Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

A collective of would-be clones can do one thing well, at best; a circle of unique individuals can do many differing things that complement each other. The best collectives are the ones that engage the sum total of all the different members have to offer, not the ones that limit themselves to applying only what their members have in common. Just as a band needs musicians who play different instruments, healthy associations don't restrict the participants with compromises that force them to limit themselves to the things they have in common, but instead integrate their dissimilarities into a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Working and living in such arrangements, in which every person is conscious that she is responsible for making the projects and relationships work, helps one learn to see oneself as a part of the web of human relations, rather than as an isolated individual against the world. Under these ciromistances, others' desires must be taken as seriously as one's own. This can actually allow an individual to be a more complete person, as her companions can represent parts of herself for her that she would not otherwise express. Ultimately, everyone is a product of the same world, anyway?we are all interconnected, each of us manifesting different aspects of the same interplay of forces. Without this insight, our cooperation and community can only be incidental and haphazard.

You can take advantage of the thousands of different attempts people have already made to establish community?neighborhood associations, punk rock scenes, bowling leagues, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, church choirs, high school clubs, student organizations, knitting circles, hobby groups?as starting points from which to work toward broader communities that are more radical, durable, and ambitious. Consider which communities you already have ties with. Don't abandon these in search of more radical communities? stick around to radicalize them.

Collectives 193

Eventually, for the individual experienced in living communally and acting collectively, it becomes possible to regard the entire cosmos as one vast, albeit dysfunctional, collective; the problem is simply how to make its workings more to one's liking. This is not to say that fascists or sexists can go about their merry business and be "part of our collective"?^they'd be the first ones to deny that, and follow it up with proofl But the chief argument of fascism and reactionary thinking has always been that cooperation and autonomy are mutually exclusive, that people have to be ordered and controlled or else they will do nothing but be lazy and kill each other. The more we can demonstrate that this is untrue, the less appeal their claims will have.

Dit/ersity Starting from diversity is as important as fostering it. Everyone is unique, of course, and it can happen that there is more divergence of personality, skills, and experience between two people of the same background than between individuals from differing demographics?^but that said, it can be a great thing for a collective to include members of different genders, ages, social classes, and cultures. When people from such differing backgrounds learn to understand and respect each other's perspectives, complement each other's strengths and weaknesses, and form symbiotic relationships on the basis of their differences, that's revolution in action, even if it's just a handful of people at first. This is not to say that you should recruit people for your collective on the basis of race or gender alone?that can come across as patronizing, to say the least?but rather that traveling in diverse circles, and drawing on the friendships that develop naturally within those circles to undertake collective projects, are in your best interest.

Of course, collectives composed of members with viddely differing degrees of privilege will have to work extra hard on learning to interact as equals {see Undermining Op-

Colkctiues pression, pg. 560). Oppressive patterns?middle class people tending to take over the or-ic)4 ganizing, working class people to do the physical labor, men to make decisions in ways

that exclude women, and so on?come with us into our collectives from the hierarchical world that raised us; let's make these groups social laboratories in which we learn how to break these patterns, in preparation for breaking that world.