Anarchy: But Seriously, Folks
Posted by Thomas L. Knapp on Jul 6, 2009 in Commentary • 4 commentsA typical first reaction to the anarchist proposal — society without the state — goes something like this: “You can’t be serious! That couldn’t possibly work!”
A lot of ink’s been spilled explaining how it could work, has worked and even how it works every day for most people, but I’d like to take a run at this from the opposite direction:
You there! Yeah, you, the one who just told me I’m not serious and that a stateless society couldn’t possibly work — turn on your television and take note of the next few political stories you see. For the sake of argument, I’m going to throw out some examples of what’s likely coming through the tube at the moment:
- In New York, the State Senate is deadlocked into two bodies of 31 senators each. Each body claims to be the real Senate and refuses to acknowledge the other. Each body is one short of a quorum to legally pass bills. Last week, a Senator from one faction wandered across the other faction’s floor territory looking for a soda machine. The other faction declared the existence of a quorum and hurriedly passed 100 bills while he tried to hunt up his cold beverage. No dice — the lower house of the legislature declined to recognize bills passed by the Cola Quorum.
- In California, the state is issuing IOUs instead of checks to cover tax refunds, payments to vendors, etc. After the electorate rejected several tax increase proposals, the legislature deadlocked on a budget. The main activity on the floor of the legislature seems, at this point, to be referring to the public as “terrorists” for refusing to hand more of their earnings over to the politicians so that said politicians don’t have to make “tough decisions,” i.e. spend only within their extremely substantial means.
- In South Carolina, the biggest political issue of the moment seems to be whether or not the governor should resign because he has a mistress in Argentina.
- In Alaska, the governor has resigned. Why? Who knows? It appears to have something to do with dead fish and basketball and Jesus, but until her speech is re-released with English subtitles it’s anybody’s guess.
Now, two things:
First, get “serious.” Go back over those stories above and then try to tell me, with a straight face, that the state “works.” Admit it: 90% of what the state does looks like a deleted early pilot of “Different Strokes” — same cast, only with Joan Crawford as the adoptive mother.
Second, look around you. Despite the state — despite its complete dysfunction, despite its inability to get much of anything right, despite the huge percentage of your time and money that it steals and throws down the rathole of its own collective incompetence …
… things aren’t so bad, are they?
The crops still get grown and the cows still get milked, even with the huge overhead burden of the state.
You can still go to the grocery store and get everything you need to grill out for the 4th of July, even with Barack Obama in the White House and Sarah Palin running off to go fishing or join the WNBA or handle snakes or whatever the hell it is she’s doing.
In most places, at least in America, you can still walk down the street without getting mugged — and the places where you can do so with the least fear of that happening are the places with the fewest police officers per capita.
What I’m getting at here is this: Anarchy works. If you look around you, the best parts of your life are probably the parts where it has the most room to work, and the worst parts of your life are the places where it’s been partially or completely displaced by the incompetence of the state.
The burden of proof as to what “works” isn’t on the anarchists. It’s on those who claim that the state is necessary — because every last crumb of available evidence says that it’s not only unnecessary, but an abject failure by any pragmatic standard.
All of what you say is true – however there are different standards for living day-to-day and getting elected.
Mostly the political process works. Palin going out to be queen social conservative, which until I find out differently seems to be code for nationwide Imperial Witch for the KKK, but even that exit is good since she seemed quite dysfunctional of late as governor – mostly because she felt that actually governing would damage her GOP street cred. Darwin works in politics too. (The same goes for Mark Sanford, who’s problem wasn’t the mistresss, but not telling his Lt. Gov he was going to see her).
California shows what happens when you have too much direct democracy – mostly anti-tax Republicans who don’t want to spend any money and think government failure somehow improves life. Dysfunctional government is not an improvement – abolition of government is.
New York is just plain weird because the sitting Governor is also the Lt. Governor. He either needs to resign that job and hold a special election or go to the Senate chamber and grab the gavel.
In all of the cases you cite, people refused to simply do the jobs they were being paid for. If they would do their jobs, they wouldn’t embarrass themselves or their states.
In at least 3 of these cases, the reason they aren’t doing their jobs well is BECAUSE they have adopted anti-government rhetoric. People would not be on Sanford’s ass so much if he didn’t make himself look stupid by pandering to the anti-government base of the GOP. His attempt to make a name for himself in certain circles has damaged his ability to do his job.
Anarchy is fine, as long as you clean up the mess government makes before you leave and replace it with a society that works well without government priviledge (including banning the limited liability corporation and collusion among employers to depress wages).
I’m always amused when people ask how we’ll prevent violence in anarchist society as if the State was doing a good job of it.
The cows do get milked, Tom, but the state actively prevents me from buying milk direct from dairy farmers in my state. They only allow milk to be sold by farmers to the processors. This appears to be a federal regulation, and they are very serious about it.
Now, I have more than enough room to store a cow in the back yard, but the city government actively prevents that. Hens they don’t seem to mind, but roosters really piss people off (waking them up at dawn, horrors). And to have milch goats I need to prove a medical condition or something. lol
Bypassing the edifices of the state can be a lot of effort. So, I continue to buy cream at the grocery store while working with the local “peace and justice” crowd to get the sales tax taken off food.
Anarchy is the best idea. We have worthless rulers now. None would be better.
We have no obligation to clean up the messes that government makes, Michael. They can go to hell in their own hand baskets. We don’t have any obligation to replace the screwed up society that fails to work now with one that works well, though I’m certainly up to the challenge.
The state is the biggest source of limited liability entities and immunity from prosecution. It takes state collusion and monopoly privileges granted by the state (e.g., baseball cartel) to really work the wage gimmick. Anyway, we don’t need a government weather man to tell us that the wind is blowing.
Jim, unless we offer a plan to clean up the mess, the people will continue to trust the state. The last time anarchy tried the more direct approach we traded in McKinley, who was mildly annoying, for Theodore Roosevelt – who is the architect of much of the modern state. Trying that again would play into the hands of the state. It is best to unwind it slowly and methodically.