Raddle Collective

This FAQ was gradually developed as a wiki on raddle.me beginning in 2021, initially by collecting essays written for the wiki as early as 2018. It was created because many anarchists take serious issue with the old FAQ — particularly its frequent conflation of anarchy with majoritarianism and its vicious attacks on anarchist currents the author disagrees with. But it was also created because the old FAQ simply doesn’t meet our needs: we wanted a clear, short, and succinct introduction to anarchist principles that isn’t bogged down in minutiae. A FAQ that can actually be read in one sitting and not take a year to work through. We also wanted to make room for contemporary schools of thought the old FAQ chooses to ignore.

Since the old FAQ has achieved critical mass to the point where the answers it offers to any questions relating to anarchy are treated as the default, and its ideological supporters are aggressively hostile to opposing narratives, this new FAQ should be expected to be judged harshly by readers who share that author’s ideological bent and are determined to preserve the old FAQ’s dominance.

In fact, this new FAQ has already sparked furious outcry for refusing to fall in line with the prevailing order’s polemical attacks on non-conforming anarchist currents — from vegan anarchy to green anarchy to nihilist anarchy. Despite these unpleasant reactions, don’t expect this FAQ to shy away from ideological bias: anarchy simply wouldn’t be anarchy without passionate conviction. Each section will state its commitments clearly, but it won’t join the old FAQ in dismissing legitimate schools of anarchist thought as “nonsense,” “confused,” or “absurd” simply because they don’t centre majoritarian assemblies the way the ghost of Murray Bookchin demands. We will make room for every current that aligns with the anarchist ethos.

Our core mission is to produce a text that embraces contradiction instead of fearing it — presenting ideas with fierce conviction while allowing multiple, even conflicting, perspectives to coexist in this FAQ as they do in the wider anarchist milieu. To achieve this, every category in the FAQ has to stay faithful to the passionate currents that originated these ideas and popularised them. They shouldn’t be watered down to avoid offending advocates of opposing currents.

An anti-work section should argue from an explicitly anti-work stance; a section on communism shouldn’t be softened through an anti-communist framing and a vegan anarchism section shouldn’t be distorted to accommodate carnist perspectives simply because those perspectives are more common.

We want people who are genuinely passionate about these ideas to bring that energy and conviction into how they’re presented. We don’t want this FAQ to become a bland, colourless exercise in ideological harmony and staid compromise. We want it to function as a mirror of the milieu — showing competing anarchist possibilities clearly, each with its own internal logic and uncompromising intensity.

Anarchism is inherently filled with contradictory viewpoints, and we believe that intellectual friction is a strength rather than a flaw to be smoothed away. We reject ideological uniformity in favour of true diversity of thought, which is exactly what sets this text apart from any other. That’s why a Christian section can passionately argue for Christianity beside an anti-religion section that forcefully critiques it. Both positions exist vividly within the anarchist milieu, and within these pages both are treated as valid.

Anarchy doesn’t need to be watered down into an inoffensive milquetoast pulp in a misguided bid to win the widest possible audience. It’s meant to offend. It’s an attack on the prevailing social order. The fighting spirit of anarchy can’t be sacrificed at the altars of respectability politics, tradition, or mainstream appeal.

This FAQ strives to adopt an “anarchism without adjectives” approach: it isn’t aiming to privilege any single anarchist school of thought, even if it’s widely popular. To limit the ideological bias so common in other FAQs, it’s structured to prompt critical thinking rather than rewarding doctrinal allegiance or present marching orders. We celebrate multiple anarchist perspectives rather than falsely painting anarchy as homogeny. True diversity of thought is the goal of this ongoing process, even if it isn’t there quite yet. Consider this FAQ to be very unfinished and constantly evolving, much like anarchy itself.

We don’t aim to rank theories or treat any one ideological label as the definitive path to anarchy. Theoretical models don’t dictate how anarchy is practised by disparate people across diverse cultures. So the specific school of thought someone identifies with, whether it be mutualism, anarcho-communism, egoism, or any of the others — ultimately matters less than whether the ideas are able to meet real needs and desires in real contexts. Experimenting with different approaches in different environments should always be encouraged, and each can be applied when it fits the unique challenges faced by each group. There is no one-size-fits-all anarchy and this is important to keep in mind when contributing to this FAQ.

To our critics who accuse us of being “sectarian” for exploring currents that offend their traditionalist sensibilities (e.g., anti-work, vegan anarchy, illegalism), or for not devoting tens of thousands of words to specific moments in anarchist history that they personally consider defining, I would argue it would instead be sectarian to exclude certain schools of thought and pretend they don’t exist simply because you find them too radical, extreme, or divisive. It would also be sectarian to rank your school above the others by giving it the most attention.

This FAQ covers a wide range of topics, including sections that loudly celebrate what our critics consider the default positions. Is it only sectarian when we give time to anarchist philosophies they choose to dismiss? Or are we also being sectarian to the minority currents when we describe the dominant currents? Sectarianism doesn’t mean disagreement or holding firm convictions; it means refusing to acknowledge other currents exist — or treating your own as the measure of legitimacy.

It’s impossible to please everyone, but it’s especially impossible to please people who are used to having a monopoly on ideas, to being centred in anarchist discourse — and to those people, I direct you to the old FAQ, which celebrates everything you value and attacks or ignores everything you would rather hide from sight. The new FAQ might not be overflowing with vicarious nostalgia for the Spanish civil war but what it offers is clarity: a simple easy to digest introduction to anarchist principles drawn from the full range of living currents.

One final note: this FAQ will not fall into the trap of personality politics. It won’t evaluate arguments based on who says them or who is liked, disliked, or respected in the milieu. The focus will stay on ideas and their consequences. If an argument has been shown to be flawed or harmful, it will be challenged on its own merits, and if it’s helpful or accurate, it will be treated as such regardless of the speaker. We won’t dismiss a good idea just because it was offered by someone who is considered controversial or has personal demons that don’t affect the idea being put forward.

What is Anarchy?

Anarchy is the rejection of all institutions and doctrines that seek to impose rule. It is a life of autonomy and self-determination. Anarchy is not theoretical, nor hypothetical. It is not a hope for an imagined future, it is here and now. It is a living and breathing praxis. It is a path of defiance we create for ourselves in spite of constant subjugation.

Anarchy is an endeavour to carve out pockets of life free from exploitation and suffering. It is actively working to end authoritarian relations wherever they exist, and building non-authoritarian alternatives. There is no end-goal to anarchy. It is not a prescribed way of life for an imagined people in an imagined place and time, but the experiments of countless generations of disparate people who aren’t happy being forced to submit to their supposed superiors, people who aren’t willing to accept that a life spent toiling to enrich others represents any kind of “freedom”.

“Anarchy is the thing we want. It is
the Beautiful Idea. It is the entirely
impractical idea that we can be, and
must insist on being, totally free. From
domination, of course, but also from
mundanity and morality. It is the id to
the super-ego of society and its
shaming, fear-instilling humiliations and
self-inflicted limitations.

Anarchy is an act of faith — a leap
into the unknown — and a totally sober
proposition. It is an explosion and the
simple things we do unconsciously.
It is something that predates civilization
and cannot be tamed by cities,
governments, exchange, or politics.

Anarchy is anarchy, it is both organization
(along completely different lines
than the ones that currently exist on
a broad level), and chaos. It is each of
us having the ability to determine our
own lives and the ways that we relate
to others, from our most intimate
relationships to the more far-flung.
Anarchy is impossible and it is
that very impossibility that makes it
desirable. As desirable as the eventual
lover or the water at the end of a long
hike. As impossible as independence,
autonomy, and collaboration among
equals.

Long Live Anarchy!”

-anonymous (from Pistols Drawn)

What is Archy?

The dictionary definition of ‘archy’ is any body of authoritative officials organised in nested ranks. Be it monarchy, an oligarchy, a republic, a feudal state or any other hierarchical society.

While anarchy is the opposition to social hierarchy and domination, archy is the full embodiment of those things. While anarchy calls for the absence of rulers, archy depends on the majority of a population serving and obeying a minority of rulers. Sometimes a few rulers (e.g. monarchies), and sometimes many (e.g. social democracies).

Hierarchies exist for rulers to maintain their social control & power over the population. This control is maintained with violent force by authorities appointed by the rulers: the army, national guard, police, courts, prisons, social workers, media, tax collectors, etc.

Not all guidance given by one person to another constitutes hierarchy. Choosing to accept a specialist’s expertise in their craft needn’t create a hierarchy or make them your ruler. A roofer laying your roof or a chef cooking your meal needn’t be your superior on a hierarchy simply because they are providing you with a valued service.

Similarly, an individual using force to strike a blow at the system of authority that oppresses them does not turn the individual into an authority.

Authority is not simply an isolated instance of the use of force, but an ongoing social relationship between two parties. It is a relationship where one party has the socially legitimised right to command, and the other party has the corresponding obligation to obey.

Destroying archy where you see it does not create archy, it creates anarchy.

What is Autonomy?

Autonomy, in the anarchist sense, is the freedom to make your own decisions and act on them — without needing permission from any higher authority like governments, bosses, or institutions. It’s about self-governance, not just as individuals but also as communities.

In some respects, autonomy resembles the concept of liberty — an idea that gained prominence during Europe’s so-called “Age of Enlightenment” in the 18^th century. At the time, liberty was seen as a bold and radical challenge to the unchecked authority of the monarchs who ruled society. Its advocates argued that all people were born with inherent rights, supposedly granted by God, which no ruler had the right to violate. The idea of inalienable rights, or liberties quickly spread, becoming a central slogan of the French and American Revolutions. These uprisings played a key role in dismantling monarchy and feudal rule and laying the foundation for what would become modern liberal democracy.

While liberty is often seen as a “right” granted by the state (like freedom of speech or the right to vote), autonomy doesn’t depend on the state at all. It’s not something given to you — it’s something you claim and practice yourself, anarchically.

From Sub.Media:

“Over the centuries, countless astute, and not-so-astute political thinkers, from Voltaire and Thomas Jefferson, to Alex Jones and Glenn Beck have claimed liberty as a universal human right. But to say that this principle hasn’t been universally applied would be a gross understatement. This is because from its very beginnings, the concept of liberty has existed within a framework of European global conquest, a process facilitated by colonialism, slavery and genocide. Even today, the language of liberty is still used to mobilize people’s support for imperialist wars. Remember when the United States government claimed they were bringing freedom to Iraq?”

Liberty comes with conditions: you’re allowed certain rights as long as you obey laws and accept the authority of the state. Autonomy rejects that setup entirely. It says: you don’t need rulers to tell you what rights you have — you already have the power to decide things for yourself and with others.

Autonomy is both individual and collective. In the individual sense, it means you can make choices about your life without external control or having to obey the will of authority figures who always put their interests before yours. In the collective sense, autonomy means groups of people make decisions together on matters that affect them collectively.

With anarchism, you can’t really have one without the other. Autonomous communities are made up of individuals who freely choose to work together. Think of it like an inverted pyramid. Autonomy starts small and grows outward, instead of being imposed from the top down.

Some examples of Autonomy:

A feminist collective organising its own campaigns without relying on NGOs or politicians to give them their marching orders.
A neighbourhood assembly of residents resisting gentrification by making decisions about housing and land use themselves, rather than obeying the will of property developers and landlords.
A tribe in the Amazon that refuses to receive missionaries, conform to European social mores or accept the laws of the state that claims ownership over their land.

These are all examples of people creating systems of power and decision-making that belong to them, and work for them, not imposed from above in order to benefit capitalists and their enforcers.

Autonomy challenges the idea that we need to be ruled by people who supposedly are more qualified than us to determine our needs. It’s about reclaiming control over our lives — not through asking for rights from powerful entities, but by organising ourselves and taking direct responsibility for how we live, play, relate, and co-exist.

Or put more simply: Do you really need someone sitting in a palace or parliament in a faraway city telling you what you can or can’t do, what your goals are, and how to achieve those goals?

Who Created Anarchy?

Anarchy was not created by a single person. It emerged over time as revolutionaries and philosophers questioned the legitimacy of their rulers and explored alternatives to government, social hierarchy, and other structures of authority. Many influences fed into the movement, but it’s best understood as a tradition with multiple origins rather than a single invention. Its core themes developed from changing historical conditions and the writings of several influential thinkers, whose ideas others later built into what became known as anarchism.

Diogenes of Sinope (4th century BCE) predates anarchism as a modern political movement, but many of his ideas resonate with anarchists today. His life and philosophy attacked conventional authority and social status, embraced radical self-sufficiency, and mocked accepted norms. In that sense, he can be seen as a kind of proto–anarchist figure: not an anarchist in the historical sense, but a forerunner in the spirit of anti-authoritarian critique. He was a Cynic, and that Cynic temperament often overlaps with anarchist sensibilities.

Indigenous societies such as the !Kung San of southern Africa, the Mbuti peoples of Central Africa, and various Indigenous nations of North America have often been discussed for their egalitarian structures, consensus-based decision-making, and aversion to centralised authority. Anarchist writers have also highlighted historical communities such as certain early village societies, Celtic tribes, and peasant movements that resisted hierarchical control and state domination.

North American examples such as the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy and Muskogean (including Creek) societies demonstrate forms of governance based on councils, collective decision-making, and community accountability rather than rule by a central authority. While these societies were perhaps not anarchist in the modern political sense, their emphasis on autonomy, shared responsibility, and decentralised organisation has influenced anarchist discussions about alternative forms of social organisation.

The Hadza people of northern Tanzania are frequently discussed in anarchist and anthropological literature as an example of a society that reflects strong anarchist principles. Traditionally, Hadza communities have maintained highly egalitarian social structures with built in resistances to hierarchy, no centralised political authority, and an emphasis on individual autonomy, cooperation, and resource sharing. Anarchist writers have highlighted these practices as evidence that human societies can organise through voluntary association and mutual aid rather than systems of domination or centralised control. However, anthropologists caution against imposing modern political labels on the Hadza, whose social organisation developed from their own cultural and historical context.

One of the most influential figures in the development of modern anarchism was Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who, during the nineteenth century, helped popularise the term "anarchism" and became the first person to publicly describe himself as an anarchist. Best known for his declaration that "property is theft," Proudhon challenged prevailing ideas about private property, political authority, and the state, arguing instead for a society based on voluntary association, mutual aid, and economic reciprocity. Through works such as What Is Property? (1840), he advanced the idea that social order could emerge without centralised government, laying the foundations for what later became known as mutualism. Although his ideas did not define anarchism in their entirety, they gave the emerging movement a distinct identity and provided an enduring theoretical framework for subsequent anarchist thinkers.

Another frequently cited precursor is William Godwin, whose earlier, systematic opposition to government laid groundwork that later anarchists found useful. Godwin’s arguments offered a vision in which social order could exist without the state, inspiring subsequent debates about freedom, authority, and voluntary association.

Around the same time Proudhon adopted the label “anarchist,” Max Stirner developed a sharp critique of social obedience and moral authority. Rather than treating freedom mainly as a social arrangement to be constructed, Stirner focused on how control can be internalised through ideas such as “the state,” “society,” or supposedly higher moral duties. His emphasis on self-assertion and his rejection of imposed authority (whether political, religious, or ideological) offers anarchists another way to confront domination: not only by changing institutions, but by refusing the mental and moral claims that make authority seem legitimate.

Henry David Thoreau is also an important contributor to the early anarchist tradition, especially through his emphasis on rejecting authority. In Civil Disobedience (1849), he argued that individuals should not lend their support to government when it violates their conscience, presenting refusal to cooperate as an ethical and practical alternative. Thoreau’s critique doesn't attempt to model a society or offer an economic blueprint, but it fits well with anarchism’s broader anti-authoritarian instincts: scepticism towards the state’s claims to legitimacy, suspicion of conformity, and a belief that personal conscience and direct action can challenge coercive power.

Later in the nineteenth century, Mikhail Bakunin pushed anarchism towards revolutionary confrontation with existing power structures. His writing emphasised the danger of authority itself and argued that liberation required not merely replacing one ruling class with another, but abolishing hierarchical domination in all its forms. A central figure in the development of revolutionary anarchism, Bakunin criticised both the state and religious institutions as systems that concentrated power and limited human freedom. He advocated for collective action, workers' self-management, and federations of autonomous communities as alternatives to centralised rule. His debates with Marx and other socialists helped define anarchism as a distinct revolutionary tradition focused on decentralisation, voluntary association, and opposition to all forms of authority, which he clearly differentiated from expertise.

Pyotr Kropotkin offered a different emphasis by highlighting mutual aid as a recurring force in human history and a foundation for social cooperation. In works such as Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902), he challenged the idea that competition and self-interest were the primary drivers of human development, arguing instead that cooperation played a crucial role in the survival and progress of many species and societies. Kropotkin envisioned a decentralised, cooperative economy in which communities could organise production and distribution according to need rather than profit, class hierarchy, or state control. He believed that voluntary associations, local self-management, and federations of autonomous communities could replace centralised institutions, creating a society based on solidarity, equality, and shared responsibility.

Born into the highest tier of the Russian aristocracy, Kropotkin formally renounced his princely title at just twelve years old, rejecting the unearned privilege and feudal exploitation it represented. This symbolic break with his royal heritage presaged his later evolutionary and economic theories on anarchism, leading him to fully abandon a life of courtly luxury to embed himself in the working-class revolutionary underground.

Anarchists played an important role in the broader labour movement that fought for the eight-hour workday, improved working conditions, and the reduction of working hours. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, anarchist organisers were active in trade unions, workers’ associations, and mass demonstrations, arguing that shorter working hours were essential for human freedom and dignity rather than simply an economic demand. In particular, anarchists in the United States, Europe, and Latin America helped organise strikes and campaigns demanding the eight-hour day, with the Haymarket affair of 1886 in Chicago becoming one of the most significant events associated with the struggle.

Lucy Parsons was a prominent Black American anarchist and organiser who was heavily involved in these labour struggles. Her work promoted solidarity across race and class, defended workers’ rights, and criticised both state violence and the power of capitalism.

Parsons often argued that electoralism could not undo wealth-based domination, famously writing: “Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.” She also strongly backed direct action and class struggle. On strikes and workers’ demands, she urged: “Strike not for a few cents more an hour, because the price of living will be raised faster still, but strike for all you earn, be content with nothing less.”

She described how: “Concentrated power can be always wielded in the interest of the few and at the expense of the many.” After the state executed her husband and several of their comrades as part of the Haymarket aftermath in 1887, she strongly advocated direct action against the rich: “Let every dirty, lousy tramp arm himself with a revolver or a knife, and lay in wait on the steps of the palaces of the rich and stab or shoot the owners as they come out. Let us kill them without mercy, and let it be a war of extermination.” She reiterated this point with “We must devastate the avenues where the wealthy live.”

Voltairine de Cleyre was an important writer and speaker from the same era who developed anarchist arguments through essays and lectures on education, free thought, women’s rights, and the ethical urgency of resisting oppression. Though initially identifying as an “individualist anarchist,” she proved central to the idea of anarchism “without adjectives,” keeping the movement focused on anti-domination principles rather than unflexible labels and economic theories.

Another important figure in anarchist history around this time was Errico Malatesta. He argued for an anarchism rooted in mass participation, mutual aid, and anti-authoritarian solidarity rather than narrow doctrines. Malatesta was especially known for insisting that anarchists should not wait for ideal conditions or put any stock in parliamentary politics, and that change should be driven by collective action that directly challenges the authority in place.

He also emphasised that anarchist ideas must remain flexible and practical, aiming to dismantle domination while building everyday cooperation, mutual support, and freedom from below. Malatesta was another strong advocate of anarchism “without adjectives,” arguing against rigid labels and fixed end-goals, and instead keeping the focus on resistance to domination and practical, people-led movements.

Following a mid-life spiritual crisis, the celebrated Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy abandoned his aristocratic privileges to become the foundational pioneer of Christian anarchism and anarcho-pacifism. In seminal works like The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1893), he argued that because the state relies inherently on organised violence, military conscription, and economic exploitation, it is fundamentally incompatible with the teachings of Jesus. Tolstoy rejected all human government, law courts, and the institutional Church, advocating instead for absolute non-violence, vegetarianism, and passive non-cooperation (such as refusing taxes and military service) to peacefully dissolve the state. This radical doctrine of non-resistance to evil ultimately resulted in his excommunication, yet it left a profound legacy, directly inspiring the non-violent liberation movements of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

In the early twentieth century, Emma Goldman became a leading anarchist thinker and one of the most recognizable, controversial radical figures of her time through her impassioned speeches, prolific writing, and lectures that always attracted large audiences. Her advocacy ranged from civil liberties and freedom of expression to workers’ rights, and she insisted that personal liberation was inseparable from broader political change. Focusing heavily on women's emancipation and sexual freedom, she challenged conventional attitudes toward contraception and gender roles, arguing that genuine freedom required a transformation of social relations and individual autonomy.

