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Anarchism... the pros and cons
Anarchism for a Post-modern Age
By Sam Vaknin
Author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"
"The thin and precarious crust of decency is all that separates any
civilization, however impressive, from the hell of anarchy or
systematic tyranny which lie in wait beneath the surface."
Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894-1963), British writer
I. Overview of Theories of Anarchism
Politics, in all its forms, has failed. The notion that we can
safely and successfully hand over the management of our daily lives
and the setting of priorities to a political class or elite is
thoroughly discredited. Politicians cannot be trusted, regardless of
the system in which they operate. No set of constraints, checks, and
balances, is proved to work and mitigate their unconscionable acts
and the pernicious effects these have on our welfare and longevity.
Ideologies - from the benign to the malign and from the divine to
the pedestrian - have driven the gullible human race to the verge of
annihilation and back. Participatory democracies have degenerated
everywhere into venal plutocracies. Socialism and its poisoned
fruits - Marxism-Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism - have wrought misery
on a scale unprecedented even by medieval standards. Only Fascism
and Nazism compare with them unfavorably. The idea of the nation-
state culminated in the Yugoslav succession wars.
It is time to seriously consider a much-derided and decried
alternative: anarchism.
Anarchism is often mistaken for left-wing thinking or the advocacy
of anarchy. It is neither. If anything, the libertarian strain in
anarchism makes it closer to the right. Anarchism is an umbrella
term covering disparate social and political theories - among them
classic or cooperative anarchism (postulated by William Godwin and,
later, Pierre Joseph Proudhon), radical individualism (Max Stirner),
religious anarchism (Leo Tolstoy), anarcho-communism (Kropotkin) and
anarcho-syndicalism, educational anarchism (Paul Goodman), and
communitarian anarchism (Daniel Guerin).
The narrow (and familiar) form of political anarchism springs from
the belief that human communities can survive and thrive through
voluntary cooperation, without a coercive central government.
Politics corrupt and subvert Man's good and noble nature.
Governments are instruments of self-enrichment and self-
aggrandizement, and the reification and embodiment of said
subversion.
The logical outcome is to call for the overthrow of all political
systems, as Michael Bakunin suggested. Governments should therefore
be opposed by any and all means, including violent action. What
should replace the state? There is little agreement among
anarchists: biblical authority (Tolstoy), self-regulating co-
operatives of craftsmen (Proudhon), a federation of voluntary
associations (Bakunin), trade unions (anarcho-syndicalists), ideal
communism (Kropotkin).
What is common to this smorgasbord is the affirmation of freedom as
the most fundamental value. Justice, equality, and welfare cannot be
sustained without it. The state and its oppressive mechanisms is
incompatible with it. Figures of authority and the ruling classes
are bound to abuse their remit and use the instruments of government
to further and enforce their own interests. The state is conceived
and laws are enacted for this explicit purpose of gross and unjust
exploitation. The state perpetrates violence and is the cause rather
than the cure of most social ills.
Anarchists believe that human beings are perfectly capable of
rational self-government. In the Utopia of anarchism, individuals
choose to belong to society (or to exclude themselves from it).
Rules are adopted by agreement of all the members/citizens through
direct participation in voting. Similar to participatory democracy,
holders of offices can be recalled by constituents.
It is important to emphasize that:
" ... (A)narchism does not preclude social organization, social
order or rules, the appropriate delegation of authority, or even of
certain forms of government, as long as this is distinguished from
the state and as long as it is administrative and not oppressive,
coercive, or bureaucratic." (Honderich, Ted, ed. - The Oxford Companion to Philosophy - Oxford
University Press, New York, 1995 - p. 31)
Anarchists are not opposed to organization, law and order, or the
existence of authority. They are against the usurpation of power by
individuals or by classes (groups) of individuals for personal gain
through the subjugation and exploitation (however subtle and
disguised) of other, less fortunate people. Every social arrangement
and institution should be put to the dual acid tests of personal
autonomy and freedom and moral law. If it fails either of the two it
should be promptly abolished.
