The System Of Order In A Perfect Society

This society takes ideas from all different schools of anarchism - with the exception of anarco-capitalism all concepts of anarchism can be found, or have the potential to be found, within this society. At the moment this society can only be found in a few people’s minds and probably some far off lands, but hopefully in the future this society will become reality and common place. I have partly addressed already how to best move into an anarchist society would be through the use of communes. These communes would be completely different to how we live life now. People would only be doing jobs that are vital for survival and they would hopefully be moneyless societies of about 60 - 150 people in size. Obviously the size can be completely different, this is just a guideline. These communes would prepare people for community living for when the government crumbles and anarchism stands. By developing a more community based approach to society the hope would be that the people would be able to, as soon as the government crumbles connect all together and anarchisticly run everything. But what does it mean to anarchisticly run something?

I think the best and most efficient way to anarchisticly run something is through the anarcho-communist idea. This idea would run everything from the bottom up rather than the massively top down approach we have to everything at the moment. The idea would be that you have a series of councils and delegates. Imagine levels of councils, at the bottom (this is in no way saying the least influential, on the contrary the most important) the people. So one community, a neighbourhood say, would be a council itself, say for examples sake that all community councils are made up of 100 people. One level above that would be a borough style council. Which would be a collection of all the community delegates in a certain area in one meeting. I would say no more that 21 councils should be in a borough, to keep things simple, but again this is just a guideline, in practicality just remember to go with whatever works sustainably (when I say sustainably I do not mean like systems that “work” nowadays but are really just going to crash on us in the future: for example, how banks are managed at the moment). All of the borough councils would be geographically organised so there would be no communities joining together solely out of common interests (as this is how powerful interests are born). Up from a borough council there would be a regional council. The size of all council meetings above the community level would depend on what the meeting was about and how many communities it affected. A council meeting cannot be held without all the members (whether communities or individuals) it affects being notified. If communities decide not to show up for the meetings they abstain. Only in extreme cases would there ever be a "national" council (obviously because within an anarchistic society there would be no nations this would just depend on how big the mass of land was that the people inhabited, for example what is now England, Scotland and Wales would all be one national council, Ireland would be its own national council). All councils above the level of community councils would only have meetings when they are necessary. So borough meetings would be uncommon, regional meetings would be almost unheard of and National councils would only be assembled if for example another "country" of people decided to invade your land mass by force. Any meetings above that of the community level would be made up of delegates. So what exactly is a delegate?

Delegates are, simply put, representatives. These delegates would be selected by a rota system, so everyone would have to be a delegate at some point, and no-one could be a delegate three times while someone else has only been a delegate once. You can only be a delegate for one meeting before it is the next persons turn. If a community - or someone within a community - has any reason to doubt a person as being a delegate, then they can voice their opinion and a general consensus will be taken by the community as to whether the potential delegate is fit to act as a delegate. Although I would warn against this as this is a big betrayal of trust in an anarchist society and can cause unnecessary divides. Before a meeting made up of delegates takes place the list of discussion topics will be sent around to all the communities, so they can tell their delegate exactly what to say. So all the decisions that have to be made at a council of delegates will have already been made before hand. The delegates just meet to debate the ideas of the community they are representing. A minute taker, also from the same community council of the delegate, would always attend a meeting alongside a delegate. They would not speak, just take the minutes of whatever the delegate is talking about so it can be shown to the community after the meeting. The community can then decide if they have been happy with how the delegate has acted. Both the minute taker and the delegate would change every meeting. The selection process of delegates and minute takers would be totally random. If the votes in a delegate meeting are equal so there is a 50/50 split. The status quo will be maintained.

The world is always changing, if you don't like it at the moment, mould it in to something you like for the future.

