Hopefully there is no defensive
reaction against what I write. What I mean is the assumption that because
I question I must really be a "bourgeois capitalist," parroting and
discussing anarchism to destroy it from within. But, the whole purpose of
this blog is to question abstractions and their application to real people.
In this post, I question the destructive capabilities of believers in the
anarchism abstraction because I feel it is my individual duty to reflect on their
beliefs (independent of anarchism’s content), my duty of autonomy from the
anarchism belief system, and thus my duty to act to question the logical and
moral contradictions which trouble my conscience (see individual anarchism and
Christiano).
I do not believe in a world dominated by permanent DISCONTENT like the anarchist's anti-ORDER system requires. I approach the world as it is, with the realization that abstractions like JUSTICE and AUTHORITY are simply abstractions, beliefs developed over thousands of years to help mankind cope with life and if possible, make it easier. Contrarily, anarchists criticize concepts without checking first for their rationality or their utility by human beings in a real and not ideal world. Because of its diffuseness, anarchist criticism involves many different topics that are too wide for one blog post. But, I'll start to scrape the surface with introductory comments about authority, the State, democracy, and tradition.
I do not believe in a world dominated by permanent DISCONTENT like the anarchist's anti-ORDER system requires. I approach the world as it is, with the realization that abstractions like JUSTICE and AUTHORITY are simply abstractions, beliefs developed over thousands of years to help mankind cope with life and if possible, make it easier. Contrarily, anarchists criticize concepts without checking first for their rationality or their utility by human beings in a real and not ideal world. Because of its diffuseness, anarchist criticism involves many different topics that are too wide for one blog post. But, I'll start to scrape the surface with introductory comments about authority, the State, democracy, and tradition.
Why
create a belief system that destroys people who claim AUTHORITY if you are going to establish an AUTHORITY after that destruction?
Why must we have faith that they'll do better?
Why must we have faith that they'll do better?
Authority
is just the ability to command people to obey. Unfortunately for us today,
much of the philosophy of anarchism developed around a hundred sixty years go in France during multiple revolutions and in the Russian Empire. Russian anarchists were influenced by a series of abstractions from the French anti-property and anti-Statism of Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809-65). He then influenced others like Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) who combined French abstractions with the beliefs in Russian “peasant wisdom” and “Slavophile
communalism” (Burroughs 116). Buoyed by examples of supposedly glorious but inevitably futile French street riots and communal experiments most notably in 1848 and 1871, a few Russians believed in the strength and moral superiority of the poor Russian peasantry and the supposedly egalitarian (equal) local communities who did not have as much power as the "machinery" of the autocratic tzar ("all-powerful" Russian emperor). Because of terrible experiences with a different authority and different abstractions, anarchists today feel the need to change America without the consent of American citizens. They feel inspired by past anarchists; I am not.
But, the ideological fit was more difficult when a small group of those inspired anarchist immigrants brought those abstractions with them to the US in the mass immigrant waves of the later part of the 19th century. They also brought with them a desire to destroy the established authority (Riasanovsky 433). They created explanations of life in Russia with its 19th century Tsarist oppression. But those abstractions do not fit as well with say, an anarcho-syndicalist voluntary association in Washington State, USA in 2013. Nor do second generation immigrants from 1911 Europe/Russia and their difficulties reflect common grievances with the 2011 Occupy Wallstreet movement, which has a strong anarchist following, an "anti-hierarchical" tradition, and among many complaints, a desire to use their Ivy league education to get a job they can be happy with (See Bennett for anti-hierarchy). Today, anarcho-syndicalist communities organize freely based on the protection of citizens who believe in the American abstractions of freedom of association, speech, and citizenship. Yet, anarchists of whatever variety deserve the same skepticism they reserve for everybody not freely associating with them.
Influenced by prominent anarchists like Emma Goldman, American anarchists throughout the 20th century forged a wide front against abstract explanations of American problems, while oftentimes saddling various rights movements with radical and terrorist labels. A fringe of anarchist believers used sporadic acts of violence like the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901 to achieve erratic results, namely to chop off the heads of an American authority explained by a metaphor of "weeds" that polluted the vast fertility of humanity (to borrow a Goldman metaphor). Attempting further decapitation, between 1881-1911, numerous ministers, generals, kings, empresses, presidents from Russia, Italy, Austria and the United States were assassinated by terrorists believing in anarchism, while espousing “propaganda by the deed” (Burrough 195).
