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Anarchy... a brief overview

Anarchy is an ideology that is as old as time itself. And I don’t mean in the way that it is framed, rather I mean that a thought in the back of the human mind that has always remained.

Anarchy comes from the ancient greek word anarkhia, which means without ruler. It stands for the absence of domination, hierarchy and power over others. It is on the far left of the political spectrum as it believes in the complete altruism of the human mind as a response to educated freedom.

We can also define anarchism as a socio-political theory which opposes all systems of domination and oppression such as racism, ableism, sexism, anti-LGBTTQIA, ageism, government, competition, capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and punitive justice, and promotes direct democracy, collaboration, interdependence, mutual aid, diversity, peace, transformative justice and equity.

However this concept of anarchy was phrased only after the concept of “Tabula Rasa” was developed in the 1700s. The concept by John Locke that the mind upon appearance was a blank slate, and was developed by what people observe from sensory input and mental input. What they were taught shaped their beliefs.

This is directly in relation to anarchy which has to believe in the inherent goodness of man to function. A system of altruism where when each man is left to his device without the presence of a ruler, will do what is inherently best for the group of people.

There are a few different types and varieties of anarchism which are based on what they are against. The first is political anarchism.

Political anarchism is primarily understood as a skeptical theory of political legitimation. This is primarily against the presence of a single state of ruler, where everyone rules themselves. Some argue that no rule only happens when everyone rules, hence in direct conflict with the theory of anarchy. But anarchy calls for individual and equal power, so it works around that.

Anarchists say that monopolistic or coercive power is illegitimate. Anarchists criticised the state. Bakunin provides a example:

“If there is a state, there must be domination of one class by another and, as a result, slavery; the State without slavery is unthinkable- and this is why we are enemies of the state.”

However such sweeping generalisations are very different to support in a political landscape such as the modern one. The works by Bakunin and other anarchists were written as a response to the global socialist movement and Marxist and Hegelian view of the state and the accelerated globalisation. While some anarchists make wide claims of the corruption of the state, most modern anarchists give it as a response to the actions of the localised political entity.

The next type of anarchism according to the Stanford encyclopaedia of Philosophy is religious anarchism. Religious anarchism, the main type overarching Taoist anarchism, Christian anarchism Bhakti anarchism, and in Sikhism and Buddhism, can involve either the rejection of God as an authority, or accept him as the sole authority.

Bakunin said that if god really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him.

Christian anarchism said accepting any other authority than God would be sacrilegious. A major supporter of this movement is Russian writer Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoi, also known as Count Leo Tolstoy.

Christian anarchy also has its ties to pacifism and hence says the state is immoral because of its ties to the military. But there are also non-pacifist anarchists.

William Godwin came up with modern anarchy in its modern form in around the 19th century, when terrorism began to grow as a result of anarchist revolt.

In the height of the French Revolution in 1784, Godwin published “An inquiry concerning Political Justice and its influence on morals and happiness”, which while not using the word anarchism, was one of the first modern anarchist texts. It also influenced the fathers of socialism, and poets like Robert Owen and Percy Shelley.

This came as a result of John Locke’s argument that the mind was a blank slate, tabula rasa. Godwin argued that men were born equal, and differences were a product of their environment. Godwin also believed that morality was a system of conduct which is determined by a consideration of the greatest general good.

He also had a strong belief that man could be perfected, so when these principles of tabula rasa, the greatest good and continual improvement were reconciled, we would have a perfect human being and a perfect man. And as man became more educated and rational, they became capable of governing themselves.

His political view was that property accumulation was evil, and each person was entitled to his personal stock. Communities governed themselves face to face as nation states.

He also believed that this would be the route to a technological utopia, where everyone took a share of the workload, and the innovations of the industrial revolution would be put to use by everyone. Based on this, work hours for each person could be reduced to just half an hour, the rest of the day could be used in pursuing the individuals dreams and passions, creating a system where happiness is ensured and so is productivity!

Another one of Godwin’s statements that spark discussion is “despotism is as perennial as anarchy is transitory”. This was a response to Hobbe’s argument that the state was a comfort from the natural evil of man, a direct contradiction of the pinrciple of anarchy. However this was reconciled with the next man.

