ECOLOGY OF EVERYDAY LIFE
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translation of the term, without rule, which reduces anarchism to a rejection of
any kind of social, economic,
or governmental organization. Llowever,
anarchism has a far more nuanced history that includes a variety of complex
interpretations of exactly what without rule means. For instance, while many
anarchists agree on the need to abolish the state, not all agree that all forms of
governance should be abolished. In turn, while most anarchists agree that
capitalism should be transcended, there exist a variety of interpretations
regarding the role of production and labor in creating the new society.
Questions regarding what kind of non-statist governance, or what kind of
non-capitalist economic system to adopt, remain to be sorted out by anarchists
today.
Beginning in the 13th century with the Brethren of the Free Spirit,
through to the social anarchists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and
finally resurfacing in the counter-culture of the 1960s and 1970s, the anarchist
impulse has continued to offer a vision of society based on a sensual and
social understanding of the potentialities of human nature and desire. like
liberalism, the social tradition finds its roots within the womb of the old society,
within the Middle Ages of Europe. But while liberalism was marked by a
capitalist response to the breakdown of the feudal order, the early pre-anarchist
and anarchist impulse represents a response that was
overwhelmingly
anti-capitalist. In turn, whereas most liberal theorists condoned the emergence
of the nation-state within Europe and North America, many early anarchists
opposed the formation of the state in general.
As early as the thirteenth century, Medieval socialists expressed a nascent
anarchist impulse. During this time, there developed a series of popular sects
ranging from religious and ascetic, to secular and hedonistic. One sect in
particular, the Brethren of file Free Spirit, was marked by an undeniably
pre-anarchist impulse. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the
Brethren of the Free Spirit formed a loose confederation of sects in the
Rhineland of central Germany.1 Resisting institutions of class in general, the
Brethren of the Free Spirit appeared primarily in towns marked by the struggle
between the artisan class and the rising class of bourgeois patricians. The Free
Spirit maintained that “a handmaiden or serf should sell their master’s goods
without his permission, and should refuse to pay tithes to the Church.”2
Since the Brethren of the Free Spirit asserted that the Holy Spirit dwelled
within each person, they advised that grace should be derived from the
individual rather than from the Church. Promoting a hedonistic way of life, the
Brethren of the Free Spirit encouraged the pleasures of sumptuous food, dress,
and sexual promiscuity. Their emphasis on sensuality represents a striking
departure from other similar pre-anarchist Medieval sects which merely
promoted a kind of happiness derived from adherence to an ascetic fife. The