This philosophy led Goldman to view the mainstream women’s suffrage movement with deep skepticism, famously dismissing the fight for the ballot as a bourgeois "modern fetish" that offered only an illusion of freedom. Because she believed the state was inherently corrupt, she argued that since voting had failed to liberate working-class men from economic exploitation, it would do no better for women. She flatly rejected the popular suffragist claim that women would "purify" politics — asserting they were subject to the same corruptibility as men — and critiqued the movement as a wealthy "parlour affair" detached from the harsh realities of wage earners. Ultimately, she argued that true emancipation could never be granted by legislation or a government stamp; instead, it had to come from within, through a social, economic, and internal revolution where women asserted their independence from traditional marriage, religious superstition, and the state. Although her outspoken views frequently brought her into conflict with authorities and other socialists, her ideas left a lasting impact on feminist, libertarian, nihilist and social justice movements.

Émile Pouget emerged as a pivotal French anarchist and pioneer of revolutionary syndicalism who fundamentally reshaped the labour movement by wedding anarchist strategy to union direct action. As a prominent leader within the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) and co-author of the historic Charter of Amiens (1906), Pouget fiercely rejected parliamentary politics and political parties, arguing that the working class must achieve liberation entirely through its own economic organisations. His theories revolutionised working-class tactics by championing direct action, sabotage (popularising the concept of boca cannier or "bad work for bad pay"), and the general strike, which he viewed not merely as a tool for immediate reforms, but as the ultimate revolutionary weapon to paralyse capitalism and collapse the state. For Pouget, the trade union, or syndicate, served a dual purpose: it was a combat unit for the daily struggle against exploitation, and the foundational laboratory where workers learned to self-manage factories and infrastructure, thereby building the new social order directly within the shell of the old.

In Spain, Buenaventura Durruti and Federica Montseny embodied the mass-organising and militant power of anarcho-syndicalism during the 1930s Civil War. Operating through the massive Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), Durruti spearheaded the movement's armed resistance on the front lines against Francisco Franco's fascist uprising, while Montseny navigated its complex political realities, briefly and controversially serving as Western Europe’s first female minister to secure medical and social reforms. Together, they reflected a historic moment when millions of Spanish workers bypassed state authority to implement decentralised worker self-management, which encompassed collectivising factories, running public transit, and organising agricultural communes, proving that large-scale anarchist governance could function even under the extreme pressures of wartime survival.

Emerging in France, Italy, and Belgium, the illegalists were a radical faction of individualist anarchists who embraced criminality including theft, burglary, and counterfeiting as a valid form of political warfare and personal liberation. Deeply influenced by Max Stirner’s egoist philosophy, which rejected morality and law as social fabrications, they refused to submit to the humiliation of wage labour and instead championed la reprise individuelle (individual reclamation), arguing that stealing from the bourgeoisie was merely taking back wealth stolen from the working class.

This current reached its violent peak with the Bonnot Gang (1911–1912), a group that pioneered the use of getaway cars and automatic rifles in brazen bank robberies, sparking deadly shootouts that ended in bruta sieges. While the illegalists viewed their criminality as a conscious lifestyle choice and a direct critique of capitalism, their actions were fiercely condemned by mainstream anarcho-syndicalists and communist anarchists, who argued that their violent tactics and killing of working-class bank workers isolated the movement and gave governments the perfect pretext to crush the labour unions which were the focus of their efforts.

In the late twentieth century, Fredy Perlman emerged as a deeply influential anarchist thinker whose self-printed essays and translations revitalised contemporary radical theory. Expanding his focus beyond the state and capital, Perlman targeted the structure of technological civilisation itself, viewing it as an all-encompassing system of domination. In his definitive 1983 text, Against His-Story, Against Leviathan!, he recast human history not as a march of progress, but as a tragic narrative of free communities being mechanized into a totalitarian, artificial monster he called the "Leviathan." Rejecting the orthodox Marxist and syndicalist notion that workers should simply seize and manage industrial society, he argued that a mere change of ownership would only reproduce the same alienation under a different guise. Instead, Perlman insisted that genuine liberation required dismantling the technological megamachine to reclaim daily life — a heterodox critique that fundamentally laid the groundwork for modern anti-civilisational anarchist thought.

Soon after, Bob Black put forward his critiques of work, authority, and conventional social institutions. His most influential essay, The Abolition of Work (1985), argues that compulsory wage labour is a central form of domination in modern society and calls for its replacement with voluntary, creative, and intrinsically rewarding forms of activity. Drawing on anarchist, situationist, and libertarian traditions, Black contends that technological advances and alternative forms of social organisation could largely eliminate the need for coercive labour. Although his provocative style and uncompromising arguments have made him a controversial figure, his work has had a lasting influence on anarchist and anti-authoritarian debates surrounding labour, freedom, autonomy, and the organisation of everyday life.

John Zerzan is an American anarchist philosopher and one of the leading proponents of green anarchism. His work critiques industrial civilisation, technology, and symbolic culture, arguing that many forms of domination and alienation emerged with the development of agriculture, complex societies, and technological dependence. Through books such as Future Primitive and Running on Emptiness, Zerzan has significantly shaped debates on the relationship between civilisation, freedom, and ecological sustainability within contemporary anarchist thought.

John Moore was a British anarchist writer and literary theorist whose work helped develop green anarchy beyond its critique of civilisation by exploring its ethical, cultural, and existential dimensions. Through his essay A Primitivist Primer, he articulated the current as both a critique of industrial society and a vision of rewilding, autonomy, and non-hierarchical ways of living. His accessible writing played an important role in introducing and refining anti-civ ideas for wider anarchist audiences.

David Graeber was a major 21st-century influence in anarchist and anti-authoritarian circles, primarily through his writing, which connects power to the ways people organise society and make sense of the world. He explored how humans develop knowledge, shared beliefs, and social institutions, helping explain why hierarchy persists and why alternative, cooperative forms of social organisation remain possible. His work combines anthropology, history, and political theory to challenge assumptions about authority, bureaucracy, and economic life.

Graeber’s influence was most visible via his involvement with Occupy Wall Street, where his arguments about debt, power, and everyday politics resonated with people trying to understand why democratic systems seemed to serve the interests of elites. A major contribution to the milieu is his critique of “bullshit jobs”: jobs that provide little real social value and are kept in place mainly because of bureaucratic inertia, the status incentives of managers, or the need for institutions to justify themselves. In his account, the problem is not simply that work is unpleasant, but that many people find their roles meaningless in the most basic sense, which can produce alienation and harm even when the job pays well. He links this to how modern institutions create a culture of paperwork, performative productivity, and managerial oversight that substitutes activity for necessity, and he uses the idea to challenge the assumption that employment is inherently tied to usefulness or human flourishing. Graeber framed certain kinds of work not as individual failure or bad luck, but as symptoms of a wider political economy that manufactures obedience and wastes human capacity.

Aragorn! was an Odawa anarchist who founded The Anarchist Library and helped build early anarchist online networks and a prolific anarchist publishing house. His work drew on indigenous, insurrectionary, queer, and anti-civ currents. He wrote and edited many anarchist texts and publications, and heavily incorporated nihilism into anarchist thought as a critique of fixed ideologies, universal moral claims, and the idea that history necessarily progresses toward liberation. Rather than treating nihilism as despair, he framed it as a method for rejecting inherited assumptions about politics and revolution, urging anarchists to prioritise autonomy, experimentation, and resistance in everyday life over rigid programmes or utopian blueprints. Aragorn! saw freedom as something created through ongoing practices of refusing domination, not by waiting for a future revolutionary transformation that may never come.

Contemporary anarchist thought has also been shaped by writers such as Cindy Milstein, who has written extensively on anarchist organising and prefigurative politics, emphasising how everyday practices, mutual aid, and internal methods should reflect the kind of society anarchists want to see. Uri Gordon’s work similarly draws attention to real-world anarchist networks, examining how global movements coordinate, learn from one another, and sustain action across borders, including through environmental and climate-related activism.

Throughout history, anarchy wasn’t a single ideology or political programme. It was a broad network of writers, organisers, and groups, shaped by local movements, labour and community organising, anti-militarism, and fierce critiques of centralised power. Even so, the core themes are still clear: resistance to coercive authority, support for decentralised decision-making, and the belief that solidarity and mutual cooperation can replace hierarchical control.

What is Freedom of Association?

For anarchists, it is crucial that people can form, join, and leave groups voluntarily, on terms they agree to, without coercion. It treats group membership as a matter of choice: people should be able to exit if they do not want to participate, and they should be able to join without being compelled against their will. The core idea is that relationships and collective action are only free when participation is consent-based rather than forced.

This principle matters because group membership often determines access to opportunities, resources, and influence. When joining a group is effectively mandatory, or when leaving has serious punishment, freedom becomes nominal. Freedom of association therefore includes not only the right to join, but also the practical right to refuse and the real ability to leave. If you cannot realistically exit, then your choice is shaped by threats rather than consent, and the group ceases to function as an association and instead operates as an imposed structure.

Freedom of association also implies that groups should be able to set their own membership terms and decide how they organise their internal participation, as long as they do not coerce others. Practically, this means members should not be compelled into particular roles, duties, or obligations as a condition of belonging. For example, household labour should not be imposed on women simply because of their gender. It also means that any internal power should be exercised only with the consent of members, because consent is what keeps collective organisation from turning into domination. Where participation is coerced, the group’s rules stop being a reflection of collective choice and instead become tools for controlling people who did not freely agree to them.

Finally, freedom of association emphasises that social coordination should be built through voluntary relationships. People often need to cooperate to achieve goals, such as mutual support, shared work, shared advocacy, or community services. Freedom of association holds that such coordination should arise from people deciding to cooperate with others of their own accord, rather than from compulsion that forces individuals into predetermined roles. For that reason, freedom of association is not only about personal liberty. It is also about preserving genuine collective agency, ensuring that groups exist because members choose them, not because power requires them.

In contrast to anarchism, the system of democracy grants people the right to participate in collective decision-making, but it does not guarantee a right to walk away from decisions by simply seceding. If a democratic vote sets the rules, those who lose are expected to comply with the demands of the majority. Freedom of association is constrained because membership in a political community is effectively treated as a continuing commitment once the group decides to bind itself through majority rule.

Outvoted individuals and groups are not just a minority of decision-makers, they are also members of the polity that must follow the outcome. If secession is blocked, prohibitively difficult, or only allowed under narrow conditions, then exit is not a real option. In that sense, democracy is able to preserve its rule through binding decisions while denying unilateral exit to those who dissent, turning participation into something closer to compelled belonging than a freely detachable association. This greatly conflicts with anarchy's promise of freedom of association and is why so many anarchists reject the system of majoritarianism or democracy.

Murray Bookchin famously broke with anarchism largely so that he could build a system of government that didn't allow for dissenting members to secede of their own volition. He wanted a confederal system which he saw as capable of confronting and replacing the nation state, and argued that anarchism’s idea of a loose federation in which any locality could withdraw at will would be too unstable for the “libertarian municipalism” he envisioned. While describing his social and political system, he stipulated that members “may withdraw only with the approval of the confederation as a whole”.

Bookchin's direct democracy model shares the pitfalls of representative democracy: once municipalities are bound together through confederal decisions, those who are outvoted are not treated as having any right to walk away from the arrangement when it no longer meets their individual or collective needs. Instead, they must remain within the political commitments until the confederation revises its direction through further democratic deliberation, or until a collectively authorised mechanism makes withdrawal possible. Anarchists reject any attempt to coerce continued membership of an organisation that no longer works for them.

To anarchists, freedom of association is about consent: the freedom to enter groups, the freedom to decline, the freedom to leave, and the requirement that collective power over participants be grounded in voluntary agreement rather than coercion.

Anarchists insistence on freedom of association also extends to religions that impose permanent membership or treat leaving as impermissible or punishable. If a faith requires people to remain part of the religious group and blocks exit in practice, through social pressure, legal penalties, or other coercive consequences, then the religion is not really functioning as an association people can freely join and leave. It becomes more like compelled membership: participation is maintained by threats, sanctions, or irreversible constraints rather than consent.

When a religious system does not permit people to leave, forcing them to continue submitting to membership, it cannot be described as compatible with freedom of association and therefore is not compatible with anarchism.

What is Mutual Aid?

Mutual aid is the principle of people working together to solve problems for the benefit of everyone involved. It’s about cooperation, not competition — helping each other out because we all do better when we support one another.

While mutual aid has existed for as long as human society — and is found throughout nature — anarchists emphasise it as a core principle for how society should be organised. The Russian anarchist and biologist Pyotr Kropotkin made this argument in 1902, in his book Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution, when he challenged the dominant view of evolution among his peers in the scientific community as a brutal competition among people for power (“survival of the fittest”).

Instead, he showed that cooperation within and between species actually offers a major evolutionary advantage and is a more sustainable form of social organisation than the winner-takes-all competition envisioned by capitalism. Using the scientific method, Kropotkin demonstrated that species that were able to work together, or who formed symbiotic arrangements with other species based on mutual benefit, were able to better adapt to their environment, and were granted a competitive edge over those species who didn’t, or couldn’t.

Capitalism organises human activity around profit, often through coercion — like forcing people to work or go hungry. Mutual aid, by contrast, organises activity around human need and collective care. It is a wholesale rejection of capitalism’s competitive, profit-driven systems. Capitalism can’t or won’t solve problems like global poverty, exploitation of workers and environmental collapse. Mutual aid offers a different path where people come together without expecting profit and hierarchical power, simply to support each other and improve life for all.

In modern civilisation, we’re taught to see ourselves as independent and self-reliant — living in our own apartments, managing personal bank accounts, signing a smartphone contract, and carefully curating individual identities on social media. But this idea of personal independence is largely an illusion. It’s a narrative promoted by governments and corporations to shape us into isolated, manageable and commodified consumers focused on short-term gratification.

In reality, human beings are deeply interdependent — and that interdependence has always been central to our survival and progress as a species.

Take a moment to consider: where does your food come from? Your clothing? The materials that make up your home or your car? Most of us rely on vast, complex systems of labour, infrastructure, and global supply chains to meet even our basic needs. Without these systems, very few people today could last a week, let alone manufacture the commodities we depend on daily.

Some examples of Mutual Aid in the World Today:

People organising relief efforts after disasters like Hurricane Katrina
Community-run child care co-ops
The global Food Not Bombs volunteer organisation that feeds the hungry using food that would otherwise be discarded
Open-source software communities
Volunteers risking their lives to help others in war zones (like the White Helmets in Syria or Médecins Sans Frontières / Doctors Without Borders)

Mutual aid is the basic foundation for building social relations based on solidarity, not control or coercion. Mutual aid is the belief — and more importantly the practice — that we survive and thrive through cooperation, not competition. It’s a practical, ethical, and political alternative to systems based on hierarchy, profit, and control.

What is Direct Action?

Direct action is the choice people make to take political action themselves, directly addressing an issue without waiting for higher authorities like politicians, courts, police, social workers or bureaucrats to act. Direct action can be taken either by an individual or a group of people who share the same immediate goal.

Instead of asking for permission, voting for a representative, protesting or lobbying for change, people undertake the action themselves — whether that’s blocking a harmful development project such as a pipeline, squatting a building to counter private property relations, using graffiti to stave off gentrification, sabotaging a hostile workplace, neutralising a rapist or dismantling a private health insurance company. It’s one of the main ways anarchists put our values of autonomy, self-organisation and mutual aid into practice.

Direct action encompasses a wide range of activities: everything from minor graffiti and wheat-pasting, to prison breaks and assassination. Direct actions are tactics, meaning that they are a specific type of action that can be used to implement a wide variety of strategies, so it doesn’t necessarily tell us much about the politics of those carrying out the action itself. The long-term goals of a group undertaking a direct action together could diverge greatly, but the immediate goal can be mutually beneficial. For this reason, anarchists often work with non-anarchists they feel they can trust on direct actions.

The German philosopher Max Weber famously described the state as holding a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force. In practical terms, this means that acts of state violence — whether delivered through a politician’s laws, a court’s ruling, a prison guard’s chains, a psychiatrist’s involuntary hold order or a police officer’s gun — are considered lawful and justified. It serves as a stark reminder that the state always positions itself as the one and only legitimate authority in managing social conflict. The government uses its monopoly on violence to reinforce the structural cruelty inherent to capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy, ableism and hetero-patriarchy.

At its core, direct action isn’t about pleading with those in power to end their cruel exploitation. Instead, it’s about asserting the power of the people taking the action — standing apart from, and in direct opposition to, the systems of structural oppression enforced by the various authorities who insist on our obedience.

By engaging in direct action, people reject the idea that a government or state has the exclusive right to make decisions for communities and instead assert their own autonomy and freedom to determine their own fate — often setting a powerful example for others to follow.

For instance, instead of lobbying a politician to oppose a pipeline or trusting regulatory agencies to intervene, supporters of direct action may choose to physically obstruct construction of the pipeline themselves, seeing it as a more immediate, effective and empowering way to create social change.

As pointed out by Sub.Media in their direct action explainer, direct action is also instrumental in creating the conditions to enable mutual aid. The following summarises their article.

A good example of direct action being symbiotic with mutual aid comes from the 1960s, when the Black Panther Party in the USA confronted the harsh realities of poverty and systemic neglect in their communities. Instead of waiting for government support or appealing to the conscience of white-dominated America, they took matters into their own hands — creating free health clinics and launching breakfast programs to feed impoverished schoolchildren.

These initiatives weren’t just charity; they were part of a broader effort to build grass-roots community power. So effective were these programs that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover labelled the Black Panthers a major threat to national security — by which he really meant, a threat to the state’s legitimacy and the cruel white supremacist structures it protects. In order to continue their social programs, the Panthers armed themselves to protect the programs from government agents, who worked to assassinate their leaders and dismantle their organisation.

Because direct action often steps outside official political channels — and sometimes outside the law — it is frequently met with efforts to suppress or control it. These range from subtle tactics like co-option by government and corporate-aligned non-profits, to more extreme forms of repression, including surveillance, mass arrests, and targeted violence by government or paramilitary forces.

The men and women who have declared they hold exclusive control over social organisation have demonstrated they will do whatever it takes to suppress movements that threaten this status quo. They will maim and kill anyone in order to ensure full control over society is maintained by the collection of governments and corporations that rule us.

While the idea of direct action likely predates written history — emerging wherever people have resisted hierarchy — the term itself originates in the early labour movement. It was used to describe militant tactics including industrial sabotage and wildcat strikes.

By directly halting production and standing together in the face of repression, workers were able to extract real concessions from their employers. Over time, the widespread use of these tactics pressured governments to legalise trade unions and implement labour reforms — moves largely intended to pacify the more radical elements of the labour struggle and bring them back under state regulation.

One of the most powerful chapters in the history of direct action unfolded in 1970s Italy. Amid a housing crisis triggered by capitalist restructuring, thousands of southern migrants occupied abandoned buildings and organised collective resistance to evictions. This forced the state to secure affordable housing for the poor in order to manage the growing crisis that was presenting a big threat to their power.

When the state then attempted to raise transit fares and utility bills, massive groups engaged in auto-reductions — refusing to pay the increased rates as a form of collective defiance, again forcing the state to re-examine its policies in order to maintain its power.

Italian society at the time remained a deeply religious, conservative, and patriarchal society, where both abortion and divorce were outlawed. In response, a bold women’s liberation movement emerged, establishing a covert network of clinics to directly defy the state. Doctors, nurses, and trained volunteers provided safe abortions in defiance of the government’s laws. These acts of direct care were accompanied by persistent public demonstrations, which ultimately led to the legalisation of abortion as the ruling parties feared losing even more ground to the grass-roots.

Today, as we face rising inequality, social fragmentation, and ecological crisis, direct action continues to serve as a vital tool for communities seeking to reclaim power. It offers a means not only to resist injustice, but to begin shaping the kind of world we want to live in — together in our own communities, without ceding control to the brutal authorities who would sooner murder us than see their monopoly on power threatened.

What is Praxis?

A question you’ll often get when you attempt to discuss anarchism with people new to these ideas is how practical is anarchy? How can anarchy be demonstrated to me in a way that I can appreciate its effectiveness? Nothing is more effective in demonstrating the value of anarchy than praxis.

Praxis is when anarchists apply theory to practice through direct action, collective effort, and grass-roots initiatives. It emphasises the importance of lived experience, immediate action, and the continuous interplay between reflection and practice to challenge and dismantle oppressive structures. For anarchists, praxis is not merely about theoretical discussions, but about embodying principles such as autonomy, mutual aid, and self-organisation in everyday life, aiming to create a liberated way of life through participatory and decentralised methods.

Praxis is any action that embodies and realises anarchist theory. It’s a valuable method for creating awareness of anarchist causes and building solidarity in your community.

Examples of praxis:

Setting up a Food Not Bombs chapter in your community.
Squatting an unused building to provide a safe space for homeless people.
Guerilla gardening.
Setting up a free shop that people can freely take what they need from.
Building community gardens to feed and engage the community.
Preparing free meals for homeless people.
Helping people install a free and open source operating system and the Tor browser for privacy and security.
Converting old combustion-engine cars to electric.
Make a zine/informational about an important topic.
Creating memes from an Anarchist perspective.
Assassinating dictators.
Creating an autonomous zone.
Horizontal community public safety organising to replace the police.
Teaching people how to steal from the rich effectively.
Creating a space online where Anarchists can share their ideas with each other.
Aiding in defending indigenous sovereignty.
Offering support to people suffering from addictions, and helping them be on a healthy path if they want to be.
Stopping pipelines from being built.
Investigating history, and appreciating the context for how you have come to be.
Identifying privileges caused by being a part of a white-supremacist, hetero-normative, patriarchal, trans-phobic, classist, state controlled labour farm.
Calling out problematic behaviour in other group members, no matter their status in the group.
Teaching people to be self sufficient by gardening, foraging and upcycling.
Starting an anarchist bike collective to fix people’s bikes.
Making anarchist music that shines a light on injustices in the world.
Setting up a community mesh-net to share data with people in a decentralised manner.

