How "anarchy" became such a dirty word...

The following is a loose collection of additional thoughts on this video and anarchism at large:

As I noted in my video, governments often sow the very chaos that tends to accompany accusations about anarchy. This is true of the Haymarket bombing and subsequent chaos: an important detail is that the day before, police had inflamed popular reactivity by killing one worker and injuring others at a labor strike. This was what prompted the Haymarket demonstration the following day. The next day, police showed up to that protest with the intent of breaking it up, during which the bomb exploded.

Even the Haymarket incident, pinned on anarchists, had roots in State violence and control. To this day, no one knows who threw the bomb, but it remains that the trial that pinned it on the accused anarchists was a sham.

On the subject of violence, there is ongoing debate in anarchist circles about the merits of violent resistance to government. This was also the case among 19th-century anarchists. To many, such violence is justified if not required because people acting in the name of government authority act as perpetual aggressors.

People in positions of authority demand compliance and use threats of violence—often actually deploying it—to ensure that compliance. Some believe this makes violent resistance the moral response to authoritarianism. As the popular revolutionary refrain goes, “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”

While I stand by the right to self-defense and agree that governments initiate violence against those they rule over, I also strongly believe such violence is not a viable path to abolishing government and cultivating freedom, peace, and respect for human rights.

The violent actions of misguided 19th and 20th-century anarchists demonstrate the shortcomings of this approach: It tends to terrify people and malign the cause as well as ‘justify’ indiscriminate State crackdowns. It also does nothing to challenge the violent nature of the statist paradigm.

Even in cases where violence was successful in the short term—like the American Revolution—what followed it reinforced the belief that violence is justified when committed in the name of authority. While the American Revolution is remembered for resisting authority, its leaders did not simply leave people to live freely without some form of violent authority lording over them.

The revolution led to the replacement of monarchical political authority with “republican” or “democratic” political authority, which still requires violence to enforce. The configuration of government authority shifted, but its foundational violence did not. This became clear early on with the Whiskey Rebellion, when President George Washington summoned a militia to shut down a tax revolt (those who rebelled also used violence, and it did not lead to their desired outcome).

Many revolutions throughout history have fallen prey to the enduring belief in statism. Violent revolutionaries fighting illegitimate authority often become the illegitimate authority because they fail to reject violent authority itself. They seize control of the levers of power and often become what they set out to destroy.

There are many subcategories of anarchism: anarcho-communism, anarcho-socialism, anarcho-capitalism, and mutualism, for example. As with most groups, the factions fight it out, claiming their beliefs alone embody the true meaning, values, and spirit of anarchy. As anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre wrote in her 1901 essay “Anarchism”:

“In times past these several schools have bitterly denounced each other and mutually refused to recognize each other as Anarchists at all. The more narrow-minded on both sides still do so; true, they do not consider it narrow-mindedness, but simply a firm and solid grasp of the truth, which does not permit of tolerance towards error. This has been the attitude of the bigot in all ages, and Anarchism no more than any other new doctrine has escaped its bigots. Each of these fanatical adherents of either collectivism or individualism believes that no Anarchism is possible without that particular economic system as its guarantee, and is of course thoroughly justified from his own standpoint.”

While many early anarchist thinkers and movements in the 19th century were left-wing, that does not necessarily imply anarchism must be left-wing or is inherently so. Claiming that because many early philosophers of anarchism were on the left, the philosophy of anarchism is necessarily left-wing is an appeal to perceived authority. Additionally, I believe anarchism transcends left-right distinctions, which are largely a feature of the political paradigm.

That said, it’s impossible to deny the early anti-capitalist components of anarchism. Of course, “capitalism” is not rooted in free markets at all. It’s the opposite. While anti-capitalist anarchist sentiment often contends that the State protects the capitalist, monied, property-owning class, free-market anarchists argue that there is no true capitalism because the State props up winners and losers, driving the destructive corporatism that dominates much of the world today. Meanwhile, in the past, for example, governments heavily sanctioned companies engaging in the slave trade, and US railroad companies enjoyed subsidies from the federal government.

Regardless, like de Cleyre, I believe anyone should be free to engage in any economic system they choose so long as they don’t force others to participate (it’s worth noting that she did not refer to “anarcho-capitalism” in this essay, as it was not yet a term). As she wrote in “Anarchism”:

“[A]ll these economic ideas may be experimented with, and there is nothing un-Anarchistic about any of them until the element of compulsion enters and obliges unwilling persons to remain in a community whose economic arrangements they do not agree to.”

