Download Anarchy Works PDF book by Peter Gelderloos 2010

No more talk about the old days, it’s time for something great. I want you to get out and make it work... Thom Yorke Dedicated to the wonderful people of RuinAmalia, La Revoltosa, and the Kyiv infoshop, for making anarchy work. Although this book started out as an individual project, in the end, a great many people, most of whom prefer to remain anonymous, helped make it possible through proofreading, fact-checking, recommending sources, editing, and more. To acknowledge only a small part of this help, the author would like to thank John, Jose, Vila Kula, AAAA!, L, J, and G for providing computer access throughout a year of moves, evictions, crashes, viruses, and so forth. Thanks to Jessie Dodson and Katie Clark for helping with the research on another project, that I ended up using for this book. Also thanks to C and E, for lending their passwords for free access to the databases of scholarly articles available to university students but not to the rest of us.There are hidden stories all around us, growing in abandoned villages in the mountains or vacant lots in the city, petrifying beneath our feet in the remains of societies like nothing we’ve known, whispering to us that things could be different. But the politician you know is lying to you, the manager who hires and fires you, the landlord who evicts you, the president of the bank that owns your house, the professor who grades your papers, the cop who rolls your street, the reporter who informs you, the doctor who medicates you, the husband who beats you, the mother who spanks you, the soldier who kills for you, and the social worker who fits your past and future into a folder in a filing cabinet all ask “It would be anarchy.” And the daughter who runs away from home.the bus driver on the picket line, the veteran who threw back his medal but holds on to his rifle, the boy saved from suicide by the love of his friends, the maid who must bow to those who can’t even cook for themselves, the immigrant hiking across a desert to find her family on the other side, the kid on his way to prison because he burned down a shopping mall they were building over his childhood dreams, the neighbor who cleans up the syringes from the vacant lot, hoping someone will turn it into a garden, the hitchhiker on the open road, the college dropout who gave up on career and health insurance and sometimes even food so he could write revolutionary poetry for the world, maybe all of us can feel it: our bosses and tormentors are afraid of what they would do without us, and their threat is a promise — the best parts of our lives are anarchy already.Contents of the book:Introduction Anarchy would never work 1 What exactly is anarchism? 2 A note on inspiration 4 The tricky topic of representation 7 1. Human Nature Aren’t people naturally selfish? 11 Aren’t people naturally competitive? 16 Haven’t humans always been patriarchal? 22 Aren’t people naturally warlike? 27 Aren’t domination and authority natural? 32 A broader sense of self 44 2. Decisions How will decisions be made? 48 How will decisions be enforced? 65 Who will settle disputes? 70 Meeting in the streets 72 3. Economy Without wages, what is the incentive to work? 76 Don’t people need bosses and experts? 81 Who will take out the trash? 90 Who will take care of the elderly and disabled? 92 How will people get healthcare? 94 What about education? 97What about technology? 102 How will exchange work? 108 What about people who still want a consumerist lifestyle? Ill What about building and organizing large, spread-out infrastructure? 112 How will cities work? 118 What about drought, famine, or other catastrophes? 128 Meeting our needs without keeping count 129 4. Environment What’s to stop someone from destroying the environment? 134 What about global environmental problems, like climate change? 143The only way to save the planet 148 5. Crime Who will protect us without police? 152 What about gangs and bullies? 165 What’s to stop someone from killing people? 168 What about rape, domestic violence, and other forms of social harm? 170 Beyond individual justice 178 6. Revolution How could people organized horizontally possibly overcome the state? 184 How do we know revolutionaries won’t become new authorities? 203How will communities decide to organize themselves at first? 218 How will reparations for past oppressions are worked out? 223 How will a common, anti-authoritarian, ecological ethos come about? 226 A revolution that is many revolutions 238 7. Neighboring Societies Could an anarchist society defend itself from an authoritarian neighbor? 242 What will we do about societies that remain very patriarchal, or racist? 249 What will prevent constant warfare and feuding? 251 Networks, not borders 257 8. The Future Won’t the state just reemerge over time? 260 What about other problems we can’t foresee? 264 Making anarchy work 265 It Works When We Make It Work 268 Bibliography 272