What is Prefiguration?

Prefiguration, or prefigurative politics, is a principle of anarchist thought that holds that the methods used to achieve social change should reflect the values of the society being sought. Anarchists argue that means and ends are inseparable: a free and egalitarian society cannot be created through authoritarian or hierarchical methods. Instead, the struggle for social transformation must itself embody principles such as freedom of association, direct action, mutual aid, voluntary cooperation and self-management.

This commitment ideally leads anarchists to practice horizontal forms of organisation, collective decision-making, and the decentralisation of power in their lives. This helps ensure that the forced participation in centralised leadership and state authority we're all subjected to doesn’t train us to dismiss anarchy as unworkable or impractical. By applying these principles throughout the process of change, people build the relationships, skills, and habits needed for a free society while reducing the likelihood that new hierarchies will emerge.

Prefigurative politics is expressed through both organisational practices and everyday forms of mutual support. Worker cooperatives, mutual aid networks, community assemblies, and grassroots campaigns seek to demonstrate alternatives to hierarchical social and political institutions. Within anarchist movements, this often means organising through voluntary participation, consensus or participatory decision-making, transparent sharing of information, and collective responsibility. It also involves meeting people's needs directly through practical forms of solidarity, such as sharing food, organising childcare, providing legal support, or coordinating community healthcare.

For anarchists, however, prefiguration is more than a set of organisational techniques. It is the practice of learning how to live together in freer, non-coercive ways while the struggle itself is taking place. This includes experimenting with democratic forms of coordination, developing fair approaches to resolving conflict, and creating safeguards to prevent informal concentrations of power from replacing formal hierarchies.

Prefiguration also challenges the idea that liberation can be postponed until after a revolution or the capture of state power. Rather than treating freedom as a distant goal, it insists that liberation must be built in the present through everyday practices of cooperation, shared responsibility, and self-management. In this way, prefiguration is both a political strategy and an ethical commitment: it seeks to ensure that the movement for a free society already embodies the principles of the society it hopes to create.

What Are Temporary Autonomous Zones?

Temporary Autonomous Zones are anarchist experiments in which people carve out a physical social space that operates according to anti-authoritarian principles for a limited time. The goal is not to create a permanent alternative to the government, but to demonstrate, through direct practice, how life might work without hierarchy, domination, or centralised control. A TAZ is autonomous because participants organise the space so they can govern themselves directly, typically through collective decision-making rather than through leaders or formal command structures. It is “temporary” because these arrangements are tactical: they persist only as long as participants can sustain the social coordination, resources, and safety needed to maintain non-coercive life together.

TAZs are closely linked to the concepts of prefiguration. Rather than waiting for a distant future revolution to make anarchy possible, participants try to live the values of that imagined society immediately. The principles of mutual aid, shared labour, collective care, and communal provisioning are all put into practice. Whether the “zone” takes the form of a temporary occupation, a self-run community project, or an encampment-like gathering, the emphasis is on building solidarity and meeting basic needs without recreating the power dynamics that anarchists oppose. In this sense, TAZs function as both practical experiments and political messages: they model everyday alternatives to state or capitalist authority, and they do so in ways that are mobile, flexible, and resilient under pressure.

Some real-world examples anarchists often point to as either being Temporary Autonomous Zones or similar experiments include:

ZAD de Notre-Dame-des-Landes (France; 2000s–2018+): Opponents of a proposed airport occupied land in western France to prevent development, creating a long-lasting autonomous zone known as the ZAD ("Zone to Defend"). Residents established self-managed farms, communal kitchens, workshops, media spaces, and alternative housing while resisting repeated eviction attempts. It was an experiment in libertarian, anti-capitalist living, characterised by cooperative decision-making, self-production, ecological construction using recycled and organic materials, and regenerative agriculture. The community brought together farmers, artisans, and activists in a decentralised social and economic system that rejected hierarchical leadership and sought to minimise dependence on the state and capitalist markets. The occupation ended in its original form after the French government abandoned the airport project in 2018 and subsequently carried out large-scale evictions, although some residents negotiated legal agreements allowing farms and community projects to continue. The ZAD remains a prominent example of long-term autonomous governance and resistance.
CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, USA 2020) alternatively referred to as CHOP (Capitol Hill Organized Protest) was a self-declared autonomous area in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood that grew out of protests after George Floyd was killed in May 2020. Protesters (including many anarchists) took over a multi-block area after police withdrew, creating a barricaded, self-organised space with community-run food and meetings for a limited period before it was forcibly shut down when the police regained control.
Zapatista autonomy in Chiapas (Mexico): Following the 1994 uprising by the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN), the Zapatistas gradually established a network of de facto autonomous territories in the Mexican state of Chiapas. Rejecting direct integration into state political institutions, they created autonomous municipalities that operated independently of official municipal governments. These municipalities developed parallel systems of governance, including community assemblies, locally elected councils, autonomous schools, health clinics, and systems of restorative justice. In 2003, the movement consolidated regional coordination through the creation of caracoles ("snails"), each overseen by a council which coordinated administration, conflict resolution, development projects, and relations with outside organisations. Leadership rotated regularly, decisions were made through participatory assemblies, and officials served without salaries to reduce professionalisation and concentration of power. Although the Mexican state retained formal sovereignty, the Zapatistas exercised substantial self-government within many indigenous communities for decades. Their project has been widely cited as one of the most enduring examples of sustained autonomous self-government operating largely outside the formal structures of the state while coexisting in tension alongside them.
City Plaza (Athens, Greece) was an autonomously run, self-organised squat for refugees, based in the former City Plaza Hotel. Rebranded as a “Refugee Accommodation and Solidarity Space,” it became one of several refugee squats in Athens. Occupied in 2016, it housed large numbers of refugees while relying on internal support structures and volunteers. By 2017, it housed roughly 400 residents from ten countries across 110 rooms. Two activist groups involved in the space were Diktio (Network for Political and Social Rights), focused on anti-nationalism, political prisoners, and migration struggles, and Aren/Onra, a youth collective. The space closed in 2019, after authorities moved to evict it.
Hospital Squat (Alkiviadou street, Athens): An abandoned hospital building occupied by anarchists and solidarity networks, which was transformed into temporary housing for refugees and migrants. The project provided shelter and basic support through collective organisation, volunteer involvement, and self-managed structures, reflecting broader grassroots efforts to address the lack of adequate refugee accommodation during the European migration crisis. Residents and supporters organised everyday operations, including the distribution of food, provision of essential supplies, and maintenance of communal spaces. The occupation was eventually targeted by police, who raided and cleared the building, ending the self-managed housing initiative. The Hospital Squat became an example of the wider movement of refugee solidarity occupations in Athens, where unused buildings were repurposed as spaces of collective care, autonomy, and resistance to institutional failures in refugee accommodation.

There have also been numerous other squatted social centres and liberated buildings that anarchists identify as long-running autonomous spaces. These occupations repurpose abandoned properties as sites for community organising, food distribution, media production, cultural activities, safe injection sites, clinics, shelter and mutual aid. While some develop into enduring centres of collective life, they all ultimately remain vulnerable to police action, eviction, or legal challenges, reflecting the often temporary and contested nature of squatted autonomy.

How Do Anarchists Critique Identity?

Capitalism often uses identity in two big ways: to organise people into social groups that are easy to market to and govern, and to redirect dissent away from the sources of economic power (the ruling class, corporations, political parties, the state) and direct it at scapegoated minority groups (migrants, trans people, ethnic minorities).

Capitalists don’t just sell products; they sell status, lifestyles, and a sense of identity and belonging. When people’s sense of self is tied to what they buy, what group they’re seen as belonging to, or what role they perform within the capitalist system, staying in their assigned role within the system becomes part of their identity. That makes change much harder, because systemic change can feel like a threat to who you are as a person — not only to your income or the stability of society.

Alienation is the deeper mechanism behind this. Capitalism works to separate people from the control of their own labour: you don’t get to make decisions about what you produce, how you produce it, or how the results are used. Your effort is converted into wages, and your connection to the final product becomes indirect — mediated by bosses, markets, and money.

Even consumption turns into a substitute for agency: instead of shaping your life through collective control, you’re encouraged to cope by purchasing goods that promise to award you relief, status, or recognition. Over time, this can make everyday life feel like it happens to you rather than through you, so the idea of leaving the system behind doesn’t just risk you losing whatever meagre benefits the system affords you — it risks losing a familiar sense of reality, purpose, and belonging.

Capitalism also relies on categories to manage populations. Using identity markers such as race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, nationality, religion, city, or age group helps corporations and institutions decide who is considered “fit,” “safe,” or “worth” investing in. That shapes access to opportunities at multiple points: who gets hired, who is eligible for benefits, who can access credit or housing, and even who gets treated as credible or trustworthy in everyday life. It also shows up in more overt ways, like policing and surveillance.

As part of this process, unequal outcomes get reframed as “cultural” or “individual choice,” as if the results come from personal traits, upbringing or talent rather than from policies and power that deliberately distribute opportunities unevenly.

When economic insecurity rises, the ruling class and its political apparatus can steer conflict towards identity-based “culture wars” to avoid challenges to ownership, wages, housing or control of resources. Identity conflict is often easier to monetise and mobilise than coordinated collective action, so the system can manage unrest without changing the underlying concentration of power.

Another benefit to all this is making opposition feel illegitimate or futile. If critics can be framed as “anti–[country]” or “anti-social,” or as damaging to the social fabric or the prevailing national ideology (e.g. democracy), then debating their ideas matters less than attacking the identity they’ve been sorted into. When people are targeted on identity instead of engaged on real policies and evidence, organising for economic and social change becomes much harder.

Capitalism also blunts change by co-opting movements. Demands for fairness or redistribution of resources controlled by the ruling class can be reframed as lifestyle “niches,” cultural expressions, or brand-friendly institutional initiatives. Some examples include awareness months, diversity parades, “listening sessions” that invite input without making real commitments or material concessions, and “community partnership” grants that fund small pilot projects aimed at diversity while leaving real decision-making and ownership unchanged.

This co-option can also show up as policy-friendly corporate lobbying framed as “responsible reform,” designed to avoid any meaningful redistribution of power. The movement can appear to win concessions after years of hard fought battles, while material incentives and the underlying concentration of power remain untouched.

Finally, identity management can happen through social reward and targeted stigmatisation. People who match the dominant norms society treats as “respectable,” “responsible,” or “professional,” and who fit the roles society deems legitimate, are treated as trustworthy. They’re more likely to be hired or promoted and to get more space to speak, lead, and be assigned trust and respect. These rewards reinforce the message that success comes from conforming to the system, not from challenging the power that sets the rules.

At the same time, people who disrupt social norms are sanctioned informally. They may be mocked, othered, dismissed, isolated, or quietly blocked from advancing, so opportunities dry up. The stigma doesn’t just target behaviour. It re-labels the person as unfit, suspicious, lazy, embarrassing, strange, threatening, or dangerous, turning exclusion into a warning that silences other potential rebels. That discourages change because deviating from the ruling class’s largely unwritten rules can cost not only wages, but also credibility, networks, safety, and belonging.

Instead of treating inequality as a shared outcome of power and property, it gets filtered through identity stories: who is to blame, who belongs, who is legitimate, who is patriotic, who is seen as a threat, and who needs to be purged. That can be emotionally real and politically meaningful, but it often pulls attention away from material causes like wages, ownership, workplace control, housing markets, and public resources, and toward cultural or status conflicts that only serve to insulate the ruling class from threats to their monopoly on power.

A key nuance is that identity isn’t only a tool of control. People use it for solidarity and resistance too. The anarchist critique of identity is mainly about how institutions and markets selectively amplify politically useful identity narratives while blocking collective challenges to economic and social power.

We reject the idea that identity categories should replace material analysis of power and exploitation, or that liberation can be achieved by policing who is “legitimate” and who is not. For anarchists, the goal is not to win recognition and acceptance on the system’s terms, but to dismantle the structures that produce domination in the first place, so that people can live freely without needing gatekeepers to validate their humanity or “place” in society.

Accusing people of engaging in “identity politics” can become toxic when it’s used as a silencing tactic rather than an actual critique. If the charge is mainly meant to dismiss minority concerns as trivial, divisive, or distracting, it treats lived oppression as a distraction from “real” politics. That can pressure minority people to downplay what they’re experiencing in order to be considered “serious,” which effectively blocks their ability to participate fully in anarchist spaces and in wider organising efforts.

This is especially toxic when the accusation comes with a demand to “wait your turn.” Telling women, black people, or trans people to wait until “after the revolution” or “once we’ve fixed class issues first” turns their liberation into a moral and strategic deferral. Marginalised people can’t be asked to absorb ongoing harm while the dominant group postpones their concerns indefinitely. In practice, “after” often never arrives, and the cost is paid immediately by the people least able to afford delay.

It also shifts the meaning of solidarity. Instead of treating minority liberation as part of dismantling domination, the dominant group (e.g. white men) can end up treating it as secondary. That reinforces the idea that some groups matter politically only when their issues are convenient to majority priorities. The result is resentment, fragmentation, and burnout, because people can feel like they’re being used for broad support while their specific needs are always deferred. Democracy can intensify this dynamic, especially when the majority claims that minorities should simply accept being outvoted and stop “interjecting”.

Finally, the “identity politics” accusation can legitimise internal policing. Minority organisers may be criticised for how they name oppression, who they centre, or what demands they prioritise. Over time, this creates a hierarchy of acceptable speech, where the movement decides which experiences count as convincing evidence and which are dismissed as emotion, distraction or rhetoric. Even when allies intend to be constructive, the effect can be to discourage minority voices and narrow the movement’s vision. That makes it much harder to build durable, cross-group coalitions that empower the most oppressed among us.

What Are Some of the Schools of Thought Within the Anarchist Milieu?

Though this FAQ is structured to avoid treating particular economic theories and tactics as identities, and instead promotes anarchism-without-adjectives or the idea that these approaches can all be used where it makes sense to use them, it can still be helpful to briefly define the terms you’ll see anarchists use to describe themselves, since people living under capitalism have the habit of turning every microcosm of an idea into a label.

Economic

Anarcho-communism: Common ownership of the means of production. Abolishes the wage system entirely, distributing goods based on individual need from a common pool that is managed by the community.
Collectivist anarchism: Distributes goods based on labour performed, using labour vouchers to compensate workers for their time and effort.
Anarcho-syndicalism: Workers’ unions coordinate production. An anti-state revolutionary federation is the basis of the social structure, replacing government with a network of trade unions that run production and social life through direct action and collective decision-making.
Mutualism: Free association and voluntary exchange among equals, using cooperatives and mutual credit. It aims for a society where people can access resources through reciprocal labour and contracts rather than coercive ownership.
Egoist economics: This isn’t a formal economic model like communism or mutualism, but it implies an economy built entirely from voluntary contracts between self-interested individuals. Property and exchange aren’t treated as morally fixed systems, they’re just tools individuals use as long as they’re useful and discarded when they're not. It overlaps with mutualism but is less structured and more anti-system, with no underlying framework assumed beyond individual agreement.
Social ecology: Decentralised, ecologically grounded approach to political economy that reorganises production around ecological limits and sustainability. It emphasises local self-sufficiency, democratic participation, and confederal coordination between communities, replacing market-driven allocation with directly democratic decision-making over production and resource use.
Participatory economics: Workplaces are self-managed by workers’ councils, with decision-making shared in proportion to those affected. It proposes “balanced job complexes” to prevent hierarchical class divisions by distributing both creative and menial labour more evenly. Remuneration is based on effort and sacrifice rather than output, property, or bargaining power, aiming to eliminate structural inequality while preserving coordinated production.

Strategy & Organisation

Insurrectionary anarchism: Prioritises continuous revolt, sabotage, and moments of insurrection over long-term institution-building or gradual reform. It emphasises spontaneity, informal organisation, and small affinity groups that are difficult for states or other authorities to monitor or penetrate, viewing sustained rebellion as a way to disrupt and weaken systems of power.
Anti-left anarchy: Also known as post-left anarchy. Questions traditional left-wing ideas like organising around large movements, fixed political programs, the fetishisation of revolution and moral absolutism and instead focuses on how domination shapes everyday life. It emphasises deconstructing fixed identities and resisting “one-size-fits-all” solutions. Focus is put on experimentation, personal autonomy, and building new, situation-specific forms of resistance — rather than following abstract blueprints from a manifesto written by a scholar whose life bore little resemblance to your own.
Platformism: Prefers more formal organisation than other tendencies, with clearer roles and responsibilities and an agreed strategy. Argues that anarchist movements should be more tightly coordinated so they can act effectively, through shared plans, discipline, and clear communication among members. Heavy emphasis on collective responsibility and practical unity while discouraging loosely connected groups.
Illegalism: Focused on rejecting the legitimacy of law and treats illegal acts such as theft or sabotage as both political tactics and practical means of sustaining resistance against authority and economic exploitation. It emphasises individual autonomy and direct action, rejecting conventional moral frameworks and lawful or reformist approaches in favour of openly defying social and legal norms.
Transcendentalism: A philosophical movement that emphasises individual conscience, self-reliance, and strong personal ethics over conformity and state authority. It views liberation as both an inner ethical transformation and the dismantling of coercive institutions that prevent people from living authentically and caring for one another through voluntary cooperation. The movement is closely associated with Henry David Thoreau, whose book Walden popularised a move towards self-sufficiency and simple living.
Union of egoists (Egoism): People associate purely through voluntary, self-interested cooperation rather than loyalty, duty, or moral obligation. Individuals join because the relationship serves their own needs or desires, and they leave once it no longer does, without guilt or constraint. The union has no fixed authority or identity above its members; it exists only through their ongoing, active participation. This makes it fundamentally different from states or other hierarchical institutions, which rely on treating abstractions like “society,” “the nation,” or “humanity” as if they have authority over individuals. In contrast, Max Stirner's union of egoists is fluid and temporary, continually re-formed through the changing choices of the individuals involved, without any sacred or binding framework beyond their immediate self-interest.
Anarcho-syndicalism: Mass labour organising + direct action; revolutionary change through unions.

Issue-based:

Anarcha-feminism: Sees patriarchy as a major hierarchy to fight alongside capitalism and the state. Aims for women’s and gender-oppressed people’s liberation through direct action, egalitarian organisation, and challenging sexist power in both society and anarchist practice.
Queer anarchism: Links sexual and gender oppression to broader systems of hierarchy and domination. Aims for LGBTQIA+ liberation through dismantling oppressive power structures and building freer, more mutual forms of community and life that don’t discriminate based on sexual or gender identity.
Trans anarchists view gender as something people experience and express, which the state has no right to impose on. They see gender as socially constructed and fluid in practice, emphasising that trans liberation means self-determination and dismantling the institutions, traditions and norms that enforce rigid gender roles and make life in a hierarchical society so unsafe for trans people.
Black anarchism: Focuses on black and brown liberation and critiques racial oppression as a form of state and capitalist domination. It strongly opposes white supremacy, aiming for freedom through direct struggle against racial oppression and by building non-hierarchical community where people of colour aren’t discriminated against, whether openly or subtly. This critique also extends to racism that some white anarchists subconsciously hold.
Green anarchy: Sees ecological destruction as deeply connected to hierarchy, and calls for ending domination over nature and over one another. Critiques civilisation (or industrial society) as the root cause of hierarchical power, alienation and domination.
Vegan anarchy: Treats the exploitation of non-human animals as the root of broader domination, aiming for liberation through both dismantling hierarchical power and building vegan, non-violent alternatives to speciesist society.

Mix and match:

Anarchism without adjectives: Avoids treating anarchism as one fixed economic system or single strategy, instead stressing shared anti-authoritarian principles. Argues that different tactics and ideas from across the various tendencies can be used where they fit to challenge domination and build solidarity.

What is Leftism and How Does it Relate to Anarchy?

The familiar left–right political divide originated during the French Revolution, when deputies in the National Assembly came to be seated according to their political positions: defenders of the monarchy and the existing order sat to the president's right, while supporters of revolutionary reforms (constitutional monarchy) sat to the left. Although the early left was not yet republican, both sides assumed that society would continue to be organised through the state. That assumption has largely endured. Whether social democrats, liberals, conservatives, Marxist-Leninists, or Greens, the overwhelming majority of political ideologies take the state as the primary instrument of social change. Anarchism breaks with this shared assumption by rejecting the state itself rather than arguing over who should control it.

One of the most important things anarchists need to get across is that worthwhile transformation can only be achieved through direct action outside of and against the state, parliamentary democracy and the various structures of class collaboration, and that means questioning the left vs right thing, which only serves to cement the state’s dominance over our lives.

Anarchists are not leftists, we side with neither monarchy nor republic, dictatorship nor democracy, free market capitalism nor state capitalism. We stand for anarchy. The absolute negation of all authority, including both wings of government: Left and right.

