Tuesday, March 27, 2007

ANARCHY!! (That Got Your Attention)

The jury's still out inside my head as to whether I should officially declare myself an anarchist. Part of me thinks that's silly, as if reciting the phrase "I am an anarchist" will somehow stamp me as a member of the blessed community, like saying an Arabic tongue-twister to become a Muslim or falling to your knees in prayer at youth group to become a Christian. Another part of me says that of course I'm not really an anarchist; I don't think we can do without government.

And it's true. I don't know how we human beings would get along without something in some way approaching government. However, this is using a very broad definition of the word "government". I'm quite aware that indigenous tribes living the Ishmael wet dream in the wilderness can get along fine without a tax-supported group of politicians or kings. I'm even aware that small groups can often manage to swing the consensus thing rather than settling for majority rule. It's just that many forms of social organization need something a bit more formalized than village meetings where everyone compromises till they agree. I'm thinking specifically of societies that involve large numbers of people living close to each other, especially when they do not go grocery-shopping in the woods with a stick. Arguing this might make me fall into the primitivist trap, but that's another issue, one I've at least partially discussed elsewhere: http://jlhart7.blogspot.com/2006/09/long-awaited-communique-on.html

Of course, it could be, as usual, that I'm asking the wrong question. Asking "should I label myself as an anarchist?" is mainly a matter of what I want other people to see me as -- "will calling myself that impress people or scare them away?", "what kind of bumper stickers should I buy?", and all that other crap. I should be asking what kind of values I do have. If I don't think society without government would work, what do I think would? When I say I value freedom, what do I mean by "freedom" -- and all my other political terms -- anyway?

Even if I decided to call myself a non-doctrinaire anarchist ("an anarchist, but not a fundamentalist anarchist", as I've like to tell myself), there are still issues to be resolved -- and most of those issues remain the same as the ones above. Perhaps one of the major rifts amongst the gaggle of people who call themselves anarchists is the divide between the ones who like capitalism and the ones that hate capitalism. According to my growing-but-still-limited understanding of anarchist theories, there are three basic positions in anarchism when it comes to capitalism:

1. That capitalism is bad and should be replaced with something similar to what we'd call socialism or communism, only done voluntarily and without any government as such.

2. That capitalism is bad, but is not to be confused with the free market, which is good. Capitalism is defined here as being when somebody takes away the end product or profit of what someone else works to make because the law says that the taker-person is the owner. The free market is what these anarchists call just trading this for that freely -- meaning, I make this thing and trade it for that thing, or else (in some cases) for recognized, non-governmentally-sponsored currency that can be used to buy that thing.

3. That capitalism -- including one person's right to own what other people make, according to pre-established agreements -- is good.

I pretty much reject the third position (insofar as we can do without such economic inequalities any more than we can do without government). However, I see no reason why the first two positions can't at least tolerate each other's existence. Indeed, I even figure that people should have the right to follow the third position if they want to.

Let's say that we get rid of the government and roll up our sleeves to set up an anarchist world. Some of the people freely decide to have voluntary socialism, while some of the other people decide they want to set up a system of trading this-for-that. Why can't they do that? It's anarchy, people! You're supposed to get to do what you want to at least some extent! And heck, if anyone's dumb enough to voluntarily submit to someone else being their boss as in the pro-capitalist position, then let 'em! We may each have different ideas about what will make a truly liberated life, but shouldn't we be liberated to follow those options with mutually consenting people?

Upon further research, I've found I'm not the first to think like this--I hadn't been aware of the existence of "anarchists without adjectives" . Having others basically agree with me makes me feel like I'm not crazy or stupid.

One of the things that attracts me to anarchism is precisely this sense of, well, freedom. Because of the possibility that people can do more or less what they want, there is relatively less for the armchair theorist to have to take a stand for or against when drawing up the blueprints for utopia. If you let other people make their own decisions, there's less work for you. I don't want to spend all my time trying to get other people to do things any more than I have to.

Of course, the liberation can only go so far, even in anarchy. This all is assuming that our anarchist mini-societies would have some anarchistic way of dealing with the possibility that people may try to murder each other and whatnot. Which is another issue with anarchism, but one that I do not necessarily see as an impossible obstacle. Maybe it is, but maybe it isn't.

Interesting aside: I found this FAQ , which attempts to answer the criticism that anarchists "must" somehow assume inborn human goodness. The relevant quote is as follows:

Don't anarchists assume that all people are innately virtuous?
This is a perfectly reasonable question, for it is indeed the case that some anarchists expect a remarkable change in human nature to follow (or precede?) the establishment of an anarchist society. This assumption partially explains the frequent lack of explanation of how an anarchist society would handle crime, dissenting individualists, and so on.

The belief in innate human virtue is normally found only among left-anarchist thinkers, but of course it does not follow, nor is it true, that all left-anarchist thinkers believe in humanity's innate human virtue.

Anarcho-capitalists have a very different picture of human nature. While they normally believe that people have a strong capacity for virtuous action (and it is to people's moral sense that they frequently appeal when they favor the abolition of the state), they believe that it is wise and necessary to cement moral virtue with material incentives. Capitalism's system of unequal wages, profits and losses, rent and interest, is not only morally justified but vitally necessary for the preservation and expansion of the economy. In short, anarcho-capitalists believe in and indeed must depend on some reasonable level of human morality, but prefer to rely on material incentives when feasible. (Similarly, they morally condemn crime and believe that most people have no desire to commit crimes, but strongly favor some sort of criminal justice system to deter the truly amoral.)


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Anyway back to me. The assumption that we can find some way to do handle such complications without ruling authorities may be anarchism's main blind spot; if anything's keeping me from officially checking the "Anarchist" box on the Self-Identity sheet, it's probably this.

Of course, the idea of anarchism seems to be opposed to the idea of any Self-Identity sheet that we all must fill out in order to be put in little boxes. Therefore, to avoid calling myself an anarchist could be -- if I may say so -- a very anarchistic thing to do.

In the end, I guess I like to think of anarchism as more of a general approach rather than an iron-clad set of prescriptions; the whole "a journey, not a destination" thing, to quote a crappy Aerosmith song. Hence the idea that I'm an anarchist, but not a fundamentalist anarchist.

I kind of think this way: anarchy is best. If anarchy is impossible, then the next best thing is direct democracy, with majority rule and the basic Greek-town-hall vibe. If direct democracy is impossible, then the next best thing is a democratic republic, with the people voting with majority rule for a government with a separation of powers and constitutional constraints. Which is supposedly what we kind of have in Yankee Pig America (gasp!). Whether or not we actually have this, or will have it in the future, depends on all us little semi-anarchists getting out there and raging against the machine with every astro-turf e-mail we send to our Congresspeople (which, by the way, I haven't done in awhile).

So until next time, Anarchy (or at least Responsive Officials) in the U.K.!