I wanna preface this with: I’m learning and I want to learn. I have so many questions and I’d love to hear the perspectives of some seasoned anarchists on my thoughts and questions. I’m here to learn, and I greatly appreciate any input anyone can give.
I’m confused. I have so many anarchist friends, and I politically relate to them on a very very deep level. In a lot of ways I consider myself an anarchist, I sympathise with it for so many reasons:
- I’ve been let down by so many electoral movements the last 10 years, and there’s somethin so empowering about not asking or waiting for help
- Anarchist calisthenics has changed my life, not asking for permission to change things, to take charge
- I believe in the power of the grass roots, that ultimately, if enough of us got together, we can make the change we want
- Whenever a disaster occurs, look around: there’s anarchists everywhere. In natural disasters? Anarchist groups are found distributing food, water and shelter. In homeless crisis? They’re found in soup kitchens distributing food.
- It challenges systems of power by default that governments use to harm marginalised folk
Despite all of this? I’m still a member of my country’s Green Party. We have a very progressive leader and their policies could make a huge difference to my life and the people I care about, my community, everyone. While I’m not going to rely on them to win power, or even to hold onto their promises, I can’t help but feel like it’s still worth campaigning for them because I feel like it moves me closer to a country where more of us have the help we need.
Some of my anarchist friends shit on these electoral parties (even if they’re super progressive). And I understand why, and I feel it’s difficult to critique them for it, because electoral politics has rarely won us any consistent safety or justice.
But as a disabled trans person, I’ve been on the shit side of the state so often… that no matter who’s in power, I’ll always feel like an adversary to the state. Because at the end of the day: the state has power, and it’s difficult to invision a state that doesn’t abuse vulnerable groups (perhaps that’s a problem?).
On the other hand? I also feel like… The state is a central entity that can organise large amount of resources much easier than the people themselves can. And after centuries of capitalism, is it possible for enough of us to work with each other to build power, community, care and resources outside of the constraints the government and state give us?
I’m also well aware that anarchism isn’t the absence of hierarchy necessarily, it’s the conscious understanding and consent to hierarchy that we choose (if I’m understanding it correctly). Whether that’s through choosing people to lead certain things or groups to do it etc. but then I’m also like: is it human nature that problematic hierarchies occur, whether through governance or anarchism?
That’s my other question: the way I feel I’m an anarchist is as an activist. Which is to say: when I cover up fascist stickers and propaganda in my city? I’m not waiting for the government and I don’t care about the laws that prohibit me from doing it. But as far as changing things on a societal and cultural level? I feel this conflict: I feel the need to work within electoral politics to temper the rise of the far right parties in my country… but at the same time I recognise this system is a sinking ship, and therefore? I want to build resources, community and support on the ground irrespective of government.
I don’t know… I’m very confused and I don’t know what I’m thinking, saying or doing. I feel like these contradictions are incompatible with anarchism. But do my values and praxis make me an anarchist, even if I’m participating in electoral politics? Am I wrong for wanting to seek some electoral power to at least have a leader in my country that’s NOT a raging transphobe, or neo Nazi?
I know don’t necessarily have to choose between the two (though I guess it depends on who you ask), but I wonder: how do you reconcile the contradictions?
Elections are something you can do once every few years to leverage the small amount of power that you can claim for yourself with no adverse consequences. Some might say that it legitimizes the state, but the government doesn’t collapse if voter turnout drops below a certain level.
Ultimately I see it as something you do for maybe one hour out of one day of the year, and the other 364 days of the year are for leveraging power in other ways. So the election should be an afterthought, a minor piece of context. If you find yourself campaigning, donating, investing a lot of your sense of self into national elections, that would not be so anarchistic. If the height of someone’s personal political power is based around voting for parliamentary elections, thay person is a liberal through definition by contrast.
Vote or don’t vote, but our aim is that whoever they vote for, we will be ungovernable.
okay but this person isn’t just voting they’re actively campaigning for a capitalist party not that i would defend voting itself but this is different and worse.
“Actively campaigning” is not the same thing as “feel like it’s still worth campaigning”.
I don’t really care about the purity of detaching yourself from statist hierarchies, because we are all tied into them to some degree or another. I’m interested in what actually works to bring about a more humane, free, egalitarian, and sustainable world. This is a big part of the reason I identify as “autonomous communist” instead of “anarchist”, even though these terms are conflatably close to each other.