Violence thus became the most powerful form of anarchist expression because at least in America, other ideological groups in America were more successful in altering people's minds (labor, women's rights, civil rights, etc.). Thus, acts of violence and terrorism were perfectly acceptable and the future was just something humanity was just going to have to TRUST from people J.W. Burroughs called “confidence artists” (195). Yet, many Occupy Wallstreet anarchists apply the same principles of anti-government, property, and tradition to America today (Bennett). Are we going to have to trust that they won't be violent?
But, the ideological fit was more difficult when a small group of those inspired anarchist immigrants brought those abstractions with them to the US in the mass immigrant waves of the later part of the 19th century. They also brought with them a desire to destroy the established authority (Riasanovsky 433). They created explanations of life in Russia with its 19th century Tsarist oppression. But those abstractions do not fit as well with say, an anarcho-syndicalist voluntary association in Washington State, USA in 2013. Nor do second generation immigrants from 1911 Europe/Russia and their difficulties reflect common grievances with the 2011 Occupy Wallstreet movement, which has a strong anarchist following, an "anti-hierarchical" tradition, and among many complaints, a desire to use their Ivy league education to get a job they can be happy with (See Bennett for anti-hierarchy). Today, anarcho-syndicalist communities organize freely based on the protection of citizens who believe in the American abstractions of freedom of association, speech, and citizenship. Yet, anarchists of whatever variety deserve the same skepticism they reserve for everybody not freely associating with them.
Influenced by prominent anarchists like Emma Goldman, American anarchists throughout the 20th century forged a wide front against abstract explanations of American problems, while oftentimes saddling various rights movements with radical and terrorist labels. A fringe of anarchist believers used sporadic acts of violence like the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901 to achieve erratic results, namely to chop off the heads of an American authority explained by a metaphor of "weeds" that polluted the vast fertility of humanity (to borrow a Goldman metaphor). Attempting further decapitation, between 1881-1911, numerous ministers, generals, kings, empresses, presidents from Russia, Italy, Austria and the United States were assassinated by terrorists believing in anarchism, while espousing “propaganda by the deed” (Burrough 195).
Violence thus became the most powerful form of anarchist expression because at least in America, other ideological groups in America were more successful in altering people's minds (labor, women's rights, civil rights, etc.). Thus, acts of violence and terrorism were perfectly acceptable and the future was just something humanity was just going to have to TRUST from people J.W. Burroughs called “confidence artists” (195). Yet, many Occupy Wallstreet anarchists apply the same principles of anti-government, property, and tradition to America today (Bennett). Are we going to have to trust that they won't be violent?
Can Individuals "LIBERATE" themselves from Society and THEN be NATURAL, MORAL Beings?
Let me refer again to the terms of consent, duty to obey, to act from previous posts and now of AUTONOMY. The last term refers to ones' individual independence from the content of others' actions/speech; "we have the right to do what we think is in our best interests." Of course people are independent from the actions and speech of others. But, does that mean we must evaluate every other person, out of billions, and decide for ourselves if their actions are moral? Is that our duty to act? Instead of acting justly in the perfect world of ideals and hypothetical, wouldn't we just spend a lot of time in the real world judging each other, until some COMMON beliefs started showing up anyways? Like I don't know, trying to survive and avoid death by writing some rules down?
And how can anarchists judge the
individual if the purpose of their system is the individual moral duty to
act? If violence is an acceptable way to correct an immoral situation from the subjective viewpoint, can one be an anarchist if one feels their duty to act would be to
eliminate all other anarchists because one believes they are acting
immorally? Can't we keep time-tested abstractions over some charismatic leader's better future that they'll deign to lay out for us?
The Stupidity of the SHEEPLE Monicker
And if individually interpreted morality allows for the ONLY legitimate action, why are the majority people considered "sheeple" anyways? This term is quite common among the youth bandying about at Occupy cultural festivals. Really, "sheeple" is just a pejorative, a rather lame comparison of mindless sheep (animals) with a "herd" of people who supposedly don't think for themselves. Why do self-professed anarchists get to determine whether or not individual action is in fact a mindless obedient animal action, and thus worthy of violent coercion in response, or an anarchic and thoughtful action which is moral? Can't noncriminals be said to be acting within their duty to obey moral institutions as individuals at least because they haven't been caught? Laws aren't perfect either and people do not enforce "JUSTICE" uniformly. But, do we want a relatively moral humanity based on written laws or do we want to trust our fates to individual morality unlatched from time-tested commonality?
