Anarchism is not a euphemism for chaos. According to Wellington anarchist Sam Buchanan, it’s a very small group of people living in the burbs, working in the head offices of banks and community gardens.

ANARCHISM belongs in the community, says anarchist Sam Buchanan.
Last month, Buchanan, a founding member of the Wildcat Anarchist Collective, distributed 15,000 leaflets in Wellington letterboxes with a cartoon of a boy with his fist in the air saying “smash the state” and wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with an anarchy symbol.
“We think people don’t have a clue what anarchism is about. If they hear about it they hear it as a euphemism for chaos, confrontation and disorder. That is not what it’s about,” he says.
The leaflet explains: “Anarchism is a personal and political philosophy based on the premise that no person has the right to have authority over another.”
Buchanan does not advocate insurrection and revolutionary violence.
“I can’t see any point using violence. The government is good at it. They have an army, a police force, they are trained and equipped.”
Buchanan is an interior decorator, a communications consultant, edited Capital Times briefly, and is the author of Anarchy – The Transmogrification of Everyday Life.
He was drawn to anarchism in the late 80s after stumbling across a British anarchist magazine.
“At the time I was reading a lot of Marxist and left social magazines. What stunned me was that it was a serious, sensible, thoughtful analysis, but it was also funny.”
Wellington’s Wildcats Anarchist Collective began as three friends and grew to about 50 members by the end of the 90s.
“Most were involved in the punk scene. It was quite an urban youth counter culture.”
These days, he says, Wildcats are living in the suburbs, having children and getting old. Many have migrated to the coast, like Buchanan who lives in Paekakariki with his ex-girlfriend, her seven year old daughter and a flatmate.
The Wildcats get together and “write things”, and hold public meetings every two weeks.
He says their poster campaigns almost always elicit a response. (“We’d love to solve world hunger but that would damage the market – Global Capitalism, it beats reason and morality hands down!”)
Other anarchist groups that were established in Wellington were The Committee for the Establishment of Civilisation, based at Victoria University, which ran for 10 years and spawned a number of other projects including the Freedom bookshop which ran at top of Cuba St before the bypass was built. It is still active through stalls and mail order.
Buchanan says anarchism is similar to the “green” movement. He gives the example of the Common Ground Community Garden in Island Bay at the Home of Compassion, which “quite a few anarchists” – and non-anarchists - helped establish.
Katrina Tamaira, who is part of Common Ground, says the green movement is focused more on the single issue (of the environment) and anarchism is more extreme, evident in Buchanan’s statement: “Authority brings out the worst in people. We see capitalism and the state as a parasite. What keeps people going is their friends, neighbours, and people helping each other out, not the government or employers.”
The Wildcats hope the 15,000 leaflets will spark debate and inspire people to read more about anarchism. After all, it’s still a bogey word, Buchanan says.
“Usually when [anarchists] are in the paper it is about some riots. Yes some do take place but how do [journalists] know these people are anarchists?”
Buchanan, who stood for McGuillicuddy Serious Party (and didn’t vote for himself on principle) in the mid 90s, doesn’t vote, and believes it is crazy that people are elected for three years at a time.
“Nobody would ever hire me for three years. But somehow we accept that as being democratic. [As anarchists] we want to be able to recall those people should we choose to.”
Buchanan doesn’t have any specific answers about how his anarchistic ideal could work. At the moment these are ideas he would like to bounce off like-minded Wellingtonians.
Buchanan has recently completed a chapter on anarchism in New Zealand for a German book on the subject. He says there have been anarchists in New Zealand since to the late 19th century.
“ People came from Europe because they wanted to set up communities on anarchist libertarian socialist models which is the same sort of thing really. We don’t know much about those people, there is not much of a social record but we know they were there. Later there were anarchists involved with trade unions.”
Buchanan admits the most difficult part about being an anarchist is how to put it into practice, but talking about it is the first step.
“Maybe being dependent on a job isn’t the best thing. Instead we could be growing our own veggies, being in a community group, using green dollar schemes, which will make life easier in the short term.  “I’m not saying stop working. I want people to think about other possibilities. It’s about empowering people and saying ‘don’t take this authoritarian system and hierarchy for granted’.”
Buchanan is currently living off his redundancy pay from his former job as communications advisor at the Council for International Development, and painting part time. He is not interested in going on the benefit, and is prepared to work to support himself and his family. However his anarchistic dream is that the government will slowly become less relevant and people will go on to run their own farms, communities, and workplaces.
How that will happen, he has no idea. In the meantime he and other Wildcats are organising a national meeting as a forum to discuss these ideas. For more information email wellywildcats@gmail.com.