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Title: Anarchism for Civilians Author: John Halstead Date: 2020 Language: en Topics: pagan, introductory, history, pirates, animals, religion, anti-civ Source: https://abeautifulresistance.org/site/2020/5/15/what-unitarians-taught-me-about-anarchism-anarchism-for-civilians-series
âIâm an anarchist,â said Rhyd.
âSure you are!â I thought to myself, inwardly rolling my eyes.
We were at Pantheacon, a large Pagan convention in San Jose, California,
several years ago. Rhyd, who I had only known online before this, was
sitting across a dinner table from me.
At the time, I didnât know what anarchism was. I had in mind punk
teenagers wearing black t-shirts with big red Aâs painted on them. I
also had in mind the adolescent antinomianism of so many Pagans I knew.
If I had known Rhyd better at the time, I would have known he didnât fit
either of these stereotypes.
I didnât know Rhyd well, but I also didnât know anything about
anarchism. I didnât know at the time that there is a difference between
anarchism and being anti-social. I didnât know that anarchism is
actually a sophisticated political philosophy with a long and
respectable history. I didn't know that, for decades in the United
States and elsewhere, anarchists formed the backbone of movements for
economic and political justice. I didnât know that there have actually
been real communities which have practiced forms of anarchism more or
less successfully. I didnât know that there are many different forms of
anarchism. And I didnât know that my own political orientation was, even
then, drifting toward anarchism.
After having learned more about anarchism since, I feel more than a
little embarrassed about my earlier eye-rolling. Now, whenever I mention
anarchism to people, Iâm the one getting the eye rolls. And itâs not
just from conservatives. Progressives and even some leftists donât know
what anarchism is. I was surprised when a friend who was a âred diaper
babyâ and a lifelong communist admitted he didnât know anything about
anarchismâdespite the fact that the two movements were closely related
at one time.[1]
This isnât entirely the fault of the eye-rollers. I have discovered that
a lot of writing about anarchism can be abstruse.[2] Even many
introductory texts fail to build a bridge between the average reader and
anarchist thought. I have read several introductions to anarchism, which
I thought I was understanding as I read them, but as soon as I closed
the book, I realized I was still confused about exactly what anarchism
is. And I suspect Iâm not alone in this.
Most introductions start with the fathers of anarchism, Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, and Peter Kropotkin, in the 19th century. And
then things get really complicated from there. The term anarchism is
heavily contested today, and there are people on completely opposite
ends of the political spectrum who claim the term. It is easy to get
bogged down in these internecine conflicts.
For a while, Iâve wanted to write a short introduction to anarchism for
folks who have no background in the subject.[3] It is inevitable that
there will be some people who will disagree with my representation of
anarchism here.[4] For one thing, Iâm still learning about it. In any
case, I could never do justice to the complexity of anarchism. So rather
than attempting any kind of authoritative definition of anarchism (which
would really be contrary to the spirit of the thing), I want instead to
dispel some of the myths that I had to unlearn, in order to grasp what
anarchism is aboutâstarting with something I learned from Unitarians.
of hierarchy.
In the minds of most people, âanarchyâ has come to mean a state of
social chaos. But anarchy is not chaos. Anarchy is simply the absence of
social hierarchy.[5] It is the absence of domination of some people by
other people. This includes all forms of hierarchy, including
authoritarianism, classism (which capitalism is a form of), racism,
sexism, hetero- and cis-normativity, and even anthropocentrism.
Anarchism recognizes the interconnectedness of all of these forms of
oppression and, thus, how opposition to these different forms of
hierarchy must also be connected.[6]
Contrary to what some people may believe, there are ways to order
society that donât involve hierarchy. In its essence, anarchy is simply
pure democracy. It means letting people make decisions for themselves in
community with others, without abdicating power or responsibility to a
group of elites. This necessarily requires keeping things small, because
the bigger things get, the more people are involved, the harder it is to
maintain real democracy.
This is actually something that the American âFounding Fathersâ
understood. They were terrified of pure democracy, because it was a
threat to their (unearned) wealth and their privileged positions in
society.[7] James Madison, himself a slave plantation owner, justified
the need for a large federal government by arguing that identification
with large political entities tends to alienate people from each other.
In the Federalist Papers, he explained that, in smaller societies, it is
easier for people to act in concert. Whereas in larger societies, it is
harder for people to discover their âcommon motiveâ, and it becomes
âmore difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and
to act in unison with each other.â A lot of people might be surprised to
learn that the Founders understood that a large central government was
an obstacle to real democracy, and thatâs why they wanted it!
A lot of objections which people raise to anarchism take the scale of
our society for granted. Leopold Kohr was someone who did not. Kohr was
an Austrian economist and journalist who reported on anarchist
communities during the Spanish Civil War. After fleeing the Nazis and
settling in the United States, Kohr wrote The Breakdown of Nations
(1957), in which he theorized that small communities are more peaceful
and prosperous than the great nation-states. He argued that social
problems are not caused by particular political or economic
arrangements, but by their size. In his view, any political/economic
system could work well on what he called the âhuman scale,â the scale at
which people can play a determinative role in the governance of their
lives. But once it grows too large, then any political or economic
system becomes oppressive. [8]
Americans like to claim to be the paragon of democracy, but in reality
we embrace authoritarianism in many aspects of our lives.
I was raised in a hierarchical and authoritarian religion, Mormonism.
