Anarchism emerged as the anti-state wing of the socialist movement, which is commonly referred to as libertarian socialism. Anarchists, without exception, strive for a horizontal, stateless, classless, socialist society free from domination, that is grounded in the principles of solidarity, self-management, direct democracy, ecological sustainability, and cooperation.
Anarchists are opposed to all structures of hierarchical domination, including capitalism, the state, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, imperialism, and settler colonialism.Within the anarchist movement are diverse currents of thought and practice that all share these principles while emphasizing different priorities & tactics. Yet anarchists broadly agree that a new society can only be brought into being through social revolutionary action by independent mass movements, which advance dual-power, practice prefigurative politics, and organize workers' strikes.

Foundations - Bullet Points

● Classless Society: Abolition of class society and establishment of a society based on self-management along a libertarian socialist economy through the collectivization of resources and economic power.● Horizontalism: Rejection of hierarchical systems in favor of horizontal(i.e. non-hierarchical), self-managed structures without ruler positions, where power is distributed equally among everyone rather than concentrated at the top.● Mutual Aid: Reciprocal systems of support ensure universal access to essential goods, resources, and social wealth, managed collectively by communities. This also includes services like healthcare, education, and other vital services for the common benefit.● Council System: Abolition of state top-down structures and establishment of horizontal council-based decision-making system. Interests are voiced through direct democracy by self-managed workers or residents of a region and recallable delegates are chosen to coordinate and communicate council decisions, holding no personal power.● Federalism: Autonomous Communes / Districts / Regions join together with councils at higher and higher levels, using delegation, in order to manage increasingly complex matters, while keeping all power on the base level thus keeping decision-making horizontal.● Freedom & Accountability: Upholding the freedom of individuals to make choices about their own lives, including unrestricted bodily autonomy and self-expression, free from coercion and harm while holding people accountable who infringe on others.

Detailed - Foundations

Classless Society

Capitalist societies, like the feudal and slave-based systems before them, divide people into distinct classes with differing economic positions and social power. Anarchists highlight the power divide between the capitalist class i.e. those who own and control the factories, land, or housing, - and the working class, that is us, who have to sell their labor for a wage in order to make ends meet. Through markets, wages, and coercion, capitalists dictate how time is spent, how work is organized, and even who gets to live with dignity. The working class’s survival is bound to the profits of the capitalist class, giving capital not just economic power but social control over every sphere of life. For anarchists, the solution is clear: class society must be abolished, no matter what it looks like. This would include the abolition of private property i.e, the private ownership of factories, businesses, land etc. which should instead be collectively owned and controlled by the workers themselves. Anarchists seek to abolish capitalism and replace it with a libertarian socialist/communist system rooted in solidarity, self-determination, and collective access to what we need to live and thrive. Only then can we reclaim control over our lives, ensuring that decisions about work, production, and resources serve everyone, not the capitalist class. "Anarchism... creates an economic and social basis that fuses the country's economic and social life into a harmonious whole and guarantees every individual parity with everyone else and affords the maximum well-being to all. This basis is common ownership in the form of the socialization of all of the means and instruments of production (industry, transport, land, raw materials, etc.)"But the anarchist conception of class incorporates not just the economic relationship but also the relationship to the means of hierarchical administration and coercion (i.e. the state). The state is not a neutral tool, it inherently perpetuates class structures, forming its own bureaucratic ruling class that is intertwined with capital. "The state is and can be nothing other than the centralized executor of a class detached from the people, for the subjugation of a people disenfranchised and reduced to a dominated class." Anarchists seek to abolish the state in favor of horizontal(i.e. non-hierarchical) self-management. We believe that a stateless, classless society can only be achieved through prefigurative revolutionary practices that dismantle hierarchical power structures, following the principle of "Means and Ends Unity." That means in our struggle & transition period for a free society we use libertarian socialist means(horizontalism, mutual aid, self-management), rather than utilizing the hierarchical structures used in state socialism that inevitably reproduce class society instead of abolishing class. "There can be no separation of the revolutionary process from the revolutionary goal. A society based on self-administration must be achieved by means of self-administration."

Mutual Aid

Anarchists strive for a society of reciprocal support and cooperation, where social contributions, i.e. labour, would be distributed freely and fairly among all, just like wealth. Mutual aid is about collaborative exchange, where individuals contribute what they are able and everyone has access to what they need. Goods and resources are held in common, with everyone sharing the right to use them freely. "The means of production being the collective work of humanity, the product should be the collective property of the human race. Individual appropriation is neither just nor serviceable. All belongs to all." This also includes things like healthcare, education, housing, food, and access to important utilities. While in capitalism, these most basic essentials are turned into commodities forcing us into wage slavery. This system forces us to dedicate most of our time to a job that only enriches the capitalist class. Anarchism abolishes the production of commodities for profit and replaces it with production for human need. Decisions about what and how to produce will no longer be driven by the pursuit of individual wealth, but made collectively by all people in the interests of everyone’s well-being. We already do the work that keeps society functioning. We build and maintain everything, yet we don’t control any of it. Capitalism depends on our labour but excludes us from power. In an libertarian socialist/communist system, we take back that control and decide ourselves what work gets done. No more luxury apartments while others sleep outside. No more wasted labour producing junk while real needs go unmet. Instead we engage in necessary work, shared and planned together.Anarchism isn’t a dream where everyone becomes kind, generous, and wise. It doesn’t depend on some ideal human. It will involve average human beings doing average human things: getting tired, making mistakes, being selfish. That’s fine. Anarchism does not require morally perfect humans. The point is to build systems that empowers all of us, one that incentivizes cooperation instead of domination. People are shaped by the systems they live in. Capitalism trains us to compete, hoard, and treat each other as threats or obstacles. But people are also capable of care, solidarity, and cooperation. And while capitalism distorts or suppresses these capacities, anarchism builds on them instead. It starts from what already exists: the fact that we cooperate every day, at work and in life, but under conditions we do not control. Without the profit motive, we depend on one another and build our lives on community interdependence where our collective goal becomes supporting the well-being of all people.

Council System & Federalism

Anarchists oppose "liberal democracy" because of its hierarchical and capitalist nature. It preserves the class system, guaranteeing the capitalist class control over the economy while shaping the press and education to reinforce their rule. Its political institutions are hierarchical, with politicians insulated from accountability and serving the interests of capital for their own gain, which in practice makes "liberal democracy" a dictatorship of the capitalist class. In an anarchist society, decisions are made collectively through the "Council System" or historically "Free Soviet System."(Soviet meaning workers council.) The council system is built from the ground up, starting at the base usually commune level and expanding to higher-level councils in a federation. Higher-level councils are merely the direct expression of base-level councils for coordination, not a central authority. At the base level, people gather in workers councils & commune councils to make choices on issues that affect them using direct democracy. Through these councils we can self-manage the communes, organize housing, education, the distribution of goods, or regional projects like environmental conservation and collectively decide the guidelines the commune. While in workers’ councils the workers themselves coordinate the distribution of work shifts & tasks, the assessment and planning of production. In an anarchist society, democratic decision-making avoids majoritarianism when possible, favoring collective deliberation and participatory problem-solving. In an anarchist society, communes are based on free association, allowing anyone to join or leave freely so long as they accept the commune’s guidelines.

Councils must operate free from the authority of hierarchical organizations & parties that seek to integrate them into the state apparatus. "The state will be replaced by a federalist system of workers organisations, united federatively and self-managing. This system excludes just as much authoritarian organisations as the dictatorship of a party, whichever it might be." If political parties take authority over the councils, they inevitably centralize decision-making and subordinate the councils to their own interests, turning them back into state organs. This process could be seen in the USSR, where the Bolsheviks used the soviets(councils) to centralise power into the Bolshevik one-party state and then strip the soviets of their power, reducing them to subordinate organs of the state apparatus. "The council system tolerates no dictatorships as it proceeds from totally different assumptions. In it is embodied the will from below, the creative energy of the toiling masses. In dictatorship, however, only lives barren compulsion from above, which will suffer no creative activity and proclaims blind submission as the highest laws for all. The two cannot exist together. In Russia dictatorship proved victorious. Hence there are no more soviets there. All that is left of them is the name and a gruesome caricature of its original meaning."

Freedom & Accountability

Anarchism values self-determination as essential to its ideals, ensuring individuals can act freely as long as their actions impact only themselves and do not infringe on others. In an anarchist society, freedom of self-expression, speech, love, and identity is a fundamental civil right. This freedom allows individuals to live authentically and define their own lives without coercion. This principle of self-determination also supports the recognition of abortion as a civil right, full legalization of drugs, ownership of firearms, the allowance of sports fighting, the recognition of both suicide and assisted suicide etc. though we should implement systems to mitigate potential harm and ensure that choices are informed and non-exploitative. Anarchists do not settle for abstract or hypothetical notions of freedom, but insist on the real freedom to act, to create, to be, the freedom of actual and active opportunity to freely develop oneself. "For the Anarchist, freedom is not an abstract philosophical concept, but the vital concrete possibility for every human being to bring to full development all the powers, capacities and talents." Anarchists do not believe that everyone should be able to "do whatever they like," because some actions invariably involve the denial of the freedom of others. For example, anarchists do not support the "freedom" to harm, exploit, or oppress others. Anarchism supports "freedom for everybody, with the only limit of the equal freedom for others; which does not mean that we recognise, and wish to respect, the 'freedom' to exploit, to oppress, to command, which is oppression and certainly not freedom." When individuals make decisions that affect others, they are held accountable for the outcomes, whether acting as an individual or as part of a democratic body. One's freedom cannot include to terrorize, violate, attack or harm others. Discrimination on the basis of ability, race, gender, or sexuality reinforces and perpetuates hierarchical power structures. Anarchists understand that we live in relation to others, and true freedom cannot mean diminishing someone else's freedom by harming them. "Freedom for each individual so long as he does not violate the equal freedom of others."So what happens if someone violates another's autonomy, violently infringes on someone, harms or even kills someone? How would a community defend itself against this harm? Since an anarchist society rejects authoritarian & punitive means like the capitalist justice system and police, the response lies instead in transformative justice, rehabilitation and community defense. Transformative justice is a set of community based practices that address harm by holding people accountable without punishment, repairing the harm done to the idividual/community and changing the social conditions that allow harm and injustice to happen. Anarchists aim to address the root causes of harmful behavior by transforming the material and social conditions that give rise to it, meaning "seeking the causes of each crime and making every effort to eliminate them." In immediate dangers, anarchist communes could utilize community-defense militias. Unlike police, community-defense holds no more authority or privilege than any other person, they are members of the community who organize to act in need for collective self-defense when someone harms others. "We must reckon with a residue of delinquency which in the meantime will oblige the mass of workers to take defensive action... by making it impossible for anyone to derive personal advantage from the detection of crime, and by leaving defense measures to interested groups, society can reconcile complete freedom with protection against those who threaten it." Punishment has consistently failed to reduce harm, it entrenches oppression and pushes violence underground. Through transformative justice, we envision a system where offenders are held accountable in popular assemblies of the community and those affected, where we work to repair the harm done and move forward through rehabilitation. "Discarding every concept of punishment and revenge, which still dominate penal law, and guided only by the need for self-defense and the desire to rehabilitate"