Authority and institutions are abstract concepts the morality of which are subjectively determined. Laws give them more weight because they are artifacts that remain long after thoughts disappear out of the human brain. But, by dehumanizing the majority into an insulting "sheeple" term, aren't the anarchists simply imposing a new morality on everyone else? And by demanding individuals question the majority, aren't they creating a law that separates right from wrong? And if that law is written down in texts like Bakunin's God and State, aren't they really serving the same purpose as the abstract codes they would somehow abolish?
I prefer to have laws that provide for punishment when physical objects are taken that aren't your "own." What about an anarchist at a Occupy Wall-street event losing his IPhone to another person who wanted it instead? I prefer murder to be a heinous crime under the law so I am not murdered. Perhaps those acting against all of those other individuals and doing it through VIOLENCE are acting immoral and violating the legitimacy of individual moral authority with their DEEDS? Why is the minority, or rather the ultimate minority, the individual, ALWAYS the force for moral action, and not everyone else who just wants to avoid something taken from them or their safety preserved from a violent death? Which morals would be acceptable in the ideal anarchic world, why do anarchists get to make that determination, why is it such a big deal that we write them down, and do we who object get a chance to disagree?
The Stupidity of the SHEEPLE Monicker
And if individually interpreted morality allows for the ONLY legitimate action, why are the majority people considered "sheeple" anyways? This term is quite common among the youth bandying about at Occupy cultural festivals. Really, "sheeple" is just a pejorative, a rather lame comparison of mindless sheep (animals) with a "herd" of people who supposedly don't think for themselves. Why do self-professed anarchists get to determine whether or not individual action is in fact a mindless obedient animal action, and thus worthy of violent coercion in response, or an anarchic and thoughtful action which is moral? Can't noncriminals be said to be acting within their duty to obey moral institutions as individuals at least because they haven't been caught? Laws aren't perfect either and people do not enforce "JUSTICE" uniformly. But, do we want a relatively moral humanity based on written laws or do we want to trust our fates to individual morality unlatched from time-tested commonality?
Authority and institutions are abstract concepts the morality of which are subjectively determined. Laws give them more weight because they are artifacts that remain long after thoughts disappear out of the human brain. But, by dehumanizing the majority into an insulting "sheeple" term, aren't the anarchists simply imposing a new morality on everyone else? And by demanding individuals question the majority, aren't they creating a law that separates right from wrong? And if that law is written down in texts like Bakunin's God and State, aren't they really serving the same purpose as the abstract codes they would somehow abolish?
I prefer to have laws that provide for punishment when physical objects are taken that aren't your "own." What about an anarchist at a Occupy Wall-street event losing his IPhone to another person who wanted it instead? I prefer murder to be a heinous crime under the law so I am not murdered. Perhaps those acting against all of those other individuals and doing it through VIOLENCE are acting immoral and violating the legitimacy of individual moral authority with their DEEDS? Why is the minority, or rather the ultimate minority, the individual, ALWAYS the force for moral action, and not everyone else who just wants to avoid something taken from them or their safety preserved from a violent death? Which morals would be acceptable in the ideal anarchic world, why do anarchists get to make that determination, why is it such a big deal that we write them down, and do we who object get a chance to disagree?
The "State" is an Abstract Explanation for Complex Interpersonal Obedience
Anarchism is full of contradictions,
logical problems its believers should definitely work out before they affect my
life. Most anarchists choose to believe that governments and authorities
are responsible for disorder (Guérin 9). This is really an inversion of
18th century Enlightenment philosophy (abstractions) whereby
citizens in a “state of nature” form a "government" by a "social
contract" or agreement to obey other people for mutual benefit. Yet, anarchists
believe that only a society without a government can possess a restored
“natural order” and “social harmony.”
Some
anarchist "philosophers" argue that "each person has a
right NOT to be bound by the states' commands" (Standford). Emma
Goldman is one of these believers in the possibility of a “stateless society.” She wrote that “Anarchism is
the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which
maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their
promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man's
subordination” (Ward “Emma Goldman”). She disconnects ideas from humanity, much like Bakunin, in that any abstraction that impedes self-awareness (whatever that is) should be removed (if that's even possible).