Mormons have a âprophetâ (also called the âpresidentâ of the church) who
is at the top of the hierarchy. Below him are twelve âapostlesâ. Below
them is a council of seventy. And so on. (Of course, they are all men.)
Mormons believe that the will of God flows down from the prophet to the
individual members of the church. The same structure is replicated in
the Mormon home, with the father at the top, followed by the mother, and
then the children. (Of course, the structure is cis- and
hetero-normative.)
While Mormons do believe in âpersonal revelationâ, this does not disturb
the hierarchical structure, as there is no upward flow of revelation.
Those above you in the hierarchy can receive revelation which is
authoritative for you, but you cannot receive revelation which is
authoritative for them.
About ten years ago, I joined a Unitarian congregation. It was very
different from my experience with the Mormon church. Unitarians are
congregationalists, which means that their church governance is
democratic. Number five in the Unitarian Universalist Principles is âThe
right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our
congregations and in society at largeâ.
In practice, this means that every member has a vote on important
issues. And the day-to-day running of the church is delegated to a board
which is elected annually. Important decisions are made through formal
congregational meetings and recording of votes. But other decisions are
made less formally through a consensus-style of decision making.[9]
Mormons would find the Unitarian-style of democratic governance very
strange. While the hierarchical structure of the Mormons will seem
strange to many who were not raised in an authoritarian religion, it
will be familiar to others who were, such as current and former
Catholics. And while you may not have experienced a hierarchical
religion, you have experienced hierarchy in other aspects of your life.
For example, your family of origin may have been patriarchal. You
probably were educated in a school that was authoritarianânot just in
its discipline, but in its pedagogy as well. Did your teachers strive to
produce freethinking individuals, or did they want copies of themselves?
The point is that, we tend to reject hierarchy instinctually in some
parts of our lives, while accepting it uncritically in others.
Anarchists strive to eliminate all hierarchy, in every aspect of life:
government, work, religion, family. This is called âtotal liberation".
Americans like to think of their government as democratic, but it is
actually very hierarchical. âA person no less a slave because they are
allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years,â wrote 19th
century anarchist, Lysander Spooner. âBut our elected representatives
embody the will of the people!â you might object. But do they really? In
the United States, democracy has been undermined by elites in myriad
ways: The electoral college. Voter suppression. Gerrymandering. The
revolving door of government and industry. The absence of campaign
finance reform. Citizens United. The focus on national over local
politics.
The anarchist asks, Why does hierarchy belong in any part of our lives?
Many of us uncritically accept hierarchy in the workplace, for example.
But why should the capitalists (the people who own property) be the
bosses? Why doesnât everyone who participates in the functioning of a
workplace, right âdownâ to the janitor, have an equal say?
Or to give you a more radical example, the green anarchist asks, Why
doesnât the more-than-human world have a say in how a society functions?
Isnât human society part of an ecosystem (or, more accurately,
ecosystems, plural)? Shouldnât other-than-human beingsâanimals, plants,
and even so-called âinanimateâ natureâhave a say? Could not human
assemblies have spokespersons for the rights of other-than-human beings
with whom the human society is in relation?[10] Pagan activist and
science fiction writer, Starhawk, imagined such an arrangement in her
book, The Fifth Sacred Thing.
Whatever aspect of life weâre talking about, anarchists invite us to
ask, Why canât this be done with more participation from the people it
affects?
about community and cooperation.
When people think of anarchists, they often have in mind a loner, a
rebel, somebody who rejects all social norms. This is because we wrongly
associate the absence of hierarchy with the absence of social order.
Though there are some individualist forms of anarchism, many are
actually communalist. Communalist forms of anarchism recognize that no
person is an island, that we are already a part of society even before
we are born, that our very identities are formed in relation to one
another.
This runs counter to the hyper-individualist philosophy that informs
much of American politics today, which assumes that individuals exist
prior to our relationships and that human relations are inherently
adversarial. âYour rights end where my rights begin,â we are told.
According to that logic, the more freedom you have, the less freedom I
have. The anarchist sees things differently:
âFreedom is not a tiny bubble of personal rights. We cannot be
distinguished from each other so easily. Yawning and laughter are
contagious; so are enthusiasm and despair. I am composed of the clichés
that roll off my tongue, the songs that catch in my head, the moods I
contract from my companions. When I drive a car, it releases pollution
into the atmosphere you breathe; when you use pharmaceuticals, they
filter into the water everyone drinks. The system everyone else accepts
is the one you have to live underâbut when other people challenge it,
you get a chance to renegotiate your reality as well. Your freedom
begins where mine begins, and ends where mine ends.â
â To Change Everything: an anarchist appeal"
The individualist view of society can be traced to the philosopher John
Locke, who theorized that individual human beings exist ânaturallyâ
outside of society in a state of war of all against all. Eventually, he
imagined, individuals enter into a âsocial contractâ in which they agree
to respect the individual rights of others in exchange for the same
respect of their own rights. This view of social relations is atomistic
and adversarial.
This idea got a boost in the mid-1800s with social Darwinism. An example
of social Darwinism is the use of the âsurvival of the fittestâ meme to
justify preexisting hierarchical relations in human society. Darwin gets
a lot of blame for this idea. But the ideas which came to be called
âsocial Darwinismâ were already circulating before Darwin published On
the Origin of Species in 1859. Social Darwinism was the ideology (and
the propaganda) of the emerging industrial capitalist class. In fact,
the phrase âsurvival of the fittestâ was coined not by Darwin, but by
Herbert Spencer.
