Politics in Minutes (2016)

Utopianism

Anarchists believe humans are capable of governing themselves and do not need hierarchical power structures, whether church, state or monarchies. Free from the shackles of authority, a natural social order will emerge that creates its own rules based on social justice, cooperative work and mutual aid. Many believe this is unrealistic and anarchists have been accused of being utopian. However, the Anarchist Federation make the point that an anarchist utopia would not be a heavenly vision or a return to a golden age, but a world in which violence, exploitation and oppression have disappeared.

Since the 19th century there have been a number of significant radical utopian or communitarian anarchist communities, including New Lanark in the UK and New Harmony in the USA, both set up by industrialist Robert Owen. Brook Farm in the USA was inhabited by, among others, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, while the Whiteway Colony in the UK was founded by followers of Leo Tolstoy’s Christian anarchism.

Sieben Linden is a self-governing, self-sufficient ecovillage in the Altmark of Germany.