Goldman also wrote that anarchism is “the philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary” (Ward “Emma Goldman”). So, once man has somehow reached self-consciousness and purged State abstractions from their brains, then they can recieve anarchist liberty. Goldman finds little worth in laws (artifacts) written by humans. So, a written rule is automatically equated with the violence necessary to enforce it. Yet, she ignores the fact that violence exists beyond punishment for rule breaking. It might just be a human nature thing. She also did not realize that her path to a new social order may be just as violent if American society ever gets there (hopefully never).
Likewise, other anarchists have typically tried to justify their imposition of beliefs on other people in the context of individual morality and the justification for an organization of people where membership is voluntary and one can depart at any time. But, can we really leave our abstractions behind? Can we really abandon "traditional society" as she conceives it? I think not.
Others write along the same lines that individuals have a right not to be subjected to another's imposition of duties (Christiano). For example, you have no right to tell me what to do without letting me take the time to judge the morality of the situation for myself. But, how can we remove ourselves from ourselves? How can we spend the time needed to decide every possible obligation's potential morality or immorality? Can't human beings use past understanding of morality and the laws that enforce it without having to throw everything out? Of course!
Another problem is that natural
order means ”perfection,” something that can never exist in the real world
other than what’s already in existence physically or in people’s flawed
minds. In some anarchist, dare I say intellectual circles, “anarchism” is
socialistic because believers want to “abolish the exploitation of man by man”
(Guérin 9). Really, they seek to end obligations between people that
anarchism’s believers think are “too much.” Yet, it’s their “standards”
that they impose on us, the socialistic part where equality is best planned for by a select, knowledgeable few. It’s a different determination of what constitutes a socialist
construction of society. They define for us separation between a social
interaction (positive) as opposed to an obligation, and therefore a potentially “exploitative”
action (negative). Thus, they have constructed a moral system for us.Goldman also wrote that anarchism is “the philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary” (Ward “Emma Goldman”). So, once man has somehow reached self-consciousness and purged State abstractions from their brains, then they can recieve anarchist liberty. Goldman finds little worth in laws (artifacts) written by humans. So, a written rule is automatically equated with the violence necessary to enforce it. Yet, she ignores the fact that violence exists beyond punishment for rule breaking. It might just be a human nature thing. She also did not realize that her path to a new social order may be just as violent if American society ever gets there (hopefully never).
Likewise, other anarchists have typically tried to justify their imposition of beliefs on other people in the context of individual morality and the justification for an organization of people where membership is voluntary and one can depart at any time. But, can we really leave our abstractions behind? Can we really abandon "traditional society" as she conceives it? I think not.
Others write along the same lines that individuals have a right not to be subjected to another's imposition of duties (Christiano). For example, you have no right to tell me what to do without letting me take the time to judge the morality of the situation for myself. But, how can we remove ourselves from ourselves? How can we spend the time needed to decide every possible obligation's potential morality or immorality? Can't human beings use past understanding of morality and the laws that enforce it without having to throw everything out? Of course!
Bakunin
and the State
Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin
believed "States" were abstractions ( I think he’s right), but ones that devoured
people’s lives, hopes, and dreams (Guérin 12). But, humanity uses abstractions
for all aspects of life. Ask Americans to define happiness and you may
find relative similarity, but whatever is expressed is based on imperfect
perceptions of their current reality, the physical objects they THINK they possess, and
what they believe, yet they can never one hundred percent know. So, Bakunin’s standard of happiness is
relative to his perception of the 19th century world and how he
viewed one abstraction, the State, and how he conspiratorilizes its role in
affecting the "happiness" and "aspirational" abstractions. How can we call
this approach more rational than the imperfect "government" that we have
now? His ideas were violently applied in the death of Presidents and the
"radicalization" and counter-reaction against the labor movement at a
time when Americans in particular were weary of the violent 1917 Russian Revolution.
Abstractions are used in incalculable number of ways to describe real life on a planet with billions of people. Though Bakunin himself diagnoses abstractions as motivating people to act, he creates his own abstract system whereby his notions of aspiration and happiness are moral whereas the "State" is the immoral belief holding back "progress." Thus, for the purposes of altering reality for people in Europe in the 19th century, he seeks to create something after he has destroyed.