Darwin himself recognized that cooperation is an important driver of
evolution:
âThere can be no doubt that the tribe including many members who are
always ready to give aid to each other, and to sacrifice themselves for
the common good, would be victorious over other tribes. And this would
be natural selection.â
âIn the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who
learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.â
â The Descent of Man (1875)
The late-19th/early-20th century anarchist, Peter Kropotkin, believed
that competition had been given too much credit for human progress and
that cooperation was at least as important. In his journeys through
Eastern Siberia and Manchuria, he was surprised by what he didnât find
when he looked at animal life:
âEven in those few spots where animal life teemed in abundance, I failed
to findâalthough I was eagerly looking for itâthat bitter struggle for
the means of existence among animals belonging to the same species,
which was considered by most Darwinists (though not always by Darwin
himself) as the dominant characteristic of struggle for life, and the
main factor of evolution.
â Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902)
Kropotkin concluded that there was as much cooperation in nature as
there was competition, and this inspired his philosophy of âmutual aidâ:
A soon as we study animalsâŠwe at once perceive that though there is an
immense amount of warfare and extermination going on amidst various
speciesâŠthere is, at the same time, as much, or perhaps even more, of
mutual support, mutual aid, and mutual defence amidst animals belonging
to the same species or, at least, to the same society. Sociability is as
much a law of nature as mutual struggleâŠif we resort to an indirect
test, and ask Nature: âWho are the fittest: those who are continually at
war with each other, or those who support one another?â we at once see
that those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly
the fittest. They have more chances to survive, and they attain, in
their respective classes, the highest development and bodily
organizationâŠwe may safely say that mutual aid is as much a law of
animal life as mutual struggle; but that as a factor of evolution, it
most probably has a far greater importance, inasmuch as it favors the
development of such habits and characters as insure the maintenance and
further development of the species, together with the greatest amount of
welfare and enjoyment of life for the individual, with the least waste
of energy.
â Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902)
Today, many biologists are confirming Kropotkinâs observations.
Cooperation is found, not only between individuals within the same
animal and plant species, but also between different species! (This is
called âmutualismâ in biology.)
The story we have been taught about our innate selfishness is only part
of the truth. As such, it is capitalist propaganda, and something of a
self-fulfilling prophecy. Psychological studies have shown that, as they
advance in their studies, students of orthodox (i.e., capitalist)
economics gradually become more self-interested, less trusting of
others, and more competitive. Primatologist Frans de Waal has warned:
âDonât believe anyone who says that, since nature is based on a struggle
for life, we need to live like this as well. Many animals survive not by
eliminating each other or by keeping everything for themselves, but by
cooperating and sharing.â
â Frans de Waal, The Age of Empathy: Natureâs Lessons for a Kinder
Society (2010)
De Waal has spent his life studying bonobos, who together with other
great apes (chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans), we human share the
name âhominidâ. Bonobos and chimpanzees are the closest living relatives
to homo sapiens. We share 98.7% of our DNA with bonobos and 99.6% with
chimps. De Waal reports that bonobos are less aggressive and more
altruistic than chimps. Among bonobos, thereâs no deadly warfare, no
male dominance, and enormous amounts of sex. Some researchers even call
them the âmake love, not warâ apes.
Chimpanzees
Bonobos
Honestly, which of these lists would you choose?
De Waal argues that our ideas about human nature have been shaped by an
incomplete or selective view of animal nature. âThe book of nature,â he
says, âis like the Bible: Everyone reads into it what they want.â
Because we have spent so much time studying chimpanzees, who are
competitive and hierarchical, he says, we tend to view human beings in
the same way. If we had instead spent more time studying bonobos, who
are cooperative and egalitarian, then we would have a very different
conception of human nature. In fact, de Waal says that the reason
bonobos have gotten less scientific attention was because they didnât
confirm pre-existing ideas about human nature.
Unless people are socialized otherwise, thereâs evidence that they can
be more cooperative than competitive. In A Paradise Built in Hell,
Rebecca Solnit has documented how, in the face of natural disasters,
when we might expect people to be at their most selfish, they often come
together to create new communities to take care of one another:
âThese remarkable societies [disaster communities] suggest that, just as
many machines reset themselves to their original settings after a power
outage, human beings reset themselves to something altruistic,
communitarian, resourceful and imaginative after a disaster âŠâ
â Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell (2009)
This is not to say that there arenât people who will sometimes violate
others if given the opportunity. But from an anarchist perspective, the
best way to respond to these acts is not to create an oppressive police
state, but rather to allow communities to enforce their own standards of
conduct.
There is good reason to believe that a lot of anti-social behavior is
actually a self-fulfilling prophecy. We are taught to believe that,
without the order imposed by large government, people would revert to a
bestial state and start âraping and pillagingâ. As a result of this
indoctrination, when the state order does break down, some people will
act anti-socially simply because they anticipate other people doing the
same. The recent hoarding during the Coronavirus pandemic is a good
example of this.
In this time of pandemic, we are witnessing the collapse of many state
and market functions. Many people have been surprised at how fragile
these systems are. Now that we are being forced to find alternative ways
of doing things, many are realizing that neither the state nor
capitalism were very good at taking care of people in the first place.
