The first sign that a revolution was about to turn me came when I heard a Noam Chomsky interview and heard the interviewer ask if he was an anarchist. Until then I had only superficial contact with Chomsky and his work and swimming in broad strokes in the ocean of my ignorance, I believed that anarchist was a masked offender and mischief-makers. The only possible answer to a stupid question like that, I thought, was a strict "no." And to hear Chomsky say "yes" I realized that inside me something began to happen.
When the intellectual live longer, a man of 86 years of soft-spoken, articulate and paused claims to be an anarchist to you to hear what he has to say.
A few minutes later I was in a bookstore buying Chomsky's books, and, days later, my ignorance of anarchism began to be demolished.
One of the first things I learned is that for the anarchist freedom is not an abstract concept, but the foundation of human life. And that anarchism deals with ways to build a well-organized and free society from the base, detecting and destroying structures of domination that are not legitimate - as, among so many, the patriarchate.
And if freedom is a broad concept should define what it is for anarchist.
Freedom is the right to full and complete development of power material, intellectual and moral of every man and woman. Freedom is not hooliganism, but a definition which implies responsibility because, given ideal conditions, it would be the human being to achieve the highest possible level of development.
For the anarchist a human being is always used as an end and not as a means - and a human being living wage, and rent his intellect and his physical for someone to profit from, is being used as a means and not an end.
The anarchist is against the exploitation of man by man, the strong for the weak, the rich the poor. So anarchism, as was explained to me, is a movement that is up to those who wish to change the world and not just understand it.
"If a man acts in a purely mechanical way," wrote Chomsky, "reacting to external orders and instructions rather than act determined by their own interests and energies and powers, we may admire what he does but despise what he is."
For all anarchist and any form of authority, domination and hierarchy, all authoritarian structure, you have to prove justifiable and legitimate. Not being - as almost no is - must be destroyed.
Thus, the dominance of the elite of the worker is neither legitimate, but is maintained by advertising (a concept that is political but also involves advertising) and strength.
In the anarchist universe worker seizes the means of production, and here is worth a break to the prejudice that exists about the term, which refers to communism and Marxism, is left aside because this prejudice is just one of the side effects of postwar propaganda that played in a Manichean world of communism vs. capitalism, the first being the bad guy and the second the good guy.
Anarchism, therefore, differs from state capitalism - one that exists in Cuba, which existed in the Soviet Union and China - because it does not preach that the state appropriates the means of production and continue to serve on the field worker who was previously exercised by the entrepreneur, but the worker "factory control." Chomsky like, moreover, to be called anarchy-syndicalist.
Studying anarchism came to the "Homage to Catalonia" by George Orwell, which tells the story of how Orwell was enchanted with the Spanish anarchist revolution of 1936 and fought - alongside anarchists and the anti-Stalinist Marxist party - entrenched in the mountains of Catalonia. It's a historical period that has few records that the anarchist revolution in Catalonia, but the book of Orwell is beautiful and detailed.
Indeed, Orwell, the author of "Animal Farm", a book that was so used as anti-Communist propaganda, had written an introduction to the "Animal Farm" which was taken from the final edit because it he said that although the book it were of totalitarian states it was quite possible to find in England "free" time that the same traits oppression and indoctrination. What he explained is that, in the case of England, this indoctrination did not require the use of force and was made by advertising (advertising and news).
Chomsky helps to understand Orwell when he says that in democratic calls societies and dominated by the concentrated power of private capital indoctrination of the masses does not make use of force, but it is there, active, and being played by advertising and the educational system, from too early, we teach what can and can not think, say or do.
Some anarchists believe that the only way to reach a place of equality and freedom is the revolution; others think that democracy can take us there. In any case we need to transform us before anything.
The revolutionary Rosa Luxembourg (1871-1919) wrote that the true social revolution requires the spiritual transformation of the masses stifled by centuries of bourgeois rule rules. "Just eliminating obedience and servitude habits to the last root the working class can understand a new form of discipline that will highlight the free consensus," she said.
Critics accuse anarchism to be a utopian philosophy, but after reading and researching quite think, first of all, anarchism does not claim to be an end and that he just wants to point out a path to freedom and equality .
We can not know what kind of societies work or do not work unless the Let's test. It's the only way. And among the anarchist utopia and dystopia capitalist I get the first without thinking for even a second.
I don't know if I'm a full anarchist, but we can definitely agree that freedom is the most important thing. We need to free ourselves from the government control and limit government to basically nothing. I always say this, the best example of a free market is Uber. Uber basically put taxi cabs out of business by providing a better service at a cheaper cost. They were successful because they didn't have to worry about government regulations like taxi cabs did.
Totally agree
I never even knew Chomsky was an anarchist . I thought he was communist. Thanks
:)
Inspiring, thanks :) I didnt know who Noam was but now I do :)
Thanks!