Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

Accepting a diversity of tactics provides for the broad diversity of real human beings. Every individual has a different life history, and consequently finds different activities meaningful and liberating. Insisting that everyone should adopt the same approach is arrogant and shortsighted?it presumes that you are entitled to make judgments on others' behalf?and also unrealistic: any strategy that demands that everyone think and act the same way is doomed to failure, for human beings are not that simple or submissive. Critics often charge that the tactics they oppose will alienate potential participants, but the more diverse the tactics employed by a movement, the wider the range of people who can recognize among those tactics approaches that appeal to them. It may be necessary for factions applying different tactics to distance themselves from one another in the public eye, but this need not be done in an antagonistic spirit.

A movement that employs a diversity of tactics is able to adapt to changing contexts . Such a movement is a laboratory in which various methods can be tested; the ones that work will be easy to identify, and will naturally become popular. As we haven't yet succeeded in overthrovmig capitalism once and for all by any method, all methods are still worth trying, in case one works. In this sense, those who employ tactics other than the ones you favor are doing you a service by saving you the trouble of having to test them for yourself.

DiflFerent tactics, applied in conjunction, can complement one another. Just as the

r more confrontational politics of Malcolm X forced privileged whites to take the non-vio-

20 lent civil disobedience of Martin Luther King, Jr. seriously, a combination of tactics from

accessible and participatory to militant and controversial can simultaneously attract attention to a struggle, offer opportunities for people to get involved at their own pace, and provide those who engage in it with leverage on a variety of levels.

Honoring a diversity of tactics means refraining from attacking those whose chosen approaches seem to you to be ineffective, and instead focusing on what missing elements you can add to make their efforts effective. Thus, it reframes the question of strategy m terms of personal responsibility: at every juncture, the question is not what somebody else should be doing, but what you can do.

The importance of a diversity of tactics doesn't apply only when it is convenient for you. Don't claim to support a diversity of tactics and then argue that?just in this particular case, of course-others should prioritize your agenda over their own. Recognizing the value of diversity of tactics means taking into account that others will make different decisions based on their differing perspectives, and respecting this even when their decisions baflfle you.

Accepting the legitimacy of a diversity of tactics means moving from a competitive mindset in which there is only one right way of doing things to a more inclusive and nuanced way of thinking. This contests hierarchies of value as well as of power, and undermines rigid abstractions such as "violence" and "morality."

Finally respect for diverse tactics enables disparate groups to build durable solidarity. Such sohdanty must be founded on a commitment to coexisting and collaborating in harmony, rather than on limiting demands for unity.

Just as some shortsightedly reject tactics other than their own as ineffective, others feel the need to compete to determine whose tactics are the most committed or the most impressive. But the most dramatic triumphs of militant direct action are only possible thanks to the support of people applying more conventional approaches, and vice versa It IS important that we not see tactics as existing in a hierarchy of value, from risk-free T, "

and insignificant to dangerous and glorious, but ratiier in an ecosystem in which all play an irreplaceable role. As revolutionaries, our role in such an ecosystem is to create a mutually-enhancing harmony between our efforts and those of others, even if some of them want to waste time competing with us for the currency of "being right" or "being bravest." No tactic can be effective alone; all can be effective together.

Legal and lUega! Sometimes direct action means breaking the law. Indeed, direct action is a way of renegotiating laws, both written and unwritten. When people act according to conscience rather than convention, when they transgress deliberately and en masse, reality itself can be remade. This is not to say that you can get away with breaking laws just by ceasing to believe in them; but if everyone breaks them with you, the dynamics change.