If my readers have not figured it out yet, I am a self-conscious anarchist. Since people who call themselves anarchists have different interpretations of what anarchism is, I will be blunt and tell you what I mean by anarchism. Anarchism strives to do everything through actual — rather than through delegated — agreements. This means that it is based on direct democracy; not on a representative democracy. These agreements start with a small community of people, of such a size that everyone can know everyone else. And the first thing that has to be agreed to is that anyone who wants to live independently of others may do so through receiving a free homestead adequate for subsistence. It would, of course, be wiser to pool resources together for mutual benefit.
Now, given that the unit of government is a small face-to-face community which elects a council or councils for different functions, grouping of communities are organized through delegates to a higher level council of some workable size, and so on until the highest council is formed. This is bottom-up democracy; rather than a top-down democracy, which exists everywhere in democratic States, where thousands or millions vote for a political candidate.
In order for people to learn and understand what anarchism is, I have tried to collect as much literature as I could find into one comprehensive bibliography, with links as I found them. Here is the link:
Although anarchists worldwide have known about the self-conscious Ukrainian anarchist Nestor Makhno, and celebrated him; however, in the Soviet Union he was portrayed as a bandit. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, his life and activity has been the subject of many books and a 12-part television series which aired July 6, 2007 in Russia. It was filmed in Ukraine in the following places: Bila Tserkva, Dnipropetrovsk, Kamyanets-Podilsky.
I have just discovered a very interesting anarchist who has similar views to my own. His website is called “Attack the System” with two subtitles, with which I agree: (1) Pan-Anarchism Against the State, and (2) Pan-Secessionism Against the Empire.
First of all, as I was riding here … anyway, I became an anarchist somewhere in 2000. The rest of my life I have been in philosophy, studying epistemology and logic … until it hit me in 2000, roughly. . . . Anyway, as I was biking over here I was thinking about what is the significance of this? … Well, when I woke up this morning I said, shit it’s May 1st, its the labor day for the whole world, and this is the greatest monument … this is the Mecca of the laboring people of the world. This is it, its like the Muslim Mecca. So, I said, what does this mean? I felt like it was like Easter for Christians. Why Easter? Well, I was talking with a fellow here and he said it was like Christmas for him. Well I said, Christmas was when Christ was born, and there is a promise of things to come. But Easter is the big event. Easter is the promise of heaven, of resurrection. Well, perhaps these people are buried here and they are dead, but their spirit has resurrected . . . it spread all over the world, so in a sense this to me is Easter.
Here we are. I was listening to you talking about and thinking about workers. And I want to talk to you about capitalism. What is the definition of capitalism? There is a movement called anarcho-capitalism. It is bullshit. I’ll tell you why its bullshit. They think that capitalism is free trade. Well, free trade is just barter. It always existed. It existed under slavery, it existed under feudalism. What is unique to capitalism is what came after the French Revolution. It came after the end of feudalism, at the end of slavery. But what happened? Well, you had wage workers, you had wage-slaves. You had to work because what was the alternative? The alternative was starvation, or being homeless, going around looking in garbage for food. Now, why is that? Why if you don’t work you don’t have food, you don’t have shelter? Well, it’s a simple thing: you don’t have access to land. You cannot grow your own food. All land is privatized. You cannot be a free man if you do not have access to land. This has been recognized throughout history. It was recognized in Roman times…you have a problem of people not having access to land. You had the Mexican Revolution … what was their slogan? Tierra y libertad. Tierra is land. After that you had the Russian Revolution in 1917. What do you think their slogan was? Zemlia y volia, which translates into land and freedom. They were fighting for land. Then in 1936 to 1939 you had the Spanish Civil War. What do you think their slogan was? [Someone in the audience says “Tierra y libertad”] Tierra y libertad! It’s all about land. Capitalism cannot exist if people have access to free land. All these other definitions of capitalism make so sense. They say its free trade. No. Free trade has always existed. If you don’t have free access to land, then you have to sell yourself. All right. Glory to the anarchist Easter!
