"...Anarchism is not concerned with the creation of democratic control from below, but only with the destruction of "authority" over the individual, including the authority of the most extremely democratic regulation of society that it is possible to imagine. This has been made clear by authoritative anarchist expositors time and time again; for example, by George Woodcock: "even were democracy possible, the anarchist would not support it...Anarchists do not advocate political freedom. What they advocate is freedom from politics..." Anarchism is on principle fiercely anti-democratic, since an ideally democratic authority is still authority. But since, rejecting democracy, it has no other way of resolving the inevitable disagreements and differences among the inhabitants of Theleme [reference to Rabelais], its unlimited freedom for each uncontrolled individual is indistinguishable from unlimited despotism by such an individual, both in theory and in practice. The great problem of our age is the achievement of democratic control from below over the vast powers of modern social authority. Anarchism, which is freest of all with verbiage about something from below, rejects this goal. It is the other side of the coin of bureaucratic despotism, with all its values turned inside out, not the cure or the alternative."
michael yates