There is a constant temptation to anarchism. Why? For at least two reasons. First, we are all possessed of a natural feeling of autonomy, a sense that nobody tells me what to do, that you’re not the boss of me. We naturally bristle any time anyone forces us to do anything we do not choose to do ourselves. Second, we see that those who do rule us usually rule badly, acting from their own self-interest at the expense of the common good, that their political (and other) power corrupts them. Thus the temptation to anarchism, to throw off rulers of every sort. Anarchy, it is argued, should scratch both itches. It would mean I am free to do as I please and that the commonweal would be better served as a result. This sounds tempting.

But the question is whether we should give in to this temptation.

Actually existing anarchism – whether right-leaning libertarianism or left-leaning revolutionism – is both strong and violent.

If I am going to give in to the temptation to anarchism, I am going to want a version of anarchism that is weak and gentle. This will put me at odds, perhaps, with everybody. All powers-that-be are threatened by anarchism…they always have been and they always will be. But both anarcho-capitalists and anarch-communists will no doubt be repulsed by the idea of “weakness” and “gentleness.” How in the world, they will ask, can we attain our ends by being “weak” and “gentle” in the violent world of empire?

Good question. I am searching for answers….

I think it will be useful to develop a distinction between “weak anarchism” and “strong anarchism.” Others have their ideas about this distinction. Some see “weak anarchism” as a position tolerating some state action in certain circumstances (somewhat like minarchism although perhaps more ad hoc). Some see “weak anarchism” as a watered down, thoughtless reaction against power (as distinguished from a rigorously theoretical understanding of an anarchist organization of a highly complex society). Some see “weak anarchism” as simply apathy and lack of interest in the res publica. Weak anarchists talk about it; strong anarchists do something about it.

It seems to me it might be better to make the distinction like this: strong anarchism is thought to be a what, weak anarchism is more like a how. Most anarchism today is strong anarchism, in other words it is one more political ideology (with both left-wing and right-wing flavors) along side all the others political ideologies. Some work to advance it; some just wish it were so. But most treat it as if it had a certain kind of content, as if it were a certain kind of “thing,” an end-in-itself.

To me, weak anarchy is more like a way than a destination. In fact, I think that if it were a destination then it can never be reached. I think that anarchy – if it is truly to be an-archism (if there is such a thing) – ought to be considered more like deconstruction than like Marxist or Neoliberal ideology. The force of weak anarchism, so considered, is like the gentleness that nevertheless heaps burning coals, figuratively, on the heads of one’s enemies. It rejects the arche of violence (although it is not necessarily pacifist). It ought to revisit and critique the metaphysical underpinnings of strong anarchism. Weak anarchism ought to take some cues from what is known as “weak thought” and “weak theology.” It ought to understand the relation between love and law.

Again, it is easy to anticipate objections to something that sounds so pusillanimous. In a world like ours that valorizes strength and a certain form of courage, this has to seem, well, weak. We don’t like weakness, do we? We certainly don’t think as much as we might about those who are weak, do we? But maybe we need to re-think weakness.

In any case, it seems to be it would be valuable to have a thorough-going understanding of something like weak anarchism.

The most important thing in my opinion is to accept that we don’t have all the answers. Anarchists, for so long, have regarded anarchism as a sort of religion that can explain everything in the world, and if there is anything that I have learnt thus far it is that anarchism, as any other political current, has flaws and limitations. This is the reason why we should always be open to learn from others, to learn from the experience of the ordinary folks that stand up every day in different ways, to question ill-conceived dogmas, to develop a culture of constructive criticism and not to be happy with over simplistic explanations about reality. “Down with government! Down with Capital!” is a slogan that on its own will take us nowhere. We need to give more positive and constructive content to our anarchism and at that point, at the point of practice, of providing real solutions to real people on real circumstances, we see the shortcomings of ideology. But that is the only way for theory to move forward, for anarchism to develop and not degenerate into a museum piece or into an intellectual pastime for people with no real intention of making their ideas a reality.

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From Paul Goodman, a thought for today:

Anarchism is grounded in a rather definite proposition: that valuable behavior occurs only by the free and direct response of individuals or voluntary groups to the conditions presented by the historical environment. It claims that in most human affairs, whether political, economic, military, religious, moral, pedagogic, or cultural, more harm than good results from coercion, top-down direction, central authority, bureaucracy, jails, conscription, States, preordained standardization, excessive planning, etc. Anarchists want to increase intrinsic functioning and diminish extrinsic power. This is a social-psychological hypothesis with obvious political implications. Depending on varying historical conditions that present various threats to the anarchist principle, anarchists have laid their emphasis in varying places: sometimes agrarian, sometimes free-city and guild-oriented; sometimes technological, sometimes anti-technological; sometimes communist, sometimes affirming property; sometimes individualist, sometimes collective; sometimes speaking of Liberty as almost an absolute good, sometimes relying on custom and “nature.” Nevertheless, despite these differences, anarchists seldom fail to recognize one another, and they do not consider the differences to be incompatibilities. Consider a crucial modern problem, violence. Guerrilla fighting has been a classical anarchist technique; yet where, especially in modern conditions, any violent means tends to reinforce centralism and authoritarianism, anarchists have tended to see the beauty of non-violence. Now the anarchist principle is by and large true. And far from being “Utopian” or a “glorious failure,” it has proved itself and won out in many spectacular historical crises. In the period of mercantilism and patents royal, free enterprise by joint stock companies was anarchist. The Jeffersonian bill of rights and independent judiciary were anarchist. Congregational churches were anarchist. Progressive education was anarchist. The free cities and corporate law in the feudal system were anarchist. At present, the civil rights movement in the United States has been almost classically decentralist and anarchist. And so forth, down to details like free access in public libraries. Of course, to later historians, these things do not seem to be anarchist, but in their own time they were all regarded as such and often literally called such, with the usual dire threats of chaos. But this relativity of the anarchist principle to the actual situation is of the essence of anarchism. There cannot be a history of anarchism in the sense of establishing a permanent state of things called “anarchist.” It is always a continual coping with the next situation, and a vigilance to make sure that past freedoms are not lost and do not turn into the opposite, as free enterprise turned into wage-slavery and monopoly capitalism, or the independent judiciary turned into a monopoly of courts, cops, and lawyers, or free education turned into School Systems.

First published in Anarchy 62 [UK] (April 1966)