Abstractions are used in incalculable number of ways to describe real life on a planet with billions of people. Though Bakunin himself diagnoses abstractions as motivating people to act, he creates his own abstract system whereby his notions of aspiration and happiness are moral whereas the "State" is the immoral belief holding back "progress." Thus, for the purposes of altering reality for people in Europe in the 19th century, he seeks to create something after he has destroyed.
Bakunin believes that mankind has suffered because of ideas (true). History has been "a perpetual and bloody immolation of millions of poor human beings in honor of some pitiless abstraction--God, country, power of State, national honor, historical rights, judicial rights, political liberty, public welfare" (Bakunin). But, Bakunin attacks his BAD abstractions ("God," "State power," etc.) with other GOOD ones ("complete humanization," "collective consciousness," etc.). He also dehumanizes as much as he wishes the "ruling classes" didn't. The "upper classes" are already separated not by their individualism that should be part of any truly moral person, but by their ability to maintain authority with "vampire" abstractions, sucking humanity's metaphorical blood to quench an unending thirst for control over human life (Bakunin).
So in Bakunin's system, it is the PEOPLE (moral, real, positive and human) versus the VAMPIRES (abstract, sacrificial of the masses, immoral, and monster-like). Thus, some people are humans while others are monsters because they believe differently than Bakunin, a contradiction of his wish for a humanity void of abstraction and united because he used abstractions to separate human beings. But, Bakunin failed to see the logical extent of his own discussion of abstractions. Rather than seeing abstraction as necessary and inescapable parts of an imperfect world like I do, he saw them as something that can be removed from reality if people simply stop believing in them, even as he uses them as tools of explanation.
So in Bakunin's system, it is the PEOPLE (moral, real, positive and human) versus the VAMPIRES (abstract, sacrificial of the masses, immoral, and monster-like). Thus, some people are humans while others are monsters because they believe differently than Bakunin, a contradiction of his wish for a humanity void of abstraction and united because he used abstractions to separate human beings. But, Bakunin failed to see the logical extent of his own discussion of abstractions. Rather than seeing abstraction as necessary and inescapable parts of an imperfect world like I do, he saw them as something that can be removed from reality if people simply stop believing in them, even as he uses them as tools of explanation.
The
Paralyzing Effect of Abstractions: How can man be in a “constant state of
revolt?”
Taking Bakunin's views on the abstractions of true-humans versus vampires further, many anarchists who sympathize only with
nonconformists and outlaws declare themselves in permanent revolt
(Guérin). Thus, they develop erratic methods to do things, like isolated
violent acts or assassinations, without a realistic strategy for completing
their ideal individualist world. They become the vampire slayers, protecting those poor (Russian) peasants by harming or taking out real people because they truly believe that murdering "upper class" humans with "property" or "wealth" is morally justifiable. By believing that society should be
opposed in its current state, they paralyze themselves to common sense and open
the door to tragedy for everyone else. It also makes for a miserable personal life if you're constantly revolting against society for something that will never come to pass.
Not exactly a picture of happiness himself, J.P. Proudhon was probably the
first to use the label of anarchist proudly. He believed in loose organizations of
people by free will and influenced the anti-state aspect of
anarcho-syndicalism (Burroughs 117) If as Proudhon wrote “the government
of man by man is servitude,” what other non-human relationships have
existed? Which abstractions exist outside of mankind? Did aliens
coexist with man and that was a less exploitative time?
“Governments” are just abstractions anyways, groups of people who believe they command the duty to obey from other people because of interpersonal relationships and the desire to make survival a little easier. Therefore, in a hypothetical future society with all current government abstraction purged, people will still associate with each other, authority probably won't disappear at all even if every written law or vestige of "government" is destroyed. And as population increases with authority in this post-apocalyptic world, so too will the need for more complex abstractions to keep the “morally perfect” supposedly in a state of nature. Human nature is imperfect whether an “anarchist,” a self-described capitalist, or an authoritarian communist is obligating other humans. Why revolt against what we have only to hit the reset button and be forced to start over with the same imperfect human nature? And why do a few make that violent choice for many?