In response, both anarchists, as well as people who have never heard of
anarchism as a political philosophy, are turning to mutual aid.[11]
Mutual aid means creating new ways of organizing ourselvesâhorizontally
rather than hierarchicallyânew ways of meeting our needs, making
decisions, and solving problems, without the force employed by the state
and the competition employed by the capitalist system. Mutual aid isnât
unidirectional charity, nor is it quid pro quo transaction; it is a
network of reciprocal care built on the idea that we are all better off
when each of us is taken care of. These networks depend on relationships
of trust, which can take a long time to build, but can also arise
spontaneously in times of disaster and collapse, like right now.
Anarchists invite us to question the myths weâve been taught about human
nature and consider ways of being together that donât involve
competition or force.
robs us of the the good things in life.
What about all the benefits of civilization? Of large-scale, complex
social organization? Weâve all been taught the story that the history of
humankind has been a progression from barbarism to a civilization and
from less civilization to more civilization. And weâve been taught that
this is a good thing. But what if it wasnât?
Civilization is a term which is often used, but rarely defined.
Civilization involves the geographical concentration of people into
cities.[12] The word âcivilizationâ comes from the same root as âcityâ.
The earliest states were city-states like Sumer and Babylon, Athens and
Greece, TenochtitlĂĄn and Iztapalapa, Venice and Florence. The
concentration of people into cities coincides with the concentration of
power and wealth in the hands of an elite class, because it is easier to
extract the surplus of peopleâs labor when they are concentrated in one
place.[13]
Itâs really impossible to pinpoint when exactly civilization began. Itâs
easier to think of it as a process, rather than a point in time. What
anarchists call âthe stateâ is the result of the process of civilization
creating a class of people whose sole function is to govern others. This
includes rulers like monarchs and aristocrats, but also professional
politicians, bureaucrats, judges, lawyers, police officers, and
soldiers.
Though theyâre often used synonymously, civilization is not the same
thing as culture.[14] (The fact that the two are often equated is a
testament to the dominance of civilization over our minds.) When we
think about civilization, we tend to think about things that we
likeâsuch as the arts, modern medicine, technological gadgets, and so
on. But many of the things that we like, such as art and healing,
existed before civilization and outside of states. And many of the
lauded âimprovementsâ brought by civilization were not really
improvements, or else they were improvements which came at a terrible
cost.
Modern medicine is a good example, and one of the first benefits of
civilization that comes to peopleâs mind. Yes, âweâ can now treat
cancer, something that was (probably) not possible before. But we have
also lost a lot of indigenous wisdom about natural medicines in the
process, due to the exclusion of certain classes of people (women,
indigenous people, people of color) from the medical profession. We have
also lost a lot of the ecosystems from which those natural medicines
came, due to destruction by civilization. These are not accidents of
civilization, but the very nature of the beast.
Homebirth is a good example of a practice which has been almost lost to
the advance of civilization. Long before I started calling myself an
anarchist, my wife gave birth to our second child in our home. Both our
families thought we were crazy. They thought it wasnât safe. In fact, my
wife had been told by medical professionals, that because our first
child had been breach and because she had had a Cesarean section, she
could not deliver vaginally again. Her OB-GYN even told her that home
birth was a form of child abuse. And yet, not that long ago (and for
thousands of years before), it was the norm for women to give birth at
home, usually with the assistance of midwives. But the dominance of the
medical elite has all but wiped out the practice of midwiferyâand not
because OB-GYNs are better than midwives most of the time.
The birth of our first child, which happened in a hospital with a
doctor, had been a traumatic eventâthough at the time it was normalized
for us. My wife was induced by her OB-GYN early and without her consent,
in order to fit the birth into his vacation schedule. At the time of the
last exam, the doctor said he could feel my sonâs head. Yet, the next
day, when she went into labor, he was found to be in the breach position
(bottom down). As a result, she was rushed off into surgery for a
C-section. No one asked her what she wanted. She was given no options.
She was drugged, her arms were tied down, and a curtain was placed in
front of her face. All the power was taken away from her by the medical
professionals. And the doctors made a game of seeing if they could beat
their previous time record!
Later, we were introduced to home birth by a friend. When my second
child was born, my wife was the one in charge. She decided where she
wanted to deliver (in a baby pool in our living room). She decided who
would be present (me, her mom, our toddler son, a midwife and two
midwife assistants). She decided when she would deliver. (At the time, I
was working three hours away, so she intentionally prolonged her labor
while I raced home for the birthâshe delivered minutes after I walked in
the door.) It was beautiful and empowering for her. Had my daughter been
breach, the midwife knew how to turn the baby in the wombâsomething
which doctors today have neither the skill nor the inclination to do.
Theyâd rather cut. For this, and other reasons, the hospital model of
birth can be less healthy for mother and child than an assisted home
birth.[15]
But in order to experience an assisted home birth, our midwife had to
risk jail because, where we lived, practicing midwifery (outside of a
hospital system) is illegal. In addition, if the department of child
services had been notified, we might have been labeled child abusers and
our children taken away from us by the state. The state would have
claimed to be protecting our children, but what they really would have
been protecting was the privileged position of the medical elite.
