Anarchism: what is it really?

By Rose Côté
By the way, this text is not propaganda and I am not anarchist. It is just me trying to make you think about how society is working and to show you an other point of view. I wish after this reading you will only think twice about your perception of the anarchism.

In our society, we are viewing anarchism as something ridiculous and without fundaments. The anarchists are usually considered only as stupid persons that wants to make trouble using violent ways.  There are a lot of prejudices about this ideology, but are they really true? 

Inside an anarchist library in Quebec, '' La Page Noire''

When we think about anarchism, we automatically have in mind the idea of people hating society and trying to destroy everything. In fact, this kind of person exists and — sadly— they often call themselves as being anarchist, but they are not. Because of these persons, the general opinion puts a label on the true ones and proclaims that their ultimate goal is not to have no rule and to shatter without reason. But this is far away from what anarchism is really.

Values behind anarchism

First, this movement was created to counter the inequality and the misery that the industrial revolution generated. There are two main values behind anarchism; equality and liberty, for these militants think that a society, to be functional but also a good place to live, has to take care and to respect the capacities of each one, so everybody can after bring what he's good at to make his environment's quality improves.  An important point to understand the anarchism is to make the difference between the authority and the dominance. An anarchist, instead of what we usually think, accept the authority: even if there is no leader in an anarchist society, we all agree to say that some persons are more charismatic than others, can speak easily to a group and have a natural predisposition to be a leader. So, a problem that often takes place is that some persons will be more listened and respected. This is why listening to everybody and to be careful not to take all the place in a group is truly important to consider all the point of view in the decisions that are taken. The anarchists accept an authority position when the ''leader'' is consider as a teacher, so he shares his knowledge to others for after it is beneficial to all the community. What the anarchists do not accept is the dominance, when someone wants to control what you think or constrain you to do something, because it goes against the individuals liberties. For this reason, a real anarchist is non-violent, for the violence is an act of dominance and this is against the real values of the ideology.

Could an anarchist society works?

It is true that an anarchist society, to work, would require ''ideal'' persons, because everybody would have to consider the common good more important than the desire to own more, thing that depends upon the education. To see if this kind of society could be possible, some anarchists opened bakery and library that are self-managed, which means that they function with anarchism principles. To show you an exemple, I will talk to you about ''La Page Noire'', an anarchist library in Quebec city. In this library, there is no boss so the employees frequently meet to talk about what they would like to do and to administrate all the place together. All the opinions are taking in count and at the end a consensus is made. Every month, all the employees are getting the same salary, no matter how many hours they worked. This might seams really unfair, but in a small environment, everybody knows each others, so the employees are trusting themselves and are working equally. Finally, you are not doing always the same duties, because in an anarchist system, people learns to do multiple jobs, to stimulate the intellect but also to make a more equal repartition of the tasks.

In conclusion, it is true to think that anarchism looks like a utopia, because it would not be a possible system with our actual society. But anarchism exists mostly to claim rights and equality and to propose alternatives to capitalism than to take the power, because violence is not a part of the anarchist values.