In other words, I believe that the anarchist fight, the struggle for an anarchist society, is essential, but I also think that the realizing of such a society is impossible. The true anarchist thinks that an anarchist society - with no state, no organization, no hierarchy, and no authorities - is possible, livable, and practicable. This may imply, as Jacques Ellul wrote, that an “anarchist society” is impossible:
Any violation of this is a betrayal to the anarchist, whether in the guise of an established society or in that of a “revolutionary means”. Let us take for granted, let us assume, that what characterises anarchy is the refusal of command and the insistence that we are all equal and singular in our capacity to decide how we live together. This is the tragedy that inescapable haunts all rebellious politics. The agitation of a demonstration that develops into a riot isolated individual and/or collective gestures of rebellion the riot or the insurrection that promises revolution the missing philosophy or ideological expression that will make sense of it all the revelation of the absent revolutionary subject the creation of the properly radical organisation revolutions past: each carries a power of seduction and each taken as privileged renders us blind to the uncertainty and contingency of events.Įvery revolt engenders a response from the state every state reform in response to demands for justice risks reinforcing the state and its utilitarian, economic logic every planned and institutionalised revolution threatens the betrayal of insurrection. Though by no means exclusive to anarchists, their/our susceptibility to them does ill. Jacques Ellul, Autopsy of Revolution (1969)Īnarchists are prone to political idol worship. Acting at the same time against and for him-to release him from his myths of money, of the nation, of work, of the state, or of socialism-from the chains he worships (gilded perhaps, but still chains).
In other words … revolution acts not only against organizations, institutions, systems, and structures, but also, and concurrently, against each member of this society, his behavior, and his beliefs. … man must refuse to be his role, and revolution must attack all roles.
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