One common argument against anarchism is that ‘it’s never been tried’ and so has no merit or evidence to support it. There are several problems with this line of thinking.

For one, anarchism has been tried around the world in various forms. In ancient Ireland, Brehon law functioned for generations without a centralized police force or traditional court system. Zomia, a term coined to refer to large swaths of highland regions in Southeast Asia, was detailed extensively in James C. Scott’s The Art of Not Being Governed. Zomia has existed for generations, resisting the encroachment and authority of nation-states. Even when a clearly defined stateless community or society isn’t present, much of our day-to-day lives involve “anarchy” in that our interpersonal relationships—whether personal or professional—don’t require force.

Additionally, just because something hasn’t been tried (it has) doesn’t mean it can’t work. With that attitude, many of humanity’s greatest feats would have never been accomplished. On that note, government has been tried repeatedly. Thousands of years of evidence show that everywhere it’s been implemented, no matter the form, it has led to violence and authoritarianism (to one extent or another, as government relies on violent authority). How many more trials are needed for people to consider that there might be a different way?

As economist and historian Robert Higgs has put it:

“Anarchists did not try to carry out genocide against the Armenians in Turkey; they did not deliberately starve millions of Ukrainians; they did not create a system of death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, and Slavs in Europe; they did not fire-bomb scores of large German and Japanese cities and drop nuclear bombs on two of them; they did not carry out a ‘Great Leap Forward’ that killed scores of millions of Chinese…

In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy’s mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state’s mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.”

Another common argument against anarchism is the general belief that without government, no one would be able to figure out how to do…seemingly anything. Who would build the roads? Who would provide electricity? Who would protect communities? Who would care for the disadvantaged? While these are understandable concerns (and ones I raised before I began my path away from statism), the most obvious answer is: people.

People would continue to provide the services that people in government currently distribute rather poorly. But in government systems, there is little recourse because the State holds the monopoly on violence. It’s very hard to hold a group of people accountable when they—and the collective they claim authority over—believe they alone have a moral justification to issue commands and use violence to enforce them. One need only consider the DMV or the VA to see the quality of government services when there are virtually no mechanisms for accountability.

That aside, it’s worth discussing the importance of building parallel systems that can ultimately undermine State power by making it obsolete. For example, creating community networks to support each other during natural disasters and other crises; using alternative currencies to break out of the fiat dollar system; or growing your own food or participating in a community garden co-op (or any other efforts to become independent of the corporatist food supply).

This can also include engaging in activities the State forbids but that have no actual victim. For example, letting an unlicensed barber cut your hair, circumventing onerous occupational licensing requirements, or using illegal plant medicines for physical or emotional health, choosing to opt out of the State-sanctioned pharmaceutical industry. While this takes time and effort, over time, I believe people can render the State obsolete.

A final thought on this: The assumption that humanity can’t live without government rests largely on the belief that people are incapable of caring for themselves and surviving on their own. They are too stupid—or too evil—to be trusted with freedom. But this brings me back to something I often discuss in my videos: if this is true, it’s probably not a great idea to let these fallible people choose other fallible people to rule over them through violence. If it isn’t true, then people are more qualified to live without government than popular sentiment suggests.

While I believe wholeheartedly in the abolition of government, I can’t say I envision it would go smoothly if all political authority vanished tomorrow. Many people are too conditioned to rely on the State—whether materially, mentally, or emotionally—and it would likely be a hard, chaotic transition. Such a transition would likely be blamed on “anarchy” rather than a withdrawal effect following generations of dependence on the State.

As much as material solutions are essential to changing the paradigm, so is the evolution of consciousness. This means not only a rational and moral rejection of statism but also spiritual and emotional fortitude, which much of humanity currently lacks. This is not an endorsement of government but, in my view, a sober perspective of at least some of what is necessary for humanity to be truly free. I believe this is possible, but it will not be an overnight shift.

I’d like to conclude by saying I am open to being wrong about every point in this article. I don’t think it’s in the spirit of anarchism and freedom to present myself as an “authority” on any of these matters. I believe that a wide range of perspectives, ideas, and strategies is necessary for the realization of anarchism (and I tend to distrust anyone who acts as if they have all the answers).