According to every contemporary definition, the left wing is part and parcel of the state, of government, of authority, and anarchists who identify with that left wing are buying into the coercive notion that they need to box themselves in with liberals, social democrats, Marxists and other authoritarians for no logical reason at all.

A far more useful distinction than left vs. right is authority vs. anti-authority. Anarchy has nothing of substance in common with authoritarians, with governmentalists, with those who desire to dominate and rule us, because anarchy is a completely different animal than anything envisioned by the left (or the right) wing of the state. We speak an entirely different language.

While the left attempts to organise people in order to cement left-wing state power, in order to reform the state to better suit the interests of the left, anarchists attempt to escape all domination and control, to abolish the government, political parties, the state, its borders and military and all kinds of power hierarchy.

Anarchy isn’t simply another cog in the politics machine, it’s the anti-politics. We reject everything politics represents.

Although anarchists differ in their ideas of the tactics to be used in achieving social change, they are united in regarding themselves as apolitical or even anti-political.

Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements, George Woodcock (1962)

It is not true then to say that we treat politics abstractly. We make no abstraction of it, since we wish positively to kill it. And here is the essential point upon which we separate ourselves absolutely from politicians and radical bourgeois Socialists (now functioning as social or radical democracy which is only a facade for capitalistic democracy,). Their policy consists in the transformation of State politics, their use and reform. Our policy, the only policy we admit, consists in the total abolition of the State, and of politics, which is its necessary manifestation.

Politics and the State, Mikhail Bakunin (1871)

I have always considered my inclination to anarchy to be irreducible to a politics. Anarchist commitments run deeper. They are more intimate, concerning supposedly personal or private matters; but they also overflow the instrumental realm of getting things done. Over time, I have shifted from thinking that anarchist commitments are more than a politics to thinking that they are something other than a politics. I continue to return to this latter formulation. It requires thinking things through, not just picking a team; it is more difficult to articulate and it is more troubling to our inherited common sense. I do not think I am alone in this. It has occurred to some of us to register this feeling of otherness by calling our anarchist commitments an ethics. It has also occurred to some of us to call these commitments anti-political. I think these formulations are, for many of us, implicitly interlinked, though hardly interchangeable.

Its core is the negation, Alejandro de Acosta (2013)

Classical anarchists rarely, if ever identified with the left wing, and after waging deadly warfare on anarchists for a century, it was only recently that the left began to lay claim to anarchy, typically to co-opt successful grass-roots anarchist movements to further their coercive political program and ultimately prolong capitalism and our growing dependence on the state.

This being said, a lot of anarchists today, the majority in fact, strongly identify with the left, typically by defining “left” to mean “anti-hierarchy”, despite this definition being incongruous to what the left actually represents in both modern times and historically. These anarchists closely affiliate themselves with a wider left-wing movement, including Marxists, social democrats, and even centrist political parties, and they’re perhaps unwilling to sacrifice the social capital they’ve accrued in their friendship circles by swearing off the left.

A lifetime of daily propaganda by the state and its media apparatus separating people into 2 opposing factions: left Vs. right, has a way of become ingrained in the collective consciousness. Parting psychologically with this meticulously manufactured tribalism is no easy feat. The advertised left wing identity of social responsibility, ethics, diversity, inclusion and a dedication to equality is not something that’s easy to part with, despite it being a largely fictional construct: which is constantly proven when the left wing parties get their turn to be in power and quickly increase austerity, imperialism, war, surveillance, mass-incarceration and corruption.

The state wants us to view the world in left/right binary terms in order to uphold the representative democracy system that sustains the state and keeps us separated into haves and have-nots, rulers and obeyers, while allowing the wealthy to loot our resources and steadily criminalise our very existence.

As long as the left is in service to state power, it’s of no use to anarchists.

Wait, How is Anarchy Anti-Politics?

To my mind, the struggle for liberty is too great and the few steps we have gained have been won at too great a sacrifice, for the great mass of the people of this 20th century to consent to turn over to any political party the management of our social and industrial affairs. For all who are at all familiar with history know that men will abuse power when they possess it, for these and other reasons, I, after careful study, and not through sentiment, turned from a sincere, earnest, political Socialist to the non-political phase of Socialism, Anarchism, because in its philosophy I believe I can find the proper conditions for the fullest development of the individual units in society, which can never be the case under government restrictions.

(from The Principles of Anarchism), Lucy E. Parsons (~1905–1910)

Anarchism is often described as anti-politics because it rejects the conventional organisation of society around the body politic. It opposes state power, law, political representation, and the assumption that social order requires authority in order to be legitimate.

The anarchist critique of the body politic is that it transforms a society of distinct individuals into a single abstract entity — the People, the Nation, or the State — whose supposed interests are then used to justify exercising authority over those individuals. Rather than seeing society as a unified political body, anarchists understand it as a network of free individuals, associations, and communities whose relationships are voluntary, plural, and constantly evolving. The aim is not to perfect the body politic, but to abolish it by replacing relations of rulership with voluntary cooperation and free association.

For more than a century, anarchists have understood politics in its conventional sense as the activity of governing through the state. Since anarchism rejects the state and its monopoly on violence, politics becomes not the solution to social problems but part of the problem itself.

At the same time, anarchists distinguish government from self-governance, rejecting institutions that rule over people, but not collective decision-making itself. Instead, we advocate voluntary association, self-management, mutual aid, and forms of organisation through which people coordinate their affairs without a governing class or permanent structures of authority. Because politics is commonly understood as inseparable from government, anarchy can therefore best be described as anti-political.

This also extends to the anarchist rejection of political representation. Entrusting a minority with the authority to govern on behalf of others reproduces hierarchy, even when representatives are elected democratically. Freedom, in the anarchist view, cannot be delegated to authority figures.

For anarchists, politics is not merely public debate about methods of social organisation the way some would incorrectly frame it. It is a system for organising society through institutions of authority. If those coercive institutions are abolished, collective decision-making takes on a fundamentally different character: rulership gives way to free agreement.

Accordingly, anarchists reject the idea that positive social transformation can be enacted through political parties, lobbying, elections, parliaments, or state institutions. Instead, we focus on the relations of power embedded in everyday life: workplaces, neighbourhoods, schools, policing, trade, families, and other social hierarchies. Rather than seeking to capture political power, anarchists seek to dissolve relations of domination wherever they exist and replace them with anarchy.

To advocates of politics, this emphasis on transforming everyday social relations rather than competing for state power can appear anti-political or apolitical. From an anarchist perspective, however, dismantling relations of domination — including the polity itself — is the only form of social transformation worth pursuing. In that sense, it is entirely fair to describe anarchism as anti-political.

The anarchist alternative to the polity is not another political body, but a society of free associations: a decentralised network of individuals, communities, and organisations that coordinate through voluntary cooperation rather than sovereignty, representation, or rule. The polity asks, "Who has the authority to govern?" Anarchism asks, "How can people coordinate their affairs without anyone having authority over others?"

Once this negative power — government — has been abolished, society will be whatever it can be, and all it can be, given the forces and capabilities of the moment. If there are educated men eager to spread education, they will organize schools and strive to make everyone aware of the usefulness and pleasure of education. And if these men were absent or few in number, a government could not create them; it could only, as is happening today, take those few, remove them from fruitful work, put them to draft regulations that must be enforced by the police, and from intelligent and passionate teachers turn them into politicians — that is, useless parasites, all preoccupied with imposing their whims and maintaining themselves in power.

(from L’anarchia), Errico Malatesta (1891)

Do Anarchists Support Free Speech?

From Wikipedia.org:

Doublespeak is language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the meaning of words. Doublespeak may take the form of euphemisms (e.g. “down-sizing” for lay-offs, “servicing the target” for bombing, in which case it is primarily meant to make the truth sound more palatable. It may also refer to intentional ambiguity in language or to actual inversions of meaning. In such cases, doublespeak disguises the nature of the truth.

The concept of “free speech” is fundamentally flawed, and has historically been used to convince citizens of states that they have “rights” that are gifted to them by the supposedly benevolent and generous state.

In actuality, the state doesn’t give you rights; it controls them, limits them, denies you them. It uses its monopoly on violence to censor, stalk, spy on, imprison and terrorise anyone that would threaten to subvert its power.

When an authority grants you “free speech”, what they’ve really done is take away your freedom to speak, and then allow certain people (typically the favoured social class) to say certain things under certain conditions. There’s nothing “free” about this. You’re still forbidden from speech that would threaten the state or those it empowers. You’re still legally viable for slandering powerful people that can afford as many lawyers as it takes to sue you into bankruptcy. You’re still beaten to a bloody pulp (or worse) for talking back to a cop. You’ll still be imprisoned, enslaved and murdered by the state and its enforcers for being the wrong race or the wrong gender or the wrong sexuality or the wrong religion or the wrong class and daring to resist your oppressors.

Free speech is a lie told to us by our rulers to convince us we need to be ruled by them.

Anarchists are aware enough to realise the state does not grant us any kind of freedom. The entire existence of the state is predicated on taking freedom away from us to empower the rich and powerful minority that the state exists to serve. So as anarchists; as people who don’t want to be ruled, people who see the blatant lies our rulers tell us for what they are, it would make little sense for us to support an inherently Orwellian concept as “free speech”. Much more honest words for this concept would be “controlled speech” or “state-approved speech”.

Really, when the state talks about freedom of speech, they’re most often talking about the freedom to be a hateful bigot — since bigotry is really the only type of speech the state will go out of its way to protect. Bigotry allows the state to scapegoat undesirable groups and thus create gaping social divisions. If everyone is demonising migrants or gays, those groups will serve as a fine distraction. Ensuring our rulers and their benefactors can live to exploit us for another day as we focus our rage at anyone but them.

According to the state, white supremacists are free to incite hatred against non-whites (which has often led to mass murder), but if someone were to say they think the president of the nation deserves to be stabbed for his crimes... Well, that person would promptly be carted off to prison for voicing such a dangerous idea.

Unfortunately, some people insist on using bigoted or otherwise oppressive language in anarchist spaces, claiming that free speech allows them to do so. Since we’ve established that free speech is nothing more than an insipid lie our rulers tell us in order to control us, it’s important that we reject the dishonest language of the state when talking about anarchy, and take a long hard look at the reasons someone would have for clinging to the state’s shrewd promises of “rights” and “freedoms” that simply don’t exist.

“Free speech” is not an anarchist principle in any way. Actual anarchist principles of course include direct action, mutual aid, taking a strong stance against authority in all its guises, as well as freedom of association. This means we are free to associate with whoever we want and free to avoid associating with people that would build authoritarian structures to oppress us.

So let’s talk about the people who enter anarchist spaces, direct slurs and hateful bigoted rhetoric at us, and then insist we accept their abuse because they have the sacred right to freedom of speech... These people simply have no understanding of anarchy. Their “right to free speech” that they insist we respect could only be granted to them by a state with a monopoly on violence. If someone comes into your space and calls you a racial slur, no institution should have the power to stop you from showing that person the door.

It takes an incredibly sheltered person to believe there should be no consequences for abuse. When someone is abusing you or people you care about, you should absolutely be free to take a stand and remove them from your space, no matter how many times the person cries “free speech” as they’re telling you you’re a worthless (slur).

The “freedom” to scapegoat, demonise and demean people who are different from you really stands in direct contradiction with anarchy. Discriminating against people based on ability, race, gender or sexuality creates authority. It makes you an authoritarian. Your rhetoric directly alienates the people who belong to the groups you’re choosing to look down on in disgust and present as less-than human. By using demeaning language to chastise marginalised people for their perceived inadequacies, you’re upholding normative social roles, creating classes and subclasses and strengthening the authoritarian power structures that directly oppress any people that belong to minority groups.

For example, by using the word “f*ggot” as an insult, you effectively cast gay people as being worthy of scorn and derision. You assert authority over everyone who isn’t heterosexual and make life incredibly difficult for people that don’t meet the normative standards you’ve helped construct to maintain the social dominance of heterosexuals.

Anarchists can and will choose to not associate with people that claim they have a right to oppress others. Anarchists are anti-authoritarian to our core, and this means we don’t have to put up with hateful bigots in our spaces.

Are Libertarian Socialists the Same as Anarchists?

An anarchist by definition stands against all authority without exception, while a socialist by definition is simply someone who feels the means of production should be collectively owned. So socialism is narrowly focused on economic issues, while anarchy is explicitly concerned with any and all social issues.

When a socialist also identifies as a libertarian, they’re indicating that they’re critical of the traditional authoritarian socialist states that have been so prominent in the world (the USSR, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Yugoslavia, Zimbabwe, etc.)

But while libertarian socialists might reject one-party states, that doesn’t mean they reject states entirely. A lot of them will support democratic states or other democratic forms of government. Anarchists, on the other hand, reject all forms of government.

Generally someone who chooses to identify as a libertarian socialist rather than an anarchist is making a deliberate choice to use non-committal language that implies they’re willing to accept certain forms of authority. If they opposed all authority as anarchists do, they’d likely call themselves an anarchist.

There are various forms of libertarian socialism that promote a supposedly ‘libertarian’ state, while there are other libertarian socialists who reject the state form, but embrace other forms of authority.

Communalists are a famous example of libertarian socialists who embrace various forms of authority including majoritarianism but stop short of supporting a full-blown state. But the form of government they do support greatly resembles states on a smaller, more localised scale.

While a few anarchists might also choose to identify as libertarian socialists in polite company, the majority of libertarian socialists aren’t anarchists, so anarchists would be better off avoiding the ‘libertarian socialist’ moniker since all it really says about a person’s politics is they like socialist economics but have an aversion to vanguard parties. Anarchy is a whole lot more than economics.

Can Capitalism Be Anarchist?

The phrase “anarcho-capitalism” is often presented as a coherent idea, but in reality it functions more as a shallow rebranding exercise than a genuine synthesis of anarchism and capitalism. It can be seen as a form of ideological double-speak, combining “anarchy,” which was always understood as opposition to domination and institutional hierarchy, with “capitalism,” a hierarchical system based on private property enforcement and structured economic power, in a way that appears to reconcile two fundamentally incompatible ideas.

By redefining “anarchy” as simply the absence of the state while leaving private power structures intact, anarcho-capitalism obscures how authority persists through property, markets, and enforcement mechanisms, effectively reframing hierarchical relations as voluntary exchange and coercion as freedom.

The term was coined by Murray Rothbard, a far right economist who enjoyed trolling anarchists. His attempt at co-option reflects a broader pattern in which political language is reshaped to dilute or redirect anti-authoritarian ideas by attaching them to systems those ideas originally opposed.

In one of his unpublished pieces, Rothbard even admitted “we are not anarchists, and those who call us anarchists are not on firm etymological ground, and are being completely unhistorical” because “all” anarchists have “socialistic elements in their doctrines” and “possess socialistic economic doctrines in common.”

Capitalism is just as brutal a hierarchy as statism and anyone claiming capitalists are capable of being anarchists is using malicious doublespeak to attack the anarchist movement by confusing the definitions of ‘hierarchy’ and ‘authority’. Capitalism is a perverse authority that creates a multitude of oppressive totalitarian hierarchies. There is no way to make it compatible with anarchy.

These “anarcho” capitalist pretenders would have us believe that capitalism is “voluntary” when in reality private property rights can only be enforced violently; by an authority that is powerful enough to rule a society.

Rothbard’s followers claim to oppose the state but not capital. In reality, they wish to replace the state with wholly unregulated corporations; effectively making the corporations into totalitarian states that don’t have to answer to anyone.

For all intents and purposes, these so called “anarcho-capitalists”, “propertarians” or “voluntaryists” wish to revert to feudalism and fully enslave workers, without the annoyance of human rights, labour and environmental laws or any other controls on their business activities.

They wish to replace the state’s police forces and military with private police and military that would work directly for the corporations, with no accountability to the public and with the sole purpose of safeguarding the profits and personal safety of the owners of capital.

They have similarly hijacked the word ‘libertarian’ which was historically synonymous with “anarchist” (Kropotkin used both words interchangeably) and maintains its original meaning outside the USA.

Within the USA, “libertarian”, “voluntaryist”, “propertarian”, “deontological liberal”, “autarchist”, “paleocon”, “minarchist”, “neocon”, “rights-theorist”, “libertarian moralist” and “social conservative” are all words that just mean “capitalist that doesn’t like public accountability or paying taxes” with very minor differences; usually relating to how private property “rights” will be enforced.

By creating far-right capitalist perversions of every anti-capitalist movement, the wealthy largely succeed in erasing the original revolutionary goals of a movement and replace them with more of the same capitalism, imperialism, poverty, genocide and environmental destruction.

“Anarcho”-capitalism is an oxymoron and has nothing to do with Anarchy.

Do Anarchists Practice Democracy?

Democracy is derived from the Greek demokratia.

demos — “the people” + kratia — “power, rule”.

It means “To be ruled by the people”.

Contrast this with the etymology of the word Anarchy. From the Greek anarchos meaning “To have no ruler”.

If the definition of the word “democracy” is “rule by the people,” and the definition of the word “anarchy” is “to have no ruler,” then the answer to the question of whether or not anarchists support democracy would logically be no. Anarchists are against all authority, including authority imposed by a majority of voters.

Of course, it’s not always that simple. Some anarchists do choose to engage with electoral voting, believing that a “lesser of two evils” approach is worth the trip to the ballot box. But, this is not the same as believing that democracy works or that it’s a form of anarchy.

Others might claim that what we have now isn’t “real” democracy. Most working systems of democracy in the world today are “representative”, where the people elect an individual to represent them in government. Some people instead advocate for a return to the direct democracy of ancient Greece, where the intermediary is removed and power is given directly to civilians to make decisions by voting directly on each government policy.

In short, these two forms of democracy are a difference between rule by political proxies or rule by the majority group of voters. But however you window dress it, all democratic systems are ways to rule people — something all anarchists oppose by definition.

But, more than this, democracy separates us; pitting the majority against the minority. A lot of us live in a democracy, and find that those outside of the ruling class continue to be exploited, living in perpetual servitude. We have never been granted the freedom and liberty that our rulers promise democracy will grant us.

Yet, because we are given the opportunity to take part in the political process by way of democracy, we are lead to believe we have a say in the governing of our lives. As long as we believe that the ballot box is the solution to our problems, we remain passive and alienated, never taking control control of our own fates.

Anarchy rejects this authority of the majority over the minority. Anarchy rejects the authority of any group over any other group. Anarchy is about upholding each individual’s autonomy and dismantling the authority forced on us by oppressive actors.

Democracy is a hierarchy of coercive power. What happens when a minority disagrees with the majority? They are either forced to conform or forced to leave. Democracy either promotes or enables the marginalisation of minority groups while placing the onus on them to “speak up, be heard, and vote for change.” “Power to the people” can mean “power to the most powerful group of people.” The more power the majority group has, the less power marginalised minority groups have.

Finally, democracy has proven endlessly throughout history that it enables the authority of brutal power hierarchies starting from its inception in ancient Greece; where only free land-owning men were allowed to participate in the direct democracy system. Democracy is responsible for some of the worst atrocities in history. More than we could list here. But, to scratch the surface:

Funnelling wealth to the ruling class leaving billions in poverty
The Armenian genocide
US Oil wars
South African Apartheid
Palestinian Apartheid
Prison states
The democratically empowered Nazi holocaust
The US carpet bombing of Vietnam
Guatemalan death squads
Slavery in the USA (representative democracy) and in ancient Greece (direct democracy)
and more

Democracy is a tool that maintains the tyrannical capitalist status quo.

So do anarchists support democracy?

Anarchy is the opposition to authority. It is taking a stand against every form of oppression. It is the quest to limit the suffering afflicted on people by those who rule them. Anarchy is against all rulers, including democratic ones. Anarchy and democracy are incompatible by definition, just as anarchy and capitalism or anarchy and monarchy.

Does Anarchy Have Rules?

This is a highly-condensed segment from the essay No Rules, No Rulers by ziq

The often-repeated cliche that anarchy represents a society with rules but no rulers is deeply flawed. This notion fails to recognise that the very nature of rules and laws implies an expectation of obedience, which in turn necessitates a mechanism for enforcement, making the presence of a ruling body, in other words, a government, wholly inevitable. There is an intrinsic relationship between rules and rulers.

Rules, by their very definition, are guidelines for behaviour that carry an expectation of compliance. Whether these are codified laws or more informal social norms, their efficacy depends on the consequences of non-compliance and the fear it generates. In a society, these consequences can be catastrophic to freedom. The presence of a rule, no matter how it’s created, implies a system that ensures adherence. It creates a system of coercive social control.

This system, whether it’s a courtroom, a body of bureaucrats, a home owner’s association or a council of elders in a village, is, in essence, an expression of government. The size of the body doesn’t alter its function. A small council that creates and enforces rules over a neighbourhood is just as much a governing body as a large parliament representing a nation-state and passing laws on all its citizens. They both rely on coercion and hierarchy.

The argument that rules can exist without rulers is as nonsensical as the idea of a court existing without a justice system. In the absence of a governing body, rules become mere suggestions, lacking any true power or authority, and thus cease to be rules. The practical reality is that any attempt to establish and maintain a system of rules will naturally lead to the formation of a body responsible for their creation and enforcement, thereby establishing a form of government.

