[For more of my posts on anarchism visit this page.]

I was hanging out in the woods with a few old friends over a long weekend recently and we got to debating about our usual political topics. One friend is a Silicon Valley brand of conservative libertarian, another is a progressive liberal, and I am the resident leftist anarchist. The progressive is more willing to consider other viewpoints and finds some aspects of both the libertarian and the anarchist perspective appealing, whereas the libertarian and myself are much more rigid and uncompromising in our contrasting and long-standing convictions. As such, the libertarian and myself end up trying to win over the progressive on various points. Our hours-long debates are mostly cordial but sometimes get heated. Nonetheless, we all seem to enjoy these skirmishes.

During this sojourn in the woods, I came up with a way of framing anarchist politics that captured better than any other phrasing I’ve come across the distilled essence of my commitment to anarchism. The progressive asked me what about anarchist politics was appealing. In response I posed the following question, “Would you ever want to have less influence over the things in your life that you care about most?”