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Anarchism
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It was from this understanding that modern Anarchism was born and draws its moral force. Only freedom can inspire men to great things and bring about intellectual and social transformations. The art of ruling men has never been the art of educating and inspiring them to a new shaping of their lives. Dreary compulsion has at its command only lifeless drill, which smothers any vital initiative at its birth and brings forth only subjects, not free men. Freedom is the very essence of life, the impelling force in all intellectual and social development, the creator of every new outlook for the future of mankind. The liberation of man from economic exploitation and from intellectual, social and political oppression, which finds its highest expression in the philosophy of Anarchism, is the first prerequisite for the evolution of a higher social culture and a new humanity.
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Bill Christopher, jack Robinson, Philip Sansom and Peter Turner: "Anarchism is a philosophy of freedom. It is a body of revolutionary ideas which reconciles, as no other revolutionary concept does, the necessity for individual freedom woth the demands of society. It is a commune-ist philosophy which starts from the individual and works upwards, instead of starting from the State and working downwards. Social structure in an anarchist society would be carefully and consciusly kept to a minimum and would be strictly functional; where organisation is necessary, it would be maintained, but there would be no organisation for its own sake. This would help to prevent the hardening of organisations into instututions - the hard core of government." (published in Freedom in 1970, included in The State is Your Enemy)
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Anarchism had a long history in Spain, going back to the 1830s, with a strong syndicalist movement among the workers. The main anarchist force in Spain was the C.N.T. (National Confederation of Workers).
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Anarchism has a broader series of definitions of the state, varying from the bourgeois state formation of army, bureaucracy and representative parliament through to an idea of the state as a monopoly of violence. Left wing anarchists disagree amongst themselves if democratic workers councils with a monopoly of violence constitutes a state or not.
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Anarchism ... means different things to different believers. Anarchists do not hold common views on subjects such as desirable levels of community cooperation and the role of large industry in society. Another matter of continuing debate is whether anarchy is an end unto itself or simply the best means to a better government. To all anarchists, though, anarchy is the best refuge from political dogma and authority. And most anarchists agree that anarchism begins with the notion that people are inherently good, or even perfect, and that external authority — laws, governments, institutions, and so forth — limits human potential. External authority, they suggest, brings a corruption of the innocent human spirit and a ceiling on achievement.
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A transitional society to Anarchism isn't necessary. The idea touted by Leninists was that the State would fade away after years of the harshest dictatorship -- originally claimed to be only as much as was necessary to save the infant Soviet Republic but which lasted for seventy years until the people got fed up with it. All that faded away was people rash enough to want to go forward to free socialism. The prospect of 'withering away of the State' after years of strengthening it is illogical. Leninists justify this by saying the State is only that part of the State apparatus which favours the capitalist class by suppressing the working class. This might fade away (though it did not do so in the years of State Communism). What cannot fade away is the rest of the State apparatus, unless the State is destroyed root and branch.
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Anarchism