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anarchy 113 no assumption of natural affection in this world: owners respond to their offspring rationally and where affection fails, sell them to those who really want them on the free market. The first form of communitarianism, intentional community, has been a constant feature of anarchist activity since the 1890s, if not before. The first wave of anarchist community building is associated with the ‘milieux libres’ in France and campaigns like the ‘New Australia Movement’ – an organization created to settle ‘healthy and intelligent men and women’ disgruntled with life in the ‘working man’s Paradise’ in co-operative communities in South America. 43 These experiments were often short lived, but subsequent generations of anarchists have continued the tradition. Franco’s victory in the Civil War encouraged groups of Spanish anarchists in exile to set up communities in France. And a general dissatisfaction with materialism acted as a catalyst for a wave of American experiments the following decade. Intentional community is often associated with a desire for rural living. As Lerner argues, the post-war American movement reflected ‘a response to dissatisfaction with the cities’. 44 Yet anarchist communities have been set up in urban as well as rural areas. Indeed, although it is usually regarded as anarchistic rather than anarchist, one of the best known experiments in intentional community – Christiania or ‘Freetown’ – is based in Copenhagen. Often, too, community is linked to Christian or ethical anarchism – Tolstoyans and other Christian anarchists played a leading part in both British and Dutch movements. However, communitarianism has engaged a wide spectrum of anarchists: from individualists to communists and from those seeking space to prepare for guerrilla warfare to those looking for an opportunity to create new ways of living. One of the chief concerns of anarchists involved in intentional community is to show that individuals and groups can improve the quality of their social relations by removing themselves from the influence of mainstream culture. This concern is made explicit in the mission statement of the Anarchist Communitarian Network (ACN), an association set up to provide help and support to anarchist communitarians in America. The ACN describes intentional community as a movement ‘discontent with the dominant norms of alienation, competition, and antagonism’. By encouraging anarchist experiments in community it hopes to foster ‘a qualitative change of social relationships and institutions’, making them ‘non-hierarchical, democratic ... intimate, and authentic’.
114 anarchism: a beginner’s guide Anarchist observers of community have often testified to the success with which communitarians have realized this general goal. For example, when Augustin Souchy paid Spanish comrades a visit, he recorded the extraordinary conviviality of the group. Their settlement ‘was an economic and cultural commune based on voluntarism after the pattern of the Spanish collectividades’: Meals were served in a special communal dining room, laundry and clothing were allotted according to need and vacation money was disbursed from a common treasury just like in a happy family. Vacationers from outside gladly and voluntarily lent a helping hand in agricultural work. No written by-laws were needed. Every six months a chairman, treasurer and secretary were elected ... The French peasants in the neighborhood at first regarded the foreign colonists with suspicion but soon changed their attitude ... after a short time friendly and neighbourly relations were established. I could close the notes in my diary with the blunt sentence: ‘Overall impression of the free collective of d’Aymare: positive’. 45 Yet on two particular issues – democratic decision-making and individual liberty – for which intentional communities have provided a platform for analysis, the record of anarchist community appears less certain. Discussions of democracy have tended to focus on the possibilities of consensus decision-making. The principle of consensus decisionmaking is straightforward: individuals come together, respecting each other as equal voices, to determine preferred courses of action by common agreement. The attraction of consensus decisionmaking is that it avoids the need for voting and seems, therefore, to offer a solution to the problem of majoritarianism. Specifically, in contrast to other systems of democracy (including the nonhierarchical, participatory, municipalist model developed by Bookchin), consensus decision-making does not allow minorities to be outvoted (coerced) by majorities. Yet as an alternative method of organizing anarchy, consensus decision-making is also problematic. Jo Freeman’s critique of anarcha-feminism, the Tyranny of Structurelessness, points to the root of the difficultly: Any group of people of whatever nature coming together for any length of time for any purpose, will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible, it may vary over time, it may evenly or unevenly distribute tasks, power and resources over
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contents Acknowledgements vii intro
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acknowledgements A number of people
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chapter two anarchist rejections of
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Page 95 and 96: chapter three anarchy We have alway
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chapter five concluding remarks Stu
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index Page numbers in italic denote
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index 177 Farrow, Lynne 119 fascism
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index 179 and state 30, 45-6, 50, 5
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