.?n.mfifist Solutior, totfe agef 'E-"f‘l‘m‘mls gene; pamphlet T'he first thing people want from government is that it maintain the peace and administer justice. Yet governments have killed more people and seized more goods than any private criminal ever has, and today's governments threaten either to wipe out hu- Ly in a nuclear war orto submerge the world in a system of 1984-style superstates. Governmentand law enforcement actually perpetuate the conditions thatbreed crime- -poverty, racism, alienation, sexual repression. Evenas the numbers of laws, judges and jails increases, so do the rates of murder, rape, assault, robbery, burglary and larceny. Anarchists believe that if government is abo- lished the evils it causes will disappear and the evil it supposedly prevents - -antisocial behavior - -will get noworseand may evendecrease. A popular miscon- ceplion of anarchy pictures people running amok, a complete breakdown of humane and sensible behavior. This is not what anarchists aim at, since an orgy of violence would immediately lead to the restoration of government. The basic idea of anarchism is that a peacable, harmonious social system can be founded on the willingness of most people to work together without coercion. man THE FAILURE OF LAW ENFORCEMENT Law supposedly has four functions: 1) to es- tablish the rights, privileges and powers of govern- ment and to regulate the economy; 2) to control pri- vate activities suchas sex, drinking, drug-taking and gambling on the basis of moral judgments; 3) to act asanarbiter ofdisputes and an enforcer of contracts; 4) to prohibit acts that actually injure people. The firstthreekinds of law have little intrinsic value ex- cept to maintain many of the frustrations and inequ ties thatincite crime, and the forbidding and punishing of antisocial acts doesnt prevent them or help their victims. Belief in law and law-enforcement diverts attention and effort from solutions that would deal with the cause of crime. The failure of law-enforcementis dramatically demonstrated byone criminologist's estimate thatin New YorkCity in 1972 there were 300, 000 robberies andonly 20,000 arrests, Police sometimes prevent crimes andjails keepa few criminals off the streets. But thisis like trying to cure a fever with an ice pack. Government officials need crimeand will consciously orunconsciously promote it and insist that there is no sensible solution to the crime problem except more government. But each step in this direction--each new law and each new bureaucratic office --adds to the taxburden and moves us closer to a society in which all of us are under constant surveillance and totally at the mercy of an all-powerful police. Punishment, the keystone of crime-control in this society, is anutter failure. Cagedand degraded, the condemned man learns only that justice is not re- habilitationbut retaliation. The mosthumane prison system is still based on forcibly depriving people of their freedom, teaching the lesson that itis permis- sable to use force to impose one's will on others. Crime is as natural toour kind of coercive so- cietyas cirrhosis of the liver is toan alcoholic. Wes- tern civilization has for thousands of years inflicted onits childrena morality that torments the mind with fear of punishment, frustration, self-loathing, rage. Morality doesn't make people behave themselves, it creates the inner conflicts and repressed rages that provoke crime. Socially sanctioned violence provides amodeland oftena justification for criminal violence. And the U.S. economic system, which allows most money and property to accumulate in the hands of a few, rewards financial success no matter how attained and provokes and punishes the poor while protecting the rich, couldn't be better designed to generate an ever-increasing crime rate. THE ANARCHIST ALTERNATIVE It may seem hard to imagine that civilization could survive without government, butitonce seemed impossible that civilization could exist without slavery. Human nature, contrary to what many people believe, is not dangerous and in need of control, Itis sometimes argued that since manhas formed governments throughout history, both government andits abuses are natural tohumans. But the fact that people tend to rely informally on leadership does not make monarchies, oligarchies or even republics and democracies inevitable. Most of the preconditions of an anarchist socicty existed in the more unsettled arcas of North America onlya century ago. To solve their immediate problems, people decidedto surren- der some of their freedomtoa local sheriff. Only too late did they realize that giving upa little bit of free- dom s like contracting a little bit of cancer. The memoirs of old Western settlers are full of regrets for the unfettered individualism of the frontier. The lessontobe drawn is that (reedom demands a certain toughness, an insistence on self-reliance and, as the proverb has it, eternal vigilance. Anarchism doesn't promise a perfect world-- only something better that whatwe've got. The abo- lition ofthe state won't instantly transform humanity intoa race of kindly, enlightened creatures. But we can rely on the probablity that, set free, people will pursuc their interests with prudence and enough ima- ginaliontobe able to envision long-run consequences. That could be and should be enough to make this a happier world, - Libertarian Morality: The violent tyP® of human y our current methods of child- being is produced b coercive rearing. The repressive. authoritarian, practices currentlyused in many families and schools D e necessary only to condition children to live in a government-run society: Libertarian, free-formfa- B lies and