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this article page no Politics in all
its forms has failed. The notion that we can safely and successfully hand over
the management of our daily lives and the setting of priorities to a political
class or elite is thoroughly discredited. The thin and precarious crust of
decency is all that separates any civilization however impressive from the hell
of anarchy or systematic tyranny which lie in wait beneath the surface. Aldous
Leonard Huxley 18941963 British writer I. Overview of Theories of Anarchism
Politics in all its forms has failed. The notion that we can safely and
successfully hand over the management of our daily lives and the setting of
priorities to a political class or elite is thoroughly discredited. Politicians
cannot be trusted regardless of the system in which they operate. No set of
constraints checks and balances is proved to work and mitigate their
unconscionable acts and the pernicious effects these have on our welfare and
longevity. Ideologies from the benign to
the malign and from the divine to the pedestrian have driven the gullible human race to the
verge of annihilation and back. Participatory democracies have degenerated
everywhere into venal plutocracies. Socialism and its poisoned fruits MarxismLeninism Stalinism Maoism have wrought misery on a scale unprecedented
even by medieval standards. Only Fascism and Nazism compare with them
unfavorably. The idea of the nationstate culminated in the Yugoslav succession
wars. It is time to seriously consider a muchderided and decried alternative
anarchism. Anarchism is often mistaken for leftwing thinking or the advocacy of
anarchy. It is neither. If anything the libertarian strain in anarchism makes
it closer to the right. Anarchism is an umbrella term covering disparate social
and political theories among them
classic or cooperative anarchism postulated by William Godwin and later Pierre
Joseph Proudhon radical individualism Max Stirner religious anarchism Leo
Tolstoy anarchocommunism Kropotkin and anarchosyndicalism educational anarchism
Paul Goodman and communitarian anarchism Daniel Guerin. The narrow and familiar
form of political anarchism springs from the belief that human communities can
survive and thrive through voluntary cooperation without a coercive central
government. Politics corrupt and subvert Mans good and noble nature.
Governments are instruments of selfenrichment and selfaggrandizement and the
reification and embodiment of said subversion. The logical outcome is to call
for the overthrow of all political systems as Michael Bakunin suggested.
Governments should therefore be opposed by any and all means including violent
action. What should replace the state There is little agreement among
anarchists biblical authority Tolstoy self
regulating coopertaives of craftsmen Proudhon a federation of voluntary
associations Bakunin trade unions anarchosyndicalists ideal communism
Kropotkin. What is common to this smorgasbord is the affirmation of freedom as
the most fundamental value. Justice equality and welfare cannot be sustained
without it. The state and its oppressive mechanisms is incompatible with it.
Figures of authority and the ruling classes are bound to abuse their remit and
use the instruments of government to further and enforce their own interests.
The state is conceived and laws are enacted for this explicit purpose of gross
and unjust exploitation. The state perpetrates violence and is the cause rather
than the cure of most social ills. Anarchists believe that human beings are
perfectly capable of rational selfgovernment. In the Utopia of anarchism
individuals choose to belong to society or to exclude themselves from it. Rules
are adopted by agreement of all the memberscitizens through direct
participation in voting. Similar to participatory democracy holders of offices
can be recalled by constituents. It is important to emphasize that ... Anarchism does not preclude social
organization social order or rules the appropriate delegation of authority or
even of certain forms of government as long as this is distinguished from the
state and as long as it is administrative and not oppressive coercive or
bureaucratic. Honderich Ted ed. The
Oxford Companion to Philosophy Oxford
University Press New York 1995 p. 31
Anarchists are not opposed to organization law and order or the existence of
authority. They are against the usurpation of power by individuals or by
classes groups of individuals for personal gain through the subjugation and
exploitation however subtle and disguised of other less fortunate people. Every
social arrangement and institution should be put to the dual acid tests of
personal autonomy and freedom and moral law. If it fails either of the two it
should be promptly abolished. II. Contradictions in Anarchism Anarchism is not
prescriptive. Anarchists believe that the voluntary members of each and every
society should decide the details of the order and functioning of their own
community. Consequently anarchism provides no coherent recipe on how to
construct the ideal community. This of course is its Achilles heel. Consider
crime. Anarchists of all stripes agree that people have the right to exercise
selfdefense by organizing voluntarily to suppress malfeasance and put away
criminals. Yet is this not the very quiddity of the oppressive state its laws
police prisons and army Are the origins of the coercive state and its
justification not firmly rooted in the need to confront evil Some anarchists
believe in changing society through violence. Are these anarchoterrorists
criminals or freedom fighters If they are opposed by voluntary grassroots
vigilante organizations in the best of anarchist tradition should they fight back and thus frustrate the
authentic will of the people whose welfare they claim to be seeking Anarchism is
a chicken and egg proposition. It is predicated on peoples welldeveloped sense
of responsibility and grounded in their natural morality. Yet all anarchists
admit that these endowments are decimated by millennia of statal repression.
Life in anarchism is therefore aimed at restoring the very preconditions to
life in anarchism. Anarchism seeks to restore its constituents ethical
constitution without which there can be
no anarchism in the first place. This selfdefeating bootstrapping leads to
convoluted and halfbaked transitory phases between the nationstate and pure
anarchism hence anarchosyndicalism and some forms of protoCommunism.
Primitivist and green anarchists reject technology globalization and capitalism
as well as the state. Yet globalization technology and capitalism are as much
in opposition to the classical hermetic nationstate as is philosophical
anarchism. They are manifestly less coercive and more voluntary too. This
blanket defiance of everything modern introduces insoluble contradictions into
the theory and practice of late twentieth century anarchism. Indeed the term
anarchism has been trivialized and debauched. Animal rights activists
environmentalists feminists peasant revolutionaries and technopunk performers
all claim to be anarchists with equal conviction and equal falsity. III.
Reclaiming Anarchism Errico Malatesta and Voltairine de Cleyre distilled the
essence of anarchism to encompass all the philosophies that oppose the state
and abhor capitalism anarchism without adjectives. At a deeper level anarchism
wishes to identify and rectify social asymmetries. The state men and the
rich are respectively more powerful than
the individuals women and the poor. These are three inequalities out of many.
It is the task of anarchism to fight against them. This can be done in either
of two ways 1. By violently dismantling existing structures and institutions
and replacing them with voluntary selfregulating organizations of free
individuals. The Zapatistas movement in Mexico is an attempt to do just that.
2. Or by creating voluntary selfregulating organizations of free individuals
whose functions parallel those of established hierarchies and institutions dual
power. Gradually the former will replace the latter. The evolution of certain
nongovernment organizations follows this path. Whichever strategy is adopted it
is essential to first identify those asymmetries that underlie all others
primary asymmetries vs. secondary asymmetries. Most anarchists point at the
state and at the ownership of property as the primary asymmetries. The state is
an asymmetrical transfer of power from the individual to a coercive and unjust
social hyperstructure. Property represents the disproportionate accumulation of
wealth by certain individuals. Crime is merely the natural reaction to these
glaring injustices. But the state and property are secondary asymmetries not
primary ones. There have been periods in human history and there have been
cultures devoid of either or both. The primary asymmetry seems to be natural
some people are born more clever and stronger than others. The game is skewed
in their favor not because of some sinister conspiracy but because they merit
it meritocracy is the foundation stone of capitalism or because they can force
themselves their wishes and their priorities and preferences on others or
because their adherents and followers believe that rewarding their leaders will
maximize their own welfare aggression and selfinterest are the cornerstone of
all social organizations. It is this primary asymmetry that anarchism must
address. banking
services chronicle august 2020
banking services chronicle august 2020