Picture an area the size of London, I have no idea how many people would be in this area in an anarchist society but let’s say it’s roughly 5 million people. Of course I do not see how cities would fit into an anarchist society. There would be no reason for people to amalgamate in such a way as to form a city. Now if there was ever a decision that had to be made affecting the all of the people in that area of “London” then everyone would need to have a say. Imagine the decision was to build a nuclear reactor somewhere in "London" of which the potential spill out of that nuclear reactor – should it break – be big enough to seriously affect the people and potentially kill them. Everyone would of course have to have a say in this. But imagine the meeting without delegates that would be held to make that decision. 5 million people would all have to try and squeeze into one meeting place and make themselves heard. The voting would take forever, it would be too confusing and no one would ever get things done. A delegates’ job is simply to cut down on the number of people. A delegate would hold 2 pieces of information. One would be the general consensus of the people, so if 70 out of the 100 people in the community voted yes to the nuclear power plant, the delegate would vote yes. The second piece of information would be the make-up of how many people voted for it in their community. So if when the decision by all the delegates was unanimously yes then that would mean the overwhelming majority of the individuals in all of the communities combined had voted yes. But it also means that if the vote is quite close. Say anything from a 65%-35% split on the vote to a 51%-49% split then all the delegates would have to show the individual vote make-up of their communities. In this case the individuals votes (as opposed to the community's' votes) would then be counted, and it could appear that the majority of people actually want to vote no, and the proposal will not pass. In the present voting system we have of First Past The Post, quite a lot of people fall into this trap and we quite often end up with leaders who have not got the majority vote. This process will take a long time I know, but to quote the EZLN "This is the speed of democracy".

Anything not made by humans cannot be owned.

Everyone would have to attend these council meetings and everyone would be a part of the councils, there would be no discrimination based on mental health or anything else. This system proves that things absolutely can be done in an anarchist society. There is absolutely no authority in any of the councils and very little chance, I think, for corruption. This is just an image of my perfect society and of course people can in reality do whatever they want. I think at the start of an anarchist society there would be quite a bit of opting out of the community council system and we would see the starting up of more primitive-anarchist and individual-anarcho communes of their own. This would not mean however that these communities would not have a say in the nuclear power plant example mentioned above. It just means they would choose not to run their communes on this basis. Some critics I have heard have said this system creates an environment of individualism and tribe like mentalities. I think that assessment is a load of rubbish. In reality people will still be living together in the bigger village or whatever they live in. And because all important decisions that affect other communities would have to be made by "borough" councils there could be little passive aggressive political warfare created between different communities. Also with the creation of the New People (see my People's Liberty entry) everyone would in theory be able to get on.

A Call For Unity Between The Left

The right-wing is an amalgamation of "moderates" - whom you must see nearly every day - to the downright stupid, such as Sarah Palin and James Dellingpole. The key difference between the moderates and the extreme right-wingers (who don’t have to be as extreme or stupid as Sarah Palin) is that moderates believe that the free market is the best way this world can be run and therefore call for the deregulation of it in a bid to help people and let people "earn their own way in life". Which even if you believe that is completely naive (which I do) it is still noble as they think they are helping the people. The extreme right-wingers however want nothing more than to keep the rich and elite in power without caring a damn for the average person. A type of fascism indeed. But the thing that gets to me the most is that with the exception of a few out spoken and clearly imbecilic twats the right is very much in unity. Even if a semi fascist senator in America gets in to power it is better that a democrat getting in, in their eyes.

That is the thing that I most admire about the right, while you have people on the left slandering all other types of lefties whose views they don’t completely agree with. The right has nothing bad to say really about anyone else on the right (apart from the extreme few), and this is what I want for the left. With the rise of fascism in America (and indeed here in Britain) there has never been more of an important time for the left to unite against the common enemy and try and actually combat the right with all its force. We shall best do this on the streets, on the internet, in the media and through education. We will confront them in the debate rooms of any type and expose the truth that conservatism is regressive to humanity and is not be the best system to base life on.