The mischaracterisation of anarchy as “rules without rulers” blurs the line between voluntary interaction, or anarchy, and coercive law, or archy. When people freely interact and consent to certain behaviours, they are not creating a system of rules in the governmental sense. They are establishing personal relationships and social agreements. This is a fundamental distinction: one is based on voluntary consent, while the other is based on enforced compliance. To confuse the two is to misunderstand the very foundation of anarchic principles, paving the way for authoritarian creep.

The rules we live under today are not simply suggestions; they are authoritative mandates from above. They comprise a set of rigid principles, often created by individuals we do not know, and are enforced by the state and its various institutions, including the police, courts, and military, as well as smaller-scale versions of these entities established by non-state groups. These rules are indifferent to your personal feelings or your willingness to comply. If you violate them, you will face consequences, regardless of whether you consented to them. This reality sharply contrasts with the idea of anarchy.

Anarchy requires freedom of association absent of coercion, requires mutual consent and the right to secede. It envisions a radically different existence where relationships and agreements are based on voluntary participation and mutual respect, not on a set of externally imposed mandates that are held up with punitive penalties.

The rules-based order is completely dependant on coercion. Anarchy asserts that all relationships should be based on mutual consent. This means that if you choose to associate with others in a community, you do so because you agree to the terms of that association, and you have the right to leave if those terms no longer work for you. Anarchistic agreements between people are not dictatorial; they are the result of ongoing, fluid agreements between people. They are optional and can be renegotiated and withdrawn from at any moment.

Some attempt to trivialise this issue by drawing parallels between the rules of board games and sports, claiming that this somehow validates the existence of rules in sociopolitical contexts. However, instructions for gameplay mechanics have no relation to the rules enforced on a society. The existence of entertainment products does not exempt us from applying a consistent anarchist critique to the systems of rules and authority. Choosing to voluntarily follow instructions in a game is not the same as imposing rules on how people should live their lives.

The distinction between rules and personal boundaries is frequently obscured by those attempting to justify the necessity of rules, ultimately reinforcing authority and undermining personal autonomy. Rules, imposed by external authorities, serve to regulate behaviour collectively, while personal boundaries assert how an individual wants to be treated and the nature of the relationships they wish to engage in. When these concepts are conflated, compliance with external mandates takes precedence over personal autonomy, fostering coercive dynamics that can compromise emotional well-being and erode trust in relationships. This misrepresentation can lead to feelings of invalidation, especially in anarchist spaces, where asserting personal boundaries may be mischaracterised as attempts to control others. Moreover, normalising this conflation enables authority to intrude into personal lives, rationalising intrusive behaviours as essential for maintaining order. Understanding the difference between rules and personal boundaries is vital for nurturing healthy relationships and promoting individual autonomy.

Some may argue that rules are necessary to combat bigotry. However, given the difficulties of engaging with bigots in inclusive spaces without causing harm to those targeted by their views, disassociating from individuals who hold bigoted beliefs is often a more pragmatic approach than attempting to create rules to control their toxic views. Such rules typically lead to bigots finding ways to circumvent them, allowing them to express their hate more covertly and thus do more sustained, ongoing harm. Instead, individuals should be encouraged to assert their personal boundaries and distance themselves from bigots, rather than engaging in often futile negotiations over rules. This prevents bigots from dominating discussions and undermining the integrity of the space as they quickly learn to navigate around the increasingly long list of rules written to counter their tactics.

In an anarchy, the interactions between individuals are not governed by a set of external rules but by a continuous process of negotiation and consent. Interactions are fluid, and agreements are a product of mutual consent that can be withdrawn at any time. This is a stark contrast to a rule-based society, where rules are imposed on individuals, often without their direct, ongoing consent.

Rules are for authoritarians. Anarchists opt for relationships built on trust and consensus rather than imposed regulations for living. Anarchists believe in creating environments where people can freely collaborate, share resources, and resolve conflicts without the need for hierarchical structures or coercive rules.

Are Anarchists Allies With Other Anti-Capitalists?

Anarchists oppose authority. Temporary alliances can make sense when two groups share common or at least compatible goals, but when one of the groups aims to create the conditions that will oppress the other group, an alliance wouldn’t be in the oppressed group’s interests.

Since most Marxist and democratic socialist groups aim to wield the power of the government and more broadly, the state form, and have shown countless times that they will use that power against anarchists as soon as they get it, there’s simply no way for anarchists and authoritarian socialists to find common ground. Anarchists would be shooting themselves in the foot by helping authoritarians grasp for power.

To be an anarchist is to abhor rulership, government and the coercive machinations of politicians. There’s no way for an anarchist who allies themself with an authoritarian to be anything other than a patsy who is arming their own oppressor.

There are countless examples of Marxists betraying and mass-murdering anarchists in history: during the Spanish civil war, during the Russian Revolution and its aftermath in Ukraine (including the Kronstadt rebellion, the Bolshevik–Makhnovist conflict), in Korea when Marxists assassinated the leaders of KPAM, and in modern times every time the members of a communist party join forces with the police to violently beat and imprison anarchists, from Greece to China to Vietnam.

Democratic socialists have the same history of violently killing anti-capitalists from outside their party, including in Germany during 1919, when the ruling democratic socialists violently put down the Spartacist uprising, with one of the most famous casualties being orthodox Marxist Rosa Luxemburg, as well as scores of anarchists.

Anarchists are only lasting allies with those who seek to dismantle systems of domination, not simply change the strongman who gets to crack the whip.

What About Healthcare?

There have been numerous alternatives to both state-run and capitalist models of healthcare throughout history. Revolutionary Catalonia (1936–1939) was a pioneer in universal public health care. Managed by worker collectives, these revolutionaries showed medical care could be organised without government oversight or profiteering private companies.

Similarly, the Welsh Tredegar Workmen’s Medical Aid Society in the UK directly demonstrated for 50 years how communities could establish their own thriving healthcare systems through mutual aid. The society, run by iron and coal workers, catered to the specific needs of its members, offering a variety of medical and health benefits. Services across several hospitals and clinics included convalescent and maternity homes, ultraviolet treatments, glasses, dentures, prosthetic limbs, dietary supplements, injections, health foods, medications, X-rays, and even wigs were supplied.

These pioneering systems greatly inspired the formation of the Spanish SNS and British NHS, although their non-hierarchical features were naturally abolished as part of the shift to state control.

To dismantle the state and capital’s grip on healthcare and restore the medical system to anarchy, it’s important to implement collective decision-making that involves all stakeholders, particularly those most affected by the medical policies that affect them. Prioritising the integration of medical knowledge and expertise without bestowing special political power on the administrators and practitioners is crucial: a horizontal organisation where medical professionals share their knowledge as equals within the community instead of dominating and ruling over those who lack their expertise. It is important to acknowledge that medical care is intertwined with wider social issues that impact the entire community, and these issues must be addressed in a holistic manner.

Do Anarchists Support Money?

There are several conflicting proposals for anarchist economic systems, including Mutualism and Anarcho-Communism.

Mutualists promote decentralised, community-based monetary systems that facilitate equitable exchange without the accumulation of interest or profit. It emphasises mutual credit, local currencies, and labour-backed tokens, aiming to create a monetary environment aligned with cooperative values and social equity.

Anarcho-communists, on the other hand, seek to abolish or drastically reduce the role of money in society altogether, replacing it with direct distribution of goods and services based on need, and communal cooperation to freely share resources. Anarcho-communists see money as an oppressive tool that fosters inequality and alienation, and advocate for minimising or eliminating its use entirely.

All anarchists oppose extracting rent or profit—such as interest or usury. Mutualists aim for an economic future where money functions as a facilitator of exchange rather than a source of wealth. The goal is to prevent capital accumulation through monetary means and promote equitable access to resources.

Using mutualist economics, money would be decentralised, locally issued, and tied to specific communities or cooperatives. These local currencies would be designed to circulate within the community, maintaining local economic autonomy and reducing dependence on national or global monetary systems.

In practice, mutualist communities might use a combination of mutual credit, local currencies, and barter arrangements. The focus would be on facilitating equitable exchange, avoiding interest payments, and promoting producers’ self-sufficiency.

Anarcho-communists especially emphasise mutual support, sharing surplus resources freely with those in need, fostering social bonds and collective well-being. Goods can be distributed through systems like gift economy exchanges or managed as common resources (the “commons”) accessible to all members of the community.

With both anarcho-communism and mutualism, distribution often considers what individuals contribute to the community. Those who work or contribute more may receive more, but the focus is on meeting needs rather than profit or hierarchical privileges.

Regardless of the economic school of thought, anarchy aims to replace capitalist markets with voluntary cooperation and mutual aid. Replacing money within such a framework involves fundamental shifts in how resources are allocated, produced, and shared. Here are some ways anarchists can work to replace capitalism:

A Resource-Based Economy: Instead of using money as a medium of exchange, communities could directly share resources and services based on needs and availability. This would involve communal ownership of the means of production and a focus on fulfilling everyone’s needs rather than generating profit for a few capitalists.
Mutual Aid and Voluntary Cooperation: Social relationships would be based on mutual aid—people helping each other voluntarily—reducing the need for transactional currency. Goods and services would be exchanged through direct barter or community-based sharing systems.
Decentralised Autonomous Communities: Localised, self-managed communities could coordinate through consensus or participatory decision-making. Resources would be allocated based on community agreements, and labour contributions would be recognised as fulfilling individual and collective needs.
Labour Credits or Time Banks: Some proposals suggest replacing money with systems like time banking, where people earn credits for their work, which can then be used to access services. While still a form of exchange, it emphasises social value rather than monetary profit. Historically, mutualist ideas have favoured commodity money or labour notes—tokens representing actual labour or value contributed—rather than fiat money issued by governments. This approach aligns with the principle of valuing labour directly and avoiding the distortion caused by fiat currency creation and inflation.
Communal Planning and Allocation: Resource distribution could be managed through decentralised planning, where communities collectively decide what to produce and how to share it, removing the need for monetary transactions.
Mutual Credit Systems: Mutualism often advocates for the use of mutual credit systems—local currencies or credit exchanges—that facilitate exchange between individuals and cooperatives without relying on centralised money issued by a state or banking system. These systems are based on trust and reciprocal obligations, allowing communities to trade goods and services directly or through credit notes that are mutually recognised.

What About Security?

Anarchist strategies for security focus on building resilient, self-sufficient communities rooted in mutual aid, non-hierarchical organisation, and voluntary cooperation to maintain safety and social order. Emphasis is placed on non-violent conflict resolution, mediation, and restorative justice practices to address disputes and prevent escalation, aiming to build trust and cohesion within communities.

Anarchists believe in self-defence. Communities and individuals are empowered to defend themselves if necessary, emphasising the importance of preparedness without reliance on state-controlled forces.

Instead of centralised police or military forces, anarchists favour mutual aid networks where community members support and protect each other. This can include neighbourhood watch groups, community patrols, collective emergency response teams or even the temporary formation of militias to face external threats.

Security efforts are organised locally and autonomously, allowing communities to tailor their methods to their specific needs and values. This reduces reliance on a centralised authority and fosters direct accountability.

Education about bodily autonomy, social responsibilities, and conflict de-escalation is prioritised to reduce the likelihood of violence or theft, fostering a culture of mutual respect and understanding.

Militias need to be organised without leaders or ranks, ensuring that all members have equal say and responsibility, preventing authoritarian tendencies from taking root. Participation in security is voluntary, respecting individual autonomy and avoiding coercion.

Anarchists understand that the state functions to protect and defend serious forms of harm and abuse, particularly those that serve the interests of those in power—be they economic, political, or social. For example, the state’s criminal justice systems tend to prioritise maintaining social order and property rights over addressing the root causes of violence or supporting survivors. In many cases, state responses to harm can be limited, punitive, and disempowering, ultimately taking away individuals’ agency and control over their own lives and not doing anything to solve the underlying problems at play.

Furthermore, anarchists see how the state’s systems criminalise and stigmatise victims and survivors, rather than providing genuine support or justice. By doing so, the state can perpetuate cycles of silence, shame, and disempowerment, making it harder for people to resist or challenge harmful structures. It can also suppress grass-roots community efforts for accountability and healing, preferring instead to enforce top-down control.

Anarchists believe that real justice arises from communities taking responsibility into their own hands, rather than relying on state institutions that simply reinforce oppression. They emphasise the importance of empowering individuals and communities to define their own responses to harm, ensuring that agency remains with those directly affected and not with an apathetic bureaucracy. It’s important to reject the state’s attempts to co-opt or suppress genuine efforts at accountability and social change and advocate instead for decentralised, community-led approaches that respect and uphold personal agency and build collective responsibility.

What About Prisons?

Anarchists advocate for the complete abolition of prisons because they view these institutions as inherently oppressive and unjust. Prisons are seen as expressions of state power that serve to uphold existing social hierarchies—particularly those related to race, class, and gender—by disproportionately targeting marginalised communities. From an anarchist perspective, incarceration perpetuates systemic inequalities and fails to address the root causes of social harm.

Instead of punitive measures to control the population, anarchists support the development and expansion of community-based, non-coercive forms of justice. This means restorative justice, transformative justice, and community accountability practices that aim to repair harm, foster understanding among people, and rebuild relationships in communities torn apart by the state’s cruel divide and conquer policies.

Anarchists reject the legitimacy of the state and law enforcement to deny people freedom. Prison abolitionists focus on addressing the underlying social, economic, and psychological factors that contribute to harmful behaviours, emphasising healing and reconciliation rather than punishment and confinement.

Anarchists view prisons as a component of the broader state machinery that consolidates power through its monopoly on violence. They recognise that law enforcement agencies, which operate within a rigid framework of hierarchy, violence and coercion, are inherently joined to the prison system, feeding it mostly impoverished people and minorities for using drugs, stealing from capitalists or struggling with mental illness. Therefore, advocating for prison abolition also involves challenging the legitimacy of law enforcement institutions altogether, seeing them as tools of social control that perpetuate inequality and repression.

The prison abolition movement, rooted in anarchist principles, envisions a society where community members collectively take responsibility for addressing social harms without relying on coercive hierarchical institutions. It seeks to dismantle the entire carceral system and replace it with networks of support, dialogue, and mutual aid—building communities based on solidarity rather than punishment.

How Do Anarchists Handle Sexual Violence?

Anarchists approach sexual violence with an emphasis on community-based, autonomous responses that prioritise survivor empowerment, accountability, and transformative justice. They reject reliance on state institutions like police or courts, which are often perpetuate harm, disempower survivors, and maintain systemic inequalities. Instead, anarchists advocate for alternative models rooted in mutual aid, consensus, and collective responsibility.

Anarchists also fully support utilising direct action when dealing with violent actors if necessary. Self-defence, whether by the victim or the broader community, is always supported. Anarchists always advocate for communities to take responsibility for their own protection. In situations of violence, they view direct intervention—such as confronting or removing the violent individual—as essential for ensuring immediate safety and preventing additional harm.

Many anarchists emphasise that any direct action should be rooted in principles of accountability, non-coercion, and safety. The goal is often to address harm without perpetuating cycles of violence or creating new forms of domination. The approach should ideally be decided by the survivor. Some may favour community-based conflict resolution, while others may prefer more direct interventions.

Anarchists recognise that social inequalities, patriarchy, misogyny, trauma, and lack of support systems greatly contribute to sexual violence. Therefore, a significant part of a strategy for anarchist justice involves transforming these social conditions—promoting gender equity, mental health support, education, and community solidarity—to reduce the likelihood of harm occurring.

Preventing sexual violence involves community education about consent, power dynamics, and healthy relationships. Building a culture of respect and mutual care is seen as essential to reducing the harm of the patriarchy. Anarchists believe survivors of sexual violence should always be empowered to lead their own healing processes, participate actively in community-based accountability efforts, and have their safety, autonomy, and well-being prioritised in any response to violent individuals.

Anarchists believe that communities should take responsibility for addressing harm directly. This involves creating safe spaces where survivors can share their experiences, seek support, and participate in decisions about how to respond to the harm. Anarchist groups ensure survivors have agency and control over their healing process. This involves listening to their needs, respecting their choices, and providing resources that support their autonomy.

How Do Anarchists Approach Ecology?

As always, anarchists call for communities to have direct control over their ecosystems, emphasising sustainable lifeways and ecological justice without hierarchical or corporate interference.

Anarchists favour local, community-based decision-making to ensure ecological concerns are addressed directly by those most affected, rather than through state authorities or corporations that are always completely displaced from the ecosystems they exploit for profit.

Anarchists promote collective efforts to restore and protect ecosystems, emphasising solidarity and shared responsibility among communities and individuals as well as direct action to protect ecosystems from attack by vested interests.

Anarchists advocate for reducing consumption and living in harmony with nature to mitigate environmental degradation. The current system of concrete and tar covered industrial population centres needs to be dismantled so that people live with their ecosystem rather than attempting to erase it. This is the only way people will respect the land that gives them life and correlate its suffering with their own. People who are displaced from the ecosystem rarely learn to treasure it.

Anarchists repudiate capitalism and state policies that prioritise profit over ecological health. Anarchists put their lives on the line to challenge exploitative practices like deforestation, pollution, and resource extraction.

Anarchists envision a world where ecological considerations are integrated into all aspects of life, fostering a culture of respect for the environment and recognising the intrinsic value of all living beings.

Overall, anarchists seek to create a society rooted in ecological sustainability, ecological justice, and autonomy, believing that true environmental stewardship can only be achieved without the use of oppressive hierarchies, which always end up being used to protect the industries that despoil the wilds for profit.

Do Anarchists Have Their Own Music?

Anarchists have long developed a diverse musical tradition that uses creativity as a way to express political ideas, challenge authority, and build communities from which to express and normalise anarchy.

After the Russian Revolution, anarchist music in Ukraine became closely connected to the revolutionary movement to defeat both the capitalists and the Bolsheviks. Folk songs and revolutionary ballads were used to express ideas of freedom, resistance, and solidarity, particularly among communities connected to Nestor Makhno and the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine, often known as the Black Army.

Rather than being a single genre, anarchist music exists across many styles, including folk, punk, and experimental forms. Its roots can be found in protest songs, labour movements, and revolutionary traditions, where music has been used to share experiences, document struggles, and bring people together.

Many anarchist musicians follow a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach, creating independent recordings, organising performances outside mainstream industries, and encouraging participation rather than passive consumption. Through its focus on freedom, equality, solidarity, and resistance to oppression, anarchist music demonstrates how art can become a thriving form of social and political expression.

Anarchist Punk

Anarchist punk emerged from the wider punk movement of the late 1970s and developed into a scene that combined intense, confrontational music with anti-authoritarian and socially critical ideas. It provided a space for musicians, artists, and activists to question existing systems of power and challenge accepted ideas about politics, culture, and society.

A central idea within anarchist punk is that social structures should not simply be accepted as natural or unavoidable. Many anarchist punks have used music, independent publications like zines, visual art, and community organising to discuss issues such as capitalism, war, environmental destruction, inequality, and state control. The movement’s DIY philosophy encourages people to create their own bands, produce their own artwork, organise events, and build alternative communities without relying on commercial institutions. These prefigurative practices prepare anarcho-punks to live without authority and social hierarchy.

Bands associated with anarchist punk often combine intense musical styles with direct political messages. Groups such as Crass played an important role in shaping the movement by promoting anti-war dissidence, anti-consumerism, and personal responsibility. Later anarchist punk scenes around the world adapted these ideas to address their own local conditions and personal struggles. Beyond music, the movement influenced independent media, protest culture, activism, and alternative approaches to everyday life.

Although anarchist punk has changed over time and includes many different viewpoints, it remains an example of how a subculture can create spaces for criticism, discussion, and collective action. Its emphasis on independence and creativity continues to inspire people who view music as a way to question power and encourage social change.

Anarchist Folk

Anarchist folk music combines traditional folk storytelling with anarchist ideas about freedom, equality, and collective action. Like other forms of protest music, it tends to focuses on the lives and experiences of ordinary people, using simple calming melodies, acoustic instruments, and personal stories to explore themes such as workers’ struggles, homelessness, poverty, war, and social justice.

The origins of anarchist folk can be connected to older traditions of labour songs, protest ballads, and revolutionary music. For many working-class communities, music has been a way to preserve memories of resistance, communicate political ideas, and strengthen solidarity. Within anarchist movements, folk songs have often been used as tools for education and organising, helping people imagine alternative ways of living based on cooperation and mutual support.

Like anarchist punk, anarchist folk is strongly connected to a DIY ethic. Musicians often perform in small community spaces, release their own recordings, and participate in activist networks rather than seeking mainstream recognition. Performances frequently emphasise participation, with audiences encouraged to sing along and become part of the creative process.

Artists such as Woody Guthrie influenced later generations of political musicians through songs that addressed poverty, inequality, and the struggles of working people.

Utah Phillips was a prolific American folk musician whose songs and spoken monologues reflected a strong anarchist spirit: a distrust of authority, deep solidarity with working people, and a belief that communities are built through mutual aid rather than domination. Drawing from traditions of labour and protest music, Phillips focused less on abstract political theory and more on human experiences, using humour, storytelling, and personal reflection to explore class inequality, social injustice, and the struggles of everyday life. Whether singing about work, travel, or people living on the margins of society, his message remained consistent: freedom is not something granted by institutions, but something created and defended through solidarity and collective action.