Anti-capitalist movements have appeared throughout history, but the anarchist movement emerged as the libertarian wing of socialism within the growing labor struggle. Its emergence was closely tied to the International Workingmen's Association also known as the First International in the late 1860s, where the split between the authoritarian socialists and the libertarian socialists emerged. Various currents of anarchist thought emerged during this time, like Anarcho-Mutualism, Anarcho-Syndicalism, and Anarcho-Communism. All key theorists were also revolutionaries who fought within the workers’ movement. As an ideological current of anarchism, Anarcho-Communism truly solidified in the late 19th century, quickly becoming the dominant current of anarchism, strongly influenced by Mikhail Bakunin’s work. Pyotr Kropotkin, renowned for his concept of mutual aid, was also central to its development. Anarcho-Communism placed more emphasis on class struggle and argued that a communist(i.e. stateless, classless, moneyless) society can only be achieved through anarchism. It received further influences from revolutionary Marxism, with which it was in lively exchange, both practically and theoretically. As Anarcho-Communism became the dominant form of anarchism, it influenced theorists like Errico Malatesta, Emma Goldman and Erich Mühsam, and more importantly the minds of the revolutionary masses in the two great anarchist revolutions of the 20th century in Europe. For example the anarcho-syndicalist union confederation CNT proposed that "during the social revolution workers should establish both federations of producers’ associations, which would self-manage the workplace, and libertarian communes in each locality, which would organize such things as housing, education, etc. and federate together to form the Confederation of Autonomous Libertarian Communes." Later they attempted to put this into practice both in Catalonia & Aragon during the Spanish Revolution (1936-1939), anarchist unions and militias expropriated the capitalist class, established self-managed communes, with around two thousand enterprises collectivized in catalonia alone and directly controlled by workers' committees through a council system federated together into horizontal planning councils like the Economic Council of Catalonia. The revolution created self-management in all aspects, improved & free education, collective & equal food access, decommodification in multiple areas, free and improved healthcare. "They practised the social ethos 'from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.' In a good number of collectives money was abolished, individuals being guaranteed a certain proportion of products from the common supply. The Council of Aragon abolished all money within its area, operating on the basis of a Producer's Card and a Consumer's Card." The Spanish Civil War was ultimately lost. Marxist-Leninist parties, bolstered politically and materially by the USSR, denied weapons, marginalized and suppressed anarchist and other revolutionary groups not aligned with the USSR. That intra-Republican repression leading to direct conflict with the anarchists and the forced dismantling of anarchist institutions in Aragon, fatally undermined popular revolutionary organization and helped precipitate the defeat of anarchist territory. A similar anarchist revolution had already taken place between 1918-1921 in Ukraine, which established an "Independent Anarchist Republic" later referred to as "Makhovshchina". Here Land was seized from landlords and reorganized into collective or communal holdings. The revolution led to the creation of the "Free Soviet System" anarchist council structures that acted independently from any central authority, excluding all political parties from participation, and met to self-manage the production & activities of workers and peasants. They declared "Long live the free soviet system! - Where there will be neither landlords nor masters!" They established schools, hospitals and education programs. At the same time they expanded civil liberties, freedom of speech, press and association. The anarchist Revolutionary Insurgent Army proved militarily effective, defeating White army columns at Perehonivka, repeatedly breaking Red and White encirclements and seizing large quantities of arms, while remaining a democratized force governed by soldiers and the Regional Congress with elected, recallable commanders. The anarchist republic was ultimately betrayed by the leadership of the USSR, as the Bolsheviks sought to further consolidate their own power. In the aftermath, revolutionaries like Nestor Makhno, Peter Arshinov and Ida Mett along the rest of the Delo Truda group refined strategies for revolutionary organization, referred to as "Platformism", learning from the brutal lessons of the conflict and missteps of the anarchist movement.

In the time after the Spanish Revolution’s defeat, anarchism suffered a massive blow as fascist and authoritarian regimes crushed revolutionary movements as Anarchists were hunted, imprisoned, and executed. The later Red Scare forced many underground or into exile while revolutionary trade unions were co-opted or dismantled. By the 1980s, the movement had shifted towards individualist, lifestyle-oriented currents and insurrectionary tactics, which struggled to build sustained power in the face of rising neoliberal capitalism. Despite this, anarchists persisted in anti-colonial struggles, labor movements, and anti-fascist organizing, resisting both state repression and authoritarian leftist dominance imposed by the shadow of the USSR. In recent years, anarchism surged back into mainstream after the Occupy movement repopularized anarchist tactics like direct action, mutual aid, and direct democracy with consensus decision-making. Today Anarcho-Communism is the most widespread and influential anarchist current and is represented in countless worldwide anarchist groups and regional federations. These federations often also represent anarchist liberation movements like Anarcha-Feminism or Black Anarchism. Now, more libertarian socialist organizations are emerging worldwide, actively engaging in union organizing, building community councils and fostering cooperative networks. Through this the anarchist movement has been strengthening collective power from the ground up, making solidarity and mutual aid the backbone of our movement. Besides the specific anarchist movement other libertarian socialist projects have emerged, such as the Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities in Mexico, where communities built a bottom-up autonomous-council alternative to state control with recallable delegation etc. based on an anarchist outlook with a heavy focus on indigenous rights called "Neozapatismo." Despite operating under the constant pressure of a hostile state and neoliberal global order, the Zapatistas have achieved remarkable gains in their autonomous region like decommodification, food sovereignty, collective health care, and self-determined education, demonstrating what is possible through sustained, revolutionary anarchist practices. As another example, in the most difficult of conditions of Syria, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria(Rojava) based on "Democratic Confederalism" has experimented with radical gender equality initiatives, and decentralized self-management based on grassroots community councils amid the Syrian Civil War. While facing ongoing conflict and discrepancies in their revolutionary project due to many limitations, these efforts reflect a broader libertarian socialist momentum in Rojava leading toward horizontal and emancipatory structures, from which the anarchist movement itself can draw important lessons. Amidst all of this, the anarchist movement is reemerging as a relevant revolutionary force on the international stage again, offering tangible alternatives to the current crisis of capitalism, state and ecology through building collective power on the grassroots level and opposing fascism at every step.

We live in a class society. In simple terms this means that the population is hierarchically segmented into different groups, with each group being defined by their relationship to each other. But this arrangement is not voluntary. Indeed, a central feature of all class societies (be they feudal, capitalist, or otherwise) is domination and exploitation of some classes by others. If we oppose class society and want to overturn it, we must accurately understand how it functions. In the following, drawn largely from the anarchist text "Turning the Tide", we explore the anarchist conception of class.Before we dive into our understanding of class, we should first step back and start with a more general concept: Power.
Some revolutionaries, even some anarchists, incorrectly see power as indistinguishable from domination and/or exploitation and thus as something that we should try to destroy. We, instead, understand power as a relationship. One that is shaped by the ongoing struggle between social forces in society, particularly between the dominant and dominated classes. Our task as revolutionaries is to shift this balance of power in favor of the dominated classes. Like power, we conceive of class as a relationship. One dimension of this relationship is economic. In this sense class is partly defined in relation to ownership and control of society's means of production (machinery, land, etc). We share this analysis with Marxists.However, unlike Marxists, we do not limit our understanding of class to its economic dimension. Whereas Marxists tend to conceive of class as purely a relationship to society's productive means, the anarchist conception of class incorporates both the economic relationship and the relationship to the means of coercion and administration (i.e. the state). We recognize the key and interrelated role played by political bodies in directing, maintaining, and enforcing class society. Those who own or control the means of production, coercion, and administration are inherently part of the dominant classes (e.g. capitalists, political officials, military leadership, police, judges, governors), placing them in a structural position to exploit, oppress, extract from, and generally dominate those who do not.
Those who do not own or control the means of production, coercion, and administration are part of the dominated classes. Those of us who are waged, unwaged, and precarious workers, the unemployed, and the incarcerated. In other words, the vast majority of the population. The dominated classes are not a monolith. While we are united by our lack of ownership or control over the means of production, coercion, and administration, we often experience or understand this shared status in different ways due to a number of factors: from how we are racialized and gendered, to our citizenship status. The dominated classes represent the vast majority of the population in all its diversity, but those of us at the sharpest edges of the system - Black, Indigenous, LGBTQ people undocumented immigrants, and incarcerated people, etc. are disproportionately represented in its ranks. We also maintain that class domination is inseparable from other forms of domination. The same structures and relationships that define class, for example, also shape racialized and gendered domination, and vice versa.
Race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, among other social categories, are mutually constructed elements that define the system of domination.
In this way we reject any reductive analysis that focuses wholly on identity or wholly on class as the locus of domination in our society.This more complete conception of class shifts the focus away from the industrial proletariat as the only revolutionary subject. Anarchists argue that while the working class is a crucial protagonist in the process of revolutionary transformation, it is not alone. For anarchists this has meant the inclusion of social groups in our revolutionary strategy that sit outside of Marxism's strictly economistic notion of class. For example: peasants, queer people, students, the unemployed, those laboring in the black or gray markets, incarcerated people, tenants, etc. some of which Marxists would consider "lumpenproletariat." Each of these groups has a particular social relationship, one of exploitation and domination to the means of production, coercion, and administration.

Anarchist Definition of the State
The state is a centralized top down hierarchical institution that inherently perpetuates minority class rule, which maintains its power both by a monopoly of violence and through the transmission and reproduction of statist power relationships throughout society, Kropotkin, for example, writes that the state “not only includes the existence of a power situated above society, but also of a territorial concentration and a concentration of many functions in the life of societies in the hands of a few... A whole mechanism of legislation and of policing is developed to subject some classes to the domination of other classes.” The state is therefore “the perfect example of a hierarchical institution, developed over centuries to subject all individuals and all of their possible groupings to the central will. The State is necessarily hierarchical, authoritarian - or it ceases to be the State.”

The anarchist understanding of the state, unlike the authoritarian conception, avoids the overly broad and idealist framing and instead the anarchist analysis focuses on the concrete, contemporary, and historical features of the state, describing it mechanically as it exists in practice rather than imposing ideological or abstract attributes onto it.From these mechanical features inherent to the state, anarchists identify the state as fundamentally antithetical to revolutionary goals. Anarchists conclude that the presence of these features in the revolutionary process leads to the death of the revolution itself.The counter-revolutionary effects of the state are elaborated upon in the next section.

Why reject the state to transition to anarchy/communism?
Understanding Anarchist Opposition to Using the State for Revolutionary Change

A common falsehood often spread by uneducated leftist and authoritarian socialists is that anarchists "skip" the transition phase to communism. In reality, anarchists reject the transition state and vanguard rule, not a transitional phase itself. No one believes that full anarchism/communism will be brought about over night or can be instantly established. Instead anarchist aim to establish the structures from which communism would emerge from, in practice this means the transition must be rooted in the prefiguration of libertarian socialism, rejecting the hierarchies and centralization in state structures. Most authoritarian socialists fail to understand why anarchists reject hierarchical structures for revolutionary change. The following text provides an overview of the reasons libertarian socialists oppose centralization to enact this change, instead making use of horizontal decentralized systems that are based on prefigurative politics.

