He gives as an example the case of a cheating butcher. If you do nothing more than this, this is 'indirect action'. However, if you picket the shop, or get involved in setting up a workers' co-operative butcher's shop, then this would be direct action. Unfortunately, because most of us have delegated power over to state institutions, we rarely consider taking direct action. Workers would organise themselves through local, regional and national committees, free of a centralised state bureaucracy.
Anarchists advocate 'participatory' rather than 'representative' democracy.
The anarchist critique of the state, therefore, can be located somewhere around the 'libertarian left' axes of the political spectrum. It criticises both the neo-liberal right and the Marxist left, whose values it sees as leading to authoritarian regimes which deny human liberty. The theory of 'spontaneous order' An important element in anarchist thinking is the theory of 'spontaneous order'. This argues that a collection of people will, through trial and error, improvise and experiment to create order out of any adverse situation, and that this order will be more durable and sustainable in the long term and more closely related to people's real needs. This movement cut across a wide range of social groups, including tinkers and University dons, and provided an immediate solution to an important social problem.