ANARCHY! | ||||
May 26, 2005 "If America could be, once again, a nation of self-reliant farmers, craftsmen, hunters, ranchers, and artists, then the rich would have little power to dominate others. Neither to serve nor to rule: That was the American dream." Ed Abbey Cactus Ed was much beloved in anarchist circles for his defense of anarchism. Oddly enough, few anarchists, self-proclaimed (is there any other kind?) or otherwise these days have ever read his 1959 Masters thesis at the University of New Mexico, that jumble of faux adobe boxes on East Mesa, titled "Anarchism and the Morality of Violence." Ed was searching for a universal theory of anarchism, human society without state domination and oppression. He rightly understood that the state, central government, in any form is by its very nature illegitimate and oppressive, relying ultimately on a monopoly of force to coerce its citizens to do its bidding, most often not in their own best interests. Anarchists have long decried the image, fostered by government propaganda since the 1920s, of the anarchist as mad bomber, hair afly, mad gleam in eye, dirty as a big sty (no offense, pigs). Yet most anarchists, especially the fashionably black-clad variety made momentarily media famous in recent anti-globalization protests, favor violent revolution as a means of unseating the capitalist hegemony of the corporate oligarchy and replacing it, in some vague, unspecified manner, with a stateless society, equally unspecified. We all suspected Ed had something specific in mind, as is hinted in the above quote. Maybe such a vision was sufficient, though Ed never fleshed it out in his novels or perambulating ruminations. I think of it, the alternative to our modern madness of cancerous technocratic growth, as living in place. Its not my idea; others have brought this concept to my attention and it has lately begun to dominate my thinking. Rather than Socialism vs. Capitalism, workers vs owners, the struggles seems to be between those who would concentrate economic and political power into the hands of the few vs. those who seek freedom and autonomy for all. As Ed pointed out in has MA thesis, we cannot overthrow power by force without replacing "their" power with "our" power. Power is power, regardless of the color of the bandana covering the face. If we are to move toward a world of "self-reliant farmers, craftsmen, hunters, ranchers, and artists" then we must eschew power struggles in favor of cooperation, free association and mutual aid. The ultimate expression of this approach to social organization is the practice followed by indigenous peoples, people of the place, for centuries before capitalism, greed, acquisitiveness and state oppression reared their ugly heads. No rulers; a clear understanding by all of the rules. Decentralized, locally controlled economy, living within the natural biological and geophysical limits of the local bioregion. Michael Leona Gulch Pacific Plate October 22, 2004 Self-ResponsibilityThe central principle of anarchism is self-responsibility. We cannot take care of each other unless we first and foremost take care of ourselves. "Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners." Ed Abbey We manage our own lives in ever expanding waves of inclusion that work their way outwards from between our ears to the entire planet. Self-interest is planetary interest. NIMBYs are us! Along about twenty-five years of age, or thereabouts, we become responsible for our faces. Before that time, we are mainly a product of our parents and the socioeconomic realm into which we are born. Once emancipated, however, we take on that responsibility to ourselves. True, there are some who find themselves in relatively greater systems of oppression, from which it is more difficult, though not impossible, to escape. And yes, some folks have health challenges to deal with in various degrees of difficulty. No one is dealt a double deck. No one gets out alive. It's hard and it's fair. At some point we are all responsible for our face. There is a widespread liberal attitude in the United States that society is somehow responsible for "poverty," "disease" and "ignorance," and that society owes us a living, health care and a "good" education. This has lead to the grandest welfare state in history, within which we still have ignorant, unhealthy people living in poverty. It seems to me that the responsibility of society rests solely in lifting the oppression from individual humans imposed by other humans, and human institutions, thus allowing free human self-responsibility the fullest expression. When human social institutions decide for us what constitutes poverty, health and education, our self-expression is limited, curtailed, molded into a form decided by others rather than ourselves. We become caricatures of human beings, doomed to forever repeat ourselves as technocratic Xerox copies piled into the future. I think it would be better to take control of our own health, seek medical intervention only for gross traumatic injury and life-threatening illness, if then; to decide for ourselves what level of consumption we wish to pursue, what level of pecuniary recompense fulfills our needs; and most of all, to direct our education in directions we find personally satisfying and rewarding, attending the school of life from birth to death: no classes, no bells, no diplomas. Some call this anarchy, some, including myself, prefer to think of it as democracy, democracy taken serious. Michael Twin Lakes Pacific Plate Anarchy and the Art of BaseballMay 20. 2004 I've been giving much thought to Things Anarchic of late, what with the chaos created by the world's greatest exporter of terrorism and violence running roughshod about the neighborhood these days. Not to mention the neighbors, whom they rarely ever mention. What will it take to put a stop to this madness? How do we derail this runaway train of imperialism, war, death and destruction, packing a cargo of fresh greenbacks to line the pockets of the self-chosen few? We witness the corporate oligarchy run amok, no longer trying to disguise it's manipulation of the international political and economic scene, the buying of influence in places of power, the slathering frenzy at the trough of military opportunism, the overt puppetry of the hands holding the reins of power. There's no opposition in sight. The Demopublicans once again hoist their Tweedledee/Tweedledum flag, offering no meaningful choice for the electorate of the United States. Bush and Bushlite both support sending more malleable, economically vulnerable young men and women overseas to devise new and more easily concealable methods of oppressing, torturing, wounding, maiming and murdering the inhabitants