1. The State is Counter-Revolutionary:
Libertarian socialists and state socialists have fundamentally different understandings of the role of the state. Marxist-Leninists for example cling to the dangerous illusion that the state is simply a tool by which one class suppresses another class that, when seized, can be used to create a "workers state," to liberate the working class and oppress the bourgeoisie. This understanding of the state is not only naive but reckless. The state, by its very nature, is a mechanism of centralized power that is designed to suppress direct control by the people. It entrenches power in the hands of bureaucrats who, as members of an insulated governing structure, holds different relations to power and develop interests that are inherently opposed to the broader working class. Besides the inherently different relation to these power structures, this bureaucrat class of state officials, forming the new ruling class, have the disposal over the product, hence over the surplus-value, whereas the workers receive wages only, thus forming an exploited class. The state apparatus, by design, exists to undermine revolutionary change and should never be empowered through centralization. It must be recognized as an inherently counter-revolutionary force, one that, like capitalism, must be relentlessly challenged and dismantled at every stage during the transition process. The state must be dismantled and pushed back continuously, ultimately aiming for its abolition to achieve a actual transition to a communist society. Thus, the misguided authoritarian concept of a "workers state" is not just wrong but turns them into collaborators with the very class structures they claim to oppose, reinforcing the same class hierarchies under a different banner while maintaining the illusion of revolution. "The state is and can be nothing other than the centralized executor of a class detached from the people, for the subjugation of a people disenfranchised and reduced to a dominated class."State socialists often argue that these representatives or bureaucrats would still be workers, thus not forming a distinct ruling class, completely ignoring the fact that, as part of a governing hierarchy, their interests inevitably diverge from the working class. Bakunin replied to this argument by insisting that such individuals are “former workers, who, as soon as they become rulers or representatives of the people, will cease to be workers and will begin to look upon the whole worker's world from the heights of the state. They will no longer represent the people but themselves and their own pretensions to govern the people.” Those who hold power are structurally inclined to consolidate and use it for their own benefit, often at the expense of the masses freedom and well-being. "Every lawgiver, be he supreme court justice, minister or parliamentarian, feels himself elevated above those for whom he can create regulations, thus becoming, even when he wasn’t before, the agent of an elite divorced from the whole with different, increased needs and life goals."-Erich Mühsam. As a result the state, no matter who is in position of authoritarian rule, will always reinforce class hierarchies, rendering it fundamentally incapable of advancing toward a truly communist society. Rudolf Rocker for example wrote: "Just as the functions of the bodily organs of plants and animals cannot be arbitrarily altered, so that, for example, one cannot at will hear with his eyes and see with his ears, so also one cannot at pleasure transform an organ of social oppression into an instrument for the liberation of the oppressed. The state can only be what it is: the defender of mass exploitation and social privileges, the creator of privileged classes and castes and of new monopolies. Who fails to recognize this function of the state does not understand the real nature of the present social order at all, and is incapable of pointing out to humanity new outlooks for its social evolution."2. Why use Prefigurative Structures? / Means and Ends:
The connection between Means and Ends is essential in pursuing the vision of a stateless, classless society. To quote Bookchin:-"There can be no separation of the revolutionary process from the revolutionary goal. A society based on self-administration must be achieved by means of self-administration." Human beings engage in activities that transform themselves and the world around them. The means used to achieve our goals must align with the desired end state. If revolutionaries use inappropriate means, they may inadvertently create a society different from their original intentions. Revolutionaries therefore have to use means that are constituted by forms of practice that will actually transform individuals into the kinds of people who will be able to and want to create a stateless, classless, horizontal society. If revolutionaries make the mistake of using the wrong or inappropriate means, then they will produce people who will create a different society to the one they initially intended.To quote Malatesta:
"It is not enough to desire something; if one really wants it, adequate means must be used to secure it. And these means are not arbitrary, but instead cannot but be conditioned by the ends we aspire to and by the circumstances in which the struggle takes place, for if we ignore the choice of means we would achieve other ends, possibly diametrically opposed to those we aspire to, and this would be the obvious and inevitable consequence of our choice of means. Whoever sets out on the highroad and takes a wrong turning does not go where he intends to go but where the road leads him."Many Anarchists argue that the state, like all social structures, is constituted by forms of human activity and so participating in the state produces and reproduces particular kinds of people and particular kinds of social relations. This occurs irrespective of the intentions or goals of people because what matters is the nature of the social structure they are participating in and the forms of activity this social structure is constituted by and reproduced through. Socialists who enter the state “have placed themselves in determinate conditions that in turn determine them.” - Reculus.
Those who wield state power will therefore engage in forms of human activity that will over time transform them into oppressors of the working class who are concerned with reproducing and expanding their power over other people. Anarchists held that this process of socialists being transformed into oppressors would occur both to socialists who are elected into the currently existing capitalist state and also to socialists who attempt to seize the existing state via a coup and transform it into a "workers state".The state not only has a negative effects on those who wielded its power. It also harm the vast numbers of people who are subject to it by making them engage in forms of practice that did not develop them into the kinds of people needed for a communist society. This is because instead of learning how to self-organize their lives effectively workers are subject to the power of a ruling minority and so are forced to do as instructed. They learn to obey and defer to their superiors rather than to think and act for themselves. Instead of learning how to associate with others as equals they learn to put those in power on a pedestal and venerate them in just the same way that people under capitalism learn to hero worship so-called ‘captains of industry’ or political figureheads like the British royal family. As Bakunin wrote, -“power corrupts those invested with it just as much as those compelled to submit to it.”Just like hierarchical social-relations reproduce themselves, libertarian socialist horizontal social-relations would aswell and over time by human beings engaging in these anarchist forms of activity and in so doing continuously creating and re-creating both anarchist social relations and themselves as people with the right kinds of capacities, drives and forms of consciousness for an anarchist society. For example, under anarchism workers within their local councils would make decisions through a system of direct-democracy in which every member has a vote. Through participating in these local councils they would not only make decisions but also reproduce themselves as people who are able to and want to make decisions in this manner, such as being able to effectively take minutes, formulate proposals that people will support and make sure that a small minority of people do not do all the talking in meetings. People who want to and are able to reproduce a communist society will not magically come into existence. A communist society can only emerge through a social revolution that abolishes capitalism.This commitment to aligning means with ends is why anarchists have embraced prefigurative politics in building organizations and dual-power structures. The use of prefigurative politics in these structures is a form of human activity that reproduces egalitarian, horizontal social relations. For this reason many anarchist theorists also argued that we should form mass working class social movements which struggle for immediate reforms in the present via direct action and organized in a manner that prefigures an anarchist society and thus produces and re-produces these libertarian social relations. Even within the constraints of capitalist society or the limitations of a socialist transitional society, these prefigurative structures need to strive to engage in horizontal, participatory forms of action that reinforce the horizontal social framework they envision for the future.3. Corruption and Benevolent Rulers:
Statists ignoring this understanding of re-&production of certain social relations ternd to argue that in the framework of a revolutionary vanguard party, class conscious socialist rulers could truly represent the workers, claiming that the real challenge is to keep corrupt individuals out of power. Anarchists, however, see corruption as a product of hierarchical systems themselves. Even under a so-called "benevolent rulers" hierarchies are inherently fragile to corruption, as people who don’t prioritize the public good will inevitably gain executive power. Anarchists argue that "getting the right people in power" is futile because the system itself incentivizes corruption, once inside, individuals gain disproportionate control over how power is distributed, often using it for personal or factional interests. There is no one person, vanguard or state that can "represent" the people, this is a liberal mythology to justify the hierarchical structure of republic governance. Hierarchical systems are inherently structured to reward power consolidation, leading to a concentration of unchecked authority at the top and diminishing accountability to those below. But even if "class conscious benevolent rulers" genuinely committed to representing workers and advancing socialism gain power, such a system is doomed to fail on a long enough timeframe. Eventually, individuals who lack this commitment can rise to power, whether through "democratic" processes or party politics. Centralizing power in a single figure or institution creates a critical failure point where a single person or a small group of people can subvert the whole revolution. This makes the system vulnerable to coups, imperialist sabotage, or the rulers' removal. If the "benevolent rulers" are deposed, the entire structure becomes vulnerable, leaving it ripe for manipulation or control by foreign interests. This failure point can be time and time again seen in state "socialist" experiments like the USSR or China where rulers became detached from the people or were replaced by such people over the years to come. Centralization ultimately creates a inherent failure point in the system and undermines the resilience and autonomy of movements needed for lasting social change. Thus, even well intentioned progress towards socialism can be quickly undone when those with self-serving motives assume control.4. Self-Perpetuation of the State:
The Leninist notion that a centralized state could ever "wither away" is a naive fantasy unsubstantiated in reality. It ignores a core principle of political power dynamics, that centralized authority, once established, becomes self-preserving and expansionist by nature. Instead of withering, a state apparatus structured to enforce "proletarian dictatorship" through a vanguard party will inevitably seek to perpetuate its control, as it creates layers of loyal bureaucracy and rigid hierarchies whose survival depends on the continuation and growth of state power. Rather than dissolving, such states historically entrench themselves, transforming into sprawling authoritarian systems that prioritize their own preservation over any emancipatory ideals they claimed to represent.The power of the state is what allows those people to act in their self-interest. Therefore, it is in the interest of all people that currently operate the state, to perpetuate the power of the state. With this in mind, each time the power of the state is threatened, those who operate the state will have a tendency to obstruct that threat. But every power structure that exists, is competition for the state. Thus, the state stands at odds with any structure which may threaten its control over society. The masses, however, have an inherent power in their numbers and in their primary function as the laborers that make society run. So, the state will always have an institutional tendency to view the masses as a threat to the unitary power of the state. And, therefore, the state will always seek to control and suppress the latent power of the masses, except when it serves the interests of the state.Closing Words:
These observations and predictions by theorists like Bakunin, Malatesta, Kropotkin, Rocker etc. and history has shown this to be true time and time again.The state inevitably reproduces hierarchies, it is not a neutral tool to be seized, its a structure designed to maintain class structures and protect existing power relations. Authoritarian theorists cling to the idea of a centralized state fail to grasp the nature of the state itself. The only real path to libertarian communism is through the complete destruction of capitalist power and the dismantling of the state apparatus, this is what all socialism should be about. Only by embracing a libertarian socialist process focused on horizontal self-management of the workers can we begin the process of transitioning to a truly stateless, classless society. Leninist vanguardist ideology and its offshoots must be firmly rejected and discarded into the trash bin of history, alongside other reactionary and counter-revolutionary experiments that perpetuate oppressive class systems and fail to deliver genuine transformation.

What is a modern-day social revolution?

1.Skepticism on Revolution in a Modern Nation-State?
The first problem already arises with the doubt about whether a revolution is even possible.
Skepticism and pessimism about the possibility of a social revolution in First-World nations are common. Phrases like “We need a socialist revolution, but it’ll never happen here,” or “Isn’t the working class too ‘privileged’ to revolt?” often reflect this. For example many claim the USA, is too "powerful" and "stable" for revolution. Yet history shows no system is unbreakable. If revolution can happen in the imperial core it enshrines that change is possible everywhere. After decades of anti-capitalist ideology in schools and media, coupled with the post-WWII economic boom that dulled class consciousness and weakened unions, it's easy to assume the US will remain capitalist forever. However, the tide is turning, and even the world's most powerful imperialist nation is not immune to the onset of a revolutionary situation that challenges the power of the ruling class. The german revolution of April 1919 declaring the Bavarian Council Republic, along with the British General Strike of 1926, demonstrate that even in the strongest economic centers of capitalism, its inherent contradictions cannot be overcome. Remarkably, in 1968, France a nation celebrated for its high living standards, experienced the largest revolutionary general strike in history, despite being in a period of economic prosperity., revealing that it is not merely the absolute level of poverty or deprivation that ignites such movements. Instead, it is the persistent contradictions of the system leading to instability & oppression that drives the masses toward a tipping point. Over time, the constant cycles of exploitation, inequality, and insecurity push the working class to recognize that the existing system does not exist to address their needs or resolve their struggles and realize that the only solution is to take matters into their own hands, sparking the conditions necessary for revolution. If that weren’t enough, we must remember that consciousness evolves over time and is shaped by events. A 2023 poll found that 11% of Americans over 28 million adults support communist economics. This shows a significant support for communist radical-left ideas in a country with limited class consciousness and weak worker organization. Recent history also shows a clear trajectory: the 2011 Occupy movement, rooted in anarchist principles like consensus direct-democracy & self-management, brought masses to the streets and reignited interest in anarchism. Similarly, the BLM protests, rising labor actions, and unionization efforts reveal that economic and political instability fuel liberatory movements and intensify class struggle. Anarchist theorists typically differentiate between three distinct periods of societal transformation: the periods of evolution, characterized by gradual, incremental changes through for examples gains made by unions, and the periods of revolution, which involves rapid, fundamental large scale shifts catalyzed by moments of rupture that lead to social upheaval. The period of evolution is often seen as a preparatory period, where smaller gains accumulate and lay the groundwork for the conditions necessary to achieve large-scale revolutionary outcomes. They also describe a period of incubation, which lies between evolution and revolution. The period of incubation is the period that transforms a revolutionary situation into a fully realized revolutionary period. Then anarchists intervene in the revolutionary period as an organized mass movement in order to ensure that it becomes a social revolution and won't be co-opted. Currently, society is in a period of evolution, as the structural conditions and collective momentum needed for a full-scale social revolution have not yet materialized. The question isn’t “if” a revolution will happen, but “when” and whether we’ll be prepared. Afterall we dont simply want a political revolution or coup, we want a "social revolution.",2.What is a social revolution?
In order to understand what social revolution is, it is helpful first to distinguish it from political revolution.
Political revolution-examples of which include the French Revolution, the Revolutions of 1848, and later state socialist revolutions such as Cuba etc. involves the total seizure of state power. This swapping of one ruling minority for another may result in alterations to the structures of domination, but it is not capable of uprooting and destroying them, for this a strong movement is needed. This is precisely because the state itself is fundamentally a structure of domination, not a neutral instrument which can be seized upon and used for emancipatory ends. A social revolution is marked by both destruction and creation. It destroys-with the aim of preventing its future reemergence-the total system of domination. This includes the abolition of the state and the capitalist mode of production along with private property and the active overturning of old cultural norms, as well as the destruction of social classes and all other forms of domination such as white supremacy, settler colonialism, and patriarchy. These acts of destruction are intertwined with a process of creation. The means by which the system of domination is destroyed are themselves the same means through which a libertarian socialist society will be born. In other words, when the front of dominated classes have accumulated the necessary social force to initiate this final confrontation with the system of domination, it will take place primarily in the institutions where social movements are rooted-our workplaces, schools, neighborhoods, prisons-in some cases expropriating and placing them under self-management and in others razing them. In order to create and re-create anarchist relations workers are creating the anarchist society by using anarchist systems of organization and decision- making (i.e. horizontal popular councils) even if they don't actually identify as anarchists.3.When? & How?
The dominated classes accumulate the necessary social force and organization to carry out a social revolution by engaging in the everyday battles of class struggle through social movements. Anarchist revolutionaries, inserted in these social movements, work to orient them to our principles and to unite them into a broad front of dominated classes aimed at attacking the system of domination. We refer to the ability of these social movements, after having accumulated sufficient force and organization, to challenge the structures of domination as popular power. Having achieved popular power and engaged in careful preparation, the front of oppressed classes (the broad front of social movements acting together) can seize upon an opportune moment of upheaval to heighten it and transform it into a truly revolutionary rupture. Many anarchists believe that the role of a revolutionary anarchist organization begins well before a social revolution unfolds. Its members participate in social movements to shape them, infuse them with our principles, and prepare them for the confrontation that social revolution entails. That does not mean we want to impose an exact absolute vision on the revolutionary process, but principles of self-management, federalism, and socialism must be core to a social revolution. For the social revolution to build up enough dual power and successfully sustain itself during the process of a revolutionary rupture, we must build resilient dual power structures on a large scale.