After Godwin died in 1836, came Max Stirner. His work “Der Einzige und sein Eigentum”, the ego and its own, where he looked at cooperation and community as the essence of anarchy. Sterner was a radical individualist. He was influenced by Hegel’s dialectics, that progress occurred only when there was development of a thesis, antithesis and synthesis that drives idea and history. Instead of progressing towards the state as the centre of the community as Hegel had argued, he believed that this dialectic would progress towards a supreme individual freedom, where each man had his own moral footing.

While most of is points were philosophically abstract and would never work, his fundamental point was that all humans are egoists, and every deed you do, no matter how charitable and selfless on the surface, was for self benefit. An example for this is a man funding the education for a child in Africa. The only reason he is doing this is because people in his society will look at him better. He wants to purge himself of these sins, or maybe he holds hope that one of these children can come up with the cure for cancer, because his child may have it in the future and he wants to ensure his/her safety.

Based on that, the state is superfluous, because we would be good to further our own individual interests. Laws only placed a limit on our personal freedom of the ego.

He didn’t believe in the abolishment of government, rather he believed in the presence of unions which would create an egoistic equilibrium with the government.

In 1840, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon published “What is property”, one of the most influential anarchist texts of the 19th century. His answer to the statement was that property was theft. He said that property as a result of labour was legitimate, but property in unused land or property that’s profit as a result of rent or interest was illegitimate.

He is known for his squabbles (hehe funny word) with Marx and deserves credit for his foresight that the communist system is based on the principle that the individual is essentially subordinate to the collective, and from that alone he has his right and life. The citizen belongs to the state, like a child to his family. That he is in its power and possession, in manu, that he owes it submission and obedience in all things. This predicted the horrors of the totalitarian Soviet State in the 20th century.

Instead of control from the higher people, he believed in a bottom up society, where the people lower would control those that were higher. Instead of laws, he proposed contacts between people and groups. This was called mutualism.

Another anarchist who opposed Marx was Mikhail Bakunin, perhaps the most famous anarchist. He believed that justice was synonymous with equality, so that the freedom of each is realisable only in the equality of all. He also believed in a bottom-up society where communes which while federated into larger units, would always retain the right to secede, or opt out. This is called collectivist anarchism called for equal means of subsistence, support, education and opportunity for every child, boy or girl, until maturity, and equal resources and facilities in adulthood to create his own well being by his own labour. His arguments with Marx were over the fact that the workers association should themselves own the means of production, not the state.

He argued that the acceptance of authority was a matter of choice, making the state illegitimate.

The next Anarchist to close off the century was Peter Kropotkin, who spent most of his life arguing against the people that believed that Darwin’s survival of the fittest allowed discrimination and racial and class hierarchy.

He said that rather than the shallow genes, it was the gene of cooperation that was the defining factor of evolution. He argued that an altruism of kind was present biologically in humans, as it was in other animals, hence the state was unnecessary as the protector of order.

He believed that humans were good by nature, but lived under the corrosive effects of society. He saw in nature that the eagles feed the youngest and the weakest and the oldest first, when two ants met from the same anthill, they gave each other water and food, and when the dung beetles had too much to eat and the food was hard to bury, another dung beetle would come and help out. Everywhere he looked, he saw cooperation. He also so aid organisations that provided help without the coercion of the state.

During the twentieth century anarchists were divided into communist anarchists, or non-communist anarchists. The communist anarchist believed that the property was controlled by a small group of people, while non-communist anarchists believed that property was controlled by the individual.

While studying anarchism through encyclopaedia Britannica, Kropotkin noticed that there were six types of anarchism. Mutualism, Individualist, Collectivist, Communist, Christian and Literary.

Anarchy is incredibly nuanced, with many different definitions, types, and it can’t be described with this short piece. However, let this serve as a beginning for enlightening discourse on this topic that is shunned and while isn’t applicable, can certainly change our views on how we view politics and individual responsibility.

#anarchy #anarchism #politics #kropotkin #stirner #bakunin #proudhon #godwins

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