Not only has much been lost to the advance of civilization, but its
purported benefits have been distributed unequally. Weâve been taught
that civilization has led to a better life for everyone. In actuality,
what it did was allow a concentration of power in a class of elites who
consume a disproportionate share of the communityâs resources. Thanks to
the Occupy movement, weâve all heard the statistics about economic
inequality in the United States: the richest 1% in the United States now
own more wealth than the bottom 90%. In fact more than half the wealth
in the United States is owned by just 400 people.
Again, health care is a great example of this unequal distribution.
Cancer treatment is something that is often cited as an example of the
benefits of civilization. And yet, how many people, even in
industrialized societies, actually have access to those expensive
treatments? In the U.S., even those who do have access are often
bankrupted and lose their lifeâs savings due to medical debt.
Contrary to what we have been taught, living outside of civilization has
always been better for most people than living inside civilization.
Because they were sedentary, people who lived in early city-states had
more restricted, and thus unhealthier, diets.[16] The same is actually
true of most people today. Our diets are woefully dependent on monocrops
like corn, large amounts of refined sugars, and unhealthy amounts of
meat.
Famine was also more common for residents of early cities, because
people tended to be reliant on one food source, usually a grain crop,
which they were forced to grow, because it was easily taxable by the
elite. Today, our current food system is propped up my massive
petroleum-based inputs (fertilizers and pesticides), which will become
more expensive as oil reserves are depleted. Famine will become a
reality again unless people relearn how to grow their own food.
The concentration of people in early cities resulted in environmental
degradation, such as soil depletion, which also contributed to famine.
In addition, the close proximity of people to each other and to
domesticated animals made city dwellers more prone to epidemics. Weâre
realizing thatâs just as true today as well.
And civilized people had less power of self-determination, because they
were ruled by an elite class. Civilization domesticates human beings,
just as human beings domesticated other animals. Initially, this was
accomplished through force. Civilization is not the result of free
people seeking to protect themselves, but of would-be elites seeking
power over people. It is the result, not of a social contract, but of
slavery. Throughout history, a large majority of people living in early
city-states lived in some degree of bondage, including forced
resettlement, unpaid (corvée) labor, debt bondage, serfdom,
conscription, communal tribute, and outright slavery. Elites built walls
around cities as much to keep people in as to keep threats out.[17]
Later, elites could use less overt force and more subtle techniques of
manipulation to domesticate people.[18] We have largely internalized the
mythos of civilization, so that we now believe there is no alternative
to it. And yet, force remains essential to maintaining civilization (as
will be discussed in the next installment of this series). David Grabber
has noted that, by some estimates, âa quarter of the American population
is now engaged in âguard laborâ of one sort or anotherâdefending
property, supervising work, or otherwise keeping their fellow Americans
in line.â
For all these reasons, civilization itself is highly precarious and
prone to collapse. What historians call the âdark agesâ, periods of
civilizational collapse, were actually periods of freedom for most
peopleâfreedom from domination by elites, freedom from large scale war,
freedom from pandemics. These periods only appear âdarkâ from the
perspective of the elites, who were the ones who wrote the histories. As
the poet Robinson Jeffers reminds us:
⊠the wise remember
That Caesar and even final Augustulus had heirs,
And men lived on; rich unplanned life on earth
After the foreign wars and the civil wars, the border wars
And the barbarians: music and religion, honor and mirth
Renewed lifeâs lost enchantments.
â Robinson Jeffers, âHope Is Not For the Wiseâ
Anthropologists now tell us that, far from living lives that were
ânasty, brutish, and shortâ, non-civilized people were healthier, lived
longer lives, worked less, and were probably happier as a result.[19]
Rather than leading to a better life for most people, civilization does
the opposite. And the whole order has to be maintained through violence,
both externally through large-scale war and internally through a police
state.
Anarchists invite us to examine whether civilization really has been the
boon to humankind that its defenders claim and to look back to a time,
before civilization, when life was simpler and better for most people.
Civilization is itself violent.
The violent nature of civilization is everywhere around us, if we are
willing to look. In the homelessness of people sitting and standing on
city streets. In the shootings of Black men by police. In the burning of
the Amazon rainforest. In the poisoning of the drinking water in Flint,
Michigan. In almost two decades of American occupation of Afghanistan.
In the incarceration of 1 in every 140 people in the U.S. In an
industrial agriculture system which destroys biodiversity, topsoil, and
human health.
We are taught that these are exceptions. But this is the rule of
civilization. This really came home to me, oddly enough, while watching
a television series, called âBlack Sailsâ, about pirates in the West
Indies during the early 18th century. What struck me was how the pirate
characters talked about âcivilizationâ as being something oppressive and
violent. Though the pirates themselves were very violent, they also had
communities and practiced a form of democracy. The show inspired me to
learn more about historic piracy.
Pirates, unlike many depictions of them, were actually quite organized,
despite the fact that they could not resort to state institutions (i.e.,
police, courts, etc.) to enforce order.
âAmidst ubiquitous potential for conflict, they rarely fought, stole
from, or deceived one another. In fact, piratical harmony was as common
as harmony among their lawful contemporaries who relied on government
for social cooperation.â
â Peter Leeson, âAn-arrgh-chy: The Law and Economics of Pirate
Organizationâ, Journal of Political Economy (2007).
Pirates used democratic practices, like constitutions and checks and
balances, to constrain the power of ship captains and minimize conflict
among themselves.
The violence of civilization came into stark relief for me when which I
learned how people actually became pirates. Some were escaped slaves.