What is Dual Power / Counter Power?
When anarchists, libertarian communists & socialists, and other revolutionaries discuss revolution, the concept of "Dual Power" is often described as a critical step - but what exactly does "Dual Power" mean?Dual Power, sometimes referred to as Counter Power by anarchists to differentiate it from its leninist origins, in its broadest sense, describes a situation where two or more competing political frameworks exist in the same territory at the same time. It implies a high level of popular mobilization, in which large numbers of people participate in alternative institutions set up outside and against those of the state. One of capitalism’s most insidious mechanisms has been making us dependent on our exploiters for survival, this is why it is crucial to build "Dual Power Structures", alternatives to provide for ourselves outside of our current framework.So what does it mean to build "Prefigurative Dual Power Structures?"
Establishing prefigurative dual power structures involves creating and connecting institutions of direct participatory democracy to challenge the existing systems of state and capitalist power, with the ultimate aim of achieving a revolutionary break. This process of building counter-institutions includes:•Establishing regional popular councils as alternative decision-making bodies to replace statist structures, ensuring that during a revolutionary rupture we have a viable alternative. These structures should be organized horizontal where power is held collectively and decisions are made democratically from the ground up rather than by centralized authorities. (A good overview for implementing this during large-scale uprisings can be found in "The Formation of Local Councils by Omar Aziz").•Developing strike power through radical unions and independent workers' councils, which can halt capitalist production and transition economic control directly to workers during revolutionary upheaval.•Organizing defense militias as alternatives to state-controlled military and police forces, providing protection for revolutionary movements against state repression and counter-revolutionary forces. These militias would need to recruit & train new members locally to ensure sustainable, community-led defense and preparedness.•Establishing community emergency services, such as medical training programs and first-aid networks, to provide immediate care and ensure communities can remain resilient when systems are disrupted. This includes training more people locally to handle medical emergencies and build a local healthcare infrastructure.•Establishing food supply centers and mutual aid distribution networks to sustain communities during periods of economic disruption and ensure that resources remain accessible when state or capitalist supply chains collapse.

What is Direct Action?
Direct Action is a phrase that gets thrown around a lot when describing anarchist tactics but what does it actually mean? The following text is sourced from anarchist media collective sub.media
Direct Action is one of the main ways anarchists put our values of autonomy, self-organization and mutual aid into practice. So… what is it exactly? Well, a simple definition would be to say that a direct action is a political action aimed at achieving a specific goal or objective, and which is carried out directly by an individual or group of people, without appealing to a higher authority for legitimacy.Now, this broad definition covers a huge range of activities… everything from banner drops, to prison breaks. And it doesn’t necessarily tell us much about the politics of those carrying out the action itself Direct actions are tactics– meaning that they are a specific type of action that can be used to implement a wide variety of strategies. While you don’t have to be an anarchist in order to carry out, or to participate in a direct action, the concept itself holds a special importance for anarchists and other anti-authoritarian radicals. And that’s because well-timed and well-executed direct actions can offer an escape from the endless cycle of representational politics, which assumes its highest form in the state. The German philosopher Max Weber famously defined the state as a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force.In other words, state violence, whether dispensed by a politician’s pen, a judge’s gavel, or a cop’s baton, is a manifestation of legitimate force, and a harsh reminder of the state’s role as the ultimate mediator of social conflict. This mandate includes everything from interpersonal disputes that end up settled in the courts, or by someone calling the cops… all the way up to the broader conflicts that spring from systemic inequality and the structural imbalances inherent to capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy, ableism and hetero-patriarchy. In its purest form, direct action does not aim to persuade those in power, but seeks to foster and assert the power of those carrying out the action themselves.When people carry out a direct action, they are rejecting the state’s monopoly on decision-making, and asserting their own autonomy while providing an example for others to follow. To take just one example, rather than petitioning a politician to vote against the construction of a pipeline or appealing to state-controlled regulatory bodies, those who favour a direct action approach often find it more effective and empowering to go out and block the pipeline themselves… directly. Direct action can also be used to set up networks of mutual aid.Fifty years ago, the Black Panthers were faced with the reality of widespread poverty and lack of service provision in their communities. Rather than appealing to the government, or to the conscience of White America, the Panthers set to work organizing their own health clinics and breakfast programs for hungry school children. These programs were part of a broader strategy of building community power, and were identified by FBI Director J Edgar Hoover as a primary threat to national security – by which he meant a threat to the legitimacy of the state, and the white supremacist power structure that upholds it. Because they transgress the official channels of politics, and often the law itself, direct action campaigns are inevitably met with a whole toolbox of tactics aimed at bringing conflicts back under state control. These can range from state and corporate-funded non-profits infiltrating and co-opting grassroots movements in order to force a change in tactics or leadership, all the way up to extreme repression, such as mass incarceration and targeted assassinations carried out by state and paramilitary forces.Although as a concept, direct action has probably existed for as long as there have been hierarchies to rebel against, the term itself dates back to the early workers movement, where it was used to describe militant practices such as industrial sabotage and wildcat strikes. By physically blocking production, and collectively defending themselves from repression, workers were able to force concessions from their capitalist masters. The widespread use of these tactics eventually led to the legalization of trade unions and a whole host of concessions aimed at bringing the more radical sections of the workers movement back under state control.One of the most significant heydays of direct action in modern history took place in 1970s Italy. Faced with a housing crisis provoked by capitalist restructuring of the economy, thousands of migrants from the country’s south squatted apartment blocks, and physically defended families from eviction. When the government attempted to hike transit fares and energy costs, tens of thousands of people refused to pay the increased rates, in collective actions known as auto-reductions. Italy was, at that time, a deeply religious, conservative and rigidly patriarchal country, in which both abortion and divorce were illegal. Within this context, a fearless women’s liberation movement organized an underground network of clinics, with doctors and nurses providing hundreds of volunteers, with necessary skills to perform clean and safe abortions. This direct action approach to reproductive health was complimented by massive and regular demonstrations calling for the legalization of abortion, which were ultimately successful.In our current age of increasing polarization, uncertainty and insecurity, direct action offers a way for our movements to build and assert our collective power, both to defend our communities, and to fight for the world we want to live in.

How Would Anarchism Defend Itself?Anarchists recognize the need for a army/milita-network for the defense of the revolution. "The question of the defence of the revolution from the armed counter-revolution is no easy matter. It may require great organizational commitment from the armed revolutionary masses." - Nestor Makhno"The most critical juncture in the social revolution is not the moment when authority is overthrown, but the time thereafter when the forces of the ousted regime unleash a general offensive against the workers, when the gains that have been achieved must be safeguarded. The nature of that offensive, the weaponry used and the course of the civil war will require that the workers create specific military revolutionary bodies."Key principles for a revolutionary army should be:1. the class nature of the army;
2. voluntary military service
3. revolutionary self-discipline
4. total subordination of the revolutionary army to the worker and peasant masses as represented by the general worker and peasant bodies throughout the land, which will be created by the masses at the moment of revolution and given the task of overseeing the country’s economic and social life.This example is about an internal organization model for a libertarian socialist military designed to defend a revolutionary society from external threats, particularly from reactionary, imperialist capitalist forces. This model is based on historical examples, incorporating flexible organizational principles and empowering the collective within the military structure unlike traditional hierarchical command systems. Historically anarchist armed forces advocated for a organized and coordinated military force "without trampling on the internal autonomy of the fighting units, which enabled them to be re-organized into regiments and brigades, coordinated by a common operational staff" - Nestor MakhnoEach militia would be part of and federated into the council system and operate with a horizontal structure, empowering members to make decisions autonomously, with temporary delegation of authority that can be revoked or reassigned as needed. This model allows for quick responses to changing certain conditions changing, unlike hierarchical rigid structures that can easily suffer delays due to command chains. The decentralization of decision-making leads to more adaptability so militias can adjust tactics and strategies in real time based on the circumstances. While they keep their autonomy they would also be federated into the larger organized network to coordinate with other militias across regions. At each level of federation, elected commanders coordinate activities, but the autonomy of individual militias is preserved. Militias keeping the right to challenge directives that conflict with their immediate needs is extremely important and a huge advantage over traditional hierarchical forces facing paralysis in the absence of clear top-down orders. The decentralized structure ensures that militias can operate as independent cells, maintaining functional continuity even when central coordination is temporarily unavailable. This model is flexible and scalable, making sure militias can function both independently and within a larger, coordinated network. When faced with heightened threats or larger-scale combat, militias can just as well coordinate to concentrate forces where and when they’re needed most.While this model is rooted in libertarian socialist principles, it is flexible enough to allow for temporary command structures if the militia members decide the context calls for it. In times of heightened threat or urgency, central decision-making can be introduced, but these positions would be designed to be temporary and voted in with the understanding that they will dissolve once their specific, short-term function has been fulfilled. Like this the system remains aligned with libertarian principles, while still gaining the coordination necessary to address a specific context/situation. This model isn’t purely anarchist either, similar tactics have been successful throughout history, even within statist militaries. For example, guerilla tactics in Vietnam, Cuba, and China used decentralized groups to resist imperial powers. These smaller, independent units were key to maintaining resilience and flexibility, even when federated. This approach has also been tested contexts, such as in the CNT-FAI during the Spanish Civil War, where militias managed to organize a substantial fighting force with minimal reliance on centralized authority. George Orwell described the CNT-FAI militia confederation in "Homage to Catalonia" as -"The essential point of the system was social equality between officers and men. Everyone from general to private drew the same pay, ate the same food, wore the same clothes, and mingled on terms of complete equality. If you wanted to slap the general commanding the division on the back and ask him for a cigarette, you could do so, and no one thought it curious. In theory at any rate each militia was a democracy and not a hierarchy. It was understood that orders had to be obeyed, but it was also understood that when you gave an order you gave it as comrade to comrade and not as superior to inferior. There were officers and N.C.O.S. but there was no military rank in the ordinary sense; no titles, no badges, no heel-clicking and saluting. They had attempted to produce within the militias a sort of temporary working model of the classless society."The goal in starting a militia for defense today, right here, right now, is to create small, autonomous units capable of independent action. Regional cells could teach combat skills, medical support, mechanics, and coordination. Over time, they would evolve into a stronger, decentralized system that adapts as needed. Prototyping anarchist militias in the here and now is important, it’s not about creating a final structure, but to start building local militias and training for the future to prefigure parts of a revolutionary society and making sure the movement is prepared for challenges.

