So You Say You're an Anarchist?

Then you better explain yourself...

Everything most people know about anarchism, which isn’t much, they learned from people who despise the concept. Surely you have heard all your life that rioting in the street and the absence of law enforcement is anarchy. Anarchy is chaos. Anarchy is unchecked violence. Anarchy is every man for himself. If there is one thing the Marxist/Socialist/Communists and Capitalists agree on, anarchy is something like the very definition of evil.

Anarchy is in fact a distinct political theory, the one political theory that puts regular, working, typically wage earning people first. If you know your way around class politics in America, you know that all the “best” people of both political parties think very little of manual laborers and working poor. That is putting it as mildly as I can.

In some sense, Anarchism, Marxism and Capitalism are all spawn and artifacts of industrialization. It is ironic, there being so much hatred on the left of all things Western Civilization, when the Marxism they take their cues from is every bit of the West. Anarchism as an actual practice has never been, but for one very brief period in 1871, the rise of the Paris communes, which the Marxists and capitalists agreed, had to be put down like a rabid dog, and did with the full power and violence of the State, after only two months. There was some success in the Spanish Civil War in 1936, people living in anarchist communities. But again, the fascists and communists agreed, there can be no anarchists.

Mikhael Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon are the firmament, the three wise men so to speak, the progenitors of political anarchy, arising out of the tumult of early industrialization, so many people leaving the country to work in the city, often finding themselves trapped in degrading and predatory circumstances. Bakunin and Kropotkin were both Russian, both of the aristocracy who renounced their status, both beloved of the common people they fought for. Bakunin was a true rabble rouser, a real revolutionary to a fault, stirring up working people all over Europe, truly hated by the aristocracy of many a nation, and especially by Marx himself. Bakunin paid a very heavy price with his health and his freedom. When Kropotkin died even Lenin grieved. It is said that Lenin said, if even a third of anarchists were like Peter Kropotkin, Lenin and the communists would all become anarchists. Kropotkin was the good grandfather and philosopher of the movement. Proudhon, a Frenchman, was the first to call himself an anarchist, and was perhaps the most purely intellectual of the three, influencing both Bakunin and Kropotkin (though he has of late been cancelled for some obscure letters that were found to contain some less than charitable ideas about Jews.)

In the main, these men argued, anarchy is about giving working people ownership over their own production. By contrast, capitalism claims ownership of the production of society by ever fewer people and corporations over time, celebrating and facilitating the consolidation of wealth and power at the expense of the many; communism deprives most people of ownership of anything from the beginning. Anarchism, in the form of these three men, arose out of the socialist tradition. In America, anarchism tends more toward the individual and is often called libertarianism.

Modern anarchist writers like Murray Bookchin, David Graeber and Michael Malice (and anarchists generally) tend to get bogged down in their writing, in ideas about how to order society (or in mere criticism of it.) That is always the first question of anarchists, what about Law and Order? Anarchy is defined loosely as “no rule”, or “no rulers”. There is a notion that there can be no law or order without a ruler(s) or a State. Consequently anarchists are always put on the defensive, and feel compelled to explain what an anarchist society would look like down to the mundane details, often accused of being naive, or mere destroyers not builders, or sowers of disorder.

Suffice to say, a society designed to empower the individual while disempowering the consolidation of social and political power, would devise a means to govern and police itself.

As for ANTIFA (anti-fascists), which is made somewhat famous since the rise of Trump, I do not claim to know much. But as with the anti-racists, I do not understand defining oneself as the opposite of something. That implies the necessity of that other thing, that your identity is dependent on that Other, it is a kind of dance you are doing and you cannot dance without the Other. ANTIFA also seems like a purely destructive force, as post-destruction of the Fascists, such an identity would be bereft of purpose. In fact ANTIFA and Fascists appear to feed off each other and expand.

There is an old joke that in this context goes, if you ask 10 anarchists what is anarchism, you will get 100 answers: anarcho-syndicalism, anarcho-capitalism, anarcho-socialism, green anarchy, feminist anarchy and so on. Anarchism in some ways is similar to what we describe when we say American individualism, and I think America is where anarchism will come to its full fruition.

I said in my introduction that I think of myself as a philosophical as opposed to political anarchist. I am not interested in getting bogged down in debates about Law and Order, or Governance. Nor do I advocate for any kind of violence, when many an anarchist since the beginning of anarchism has. I do not see anarchism as a political theory as much as a way of being. In some real sense anarchy is the way of nature. Nature is self organizing, spontaneous, it always organizes for increasing differentiation and diversity. It is both chaos and perfect order. Being of nature, it is a way for us to think about organizing ourselves.

In real time this dynamic is most evident in the aftermath of war or natural catastrophe. People spontaneously build markets, they come together and offer mutual aid, without anyone having to show or tell them how. No State nor ruler is required. Of course the State and Ruler(s) are usually the cause of war, and are rarely helpful and often make natural catastrophes worse (as in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.)

To say anarchism is the way of nature, it is also necessary to point out how badly nature is treated by Capitalists and Communists, generally speaking. Communist countries were and are terribly polluted (China has exterminated most of it’s pollinators), and unrestrained consumer capitalism is putting the very viability of the biosphere to sustain our current numbers at risk. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, nature is the seat and dominion of the Devil. For the scientific materialists, nature is base and gross, matter without meaning and merely a vehicle to get off this rock (manifest destiny and colonialism for the entire universe.) Do you suppose there is any connection between the general fear and hatred of nature, and fear and hatred toward the concept of anarchy?

It can be said too, America was already an anarchist place. Native, aboriginal culture prior to European colonization was a lot like what we describe when we talk about anarchy. In that sense, anarchy is about restoring America.

Most of all, anarchy questions the consolidation of political and social power by the individual, corporation, and the State, while it strives to set some first and primary principles as to how to order society most equitably.* I think that starts with the individual, which is a lot like what is talked about in the occult, to know thyself, the Great Work (which is what I will be writing about next.)

America is an immature nation. It does not yet know itself. America cannot know itself or fulfill it’s promise, until it’s people agree, that is a priority for themselves and the nation. That in part, I believe, is the promise of anarchy, which I believe can be both conservative and liberal, and bring us together as a people, against the so-called experts and officials who have done such a thorough job of making America a less free place over time, who have facilitated the transfer of wealth and power up the social pyramid for three generations at least, and seem ever eager to use technology to rule over us, to monitor us, to dictate what we are allowed to say and do.

We Americans have given our power over to the “experts.” They are failing us. They are giving America to globalists and trans-national institutions, who do not have our best interests in mind. It is time to look to each other and ourselves, to regain power over our own lives and the future of America.

*This is some of what separates anarchism from libertarianism, the seeking of a more equitable society - and also care and concern for the biosphere.