The Dream of Anarchists

Recently I read Sakae Osugi's works.

He was one of the most famous anarchists in Japan before World War II. He was killed by the military police in the chaos just after the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923. After his death, anarchism was almost disappeared in Japan.

He explained about anarchism as follows.

"Anarchist society is a society in which free individuals form organizations of their own free will, and these autonomous organizations form a union."

(自由なる各個人が自由合意によって一団体を形づくり、その各自由自治団体がまた自由意志によって相互の連合を謀る社会である。)

I'd like to put anarchism on the political map.

Communism and anarchism both advocate revolution, but they are opposed between emphasis on the group and emphasis on the individual. Actually they conflicted sharply with each other.

Communism is based on the proletariat as a class, and anarchism is based on laborers as individuals. Communist movements have led to autocratic states, whereas anarchists have failed to take power through lack of organization

Libertarians and anarchists both advocate individualism. I, myself, am conservative, and I agree with the kind of individualism advocated by anarchists. But I thought that an anarchist society was impossible and just the dream of anarchists.

When I read "How to Become a Hacker" by Eric Raymond, I found that the dream of anarchists came true in the hacker society. He wrote as follows.

There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term 'hacker'. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers run Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work.

Hackers solve problems and build things, and they believe in freedom and voluntary mutual help. To be accepted as a hacker, you have to behave as though you have this kind of attitude yourself.

Hackers are naturally anti-authoritarian. Anyone who can give you orders can stop you from solving whatever problem you're being fascinated by — and, given the way authoritarian minds work, will generally find some appallingly stupid reason to do so. So the authoritarian attitude has to be fought wherever you find it, lest it smother you and other hackers.

This is the dream of anarchists, is it? They made a community of their own free will, and expanded the Internet and UNIX world. I think that Sakae Osugi would be a hacker in his era, even if he didn't know a computer.

I found another dream of anarchists, here.