The reason I say there has never been more of an important time to fight right-wingers - as some would argue the second world war was a much more important time to not just stop right-wingers but fascism - is that many people now don’t realise the growth of the right and the massive assent to power it has achieved. As corporate America is sucking Americans out from under government liberalism and placing them under capitalist regulation (all thanks to the oh so wonderful policies of the right) sometimes even moderate liberal Americans can find them saying no to things like immigration laws, health care reform and fairer votes. Because democrats are in power (sort of) most americans and other people from other countries feel America is swinging much more to the left and some claim towards "socialism". This however is completely the opposite. The controlling system (which is capitalism) is now so in control that the only way politicians can bring it back under control and therefore thrust the power back into the "peoples" (their) hands is by slaming through laws and legislation to regulate it, which of course will never be allowed by the right, it is a vicious circle. Even we in Britain have seen the rise of the right wing press: the daily mail is now the biggest internet news page in the world and we are still fighting off Murdoch from engulfing yet more of our press. Although I feel very fortunate in saying that our press is no-where near as bad as America. Most of Europe has also seen a rise in the right, and russia has even seen the rise of neo nazis. Mexico has seen the rise of "Peace and Justice" group which is completely the opposite as to what its name suggests, and the list goes on...

Fortunately with the recent crash of capitalism people have started thinking outside of capitalism and trying to turn towards other economic models that we the people can prosper in, not just the bankers. I think this will slowly come to a halt as we exit the recession and start onto the next boom years. That is why the left, must organize and unite while there is still time, because personally I don't want to wait for the next recession for people to start thinking again about how bad and unsustainable capitalism is. I am not saying that all quarrels will go away between the left, but if we can all focus on a common goal of beating off the rightwing ethos and austerity measures that are gripping the world then we will be much more a force to reckon with. Just try to appreciate where different people are coming from, and unless it quite clearly cannot work i.e capitalism or conservatism then keep your mind open to the fact that it may be a possible way. The reason I say capitalism and conservatism cannot work, is that we have experienced thousands of years in both, I think that if a system has been given millennia to prove if it works and it still doesn't it is safe enough to rule it out as working. I am not saying that we should stop listening to capitalists and conservatives’ points of view, but it is more important to debate a new kind of system rather than try to keep on reforming the current system.

So if you are a believer of Bakunin, next time you see a Marxist don’t instantly tell them why they are wrong, debate with them and try to open their mind to why their ideas are flawed. If you follow the path of Kropotkin don’t become aggressive towards a Trotskyite instead embrace them. After all, the left wing do all have the same common goal. To make life better for the average person. 

People's Liberty

Some people say that oppressing the people more, or harming them (in the form of chucking bombs at them for example) will make the people more politically motivated to bring about a revolution and completely free them from the shackles of the state. They argue this will avoid any reformist moves to compensate and give the people superficial liberty thus suppressing the people with their own naivety into thinking they're free. While this may be true about the motivation, it motivates the people very superficially, makes them desperate to escape the regime and in some cases it can actually turn them away from the cause the properganderists by the deed are trying to turn them on to. For example in spain in the late 1800s - which has historically been quite an anarchisticly influenced country - anarchism suffered horribly because anarchists were promoting violence though propaganda by the deed.

I was talking with an anarchist the other day and he said that apartheid should of not been ended in the way that it was. I was quite shocked and so i pressed him for more details, he then said that if apartheid had been allowed to continue (no pressure from the west etc) then the black people probably would of risen up and very quickly started a revolution, instead, he said that reformist measures were put into place and things haven't improved greatly for black people in south Africa. Very true and things still aren't great for black people in south Africa, but if apartheid had lasted up untill now that would of been much more suffering than would of been necessary. No one apart from people in that position (and even then they can't force it) can even dare to ask other people to stay in that position for a bit longer. I believe that it is necessary to educate people at any age. Educate them that it makes absolutely no sense to hate on other people full stop. Let alone because of someone's skin colour. Educate a way of peace for the world and make them see that the advancment of the human race, whether personal or global, should be put above all other matters.

