Anarchism without adjectives: not a band name, but a label
q: what is anarchy without adjectives?
a: if you’re an anarchist, you’ve likely heard a whole bunch of labels—BashBack aligned, prefigurative, egoist, postleftist, anarchonihilist, anarchoqueer, collectivist, primitivist, you know them, you love them—and then tried to explain your views with this level of specificity to a friend who’s not anarchist. and they have probably done one of two things: pointed out the fact that you used a big word and found it funny, or furtively Googled it.
anarchism without adjectives is an attempt to solve that problem.
when people self-describe as anarchist without adjectives, they mean that they hold the bare minimum of anarchist beliefs: disagreement with both capitalism and government. their views on social justice, on the role of desire in anarchism, on how decisions are made, on their comfort level with technology, and on the relationship of anarchism to leftism are not explored in their label. while they might have thought this through, and it might come up in a longer discussion about their politics, they aren’t out there announcing that they’re an insurrectional post-leftist and newly anarchonihilist with intersectional postciv tendencies.
this has a few advantages to it, of course; it makes it easy to discuss anarchism with the anarcho-curious, meaning that people don’t have to learn what every school of anarchism is before they even join their first affinity group. (i personally did not know what postleftism was when initially getting radicalized, which made me sound like an ML, as I would refer to anarchism as a leftist movement. stuff like this happens.) it also reduces infighting; often people have similar views, yet one person uses the egoist label and another considers themself more collectivist, and that causes drama. but…like any political thing, it isn’t universally positive.
If you answered yes to the poll above, you know where I’m going here. But if not—a certain subset of rightist libertarians, who believe in capitalism without a state (an incoherent position, as one needs a state to keep capitalism going), label themselves anarcho-capitalist. And often, this crowd self-describes as anarchist without adjectives. Meaning that using this label is likely to lean to one being assumed libertarian rather than anarchist.
This means that, rather than using the label of anarchism without adjectives, some anarchist community members use anarchocommunist as a catch-all for people who believe in state abolition an anti-capitalism, without identifying with a specific subset of anarchism. Of course, isn’t a perfect solution, but gets at the initial intent of anarchism without adjectives. That said, this problem is a relatively new one…and there’s no shortage of opinionated anarchists in the comments here. What do yall think about anarchism without adjectives? What labels, if any, should people use instead?
Just putting in my two cents' worth. The idea of "anarchism without modifiers" has been around for a long time, but can't really work, because alot of people who call themselves anarchists just don't agree on fundamental principles, and don't have the same goals, or care about the same things.
Some anarchists want to organize the working class, some believe in a free market (which they say is not the same thing as capitalism, some get involved in whatever the hot social movement is at the moment, some think it's OK to vote (if an issue is really, really important), some believe in anarchist federations, while others can't stand that idea, and prefer affinity groups.
Some believe in planning for an "anarchist society", whatever that would mean, while others believe there can't possibly be such a plan or blueprint. Some believe in overthrowing the existing power structure by force, while others believe that would only create a different power structure, and prefer "evolution" - changing people's minds through persuasion and example. Etc., etc.
Debating about the meaning of anarchism is like debating about religion - in the end, people will just believe whatever suits them. After all these years, I've come to see anarchism as a continuous process whereby I challenge any form of hierarchy or coercion that seems particularly oppressive in my life, and occasionally in other peoples' lives, as well. Much more can be accomplished when we actually listen to each other and engage in discussion, rather than simply hiding inside our own ideological bubbles.