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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.
164 anarchism: a beginner’s guide Anarchists remain divided about how best they promote anarchist action and one of the issues that most divides opinion is the use of violence. Yet none of the responses anarchists give to the issue of violence suggests that anarchist action is motivated by irrationality or a messianic devotion to a cult of destruction. Anarchists have developed their strategies for change in particular historic and political conditions in order to meet complex sets of ideas about the nature and purpose of anarchist goals. further reading Luigi Fabbri, Bourgeois Influences on Anarchism (Tucson: Sharp Press, 2001) Graham Chesters, Jon Purkis and Ian Welsh, ‘Not Complicated, but Complex’, Anarchist Studies, 12 (1), 2004: 76–80 Karen Goaman, ‘Globalisation versus Humanisation’, Anarchist Studies, 11 (2), 2003: 150–71 Karen Goaman, ‘Anarchism, Realpolitik and “Global Civil Society”’, Anarchist Studies, 12 (1), 2004: 72–5 Peter Kropotkin, An Appeal to the Young, http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/ Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/appealtoyoung.html Geoffrey Ostergaard, ‘Resisting the Nation State: Anarchist and Pacifist Traditions’, http://www.ppu.org.uk/ e_publications/ dd-trad6.html Anton Pannekoek, Workers’ Councils (Edinburgh: AK Press, 2003) David Stafford, From Anarchism to Reformism (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1971) J. Tracy, (ed.)The Civil Disobedience Handbook (San Francisco: Manic D Press) Henry David Thoreau, Political Writings, (ed.) Nancy Rosenblum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) Simon Tormey, A Beginner’s Guide to Anti-Capitalism (Oxford: Oneworld, 2003) Colin Ward, Anarchy in Action (London: Freedom Press, 1982) H. Zinn, Disobedience and Democracy (Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 2002)
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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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chapter three anarchy We have alway
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Page 186 and 187: index 177 Farrow, Lynne 119 fascism
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