Sir Herbert Read’s 7-Steps to Anarchism
A “sevenfold system” to change our approach to changing society.
Sir Herbert Read was an influential art historian, co-founder of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, a prominent anarchist, and a knight of the realm.
“From the family to the State, the group in modern society is a flabby, inchoate, uneasy organization, and until we have discovered what is wrong with these organizations, we shall fail to effect any widespread readjustment of individual neuroses.”
In one of Read’s most important short works (Lecture to the London Anarchists, 17 May 1947), he discusses the concepts of archaic “revolutionary anarchism” which he defines by its “romantic conception[s]… of conspiracy, assassination, citizen armies, [and] barricades”. For this, Read exchanges what he calls the “fundamentalist anarchism” (by which he means, literally, the fundamentals of anarchism). The fundamentals of anarchism, Read states, rely on education as the only true method for lasting social change.
Read outlines what he calls a “sevenfold” system for the future of anarchism, beginning with three core beliefs:
- Personal freedom. Not merely a state of individual liberty, but a state of mental egalitarianism. This is the ability to remove oneself from dogma, to explore…
