ANARCHISM

Être gouverné, c’est être gardé à vue, inspecté, espionné, legiféré, réglementé, parqué, endoctriné, prêché, controlé, estimé, appécié, censuré, commandé, par des êtres qui n’ont ni le titre, ni la science, ni la verue…: To be governed is to be placed in custody, inspected, spied upon, legislated, regulated, cooped up, indoctri-nated, preached to, controlled, esteemed, appreciated, censured, commanded, by beings who have neither the title, nor the know-ledge, nor the virtue…                                – Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

If this is what being governed is, would anyone really like to be governed? The emphatic answer of No is given by anarchists.

The suffix archia, to rule, may be seen in many words: Monar-chy is rule by a single ruler (monarch). Oligarchy is rule by the a small group of people. Gynarhy is rule by women. Iatrarchy is rule by physician. All these imply that societies are invariably  ruled and have rulers.

But can one imagine a society that has no government or established ruler at all, where people congregate in small groups and organize themselves without having a person or group as their chief? There would be anarchy in such a group.

Anarchy as a political philosophy holds that governments and laws are not at all necessary for a people to live in peace. So anarchists call for the dissolution of all governments. An anarchist would ask: If religion can be without an ecclesiastic authority, and morality without a God, then why can’t a state be without a government?

Given that this is only a conceptual possibility and that most peoples in mainstream countries do live under governments of one kind or another, the next best that anarchists can do is to oppose the government under which they happen to live. In some ways one may compare anarchism to the mindset of an adolescent who rebels against parents and against all authorities.

Historically, anarchism has often found expression where political oppression or exploitation of the working class has prevailed for long. It is an expression of extreme frustration, often the early phase of a major revolution, only to gradually fade away. Anarchists are not for chaotic rule, but for locally organized groups that plan, produce, and share the fruits of their labor. An anarchist group is somewhat like a household in a community that is managing its affairs without being directed or constrained in any way by a community organization. But it is realistic only up to a point, which is why there are no anarchistic nations in the U.N. With the advent of globalization, anarchism has very little possibility of success anywhere in the world.

In theory, anarchists believe that no government has any right over the people. They are a step beyond conservatives who wish to limit the government’s power: anarchists want to eliminate all power and in the institutions where power ultimately resides in a country: namely, government.

The underlying idea in anarchism is understandable, if not practicable: We came into this world without our asking for it. Now that we are here we should manage our lives the best we can, without anybody telling us what we should or should not do. But governments do precisely that: restrict our actions and movements and thoughts. This is totally unacceptable, and we must not put up with that, say the anarchists.

Organized societies emerged probably some ten thousand years ago. Now and again thinkers have arisen speaking out against organized authorities. Lao Tzu who prized Nature above all also taught, like Heraclitus, that Reality is in a state of  constant  flux, with energy incessantly flowing between yin and yang. Going beyond the Biblical aphorism that “No man can serve two masters,” he preached that Man shall have not even one master. So scholars have seen in his writings the first glimmer of anarchist thought. To Lao Tzu is attributed what Josh of the Anarchist Library described as the first Anarchist Manifesto:

The more laws and restrictions there are, the poorer people become. The sharper men’s weapons the more trouble in the land. The more ingenious and clever men are, the more strange things happen. The more rules and regulations, the more thieves and robbers.

Therefore the sage says: I take no action and people are reformed. I enjoy peace and people become honest. I do nothing and the people become rich. I have no desires and people return to the good and simple life.

The Stoics and Cynics of ancient Greece have also been seen as early anarchists, though they never used that term either. In the eighteenth century Jean Jacques Rousseau lamented that though Man in born free, he is in chains everywhere. Unknowingly he was advocating anarchism.

Every revolt, rebellion, and revolution the world has seen was an outburst of anarchism, albeit for a temporary phase. On the other hand, William Godwin, often regarded as the founder of philosophical anarchism, eulogized individualism and considered organized state to be a necessary evil.

Anarchists are sympathetic to both individualism and communism. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809 – 1865) who famously declared that “all property is theft,” and was one of the first to call himself an anarchist, influenced Karl Marx’s thinking.

But history will always remember Mikhail Bukanin (1814 – 1876) as a hero in the modern anarchist movement. Bukanin loathed the oppression and injustice he suffered in Tsarist Russia. He traveled to Paris and instigated others to his hatred of the State, spoke out against oppression and colonialism, pleaded for Poland’s freedom, was expelled from and thrown into prison in more than one country, was about to be hanged more than once, escaped from Siberia to where he had been exiled, sneaked into San Francisco and New York, published manifestoes, and predicted the dictatorship of the Proletariat (Communist Revolution).

The essence of the philosophy of anarchism is that the world needs to dismantle all concentrations of political power. It must be unfettered from the shackles imposed on a majority by a minority that governs. Anarchists want to let ordinary citizens live up to their full potential.

Anarchist philosophy has permeated into different aspects of society, leading to such fields as eco-anarchism, anarcho-feminism, anarcho-primitivism, and anarcho-syndicalism.

There are at least two practical problems in prescriptions for a government-less state. Invariably, in such a situation one or more will become leaders, and the dominance of the powerful will start all over again. The second difficulty is that governments need not be what Bukanin and Proudhon saw and experienced in the nineteenth century. Governments, like religion, are indispensable for civilized countries. Like religions, they need to be tamed and deprived of their poisonous fangs: potential and tendency for engaging in intrusive practices, as they have been doing in many countries all through history. It is not impossible to bring govern-ments under the control of the people. That is what enlightened democracies with free press and free speech are meant to do.

The irony is that every anarchist thinker and writer needs an organized society with press and book publishers, advertizing channels and meeting rooms to publicize and propagate anarchist philosophies. Those who truly believe in anarchism are individuals and groups that, instead of condemning the society where they live or criticizing local governments, rulers and elders, move away from it all to live in seclusion in woods or hermitages – not unlike some hippies in our own times. They practice rather than preach anarchism. Even they need a food-chain to sustain them and their families, if they have any.