Notes on anarchism

Anarchism is not primarily a political ideology. Holding certain beliefs and opinions does not make you an anarchist. Or perhaps a better way of putting it is that anarchism requires the disruption of ideology by action and the union of belief and projects in the world.

A democrat or republican takes on his/her political identity by voting for representatives of a certain party or promoting that party in some other way. Most political identities based upon mass parties are defined primarily in terms of their aligned candidates, using elections and the mechanisms of the state to promote their political agendas, etc.

Anarchists clearly cannot express their political positions through the mechanisms of government, at least not directly*, and so they must pursue other means. These consist primarily in participating in projects or organizations that express anarchist values and are organized along anarchist lines.

If you want to become an anarchist then you should begin by attaching yourself to an anarchistic project or organization.

Why?

There are several reasons to address the problem in this way. The simplest is the mixture between theory and practice that grounds anarchist principles and desires. Thought means nothing absent the movement of bodies and the generative organization of their desires, or their "flesh."**

But a more direct reason lies in the nature of anarchism. It is not an ideology, so what is it?

It is a comportment of bodies, a tendency towards certain ways of constructing the world in which we live; and a ferocious dedication to doing so. It is grounded in affect and emotion, a particular style of emotion that can only be strongly communicated through direct experience. I would offer yet another description of anarchism, an "atomic" definition- it is the emotional response to an experience of unalienated labor, and the system of sense and thought that erupts from such an experience to buttress it and create the conditions for the experience's repetition.

*we can do any number of things that the government reacts to however.
**see Merleau-Ponty