Thoughts on Anarchism

Because of all the election talk I've been asked a few times about my political philosophy. I am not a scholar or any authority on a given philosophy, but I do have my own beliefs. Obviously no word encapsulates everything, but I think for the sake of classification, I am an anarchist. 

This typically evokes imagery of black bloc rioters or whiskered maniacs throwing Molotov cocktails. The truth is a lot more complicated and boring. So if you want to see me that way, it's much cooler than I am, so take that and leave. 

For those still here, the way I often explain it is similar to the concept of a personal philosophy or religion. Politics and religion are pretty entangled these days anyway, so that works well as an analogy. 

When I say I'm an anarchist, people ask how many government buildings I've destroyed. When I say zero, they say I'm not an anarchist. To me, that's like saying that if you haven't forsaken all your property, taken a vow of celibacy, severed all attachments and attained enlightenment under a bodhi tree in the Himalayas then founded your own sect of the religion, you're not Buddhist. That’s all a very extreme example of one way to have a belief. It’s possible to integrate a belief with your life in such a way that the belief informs your life, not the other way around. And, at least in my case, beliefs are not based on expectations or experiences of others. 

Anarchism is not defined as the violent opposition to the current system of government. It's the idea that a system in which there are people who have the power to take all your possessions, lock you in a cell, or even kill you without you being able to respond in kind is a problem. How you approach solving that problem is a separate question and point, which is why there are so many formal distinctions in anarchism. I'm not going to go into all of them, but suffice to say that anarchy isn't rejection of a system of mutual benefit or dissolution of community: it's a debate over the social contract you have with that system. The idea isn't that people don't need organization: it's that they can manage to organize without the constant threat of being jailed, killed, or having their property seized (which we will henceforth define as violence). 

I don't really subscribe to any of these systems, but in many cases they replace government with something that's government without violence.  Anarcho-syndicalism for example suggests the example of something like a trade union that organizes bottom up, and collectively owns the companies where they work. And yes, that's the system the angry peasant references in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (we're an anarcho-syndicalist commune!). In many cases, the systems that are proposed have a form of democracy: voting by members, councils and meetings. Direct or representative democracy are examples of many systems that can be used decoupled from an authoritarian state. 

So what does that mean in a system such as ours? How do you get from there to what certainly sounds like a utopia?

Well, it's not simple, but at least it's also not easy. You do the best you can. 

1) We live in a system where our political choices are often pared down to a binary, and you're voting for an individual who promises to represent the will of a party, not the party itself. A Person X presidency can be very different from a person Y presidency even though they’re in the same party. Could you just attempt to overthrow it all and start over? Yes, but again: that's violence. The whole point of the philosophy is that a person does not have the right to violently enforce their will upon another person. 

Could you form a political party and try to unseat one of the big two in our first past the pole system? Maybe! But we go back to the point above. Some theoretical person may question if you’re really an anarchist unless you register as a proper anarchist and carry your anarchist card around. It's problematic: organizing around that idea grants legitimacy to the process that's a problem, and from a practical perspective you face an almost impossible goal of overcoming the current two party system. Also take into account the religious example: anarchism is by its definition a pluralist philosophy. It can and must coexist with others, and claiming others must convert to your view or be destroyed is again self-defeating. 

So, you do your best with the options you have to a) minimize violence against your fellow human and b) maximize helping the same human. For example, as an anarchist I may not in principle agree with the need for a tax-funded government organization that feeds the homeless... but if they don't have the right to brutalize homeless people and arrest them for sleeping on a bench but rather feed them and give them a chance at a better life, it seems to me to be a net positive. Dismantling these sorts of programs in the attempt at a sort of purity of intent process would just be harmful to the people who benefit from them. That’s not necessary: it’s a waste of your time and effort, and ideally you are working alongside these groups as your goal is to maximize help and minimize harm. This calculus becomes more complex when it comes to criminal law and enforcement. One example I can give from an anarchistic perspective is the concept of gun control. 