A Anarchist Resolution to Crime & Justice
1.Anarchist criminology
Our bourgeois justice systems are formalized networks of power relations designed to serve the ruling class by enforcing social control through laws, police, courts, and prisons, primarily in the interest of capitalist economics. In the revolutionary process, a libertarian socialist society would dismantle the existing bourgeois police, the carceral state and its bourgeois judiciary structures, rejecting the need for a centralized authority. Unlike authoritarian socialists, we reject the replacement of the existing system with a new ruling class or centralized state apparatus. Instead Anarchist criminology supports transformative justice systems rooted in prevention and community organizing, centered around collective responsibility and community-led security initiatives. This approach prioritizes preventing crime through the elimination of the socio-economic conditions that often drive criminal behavior like poverty, inequality, and lack of access to resources. It is rooted in the materialist perspective, which recognizes that every action has a cause and effect. From this view, crime is not an inherent moral failing but a consequence of material failures, whether directly, such as through poverty, or indirectly, such as the long-term impact of these conditions on mental health and community stability. So anarchists believe in "seeking the causes of each crime and making every effort to eliminate them" as Malatesta said, this means by addressing these material causes, we aim to abolish their effects, tackling crime at its source. Redistributing the hoarded power & wealth of the capitalist class and ensuring that everyone’s material needs are met would address the root causes of the large majority of crime, significantly reducing it to a minuscule point.However, while prevention is the most important focus, we acknowledge that some crimes, would still occur. In such cases, justice and security would not revert to punitive measures but would instead focus on community-led rehabilitation and restorative- & transformative justice. "We must reckon with a residue of delinquency … which in the meantime will oblige the mass of workers to take defensive action. Discarding every concept of punishment and revenge, which still dominate penal law, and guided only by the need for self-defence and the desire to rehabilitate, we must seek the means to achieve our goal, without falling into the dangers of authoritarianism and consequently finding ourselves in contradiction with the system of liberty and free-will on which we seek to build the new society" - MalatestaThis would involve the establishment of community-defense militias, social emergency services, therapeutic facilities, conflict-resolution assemblies and supports systems to help individuals who commit violent offenses. For more severe violent crimes, such as counter-revolutionary & reactionary violence, murder, and rape, special measures i.e. preventive detention would be required, alongside the aforementioned community discussions to determine the most appropriate course of action. Ultimately, the aim is to create justice structures based on conflict resolution where safety and justice are ensured not through authoritarian control but through communal effort, a focus on healing, and a commitment to social reintegration. The shift from a punitive justice system to one based on collective responsibility and restorative practices ensures safety and long-term security without the need for a centralized state apparatus.2.Organized Community Defense
So what happens in an actively dangerous violent situation? In an anarchist commune, one approach to handling an active violent threat to others would involve Community-Defense Militias, which are directly accountable to the commune itself. For example Malatesta wrote -"A criminal is not someone against nature or subject to a metaphysical law but someone who offends their fellow humans by violating the equal freedom of others. So long as such people exist, we must defend ourselves. This necessary defense against those who violate not the status quo but the deepest feelings distinguishing humans from beasts is one of the pretexts by which governments justify their existence. - to eliminate all social causes of crime & to seek useful alternatives to crime, these are the steps one must take. But if criminals persist, the people must find the means and the energy to directly defend themselves" These militias would not operate as an external force, but as part of the community, working to intervene and prevent harm. Preventive detention would only be considered acceptable as a form of self/community-defense i.e. for more severe violent acts as mentioned above if the individual is an active threat to those around them. Any community-defense militias would be directly accountable to the commune for self-defense purposes and would be open to all members of the association. Malatesta mentioned the fears that - "one can, with justification, fear that this necessary defense against crime could become the beginning of and pretext for a new system of oppression and privilege" but added that - "by making it impossible for anyone to derive personal advantage from the detection of crime, and by leaving defense measures to interested groups, society can reconcile complete freedom with protection against those who threaten it." These defense militias do not exist as enforcers with special rights standing above the people, instead they have the same power & rights as everyone else, they are members of the community who organize to act in need for collective self-defense when someone harms others. There are many historical examples showing that decentralized, community defense can effectively address safety and justice such as in historical anarchist societies or in self-managing regions such as the Zapatista territories.3.Transformative justice & Rehabilitation
Punishment has consistently failed as a tool for reducing violence. Instead, it reinforces systemic oppression, increases violence against targeted groups, and fosters resentment rather than meaningful change. Perpetrators often shift their harmful actions to hidden areas, like domestic violence, where they're less likely to be caught by repressing behaviors or black-market industries. Punishment pushes issues out of public view without addressing the root causes of antisocial behavior.Anarchist criminology rejects the traditional legal systems in favor of transformative justice. This conceptions of justice focuses on non-retributive responses to harm build around community accountability and reparation- i.e. they aim to repair the harm done to everyone affected and ensure that offenders take responsibility for their actions, to understand the harm they have caused, to give them an opportunity to redeem themselves, and to discourage them from causing further harm. Malatesta supporting rehabilitation for example wrote that - "Criminals should be seen as brothers who have strayed, as sick people needing loving treatment. In this way, it will be possible to preserve liberty while addressing crime." When someone, for example, attacks someone, the case would be handled at the community level, focusing on the needs of those affected and the larger community. A community based approach where most people know and understand each other would ensure a careful and considerate way of handling these situations in a conflict resolution justice system. This approach to justice focuses on understanding the contexts that enabled this harm to prevent any future incidents, on rehabilitation and on how the harm can be repaired. Transformative justice first was popularized by Queer, Black, Indigenous, and otherwise marginalized communities because they were unable to rely on the police and the courts to obtain justice after being victimized by interpersonal harm (such as hate crimes, sexual assaults, and domestic violence), it prioritizes the importance of relationships with oneself, one's community, and one's environment.As Kropotkin wrote - "There was a custom of old by which each commune(community, clan, municipality) was considered responsible as a whole for any antisocial act committed by any of its members. This old custom has disappeared like so many good remnants of the communal Organization of old. But we are returning to it; and again, after having passed through a period of the most unbridled individualism, the feeling is growing among us that society is responsible for the anti-social deeds committed in its midst." An example of this can be seen in the Zapatista territories and how they handle crime/harm through participatory justice. Another example commonly brought up is seen in Street Committees in South Africa where the police were violently repressing people and could not be relied on by the population. To address the real need for public safety, they first build the "makgotla" which were oppressive draconian courts with centralized authority but in the 1980s the "makgotla" were abolished by the youth-based anti-apartheid movement and replaced by inclusive and democratic organizations - first “People’s Courts,” and later “Street Committees.” The Street Committees were managed through popular assemblies with the goal to keep peace in their area. While sometimes utilizing violence (mainly against those collaborating with the Apartheid government), Street Committees focused primarily on healing and restorative justice. In addition to addressing normal street crime, the Street Committees also addressed disputes between neighbors, family conflicts, employee or tenant grievances, and the like.
More on this topic can be found in Alternatives to Police by Rose City CopWatch.

Why Do Most Anarchists Support Council System & Direct Democracy?
"The governments protected the bourgeoisie and their money and exploitation of workers and peasants.
As for the second way, the Popular Councils, they do not need a parasitic or oppressive government, in which classes, unemployment, poverty, labor, wages, private property, and the needs of all are realized, and greed, lies, deception, greed, laziness, and envy will disappear."The council system offers an directly democratic, anarchist approach to self-organization and decision-making that actually empowers the people, resolves conflicts peacefully and ensures responsive decision-making which is supported by most anarchists. The council system has always been a very important part in self-management to anarchists "The best method to create new collective freedom is the 'Free Soviet.' Proceeding from this conviction, the anarchist revolutionary will call the enslaved to struggle for these free associations."It is obvious that individuals must work together in order to lead a fully human life. And so, "having to join with others humans” the individual has three options: “ 1.he must submit to the will of others or 2.subject others to his will or 3.live with others in fraternal agreement in the interests of the greatest good of all. Nobody can escape from this necessity.”-Errico Malatesta.
Anarchists obviously pick the last option, where individuals engage as equals, expressing themselves and developing their intellectual and ethical capacities. Direct democracy allows individuals to participate in decision-making, fostering self-determination and critical thought, unlike hierarchical systems.For anarchists, "democracy" broadly usually means any form of direct voting based on full and equal participation within a free associations, which we see as essential for peoples self-management and free agreement. Some disagree with this definition and argue democracy always implying majoritarianism because they claim democracy strictly means "rule of the people" which was based on a historical misconception in the first place as the idea that democracy means "rule of the people" is false because "kratos" means "power" or "capacity". Therefore, demokratia is lacking in archy "arkhe" and even in pointless semantic discussions around the word aligns with the anarchist conception of "Power to the People," Democracy only became associated with "rule of the people" since it was used synonymously with republicanism between 18th- and 19th century."Democracy was not invented in ancient Greece. Granted, the word “democracy” was invented in ancient Greece —but largely by people who didn’t like the thing itself very much. Democracy was never really “invented” at all. Neither does it emerge from any particular intellectual tradition. It’s not even really a mode of government. In its essence it is just the belief that humans are fundamentally equal and ought to be allowed to manage their collective affairs in an egalitarian fashion, using whatever means appear most conducive. That, and the hard work of bringing arrangements based on those principles into being.In today’s North America, its anarchists - proponents of a political philosophy that has generally been opposed to governments of any sort - who actively try to develop and promote such democratic institutions. In a way the anarchist identification with this notion of democracy goes back a long way. In 1550, or even 1750, when both words were still terms of abuse, detractors often used “democracy” interchangeably with “anarchy”, - But while “democracy” gradually became something everyone felt they had to support (even as no one agreed on what precisely it was), “anarchy” took the opposite path, becoming for most a synonym for violent disorder. Actually the term means simply “without rulers”. Just as in the case of democracy, there are two different ways one could tell the history of anarchism. On the one hand, we could look at the history of the word “anarchism”, which was coined by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1840 and was adopted by a political movement in late-nineteenth-century Europe, becoming especially strongly established in Russia, Italy, and Spain, before spreading across the rest of the world; on the other hand, we could see it as a much broader political sensibility."This understanding follows the same logic we have on anarchism, meaning that Bakunin, Kropotkin, and others, did not invent the idea of anarchism, but, having discovered this broader phenomena among the masses, they merely helped refine and propagate it.Anarchist organisations dislike the enforcement of decisions upon dissenters and instead, members of anarchist associations collectively define obligations, managing their own activities. These associations operate through assemblies where decisions are made collaboratively, ensuring laws can be revised as needed. Administrative tasks may be delegated to elected individuals with clearly defined, limited mandates. These delegates are recallable at all times and hold no personal power; their role is simply to relay proposals from their council and act as a conduit for the region's collective interest. They can be immediately recalled if they stray far from their directive, which is set by the council through an imperative mandate. This directive could outlines specific guidelines or instructions that delegates must adhere to, ensuring they remain accountable to the councils. Additionally, any outcomes from discussions at higher levels are shared with the community for review. This process ensures that all affected councils have a direct role in shaping decisions, while maintaining their self-determination. "We consider the working people capable of building, on their own and without parties, commissars or generals, their own Free Soviet System, in which those who are elected to the Soviet(Councils) will not command and order us but on the contrary, will be only the executors of the decisions made in our workers' gatherings and conferences"The federative council system connects associations(councils) into federations. These relationships, like those within associations, are free and horizontal, maximizing participation and individual freedom.

