The Return of the Return of Anarchism

[Red Green]

The Return of the Return of Anarchism
Posted by Thomas L. Knapp on Mar 28, 2011 in Commentary, Feature Articles • Comments (4)


“[A]n ideological philosophy and political movement that had been thought of as a dusty oddity, a relic of the late 19th century, has returned to the fore,” writes Abe Greenwald in Commentary. Worse yet, opines Greenwald, this return is fraught with “enough consequence that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently denounced terrorism ‘whether it comes from the right, the left, from al-Qaeda, from anarchists, whoever it is.’”

Like those rumors of Mark Twain’s death, recurring claims of anarchism’s demise and resurrection are greatly exaggerated. Greenwald misinterprets his own observations. It is not resurrection he sees, it’s resurgence: A cyclical phenomenon driven primarily by the reliably recurring failure of the modern state to deliver on its most basic promises of peace, prosperity and respect for human rights.

At its least introspective, anarchism seems a merely visceral response to those failures. When confronted by some particularly repugnant manifestation of X, it’s only natural to reflexively posit Not-X as the solution. The growth of the state — its increasing size, its ever more insistent insertion of itself into new areas of human interaction, and its thoroughness in regularizing and co-opting, rather than remedying, social ills — makes it more and more the usual suspect for the role of X. Thus the more and more frequent renascences of anarchism as populist street theater.

Beyond that visceral expresion, anarchism — fundamental, principled opposition to the existence of the state — survives as numerous unbroken (though often evolving) intellectual traditions, awaiting, nay begging, adoption by those street actors as both explanatory tool and plan for more considered action.

As the Hobbesian experiment we call “the state” polarizes along the lines of its own contradictions of “left” and “right” authoritarianism (Hobbes, meet Hegel!), anarchism emerges not as antithesis, but as synthesis. When the state runs short of convincing fictions (“constitutionalism,” “dictatorship of the proletariat,” “fuhrerprinzip”) to disguise those contradictions and stands weakened, near collapse over the pit of its own digging, it is anarchism we invariably see approaching, shovel in hand, ready to bury the failed experiment and turn, with humanity, to new ones.

For two centuries, give or take, the anarchists have — sometimes in breathless anticipation, sometimes in a stoic spirit of resigned obduration — looked for inspiration to Cato the Elder’s admonition that Carthage must be destroyed. The state, we say, must be destroyed, the sooner the better. Can someone please pass the salt?

http://c4ss.org/content/6582

[Peter O'Donnell]

This is all very well, but I assume if we destroy our state(s) in North America, then a hundred million Chinese folk will be arriving here within a year or two including about ten million of their armed forces. Who gets rid of them?

[Red Green]

This is all very well, but I assume if we destroy our state(s) in North America, then a hundred million Chinese folk will be arriving here within a year or two including about ten million of their armed forces. Who gets rid of them?

You seem to think that the end of govt is the beginning of a free for all, which I would argue is quite the opposite; it would be the end of the free for all.

Land would be owned, and supported by mutual recognition of ownership. People would be free to either accept people into their community or reject them, and people coming from China would have to bring something to the table to be accepted by the population already here, rather than just grease enough wheels to get past immigration services.

[styky]

This is all very well, but I assume if we destroy our state(s) in North America, then a hundred million Chinese folk will be arriving here within a year or two including about ten million of their armed forces. Who gets rid of them?

You seem to think that the end of govt is the beginning of a free for all, which I would argue is quite the opposite; it would be the end of the free for all.

Land would be owned, and supported by mutual recognition of ownership. People would be free to either accept people into their community or reject them, and people coming from China would have to bring something to the table to be accepted by the population already here, rather than just grease enough wheels to get past immigration services.

All well and good to say people will but what about the people that won't

[Red Green]

This is all very well, but I assume if we destroy our state(s) in North America, then a hundred million Chinese folk will be arriving here within a year or two including about ten million of their armed forces. Who gets rid of them?

You seem to think that the end of govt is the beginning of a free for all, which I would argue is quite the opposite; it would be the end of the free for all.

Land would be owned, and supported by mutual recognition of ownership. People would be free to either accept people into their community or reject them, and people coming from China would have to bring something to the table to be accepted by the population already here, rather than just grease enough wheels to get past immigration services.

All well and good to say people will but what about the people that won't

The people that won't, won't now. The only difference is the govt gives the "people that won't" power. The people who are happy to send tax dollars and soldiers to die on foreign soil are the "people who won't" because they don't go over themselves on their own dime.

The "people that won't" perish without a state.