On one hand, easier access to high powered weaponry almost always leads to an increase in violent encounters with them. So reducing access seems correlated to a reduction in harm. However, all restrictive laws that are enforced by violence have a tendency to be enforced more often against the people whom those in power see as threats than the people they see as allies. Just look at any area where these enforcements increase: stops, arrests and convictions are always disproportionately higher among the economically disadvantaged, or minority groups typically targeted as criminals. This can actually compound harm, especially in times where personal protection of yourself and family may have increased necessity. Washington State actually has a decent solution to this: semi automatic weapons with high capacity (higher than 10 rounds) are typically restricted for sale. But not ownership: you can own these already or buy them in another state and transfer them here. This is enforced at the seller level. I'm not a fan of laws that are violently enforced against people, but given the options available, this one seems to me to be doing its best to both minimize violence and maximize help. It’s not perfect, and some restrictions are actually more harmful than helpful, but some (like requiring the guns to be secured from minors) seem like they’re overdue in terms of how you determine liability. 

2) The same system tends to treat politicians as a special, separate class. Just try criticizing a politician (on their policy or personal behavior). It won't be long before someone refutes your point by insisting you defend the policy or behavior of their opponent. And yet the same problem continues in the other direction: you are expected to respect the person's difficulties in being a mostly unquestioned ruler. I haven't bombed any hospitals, and I would be a criminal if I did. But criticizing a ruler for doing this is unacceptable: they had to make a choice. Clearly I don't agree with it, and I'm treating the ruler as a human with the same rights and responsibilities that I have, because again no one has the right to inflict violence on others. Though this is not strictly an anarchist thought, the understanding is that there are no innate heroes or villains: just people trying to do their best and making mistakes along the way. Putting them on equal ground tends to minimize the harm they can cause and be subjected to.

3) The concept of government fills a lot of needs in our daily lives. It does not necessarily need to: sometimes these roles are better suited to individuals and local community efforts. The big advantage to having a government solution is that it's able to bring a concentration of resources to bear in solving a problem. It's nearly impossible to get random private citizens to voluntarily build an interstate system at their own expense, and they may not have the knowledge or equipment to do it. But private individuals do all that work: almost all public works are contracted to private companies. The big thing is that they need tax revenue to pay those contacts. But it's also possible to use those same resources to build high speed rail or other public utilities that don't have the barrier to entry of car ownership (licenses, gas, the cost of any car, etc). So how do you get individuals to do that in a free market? 

4) Well another defining characteristic of anarchism is recognizing that capital is itself authority. There is one branch of anarchism known as anarcho-capitalism, but most forms tend to believe that a private authority is just as pernicious as a public one: and often worse. In a democracy, each person has a vote. They can be disenfranchised or they can have options limited or confined, but they have more or less an equal say. When you vote with your dollars, some people get billions of votes, and some get a few hundred. This is obviously a problem when it comes to fairness. But how does it influence my main point? Violence need not be enforced by stormtroopers and bureaucrats: it can just as easily be leveled upon an average person by refusing to rent them a home because of their skin color. It can be used to block someone’s account in a system that is required for employment. These are the more sinister and hard to quantify aspects of a private enterprise that make it harmful. Anarchism doesn’t propose that you eliminate private enterprise, but rather that in systems such as ours, a tight connection between the elected authority and the private enterprise ensures that they can use their combined resources against you. And corporations and large capital will always get regulation removed, which inevitably leads to more people getting sick from bad meat, or companies buying out all their competition and jacking up prices. These are only possible when the government that exists allows it, which it continually does. You might argue that trust-busting is something that only an authoritarian government can accomplish. This may be true, though one may argue that simply not bailing out failing megacorps could be enough to cause them to fracture into smaller entities. 

5) This concentration leads to a big problem. Not all anarchism is based around the concepts of sustainability, but it’s a common thread. When one megacorp is the only one that produces a given drug, for example, the entire country is now vulnerable when that consolidated corporation is hit by a hurricane. We can argue about the impacts of climate change, but it’s much harder to argue that concentrating all production of anything in a single geographic location is creating a single point of failure. Resilience and ability to function almost always requires a form of decentralization. Factory farms have allowed modern nations to avoid subsistence farming, which frees up their time for a variety of other things… but this also has led to a number of issues, both in terms of environmental impact and overall health of a nation’s food supply. Most forms of anarchism follow the concept that a hybrid between large centralized systems and smaller community ones is the best way to insulate the problems of either one, and this is something that’s been lacking in our latest political discussions. The same is true of power production: solar and wind are relatively unreliable compared to fossil fuels, but they can be completely decentralized and resilient to a number of problems (see pipelines and fuel trucking). 