Erich Mühsam in his work "The Liberation of Society from the State: What is Communist Anarchism? " writes "which manner the federated labor and distribution organizations of communist anarchism are to be realized by means of the council system. A council republic is created from the bottom up, its actual center of motion is the local urban and rural councils. According to circumstance and necessity, they can in occasional or regularly scheduled meetings of residents take note of, discuss, criticize, and expand upon the activities of the industrial or regional councils, making them the foundation of their own decisions. They can set up committees for specific purposes which might deal with specialized questions and independently under general vigilant supervision entrust individual persons with the carrying out of contracted duties. They will resolve the technical questions of medicine, construction, and commerce in the city or village, the educational and judicial affairs, the protection of the common institutions, in short they themselves will take care of everything which can be naturally accomplished at the scene by those immediately involved and affected."Direct participation in the decision-making process of a community improves people's understanding of civic participation and the impact they can have on shaping their lives. These assemblies foster open dialogue and peaceful conflict resolution by promoting the exchange of ideas, compromise, and negotiation. This approach leads to decisions that are broadly supported, reducing division within the community while effectively addressing local projects and issues. The decision-making on local issues and projects also leads to more responsible and thoughtful choices, as the community is directly influenced by the consequences of their actions because of the proximity to the outcomes.
Erich Mühsam writes: "In federalism, the agreement of individuals brings about the connection of their will, directed without distinction toward their own as toward the common good, with the rational production of necessities, with their rational distribution and usage and with the proper arrangement of all other life-relationships; in centralism the externally derived law of the momentary power is in force, which holds in its hands the tools for suppressing the will of the community."Anarchist decision-making emphasizes avoiding both majoritarian and minority rule. As noted by Malatesta, anarchists prevent majoritarian rule by prioritizing consensus-building to achieve collective agreement; however, if consensus proves unattainable, they may employ supermajority voting to prevent minority rule. This approach minimizes the risk of bad-faith obstruction by a minority while preventing the tyranny of a simple majority.Some Individualist critics argue that direct democracy may still impose majority rule. However, this is unsubstantiated since anarchists emphasize the rights of minorities to dissent, withdraw, or protest.
“If the majority have acted in bad faith then the minority will have to take political action, including politically disobedient action if appropriate, to defend their citizenship and independence, and the political association itself… Political disobedience is merely one possible expression of the active citizenship on which a self-managing democracy is based … The social practice of promising involves the right to refuse or change commitments; similarly, the practice of self-assumed political obligation is meaningless without the practical recognition of the right of minorities to refuse or withdraw consent, or where necessary, to disobey.”

Councils should always strive for a directly democratic consensus when possible. Rejecting majority dominance and striving for consensus when possible facilitates the resolution of grievances and the creation of collectively decided solutions, while actively fostering solidarity. There are different possible ideas/conceptions of modified direct democracy out there that could be useful in reaching as high of a consensus as possible.

This specific proposal of how modified consensus could theoretically be organized comes from After the Revolution written by Daniel Baryon.

First, a resolution is presented by an individual in the democratic body. Following this, there is a discussion period about the resolution. After this discussion has concluded, the voters all place their first votes as a temperature check and the results are tallied. If the first vote comes to a 90% majority, the measure is passed and planning will begin.

If not, those who voted against the measure are asked to qualify their concerns into deal-breakers or non-deal-breakers. Those who have said that their grievances are not deal-breakers put their complaints into one of several categories and each category of complaint elects a delegate to plead their case.

After these delegates have each plead their case, voters are asked to weigh in on their agreement with the grievance and those with the grievance offer amendments that, if instituted, would garner their support. These friendly amendments are then voted on and a temperature check is taken to re-assess the status of consensus. If majority has now reached 90%, the motion is passed and planning will begin.If not, those who said that their grievance was a complete deal-breaker are asked to categorize their complaints and elect delegates to plead their case. Voters are then asked to weigh in on their agreement with these grievances and more amendments are gathered. If, after all amendments have been passed, turned down, or sustained, the majority has now reached 2/3, the motion is passed and planning will begin.

After passage, the minority enters into a contention process during the planning phase of the resolution, such that they might still have some recourse before the resolution is fully implemented. If, during this contention phase, the majority drops below 50%, the resolution is tabled or dismissed.

However, if the minority can’t reach a simple majority during planning and implementation, the resolution is carried forward. The body now elects a delegate or numerous delegates to carry out the implementation of the measure under the strict mandate of what was contained in it.

What a Libertarian Socialist Economy Looks Like
There are different models and proposals for how a libertarian socialist/ i.e. communist economy could look like. The through line is economic planning based on a bottom up council system similar to the early management that could be seen in Anarchist Catalonia, rather than through a centralized state like for example in the USSR. Decentralized democratic planning give us more precision in aligning production with societal needs unlike market economies. "Economic problems in the free society will be resolved by the producer-consumer co-operatives in which the Free Soviets(i.e. Councils) will act as coordinators and clarifiers."
Markets, are driven by profit, consistently overproduce waste and fail to meet the even most essential human needs, leaving millions in deprivation while resources are squandered. Market systems externalize environmental costs, allowing corporations to pollute with impunity, devastating ecosystems and communities without accountability. This is easily preventable through democratic planning, since it ensures that those directly affected by production and environmental impacts have control, enabling rational, need-based allocation and strict pollution regulation. It is not just a less damaging alternative but it’s a demonstrably superior system for achieving efficiency, equity, and any actual long-term sustainability."There will be no bosses... In the new system of production, the functions of organization will devolve upon specially-created agencies, purpose-built by the working masses: workers councils or workplace committees. These agencies, liaising with one another at the level of municipality, province and then country, will make up the municipal, provincial and thereafter general (federal) institutions for the management and administration of production. Appointed by the masses and continually subject to their supervision and control, these bodies are to be constantly renewed, thereby achieving the idea of genuine self-management of the masses. Unified production, in which the means of production and their output belong to all, with wage slavery replaced by the principle of comradely cooperation and equality of rights for all producers an established fact, production overseen by workers' administration bodies elected by the masses."One commonly proposed model is Participatory Economics (Parecon) which is a decentralized-planned economic system that strives to build a democratic, cooperative society by decentralizing decision-making in the process of organizing production. Participatory Economics along similar conceptions have quickly gained traction among the libertarian left as an alternative to both capitalist and centrally planned systems but is also critiqued by Anarcho-Communists for being closer to "Bakunin's Collectivism" than to a fully communist economy. The modern conception of Parecon is heavily associated with political theorist Michael Albert and economist Robin Hahnel, who describes participatory economics as "an anarchist economic vision." Alternative information/summary of Parecon can be found in this Video and this Overview Site.A good overview of fully anarcho-communsit economics can be found in Katja Einsfeld’s "Anarcho-Communist Planning", which updates 19th–20th century anarchist critiques and proposals for the conditions of the 21st century.Anarchists, in common with all radical proponents of social change are justifiably wary of outlining any rigid “Blueprint” for an anarchist society that would suggest that it is THE solution and should be followed to the letter. Any set of theoretical ideas about a new society and economy is only a model should be seen as concepts that are flexible and don't need to be implemented to the letter. All of us together will ultimately decide co-operatively on which elements are worthy, which need to be modified, and which may be discarded. So, this model is intended to be one possible structure to orient ourselves around.Whatever specific model we use an anarchist economy is organized around the social ownership of productive commons, federations of self-managing workplaces, and federations of self-governing communes. In this system, we cooperate to coordinate the use of society's resources. The resources used to produce goods and services are collectively owned by everyone in society, not by states or a small minority of private shareholders who gain disproportionate power and wealth. The knowledge, technology, and resources we inherit today are the result of thousands of years of collective human endeavor, and everyone deserves access to and the benefits of this shared heritage. This is what we call social ownership.Economic Councils:
Workers' Producer Councils - Industry Federation: Producer Councils are self-managed groups of workers who collectively oversee the production process, ensuring that goods and services are produced according to regional needs and in alignment with broader federation goals. These councils replace traditional top-down management structures, giving workers control over their work environment, income distribution, and division of labor. The councils would band together into a Industry Federation(or Syndicalist union), ensuring that production meets the needs of society. They submit plans for the resources that they need and the goods and services they expect to produce to coordinate with the other councils.Commune Consumer Councils - Consumers' Federation: Consumer Councils are regionally organized bodies where consumption needs are collectively determined and prioritize the distribution of goods and services based on equity and necessity. These councils operate as the primary decision-makers regarding consumption, establishing demands and submit plans for the goods and services they expect to consume that guide production at the regional and federation levels. For the federation level they would band together into a Consumers Federation. Consumers' Federation(Consumer Councils) coordinate with Industry Federation(Workers Councils) to ensure that economic activity aligns with community needs, and they send representatives to higher-level councils for broader decision-making on public goods and services.

Economic Councils & Federation Assembly:
"Anarchist Communism seeks the eradication of all exploitation and violence, whether against the individual or against the working masses. To that end it creates an economic and social basis that fuses the country's economic and social life into a harmonious whole and guarantees every individual parity with everyone else and affords the maximum well-being to all. This basis is common ownership in the form of the socialization of all of the means and instruments of production (industry, transport, land, raw materials, etc.) and the construction of national economic agencies on the basis of equality and the self-management of the working classes."
Each region has its own economic councils i.e. the Producer/Worker Councils and the Consumer Councils that are integrated into broader networks across regions. In this model, regional economies could manage local production and distribution, with each region forming interconnected nodes within a wider federation. Councils are responsible for planning, production, and distribution within their own region, managing everyday needs like food, housing, healthcare, and public services. An "Industry Federation" coordinates production within specific industries across regions, ensuring efficiency and resource alignment. Regional councils collaborate through a Economic Councils Assembly(of Consumers Federation & Indistry Federation), which facilitates coordination between regions and sectors, maintaining a decentralized yet cohesive economic structure. They manage inter-community resource allocation, large-scale infrastructure projects, and regional resources through annual, decentralized democratic planning process called participatory planning.

Anarchist Video- Media

Recommended for Newcomers

Libertarian Socialist Channels

Channels in German

Political Theorists Library

Modern Contributors

Link List: Anarchist Currents

History literature

• A Brief History of Popular Assemblies and Worker Councils
• Breaking the Chains: A History of Anarchism
• The Bolshevik Myth
• The Anarchist Collectives (Spanish Revolution)
• THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION by Rosa Luxemburg
• Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution
• Kronstadt 1921: An Analysis of Bolshevik Propaganda
• 1919: When the Bolsheviks Turned on the Workers
• The Russian Counterrevolution
• Cuban Anarchism: The History of A Movement
• Manifesto of the Makhnovists

Capital as Power Economics
A post-Marxist economic theory that closely aligns with an anarchist analysis.
CasP offers a critical perspective on capitalism, emphasizing the role of power dynamics in economic processes, distinct from both mainstream and Marxist economic theories.

(A CasP primer pre-text for the full following economic text.)

• Capital as Power: Toward a New Cosmology of Capitalism by Bichler/Nitzan

(Full CasP economic theory.)

• Capital as Power: A Study of Order and Creorder by Bichler/Nitzan

• CasP News & Discussion Website

Libertarian Socialist Economy

• Anarcho-Communist Planning

• Parecon: life after capitalism

• Parecon Org.
• Parecon Info Site

About This Website:
This is a collaborative project written form a social anarchist perspective.
We started working on this website to make it easy for non-anarchists to get started and help new anarchists dig deeper into their journey. Whether you're just curious or looking to learn more, we hope you found this site helpful.Our site was inspired by and draws heavily on the german anarchist website anarchismus.de and our summary includes excerpts from- & is heavily sourced from Black Rose Federation: New to Anarchism? & Basic Principles of AnarchismAdditional elements were directly used from Anarchist Communist Federation, Means and Ends The Revolutionary Practice of Anarchism in Europe and the United States, Popular Councils are the path to the victory of the Revolution , The Heart of Democracy , The State is Counter-Revolutionary , The Lady or the Tiger, Building Dual Power , Anarcho-Communist Planning, What We Believe(Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation) The Democracy Project, and a long list of classical 20th century anarchist works.Please send any translation errors, linking errors, complaints or suggestions to-
[email protected]Legal Disclaimer: This website presents theoretical discussions on anarchist theory and history. It is not a call to illegal action activities. The content is for educational & activist purposes only.

SPREAD THE WORD!

Material for posters, stickers, flyers.
Dowload it here: IMAGE 1 & IMAGE 2 & IMAGE 3 & IMAGE 4 & IMAGE 5

A collection of historic Anarchist Agitprop - posters & graphics.

