Anarchy = care 

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To many people, anarchy and care might at first seem mutually exclusive. Anarchism is often connected with disorder, chaos and destruction. This belief is further strengthened by mainstream media, presenting anarchism through violent imagery. In our view, this is however far from the truth. 

Care stands for the process of protecting someone and providing what they need. For us, anarchy and care are equal, might we even say fundamental. We see care in anarchism. Anarchism is essentially care in the broad sense - aiming for a world organized in terms of both human and non-human needs and pleasures. We believe that humans can organise themselves and their communities without forcing, that they are as empathetic as they are allowed to be. That humans are able to treat each other with dignity and respect without the threat of prosecution. That it is power itself that corrupts, making people irresponsible towards each other  and their environment.

Additionally, there is an emerging awareness that our current capitalistic, neo-liberal structure has failed us - by us referring to all kinds of life on Earth. Therefore, anarchy as care is also a position against the neoliberal condition: against a society of isolated individuals and competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It is against the supremacy of the human against nature. Instead, anarchy as care calls for communality as nurturance, coexistence within multispecies landscapes. 

Anarchism proposes a world without monarchy, parliaments, deputies, presidents, senators, kings, first ministers, queens, dictators, and  most politicians. Anarchism proposes a world without a ruler. Each person is free to make their choices without anyone forcing, based on the care of the Other. Not the naturalized, sexualized, racialized Other, but the Other that starts when you End. To look for care, we had to look beyond the Anthropocene as we are limited with our own humanity. Hence, different ways of being, non-hierarchical, non-neoliberalistic and opposed to forces of power, have to be considered.

The fungi represent a structure that can teach us something important about human and non-human coexistence. Fungi are capable of living in different climate conditions, from extreme cold to extreme hot, from the top of mountains to the deep down earth. The fungi are free,  the fungi are anarchic, but at the same time they care for our planet. The fungi care for humans. Many components can be extracted from them in order to increase humans’ health. The fungi care for other species. They can live in symbiosis with other green algae or cyanobacteria producing substances that help each other. If we don't adopt practices of anarchic care, we will die. Fungi will stay.

Not long ago I learnt how fungi and trees communicate among them. A whole ecosystem is constantly interacting through roots and fungi, creating a network of information and collaboration in the mysterious world of the soil. Someone once told me that if one tree is feeling weak, the strongest trees would send them nutrients through this network. Trees are not individuals growing on their own in order to be the most successful. It’s a shared flow. The whole forest acts like a single organism mediated by the mycorrhizal network. This understanding is quite revolutionary. It challenges the notion of competition in evolution, and suggests that instead collaboration is the primary factor for the survival of plants and fungi.