I have a question that I have been wrestling with; would it not be more effective to call it "Free Association" and remove the Anarchist term, at least in the primer? My thinking is that you let people onboard with less preconceptions, because the word anarchy has a lot of misinformation tied to it amongst the barely literate masses.
This can be a challenge, and for that reason my last series avoided the word anarchist to focus on such concepts without such labels, because I felt it was a better approach for those who might be interested in its topics and story, but not as interested in political philosophy.
‘Free association’ is a great term and concept central to anarchism, but since this article focused on the ‘no rulers’ part of anarchism, and since it was Tolkien who used the word anarchism (as we’ll see in the next article) to describe this, it felt more accurate to use that word in this context.
My next few planned articles also use the word because I think it is the best one for the purpose and those posts, but most of the others after that will focus on other issues where the word may not be used at all. However, whether or when to use it or a different term is a topic debated among anarchists, and I personally like the idea of trying to reclaim it as a positive word.
I had an experience with a person I was close with, was intelligent, educated, and had a doctorate in philosophy and was used to defining words before argumenting a point, so that we could argue from the same starting point. Sadly, I spent 30 minutes arguing about what the definition of the word is, and never got to sialogue the connected idea. We drifted apart over time.
The indoctrination was so deep, that in spite of attempting to sidestep and use "free association" in its place, her mind was already stuck on "chaos".
My fear is that, this was an educated leftist, if I couldn't establish an honest dialogue here, then what chance would I have with a mind-controlled cultist on the right, or an opportunistic fence sitting moderate whose ideologies survive through word manipulation; like calling immigrants "aliens" or "illegals" until it gets normalized and then the conversation changes shape.
I also feel like the labelling itself has a grouping effect that can be positive or negative. Positive in the feeling of community, but negative in that most people will be wary of wearing the label, unless they become a more radical member (fingers crossed). The middle ground between Anarcho-curious and Anarcho-radical is where we lose them, and they brush us off because the term has history they are aware that exists, and they conflate that with a losing idea, since (in there minds) Anarchism has never won and been implemented (I know thats not historically correct, but I do think it is the "feeling" people who don't know have.
It is comparable to promoting a policy vs promoting a politician. One is ideas and concepts, maybe some facts, maybe some hyperbole. But the politician has a face, height, skin color, accent, speech behaviors, and a million other factors not related to policy that the politician is judged on, which turns it into a popularity contest on some level.
I do love the idea of pulling Tolkien into the fold, that will go so far in onboarding people and winning a popularity contest (unfortunate fact of life, Im afraid).
And finally, the essence of anarchism is also the reason that anarchist thought is so wide-ranging (by design), which then again, makes the label more damaging than helpful, I feel. As an example, maybe someone knows a person who claims to be an an-cap. Likely that is the only anarchist that person can think of, and therefore everything we say to them is painted with the brush of the an-cap that they have personal history with.
Anyways, thank you for you time, I am not criticising your choice, and I loved the article. I just wanted to share my thoughts and my singular objection. I feel like the range of possible anarchism and the small amount of promoters of the ideology makes the term both meaningless and harmful to the cause. Additionally, I would not consider myself an ally of an an-cap, and so even if we did agree to use the term, we still need to qualify it with further description. Therefore, I believe we should just lay claim to a more marketable term, in an age of limited attention.
Thanks for sharing that story and perspective. I definitely see the problems you do, and that is why I try to approach these topics from different angles, most of which don't use the word anarchy at all, but I also sometimes want to directly focus on the word to challenge such misunderstandings.
I also had a discussion recently where I couldn't even get someone to agree on a definition of hierarchy and anti-hierarchy, but made some progress by switching it to rulership which was less ambiguous, because they either believed they were necessary or not. They didn't end up agreeing with me, but it did help skip getting stuck on definitions and make the disagreement more clear, and I hope showed the strength of the anarchist position to others.
This has led me to try to focus first on getting the other person to define terms when I'm in personal conversation with them, and ask them what they would call something without rulers, or decentralised, or voluntary (depending on the context).
I've been working on a few books for a few years now, writing occasional articles as draft chapters, and most of them won't use the word anarchy at all, but one definitely will. Maybe those that don't use it will get read by people who wouldn't read the other one, but I think that one has its place and purpose too. Having said this - much to my own surprise - one of my most popular articles, which I thought would lead to me losing subscribers, has anarchism in the title.
Hey, PR, this is a great anarchist primer! I read a book recently that told about how people, mainly in Europe, actually lived much more sustainably in the Middle Ages than they do now. I think one of the things you could write about would be how the concentration of population in cities tracked with capitalism and how we could have cities in an anarchist political system. You could talk about large mutual aid systems, co-ops, intentional communities, and other examples. Thanks for an amazing piece here, and I look forward to reading more of your work!
