https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-ASw3fKJNgUu33P5ZaCJFbjSuwA16Kiv
What is Anarchy?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDMGfsUjS_I
• not a concrete or utopian prescription of a better society
• first: broad ideas about what society ought to look like
• freedom to live as we please except to oppress others
• equal voice in the decisions that affect us
• collective ownership of food, wealth, and means of production
• second: tools to bootstrap a precursor “anarchist society”
• councils of temporary, instantly recallable delegates
• delegates don’t decide on behalf of those they represent
• councils form communes; communes form federations
• none of these tools are permanent or immutable, and a successful
anarchist society will develop new tools that not only had we
never considered, but that we couldn’t conceive of until then
What Do Anarchists Think About Violence?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOKVFzYXK3Q
• violence is a tool to dismantle oppressive power structures
• it is not the only tool; passive resistance is another example
• it is a necessary evil, because those with power have/will never
relinquish that power without it (or fear of it)
• surgeon analogy: cut where we must, but avoid needless suffering
• Malatesta rejects three positions on violence
• violence limited to defence against what we suffer individually:
this limits us to petty matters, or attacking only the instruments
of oppression like police and military
• strict pacifism: this is ineffective and can even be selfish in
the refusal to help a suffering comrade
• violence glorified as its own end: this creates the very suffering
that we seek to eliminate
What is a Social Revolution?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJwQaXKUCuQ
• abolition of capitalist state and its oppressive power structures
• creation of a new society that better embodies anarchist ideals
• this will take not days, but months, years, and even generations
• people earlier in the revolution
• will need to fight, expropriate, destroy, and otherwise struggle
to dismantle the power structures that oppress them
• will generally not experience society that they wish to create
• should try to do this selflessly to pave the way for offspring
• people later in the revolution
• will need to find new ways to collaborate and organise society to
continue to meet our changing concrete needs
• rely on the foundations of anarchist society laid by forebears
• where successful, will see happiness and more fulfilling lives
Evolution vs Revolution
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHnAMrBjIco
• anarchist societies exist in periods of evolution and revolution
• not defined by duration, but rather the nature of change
• not isolated from one another, but rather symbiotic
Do Anarchists Ignore Political Struggle?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YZgdYXXQr8
• social revolution can’t succeed locally
• not even the wealthiest nation can be truly self-sufficient
• anarchist society surrounded by capitalists and other states would
face everything from sanctions to interference to violence
• this adversity is insurmountable in the long run
• social revolution must grow concurrently across the world, or at
least in a large collection of nations or states
• we don’t ignore politics, but we do reject certain kinds of them:
those that entrench or create new oppressive power structures
• Bakunin and Malatesta saw politics as such structures that can be
destroyed by careful use of politics, much like copyleft tries to
destroy copyright by wielding copyright itself
• Kropotkin didn’t see politics as limited in that way, but rather
something that will take on a different form after the state
What Do Anarchists Think About Animal Liberation?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvEBa2PgO-w
• many anarchists are also vegan, vegetarian, or at least advocate for
improvement to the way we treat animals
• Kropotkin said that we will eventually extend our solidarity from
the whole human race to include our fellow animals
• Reclus argued that as meat-eaters, our domestication and farming
techniques corrupts animals into suffering, docile flesh on legs
• Reclus drew parallels between what we do to animals and what we do
to each other, and the thinking that underlies each; for example
• between the horrors of war and carnivorous slaughter
• between racist violence and things we tell ourselves about
animals e.g. it’s wrong to kill cats but ok to kill pigs
• between the exploitation of animals and soldiers for hunting
• Reclus argued that progress involves applying the same principles
of solidarity to animals, first by seeing them as fellow workers
rather than food, then as companions rather than servants