To me, it is a valuable question.
Malatesta used to talk about "anarchist gradualism". To sum it up quickly, it's the idea that any struggles and revolts, any insurrection or even action against the state, exploitation and authority brings us closer to our anarchy. I don't know what this implies exactly. It's seems to me that the idea is attractive. But gradualism has been criticized some times as something like a kind of "revolutionnary reformism" or "radical reformism".
Another question is : Do you aim to live "anarchy right now, tomorrow and for ever" and to fight for it as strong as you can, or the way you think it must be done ? Or, do you think that anarchy is a kind of "unattainable horizon" we may nevertheless try to achieve stages by stages ?
I don't have a closed opinion, and I don't really know whether it's one or the other that fits to the idea, even I tend to think that there is no such thing as "stages" . So I guess my question may seem a bit rethorical.
To be more specific, I think that the problem is how you define stages ? Who is going to say when we are done with one and have reached the next level ?
I think that historically, the big difference between marxists, traditionnal communists and the various anarchists is that these last ones -when they didn't reject the idea of socialism- tends to consider it as a permanent social phenomenon that abolish the existent society, and not like a "political process", or a defined "stage" or "step" to something else.
The same thing should be said about revolution.
I'd rather think what brings us closer to "anarchy" every day is in the same time a way to create a new kind of social relationship to the world and to each other, and a permanent revolutionnary process. Or that it should be.
So it's never achieved but in the same time, we are not trying to "realise it" as a totality, or a political program.
I mean, at least, that's not what I am trying to do. But I think that most anarchists would agree on this last idea.
