January 23, 2007

• Is anarchy violent?

  Occasionally, I get into a serious discussion of politics and when I express my true views few people are willing to take me seriously.  If someone asks me pointedly about my politics, I usually say, “I’m an anarchist but until the anarchy party appears on a ballot, I’ll vote as a liberal libertarian.”

  In my youth, the popular image of an anarchist was a sneaky-looking man dressed in black and carrying an old-fashioned round bomb with a lit fuse.  In the public’s mind today, the word, “anarchy”, is usually associated with civil disorder and violence.

  Why would so many people think of anarchy as violent, when most of the planet’s violent acts are initiated by governments?  One might think it is because most people are stupid, but it is more charitable and probably more accurate to say it is because they have been brainwashed.  The subjects of most if not all governments have been indoctrinated to believe that the government protects them and keeps order.  A simple look around might convince any thinking person that this is inaccurate.

  William Godwin was an English political philosopher, journalist and novelist of the late 18th and early 19th century.  Education was one of his major concerns, and a frequent subject in his writings.  He never referred to himself as an anarchist, but his principles have become some of the bases for modern anarchism.  He said, among many other quotable statements:

  Above all we should not forget that government is an evil, a usurpation upon the private judgement and
  individual conscience of mankind.
  —
  Government will not fail to employ education, to strengthen its hands, and perpetuate its institutions.
  —
  If he who employs coercion against me could mould me to his purposes by argument, no doubt he would. He pretends to punish me because his argument is strong; but he really punishes me because his argument is weak.
  —
  Once annihilate the quackery of government, and the most homebred understanding might be strong  enough to detect the artifices of the state juggler that would mislead him.

  What Godwin called “quackery” others later called “propaganda”.  The government of the United States of America made such a fuss about its enemies propaganda that it became a dirty word, so now they are calling their own brand of it “public diplomacy.”

  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon adopted the word, “anarchy,” to describe his philosophy in his 1849 treatise, What is Property?  He saw anarchy as:

  “…a form of government or constitution in which public and private consciousness, formed through the development of science and law, is alone sufficient to maintain order and guarantee all liberties. In it, as a consequence, the institutions of the police, preventive and repressive methods, officialdom, taxation, etc., are reduced to a minimum. In it, more especially, the forms of monarchy and intensive centralization disappear, to be replaced by federal institutions and a pattern of life based on the commune.”

  Mikhail Bakunin was a political opponent of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, and one of the intellectual fathers of modern anarchism.  He said, “Crime is the necessary condition of the very existence of the State.”

  Piotr Kropotkin may have been the most influential thinker among early anarchists.  He wrote an article on the subject for the eleventh edition of Encyclopedia Britannica.  It begins:

  ANARCHISM (from the Gr. an, and arkh, contrary to authority), the name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government – harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being.

  In a society developed on these lines, the voluntary associations which already now begin to cover all the fields of human activity would take a still greater extension so as to substitute themselves for the state in all its functions. They would represent an interwoven network, composed of an infinite variety of groups and federations of all sizes and degrees, local, regional, national and international temporary or more or less permanent – for all possible purposes: production, consumption and exchange, communications, sanitary arrangements, education, mutual protection, defence of the territory, and so on; and, on the other side, for the satisfaction of an ever-increasing number of scientific, artistic, literary and sociable needs.

  Moreover, such a society would represent nothing immutable. On the contrary – as is seen in organic life at large – harmony would (it is contended) result from an ever-changing adjustment and readjustment of equilibrium between the multitudes of forces and influences, and this adjustment would be the easier to obtain as none of the forces would enjoy a special protection from the state.

  
    I am sure that one of the reasons anarchists are thought of as violent is that some have resorted to violence against government oppression, but more often than not, it was the oppressive government that initiated violence against peaceful anarchical movements.

  On May 4, 1886 a town meeting was called in Chicago’s Haymarket Square
  by anarchists and labor activists. As the peaceful assembly came to a
  close, 180 police officers stormed the meeting, demanding it disburse.
  Suddenly an unknown assailant threw a bomb into the crowd killing a
  police officer and injuring several others. The police responded
  instantly by shooting and clubbing wildly into the crowd, killing 7
  other fellow police officers, injuring 60 more and killing and injuring
  an unknown number of civilians at the meeting.

  source:  http://www.lucyparsonsproject.org/index.html

  It seems to me that anarchists must have a very optimistic view of humanity.  For someone to believe that we can work out our differences peacefully without being coerced or forced into it by authorities, he must be a peaceful person and so highly evolved that he knows he is capable of such self-governance, and must be so charitable as to believe that everyone can do it.  

  I think everyone could do it, if everyone were willing, if everyone were living in love and not in fear.  But, since fear is such a useful tool for controlling us, and governments do their utmost to indoctrinate us to fear, we’ll have to get rid of the governments before we can begin to learn how to live without them.

  

  

  • 12:19 am
  • 5 Comments