Anarchism and Its Aspirations

Cindy Milstein
AK Press and the Institute for Anarchist Studies (2010)
Reviewed by Deric Shannon

Contemporary introductions to anarchism are rare considering the veritable explosion of interest in anarchism since the Battle of Seattle (when a loose coalition of trade unionists, environmentalists, anarchists, animal advocates, and many others shut down the World Trade Organization’s conference in 1999). Rarer still, are introductions written by anarchist contemporaries active within the anarchist milieu, building anarchist infrastructure, and within social movements. And becoming an almost extinct species, anarchist works written in plain and accessible language are needed now more than ever, with the world in financial and ecological crises with impacts that are potentially devastating if we don’t start taking alternatives to domination seriously.

In this backdrop, Milstein gives us Anarchism and Its Aspirations, a short introductory book on anarchism intended for beginners to anarchist ideas, but suitable for those who have been anarchists for years. Indeed, I’ve been an active anarchist for over fifteen years now and certainly found pieces of the book engaging and unique. Milstein includes an eye towards anarchism’s history, but her book is written more as a collection of popular theory and education than a dry historical analysis of anarchism.

Milstein, quite correctly, asserts that anarchism is set “apart from any other political philosophy” because it serves as a “generalized critique of hierarchy and domination” (39). Indeed, for anarchists, social change is not reducible to just smashing the state and capital (though those are necessary components). Rather, anarchists argue that no form of institutionalized domination, coercion, or control is necessary (or desirable) for human social organization. While other political philosophies, even some with claims to being “radical”, seem to reduce social change to overturning the structures that we live under, anarchists seek to reconfigure the totality of hierarchical social relations. “It means transforming the whole of life” (40).

Thus, Milstein suggests that anarchism “revolves around an ethical compass” (47). Political action, then, is not just based on what is expedient. Rather, to Milstein, anarchists should be asking themselves, “What’s the right thing to do?” (47). Along with the most revolutionary forms of feminism, then, Milstein argues that a consistent anarchist political practice means that engaging in political projects—indeed, engaging in life—should be a self-reflexive and prefigurative project. That is, if we wish to have an egalitarian future based on popular participation, our movements should reflect those values. And if we wish to see a world based on compassion, mutual aid, and respect for difference, then we should live our lives in ways that advance those ethical commitments. This widens anarchism beyond the instrumental politics of other radical perspectives (like most forms of Marxism, for example) to also include a commitment to affective and expressive politics.

Another important extension in Milstein’s book is an anarchist reconsideration of the communist maxim: From each according to ability, to each according to need. Rather, Milstein argues that anarchism adds the dimensions of desires and passions so that the phrase might be better stated as “From each according to their abilities and passions, to each according to their needs and desires” (53). Thus we can reconceptualize economics from the rationalistic and economistic natures of private ownership, wage slavery, profit-seeking, and usury and imagine (and enact!) a system of resource-creation and distribution based on qualitatively different values. This statement inherently points out the contradictions in liberal arguments about wage work as “choice” and demonstrates that there is only a difference in quantity between owning someone (slavery) and renting someone (wage work). We anarchists are for a qualitatively different future.

It bears repeating. We need more reconsiderations of social organization and life without domination. The world we have inherited (and in which many of us silently obey) is a world based on control, authority, and property. This includes not only the ways we have come to dominate one another, but also the ways we have come to dominate and exploit the entire non-human world as if it is devoid of value outside of human use. Milstein’s book is an excellent starting point for people who want to think outside of the bland, boring, and violent status quo—and, with any luck, will help in the final push to rid ourselves of these fundamentally absurd and confining social relations.