Notes on Anarchism by Noam Chomsky
Many commentators dismiss anarchism as utopian, formless, primitive, or otherwise incompatible with the realities of a complex society. One might, however, argue rather differently: that at every stage of history our concern must be to dismantle those forms of authority and oppression that survive from an era when they might have been justified in terms of the need for security or survival or economic development, but that not contribute to—rather than alleviate—material and cultural deficit. If so, there will be no doctrine of social change fixed for the present and future, nor even, necessarily, a specific and unchanging concept of the goals towards which social change should tend. Surely our understanding of the nature of man or of the range of viable social forms is so rudimentary that any far-reaching doctrine must be treated with great skepticism, just as skepticism is in order when we hear that “human nature” of “the demands of efficiency” or “the complexities of modern life” requires this or that form of oppression and autocratic rule.
This zine is printed and published by Last Word Books & Press as part of the Olympia Zine Library (OZL), an independent zine library and infoshop housed in Last Word Books. Many of our zines originally came from the shelves of the zine library, but some came from the vast and terrible internets. It is not our intention to take credit for these titles, but to make them easily accessible to the public. The sale and reproduction of the zines in our catalog help to fund the Olympia Zine Library and make available pertinent information for the public.