Revolution, in anarchist use, is the fundamental transformation of social relations — the dismantling of hierarchy, authority, and domination and their replacement with voluntary association, mutual aid, and self-organization. It is not the replacement of one set of rulers with another.
This distinguishes anarchist revolution from two other common meanings. In liberal use, “revolution” often means a dramatic political change — the American Revolution replaced British colonial government with an elected republic, but preserved property, class, slavery, and the state. In Marxist-Leninist use, revolution means the seizure of state power by the working class (or a party claiming to represent it), which then uses the state to reorganize the economy. Anarchists argue that both of these are incomplete or self-defeating: the first changes the personnel but not the structure; the second changes the structure of the economy but preserves the structure of the state — and whoever controls the state becomes the new ruling class.
The anarchist argument is structural: hierarchical means produce hierarchical outcomes. A revolution organized through a centralized party produces a centralized state. A revolution that seizes the existing machinery of government inherits that machinery’s logic of command and obedience. This is why prefigurative politics is not merely a preference but a necessity: the only revolution that can produce non-hierarchical social relations is one that practices non-hierarchical social relations in the process of making them. The revolution is not an event that happens after which freedom begins — it is the practice of freedom itself, happening now, in every act of self-organization, refusal, solidarity, and direct action.
This does not mean anarchist revolution is gradualist or reformist. Insurrectionary anarchism insists on the immediacy of revolutionary action — not waiting for conditions to be right, not building a party first, not petitioning for reforms. The general strike, direct action, and the construction of dual power — autonomous institutions that meet real needs outside the state and capitalism — are all revolutionary practices. What makes them revolutionary is not their scale but their logic: they operate outside the structures of domination rather than seeking to capture them.
Related terms
- Freedom — what revolution works toward
- Hierarchy — what revolution dismantles
- Prefigurative politics — the principle that revolutionary means must embody revolutionary ends
- Self-organization — the capacity revolution expresses
- The general strike — one form of revolutionary action
- Direct action — action without appealing to authority
- Dual power — building alternative institutions as revolutionary practice
- The state — the institution anarchist revolution refuses to seize