His anarchist perspective was especially clear in his belief that ordinary people already possess the ability to shape their own lives without relying on systems of control. As he said, “The state can't give you freedom, and the state can't take it away. You're born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free.” Phillips also used his music and activism to highlight the responsibility of confronting injustice, famously stating, “The Earth is not dying — it is being killed. And the people who are killing it have names and addresses.”

Anarchist Folk Punk

Anarchist folk punk is a style of music that combines the political ideas of anarchism with the storytelling traditions of folk music and the raw energy of punk.

Pat the Bunny is a prominent figure in the anarchist folk punk scene, known for his raw acoustic style and biting satirical lyrics. Through projects such as Johnny Hobo and the Freight Trains, Wingnut Dishwashers Union, and Ramshackle Glory, he combined punk’s rebellious energy with folk storytelling and themes of inequality, community, and personal struggle. His music became influential within anarchist and folk punk communities for its focus on both political ideas and everyday experiences.

Anarchist musicians may not share a common style or sound, but they are very adept at using music and performance as a way to question society and express dangerous ideas such as police abolition and resistance to pipeline building. Across different traditions, it has given people a way to challenge injustice, build connections with others, and imagine different ways of organising and living together.

Are Anarchists Vegan?

Anarchists are opposed to all forms of oppressive and exploitative systems. Therefore, it is logical for anarchists to adopt diets that do not rely on the exploitation and suffering of other beings.

Many anarchists make the ethical decision to follow a vegan way of life as part of their opposition to animal exploitation, industrial food production, and the associated environmental degradation that accompanies it. They frequently promote veganism as a means of resisting systemic violence and exploitation perpetuated by the meat industrial complex, which enslaves, tortures, and kills animals for profit, while also taking advantage of the largely impoverished migrant workforce forced to work in this sector.

Nevertheless, as can be expected in all diverse groups, not every anarchist adheres to a vegan diet. Some anarchists prefer to concentrate primarily on issues related to anti-capitalism, class, union membership, or other causes, and their dietary choices may be influenced by a mix of religious beliefs, cultural habits, gluttony and apathy. For various reasons, these anarchists opt not to extend their ethical opposition against domination to non-human animals.

There are possibly a few anarchists who have significant health concerns that preclude a vegan diet, and potentially some indigenous anarchists who live off of the land in remote Northern regions where vegetation is sparse. But generally anarchists who enjoy consuming the flesh of others are considered hypocrites and frauds by vegan anarchists. This rank hypocrisy also extends to individuals who identify as anarchists yet seek to excuse other oppressive systems they partake in, such as the patriarchy. Many anarchists possess ideological shortcomings that they are not prepared to confront. It is important to recognise that people are not perfect, and it would be naive to assume that anarchists are exceptional.

In conclusion, while veganism is a prevalent practice among anarchists, particularly those who emphasise animal rights and environmental issues, it is not a universal or defining trait of anarchism as a whole, as there remain many individuals who identify with anarchist principles but are unwilling to undertake the challenging work of dismantling all their authoritarian attachments.

How Do Anarchists View Global Trade?

Anarchists generally don’t advocate for global trade and instead promote a perspective that emphasises local markets, cottage industries, decentralisation and mutual aid.

Rather than supporting centralised, hierarchical systems of international commerce, where labour exploitation and ecosystem destruction can be hidden out of sight, anarchists advocate for alternative, local models rooted in sustainable resource-management, voluntary cooperation among skilled artisans and strong autonomy.

Decentralised and local economies are integral to anarchist economics. Promoting both local production and consumption to reduce reliance on global supply chains is important to counter the immeasurable harm of globalised industry. This can involve community-based markets, cooperatives, free stores and the formation of local currencies.

Alternative trade networks need to be built which prioritise mutual aid, fair trade initiatives, and decentralised barter systems that bypass conventional global trade institutions.

Anarchists have long been involved in antiglobalisation initiatives. Anarchists oppose large multinational corporations and inter-state trade agreements that invariably form the backbone of the exploitative and oppressive capitalist system, undermining both individual autonomy and collective labour bargaining.

In challenging capitalist markets, anarchists utilise direct action and solidarity efforts, engaging in protests, strikes, sabotage and campaigns to challenge corporate influence and push for local, direct control over economic practices.

Anarchists often work to build autonomous zones and cooperative networks within their communities. Creating these self-managed zones that operate outside state and corporate control is a good way to demonstrate to curious onlookers that there are other ways to organise economic activity and trade: Promoting mutual aid, bartering, gift economies and emphasising local production by skilled artisans rather than outsourcing labour to a faraway land where ethical standards and practices may be lacking.

Alienating consumers from the production process and disenfranchising local artisans does untold damage to communities and their ability to sustain themselves without capitalism and the state.

Emphasising voluntary exchanges based on mutual benefit rather than profit, often through cooperative organisations and networks is how anarchists aim to replace global trade. Certain integral goods that can’t be produced locally would need to be sourced by sending trade delegations to negotiate with producers in other localities and ideally to directly inspect their supply chains for ethical breaches.

Anarchists critique the current global trade system for fostering inequality, environmental degradation, and exploitation, and seek to replace it with decentralised, equitable, and sustainable alternatives rooted in community self-determination.

What Do Anarchists Think About Religion?

Anarchists’ perspectives on religion can vary widely, reflecting the broad diversity within anarchist thought. Most often, anarchists will critique organised religion for its role in maintaining social hierarchies, authority structures, and systems of oppression. Most anarchists see religious institutions as tools used to legitimise and perpetuate power dynamics that anarchists oppose, such as capitalism, patriarchy, law, punishment and state authority.

Religious doctrines and dogmas are often used by authoritarians as tools for social control, limiting individual freedom and critical thinking which would endanger the rule of law. Anarchists typically oppose the indoctrination and conformity promoted by religious institutions.

That being said, a lot of anarchists hold a personal spirituality. Not all anarchists are atheists. Some advocate for personal, non-institutionalised spiritual practices that emphasise individual freedom, direct experience, and community without the need for hierarchical structures.

While there are some anarchists who support hierarchical organised religions, including some of the most oppressive religious institutions in the world, they generally convince themselves their sect’s interpretation of the institution and its dogma is non-oppressive. Atheist anarchists would argue these religious anarchists are unable to break from the lifetime of indoctrination they’ve ingested, and by convincing themselves their religion is misunderstood by 99.9% of its adherents and they have the true (non-oppressive) interpretation, they are able to overlook the apparent contradiction between a faith with a past and present steeped in fire and brimstone, and their anarchist attachments.

Christianity specifically has only embraced a stance of tolerance and peace in times when it hasn’t had real power over society, yet even then, it has acted to defend the powerful and to instruct the powerless to “turn the other cheek”. Even when the Christian church is not actively participating in the oppression waged by the state, it has played a crucial role in justifying and sustaining it. For centuries, the church has kept the working class in bondage by sanctifying the rule of earthly authorities, teaching the oppressed that resistance to power is inherently sinful or immoral and that we will be punished by God for resisting the authority of slavers and tyrants. It has worked for two centuries to reinforce the social order, instructing the downtrodden to accept their fate and be rewarded for their docility in the afterlife.

Our rulers have historically drawn their legitimacy from divine approval granted by the church — whether by claiming they govern by God’s will or asserting that wealth is a sign of divine favour. The Bible has been wielded as a tool to elevate obedience as a cardinal virtue, urging submission to authority and deflecting resistance. Passages that exalt the role of rulers and call for the submission of subjects have been used as justification for injustice, maintaining hierarchies and class divisions and even enforcing slavery.

More recent theological innovations, like the Protestant work ethic, have further entrenched this oppressive system. It frames poverty as a moral failing, while wealth is seen as evidence of divine blessing. This narrative not only rationalises social inequality but compels the working class to see their suffering as a moral duty, subtly reinforcing the status quo. In these ways, the church has not just been complicit in the oppression wrought by state and capital, but often acts as its chief defender, embedding it deeply within both spiritual and social structures.

Through these lenses, Christianity, when aligned with political and economic power, has most often served as a tool of control rather than liberation—a force that has maintained the status quo of inequality and subjugation, even under the guise of moral or spiritual authority.

Since anarchy readily embraces diversity, it should be expected for anarchists to also embrace healthy contradiction. While it’s true that the vast majority of anarchists reject the governing religious institutions, especially Christianity, there is a subset of anarchists who choose to base their entire politics on that religion. This next section of the FAQ is for Christians.

I’m a Christian, Can I Be An Anarchist?

Christian anarchism is a blended political and theological philosophy that combines Christianity—particularly the teachings of Jesus—with anarchist principles. It holds that the only true authority is God, and that earthly governments and hierarchies are fundamentally in conflict with the teachings of Christ.

Christian anarchists point to Jesus’ life and teachings—especially the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7)—as advocating for a radical form of non-violence, love of enemies, and rejection of worldly power. To describe their embrace of a pacifistic strain of anarchism, they cite select passages from the Bible, including:

“Turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39)

“Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44)

“My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36)

“We must obey God rather than men.” (Acts 5:29)

Christian anarchists believe that the state, with its reliance on violence, war, law enforcement, and coercion, is fundamentally at odds with Jesus’ message of love and compassion. They often argue that governments demand allegiance that should be reserved for God alone, that laws enforced by the threat of state violence contradict the gospel and that participation in the state’s wars or in capital punishment is incompatible with Christian ethics.

Most Christian anarchists are inspired by Leo Tolstoy – The Russian author and pacifist whose book The Kingdom of God is Within You is their foundational text. He saw the state as incompatible with Christianity. He believed that the fundamental teachings of Jesus, particularly his calls for non-violence, love, and forgiveness, directly contradicted the coercive and violent nature of the state. Tolstoy’s understanding of Christianity was deeply rooted in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus emphasised peace, loving one’s enemies, and renouncing the use of force. For Tolstoy, the state, by its very nature, relies on violence, authority, and coercion, all of which he saw as antithetical to these core teachings of Christ.

Jesus’ own life was marked by a rejection of material wealth. He chose a life of simplicity and poverty, often travelling with little more than the clothes on his back. In passages like Matthew 8:20, where Jesus says, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head,” the Gospel underscores his renunciation of worldly possessions. This voluntary poverty is seen not only as a personal choice but as a deliberate act of solidarity with the poor and marginalised. For many radical Christian thinkers, Jesus’ rejection of wealth was a direct critique of the accumulation of riches and the inequality that it breeds.

Jesus’ teachings consistently warned of the dangers of wealth. In passages like Matthew 19:24, where he states, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God,” Jesus highlighted the moral and spiritual peril of material wealth. His admonitions to the rich young ruler in Luke 18:22, “Sell everything you have and give to the poor,” further underscore his belief that the pursuit of riches was incompatible with the pursuit of spiritual integrity. These teachings were often read by later Christian radicals as a direct critique of not just personal greed but the very systems—such as capitalism—that perpetuate wealth inequality and the concentration of power in the hands of a few.

What About the Jewish History of Anarchism?

Jewish anarchists played a vital role in shaping anarchist thought and practice during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. They contributed significantly to radical political movements in both the United States and Europe, advocating for social, racial, and economic justice. While Jewish anarchists have a strong secular tradition, the cultural influence of their upbringing can be argued to informing their beliefs and practices.

The connection between Jewish culture and anarchism shows how many Jewish thinkers and activists became part of the broader struggle against poverty, oppression, and class inequality in Eastern Europe. Their ideas resonated with many people in poor Jewish communities. After emigrating to the United States, Jewish anarchists helped shape the anarchist movement and played a leading role in organising workers, often risking imprisonment, violence, deportation, and even death in the fight for working-class liberation.

Drawing upon their heritage, which emphasises debate and critical thinking, Jewish anarchists thrive in an environment of intellectual inquiry. The Talmudic tradition encourages anti-authoritarian ideas, empowering individuals to challenge established conventions, including those from religious authorities. This active discourse nurtures their philosophy and instils resilience against oppressive structures.

Many Jewish intellectuals, faced with discrimination in Eastern Europe and later in the United States, viewed anarchy as a liberating force against the harsh realities of industrial capitalism. Their experiences as a marginalised community, often composed of first-generation migrants displaced by violent pogroms, shaped this perspective.

Moreover, the cultural emphasis on thoughtful discourse and healthy disagreement strengthens community bonds essential for sustaining radical movements. In Jewish culture, navigating differences is celebrated, cultivating resilience and support among community members. This approach encourages personal growth, enabling individuals to critically examine their beliefs and engage meaningfully with others, facilitating the evolution of ideas. The Jewish commitment to Tikkun Olam (repairing the world) blends seamlessly with the anarchist ethos of social justice, emphasising that the demand for equity is a collective responsibility rooted in dialogic engagement.

The intellectual rigour inherent in Jewish tradition cultivates a dynamic environment for philosophical inquiry that closely aligns with anarchism. By prioritising the questioning of authority over blind compliance, Jewish communities contribute to the broader discourse on social justice and liberation. This foundation has empowered many Jewish anarchists to become vocal advocates for marginalised voices, reflecting a deep-rooted commitment to justice embedded in their cultural values.

Additionally, the extensive history of Jewish communities coexisting with diverse cultural groups (who are often hostile towards them) intersects meaningfully with anarchism, enriching Jewish identity and catalysing significant social change among the broader working class with whom Jewish anarchists engage.

Emma Goldman was arguably the most renowned secular Jewish anarchist of the twentieth century. Born into a Jewish family in Lithuania, she was quick to reject Judaism as a religion, viewing it as another institution that imposed authority and restricted individual freedom. After immigrating to the United States, she became a prolific writer, organiser, publisher, and one of the most influential voices in anarchism. Goldman was a passionate advocate for feminism, free speech, birth control, and the labour movement, and she fiercely opposed conscription during the First World War as part of her broader critique of militarism and the state. Her writings consistently championed individual liberty while condemning both capitalism and authoritarian government. For her activism, J. Edgar Hoover described her as “the most dangerous woman in America,” and she was repeatedly imprisoned and ultimately deported. Her ideas continue to influence anarchist and feminist thought today.

After being deported to Russia in 1919, she hoped to witness the socialist revolution that had captivated her imagination from afar. However, she quickly became disillusioned with the authoritarian realities of the Bolshevik regime and became one of the most important socialist critics of the Soviet Union.

Despite frequent challenges, Goldman remained committed to her ideals until the end of her life, continuing to write and speak on behalf of anarchism. She travelled extensively, sharing her vision of a more equitable and free society. Her legacy endures through her influential writings, such as “Anarchism and Other Essays,” which articulate her critiques of societal norms and champion the causes of marginalised groups. Emma Goldman’s life and work exemplified the powerful intersection of Jewish identity and anarchist thought, making her a pivotal figure in the fight for justice and liberation throughout the 20^th century.

A close associate of Goldman, Alexander Berkman was another leading figure in the anarchist movement who was born into Judaism and, like her, rejected the religious tradition. He is perhaps best known for his 1892 attempt to assassinate industrialist Henry Clay Frick during the Homestead Strike, believing the act would avenge the violent repression and exploitation of striking workers. Berkman spent fourteen years in prison, where he wrote extensively and further developed his ideas on anarchism, direct action, and social revolution. After his release, he too was deported to Soviet Russia, where first-hand experience of Bolshevik rule led him to join Goldman as one of its most outspoken anarchist critics.

In recent years, the rise of Zionism, alongside the ongoing Palestinian genocide, has presented a significant challenge for Jewish anarchists in the diaspora, compelling them to confront complex questions of identity, belonging, and political allegiance. As Zionism becomes increasingly prominent and is embraced as a defining aspect of Jewish identity by many, Jewish anarchists grapple with the implications of statehood and nationalism, confronting significant challenges to their core anti-authoritarian principles. The escalating tensions surrounding Zionism often prompt Jewish anarchists to engage in deeper conversations within their communities, advocating for a vision of Jewish identity that doesn’t revolve around settler colonialism.

Anarchists fundamentally reject nationalism and the oppressive divisions it fosters among people, championing instead internationalism and solidarity across borders. This perspective was promoted in response to the formation of the Zionist state, which continues to oppress Palestinians and other ethnic groups in the Levant. Rather than seeking refuge in statehood and ethnic nationalism, Jewish anarchists advocate for the establishment of alternative, autonomous communities grounded in mutual aid, actively opposing segregation and apartheid in favour of inclusive cooperation among diverse peoples in a melting-pot society.

In contemporary discourse, Jewish anarchists critique Israeli policies toward Palestinians, seeing these actions as incompatible with their principles. Their anti-Zionist stance often intersects with other movements focused on racial justice, anti-colonial struggles, and immigrant rights, illustrating a commitment to addressing multiple forms of oppression. This tradition reflects a complex relationship with Jewish identity and history, advocating for a vision of societal transformation that prioritises cooperation and solidarity over division and statehood.

Inside Israel, kibbutzim (which translates to “gathering, clustering”) are collective communities that emphasise shared ownership, communal decision-making, and cooperative labour. In theory, these principles closely align with anarchist ideals. Originating as a direct response to capitalist society, and predating the formation of the Israeli state, kibbutzim embodied anti-capitalist principles that resonated with anarchist critiques of exploitation and class division. Moreover, they provided a compelling case study for examining the balance between collectivism and individual rights, fostering dialogue about the creation of alternative societies within existing political frameworks.

Kibbutzim served as both a source of inspiration and a catalyst for critical discourse among Jewish anarchists, highlighting the complexities of building just and inclusive communities outside traditional state structures. However, their integration within the Zionist project greatly complicated this dynamic, as the emphasis on Jewish statehood and the resulting apartheid fundamentally contradict the inclusive, solidarity-driven ethos of anarchism. Furthermore, the shift toward privatisation has further distanced these communities from their original socialist principles.

For Jewish anarchists who relocated to Israel in the early 20^th century, the viability of their ideals became increasingly strained in a colonial context, posing significant challenges to practising anarchism as settlers on land where their ethnic group is implicated in a decades-long genocide. As a result, the Jewish anarchist movement has largely remained confined to the diaspora, while Israeli society continues to shift further toward the far right with each successive generation.

How to Handle An Oppressive Family Member?

There ought to be many possible answers, but in practice none are simple. Relationships are messy, and emotional problems don’t have one-size-fits-all fixes. Still, treating people as individuals helps you understand them better and respond with more empathy. This often entails looking honestly at yourself.

Conflict is part of life. When it comes up, it can push conversations forward, help people set clear boundaries, and encourage acceptance of differences. Done well, that process can lead to solutions that respect everyone’s individuality.

Anarchy requires a willingness to consider many perspectives and try to see the world from different angles. When you remain open to complexity, you tend to handle disagreement with more resilience. That kind of openness can make room for empathy and for people to grow into their own strengths, without being weighed down by guilt and shame passed down through family systems.

Culture and family shape what options people feel are available. Some communities explicitly make room for questioning and dissent. For example, Jewish religious tradition includes a strong emphasis on study and debate, where asking hard questions or even challenging how a leader interprets a text are part of the process. Healthy disagreement can deepen community ties and sharpen critical thinking, helping people develop a clearer sense of self.

If a family member is violating your dignity and you can’t disassociate from them, it’s important to communicate your boundaries assertively yet empathetically. Clearly identify the harmful behaviours and their impact on you while being careful to respect their own dignity. If you keep hitting a wall with direct communication, you could try writing a letter or asking a mutual trusted person to intervene. Establishing supportive networks outside your family can provide emotional support and help you gain perspective on toxic dynamics at home by seeing your family through their eyes.

When confronting the family member, prioritise your mental health to prevent emotional exhaustion. Setting and enforcing boundaries is vital for maintaining dignity and fostering healthier relationships. Clearly outline consequences for boundary violations and remain consistent in your approach. Reinforce the importance of your boundaries by clearly defining your limits and reducing engagement with the family member to minimise opportunities for violations. If necessary, create physical or emotional distance to give yourself space to breathe. Engage in self-care activities that relax and recharge you, as a strong mental and emotional grounding will help you maintain your boundaries more effectively.

If a family member continues to disregard your boundaries despite your best efforts, and you can’t distance yourself due to financial dependence, a practical approach is to concentrate on increasing your income and building social connections that can enable you to leave their orbit permanently. Building a life independent of them is the best way to secure the necessary resources for self-sufficiency and make choices that align with your own values and desires. While it may seem daunting, prioritising self-sufficiency outside the family can ultimately empower you to make choices that safeguard your emotional health and autonomy.

If you do choose to leave home to live independently of your family, consider implementing anarchic principles such as mutual aid, autonomy, and cooperation within your new social network. You could opt to live in a shared space with individuals who align with your values. This approach can cultivate a supportive community where skills and resources are exchanged freely, ultimately helping you build a more resilient and empowered life. By fostering these connections, you not only enhance your independence but also create a nurturing environment that reinforces your shared principles.

Other lifeways you can explore include off-grid living, communal poly-culture farming, intentional communities, queer collectives, illegalism, van life, green building, digital nomad work, art collectives, artisan co-ops, apprenticeships and cooperative economies. The social arrangement you choose should align with your values and aspirations, fostering liberation from conventional societal constraints, while facilitating meaningful connections with like-minded individuals.

Transitioning away from conventional societal and familial norms can be both challenging and liberating. Embrace practices that focus on sustainability, resource-sharing, and collaborative decision-making. By doing so, you cultivate an environment that prioritises collective well-being, empowering every member to flourish in their individuality while actively contributing to the greater good of the community. This approach not only enhances personal growth but also strengthens communal ties, creating a nurturing space where everyone can thrive together.