“Governments” are just abstractions anyways, groups of people who believe they command the duty to obey from other people because of interpersonal relationships and the desire to make survival a little easier. Therefore, in a hypothetical future society with all current government abstraction purged, people will still associate with each other, authority probably won't disappear at all even if every written law or vestige of "government" is destroyed. And as population increases with authority in this post-apocalyptic world, so too will the need for more complex abstractions to keep the “morally perfect” supposedly in a state of nature. Human nature is imperfect whether an “anarchist,” a self-described capitalist, or an authoritarian communist is obligating other humans. Why revolt against what we have only to hit the reset button and be forced to start over with the same imperfect human nature? And why do a few make that violent choice for many?
A major debate within anarchism’s
believers has been over whether to use “social institutions,” like voting to infiltrate and
change society while retaining anarchic individualism. Yet, according to Guérin, the idea of sovereignty (right to rule) of the people contains its own
negation (13). For people to be sovereign, there would no
government. But, he is incorrect because governments are just people who
believe they possess the duty to command. And we’ve established in the
last post that you can’t have sovereignty of any other species over humanity,
unless aliens are coming to rule over us. So, humans ask other humans to
do things, and people obey or not. I think that in an ideal anarchic world, humans
will still obligate each other and if they write that obligation down, it will
become a law. And if the obligation isn’t met, a person will be immoral and one
could even say, acting illegally! And with new laws, people will of course be sovereign unless we're attacked by a non-human species! Otherwise "sovereignty of the people" is just an abstraction.
Can we say that man never should have a duty to obey? If so, why must we obey anarchist morality?
Proudhon and Property:
According to Proudhon, because bias and prejudice are part of authority, and because "Constitutions like those in France in 1790-93 imperfectly describe JUSTICE," only individual equality of ALL rights independent of all written artifacts is truly JUST (see "What is Property"). To use my terminology, because written constitutions contain ABSTRACTIONS like "VIRTUE an TALENTS," Proudhon believes that documents are imperfect and display too much attachment to what he views as the old, unequal order. Proudhon found 19th century global resources to be imperfectly distributed, Constitutions protect property, and voters simply continued a rotten system. JUSTICE cannot exist if the system is corrupt.
But, neither the written word nor Proudhon's conception of JUSTICE are perfect. You can't pluck JUSTICE from our brains and bring it to earth to suddenly make it real. We use JUSTICE to explain right and wrong as real human beings relate to each other. We write those ideas down so that other people know the consequences of violation, but also to avoid conflict. And "property CANNOT be theft" because we can't take a physical object and own it, say engulf it in our human bodies like an amoeba eat its prey. Instead, we use law, an artifact itself, to ensure we can continue to use stuff with minimal harm to ourselves. Laws protect USE of physical objects, not OWNERSHIP (an abstract conference of humanity on something that is NOT).
Why do we "OWN" things?
Humans need physical objects to continue living. I can only eat a slice of bread and get energy from it. You can't receive energy when I eat the same piece of bread, unless you cannibalize me. But then you'd exist at my expense. When it comes to survival, necessary physical materials can't be in me and you at the same time. And it turns out that there is a limited amount of stuff and time out there that humans need for survival. And it is the case that humans might have to work together to limit competition for survival. As a "society" develops, so to do artifacts like laws develop and where ever more complicated USAGE is defined.
In fact, laws ensure survival because they avoid competition over physical objects and protect humans from murdering each other over stuff. So, property does not equal theft, but removing law does mean more murder. People's understanding of their reality unravels and the consequences of threatening survival become more apparent.
Why buy into Proudhon conceptions when laws simply are artifacts that reflect man's imperfect understanding of the world around them? Why threaten survival by ignoring use rules in order to satisfy the unsatisfiable, namely bringing Proudhon's conception of the JUSTICE abstraction somehow into the real world? That can never happen.
In a post-apocalyptic anarchic world, anarchists will still need physical objects, like plants, animals, and oxygen for survival. And they might find themselves competing with each other if they don't come to agreement among people to conserve the limited resources that survive their horror. That agreement equals an abstraction, an attempt to understand the world around them for the purpose of survival.
Can we say that man never should have a duty to obey? If so, why must we obey anarchist morality?