This is a very helpful breakdown on property. I find thinking of property not as an object helps — who are we to diminish land that has existed for hundreds of millions of years to “property”? Rather it describes social relations. Property is the relationship between people with respect to an object — there is a multiplicity of such relationships including the relation of “private property”, which itself creates social scarcity as it is a right to exclude all others.
It is worth noting that for ordinary people even then the right to private property never really exists. Every state retains the right to forcibly require such land.
I suspect it grew out of the 'fencing' necessary in modern farming, (keeping crops from being eaten, keeping domesticated animals both caged and safe from predators). Once they did this it created a sense of ownership of that within the fence. And an un-natural idea of 'owning nature' evolved.
The other (side) issue with enclosure economics is the way it distorts our relationship with the natural world. It creates an unhealthy outlook of possession, separation, and supremacy. We think we can do with it as we please. Our capacity for self-delusion does the rest.
I somewhat recently read a synopsis of the history of modern debt. It started out I think in Babylonian times when debt with high interest rates was issued to farmers or merchants who would go about their trades and pay off the debt with their profits. In the case that a borrower couldn’t pay the debt after five years, the debt was erased. Do you have any opinions/evaluations on this early use of monetary systems? Does this system of lending, or money in general, have any place in the anarchist economy?
Thanks for your reply. I know a little bit about Graeber’s The Dawn of Everything from citations from other authors and friends who have read it. The resource I had found was from Michael Hudson.
I have been an anarchist for quite some time, but I didn’t realize until relatively recently that there was a whole field of thought that matched the ideal that I had in mind. I’m working my way into the theory now. I appreciate your contributions.
A good book to read on the history of debt and the creation of money is Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 years. He covers that period quite well. I think his argument is quite compelling that money began as debt - originally religious debt - and that currency, barter and trade came later. This is a short video overview - https://youtu.be/A2jgxJ53STY
There is a form of anarchism known as Mutualism (a kind of market socialism) that does allow for the existence of money, although sometimes in the form of a limited currency like labour vouchers, and primarily to determine the distribution of needs. See - https://youtu.be/cj_sL9bK6IE
However, most Anarchists are anti-money at all and see it as not only unnecessary, but harmful. Here is a short video intro to that idea - https://youtu.be/USjI-ttKrPw
" you control what you actually use..." I would only point out that this is dangerously close to Locke's notion of how property is created in the first place. I understand you making a different point about usufruct, however, even framing "use as control" is problematical. The usufruct relations between different groups of indigenous people frequently fell apart, they were by no means stable arrangements. For example, Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg or Chaubunagungamaug in Webster, MA has often been rendered "You stay on your side, we will stay on ours, then there will be no problems." More literally, "Fishing Place at the Boundaries—Neutral Meeting Grounds". Anyway, I am sure you see the point. In order to create a commons, even the idea of personal control has to be relinquished.
That's a fair point - it's amazing how much hierarchal and ownership language we use without realising it, even when trying to speak about the opposite!
Yes, we are so conditioned by the Roman concept of absolute property. That was one of the things that annoyed the colonists so much about Native people. Their native neighbors, according to all accounts, just helped themselves to axes and so on, or when gifts were made, they would be recovered if and when the originator of the gift needed to use it--giving rise to such tropes as "thieving Indians" and "Indian Giver," etc. I think what you are reaching for here is an idea of stewardship, but even here, this problematically founded on biblical ideas of humans being the stewards of nature, dominating nature. Bookchin argues that our ideas of dominating nature arise from humans dominating each other. This is the origin of hierarchy. Once it start, it takes on a life of its own through privilege. And of course, a Buddhist, I recognize that problem to lie in taking conventions of "self" and "other" to represent absolute ontological categories, rather than the transactional tokens they actually are. I would even add that 19th century anarchists really did not know how to deal with these issues at all—they were to wrapped up in class and capitalism, and also not suspicious enough of the suicidal capitalist mode of production in general. So now, the world is basically a 99.9 percent capitalist economy, with production largely performed by free labor for private capital.
I avoid the word 'stewardship' for that reason. It implies explicitly that it is 'ours' to exploit. It still sets as 'masters', which I consider unhealthy.
Though of course, the area inside a commons does get 'managed'. I guess we just need new words.
Very well laid out argument.
