We are told we live in the richest and most democratic country in the world. Our rights include freedom of speech and religion, and freedom to vote for our leaders. Our country possesses more wealth than any other — more wealth in fact than much of the rest of the world combined. On TV and in real life, we see Americans with huge houses, expensive cars, plenty of state-of-the-art gadgets, and memberships to golf courses or ski resorts.

But we all know that this is not the whole picture. It is more like an advertisement. Though our neighborhoods are segregated, rich from poor; white from black, latino, and Native American, few people are unaware that most Americans do not live like the people on televised sitcoms. People living in wealthy suburbs often encounter poverty in the cities where they work for various corporations and government bureaus. People living in impoverished areas are often forced to travel out to the suburbs to work serving coffee to rich, white people.

Yet for those of us who have tasted the prospect of a world without rulership, this is simply a difference in degree of dystopia. If it truly were possible to achieve some kind of enlightened social democracy without wealth inequality, systematic disenfranchisement of minorities, and with some decentralization of state function, anarchists would still go to the barricades because this is not enough.

If anarchism is to mean anything of substance, it is surely not merely an opening bid from which you are happy to settle. Anarchy doesn’t stand for small amounts of domination: it stands for no domination. Although our approach to that ideal will surely be asymptotic, the whole point of anarchism is to actually pursue it rather than give up and settle for some arbitrary “good enough” half-measure. Such tepid aspirations is what has historically defined liberals and social democrats in contrast to us.

Instead of a large group laboring to make democracy work so they can agree on a course of action, it would be far more productive for smaller groups made up of people with shared interests to splinter off and co-operate to follow their own plans that require no compromise because their interests are already aligned.

Throughout history, democracy has existed to legitimize authority, providing justification for hierarchical power structures by framing every oppressive action the state takes against us as "the will of the people". It has long enabled the powerful to crush the powerless. People who insist on associating anarchism with democracy are trying to legitimize anarchism, to associate it with comfortable institutions embraced by thoroughly indoctrinated liberals. But anarchy has no want or need for legitimization. Anarchy doesn't need to be watered down to broaden its appeal to a public that is high on hierarchy.