Proudhon and Property:
According to Proudhon, because bias and prejudice are part of authority, and because "Constitutions like those in France in 1790-93 imperfectly describe JUSTICE," only individual equality of ALL rights independent of all written artifacts is truly JUST (see "What is Property"). To use my terminology, because written constitutions contain ABSTRACTIONS like "VIRTUE an TALENTS," Proudhon believes that documents are imperfect and display too much attachment to what he views as the old, unequal order. Proudhon found 19th century global resources to be imperfectly distributed, Constitutions protect property, and voters simply continued a rotten system. JUSTICE cannot exist if the system is corrupt.
But, neither the written word nor Proudhon's conception of JUSTICE are perfect. You can't pluck JUSTICE from our brains and bring it to earth to suddenly make it real. We use JUSTICE to explain right and wrong as real human beings relate to each other. We write those ideas down so that other people know the consequences of violation, but also to avoid conflict. And "property CANNOT be theft" because we can't take a physical object and own it, say engulf it in our human bodies like an amoeba eat its prey. Instead, we use law, an artifact itself, to ensure we can continue to use stuff with minimal harm to ourselves. Laws protect USE of physical objects, not OWNERSHIP (an abstract conference of humanity on something that is NOT).
Why do we "OWN" things?
Humans need physical objects to continue living. I can only eat a slice of bread and get energy from it. You can't receive energy when I eat the same piece of bread, unless you cannibalize me. But then you'd exist at my expense. When it comes to survival, necessary physical materials can't be in me and you at the same time. And it turns out that there is a limited amount of stuff and time out there that humans need for survival. And it is the case that humans might have to work together to limit competition for survival. As a "society" develops, so to do artifacts like laws develop and where ever more complicated USAGE is defined.
In fact, laws ensure survival because they avoid competition over physical objects and protect humans from murdering each other over stuff. So, property does not equal theft, but removing law does mean more murder. People's understanding of their reality unravels and the consequences of threatening survival become more apparent.
Why buy into Proudhon conceptions when laws simply are artifacts that reflect man's imperfect understanding of the world around them? Why threaten survival by ignoring use rules in order to satisfy the unsatisfiable, namely bringing Proudhon's conception of the JUSTICE abstraction somehow into the real world? That can never happen.
In a post-apocalyptic anarchic world, anarchists will still need physical objects, like plants, animals, and oxygen for survival. And they might find themselves competing with each other if they don't come to agreement among people to conserve the limited resources that survive their horror. That agreement equals an abstraction, an attempt to understand the world around them for the purpose of survival.
Tradition and Obedience
to the Dead?
Anarchists believe they revolt
because they reject society with its “barriers of tradition” (Guérin 9).
But, tradition is simply following the repetition of action over some period of
time. Tradition itself is an abstraction because you can have religious
tradition, say a Christmas “celebration” on December 25th, or
a
micro-tradition, like an annual family trip. So, secret “anarchistic”
societies can have anarchistic traditions,
like the annual conference titled "Renewing the Anarchist Tradition"
which revels in the "intellectualism" of its movement's activists,
writers, and cultural figures (http://www.anarchiststudies.org/rat).
In reality, anarchists reject their other beliefs because they BELIEVE they have liberated their minds. But, we can’t know everything about other people because we can’t mind-warp and understand each 100%. Because anarchists renounce authority (“political,” “religious,” “moral” etc.), they want us to have faith that their different system is more moral (even though more than a few anarchists reject universal morals outright.) So, they tear down faith in religion and religious authorities (priests, popes, etc.) while asking us to have faith in individual man’s ability to purify themselves of “society” and authority and then to remake society in their image. I’m fine with current imperfection.
Let’s take the duty to obey and abstraction further. Upon death in the US, people write documents ahead of time that dispose of their physical stuff upon their death. Essentially, this establishes an obligation to a dead body. In addition many societies on earth have burial traditions that show the strength of the interpersonal relationship with the person while they were alive.
Abstraction and memory of past reality inform the living about what to do with that physical stuff. They could dispose of the objects unjustly, that is, if the will (an artifact) demands an action be taken with the bequeathed object, and that action is not taken. Unjust would be defined by how people who believe they’re “lawyers” read the will and then act to dispose of that stuff. Or, we could take the physical artifacts and treat them as anarchists do. They destroy what they THINK are “bourgeois representations of state oppression.” Anything claimed in life as property would by this logic be inherently unjust because someone else doesn’t have it. Reverence for the dead obligates the living to obey tradition.
