Anarchism is a diverse movement with a long history. There are many routes into anarchism; socialists and greens who reject the state, liberals who apply their liberalism consistently, local traditions of dissent and resistance, experiencing abuse of authority by bosses and politicians, cultural critique, reading anarchist theory, and the countless other ways we all ended up where we are right now. These different origins all leave a mark on our ideas and our practices, and we all have our own preferences and ideological hang-ups. Every anarchist carries a slightly different anarchism within them, which also implies a slightly different communism, or a collectivism, or a mutualism, or perhaps a rejection of any of the old economic ideas in favour of something entirely new.
This feeds into a diversity of organisational forms, tactics, and broad strategies. Syndicalists who anchor their efforts in the workplace. Insurrectionaries who prefer direct attack against state and capital. Municipalists who are building a new world in the shell of the old in their neighbourhoods. Countercultural anarchists who attempt to live as free as they can in the here and now. Philosophical anarchists who do cultural and education work for a better world in the far future. And even within each branch of anarchism there are important differences between their members.
This diversity is an inherent part of anarchism. Anarchism has always respected the ability of each individual to organise with their peers based on their own experiences, conditions, capabilities, and desires, and so has always accepted that different people will have different ideas, build different organisations, and follow different strategies. Anarchism has always held that organising both along and across these lines of difference will result in a society that better serves its members, rather than a homogeneous society built on trying to suppress diversity and impose a one-size-fits-all solution.
As an example of this, someone may need to adopt an anarchism that puts an emphasis on dropping out of society because society is so hostile to them that staying within it is excruciating. That position makes it far harder for them to do the kind of organising that requires being well-connected to mainstream society, like workplace or community organising. Attempting to apply a strict syndicalist or municipalist approach to anarchism would only result in frustration for them, and likely not be effective regardless of the merit of syndicalism or municipalism. But perhaps they are well placed to maintain countercultural spaces, launch acts of insurrection, or reach for new horizons of anarchism in the spaces not yet controlled by the dominant culture.
On the flip side to this, someone who is well-embedded in their community, local traditions of organising or resistance is unlikely to be able to easily remove themselves from that position even if they tried. They have networks of solidarity that they rely on, and people who rely on them. Building on those traditions and attempting to push them in a more radical direction is probably the optimal thing for them to do. But the very social links that open some avenues for radical action also may close some avenues for insurrection or countercultural activity, regardless of the merits of those approaches.
In the above examples it is clear that each anarchist should take very different approaches to organising and tactics based on their particular context and strengths. By embracing a diversity of tactics we can better serve anarchism as a whole by doing different things as and where we can. Anarchists have different inclinations, exist in different spaces, and will have built up different skills and networks, all of which would be squandered if they decided to swap places with others because they felt that this was the only ideologically correct course of action according to a certain theory.
This kind of diversity is also never going to go away. Even if one anarchist theory or strategy becomes the most prominent, there will always be other approaches active alongside it. If this diversity is inherent, then all we can do is choose what to do with it. Ideally, we would turn our diversity into a strength, with different traditions mutually supporting each other as best they can towards building a united revolutionary movement.
Yet there is still a reflexive ideological absolutism in current and historical anarchist discourse and organising. We tend to treat our particular strain or experience of anarchism as superior to others, and treat what others are doing as simply wrong. We sometimes end up discussing the pros and cons of different kinds of anarchism in the abstract, instead of the needs and capabilities of actual anarchists and our communities. When we dismiss other anarchist traditions like this, we often end up also dismissing potential avenues of communication and cooperation, and damn anarchism to be a “movement” of isolated projects that live and die on their own or end up in spirals of infighting and ideological nitpicking with others.
This kind of attitude contradicts the pluralistic spirit of anarchism and contains the seeds of a new authoritarianism and, considering how easily authority has re-asserted itself in past movements for liberation, we must do all that we can to guard against it. Whatever else we might be, we must be good anarchists first, and we would much rather have a movement in which someone’s preferred approach was a minority but they could still trust everyone involved to be truly committed to the core ideals of anarchism, and work through disagreements with mutual respect for a diversity of tactics and a shared solidarity.
That said, this is not a call for everyone to drop their theoretical, organisational, and strategic commitments and adopt an anarchism that is a loosely-defined mush. Having specific commitments and principles in our anarchism is important, whilst remembering that not every theoretical, organisational, or strategic idea is necessarily equally valid. Some people are still doing things that are wrong for them, or wrong for anarchism as a whole. Neither is this a call for everyone to give up on deeper strategy and do whatever is easiest for them. It is laudable when people think beyond their immediate context and develop themselves as activists to fill roles they believe the movement needs.
This is a call to accept that anarchism will always be diverse, and that diversity isn’t necessarily rooted in some anarchists doing anarchism wrong, but in real differences in where individual anarchists are, what they need, and what they can do. This is a call to start organising a real revolutionary movement for all of us that can incorporate this diversity instead of ignoring it, or pretending we can build a movement on the basis of a single fixed “correct” idea of anarchist organisation or strategy. Many anarchists are going to choose, or be forced, to fight where they stand, and everyone starts standing in a different place. We need to work out how best to support each other on that basis and fight to win.
The Eclipse 
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