“The anarchist movement (her members and supporters) wants

to bring information and discussion (education) and meeting (networking) and action (activation) to organizations, individuals and suppliers

in an efficient, clear, effective and honest manner

through her information centres, food kitchens and the activities, infrastructure, knowledge, support and know-how of the organizations and individuals, her actions, her information-bulletins,…

in return for financial, material and moral support, feedback and self-activity

in order to contribute to a fundamental social change

which is based on ‘freedom, self-governance, direct action, solidarity, direct democracy and anti-authoritarian living’.

Anarchy is Order.

And:

From the 18th century, anarchism evolved as a way of working towards freedom and happiness. A combination of things has covered much of these ideas with the dust of history, blood and tears.

“We try to grow into individual and social ‘defense’ and ‘attack’ against injustice (sexism, racism, war, exploitation, unfreedom, ...) and the systems of power over others in general.

Social defence is the response of solidary individuals and communities to undesired events in the outside world as disaster, military coup, financial market crashes, war, AIDS,...

Attack means taking the initiative: we want another world and we are the ones to make it. (Why don’t we set a date to it?)

We will make it acting on principles as freedom/autonomy/anti-authoritarianism, solidarity, direct action.

In a world like ours, it’s important to know which side you’re trying to be on, without needing a promised utopia, a Kingdom Come. Anarchism is an ongoing process, never a standstill.” (A.O mission statement)

The idea grew out of a frustration with other information-related projects we were active in. We couldn't help but notice that the structuring and fuctioning of the anarchist information-network was far from democratic. First of all because of the high amounts of money involved (as comsumer as well as a -potential- producer) and the relatively high barriers as it comes to the knowledge needed: to know where to start reading, to know who to know in the world of editing / publishing, etc. What makes it often more difficult is a sort of cult of mystifying information about the classic writers of anarchist texts in order to hide that -as a movement- we have no real answers left. So we decided to create a format in which all these problems could find an answer. We decided to spread classic texts in a cheap form, in which people could really stroll through a library and look in all quite what they wanted to read and what not. This helps democratising the knowledge of anarchism as such. It helps countering elitism based on the control over this knowledge. It makes it possible to start spreading these texts the world over at very low costs by a very large amount of people. First of all where information is not that free it can be relatively easily smuggled on CD-ROM (in each case easier than a truck full of printed paper. In other cases all you really need to start going is a computer, a (good) printer and some book-binding material (glue or other systems, whatever lays in your reach best). So please go ahead. If we want to bring anarchism to life again, we will have to start sorting out what it is and what it isn't allover again. Only then can we try to apply from it what seems useful for today. And as far as I can see - even with all the contradictions that shows from strolling the CD- it shows the only path out of this world gone crazy. Jump from the Situationist movement (and their reformulation and elaborating of Marx' "alienation") to that wonderful and honorable dear Kropotkin. Visit Proudhon and Bakoenin, so fierce and fiery big men; greet dear Emma and her sisters Louise Michel and Mary Wollstonecraft and find out what feminism has to do with resistance to capitalism. You won't find the same answer twice. Compare Malatesta (communist) to Stirner (individualist) and you will find that one cannot do without the other. Find balance. Find a ray of light. Warm your heart and see that you are not alone. Maybe we will not win. So what. We will have tried to make real what we found in our hearts.

The anarchist archive ‘Anarchy is Order’ is one of the attempts to make the original resources available. We try to archive and learn from anarchist texts and spread them; we try to offer education to individuals and groups, to activate them, bond them and be a catalysing factor.

Let’s bring anarchism to life. So that values like freedom, solidarity and direct action get new meaning, are lived again and the battle continues against the ‘demons of flesh and blood, that sway scepters down here; and the dirty microbes that send us dark diseases and wish to squash us like horseflies; and the will-‘o-the-wisp of the saddest ignorance’. (L-P. Boon)

We want to archive and learn from anarchist texts; we want to making them available and offer them to the public; educate people and groups, activate them, bond them and catalyse initiative.

Anarchy is order a very small group. We are two people with a life of our own: jobs, kids,... This limits us in numerous and various ways. We have a variety of activities though.

First of all there is the CD-ROM with the collection of texts. We try to spread it through regular info-shops, although this appears rather difficult. We are confident though that it is already finding its way allover the world. We can impossibly trace it, but the networking works apparently. And this is a good thing. We have no ambition and no means to take control over the CD-Rom. The more you spread them, the less work we have to do (and it is not really fun to copy it a hundred times on one CD-burner, as you might notice).

On the other hand we try to distribute printed versions on various occasions, also trying to take it outside the anarchist scene. We're not sure you have to enter the scene before you're worthy to read about anarchism. (Or rather, we're sure you don't have to).

The next step would be to make new additions on the one hand (scanned or from the internet) and make thematic collections on the other.

With the CD you can do different things:

1. First of all you can print lay-outed titles for yourself, random interested people or your own book-project. Please mind your printer-properties and test first with 4 pages.

We ourselves use: A4 (portrait), 2-sided printing; booklet (A4, left binding); economode (to save ink); no scaling (adapting of page measurements to a paper page); 1 page per paper page.

Bookbinding methods differ in price and required skill. The cheapest way seems to be with bookbinding glue. Press the book together -after tapping the backside to the table until all pages are aligned- on the open end with some kind of pitch (you can make one by connecting two longer pieces of wood (longer than your book will be high) by two long screws (longer than your book is thick anyway; choose your format and cut it yourself or take your printing paper to the copy-shop to cut it). Put it in a screwing device with the back-side up, so you have both hands free. Apply glue from the middle to the left while spreading the left side first backwards then forwards. Do the same thing on the right side of the back, applying glue from middle to the right. Press some linnen into the glue and leave pitched long enough before attaching a cover (with name and title) in paper.

(For more, search the internet, e.g. http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jones/book/ , http://www.pennantpublishing.co.uk/bookbind.htm , http://thiswomansrevolution.trentwomenscentre.ca/bookbinding.html ,...

Other methods often require more expensive materials to make holes of different kinds and some kind of system to tie them together.

2. You can scan the original list of texts without lay-out for authors, names, words,… with the ‘Ctrl-F’ or the ‘search’-system on your computer.

3. You can make your own selections and combinations. (You could even give them the A.O lay-out by copying the text into the ‘templates’ you can find on the CD (open it from the CD and save it with your own templates: somewhere in the ‘Save As’-frame you can check ‘template’ or you can look for ‘.dot’ in the ‘Save as type’.

4. You can copy the CD and give it away, sell it (as cheap as possible) or publish it on the internet.

5. You can further add texts to it. Please send us a copy, so we can further distribute it.

Also, as we said before you can spread the texts (digitally or on paper). You can also deliver new texts, preferably in a digital version without 'hard returns' (the 'enters' at the end of a line) and spell-checked.

Whatever you do, please keep us posted.