Means and Ends: The Revolutionary Practice of Anarchism

I was reading Zoe Baker’s “Means and Ends: The Revolutionary Practice of Anarchism in Europe and the United States” – a sharp, accessible overview of anarchist strategy between 1868 and 1939. She explains the ideas that historical anarchists developed to change the world, including their views on direct action, revolution, organization, state socialism, reforms, and trade unions.

The core insight: anarchists maintained that as people engage in activity, they simultaneously change the world and themselves. This theoretical framework was the foundation for the anarchist commitment to the unity of means and ends – the means that revolutionaries propose to achieve social change have to involve forms of activity which transform people into individuals who are capable of, and driven to, both overthrow capitalism and the state and build a free society.

Kern-Extrakt – gnadenlos verdichtet

1. Unity of Means and Ends (Malatesta, Berkman, Goldman, Kropotkin)

Revolutionary means that are hierarchically, authoritarianly, or state-analogously organized inevitably produce hierarchical, authoritarian subjects. Those who try to fight for “socialism” with Leninist vanguard or reformist parliamentarism only breed new masters. The anarchist bet: Only decentralized, federal, self-managed forms of struggle (strikes, factory occupations, people’s assemblies, mutual aid networks) transform the proletariat and peasants into free, cooperative individuals during the process itself.

2. Direct Action Instead of Representation

Any form of representation (party, trade union bureaucracy, state) alienates people from their own power. Hence: sabotage, general strike, expropriation by the base itself – no petitions, no ballots.

3. Reformism as a Trap

Anarchists didn’t reject reforms because they’re “evil,” but because when purchased through the state or capital negotiations, they dissolve revolutionary subjectivity and stabilize the rulers. Reforms yes – but only when forced through direct action and immediately transformed into self-managed structures (e.g., occupied factories instead of collective bargaining agreements).

4. Why They Were “Booted Out”

You guessed it: The anarchist line was too “utopian” for the Marxists (no conquest of the state) and too dangerous for the capitalists (actually anti-capitalist and anti-hierarchical). Result: 1917–21 physical liquidation by the Bolsheviks (Kronstadt, Makhno), 1936–39 betrayal by the Stalinists in Spain, then Cold War and neoliberal historiography reducing anarchism to “chaos” and “individualism.”

Relevance for Libertaria

Libertaria is exactly that synthesis against which both sides mobilized back then: radical market (left-capitalist) + extreme communitarianism (right-communalist) + cryptographically enforced decentralization. Baker gives us both the warning and the weapon:

• If we use DAOs, tokenized community assets, or liquid democracy, but governance remains hierarchical or purely representative → we only produce new crypto-lords and rent-seekers. Means/Ends violation.
• If our “revolution” consists only of whitepapers, VC rounds, and marketing → we’ll end up like the social democrats: integrated and hollowed out.
• But if we shape participation in Libertaria itself as a school of self-management – Staking = co-decision, Exit = immediate liquidity, Proposals = direct voting without delegation compulsion, mutual credit pools instead of banks – then we transform users during the construction phase into those sovereign, cooperative subjects who later need (or tolerate) no central authority.

Baker would say: Your code must be anarchist praxis. Not “we build the system and then people become free,” but: The way people already interact with your smart contracts, forums, reputation systems today must disenfranchise them step by step – otherwise Libertaria ends up as fancy Web3 feudalism.

The consistent heart of anarchism was the idea that anarchist ends can only be achieved through anarchist means. This simple premise underpinned anarchist attempts to put theory into action. Let us not forget this lesson as we build the tools of tomorrow.