A study in terminology and a revisiting of one of the basic anarchist principles... the subtitle is "Mutual Acquiescence or Mutual Aid?" and this is a long essay exploring and defining those, by affable Canadian anarchist wizard, Ron Sakolsky.
I did not create the term mutual acquiescence as part of a doom and gloom scenario of despair in which misery rules our lives, but as a way of understanding why and how people become immersed in the dead end of believing that misery is the only reality. The latter "realistic" state of mind is what surrealists call miserabilism. I see the relevance of the concept of mutual acquiescence here as bringing the historical connection between surrealism and anarchy into the present moment. For my part, the operative idea was that if we could understand the contemporary phenomenon of mutual acquiescence, we could begin to figure out how to transform its socially ingrained relationships of subservience into vibrant ones of mutual aid. I had no illusions that accomplishing such a task would be an easy one in practice, but assumed that the crossroads of mutual acquiescence and mutual aid would offer us a place to start in that journey toward anarchy. Illustrated by Alex Januário, Beth Garon, Sheila Nopper, Michael Lundberg. LBC Books, 2015.