I have a question that I have been wrestling with; would it not be more effective to call it "Free Association" and remove the Anarchist term, at least in the primer? My thinking is that you let people onboard with less preconceptions, because the word anarchy has a lot of misinformation tied to it amongst the barely literate masses.
This can be a challenge, and for that reason my last series avoided the word anarchist to focus on such concepts without such labels, because I felt it was a better approach for those who might be interested in its topics and story, but not as interested in political philosophy.
‘Free association’ is a great term and concept central to anarchism, but since this article focused on the ‘no rulers’ part of anarchism, and since it was Tolkien who used the word anarchism (as we’ll see in the next article) to describe this, it felt more accurate to use that word in this context.
My next few planned articles also use the word because I think it is the best one for the purpose and those posts, but most of the others after that will focus on other issues where the word may not be used at all. However, whether or when to use it or a different term is a topic debated among anarchists, and I personally like the idea of trying to reclaim it as a positive word.
https://freedomnews.org.uk/2026/02/01/radical-reprint-whos-afraid-of-the-a-word/
I appreciate your response.
I had an experience with a person I was close with, was intelligent, educated, and had a doctorate in philosophy and was used to defining words before argumenting a point, so that we could argue from the same starting point. Sadly, I spent 30 minutes arguing about what the definition of the word is, and never got to sialogue the connected idea. We drifted apart over time.
The indoctrination was so deep, that in spite of attempting to sidestep and use "free association" in its place, her mind was already stuck on "chaos".
My fear is that, this was an educated leftist, if I couldn't establish an honest dialogue here, then what chance would I have with a mind-controlled cultist on the right, or an opportunistic fence sitting moderate whose ideologies survive through word manipulation; like calling immigrants "aliens" or "illegals" until it gets normalized and then the conversation changes shape.
I also feel like the labelling itself has a grouping effect that can be positive or negative. Positive in the feeling of community, but negative in that most people will be wary of wearing the label, unless they become a more radical member (fingers crossed). The middle ground between Anarcho-curious and Anarcho-radical is where we lose them, and they brush us off because the term has history they are aware that exists, and they conflate that with a losing idea, since (in there minds) Anarchism has never won and been implemented (I know thats not historically correct, but I do think it is the "feeling" people who don't know have.
It is comparable to promoting a policy vs promoting a politician. One is ideas and concepts, maybe some facts, maybe some hyperbole. But the politician has a face, height, skin color, accent, speech behaviors, and a million other factors not related to policy that the politician is judged on, which turns it into a popularity contest on some level.
I do love the idea of pulling Tolkien into the fold, that will go so far in onboarding people and winning a popularity contest (unfortunate fact of life, Im afraid).
And finally, the essence of anarchism is also the reason that anarchist thought is so wide-ranging (by design), which then again, makes the label more damaging than helpful, I feel. As an example, maybe someone knows a person who claims to be an an-cap. Likely that is the only anarchist that person can think of, and therefore everything we say to them is painted with the brush of the an-cap that they have personal history with.
Anyways, thank you for you time, I am not criticising your choice, and I loved the article. I just wanted to share my thoughts and my singular objection. I feel like the range of possible anarchism and the small amount of promoters of the ideology makes the term both meaningless and harmful to the cause. Additionally, I would not consider myself an ally of an an-cap, and so even if we did agree to use the term, we still need to qualify it with further description. Therefore, I believe we should just lay claim to a more marketable term, in an age of limited attention.
Power to the people!
Thanks for sharing that story and perspective. I definitely see the problems you do, and that is why I try to approach these topics from different angles, most of which don't use the word anarchy at all, but I also sometimes want to directly focus on the word to challenge such misunderstandings.
I also had a discussion recently where I couldn't even get someone to agree on a definition of hierarchy and anti-hierarchy, but made some progress by switching it to rulership which was less ambiguous, because they either believed they were necessary or not. They didn't end up agreeing with me, but it did help skip getting stuck on definitions and make the disagreement more clear, and I hope showed the strength of the anarchist position to others.
This has led me to try to focus first on getting the other person to define terms when I'm in personal conversation with them, and ask them what they would call something without rulers, or decentralised, or voluntary (depending on the context).
I've been working on a few books for a few years now, writing occasional articles as draft chapters, and most of them won't use the word anarchy at all, but one definitely will. Maybe those that don't use it will get read by people who wouldn't read the other one, but I think that one has its place and purpose too. Having said this - much to my own surprise - one of my most popular articles, which I thought would lead to me losing subscribers, has anarchism in the title.
