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Anarchism and practicability
JEFF ROBINSON
Ask the present people of Britain if they would like to live in a peaceful, classless, raceless society and the only dissenters would be those who imagined they had something to lose or who for reasons of personal inadequacy or support of reactionary ideas approve of hierarchical society and dread a world of free and equal human beings. Explain to the assenters the probable time scale, the fact that much of ‘our British way of life’ must be discarded, and that the personal effort involves much more than a vote every 5 years and their number greatly diminished. There remains those people who are disenchanted with present society, see the need for radical change and, most important, are prepared to do something about it.
Now tell these remaining people that you are describing an anarchist society and that the method of achieving it is anarchism and you are left with a few curious people and the convinced libertarians. Why then do so many well-intentioned people reject anarch&shhttps://www.facebook.com/y;ism and devote their energies to short-term solutions to human problems which rarely deal to lasting good? One of the main reasons is that they regard anarchism as impracticable. The arguments used to support this assertion fall into two categories: the first concerns assumptions which anarchists are falsely accused of making; the second concerns views they do express. The first group are the familiar ‘rationalisation’ based on fear, prejudice and ignorance. Such as ‘anarchists believe people are naturally good’ when all that is maintained is that they could be good enough to live in a free society. Or that ‘you can’t change human nature’ (whatever that is) when what you hope to change is human behaviour. Or that ‘men are concerned primarily with self-interest’ which is true and the creation of a harmonious society is surely in everyone’s self interest. Or it is pointed out that private grief and personal antagonisms would still exist in a free society as though lovers’ quarrels necessitate a standing army.
The second category of objections, however, those based on actual anarchist ideas includes many valid points which must be considered if anarchism is ever to become a practical, positive force in society. There must be plenty of people, perhaps even a few in high places, who would be glad to adopt libertarian solutions to human problems if they thought such solutions realistic. They often do adopt them in
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