By Bay Area National Anarchists | 1 Comment | 
Print
National Autonomous Zones:
Castles without Walls
Peter Lamborn Wilson, a.k.a. Hakim Bey
The subject of creating, discovering, or reestablishing spaces outside the domination of the State and capitalism has led authors like Hakim Bey to promote the concept of “autonomous zones.” In their beginning, Bey describes “temporary autonomous zones” as the meeting of a group to partake in a non hierarchical social activity for the benefit of its participants without authorization by the government or condoned by the capitalist system of economic mechanics.
Under certain conditions Bey writes that these zones can turn into “permanent autonomous zones” beyond the control of those forces and are for all intensive purposes, liberated. To Bey, this is the highest development of anarchist social organization. Bey has at different times promoted (to various degrees of success) examples of ravers, Burners, Caribbean pirates, Chinese Tongs, Islamic “Assassins,” and Indian Thuggee, as anti-authoritarians archetypes.
In this essay I will argue that creating a national autonomous zone (NAZ) is not just possible but the most likely path of development for communities that either 1) quickly find themselves in a vacuum of State authority structures, or 2) as a community takes it upon themselves the responsibility of living as self-reliantly as possible.
Without a State authority governing its existence the national autonomous zone functions like a castle without walls.
A “castle without walls” is not to say “without” laws or regulations concerning behavior. Or that a NAZ is equal to feudalism in form and function. Its similarity to feudalism is in respects to its pledge of loyalty directly to individuals to whom they serve with (not merely, “for”), and the service that members obligate each other to perform for community survival. That is where the similarities end. Read the rest of the article
Thanks for sharing this. The concept of the NAZ needs to reach a wider audience. The NAZ can be as humble as sitting around the dinner table with comrades, being there for each other in tough times, establishing spaces, however temporary, where we refuse to allow other tribes to invade. Of course permanence in the NAZ concept is essential for the long term health of our people, but an afternoon spent with the tribe can turn into a weekend, and that can turn into a week with people who share the same values and respect each other as kinsmen, a fellowship of the most important sort that transcends class and other differences that society uses to divide us from our folk.