I believe that instead of opressing the people to force them into a revolutionary style situation you should work on giving them personal liberty*, whether that is through reformist governments or starting up communes from under the watchful eye of the state. When personal liberty is achieved most people will inevitably forget about over throwing the state as things like mass media and activities in everyday life take over. It is then the job of the people who still care about over throwing the state to draw people back to that idea and show them why having a state is bad and why an anarchist society would be better. It is then up to the people to decide what to do. Afterall the main principal of anarchism is to not force your opinions and ideas on other people. So you can't suddenly force other people to live without a state is they dont want to. 

Anarchists do have to take pretty hard measures sometimes to get people to listen to our message. We are up against some hard opponents when it comes to propaganda. The whole of the main stream media will always as a rule of thumb be against anarchism and pro-state. There might also be social reasons for someone not to support anarchism, for example they might fear being blacklisted and therefore loose job oppertunities and the like. But anarchists' and the states' raison d'etre are rooted in completely different philosophies and, if you like, are in a constant state of war for peoples minds and support. The anarchists want whats best for the people and the state wants to conserve the power it holds while throwing a token of power to the people. This is not to say that people working for the state - for example opposition party mps - dont want to bring power to the people (for example caroline lucas the green mp for Brighton I would say definatly has the peoples' intrest at heart) but when they get into government they will inevitably be sucked up by the beauracracy and churned over by the system that is the state, regurgetated and moulded (usually by advisor's and the like) into someone who is so interested in international affairs and upholding the law of averages (see my first blog post) that they often ignore the people or inadvertantly take power away from the people.

What i would also say to those people who still believe that oppressing the people is the way to make them revolt (and revolt well) is look at case studies. For example russia has been under autocratic rule for centuries (and has only just calmed down to a mild dictatorship). Have the people revolted? Well yes, in the late 19th century to the 1920s but look at what happened then: because the people were in dictatorship before the revolution, the revolution was relativly disorganised and as a result got hijacked by several autocrats (ironically the only semi man of the people later being exiled in Mexico). Since the late 1910s there have not been any big revolutions there, and protests not big enough to bring down the government. All over the arab nation there has been sweeps of revolutions - or revolution type protests - recently (whether good or not only time will tell) that have shaken dictators out. The only thing is these dicators have been in power for decades mostly. Why are they only being kicked out now? Because the people sense a momentum and are very quickly choosing to move along with it. This was not sparked by years of oppression (although that's certainly the issue of why they are revolting) but instead from events from within Tunisia. They can feel the solidarity that has swept the arab people. And the western world is feeling the ripples off it as well.

How has it got to this stage in human life when the government can actually be accusing the people of hindering society and draining the resources. The people are only a reflection of the society they live in. So perhaps instead of coming down hard on these "thieves" they should actually be trying to change society that motivates people to work. I have already talked about how trying to force people to revolt will never end well. Trying to force people to work with threats of taking away their safety net only undermines peoples confidence and trust in society and only gets them superficially working. It may sound stupid but if people do not want to do something and you force them to, parts of society will crumble, it may look completely unrelated but the reason will be there. This is not just a crack at The ConDem government that is in now in power but also at New Labour and any other government that believes it can force people to get society moving.

I believe that every single human being has the qualities of greed and laziness, but only to some extent. What qualities we want to see in people needs to nurtured by society. That means that at the moment we are nurturing peoples materialistic, violent, greedy and lazy sides. I am not saying this is entirely the governments fault. but rather the failings of society as a whole. The one idea that I do think every anarchist should force upon the people is that, as long as it does not inflict negatively on other peoples lives, live however makes you happy. Other than that people are free to make up their own minds.

*I say personal liberty, I mean anything from the western european governments to complete anarchistic freedom

Introduction To Peaceful Anarchy

Anarchy is a peace movement.