6) Something that is often left out is the question of crime and punishment. It's a major factor in why I became an anarchist. Most of my life I've identified (and been identified) as a Boy Scout. I didn't make it to eagle, but I did get pretty close. In a metaphorical sense though, I've always kept my head down and followed rules. I could say it was fear of authority and punishment, but a big factor was actually my faith in my fellow human. The last few years that faith has been tested, but to some degree I think it still informs how I see the world. There is an adage in criminal justice known as “Blackstone’s Ratio,” or sometimes "Blackstone's Formulation.” It's all based on a quote by English jurist William Blackstone, who said "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” The ideal ratio, then, is that if our system of law is able to let ten guilty people go for every one that suffers unjustly, we have found a balance. That's not at all what he meant, but it's how our systems have come to pass. Sadly, America is likely well below that ratio, and if you consider people punished by sentences that are far too harsh for the crime, we have failed by a factor of at least ten. 

Like many people, I had faith in what I called our criminal justice system. I've realized more each year that many people suffer unjustly in that system, and the system is capable of bringing its full weight to bear in terrible consequences for the small number of people that it can target. I now refer to it, as many justice advocates do, as the criminal legal system. It is concerned more with the coherency of law and creating a reasonable facade of consistency than actually providing what any philosophy would consider to be justice or equity. The remedy that exists in it goes back to the original point: Blackstone's ratio.

Our system of law is built upon the conceit that you should be judged not by a state appointee but rather a jury of your peers. They do not have the power to find you innocent: you are presumed as such until proven guilty. And thus every jury is capable of finding any person not guilty of any crime. 

This is called jury nullification, and people have been arrested for making potential jurors aware of its existence. I understand the potential harm: a jury can exonerate a lynch mob, and that has happened. That certainly seems to not be justice. But neither is lifelong incarceration of a person who stole bread to feed their family. And so we go back to the root of the issue: is any government, no matter how it came to power, excused for its breach of natural law in pursuit of law and order? Is state approved murder still murder? 

There’s no obvious concrete solution to all these problems, but there are ways that we can come to an understanding. My belief is that we can do this as equals. I may not agree with someone, but that doesn’t mean I have the right to do harm to them. I wish the same in return. That’s the basic principle. When you say that some people should be permitted to be violent to others in certain circumstances, human beings can lose their freedom under specific rationales. Inevitably, everyone loses their freedom and is susceptible to harm. 

Clearly, if there is to be any revolution that can allow for a peaceful acceptance of these ideas, it must be one of consciousness, not violence. Spreading the ideas must be through free exchange, not colonialism or imperialism. That is why I'm willing to share my thoughts on this. With any luck, someone will read them and think more about these ideas. 

If you're interested, try reading up on mutualism, individualist anarchism, and more specifically egoism. 

In conclusion, I'm leaving this part at the bottom because given the length of this one most folks will never read it. I'm often asked how this translates to who I voted for this year. 

Theoretically, my beliefs that a violent, carceral state is immoral would be consistent regardless of where I happened to be a citizen. So the fact I happen to live here means I have to make my choice based on my available options. 

I'm the first to criticize Biden and Harris on a number of global policies that increase violence and decrease human dignity, from the hasty and neglectful withdrawal from Afghanistan to the policy on Palestine and Israel. But they have proven that they're willing to work within the confines of an idea that the president is not a monarch and their power is checked by other means. Trump has said he would like to suspend the constitution, disband Congress, and eliminate the independent judiciary. He's called for a “day of violence" that recalls the concepts and ideas of Krystallnacht. I think it's clear that given my options, Harris is the candidate more likely to listen to reason. Trump has already threatened to nuke Gaza. I'm not confident he and his supporters can be convinced that such an act would not only destroy the area but doom what is left of the soul of this country: that liberty is sacred and to be protected, not traded for political expediency or resources. 

I’ll be doing more research on anarchism and will write more on it as time goes on. I’ll tag each one with the anarchism tag, so you can find them or avoid them at your leisure.