Anarchism: An Overview

Principles, Praxis and History of Anarchism

The Social Reproduction of Libertarian CommunismFor anarchists one of the main consequences of the theory of practice was that there is an inherent connection between means and ends. The end goal of anarchism – free or libertarian communism – is a stateless classless society in which workers collectively own the means of production and self-manage their workplaces and communities through councils in which everyone has a vote and a direct say in the decisions that affect them. These councils would coordinate action over large areas by associating together into a decentralised system of regional, national and international federations in which as many decisions as possible were made by the local councils themselves. This would be achieved through regular congresses at a regional, national and international level which would be attended by instantly recallable mandated delegates that councils elected to represent them. Crucially, delegates would not be granted the power to make decisions independently and impose them on others. Decision making power would remain in the hands of the council who had elected them.Such a society would be reproduced over time by human beings engaging in these forms of activity and in so doing continuously creating and re-creating both communist social relations and themselves as people with the right kinds of capacities, drives and forms of consciousness for a communist society. For example, under libertarian communism workers within their local councils would make decisions through a system of direct democracy in which every member has a vote. Through participating in these local councils they would not only make decisions but also reproduce themselves as people who are able to and want to make decisions in this manner, such as being able to effectively take minutes, formulate proposals that people will support and make sure that a small minority of people do not do all the talking in meetings.People who want to and are able to reproduce a communist society will not magically come into existence. A communist society can only emerge through a social revolution that abolishes capitalism and therefore will have to be created by the people who presently live under capitalism. Given this, in order to achieve a communist society the majority of the population has to engage in activities during the struggle against capitalism itself that transform them into people who want to and are able to self-direct their lives and their community through local councils and federations of councils. If this does not happen, then communism will not be created. This is because for communism to exist real people must establish and reproduce it day after day through their own activity.Revolutionaries therefore have to use means that are constituted by forms of practice that will actually transform individuals into the kinds of people who will be able to and want to create the end goal of communism. If revolutionaries make the mistake of using the wrong or inappropriate means then they will produce people who will create a different society to one they initially intended. To quote Malatesta,it is not enough to desire something; if one really wants it adequate means must be used to secure it. And these means are not arbitrary, but instead cannot but be conditioned by the ends we aspire to and by the circumstances in which the struggle takes place, for if we ignore the choice of means we would achieve other ends, possibly diametrically opposed to those we aspire to, and this would be the obvious and inevitable consequence of our choice of means. Whoever sets out on the highroad and takes a wrong turning does not go where he intends to go but where the road leads him.

RANDOM QUOTES SHIT

Authoritarianism as The degree to which a power structure monopolizes control over the total social implementation of some power.

The idea of the council system is intimately intergrown with Socialism and is unthinkable without it; dictatorship, however, has nothing whatever in common with Socialism, and at best can only lead to the most barren of state capitalism. -Rudolf Rocker
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"The council system tolerates no dictatorships as it proceeds from totally different assumptions. In it is embodied the will from below, the creative energy of the toiling masses. In dictatorship, however, only lives barren compulsion from above, which will suffer no creative activity and proclaims blind submission as the highest laws for all. The two cannot exist together. In Russia dictatorship proved victorious. Hence there are no more soviets there. All that is left of them is the name and a gruesome caricature of its original meaning." - Rudolf Rocker
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each commune will have to combine with neighboring communes
in a federation - Bakunin
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On delegation: "There will be provided deputies invested with imperative, always responsible, and always revocable mandates" -Bakunin
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The communal council thus organized will be able to choose, from its own members, executive committees -Bakunin
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"The future social organization should be carried out from the bottom up, by the free association or federation of workers…”-Bakunin
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The State will be replaced by a federalist system of workers organisations of production and consumption. united federatively and self-administrating. This system excludes just as much authoritarian organisations as the dictatorship of a party, whichever it might be. - Dielo Truda
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"We consider the working people capable of building, on their own and without parties, commissars or generals, their own free soviet system, in which those who are elected to the Soviet will not, as now, command and order us, but on the contrary, will be only the executors of the decisions made in our workers' gatherings and conferences. " - Black Army
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"The governments protected the bourgeoisie and their money and exploitation of workers and peasants. As for the second way, the Popular Councils, they do not need a parasitic or oppressive government, in which classes, unemployment, poverty, labor, wages, private property, and the needs of all are realized, and greed, lies, deception, greed, laziness, and envy will disappear."
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"There will be no bosses... In the new system of production, the functions of organization will devolve upon specially-created agencies, purpose-built by the working masses: workers councils or workplace committees. These agencies, liaising with one another at the level of municipality, province and then country, will make up the municipal, provincial and thereafter general (federal) institutions for the management and administration of production. Appointed by the masses and continually subject to their supervision and control, these bodies are to be constantly renewed, thereby achieving the idea of genuine self-management of the masses. Unified production, in which the means of production and their output belong to all, with wage slavery replaced by the principle of comradely cooperation and equality of rights for all producers an established fact, production overseen by workers' administration bodies elected by the masses." - Dielo Truda
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"Anarchist Communism seeks the eradication of all exploitation and violence, whether against the individual or against the working masses. To that end it creates an economic and social basis that fuses the country's economic and social life into a harmonious whole and guarantees every individual parity with everyone else and affords the maximum well-being to all. This basis is common ownership in the form of the socialization of all of the means and instruments of production (industry, transport, land, raw materials, etc.) and the construction of national economic agencies on the basis of equality and the self-management of the working classes" - Dielo Truda
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"Everything in this society, from each individual factory right up to the entire political system of the state, is nothing but a fortress of capital"- Dielo Truda
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"Human history represents a continuous chain of struggles waged by the working masses in pursuit of their rights, freedom and a better life. At all times throughout the history of human societies, this class struggle has been the principal factor determining the form and structure of those societies."- Dielo Truda
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Revolutionary army
"Having stressed the necessity and inevitability in the period of civil war for the workers to create their own revolutionary army, the Platform also asserts that this army must be subordinated to the overall (the highest) worker-peasant production and consumption organizations.The subordination of the army to these organizations does not in any way imply the idea of an elected civil authority. Indeed, an army, even the most revolutionary and most popular of armies in terms of its mentality and title, cannot, however, exist and operate off its own initiative, but has to be answerable to someone. Being an organ for the defence of the revolutionary rights and revolutionary positions of all the workers, the army must therefore be wholly subordinate to the workers and piloted by them politically speaking (we stress politically, for, when it comes to its military and strategic direction, that could only be handled by military bodies within the ranks of the army itself, answerable to the highest worker-peasant organizations).But to whom can the army be directly answerable, politically? The workers as a whole are not a united body. They will be represented by various economic organizations(the Workers' Committees and Free Soviets). It is to these very same organizations, in the shape of their highest federal agencies, that the army will be subordinated."

"The central tendency, the spinal column of anarchism is represented by communist anarchism"- Dielo Truda (Workers’ Cause)
[extra]
"The central tendency, the spinal column of anarchism is represented by communist anarchism. Anarcho-individualism is at best a philosophical and literary phenomenon and not a social movement. It often happens that the latter is drawn into politics and ends up as a bourgeois fad." Dielo Truda (Workers’ Cause)
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“We are convinced that the formation of an anarchist party in Russia, far from being prejudicial to the general revolutionary endeavour, is instead desirable and useful in the highest degree.” -Kropotkin (Foreword to Bakunin’s Paris Commune, [Russian edition], 1892)-----
"We anarchists who agitate and fight for the emancipation of the proletariat, must, at all costs, have an end of the dissipation and disorganization prevailing in our ranks, for these are destroying our strength and our libertarian endeavours"- Dielo Truda (Workers’ Cause)
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"Whatever the cost, we must set up soviets which are beyond pressure
from any and every party. Only non-party soviets of workers, freely
elected are capable of affording us new liberties and rescuing the labor
ing people from enslavement and oppression. Long life to the freely
elected, anti-authoritarian soviets!" - (Makhnovist) Anarchist Insurgent Boino
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"In proportion as all classes of the community take a more lively part in public affairs and knowledge spreads among the masses, their longing for equality becomes stronger, and their demanda of social reorganization become louder and louder, they can be ignored no more." - Peter Kropotkin
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"the means of production being the collective work of humanity, the product should be the collective property of the race. Individual appropriation is neither just nor serviceable. All belongs to all. All things are for all men, since all men have need of them, since all men have worked in the measure of their strength to produce them, and since it is not possible to evaluate every one’s part in the production of the world’s wealth.""What we proclaim is THE RIGHT TO WELL-BEING: WELL-BEING FOR ALL!"
-Kropotkin"We do not want to rob any one of his coat, but we wish to give to the workers all those things the lack of which makes them fall an easy prey to the exploiter, and we will do our utmost that none shall lack anything, that not a single man shall be forced to sell the strength of his right arm to obtain a bare subsistence for himself and his children."- Kropotkin---
"So what remains of individualist anarchism? Negation of the class struggle, of the principle of anarchist organization having as its object the free society of equal workers[.] That whole philosophy has nothing to do with anarchist theory and or anarchist practice." - Makhno
----"We must reckon with a residue of delinquency … which in the meantime will oblige the mass of workers to take defensive action. Discarding every concept of punishment and revenge, which still dominate penal law, and guided only by the need for self-defence and the desire to rehabilitate, we must seek the means to achieve our goal, without falling into the dangers of authoritarianism and consequently finding ourselves in contradiction with the system of liberty and free-will on which we seek to build the new society" - Malatesta
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"Anarchy means society organized without authority, and this does not mean disorder, as is generally supposed. On the contrary, it means the highest order, order in freedom and equality."-Malatesta----Anarcho-Communists; are individualists, not in the sense of an exaggerated respect for the individual which, however it may be disguised, is a form of authoritarianism, but because they are supporters of communism for the very reason that it guarantees every individual the greatest physical, intellectual and moral development - International Anarchist Communist Federation-----Experience teaches us that anarchist action on a wide scale will only achieve its goals if it possesses a well-defined organizational base, inspired and guided by the principle of the collective responsibility of its militants. - Makhno----Unfortunately, as things stand anarchism is strong only in its philosophy. It lacks practical means. It is unable to manifest itself completely, even in times of revolution, and those spontaneous movements with an anarchist spirit that do appear, seem to the eyes of the wide masses to be merely desperate attempts. And that only goes towards making anarchism’s tragic state even worse. ---....-----“How do you wish to guide the masses?”, you ask. In reply, I would say that, during the course of events, every social movement, especially every revolutionary movement of the wide popular masses, is required to formulate certain proposals designed to help the intended goal be achieved. The mass is too heterogeneous to be able to do this. Only ideological groups with clearly-defined policies are capable of driving this process, particularly towards the beginning of the revolution. Only they will be able to throw enough light on events and clearly define the unconscious desires of the masses, and setting an example through actions and words. It is for this reason that our Party must, in my opinion, make clear its political unity and organizational character. In the domain of practical achievements, the autonomous anarchist groups must be able to face up to every new situation that presents itself, in establishing the problems to be resolved and the responses to make without hesitation and without altering the goals and the spirit of anarchism. - Makhno
---Man is only free if he is prepared to kill every hangman and every power magnate if they do not wish to stop their shameful tasks - Makhno-----The best method to create new collective freedom is the 'Free Soviet.' Proceeding from this conviction, the anarchist revolutionary will call the enslaved to struggle for these free associations.-Makhno-----Instead of spending their time rejecting left, right and centre, I believe that anarchists would be better occupied getting to grips with what they do want and proposing something realistic to the workers.-Makhno----------"If our movement is a revolutionary social movement, we have to acknowledge the need for it to be organized... Otherwise, our movement will be condemned to succumb once and for all to the influences of opportunists and liberals"- Nestor Makhno---"The essential point of the system was social equality between officers and men. Everyone from general to private drew the same pay, ate the same food, wore the same clothes, and mingled on terms of complete equality. If you wanted to slap the general commanding the division on the back and ask him for a cigarette, you could do so, and no one thought it curious. In theory at any rate each militia was a democracy and not a hierarchy. It was understood that orders had to be obeyed, but it was also understood that when you gave an order you gave it as comrade to comrade and not as superior to inferior. There were officers and N.C.O.S. but there was no military rank in the ordinary sense; no titles, no badges, no heel-clicking and saluting. They had attempted to produce within the militias a sort of temporary working model of the classless society."---"A council society, a council republic - this word republic in no way automatically designates a form of state, rather the self-administration of a commonwealth by the people - a council economy is only conceivable as a federative construct and can never be a state or find a place within the whole of a state. The council republic is created from the bottom up. Its actual center of motion is the local urban and rural councils. According to circumstance and necessity, they can in occasional or regularly scheduled meetings of residents take note of, discuss, criticize, and expand upon the activities of the industrial or regional councils, making them the foundation of their own decisions. They can set up committees for specific purposes which might deal with specialized questions and independently under general vigilant supervision entrust individual persons with the carrying out of contracted duties." - Erich Mühsam