of desert lands in the Middle East that have the geological misfortune of lying above large deposits of oily crude. As much as we desire regime change in the United States, even if Kerry is elected, nothing will change in the military/industrial oligarchy that drives US domestic and foreign policies that resulted in large commercial airliners slamming into the lives of millions of innocent people throughout the world. There's no hope from the Left, if there is any Left left. Socialism has long since retired from the field, the few remaining disillusioned holdouts talking quietly among themselves in infoshops and computer discussion groups in England and the US, endlessly repeating the mantra: "production for use, production for use." The problem is not Left or Right, Republican or Democrat, Labor or Conservative. The problem is people and our masses of ganglia locked up in a bony head, a head that thinks, sometimes, and usually thinks that its human body is separate from all other life forms sharing, temporarily, this poor abused and badly mishandled whirling mudball we call The Earth. Human beings, with our rattling baggage of culture and society, cannot manage our way out of the mess we have managed to get ourselves into. We cannot undo the destructive forces we have unleashed in the world with more doing. What the world needs now, from humans at least, is not love, sweet love, but a considerable period, say a thousand years or so, of benign neglect. Socialism and capitalism, and all other forms of human social organization, are merely human-centered means of managing the distinction between the human and the non-human world. Anthropologists call these "modes of production," the means by which we manipulate the "means of production" for human benefit. The means of production are raw materials (minerals, soil, plants and animals), labor (human, and in the past and the future, animal labor) and capital (the accumulation of economic resources). The only human societies that have successfully lived in the world for more than a few hundred years or so are those that did not distinguish between the human and the non-human world. All surviving indigenous peoples organized their lives as cooperating and contributing members of the community of all life, taking great pains to make sure they never exploited their fellow living beings for their (the humans') exclusive benefit. It's not that these "primitive" people (we should be so primitive; and we will, if we survive!) were smart enough to figure this all out and design a social system that worked in cooperation with the non-human world. It's a simple, unbending rule of evolution: Nature bats last; anyone who doesn't play the game, strikes out. Ed called it anarchy, though the name doesn't matter. It wasn't called anything a thousand years ago, just life, living, being. A thousand years from now, it won't have a name again, if there is anyone around to speak about it. Anarchy, democracy taken seriously, will be so common it won't require a special human label. So the question becomes: how do we change to a society that sees humans as an integral part of all life, not above but beside the rest of the world? I think there are two ways we can go: 1) We can get smart and change our society on purpose, or: 2) We can do nothing but wait around a bit, until Nature steps up to the plate. It's the bottom of the ninth, two outs, three balls and two strikes. Here comes the pitch... Michael -- "Things that can't go on forever, don't." Stein's Law, by Herbert Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Nixon administration. February 28, 2001 It is my solemn duty to come to the defense of the political and cultural philosophy most espoused by Our Noble bard. Let's dispense with the terms anarchy and anarchism for the moment. Due to an immense propaganda effort on the part of the United States government, these terms have lost their meaning as they were washed down the memory hole of Rightspeach. Think of democracy in its ultimate expression; not the pitiful excuse that is touted so much in the US today. Think of a country ruled of the people, by the people and for the people, not of the poor, by the rich, for the corporations, as the US is organized now. How would this social organization be structured? A representative republic, our present form of government, is only as good as the individuals who espouse to represent the people in the process of decision-making. If the representatives carry the brief of the people to the decision-making body and hold true to their duty to truly represent the interests of the people, then a representative republic can indeed serve as an effective means of decision-making with a potential to carry out the wishes of the people. In the early years of our republic this was the case, at least to a limited extent. Those who went to Philadelphia to represent their areas were not true representatives of the people. They were the rich propertied class and they represented their class interests far more than that of the majority of the people then living in a largely agrarian economy. There were few individuals in those early years who had the economic surplus and the free time to engage in such activities, other than those who did not have to labor for their own living. So the process was skewed from the start. It has gotten worse in recent history. Now our representatives do not even pretend to represent the will of the people. They tell us what we want to hear, they are elected and they do whatever they want. Don't like it? Vote em out of office in four years. This is not democracy, this is oligarchy. Since the political process is funded largely by corporate bribes, this is in essence a corporate oligarchy. A true democracy is ordered from the ground up, at the local, neighborhood level. Decisions are made at the local level concerning local issues: the people have a direct stake in the decisions that most affect their lives. Delegates from the locals are chosen to carry the will of the local to the next level of organization, on to the national level. Delegates serve a single term: all citizens are obligated to serve when called, much as we choose juries today. This form of popular democracy is indistinguishable from an anarchist social organization. The difference is that the anarchist approaches social organization from the philosophy that the state is illegitimate and only a truly democratic form of decision-making bears any legitimacy with regard to the people. While it is possible to have a truly democratic state, great vigilance would be required to ensure that the state did not accrue powers in excess of that granted by the people, as is the case today. Lobo Place East Mesa |