But, this logic necessarily shackles anarchists to their own abstraction. If every anarchist is responsible for their own duty to act, to evaluate all demands of other people to evaluate and possibly throw out, shouldn't every reasonably consistent one of them have to throw out the work of the past? Bye-bye Bakunin! If they didn’t, they’d be following an anarchist tradition.
In reality, anarchists reject their other beliefs because they BELIEVE they have liberated their minds. But, we can’t know everything about other people because we can’t mind-warp and understand each 100%. Because anarchists renounce authority (“political,” “religious,” “moral” etc.), they want us to have faith that their different system is more moral (even though more than a few anarchists reject universal morals outright.) So, they tear down faith in religion and religious authorities (priests, popes, etc.) while asking us to have faith in individual man’s ability to purify themselves of “society” and authority and then to remake society in their image. I’m fine with current imperfection.
Let’s take the duty to obey and abstraction further. Upon death in the US, people write documents ahead of time that dispose of their physical stuff upon their death. Essentially, this establishes an obligation to a dead body. In addition many societies on earth have burial traditions that show the strength of the interpersonal relationship with the person while they were alive.
Abstraction and memory of past reality inform the living about what to do with that physical stuff. They could dispose of the objects unjustly, that is, if the will (an artifact) demands an action be taken with the bequeathed object, and that action is not taken. Unjust would be defined by how people who believe they’re “lawyers” read the will and then act to dispose of that stuff. Or, we could take the physical artifacts and treat them as anarchists do. They destroy what they THINK are “bourgeois representations of state oppression.” Anything claimed in life as property would by this logic be inherently unjust because someone else doesn’t have it. Reverence for the dead obligates the living to obey tradition.
But, this logic necessarily shackles anarchists to their own abstraction. If every anarchist is responsible for their own duty to act, to evaluate all demands of other people to evaluate and possibly throw out, shouldn't every reasonably consistent one of them have to throw out the work of the past? Bye-bye Bakunin! If they didn’t, they’d be following an anarchist tradition.
With all of the anarchist literary
tradition thrown out, how will the perfect natural existence come to
exist? Or was it really supposed to be a group of enlightened individuals
leading a vanguard all along? Aren’t Bakunin, Proudhon, Goldman etc.
really the hated academics leading everyone else? If the individual were
truly sovereign and anarchists possessed the purest anarchic beliefs in their
brains alone, do they deserve to violate the duty of autonomy of everyone they
judge as not believing? Do they deserve to impose their anarcho—syndicalist
State of any size in order to impose their moralism and social harmony?
Can’t we just skip their polemics, assassinations, destruction, and bloody
violence and stick with the imperfect society where more individual people have
an input on the interpretation of abstractions and the ability to command the
duty to obey in US 2013?
Do we really want to consent to anarchists who believe that obedience itself is dehumanizing and immoral?
And do we really want to consent to a system where we're labeled immoral and unjust? Or where its believers think that violence can be necessary to scare the "sheeple" out of their labeled ignorance?
No thank you, I will not consent to discontent, I will not join, and I will not obey "anarchism." I can think for myself.
Sources:
(It's pretty ironic that I'm crediting some of the intellectual work, dare I say, "property" of anarchists because I didn't create their ideas myself.)
Bakunin, Mikhail Aleksandrovich. God and State. E-text prepared by Fritz Ohrenschall, René Anderson Benitz, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team. From The Project Guttenberg http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36568/36568-h/36568-h.htm
Bennett, David. "David Graeber, the Anti-Leader of Occupy Wallstreet." Bloomberg Business Week Magazine. October 26, 2011. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/david-graeber-the-antileader-of-occupy-wall-street-10262011.html
Burrow, J.W. The Crisis of Reason: European Thought 1848-1914. Yale University Press, New Haven: 2000.
Christiano, Tom, "Authority", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2012/entries/authority/>.
Guérin, Daniel. "Anarchism: From Theory to Practice, " http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/Daniel_Guerin__Anarchism__From_Theory_to_Practice.html.
Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. & Steingberg, Mark D. A History of Russia: Seventh Edition. Oxford University Press, New York: 2005.
Proudhon, P. J. "What is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government." http://www.gutenberg.org/files/360/360-h/360-h.htm
Ward, Dana. "Anarchy Archives: An Online Research Center on the History and Theory of Anarchy." A http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/goldman/aando/anarchism.html
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