FREEDOM OF SPEECH
Freedom of speech and the press is essential for a revolutionary workers' society and should generally be upheld, even for former enemies. However, in times of war, civil conflict, or military struggle, restrictions on press freedom may be necessary if enemy publications directly aid their military efforts. This censorship is strictly situational and should not become a general policy. Outside of war, all viewpoints should have the right to free expression.The core idea is that press freedom is a fundamental principle, but in wartime, preventing the enemy from using it as a weapon takes priority.by:-
"Victorious labour must not tamper either with freedom of speech or of the press, not even those of its erstwhile enemies and oppressors now defeated by the revolution. It is even less acceptable that there be tampering with press freedom and freedom of speech in the context of the revolutionary socialist and anarchist groupings in the ranks of the victorious proletariat.Free speech and press freedom are essential for the working people, not simply so that they may illuminate and better understand the tasks involved in their social and economic construction efforts, but also with an eye to better discerning the essential traits, arguments, plans and intentions of their enemies.It is untrue that the capitalist and the opportunist socialist press can lead the revolutionary working people astray. The latter will be quite capable of deciphering and exposing the lying press and giving it the answer it deserves. Press freedom and freedom of speech only scare those like the capitalists and the communists who survive through dirty deeds that they are forced to hide from the eyes of the great working masses. As for the working people, freedom of speech will be a tremendous boon to them. It will enable them to hear about everything, judge things for themselves, and give them greater consciousness and their actions greater efficacy.Monopolization of the press and the right to speak, or the limitation of these by their being squeezed into the confines of a single party's dogma, put paid to all confidence in those holding the monopoly and in their press. If free speech is stifled, it is because there is a desire to conceal the truth. This is something that was demonstrated sensationally by the bolsheviks, whose press is dependent upon bayonets and is read primarily out of necessity, in the absence of any other.However, there may be specific circumstances when the press, or rather, abuse of the press, may be restricted on the grounds of revolutionary usefulness. As an example, we might cite one episode from 1919.Throughout the month of November 1919, Ekaterinoslav was in the hands of the Makhnovist insurgent army. But at the same time, it was surrounded by Denikin's troops who, having dug in along the left bank of the Dniepr in the area around the towns of Amur and Nizhnedneprovsk, were continually shelling Ekaterinoslav with cannon mounted on their armoured trains. And a Denikinist unit headed by General Slashchev was simultaneously advancing on Ekaterinoslav from the north, from the area around Kremenchug.
At the time, the following daily newspapers were appearing in Ekaterinoslav, thanks to freedom of speech: the Makhnovist organ Put' k Svobode ["Road To Freedom"], the Right Social Revolutionaries' Narodovlastie ["Peoples' Power"], the Ukrainian Left Social Revolutionaries' Borot'ba ["Struggle"], and the Bolsheviks' organ Zvezda ["Star"]. Only the Cadets, then spiritual leaders of the Denikinist movement, were without their newspaper. But if the Cadets had at that time wanted to publish in Ekaterinoslav their own newspaper, which would without any doubt have been an accessory to Denikin's operations, would the revolutionary workers of Ekaterinoslav and the insurgents have had to grant the Cadets the right to publish one, even at a time when its military role in events would have been apparent? We think not.In a civil war context, such cases may arise more than once and in these cases, the workers and peasants will have to be guided not by the broad principle of freedom of press and free speech, but by the role that enemy mouthpieces would enjoy in relation to the ongoing military struggle.Generally speaking, and with the exception of cases of civil war, victorious labour will have to grant free speech and freedom of the press to left-wing views and right-wing views alike. That freedom will be the pride and joy of the free society of free working people.Anarchists countenance and urge the use of revolutionary violence in the fight against its class enemies, but they will never agree to wield power, even for a single instant, nor impose their decisions on the masses by force. In this connection their methods are: propaganda, force of argument, and spoken and written persuasion"

MÜSAHM QUOTES

"A council republic - in no way automatically designates a form of state, rather the self-administration of a commonwealth by the people - a council economy is only conceivable as a federative construct and can never be a state or find a place within the whole of a state."----The goal is a community which knows neither majorities nor minorities, nor dubious compromises between the two by which no one is satisfied; the goal is a community which everywhere enables unanimous resolutions because it allows every individual to fit himself into the common whole at the right place. Voluntary ties through contract and camaraderie allow such agreement of all in desire and action in every union and co-operative, and the comradely spirit which the anarchists cultivate among themselves will show and at the same time smooth the way for the cultural and economic co-operatives and voluntary agreements of the future.

[ Updates and news on the situation of the revolutionary project of Rojava. ]

Conventional theories of capitalism are mired in a deep crisis and debate. Liberals and Marxists think of capital as an economic entity that they count in universal units of utils and abstract labor, respectively. But these units are totally fictitious: they can be neither observed nor measured. They don’t exist. And since liberalism and Marxism depend on these non-existing units, their theories hang in suspension. They cannot explain the process that matters most – the accumulation of capital.This breakdown is no accident. Every mode of power evolves together with its dominant theories and ideologies. In capitalism, these theories and ideologies originally belonged to the study of political economy – the first mechanical science of society. But the capitalist mode of power kept changing, and as the power underpinnings of capital became increasingly visible, the science of political economy disintegrated. By the late nineteenth century, with dominant capital having taken command, political economy was bifurcated into two distinct spheres: economics and politics. And in the twentieth century, when the power logic of capital had already penetrated every corner of society, the remnants of political economy were further fractured into mutually distinct social sciences. Nowadays, capital reigns supreme – yet social scientists have been left with no coherent framework to account for it.The theory of Capital as Power offers a unified alternative to this fracture. It argues that capital is not a narrow economic entity, but a symbolic quantification of power. Capital has little to do with utility or abstract labor, and it extends far beyond machines and production lines. Most broadly, it represents the organized power of dominant capital groups to reshape – or creorder – their society.This view leads to a different cosmology of capitalism. It offers a new theoretical framework for capital based on the twin notions of dominant capital and differential accumulation, a new conception of the state of capital and a new history of the capitalist mode of power. It also introduces new empirical research methods – including new categories; new ways of thinking about, relating and presenting data; new estimates and measurements; and, finally, the beginning of a new, disaggregate accounting that reveals the conflictual dynamics of society.

Capitalism isn’t selfish profit seeking its social control."if we treat capital as a human mega-machine, a structure of social control, capitalization and re-capitalization become possible as business organizations adapt to and change reality"

Capitalists raise prices, not during times of growth and stability, but instead, wait for the cover of stagnation and crisis. Thus obfuscating the source of inflation, while economists advocate for raising interest rates to sabotage employment.

By fusing previously distinct earning streams, amalgamation contributes to the organized power of dominant capital, regardless of whether or not it augments the more conventional rates of return."

"In order for power to successfully harness, contain and, if necessary, crush resistance, the powerful must constantly restrict, limit and inhibit the autonomy of those with less or no power."

-- no unified economics analysis - common labor theory of values --- alternatives & critiques of marxist labor theory --- ancom inflcue marxism -- every theorsit diverge --- ovlep with marxism --- post-marxsit analyis CasPIt argues that capital is not a narrow economic entity, but a symbolic quantification of powerThe Capital as Power (CasP) framework, developed by Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan, offers a groundbreaking approach to understanding capitalism by redefining capital as a measure of power rather than as a stock of economic resources. This theory challenges traditional economic paradigms—both neoclassical and Marxist—arguing that they fail to capture the true nature of capital and its role in shaping society.
Capital as a Quantification of PowerAt its core, CasP views capital as a symbolic quantification of power. Unlike conventional perspectives that see capital as tangible assets (e.g., machinery, labor, or money), Bichler and Nitzan argue that it represents the capacity of capitalists to control and reshape societal and economic structures. Capital, therefore, is not just economic wealth but a reflection of the broader institutional and social hierarchies through which power is exerted.
Differential Accumulation: Power Through ComparisonA key concept in CasP is differential accumulation, which describes how dominant capital groups aim to increase their power relative to others. Rather than simply seeking absolute growth, capitalists focus on outperforming competitors to enhance their standing in the capitalist hierarchy. This process highlights that success in capitalism is fundamentally about gaining a larger share of power, not just creating more wealth.
Regimes of Differential AccumulationBichler and Nitzan identify four primary strategies through which differential accumulation occurs:Internal Breadth: Consolidating power through mergers and acquisitions within existing markets.
External Breadth: Expanding into new markets by building new facilities or products.
Internal Depth: Increasing profitability by reducing costs, such as through labor exploitation or efficiency measures.
External Depth: Leveraging economic or political crises to raise prices relative to competitors, a process often linked to stagflation.These regimes highlight how accumulation strategies vary based on the broader context of competition and societal dynamics.
Creorder: The Creation and Reordering of SocietyThe concept of creorder (a blend of "create" and "order") reflects the ongoing process through which dominant capital groups reshape societal structures to maintain and expand their power. This involves not just economic activities but also the manipulation of cultural, political, and ideological systems. In essence, capitalists perpetually reorganize society in ways that secure their dominance, even in the face of resistance or systemic change.
Sabotage and Power MaintenanceBichler and Nitzan emphasize that capitalists maintain power through strategic sabotage. This doesn't mean outright destruction but includes actions like limiting production, creating artificial scarcities, influencing legislation, or restricting access to certain resources. These strategies ensure that capitalists retain their position of dominance by shaping market conditions in their favor.Critique of Traditional TheoriesCasP critiques both neoclassical and Marxist economic theories for their reliance on abstract and unrealistic models. Neoclassical economics focuses on utility, while Marxist economics emphasizes labor value. Bichler and Nitzan argue that both fail to address the fundamental role of power in shaping economic systems. By redefining capital as a manifestation of power, CasP provides a more comprehensive lens to analyze real-world dynamics.
Implications for Understanding Capitalism
Critique of Marxist TheoryBichler and Nitzan critique Marxist theory, particularly its focus on labor value as the basis for understanding capital. While Marx sees capital as derived from the exploitation of labor and rooted in production, the CasP framework challenges this view by arguing that capital is primarily a mechanism of power and control, not a direct reflection of labor or material production.They assert that Marx’s focus on the labor theory of value reduces the complexity of capitalism to a narrow economic framework, missing the broader sociopolitical dynamics through which power operates. For Bichler and Nitzan, the key to understanding capitalism lies in examining the relationships and structures that enable dominant capital groups to assert control over society, rather than in the quantification of labor embedded in commodities.This critique reframes the discussion of capital, shifting the emphasis from production and surplus value to the institutional and symbolic systems that sustain and expand power within capitalist systems.The CasP framework fundamentally redefines the way we understand key aspects of capitalism:Corporate Strategies: Activities like mergers, acquisitions, and monopolization are seen as efforts to consolidate power rather than merely economic efficiency.
Economic Crises: Financial downturns, stagflation, and systemic shocks are interpreted as power struggles between dominant capital groups.
Globalization: The integration of global markets reflects a strategy to expand and solidify the power of dominant capitalists across borders.A Holistic Perspective on CapitalismBy treating capital as a measure of power, CasP integrates economic, political, and cultural dimensions into a single framework. It provides tools to understand the intersection of markets, governance, and societal control, highlighting the inseparability of economic and political power in modern capitalism.For a more detailed exploration of their ideas, their seminal book Capital as Power: A Study of Order and Creorder serves as an essential resource.