The idea that anarchists reject the need for discipline, or are against organisation, or base their ideas on the whim of the individual, are common place in Marxism. Simply put, the idea that anarchists reject "discipline" is derived from the erroneous Marxist assertion that anarchism is basically a form of "individualism" and based on the "absolute sovereignty of the individual ego" (see section H.2.11). From this (incorrect) position, it is logically deduced that anarchism must reject the need for "discipline" (i.e. the ability to make and stick to collective decisions). Needless to say, this is false. Anarchists are well aware of the need to organise together and, therefore, the need to stick by decisions reached. The importance of solidarity in anarchist theory is an expression of this awareness.
However, there is "discipline" and "discipline." There can be no denying that in a capitalist workplace or army there is "discipline" yet few, if any, sane persons would argue that this distinctly top-down and hierarchical "discipline" is something to aspire to, particularly if you seek a free society. This cannot be compared to a making and sticking by a collective decision reached by free discussion and debate within a self-governing associations. As Bakunin argued:
"Discipline, mutual trust as well as unity are all excellent qualities when properly understood and practised, but disastrous when abused . . . [one use of the word] discipline almost always signifies despotism on the one hand and blind automatic submission to authority on the other . . .
"Hostile as I am to [this,] the authoritarian conception of discipline, I nevertheless recognise that a certain kind of discipline, not automatic but voluntary and intelligently understood is, and will ever be, necessary whenever a greater number of individuals undertake any kind of collective work or action. Under these circumstances, discipline is simply the voluntary and considered co-ordination of all individual efforts for a common purpose. At the moment of revolution, in the midst of the struggle, there is a natural division of functions according to the aptitude of each, assessed and judged by the collective whole: Some direct and others carry out orders. But no function remains fixed and it will not remain permanently and irrevocably attached to any one person. Hierarchical order and promotion do not exist, so that the executive of yesterday can become the subordinate of tomorrow. No one rises above the others, and if he does rise, it is only to fall back again a moment later, like the waves of the sea forever returning to the salutary level of equality.
"In such a system, power, properly speaking, no longer exists. Power is diffused to the collectivity and becomes the true expression of the liberty of everyone, the faithful and sincere realisation of the will of all . . . this is the only true discipline, the discipline necessary for the organisation of freedom. This is not the kind of discipline preached by the State . . . which wants the old, routine-like, automatic blind discipline. Passive discipline is the foundation of every despotism." [Bakunin on Anarchism, pp. 414-5]
Clearly, anarchists see the need for self-discipline rather than the hierarchical "discipline" associated with capitalism and other class systems. It simply means that "anyone who associates and co-operates with others for a common purpose must feel the need to co-ordinate his [or her] actions with those of his [or her] fellow members and do nothing that harms the work of others and, thus, the common cause; and respect the agreements that have been made — except when wishing sincerely to leave the association when emerging differences of opinion or changed circumstances or conflict over preferred methods make co-operation impossible or inappropriate." [Malatesta, The Anarchist Revolution, pp. 107-8] As such, we reject hierarchical "discipline," considering it as confusing agreement with authority, co-operation with coercion and helping with hierarchy.
Anarchists are not alone in this. A few Marxists have also seen this difference. For example, Rosa Luxemburg repeated (probably unknowingly) Bakunin's distinction between forms of "discipline" when she argued, against Lenin, that:
"Lenin . . . declares that 'it is no longer the proletarians but certain intellectuals in our party who need to be educated in the matters of organisation and discipline' . . . He glorifies the educative influence of the factory, which, he says, accustoms the proletariat to 'discipline and organisation' . . .
"Saying all this, Lenin seems to demonstrate . . . his conception of socialist organisation is quite mechanistic. The discipline Lenin has in mind being implanted in the working class not only by the factory but also by the military and the existing state bureaucracy — by the entire mechanism of the centralised bourgeois state.
"We misuse words and we practice self-deception when we apply the same term — discipline — to such dissimilar notions as: (1) the absence of thought and will in a body with a thousand automatically moving hands and legs, and (2) the spontaneous co-ordination of the conscious, political acts of a body of men. What is there in common between the regulated docility of an oppressed class and the self-discipline and organisation of a class struggling for its emancipation?
"The self-discipline of the social democracy is not merely the replacement of the authority of the bourgeois rulers with the authority of a socialist central committee. The working class will acquire the sense of the new discipline, the freely assumed self-discipline of the social democracy, not as a result of the discipline imposed on it by the capitalist state, but by extirpating, to the last root, its old habits of obedience and servility." [Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, pp. 119-20]
Like Luxemburg, anarchists stress the difference in forms of decision making and reject authoritarian organisations along with hierarchical "discipline" (see section H.4). This support for self-discipline within self-managed organisations flows directly from the anarchist awareness of the collective nature of social change: as "[t]oday, in revolutionary action as in labour itself, collectivism must replace individualism. Understand clearly that in organising yourselves you will be stronger than all the political leaders in the world." [Bakunin, quoted by K.J. Kenafick, Michael Bakunin and Karl Marx, p. 244]
For anarchists, collective organisation and co-operation does not mean the end of individuality. As Bakunin argued:
"You will think, you will exist, you will act collectively, which nevertheless will not prevent in the least the full development of the intellectual and moral faculties of each individual. Each of you will bring to you his own talents, and in all joining together you will multiply your value a hundred fold. Such is the law of collective action . . . in giving your hands to each other for this action in common, you will promise to each other a mutual fraternity which will be . . . a sort of free contract . . . Then proceed collectively to action you will necessarily commence by practising this fraternity between yourselves . . . by means of regional and local organisations . . . you will find in yourselves strength that you had never imagined, if each of you acted individually, according to his own inclination and not as a consequence of a unanimous resolution, discussed and accepted beforehand." [quoted by Kenafick, Op. Cit., pp. 244-5]
Therefore, anarchists see the need for "discipline," assuming that it is created in appropriately libertarian ways. We reject it if it simply means blindly following the orders of those in power, which is usually does mean within modern society and, sadly, large parts of the labour and socialist movements. However, this does not mean that the majority is always right. As Malatesta argued, "[t]here are matters over which it is worth accepting the will of the majority because the damage caused by a split would be greater than that caused by error; there are circumstances in which discipline becomes a duty because to fail in it would be to fail in the solidarity between the oppressed and would mean betrayal in face of the enemy. But when is convinced that the organisation is pursuing a course which threatens the future and makes it difficult to remedy the harm done, then it is a duty to rebel and to resist even at the risk of providing a split." Therefore, "anarchists should extend our activities into all organisations to preach unity among all workers, decentralisation, freedom of initiative, within the common framework of solidarity . . . What is essential is that individuals should develop a sense of organisation and solidarity, and the conviction that fraternal co-operation is necessary to fight oppression and to achieve a society in which everyone will be able to enjoy his [or her] own life." [Life and Ideas, pp. 132-3]
In other words, anarchists reject the idea that obeying orders equals "discipline" and recognise that real discipline means evaluating the needs of solidarity and equality with your fellow workers and acting accordingly.