Hey, PR, this is a great anarchist primer! I read a book recently that told about how people, mainly in Europe, actually lived much more sustainably in the Middle Ages than they do now. I think one of the things you could write about would be how the concentration of population in cities tracked with capitalism and how we could have cities in an anarchist political system. You could talk about large mutual aid systems, co-ops, intentional communities, and other examples. Thanks for an amazing piece here, and I look forward to reading more of your work!
This is a very helpful breakdown on property. I find thinking of property not as an object helps — who are we to diminish land that has existed for hundreds of millions of years to “property”? Rather it describes social relations. Property is the relationship between people with respect to an object — there is a multiplicity of such relationships including the relation of “private property”, which itself creates social scarcity as it is a right to exclude all others.
It is worth noting that for ordinary people even then the right to private property never really exists. Every state retains the right to forcibly require such land.
Excellent article, thank you for your thoughtful work.
I've taken to calling it Enclosure Economics.
I suspect it grew out of the 'fencing' necessary in modern farming, (keeping crops from being eaten, keeping domesticated animals both caged and safe from predators). Once they did this it created a sense of ownership of that within the fence. And an un-natural idea of 'owning nature' evolved.
The other (side) issue with enclosure economics is the way it distorts our relationship with the natural world. It creates an unhealthy outlook of possession, separation, and supremacy. We think we can do with it as we please. Our capacity for self-delusion does the rest.
I somewhat recently read a synopsis of the history of modern debt. It started out I think in Babylonian times when debt with high interest rates was issued to farmers or merchants who would go about their trades and pay off the debt with their profits. In the case that a borrower couldn’t pay the debt after five years, the debt was erased. Do you have any opinions/evaluations on this early use of monetary systems? Does this system of lending, or money in general, have any place in the anarchist economy?
Thanks for your reply. I know a little bit about Graeber’s The Dawn of Everything from citations from other authors and friends who have read it. The resource I had found was from Michael Hudson.
I have been an anarchist for quite some time, but I didn’t realize until relatively recently that there was a whole field of thought that matched the ideal that I had in mind. I’m working my way into the theory now. I appreciate your contributions.
A good book to read on the history of debt and the creation of money is Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 years. He covers that period quite well. I think his argument is quite compelling that money began as debt - originally religious debt - and that currency, barter and trade came later. This is a short video overview - https://youtu.be/A2jgxJ53STY
There is a form of anarchism known as Mutualism (a kind of market socialism) that does allow for the existence of money, although sometimes in the form of a limited currency like labour vouchers, and primarily to determine the distribution of needs. See - https://youtu.be/cj_sL9bK6IE
However, most Anarchists are anti-money at all and see it as not only unnecessary, but harmful. Here is a short video intro to that idea - https://youtu.be/USjI-ttKrPw
" you control what you actually use..." I would only point out that this is dangerously close to Locke's notion of how property is created in the first place. I understand you making a different point about usufruct, however, even framing "use as control" is problematical. The usufruct relations between different groups of indigenous people frequently fell apart, they were by no means stable arrangements. For example, Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg or Chaubunagungamaug in Webster, MA has often been rendered "You stay on your side, we will stay on ours, then there will be no problems." More literally, "Fishing Place at the Boundaries—Neutral Meeting Grounds". Anyway, I am sure you see the point. In order to create a commons, even the idea of personal control has to be relinquished.
That's a fair point - it's amazing how much hierarchal and ownership language we use without realising it, even when trying to speak about the opposite!
Yes, we are so conditioned by the Roman concept of absolute property. That was one of the things that annoyed the colonists so much about Native people. Their native neighbors, according to all accounts, just helped themselves to axes and so on, or when gifts were made, they would be recovered if and when the originator of the gift needed to use it--giving rise to such tropes as "thieving Indians" and "Indian Giver," etc. I think what you are reaching for here is an idea of stewardship, but even here, this problematically founded on biblical ideas of humans being the stewards of nature, dominating nature. Bookchin argues that our ideas of dominating nature arise from humans dominating each other. This is the origin of hierarchy. Once it start, it takes on a life of its own through privilege. And of course, a Buddhist, I recognize that problem to lie in taking conventions of "self" and "other" to represent absolute ontological categories, rather than the transactional tokens they actually are. I would even add that 19th century anarchists really did not know how to deal with these issues at all—they were to wrapped up in class and capitalism, and also not suspicious enough of the suicidal capitalist mode of production in general. So now, the world is basically a 99.9 percent capitalist economy, with production largely performed by free labor for private capital.
I avoid the word 'stewardship' for that reason. It implies explicitly that it is 'ours' to exploit. It still sets as 'masters', which I consider unhealthy.
Though of course, the area inside a commons does get 'managed'. I guess we just need new words.
"wardens of the commons" I suppose.