How Do Anarchists Approach Parenting?

Anarchists raise children in diverse ways, while generally emphasising principles such as non-coercion, mutual respect, honesty, autonomy, and collaborative relationships. Because anarchism rejects hierarchical structures and systems of authority and domination, anarchist parents aim to create environments where children are encouraged to think independently, express themselves freely, and actively participate in decisions that affect their lives as well as the wider family unit.

Anarchist parenting methods involve respect for autonomy, treating children as individuals with their own thoughts and emotions and supporting their independence and self-expression. Non-coercive discipline is important. Anarchist parents avoid punitive or authoritarian methods in favour of open communication, understanding, and guidance through education rather than fear. Collaborative decision-making is another key feature, with children included in family choices to build responsibility and ensure their perspectives are given weight.

Parents are advised to model values through everyday interactions, such as equality, kindness, mutual aid, self-determination, self-defence, anti-domination, and the questioning of authority. Boundaries are negotiated and revisited as needed, rather than imposed, and household responsibilities are developed through open discussion to strengthen trust and shared understanding between parent and child.

Many anarchist approaches also support an educational philosophy centred on experiential, child-led learning rather than strict adherence to traditional schooling, sometimes drawing on alternatives such as unschooling or letting the child pursue interests first and then forming lessons based on what they’ve learned through independent study.

There of course isn’t one single “anarchist parenting” model, and approaches vary widely depending on individual beliefs and circumstances at play. The important thing is that anarchist parenting seeks to empower children as autonomous people within a supportive, non-hierarchical environment that is safe, stable, and respectful.

Anti-civ anarchists have argued that industrial civilisation is alienating to children because it organises life around large institutions, specialised systems, and coerced dependence — conditions they say weaken natural bonds, autonomy, and meaningful community.

From this perspective, industrial civilisation tends to channel people into hierarchical, power-heavy relationships organised around state and corporate structures, division of labour, and repetitive routines that don’t align with children’s needs or their sense of agency. In parenting, the concern is that instead of growing up through shared, everyday reciprocity, children are socialised into systems that reward compliance with domination while training them to reject their own autonomy. In addition, many forms of competence are outsourced to experts and the infrastructure of the state, so children participate less directly in learning through doing. This fits a broader narrative of alienation from nature: industrial life separating children from direct contact with ecological cycles, lived risk, physical activity, and the skill-building that comes from relating to and working with the land rather than relying on manufactured goods produced by others in faraway places.

In discussions of parenting, anti-civ writers often emphasise that children should grow up with more direct, hands-on relationships to survival tasks and community reciprocity, and with less reliance on impersonal systems. The underlying claim is that industrial culture tends to shape children into “cogs” in a technological order which reduces real participation, turning curiosity into compliance, and replacing mutual aid with market dependency. They also frame “learning” less as being centred around delivering information through rigid institutions and more as developing through lived experience within a reciprocal social group.

More specifically, anti-civ anarchists have argued that the early agricultural/industrial shifts created coercion, stratification, and social alienation, which then get reproduced in childrearing environments. Their preferred alternative, though it varies by author, is communities that are smaller, more decentralised, and more integrated with natural rhythms that foster intimacy, self-determination, and healthier social development rather than dependence on alienating and dangerous industrial systems which demand service to dangerous and alienating industrial systems which demand lifelong commitment while denying children meaningful community bonds.

A lot of anarcho-communists have offered a similar view: they argue that children should not be treated as property, should not be trained into obedience, and that adults should not assume a permanent right to command. Instead, parenting is understood as shared care within a broader community committed to mutual aid and free association, distributing childrearing responsibilities across many adults and peers rather than confining them to a nuclear household or outsourcing them to the state or specialists.

Where anarcho-communists and anti-civ anarchists differ is in where they expect children to get most of their upbringing and how they imagine the social world children ought to grow into. Anarcho-communists generally place primary emphasis on adults and the community collectively — so children are supported through shared, egalitarian care that involves many adults, not just relatives. The point is still anti-hierarchical: adults shouldn’t dominate or treat children as property, but adults remain the primary participants in care and learning, alongside broader communal support.

Some anti-civ anarchists, by contrast, have argued for an upbringing led primarily by children themselves — fostering largely autonomous groups of children who learn through peer interaction, exploration, and mutual responsibility. In this view, children develop competence and social bonds by living close to one another with minimal adult supervision, rather than being centred in adult-run routines or adult-directed “training.” The Hadza ethnic group in Tanzania are often invoked as an example of small-scale social life where peer-based activity and autonomy play a much larger role in how young people grow up.

So the practical difference is how power and authority are imagined in childrearing. Anarcho-communists typically propose distributing power across the whole community while keeping adult involvement central but non-dominating. Anti-civ anarchists are more focused on reducing adult control wherever possible and making peer-led groups the main social unit for raising of children.

Are Anarchists Violent?

The monopoly on violence is when the state (or a central authority) is the only entity legally permitted to use or authorise the use of physical force within the lands it claims as its territory. This concept was most notably articulated by sociologist Max Weber, who argued that the state’s legitimacy derives from its exclusive right to wield violence, either through the police or the military. Anarchists strongly reject the state’s monopoly on violence. From an anarchist perspective, the state’s monopoly on violence is seen as a tool used to maintain hierarchical structures, suppress dissent, and enforce laws that serve the interests of ruling elites rather than the common people.

When anarchists advocate for the use of violence, they’re clear it must be decentralised and accountable to the community rather than centralised in heavily-insulated state institutions. Anarchists opt for direct action and self-defence practised by communities or affinity groups, rather than state-led violence or militarised law enforcement.

Anarchists engage in direct action as a means of expressing their principles and advocating for social change outside traditional political channels. This approach emphasises immediate, voluntary, and decentralised actions aimed at challenging authority, disrupting oppressive systems, or raising awareness about injustice. Direct action can involve violence when it is needed, for example to disrupt fascist organising, to prevent pipeline building through water bodies or to defend migrants who are being targeted by the police for deportation.

While some anarchists are happy to engage in violent actions, others explicitly oppose violence and advocate for non-violent methods of social change. The diversity within anarchist movements means that violence is neither inherent nor universally endorsed, but most anarchists see no problem with using force when necessary, either as self defence, or to defend marginalised members of their community, so long as the force isn’t backed by a central authority such as a state or private security firm.

Anarcho-pacifists practice non-violence and peaceful methods to promote social change and oppose hierarchical authority. They advocate for a stateless society where conflicts are resolved entirely through dialogue, mutual aid, and non-violent resistance rather than through the use of force. While they still employ methods of direct action, they opt for peaceful methods such as marches, sit-ins, civil disobedience, community-building activities, and promoting principles of compassion, cooperation, and respect for all individuals.

Illegalists are anarchists who advocate for or engage in illegal activities as political praxis. The term is historically associated with certain anarchist movements in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries that employed illegal acts, such as theft or sabotage, as a means of resistance against the state and capitalism.

Illegalist actions have sometimes involved violent acts, but not all illegalists are necessarily violent. Their methods and philosophies vary; some may emphasise property crime or sabotage that doesn’t involve violence against persons, while others have embraced violent tactics up to and including assassination of robber barons and presidents. It’s important to recognise that the term encompasses a diverse range of individuals and strategies, and their actions depend on specific contexts and motivations.

In conclusion, anarchists can be violent or they can be non-violent depending on the anarchist, but no anarchist would confuse the isolated use of force by an individual to defend themself or their community with the hierarchical authority that is the state’s monopoly on violence, which is more often than not employed to protect the class of robber barons from the downtrodden peasants they exploit.

Who Were the Haymarket Martyrs?

The Haymarket Affair was a pivotal event in the history of labour activism and radical politics. It is widely regarded as a turning point that galvanised the international labour movement and highlighted the tensions between workers seeking better conditions and the brutal authorities who would go to any length to prevent change.

During the late 19^th century, industrialisation had led to harsh working conditions, low wages, and long hours for the majority of workers in the industrial world. The movement for an eight-hour workday gained momentum, with protests and strikes occurring across the United States and internationally. On May Day in 1886, thousands of workers participated in a nationwide strike for the eight-hour work day.

In Chicago, USA, organisers held a rally in Haymarket Square to support the strike and advocate for workers’ rights. Anarchists were largely the architects of the union movement in Chicago, using the issue of the day to galvanise workers towards a greater class war that could result in a social revolution and the creation of a free society.

As the rally was winding down, police attempted to disperse the crowd. Suddenly, an unknown individual threw a bomb into the police line, resulting in the deaths of several police officers and civilians, and multiple injuries. The police then opened fire indiscriminately into the crowd, causing more death and injury, and then reloaded their guns and did it again.

The incident was exploited by authorities and capitalists to crack down on labour organisers, especially anarchists. In the aftermath, eight anarchists were arrested and tried, accused of conspiracy related to the bombing. Despite there being no evidence linking them to the bombing, seven were convicted; four were executed by hanging, one committed suicide in prison, and others received long prison sentences.

The Haymarket Martyrs are commemorated in anarchist history for paying the ultimate price for advocating for anarchy. Their story challenges official narratives that portray authority figures as protectors of average citizens and instead emphasises their role in defending the systemic oppression of citizens. Their deaths galvanised support for the eight-hour work day, which was finally achieved in the 20^th century. They serve as a reminder of the importance of revolutionary ideals and how the ongoing fight against tyranny and exploitation can require the ultimate sacrifice.

What Happened During the Spanish Civil War?

The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) was fought not only between fascism and republicanism, but also over what kind of society could emerge after Franco’s hopeful defeat. When the military uprising began, state authority collapsed in large parts of Spain. In many places, workers and peasants stepped into this sudden vacuum — organising from below, taking control of workplaces, and coordinating production and distribution through committees and assemblies. Anarchists see this as a genuine libertarian revolution: an attempt to dismantle domination in everyday life rather than simply replacing one government with another.

In that early revolutionary phase, anti-fascist resistance and social transformation were tightly intertwined. Libertarian militants promoted workplace control, communal organisation, and experiments in new social relations. They treated politics as something grounded in direct action rather than delegated to parliamentary institutions. Through local assemblies and federated coordination, anarchists helped sustain intense mobilisation during the first months, when the struggle was fought as much in the streets and workshops as on the battlefields.

As the war escalated, however, the drive to win militarily intensified pressure to centralise authority. Anarchist historians argue that the crucial shift was that revolutionary organisations were increasingly drawn into state machinery — most visibly through CNT-FAI leaders taking ministerial roles in the Republican government in 1936. This integration narrowed the scope for independent self-management: authority increasingly flowed through command structures from above, restricting collectivisation and weakening communities’ ability to defend the autonomy they had gained. As the war turned into an existential struggle, “necessity” and “pragmatism” increasingly justified rolling back revolutionary initiatives and framing autonomous action as disruptive to the revolution rather than essential to its survival.

This involvement in government is argued to have contributed to the revolution’s defeat by narrowing the space for independent self-management. Once key militants were absorbed into the government framework, their influence shifted toward administrative command from above rather than autonomous decision-making by workers and neighbours.

As state authority reasserted itself — especially regarding policing, production priorities, and military coordination — revolutionary bodies had less room to act decisively and less political legitimacy to expand the collectivisation effort and defend autonomous community control. Once the war turned into a fight for survival, “necessity” began to justify pulling back revolutionary initiatives and independent action was framed as a threat to unity instead of something essential to survival.

Anarchists frequently point to the events in Barcelona in May 1937 (“the May Days”) as a decisive rupture. Fighting there brought libertarian socialists aligned with the Spanish Revolution — such as the CNT and the anti-Stalinist POUM — into direct conflict with forces committed to strengthening centralised authority, including the Republican government, the Catalan government, and the Communist Party of Spain.

After these bloody clashes, internal repression and factional conflict intensified, sidelining revolutionary forces and rolling back many libertarian experiments. Consequently, the revolution that had begun through self-organisation was progressively replaced by centralised control, leaving the anti-Franco coalition less able and less willing to tolerate independent libertarian power.

By the end of the war, Franco’s victory in 1939 showed that the revolutionary transformation could not withstand the combined weight of militarised state politics and counter-revolutionary violence from state socialists. Anarchist historians see this as tragic not because resisting fascism was wrong, but because revolutionary autonomy — grounded in decentralised organisation and direct control by the people most affected — was gradually worn down. In that sense, anarchists argue we did not merely lose a conventional war; we lost the possibility to establish a lasting anarchic social order — an outcome that was shaped by the shift from revolution fought by the people in their own neighbourhoods and workplaces to a political program managed from above through restrictive state bureaucracy.

What is Anti-Work & What Does it Have to do With Egoism?

Ideologies across the political spectrum all revolve around work. They may disagree on who should manage or exploit labour (bureaucrats, capitalists, “girlbosses”, etc.), but they share an assumption that people should be forced to work in industrial systems for survival. Even radical movements like socialism and communism remain committed to the same power structure — just with different people in charge of it. For this reason, “anti-work” is frequently misunderstood by socialists or domesticated into their pro-work ideologies and welfare schemes that act to further stabilise the work-industrial-complex.

Anarchist anti-work means rejecting work as a way of life. Not just making it fairer, more democratic, or better paid, but dismantling the institutions that organise society around work. Anti-work is pursuing happiness on your own terms by refusing the authority of bosses and economists, and it treats the work-based world as an oppressive, exclusionary, conditioned norm that should be abandoned entirely.

Workerism is any worldview that puts work and workers at the centre of how society is understood and run, often focusing on struggles carried out in workplaces and by the working class to improve their material conditions. In labour movements throughout history, pockets of people within those wider movements have gone further than their peers by rejecting labour altogether.

In Italy, the operaismo movement (“workerism,” or better described as “post-workerism“) was especially important in postwar revolutionary politics. It grew out of dissenting groups inside major socialist organisations and focused on studying working-class life and conflict. It treated Marx’s Capital as a “political” work, organised around the way working-class struggle develops.

Operaismo argued that changes in working-class struggle track changes in how capitalism organises labour. It used tools such as class composition and workplace inquiry to study this link. Strategically, it framed revolution as direct confrontation with labour conditions, expressed as a political refusal of work rather than simply improving the terms under which people work.

Some anarchists today, especially egoists, nihilists, and other anti-left currents, argue that parts of the milieu are too committed to a work-based way of life — one that prioritises sacrifice and productivity over genuine fulfilment. They contrast work-oriented currents with “anti-work” approaches that emphasise constructive play and joy over work. They reject what they see as stale, self-defeating ideas promoted by both capitalists and socialists, and they call for breaking with the broader workerist system to pursue a life that doesn't revolve around a relentless striving for productivity.

Alfredo M. Bonanno:

Play is characterised by a vital impulse that is always new, always in movement. By acting as though we are playing, we charge our action with this impulse. We free ourselves from death. Play makes us feel alive. It gives us the excitement of life. In the other model of acting we do everything as though it were a duty, as though we ‘had’ to do it. It is in the ever new excitement of play, quite the opposite to the alienation and madness of capital, that we are able to identify joy.

Anarchists have always been critical of traditional work structures and pursued the abolition of the oppressive labour arrangements industrial society has long upheld. Anarchists challenge the idea that the system of work — which always includes exploitation to some degree — is inherently necessary or desirable for human fulfilment or societal well-being. All anarchists have strived to expose how capitalism commodifies the workforce and how the system of work creates exploitation, inequality, and alienation. A shared objective in any anarchist movement is opposing hierarchical authority in workplaces and instead advocating for voluntary cooperation and self-management. Anarchist historians and anthropologists have outlined how in societies across the world, work as we know it depends on coercion and exploitation, a system of superiors and inferiors.

When anarchists advocate for a post-work society, they envision a future where work is significantly reduced or eliminated, replaced by leisure, communal activities, and autonomous living. Anarchists want to foster a world where individual and collective autonomy over one’s labour and life choices is the default, a world where we aren’t forced against our will to labour for others to survive.

In practice, anti-work advocates may promote ideas like voluntary labour, community-based projects, or alternative ways of life that minimise or altogether avoid conventional work. The goal is to create a society where human needs are met without the imposition of oppressive and alienating labour systems that treat people like cogs in a machine.

The anti-work movement gained visibility through anarchist literature that critiques work culture and promotes alternatives aligned with anarchist and anti-capitalist ideals. The idea was popularised on anarchist forums such as Raddle, before being co-opted by Marxists and liberals who attempt to strip it of its anarchist origins and water it down so that it doesn’t actually promote abolishing work.

To abolish work is to replace it with more equitable, fulfilling, and voluntary activities. The core principle remains challenging traditional work paradigms rooted in hierarchy, exploitation, and alienation.

Bob Black’s The Abolition of Work, written in 1991, largely shaped the modern anti-work movement.

Bob Black:

Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you’d care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working. [...]

Liberals say we should end employment discrimination. I say we should end employment. Conservatives support right-to-work laws. Following Karl Marx’s wayward son-in-law Paul Lafargue I support the right to be lazy. Leftists favor full employment. Like the surrealists — except that I’m not kidding — I favor full unemployment. Trotskyists agitate for permanent revolution. I agitate for permanent revelry. But if all the ideologues (as they do) advocate work — and not only because they plan to make other people do theirs — they are strangely reluctant to say so. They will carry on endlessly about wages, hours, working conditions, exploitation, productivity, profitability. They’ll gladly talk about anything but work itself.

These experts who offer to do our thinking for us rarely share their conclusions about work, for all its saliency in the lives of all of us. Among themselves they quibble over the details. Unions and management agree that we ought to sell the time of our lives in exchange for survival, although they haggle over the price. Marxists think we should be bossed by bureaucrats. Libertarians think we should be bossed by businessmen. Feminists don’t care which form bossing takes so long as the bosses are women. Clearly these ideology-mongers have serious differences over how to divvy up the spoils of power. Just as clearly, none of them have any objection to power as such and all of them want to keep us working.

But the anarchist critique of work long predates Bob Black’s essay, emerging in the 19^th century. The philosophy of egoism, developed by Max Stirner, is laid out in his best-known work, The Unique and Its Property, and further clarified in the text Stirner’s Critics. As an early exponent of anarchy within industrial Europe, Stirner’s ideas also predate later workerist offshoots such as anarcho-communism and anarcho-syndicalism by refusing to glorify work, the factory, or other exploitative social constructs.

Egoism emphasises the individual and their unique will and rejects any abstractions (“phantasms”) and their influence (“haunting”) on the actions, thoughts, feelings, and desires of the individual (“The Unique”). As such, Egoism is opposed to humanism, liberalism, statism, morality, ideology, work ethic, social custom, religion, tradition and other fixed ideas that are projected onto us by external forces. Stirner posits that The Unique pursue it’s own interests, whatever they may be, free of any reservations born from phantasms.

Like most currents of post-work or anti-work anarchy, egoism rejects the idea of mass social revolution, seeing it as a time of violent and unpredictable turmoil which could very easily give rise to new hierarchies that serve new tyrants who rush in to fill the power vacuum.

Instead, egoists and other post-work anarchists favour more evolutionary methods of making anarchy: A focus on alternative experiences and social experiments, as well as education and the demonstration of radical modes of living which can easily create anarchy in the world today, in the current time and place, serving the current population.

A lot of anarchists don’t believe it’s in any way desirable for individuals to wait for a pie-in-the-sky social revolution before they can begin to experience anarchy. Post-work anarchists have no qualms about celebrating life by fully-embracing alternative experiences and lifestyles outside of what is offered within the current social system.

Workerist anarchists are quick to demean post-work anarchists such as egoists, anti-civs and green nihilists as “lifestylists” for not adhering to whatever workerist program their off-shoot of stateless socialism decrees as necessary to achieving revolution. Like all socialists, workerist anarchists would rather focus their energies on recruiting workers to their cause and growing their unions in the hopes that they (or more realistically their distant descendants) can accumulate numbers big enough to bring about their much-coveted socialist revolution.

Post-work anarchists want no part of any program designed by others to limit them, control them or curtail their individual desires in order to compel them to pursue a collective ideological agenda passed down by long-dead European philosophers who lived in a different time and place and had different ideals, customs and objectives than anyone living in the world today.

Egoists reject the idea that the individual should have to sacrifice for the benefit of the “greater good” and instead they posit that cooperation, the formation of social bonds, altruism and mutual aid are inherently desirable because these things benefit the individual as much as they benefit the collective. For this reason, Stirner advocated for a “union of egoists”: Multiple egoists voluntarily associating with one another to fulfil a purpose, goal, or even to simply enjoy each other’s company; free of any coercion or obligation. It’s essentially the earliest form of the anarchist concept of freedom of association.

Despite common misconceptions, egoists have nothing against relying on or working with others to achieve a mutually-shared goal. Egoism posits that kindness and charity is born from empathy, not morality. People give and help each other because it feels good for most people to do so, in this sense, what we call “altruism” is simply a side-effect of egoism.

Egoism embraces any act that is done out of the individual’s desire to commit the act. If the act is born from obligation, it is not an egoist action. Egoism supports the individual doing exactly what the individual pleases — taking no notice of God, state, morality or society.

To Stirner, “rights” were merely spectres in the mind, coercing us to act in a certain way in order to benefit externalities like the state. He held that society does not exist but “the individuals are its reality”.

