Anarchy is not a political theory. Anarchy is the tool to heal the divisions and malignancies created by politicization and the establishment of orders and hierarchies (collectively “the state”).
Let’s break this down into a sort of logical proposition.
Politics is inherently divisive. Politicization involves establishing a structure or order for society, which mandates the classification and stratification of people, processes, and resources and ultimately results in divisions. The divisions caused by politicization are responsible for establishing false dichotomies (“good vs. bad,” “rich vs. poor,” “abundant vs. scarce,” “legal vs. illegal,” etc.) that give the illusion of “one or the other.” This is further exacerbated by capitalism, and the combination of politics and capitalism has proven to be an unholy alliance.
Eliminating political division, and the resulting social order, establishes egalitarian liberty. In order to establish an equitable, peaceful, and cooperative society, these dualities need a peaceful, cooperative resolution rather than the competitive conflict that is the result of classification. The subjective and objective realities that we all perceive — and between which we must choose on a day to day basis — demand a completely different approach, not just a new system of organizing our approach.
Anarchism as a tool can serve to eliminate the role of the state, but it must remain dynamic, flexible, and co-evolutionary; not fall into that various hypostates of political theory. Eliminating objective authority empowers the individual, but in it’s place — if society is going to continue — must be a cooperative, voluntary, and deliberate effort of individuals — working under no authority but their own will to cooperate — working together for a shared collective goal — their conceived reality. Ending social hierarchy, the state and capitalism, and the policing of individuals has taken center stage in anarchism as a political theory, but we must not neglect or forget the equally important concept of anarchism: personal responsibility and agency — and this goes well beyond the realm of politics and political discourse.
Politics Is Inherently Divisive
These divisions occur because of how classification and stratification works. An object is defined as being a member of a class based on certain characteristics, traits, accidentals, etc.; whether intended or not, this creates an implied negation — anything that is not a member of the class is separated out from it. This is where division starts: the “in group” versus the “out group.” When one class is given higher social value than another (regardless of the justifications for this), the other class is implicitly demeaned and subjugated. The entitlement of a higher-position object to subjectively manipulate and control a lower-position object creates the authoritarian dynamic of modern, state-based societies.
This is, of course, not isolated to statist politics. We find the same phenomena occurring in theocratic societies (from the Holy Roman Empire to the modern Islamic State), and it is here that we must acknowledge a dichotomy that exists persistently in social individuals: the subjective perception (identity, desire, emotion, etc.) and the objective perception (observed reality, scientific inquiry, logical reasoning, etc.). These two modes of perceiving are not siloed. They interact and coalesce in the process of conceiving our ideas about our perceptions. But when one or the other is allowed to “win” (the “this or that” / “this versus that” mentality, where one must triumph), a biased conception arises and prioritizes one above the other; how we combine them in the moment does, in fact, matter.
Politically, people who tend to lean heavy on subjective perception tend to favor liberalism and capitalism while those who lean heavy towards objective perception tend to favor socialism and communism. In both cases, the perception be suitable for the individual, but claiming that one is an objective “right” or “good” (and, incidentally, establishing the implication that the other is objectively “wrong” or “bad”) is problematic. Our social environment is a cooperative effort of conceiving our world — the coalescence and cooperation of individuals as a collective. In recent millennia, the norm when arriving at such a proverbial crossroads has been to perceive a competitive juxtaposition in which one must triumph and the other fail, but it hasn’t always been that way. For the large majority of our history, our hunter-gatherer ancestors were cooperative and mutually attentive. It has only been in the last 10,000 years — since the Agricultural Revolution — that this has shifted to a competitive dynamic… and it can be shifted back.
This is the role of anarchism: to remove all worldly authorities and hierarchies and make all people equal by proposing a dialectical tool to resolve these dichotomies into a unity, rather than giving fealty to their identity or society at the expense of the other.
Anarchism, re-imagined…
Lately, I’ve been waxing philosophical a lot and getting into some deep ontological and metaphysical questions. This has gotten me thinking about how we, as anarchists, may have been short-sighting ourselves all along. Perhaps we’ve been too narrow in our perspective — not going far enough in recognizing the real degree of change that an anarchic world demands of contemporary humanity.
The social structure of the modern world is largely built on political and economic hierarchies, with social and cultural hierarchies still playing a fairly formative role. At the same time, new hierarchies, like sustainability, are attempting to develop while old ones, like religion, are beginning to crumble. Traditionally, anarchists have competed against the state in the domain of politics and economy, and that is where our efforts remain. Politics is the contemporary language of social organization (just like religion and tribalism in eras past) but anarchism must go beyond politics if it is to be successful.
It is easy to say that liberalism and Marxism have failed, but we must also learn to acknowledge the subtle (but critical) ways they have changed humanity and human society since the 19th century. In order to acknowledge those faults, we must identify where politics ends and other “domains of life” begin… and take appropriate responsibility for them. This is in service to the greater goal of liberating the individual — by liberating the elements of their life from the authoritarians of society.
Perhaps this will make more sense if we work back.
Let’s take the impact of liberalism. Of course, we all know about the direct harm that liberal capitalism has enabled — everything from wage slavery to fabricated scarcity. But most of us don’t think about what the individual impacts of liberalism are. Things that we wouldn’t even consider:
- Neoliberalism allows the individual to abdicate their responsibility for active moral/ethical reasoning by insisting that the state’s judgments based on codified laws are superior to this capacity
- The “superior” nature of the law is so “effective” that it enables individuals to act against socially and ethically responsible reasoning (usually in the interest of a personal agenda) by virtue of “not breaking any laws”
- This emphasizes (superficially) an implication that individuals are incapable of moral reasoning and need an intercessor — whether state or priest — to do so on their behalf.
None of this stuff is “political” in the grand scheme of things. And the average person — you and I, your neighbor up the street, and 95% of the people you meet in the world — is perfectly capable of following some basic moral guidelines. It doesn’t really take any more than that. There is plenty more to give, surely, but it can stop there and still be effective.
This isn’t a politics problem. It is, however, the basic justification for politics and government, and clearly it is an absurd justification. “People cannot reason well enough to solve their problems. So let a few people reason poorly on behalf of everyone so the problems get worse?” Yeah, basically. Because if people were confident (as they should be) in their ability to solve their problems without “leaders” (construction worker teams do it every day; hackers and open source developers have been doing it for decades; the Wobbly shop model has proven effective; etc., etc., blah, blah, blah…), there would be no justification for the “elites” and the power we willingly give up to them. So they keep us scared and desperate, and preoccupied with “entertainment” and “work,” lest we start to actually talk to each other and realized how much we’re being boned by those very “elites” who so desperately claim we need them.
Contemporary leftist movements have a similar problem, but inverse. Leftism assumes society is far more structured and predictable — objective — than it is. They rely on theory to resolve conflicts, but tend to favor the theory over pragmatism (presumably because admitting your theory cannot account for something and needs modification is a blow to the ego of the individuals who adhere to the theory). This results from placing the theory, itself, in the same role that liberalism places the “elites” — the authoritative position. The theory becomes a sort of “god” to the community following it. When discrepancies arise, such a community will work to preserve the theory from challenges rather than admit that cooperation and society cannot be definitively stable or planned.
This all being the case, we must consider Anarchism not as a political ideology but as an holistic way of life for humanity. We would do well to stop reducing it to political banter. Not everyone cares about politics, and in many (perhaps all?) ways, politicization is counterintuitive to social progress and human nature.