Anarchism and Nonviolence: Time for a "Complementarity of Tactics"

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Suverans2's picture

Very good article, IMO.

Critical voices regularly chastise anarchists without indicating that they fully understand what anarchism actually is.

Anarchy. ...At its best it pertains to a society made orderly by good manners rather than law, in which each person produces according to his powers and receives according to his needs, and at its worst, the word pertains to a terroristic resistance of all present government and social order. ~ Black's Law Dictionary, Sixth Edition (c.1991), page 84

So, according to Black's Law Dictionary, “at best” anarchy is communism [“To each according to their need, from each according to their ability.” ~ Karl Marx] and at its worst it is terrorism. All in favor of “anarchy”, in either form, as defined by Black's Law Dictionary, raise your hands.

As we can all plainly see by that horrible definition, in order to claim any word for our own, i.e. use of it, we must give, along with it, our succinct definition of the word, if it is our desire to be understood by the largest number of individuals. One can easily see that Randall was correct in the above quoted assessment by looking at just a few definitions for the word “anarchism”. (Source: http://public.onelook.com/?w=anarchism&ls=a )