George Walford: Of Governments and Gardens

Quentin Crisp wrote How to Become a Virgin. Whether he would call himself an anarchist I have no idea, but he has come up with a phrase that hits off, with grace and economy, the present relationship between government and anarchy: “The function of government is to create a walled garden in which anarchy can flourish.” This is hardly what anarchists hope and work for, but it does express what has happened so far. The opportunities for living the anarchist life, and for propagating anarchism, appear at their greatest in the modern democracies. They have grown as government has strengthened and become more secure.

Continue reading Angles on Anarchism by George Walford (1991):
Class Politics; an Exhausted Myth | Anarchy Renamed | Why So Few? | Gnostics as Anarchists of Old | The Two-Sided Anarchist | The Higher the Fewer | The Anarchist Police Force | Even Worse | In the Beginning | The Competitive Co-operators | I. Q. Against Anarchism | Anarchism in Series | Friendly Reason | Anarchist Research | Are They Not Anarchists? | The Trouble With Success | Of Governments and Gardens | The Poll Tax Lesson | Healthy Freedoms | The Conventional Artist | Underground Activity | The Cretan Egoist.