Most were first sailors in the âmerchant marineâ, the private shipping
industry. Merchant ships were owned by wealthy capitalists who purchased
shares in a vessel and financed the voyage. Some men joined the merchant
marine willingly, but many others were forced to join. Press gangs would
roam cities and snatch up any poor male who seemed unlikely to be
missed. They were then sold to ship captains and forced to labor on the
ship for little or no compensation. It was effective slavery. Some later
expressed the wish that they had been sent to prison instead.
Much like the navy, the crew of a merchant ship was organized
hierarchically. The captain, who was chosen by the ship owners, had
absolute authority over their crews, and they often exercised their
power tyrannically. Order was maintained through corporal punishment.
Captains could abuse, and even kill, sailors with little cause and
little risk of consequence. So when a merchant ship was captured by
pirates, it was not uncommon for the sailors to volunteer to join the
pirates without any threat of violence. Little wonder that these men
rejected civilization.
On a pirate ship, their lives were very different. Captains were elected
and could be removed from office in the same manner. Their authority was
absolute only during times of battle. And all the sailors had an equal
stake in the profits.
âThe early-eighteenth-century pirate ship was a âworld turned upside
down,â made so by the articles of agreement that established the rules
and customs of the piratesâ social order. ⊠Pirates distributed justice,
elected officers, divided loot equally, and established a different
discipline. They limited the authority of the captain, resisted many of
the practices of the capitalist merchant shipping industry, and
maintained a multicultural, multiracial, multinational social order.
They sought to prove that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and
oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal Navy.â
â Linebaugh and Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves,
Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (2013).
According to some historians, piracy represented a threat to the state,
not just because it interfered with commerce, but because pirates
challenged the obviousness of the need for the state, and they raised
the possibility of an alternative to civilization. As one of the
characters on Black Sails explains to the leader of a colony of escaped
slaves (maroons):
âIf no one remembers a time before there was an England, then no one can
imagine a time after it. The empire survives in part because we believe
its survival to be inevitable. It isnât. And they know that. Thatâs why
theyâre so terrified of you and I. ⊠we are able to expose the illusion
that England is not inevitable.â
â Captain Flint, Black Sails (Starz)
We have been taught that our only choice is between civilization and
something called âbarbarismâ or âsavageryâ. We have been taught that, in
the absence of civilization, human beings would devolve into characters
in a Mad Max movie. And yet, the truth is that, for most of the history
of humankind, there was no civilization. And yet life went onâand for
most people, it was much better.
People had communities, just not large-scale, complex social
organization. People had social order, but not massive bureaucracies.
People had economies, but not stock exchanges. People had healers, but
not HMOs. People had human-scale tools, but not tech startups. People
had art, but not philanthropic foundations.
For most of history, civilization has been the exception, rather than
the rule. Even after the appearance of the first city-states, the vast
majority of people continued to live outside of the reach of
civilization for millennia. Until the 17th century, at least one-third
of the globe was non-civilized.
We tend to forget these facts, because history was literally written by
the winners. Most non-civilized people had oral cultures. Writing
developed out of civilization because the elites needed a technology to
keep track of their surplus property and to tax people. Because we are
âcivilizedâ, we tend to only recognize âhistoryâ after the advent of
writing.[20] But what we call âpre-historyâ, is just the time before
written records. Before âhistoryâ, people still had society. They still
had art, religion, technology, economies, and so on. They still had joy,
love, beauty, meaning, and all the rest.
Civilization brought large scale violence into the world. While war and
slavery did exist before civilization, these forms of violence were
systematized by the state. States carried on large-scale warfare in
order to increase their populations through the taking of slaves, as
well as the plunder of other forms of wealth. Citizens of states were
then forced to farm monocropsâusually grains, because grains are easily
measured and, therefore, easily taxed.
Civilized societies are not less violent than non-civilized
societiesâthough they may appear so to the more privileged citizens. Not
so much to the citizens who are not privileged. One of the defining
characteristics of civilization is the depersonalization of violence. In
a civilized state, there is social stratification and a division of
labor that separates those who command the violence and those who carry
it out. This gives the violence the appearance of inevitability and the
mask of âjusticeâ.
The actual historical pirate Captain Samuel (aka âBlack Samâ) Bellamy
expressed this well in a speech he reportedly made to the captain of a
captured merchant ship:
âYou are a sneaking puppy, and so are all those who will submit to be
governed by laws which rich men have made for their own security. ⊠They
vilify us, the scoundrels do, when there is only this difference, they
rob the poor under the cover of law, forsooth, and we plunder the rich
under the protection of our own courage. Had you not better make then
one of us, than sneak after these villains for employment?â
âBut without the state, who will protect the vulnerable? Who will
protect the rights of minorities?â I wonder.
âWho protects them now?â responds the anarchist.
âThe courts. The police.â I respond.
Itâs a knee jerk reaction. The response Iâve been taught my whole life.
But when I think about it, I realize I know better. As a lawyer, I know
perfectly well that the courts are not accessible to most people and
they are not treated equally even when they do have access. Courts
protect the rights of minorities imperfectly at best.
As for the police, well, Iâm White and economically privileged, so
naturally, for most of my life I have had a positive view of the police.
They have protected me, or so I believed, from a mass of invisible
people who wanted to hurt me or take my property. But participating in
public protests brought me face to face with the reality that the police
donât exist to make me safe.[21] They exist to protect the wealth of the
over-privileged. And they do this by carrying out a campaign of terror
against the under-privileged.
