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strategies for change 163
of class (proletarian or bourgeois), anarchists argue that individuals
can choose to work for or against revolutionary change. This idea of
choice is common to anarchists as different in outlook as Tolstoy and
Zerzan, Bakunin and Ward, class struggle anarchists and primitivists.
Naturally, taking responsibility is not equivalent to a commitment
to violence. Helen Steel, one of the defendants in the McLibel
trial, described her motivation to get involved in London
Greenpeace in much the same way as Christie explained his decision
to fight Franco: ‘[I]f I see oppression it’s just like a gut feeling that I
want to do something to challenge it and change it and end it …’. 83
But her campaign was constitutional. Jon Purkis also understands
responsibility in a wholly non-violent way, combining an individualist
concern with lifestyle choices with a communitarian willingness
to build and sustain self-organized and non-exploitative public
utilities. 84 However, if violence is considered to be purposeful – as
activists in the Black Bloc contend – responsibility suggests that the
question anarchists should ask themselves is not whether they
should be prepared to use aggression against the state or civilization,
but how and when they should do so.
summary
This chapter has looked at a variety of anarchist strategies for
change, both insurrectionary and evolutionary. It has also examined
the way in which anarchists have employed different methods of
protest to promote their causes. It is sometimes suggested that
anarchists lack viable means of change and that the weakness of their
strategies can be estimated by their failure to realize anarchy. This
criticism seems to misstate the relationship between the means and
the ends of the anarchist revolution and to underestimate the problems
facing the anarchists whilst underplaying their achievements.
The aim of anarchist revolution is to bring about emancipation from
oppression by the oppressed. The difficulty that anarchists confront
is not just how to find a way of defeating their enemies so that
anarchy might flourish but to enthuse individuals to liberate
themselves. In this second task, they have not failed and however
disappointing their historic and heroic defeats, the anarchists are
surely right to evaluate revolutionary strategies by their potential to
deviate from the goal of self-emancipation, not merely by their
effectiveness to defeat state power.