schools--the open family, the Summer - hill-type school, the free ssociation of men, women and children without authoritarian control --will not produce the violent, twisted types 50 common in to- day's society. The abolition of coercive law will lead ‘o society free of sexual suppression and sexistmale domination. Without the supportof force these forms of oppression will be unable to compete with more at- tractive ideas and practices. AS sexual repression disappears, so will violeat sex crimes: ‘The Nonviolent Society: Evenin the best of 50~ cioties it1s to be expected that some Persons will still make trouble. Murder. Rape. pilfering. Attempts todefraud. How ‘o doal with these do-badders ? Man Kind's tribes, clans, bands and free communes hat developed a variety of methods for dealing with the person who harms others. Nonviolent approaches in- clude ostracism, public denunciation (especially ef- fective when, as with the Quakers, the culprit is wept over and forgiven), payments by the wrongdoer to his victims, persuasion, education, social pressure, non- compulsory therapy, the help of friends and neighbors, o ollaboration and nonviolent resistance: Tn the view of some anarchists, anyuse of force is coercive, and the evils anarchists are trying to B e teome canonlybe corrected by complete renuncia- o Tarce, but others propose & range of seli - defense methods which, the believe, are compati= ble with libertarian principles. One sube deterrentto the crirninal is fear of his victimis possible retaliation: vely only, against per- Obviously, 'freedom is U-restraint. Itis con. s3ibility of freedom to of violence to defensive measures only, The Abundant Economy: Prevajling economic Zystems, whether they call the, iali CaPitalist) use force to min ProPerty relations. Angrengs State power for any purpog o rangements, collectivigt. op make in a free society wil o Whatever economic ar. Tee-enterprise, people voluntary. There will les, like the rules of 5 made possible by tota] freedom indiv; Technology man race-- '™ will allow 21 SuPply the basic needs of the entire hy; ventoday this is possible, Toge freedo D enormous increase in creativity, inventiveness, roductivity. Man enjoys wory When itisn't alienat. '8 and he isn't coerced into it 2 Since general acceptance of anarchist ideas isa necessary precondition to a worldwide liberated so- ciety, antisocial behavior within the free community will probablybe rare. The remedies will also be in- dividualized and peculiar to each situation. In some cases, undoubtedly, a community will decide that the antisocial person was right and the community was wrong. ‘Anarchists do not believe in unalterable laws, butonlyingeneral policies. The acme of anarchism is the policy of non-invasiveness or non-coercion- Mind Your Own Business. We don't expect people to behave like saints; we expect of them simply that they leave one another alone. FROM ARCHY TO ANARCHY The crucial question is, How do we get {rom where we are to where we want to be? Basically what is needed is a change of attitudes, and the job of to- day's anarchists is to spread the idea of the stateless society by every available means. Here are some of the things they are doing: 1) Thinking about, studying and discussing an- archist ideas. Developing a new attitude toward crime, refusing to see itasa fearsome problem to be solved by more governmentpower. Tryingto see the criminalas a fellow humanunder pressure and asking themselves what he would be like in a free society. 2) Devising personal codes of conduct based on non-injury toward others. Self-discipline is the other side of the coin of self-liberation. 3) Liberating oneself. The wise anarchist does not think of himself as a liberator of his fellow men, but as one in need of liberation. The main thing an- archism offers right now isnot a new social system but an ideal of personal liberation from the attitudes and habits of authoritarian society. The new society Al will come to be when enough individuals have freed themselves. 4) After sell-liberation, organizing in groups for the liberation of society. These can begin simply s study groups for mutual education and communes for mutualaid. Such groups will help to promote the idea of freedom wherever they are formed, 5) Building regional, continental and world -wide federations of autonomous groups towork together to spread ideas of liberty, encourage self-initiative among people and oppose oppression. 6) Withdrawing support from government by everymeans. Refusingto obey laws that do not pro- hibitantisocial behavior but merely assertor enhance the power of government. The ultimate form of non. violent resistance is the general strike, whereby peo- pleinallwalks of life refuse to work until the state is dismantled. At the climax of the movie They Might Be Giant: the hero, who thinks he is the great crime -fighter Sherlock Holmes, says, "We're living in the Garden of Eden. We've never leftit. This is Paradise all around us."! Man isnot fallen andin need of control; he is as he is, and that is good enough. To discover Paradisearound us we have to give up our distrust of people, which means giving up our distrust of our- selves. . Thesepeople and others, not listed, contributed to the writing and editing of this pamphlet: Doug Benson, Dr. Hoface Naismith, Robert Shea, Joffre Stewart, Chicago; Jim Bumpas, Linda Bumpas, Mountain View, California; Robert Anton Wilson, San Francisco; Timothy J. Wheeler, Shelbyville, Indiana. The opinions expréssed in the pam.- phletare notnecessarily those of any particular contri- butor. SRAF: 713 W. Armitage, Chicago 60614; Box 4091, Mtn, View, CA94040; Box 2827, Sta. A, Edmonton, Alberta.