Why Do Anarchists Oppose Rights?

Anarchists critique the concept of rights primarily because they see it as rooted in hierarchical, state-centred, or capitalist frameworks that can reinforce authority, inequality, and coercion. The critiques of rights often focus on the limitations, assumptions, and potential harm associated with rights as traditionally conceived. Stirner was likely the originator of the rejection of rights as a concept, but modern anarchists such as Bob Black (“The Myth of Human Rights”) and ziq (“But the Government Said I Have Rights”) have written in length about the subject.

Rights are upheld as constructs of authority. Many anarchists argue that rights granted by authorities including states, legal systems, or institutions, can be used to legitimise power and control rather than promote the genuine freedom of the people governed by the authority.

Rights are always limited and conditional. Anarchists reject the idea that rights are granted or protected by the state, as this inevitably leads to the state imposing arbitrary limitations and exclusions to certain classes and groups of people e.g. undocumented migrants, women, homosexuals. The limitations on rights undermine autonomy and restrict mutual aid efforts by criminalising anyone who offers help to the groups who are denied rights.

Rights can reinforce hierarchies. By framing individuals as entitled to certain privileges, rights can uphold social hierarchies and inequalities, especially when rights are unevenly distributed or selectively enforced, which they invariably are. Rights are often used by the state to divide and conquer: The emphasis on individual rights can create divisions among people and groups, leading to fear and competition rather than solidarity, which is contrary to anarchist principles of mutual aid and collective liberation.

Rights tend to serve capitalist or state interests. Anarchists see rights language as a tool used by states and corporations to legitimise property rights, exploitation, and control, rather than the fostering of genuine liberation and social justice.

Rights are simply not enough for true liberation. Anarchists often argue that the granting of rights are merely legal or formal protections that do not challenge the underlying power structures in place. Instead, anarchists advocate for direct action, social transformation, and the abolition of oppressive systems rather than relying on rights-based reforms to the oppressive systems.

Instead of focusing on rights, anarchists emphasise free association, mutual aid, self-determination, and collective decision-making as the foundations for a just and free society. They seek to build relationships and institutions based on voluntary cooperation, rather than scattered legal entitlements for certain people.

What Are Some Examples of Anarchist Societies and Communities?

The Free Territory (Makhnovshchina) in Ukraine (1918–1921), led by Nestor Makhno, was an expansive anarchist territory during the Russian Revolution. Peasant armies and workers’ councils controlled the territory through voluntary associations, with an emphasis on anti-authoritarianism. The Free Territory demonstrated the feasibility of large-scale anarchist-inspired self-management during social upheaval.

Policies were exercised through local councils (soviets) and assemblies composed of workers, peasants, and soldiers. These bodies made decisions collectively, emphasising direct participation and discussion. Communities and military units operated based on voluntary association, rejecting hierarchical authority structures typical of state systems. Factories and land were collectivised and managed by workers and peasants themselves, without top-down control. This meant economic activities were organised democratically, with decision-making power in the hands of those directly involved.

There was no Standing Army in the Traditional Sense: The military was organised as a voluntary militia, with soldiers choosing to participate and having a say in military decisions. The Makhnovists promoted mutual aid—community members helped each other in farming, production, and defence. Their social practices prioritised cooperation over competition.

While Nestor Makhno was a prominent leader, the movement emphasised consensus and voluntary adherence rather than authoritarian command. Leadership was based on mutual respect and consensus, not coercion. The movement rejected centralised state authority, hierarchical military commands, and bureaucratic control, seeking instead to create a stateless and classless society. Their goal was to dismantle the oppressive structures of Tsarist Russia, the bourgeoisie, and the state. Instead, they aimed to establish voluntary associations, free communities, and a society based on anarchist principles. The Makhnovists sometimes allied with other revolutionary groups temporarily but maintained their independence and anti-authoritarian stance.

The Free Territory was crushed by Marxist forces led by the Bolsheviks, who declared the anarchists to be “bandits”. The Bolsheviks viewed the autonomous anarchist region as a threat to their efforts to consolidate power and suppress independent socialist movements in favour of a centralised authoritarian socialist state with Lenin as the ruler. The Red Army’s superior military resources and strategic campaigns overwhelmed the smaller, guerrilla-style anarchist forces. By 1921, the Bolsheviks had effectively defeated the anarchist movement in Ukraine. Nestor Makhno was forced into exile, fleeing to Romania and later France.

Revolutionary Catalonia, during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) is one of the most prominent examples of large-scale anarchist influence in practice. In regions such as Catalonia and Aragon, where the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) and the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI) had deep roots, extensive collectivisation reshaped both industry and agriculture following the collapse of state authority in many areas. Factories, workshops, and farms were reorganised under worker control, with management carried out through elected assemblies rather than private ownership or hierarchical state direction. In Barcelona, this took the form of widespread worker self-management coordinated through unions and local committees, affecting key sectors such as transport, textiles, and utilities.

In rural areas, particularly in Aragon, villages collectivised agricultural land and reorganised production and distribution collectively, often making decisions through local assemblies. Some communities also extended these principles to social services, including healthcare and education, which were reorganised under communal or cooperative structures. Although the scope and durability of these experiments varied across regions and were shaped by the pressures of war, they collectively represented an attempt to replace traditional hierarchies with systems of worker and community self-management.

The revolution was later constrained and ultimately violently dismantled by the authoritarian communists, which helped Franco’s fascists win the war.

The Korean People’s Association in Manchuria (KPAM) existed from August 1929 to September 1931 as a self-governing autonomous region in Manchuria, formed largely among a population of around two million Korean refugees. Its ultimate aim was to build a stateless society based on liberty and social equality, guided by the principle of distribution “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.”

Following the Japanese occupation of Korea, many Korean anarchists fled across the border into Manchuria, where they began organising mutual aid networks to support displaced Koreans. They established the KPAM to provide food distribution, education, and self-defence for its members. Over time, the association came under pressure from both Japanese imperial forces and Korean authoritarian communist factions, and its leadership was targeted and assassinated. The Japanese invasion of Manchuria ultimately brought the experiment to an end, forcing many surviving members to flee to China, where some continued resistance efforts against the Japanese Empire.

Exarchia is a neighbourhood in Athens, Greece, known for its strong association with anarchist, anti-authoritarian, and radical political movements. It has a long-standing reputation as a hub of counterculture activity, social activism, and resistance against state authority and capitalism. Exarchia has historically been a gathering place for anarchists who oppose government policies and advocate for decentralised, self-managed communities. The neighbourhood is home to numerous alternative bookshops, cafes, squats, and art spaces that promote free expression and political engagement.

Throughout Greece’s modern history, especially during periods of political upheaval, Exarchia has been a centre of resistance, notably during the military junta of the late 1960s and early 1970s, and in subsequent protests against austerity and government reforms. Exarchia is often targeted by the Greek state for its defiance of authority. It often sees clashes with police, especially during protests, and maintains a reputation as a safe haven for anarchists, students, and activists. It embodies a spirit of rebellion rooted in anarchist principles.

The Shinmin Autonomous Region. In 1924, the Korean Anarchist Communist Federation (KACF) began actively supporting the development of anarchist labour unions and promoting anti-imperialist sentiments in China. Five years later, the KACF declared the Shinmin province to be independent from China and declared their aim to establish a decentralised society within the region.

Like other anarchist communities, the KACF organised itself into a loose federation of councils, each governing specific areas, districts, and villages. These councils collaborated and made decisions independently on key issues such as agriculture, finance, and education, fostering local self-management. However, due to Japan’s imperialist ambitions to conquer the region and Stalin’s efforts to overthrow it, the federation was ultimately dismantled in 1931.

The Strandzha Commune in Bulgaria was an anarchist-inspired community declared on August 18, 1903. It was led by Mihail Gerdzhikov, a guerrilla leader associated with the Internal Macedonian Adrianople Revolutionary Organisation. Despite having a small force of around 2,000 fighters, Gerdzhikov’s group established a provisional government in the Strandzha Mountains, challenging invading Ottoman forces that numbered approximately 10,500 soldiers. Within the commune, a communal system was implemented, with resources shared equally based on need. However, this short-lived experiment was suppressed by Ottoman troops just over a month later, on September 8, 1903.

Zomia is a vast geographical region inhabited by approximately 100 million people. Stretching from the Vietnamese highlands and Tibetan plateau to Afghanistan, Zomia is home to multiple anarchistic communities. Some political scientists, including Yale’s James Scott, view Zomia as the rejection of modern nation-states and consider it an example of anarchist society in practice.

In this region, states such as China and Vietnam lack control over many of these remote areas, leaving local communities largely autonomous in their governance. A lot of these cultures employ non-hierarchical social structures. The Wa people, for example, have social rules that limit the display of wealth and power, helping to maintain their non-hierarchical and egalitarian society.

Scott also contends that this form of society emerged as people fled from traditional nation-state systems to seek greater freedom. He further suggests that the absence of written language across Zomia is a deliberate choice by its inhabitants, aimed at avoiding the bureaucratic complexities associated with literacy and formal state administration.

The Hadza are a protected hunter-gatherer Tanzanian indigenous ethnic group. They live around the Lake Eyasi basin in the central Rift Valley and in the neighbouring Serengeti Plateau. Several anthropologists who have lived with them have written that they embody aspects of anarchistic social organisation. Their society is characterised by a high degree of egalitarianism with a strong aversion to hierarchy and formal leadership. Decisions are typically made collectively through consensus, and there are no permanent leaders or rigid social structures that enforce authority. People who attempt to assert authority over others are rejected socially.

The Hadza’s social practices emphasise sharing, cooperation, and mutual support, which reduces inequality and conflict over resources. Their mobility and subsistence diet fosters flexible social roles rather than fixed hierarchies. This decentralised and non-coercive way of organising society aligns with principles commonly associated with anarchy.

Why Do Marxists Keep Killing Anarchists?

Anarchists have often regarded authoritarian socialists as allies against a common enemy, despite the two movements holding fundamentally different views on political power. Time and again, once the immediate threat has receded and the opportunity has arisen, authoritarian movements have turned on the anarchists who fought alongside them. From the anarchist perspective, this is because anarchists pose an even greater challenge to authoritarian ambitions than capitalists do: anarchism rejects the concentration of power and seeks to dismantle hierarchical systems altogether, frustrating attempts to centralise authority in a state or party that can be controlled by a ruling elite.

The clash between libertarian and authoritarian currents begins within the First International, which was a major 19^th-century organisation created to unite workers and radical political groups across different countries, coordinated around support for the working-class movement and international solidarity. A major turning point was the ideological and organisational conflict over how revolutionary politics should be conducted. Marx called for a centralised political direction, while Bakunin advocated for anti-authoritarian, decentralised approaches that wouldn’t put decision-making into the hands of a political elite or allow any centralised authority to override local autonomy.

The tensions between Marx-aligned currents and Bakunin’s anarchist wing escalated and Marx organised the expulsion of the anarchists, helping formalise a durable division between authoritarian socialist and anarchist tendencies in the workers’ movement.

After the 1917 Revolution in Russia, the new Bolshevik state moved quickly to consolidate authority and eliminate rivals. In this process, independent revolutionary organisations, especially those outside Bolshevik control, were treated as direct threats to the state’s claim to represent “the revolution.” Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders argued that dissenting socialist currents could undermine discipline, unity, and the legitimacy of the new regime, particularly as civil war and internal unrest intensified.

As a result, anti-Bolshevik groups, especially anarchists, were targeted through arrests, bans, and the systematic dismantling of their organisational networks. Bolshevik authorities also authorised and carried out violent crackdowns against opposition, aiming to prevent anarchists from building alternative institutions of self-organisation, such as independent unions, local councils, and armed militias, outside Bolshevik oversight.

A defining episode is the Kronstadt rebellion of 1921: sailors and their supporters, with a heavy anarchist presence, rose against Bolshevik rule, demanding greater political freedom and the restoration of genuinely independent workers’ councils. The uprising was crushed by Lenin’s Red Army in what can only be described as a bloodbath. The Soviet leadership portrayed the rebellion as a counter-revolutionary threat backed by hostile forces, while anarchists and many later historians have argued that its suppression reflected the Bolsheviks’ determination to eliminate independent socialist opposition and consolidate authoritarian one-party rule.

The Korean People’s Association in Manchuria (1929 — 1931) was targeted by Chinese Communist Party–aligned guerrillas who viewed KPAM’s anarchist, decentralised villages as rival power centres and pressured them politically and militarily, working to absorb their fighters, restructure local governance along communist party lines, and undermine their autonomy. This created friction and frequent clashes, which eroded KPAM’s cohesion over time and made them unable to withstand the Japanese invasion that followed.

In Spain, anarchists helped drive the revolutionary and anti-fascist struggle during the civil war. But as the Republic became increasingly reliant on centralised authority and Soviet-backed support, communist-aligned forces began targeting anarchist autonomy. The conflict intensified around the May Days of May 1937, which are widely described as a turning point when anarchist revolutionary power was broken inside the Republic. In the aftermath, Communists and security forces moved against anarchists and anti-authoritarian revolutionary groups through repression, imprisonment, torture, and killings, and the broader dismantling of anarchist and libertarian socialist infrastructure. This ultimately led to the fascist forces winning the war and ruling Spain for decades.

During the December 1944 fighting in Athens, the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) and its security apparatus, OPLA, carried out a campaign of repression against anarchists and other internationalist socialists. Hundreds, if not thousands of dissidents were imprisoned, tortured, or executed. This was part of a broader effort around the world to eliminate independent revolutionary currents and consolidate authoritarian socialist control.

Authoritarian movements are obviously better positioned to take control of state institutions and security forces because they explicitly seek to capture and centralise them. They work to build disciplined, hierarchical organisations capable of issuing unified commands, coordinating military operations, and rapidly consolidating authority.

Once they gain control of the army, police, intelligence services, bureaucracy, and communications, they are quick to turn those institutions against anarchists. Independent militias are disarmed, opposition organisations are outlawed, dissidents are arrested, and political power becomes concentrated in the hands of the ruling party or leadership. From an anarchist perspective, this dynamic illustrates the danger of preserving state structures during a revolution: institutions built around centralised coercive power tend to reproduce and reinforce hierarchical rule, regardless of the ideology of those who inherit them.

This isn’t merely ancient history. In countries with powerful socialist parties, conflicts between authoritarian communist organisations and anarchists continue today. There have been numerous incidents in which communist party members have violently confronted anarchist demonstrations, coordinated raids against anarchist squats and neighbourhoods, or worked with the police to block anarchist organising.

In Greece, during the anti-austerity protests following the financial crisis, footage circulated that showed members of the Stalinist-affiliated union PAME directing police to arrest anarchist demonstrators during clashes outside parliament. At assemblies and within broader left-wing coalitions, communist party members have also frequently opposed anarchist proposals that they view as undermining the role of the state or the party. Earlier, in 1998, the Greek riot police joined forces with members of the youth wing of the Communist Party to violently attack anarchist student protesters, resulting in numerous injuries and around 100 arrests.

These frequent incidents are not isolated events but examples of a recurring pattern: organisations committed to centralised party power will inevitably come into conflict with movements that seek to abolish hierarchy altogether.

How Do Anarchists Who Live Together Divide Chores?

Anarchists in a shared living space handle the division of chores through the principles of mutual aid, voluntary cooperation, and consensus decision-making. Since anarchism emphasises rejecting hierarchical authority, chores are often organised in a way that promotes equality, autonomy, and collective responsibility.

Housemates collaboratively decide on how chores are assigned using consensus, ensuring everyone’s input and agreement. They may hold regular meetings to discuss responsibilities and make adjustments to the agreement as needed. They may choose to employ rotating tasks so that chores are rotated regularly so that no one housemate bears the same responsibilities indefinitely, promoting fairness and variety.

Members choose chores based on their individual preferences and skills, fostering a sense of purpose, ownership and cooperation. Instead of strict divisions along class or gender lines, chores are viewed as communal tasks that everyone contributes to according to their ability, emphasising collective care for the living space and the betterment of the residents’ living conditions.

A chore sharing system must be flexible, negotiable and adaptive, remaining open to change, allowing members to adapt chores to changing circumstances, abilities and preferences. Anarchist approaches to any communal living situation always prioritise cooperation, respect, and shared decision-making, aiming to create an egalitarian and harmonious living environment.

How Do I Manage Interpersonal Conflicts with Other Anarchists?

Tackling interpersonal conflicts with other anarchists can require a combination of open communication, mutual respect, and a shared commitment to anarchist principles such as autonomy, anti-authoritarianism, and solidarity. It can take a lot of time and energy to resolve these conflicts, but as long as these basic values are shared, it should be doable. Here are some strategies to navigate conflicts effectively.

Active listening. Listen carefully to the other person’s perspective without immediate judgment or defensiveness. Show that you value their experience and viewpoint. As long as they’re not being abusive, don’t talk over them, let them have their say before you respond.

Express your concerns and feelings honestly but respectfully, while identifying common values and goals. Remember that, as anarchists, you share core principles like mutual aid, freedom of association and resistance to authority and that focusing on these shared ideals can help bridge differences you may have.

Establish boundaries: Recognise each other’s right to autonomy and make room for differing approaches to problem solving. Respect the boundaries that have been set and always be careful not to control or dominate others in your social circle.

Seek consensus or mutual agreement: When possible, work toward consensus or at least mutual understanding rather than winning an argument. Emphasise cooperation over conflict.

Address issues promptly and directly: Don’t let conflicts and grievances fester. Address issues early while emotions are manageable, aiming for resolution rather than escalation. Avoid the temptation to break off into opposing cliques, which will only further social divisions and lead to intractable conflict and potentially violent rage.

Use mediation if needed. If conflicts are persistent, consider involving a neutral mediator from within your community who can facilitate dialogue. Be careful not to burden the mediator or expect too much of them, remember to respect their autonomy and boundaries too.

Always reflect on the power dynamics at play in any group. Be aware of any power imbalances and work to ensure that all voices are heard equally and that no one is treated unfairly due to any hierarchical elements that may develop in the group.

Prioritise solidarity and community building. Remember that maintaining relationships and community cohesion is vital. Focus on building trust and mutual support.

Be open to growth and change. Conflicts can be opportunities for learning. Be willing to adapt and grow from disagreements.

By emphasising respectful dialogue and shared values, anarchists can navigate conflicts without compromising their principles, fostering stronger, more resilient communities, but in the event that someone in the group is being oppressive, or trying to build authority, don’t be afraid to exercise your freedom of association. You don’t have to get along with everyone.

How Do I Live a Freer, More Anarchistic Life?

It can be a years-long process to align your everyday actions and choices with core anarchist principles such as autonomy, mutual aid, freedom of association, anti-authoritarianism, and direct action. It’s an ongoing, concentrated effort to move towards an anarchic way of life.

Always cultivate personal autonomy. Make decisions based on your values rather than external authority or societal expectations. Practice self-reliance and critical thinking.

Reduce your dependence on hierarchical systems as much as possible. Minimise reliance on institutions that concentrate power. Corporations, government agencies, and hierarchical workplaces have a way of monopolising solutions to problems. Instead, support local economies, share resources with neighbours, and build autonomous community in any way you can.

Participate in mutual aid. Whether you organise it yourself or engage as a participant, look for ways to enact mutual support in your community. Share resources, skills, and knowledge to strengthen community resilience and challenge the competitive, capitalistic mindset that is so pervasive in society.

Practice direct action. Don’t wait for others to solve problems for you. Take initiative to address issues directly, whether through protests, community organising, sabotage, or a variety of tangible personal choices, rather than waiting for top-down solutions to be presented to you.

Decentralise all the systems around you: Either create or support decentralised structures including local cooperatives, grass-roots groups, or affinity networks. These structures help empower individuals and communities so they don’t need to depend on centralised authorities and capitalist charities.

Live simply and sustainably in every way you can. Reduce your material consumption and environmental impact, aligning your lifestyle with ecological sustainability and strong anti-consumerist principles. Practice what you preach.

Question authority and social norms every day of your life. Constantly challenge authority figures, societal norms, and traditional roles including gender roles. Be critical of every system of power you’re forced to interact with and refuse to accept them as natural or unchangeable.

Build community and solidarity everywhere you go. Develop relationships based on trust, mutual aid, and shared values. Collective resilience is key to living freely outside oppressive structures. You can’t do everything alone.

Educate and raise consciousness among your neighbours and co-workers. Share knowledge, challenge misinformation, and promote anarchist ideas within your community to foster collective liberation. Don’t let apathy and cruelty be normalised. Always speak up for the oppressed, always oppose injustice.

Continually assess your practices and beliefs and be ready to reflect on your mistakes, adapt to new surroundings and changing circumstances. Be open to change and always work on your personal growth. Achieving greater freedom means never closing yourself off to new experiences and people.

Living a freer, more anarchist life is an ongoing process of resisting oppressive systems and cultivating personal and collective autonomy. It’s about making intentional choices that align with anarchist values and contribute to both individual and collective liberation.

What Are Some Important Texts to Read?

See https://raddle.me/wiki/reading for a comprehensive list. Each category has the texts arranged by their significance to each subject, so you can only read the texts most related to the topic at hand if you prefer. The list blends both classical and modern texts so you get a diverse perspective and it covers various schools of anarchy as well as related principles.

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