Cindy Milstein Quotes

Anarchism appears to be the only form of that speaks to the times and people's dreams.

Temporarily closing off the streets during direct actions does provide momentary spaces in which to practice democratic process, and even offers a sense of empowerment, but such events leave power for power's sake, like the very pavement beneath our feet, unchanged. Only when the serial protest mode is escalated into a struggle for popular or horizontal power can we create cracks in the figurative concrete, thereby opening up ways to challenge capitalism, nation-states, and other systems of domination.

Power needs to be forever linked to freedom; freedom needs to be the limit placed on power.

The equality of unequals isn't simply about materials needs. It is a sensibility to guide how humans can justly apply equal worth to the rich nonequivalency of differentiation.

Savoring play is just as much part of a revolutionary impulse within anarchism as is struggle—and both are essential to qualitative freedom.

Anarchism is not just an ideal; it is not merely a thought experiment. Nor is it a blueprint or rigid plan. Its reconstructive stance dreams up ways to embody its ethics, and then tries to implement them.

Coming to anarchism, taking up the mantle of imagining a world beyond hierarchy, is like a lightbulb going off inside one's head. It first offers a sense of one's own empowerment and liberation, and then, hopefully, a sense of collective social power and freedom. There is something euphoric in casting off, even if only on the level of personal beliefs initially, the idea that hierarchy is somehow a given, and that one has to abide by its rules. It's a life-altering leap when one truly uproots the belief within oneself that, say, racism or states are normal and necessary. The move toward increasingly nonhierarchical mind-sets, relations, and institutions opens up a whole world of possibility—at least as a start, within oneself. The first act might be critical thought, a less estranged relationship with oneself and others, or the reappropriation of imagination as a step toward a nonalienated society.

Accountable, democratic structures of our own making, in short, provide the foundation for trust, since the power to decide is both transparent and ever-amenable to scrutiny.

Anarchists attempt to find harmony in dissonance, like instruments in an orchestra.

What gets forgotten in relation to direct action mobilizations is the promise implicit in their own structure: that power not only needs to be contested; it must also be constituted anew in liberatory and egalitarian forms. This entails taking directly democratic processes seriously—not simply as a tactic to organize protests but as the very way we organize society, specifically the political realm.

As a practice, direct democracy will have to be learned. As a principle, it will have to undergird all decision making. As an institution, it will have to be fought for. It will not appear magically overnight.

Any vision of a free society, if it is to be truly democratic, must of course be worked out by all of us—first in movements, and later, in our communities and federations.

Anarchism doesn't concentrate on just the economic, political, cultural, psychological, or other spheres. Nor does it separate any single issue from its relation to other issues, even if one personally places emphasis on a particular area. It concerns itself with everything that makes people human, including the nonhuman world. The work of anarchism takes place everywhere, every day, from within the body politic to the body itself.

Capitalism has indicated that humans might be able to achieve a postscarcity society—a world in which everyone has enough of what they need to sustain life. But despite grocery stores and dumpsters overflowing with food, billions of people go hungry; despite labor-saving technologies, most people work more for less; despite breakthroughs in health care, many die needlessly. Meanwhile, consumption has been transformed into a barometer of one's worth, a never-ending quest for happiness via commodity choices. And it's always premised on what one has to exchange for that abundance, or else it's denied.

Anarchism believes in everyone's ability to take part in thinking through and acting on, in compassionate ways, the world they inhabit. It maintains that everyone deserves to shape and share in society.