The police are used by capitalist elites as a means of quashing protest
by workers. They are used to systematically enslave people in a
for-profit prison system. They are used as a means of checking rebellion
during a time of social collapse brought on by the end of cheap oil.
They are used to redistribute wealth in the form of fines from poor
communities and communities of color to the state (and hence to the
wealthy).
Even for most wealthy White people, the police only provide the illusion
of safety. About 90% of police time is spent penalizing infractions of
administrative regulations. As David Graeber has observed, the police
are essentially bureaucrats with guns. Of the remaining 10% of their
time, during which they are responding to violent crime, they are
largely ineffectual or actually make things worse. Most of the time, the
police donât really make anybody safer. And some of the time, they make
people a lot unsafer.
Anarchists challenge the idea that civilization actually protects us
from violence and invite us to consider all the forms of violence which
are perpetrated by elites in the name of civilization.
As I said above, this series is not a complete introduction to
anarchism. Instead, my hope was to debunk some of the myths that we have
been taught about anarchism and about civilization: the myth that
anarchy is social chaos and hyper-individualism and the myth that
civilization is healthier, happier, and more peaceful.
One of the defining characteristics of civilization is the domestication
of human beingsâboth physically and psychologically. In order to
accomplish the psychological domestication of people, civilization
constructs a mythos to justify its existence. People come to accept
their bondage because they believe there is no real alternative. I hope
that I have helped open some cracks in that mythos for my readers.
Many of the examples Iâve used to illustrate my points above arenât
actually of anarchists. Neither Unitarians nor midwives, and not even
pirates, were necessarily anarchists. (Not the bonobos either.) But each
of these groups embody certain anarchist values. And learning about them
challenged some of my assumptions about civilization.
Unitarians taught me about small-scale democracy. Bonobos taught me
about the naturalness of taking care of others. Midwives taught me about
the availability of alternatives to the state and capitalist order. And
pirates, those violent criminals from our bedtime stories, taught me
about the violence of civilization itself.
Current Affairs writer, Nathan Robinson, suggests that the motto for
anarchists should be, âActually, Both of Those Things Are Bad.â Whenever
we are presented with two things and told one is good and one is
badâlike civilization versus Mad Max, capitalism versus tyranny,
competition versus poverty, police versus riots, or hospitals versus
death in childbirthâthe anarchist invites us to question whether there
is a false dichotomy and shows us how the one often creates the
conditions of the other. Often, the dichotomy conceals a third (and
maybe a fourth and fifth) option. These other options, if they are even
acknowledged, are usually rejected out of hand as âunrealisticâ or
âutopianâ. And it is the job of the anarchist to ask, âWhy?â
âFreedom doesnât mean choosing between options, but formulating the
questions.â
Coronavirus (Itâs Going Down)
[1] Communism and anarchism diverged over the role of the state:
communists seeing it as a necessary means to an end, and anarchists
believing it to be the root of all social evil. Early anarchist Mikhail
Bakunin anticipated the Soviet Union when he predicted that the
âdictatorship of the proletariatâ would become a dictatorship over the
proletariate, and it âwould conceal the despotism of a governing
minority, all the more dangerous because it appears as a sham expression
of the peopleâs will.â Bakunin wrote, âWhen the people are being beaten
with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called âthe Peopleâs
Stick.'â
[2] Another challenge for many people is the name itself, âanarchismâ,
which is associated in peopleâs minds with bomb-throwers and punk
rockers. There is a place for both bomb-throwers and punk rockers in
anarchism, but reducing anarchism to those things is not accurate.
Sometimes, the fact that a word is commonly misunderstood is indicative
of its potential power and a reason for keeping it.
[3] The playful name of this series, âAnarchism for Civiliansâ, comes
from a play on the words âcivilizedâ and âcivilianâ.
[4] My own interpretation of anarchism has been most influenced by green
anarchism, anarcho-primitivism, and anarcho-communism. The
âanarcho-capitalistâ, for example, will not find much to agree with
here.
[5] âAnarchyâ comes from the Greek anarkhia, which means the lack of a
leader. The word derives from an- (âwithoutâ) + arches (âleaderâ). For
example, in ancient Athens, it was used to describe the Year of Thirty
Tyrants (404 B.C.), when there was no archon. Archon comes from arkhein
which means âto be the firstâ. Online Etymological Dictionary
(https://www.etymonline.com/)
[6] The grandfather of anarchism, Pierre Proudon, also recognized the
intersection of multiple forms of oppression:
âThe economic idea of capitalism, the politics of government or of
authority, and the theological idea of the Church are three identical
ideas, linked in various ways. To attack one of them is equivalent to
attacking all of them. ⊠What capital does to labour, and the State to
liberty, the Church does to the spirit. ⊠The most effective means for
oppressing the people would be simultaneously to enslave its body, its
will and its reason.â
â Les confessions dâun rĂ©volutionnaire (1851)
[7] For more on this, I recommend A Peopleâs History of the United
States by Howard Zinn.
[8] Unitarian Universalists do have an umbrella organization, the
Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), but participation in the
association by individual congregations is voluntary. The UUA advises,
but does not dictate to, its member congregations. And the UUA is itself
democratic. Its leadership is elected and member congregations send
delegates to general assemblies to vote annually.