This blog stems from the idea of bringing peace to the world, the belief that everyone should start off in this world equal to one another. After all we are all the same race, same life. I do not necessarily believe that power corrupts - as quite a few anarchists will say - as sometimes having an outlined and defined leader can be good, but it enables corruption very easily and in most cases (such as nearly every government in the world) promotes corruption. Just the idea of having a state, something so small controlling the masses who are relatively very large was never going to be a great success. In the best cases the state will regulate everything well, handle the economy well and overall be a pretty nice popular government. But these laws that we all more or less follow are created on a rule of averages, and because of this individual cases are not taken into consideration, thereby meaning that you have to abide by rules that are not in your best interests. Laws of averages simply mean legal (as opposed to lawful) laws that are created by popular consent, or what is deemed average in society i.e control orders, drug laws, immigration laws etc. Sometimes innocent people fall victim to these laws of averages and therefore an innocent life can be destroyed, a power which I believe nobody - whether a mass of people in the form of a government, or individual - should be allowed to have. A government in the worst case will oppress the people and get corrupted by the idea of having great amounts of power over masses, something which very few people (fascists) would ever want. We are seeing great amounts of oppression pretty much all over the world at the moment.

This blog is not tied to any organisations or any other blogs with similar names. This blog aims to bring anarchism into the everyday lives of people and hopes to develop anarchism as a viable idea and not something that is laughed at by the populist people and governments of today.

Anarchism is many things, there are many different schools of thoughts on anarchism and ideas are being tweaked all the time. Everytime a new true anarchist comes to light she or he will always want to tweak the ideas of their predecessors, sometimes improving them or not. Although the actual definition is a society without authority to me anarchism is also a peace movement. It is not tied to any particular classes, as some of the more communist influenced anarchist organisations might have you believe.

This blog shows one persons thoughts on what a perfect society would be, and in my own thoughts how best to get to that society, it may be idealistic, sometimes unbearably so, but you have to be idealistic, if you aren't you might as well blow your brains out. I do not expect people to have the same ideas as me and in some (most?) cases people will have completely different ideas to me. Everyone is entitled to their own views but I think it is a great tragedy when people close their minds off to all other view points before getting all the information in front of them first. This is not to say that you cannot have a view point if you don't know EVERYTHING - no one does - but just keep your mind open to change all the time. I appreciate that I do not know as much as other people and like everyone else I am still learning and developing my thoughts.

If you want to know everything about something you have to know everthing about everything. Everything is interconnected, nothing is totally individual.

Although I think that anarchy is the only way to truly liberate the people and the best way of life, it should still be the individuals choice, in other words they should not get forced into anarchy, as this can cause resentment and in some cases make individual lives worse. For example if they are not in the right mind set for anarchy or not prepared to adapt their work systems. I believe that anarchy needs to be evolved into, but not in the way that Marx talked about. He talked about the need to embrace the state and the evolution and development of the psychology of man into a New Man which would take society to new levels making an anarchisticly run society possible and viable. I believe Marx was right about many things, but not about this. In the developmental period of embracing the state I believe too much opportunity is created for corruption and power grabs. Don't get me wrong Marxism shows much potential for working. I just feel it gives too little power to the people and it takes too long, but then again that's just me.

The way I would evolve into anarchism, is by simply ignoring the state. This can be done in a number of ways. The most effective way would probably be to start up a commune (anarchisticly run of course) that runs on a moneyless basis, otherwise the government can butt in with tax obligation claims and the like. In starting the commune everyone would have to quit their job that links them to "normal" society, close bank accounts ect. Really anything that connects them to or benefits government run society. At the same time as slowly starving the government of people to control, the commune would start breeding generations of New People. These New People would be anarchisticly minded people who would be able to move seemlessly into a big connected anarchist society once the government gives up its futile control of people.

The most important issue in life, to me, is for everyone to have fun. Something which at the moment society doesn't seem to allow to happen As we go through stress after stress of everyday life, rarely stopping to watch our lives slip by as they do, we are told that this is modern life, that we shouldn't expect anything different let alone better. That is really what this blog is all about, trying to find a better, more relaxing, less bureaucratic way of life that keeps ones individual liberties intact.

Enjoy.