II. Contradictions in Anarchism
Anarchism is not prescriptive. Anarchists believe that the voluntary
members of each and every society should decide the details of the
order and functioning of their own community. Consequently,
anarchism provides no coherent recipe on how to construct the ideal
community. This, of course, is its Achilles' heel.
Consider crime. Anarchists of all stripes agree that people have the
right to exercise self-defense by organizing voluntarily to suppress
malfeasance and put away criminals. Yet, is this not the very
quiddity of the oppressive state, its laws, police, prisons, and
army? Are the origins of the coercive state and its justification
not firmly rooted in the need to confront evil?
Some anarchists believe in changing society through violence. Are
these anarcho-terrorists criminals or freedom fighters? If they are
opposed by voluntary grassroots (vigilante) organizations in the
best of anarchist tradition - should they fight back and thus
frustrate the authentic will of the people whose welfare they claim
to be seeking?
Anarchism is a chicken and egg proposition. It is predicated on
people's well-developed sense of responsibility and grounded in
their "natural morality". Yet, all anarchists admit that these
endowments are decimated by millennia of statal repression. Life in
anarchism is, therefore, aimed at restoring the very preconditions
to life in anarchism. Anarchism seeks to restore its constituents'
ethical constitution - without which there can be no anarchism in
the first place. This self-defeating bootstrapping leads to
convoluted and half-baked transitory phases between the nation-state
and pure anarchism (hence anarcho-syndicalism and some forms of
proto-Communism).
Primitivist and green anarchists reject technology, globalization,
and capitalism as well as the state. Yet, globalization, technology,
(and capitalism) are as much in opposition to the classical,
hermetic nation-state as is philosophical anarchism. They are
manifestly less coercive and more voluntary, too. This blanket
defiance of everything modern introduces insoluble contradictions
into the theory and practice of late twentieth century anarchism.
Indeed, the term anarchism has been trivialized and debauched.
Animal rights activists, environmentalists, feminists, peasant
revolutionaries, and techno-punk performers all claim to be
anarchists with equal conviction and equal falsity.
III. Reclaiming Anarchism
Errico Malatesta and Voltairine de Cleyre distilled the essence of
anarchism to encompass all the philosophies that oppose the state
and abhor capitalism ("anarchism without adjectives"). At a deeper
level, anarchism wishes to identify and rectify social asymmetries.
The state, men, and the rich - are, respectively, more powerful than
the individuals, women, and the poor. These are three inequalities
out of many. It is the task of anarchism to fight against them.
This can be done in either of two ways:
1. By violently dismantling existing structures and institutions and
replacing them with voluntary, self-regulating organizations of free
individuals. The Zapatistas movement in Mexico is an attempt to do
just that.
2. Or, by creating voluntary, self-regulating organizations of free
individuals whose functions parallel those of established
hierarchies and institutions ("dual power"). Gradually, the former
will replace the latter. The evolution of certain non-government
organizations follows this path.
Whichever strategy is adopted, it is essential to first identify
those asymmetries that underlie all others ("primary asymmetries"
vs. "secondary asymmetries"). Most anarchists point at the state and
at the ownership of property as the primary asymmetries. The state
is an asymmetrical transfer of power from the individual to a
coercive and unjust social hyperstructure. Property represents the
disproportionate accumulation of wealth by certain individuals.
Crime is merely the natural reaction to these glaring injustices.
But the state and property are secondary asymmetries, not primary
ones. There have been periods in human history and there have been
cultures devoid of either or both. The primary asymmetry seems to be
natural: some people are born more clever and stronger than others.
The game is skewed in their favor not because of some sinister
conspiracy but because they merit it (meritocracy is the foundation
stone of capitalism), or because they can force themselves, their
wishes, and their priorities and preferences on others, or because
their adherents and followers believe that rewarding their leaders
will maximize their own welfare (aggression and self-interest are
the cornerstone of all social organizations).
It is this primary asymmetry that anarchism must address.
----------------------------------------------
Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant
Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West
Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Central Europe Review,
PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International
(UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health
and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and
Suite101. Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government
of Macedonia. Visit Sam's Web site at
http://samvak.tripod.com
-------------------------------------------
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