[9] For more on this, see my essay, âDo Trees Have Rights?: Toward An
Ecological Politicsâ.
[10] Unitarian Universalists do have an umbrella organization, the
Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), but participation in the
association by individual congregations is voluntary. The UUA advises,
but does not dictate to, its member congregations. And the UUA is itself
democratic. Its leadership is elected and member congregations send
delegates to general assemblies to vote annually.
[11] To read about how anarchists are using mutual aid to respond to the
Coronavirus, check out these articles:
[12] This was true at least until human beings discovered how to harness
the sunlight stored in fossil fuels, whereupon civilization began to
grow into its current global form.
[13] In addition to (1) the concentration of economic wealth and
political power in the hands of a small elite and (2) the geographical
concentration of people in cities, for the purpose of extracting the
surplus of their labor, other salient characteristics of civilization
which I have identified from my reading include: (3) the alienation of
people from the land by the gradual artificialization of our
environments (artificial: the product of human âartificeâ or craft), (4)
the monopolization and depersonalization of violence by the state, and
(5) the psychological domestication of human beings through an
internalization of state violence.
[14] The anarchist and radical environmentalist, Edward Abbey,
illustrated this distinction between culture and civilization, though he
flipped the two terms. What matters more than the terms, however, is the
distinction itself. In the quote below, from Abbeyâs Desert Solitaire, I
flip the terms to be consistent my usage above.
Culture is the vital force in human history; civilization is that inert
mass of institutions and organizations which accumulate around and tend
to drag down the advance of life;
Culture is Giordano Bruno facing death by fire; civilization is the
Cardinal Bellarmino, after ten years of inquisition, sending Bruno to
the stake in the Campo di Fiori; âŠ
Culture is mutual aid and self-defense; civilization is the judge, the
lawbook and the forces of Law & Ordure (sic);
Culture is uprising, insurrection, revolution; civilization is the war
of state against state, or of machines against people, as in Hungary and
Vietnam;
Culture is tolerance, detachment and humor, or passion, anger, revenge;
civilization is the entrance examination, the gas chamber, the doctoral
dissertation and the electric chair; âŠ
Culture is a youth with a Molotov cocktail in his hand; civilization is
the Soviet tank or the L.A. cop that guns him down;
Culture is the wild river; civilization, 592,000 tons of cement; âŠ
â Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
[15] My knowledge of this subject is all second-hand, of course. In
this, I am indebted to several wise women who have shared their
experiences, not the least of which is my wife. If you want to learn
more about the technocratic model of birth, I highly recommend Birth as
an American Rite of Passage (1992) by anthropologist Robbie Davis-Floyd,
another woman whose wisdom has guided me in this subject.
[16] Many anarcho-primitivists equate the advent of agriculture with the
rise of cities and civilization. However, in Against the Grain: A Deep
History of the Earliest States (2017), James Scott observes that a gap
of four millennia exists between the first domestication of plants and
animals and the rise of city-states. During that time, people combined
hunting and gathering with some degree of horticulture. Note, it is
important to distinguish between agriculture and horticulture.
[17] For more on the rise of early states and the condition of their
citizens, see James Scottâs Against the Grain: A Deep History of the
Earliest States (2017).
[18] In Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), Neil Postman, contrasts two
dystopian futures, that of Orwellâs 1984 and Huxleyâs Brave New World,
and concludes that Huxley, not Orwell, was right:
âOrwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed
oppression. But in Huxleyâs vision, no Big Brother is required to
deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it,
people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies
that undo their capacities to think.
âWhat Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared
was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no
one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of
information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would
be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would
be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea
of irrelevance.Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley
feared we would become a trivial culture âŠ
âIn the Huxley prophecy, Big Brother does not watch us, by his choice.
We watch him, by ours.â
[19] See Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (1972). An excerpt, âThe
Original Affluent Societyâ, can be found here.
[20] James Scott explains how state societies came to dominate our
history books in site of the fact that, for most of history, they were
âtiny nodes of power surrounded by a vast landscape inhabited by
nonstate peoplesâ:
âThat states would have come to dominate the archaeological and
historical record is no mystery. ⊠Aside from the utter hegemony of the
state form today, a great deal of archaeology and history throughout the
world is state-sponsored and often amounts to a narcissistic exercise in
self-portraiture. Compounding this institutional bias is the
archaeological tradition, until quite recently, of excavation and
analysis of major historical ruins. Thus if you built, monumentally, in
stone and left your debris conveniently in a single place, you were
likely to be âdiscovered; and to dominate the pages of ancient history.
If, on the other hand, you built with wood, bamboo, or reeds, you were
much less likely to appear in the archaeological record. And if you were
hunter-gatherers or nomads, however numerous, spreading your
biodegradable trash thinly across the landscape, you were likely to
vanish entirely from the archaeological record.
âOnce written documentsâsay, hieroglyphics or cuneiformâappear in the
historical record, the bias becomes even more pronounced. These are
invariably state-centric texts: taxes, work units, tribute lists, royal
genealogies, founding myths, laws. There are no contending voices, and
efforts to read such texts against the grain are both heroic and
exceptionally difficult.10 The larger the state archives left behind,
generally speaking, the more pages devoted to that historical kingdom
and its self-portrait.â
â James Scott, Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States
(2017)
[21] See my essay, âThe Police Arenât Here for Youâ.