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In this booklet, left-libertarian Darian Worden explores the relationship between the global economic and political crisis, and the future direction of global power. The three great tendencies for the role of politics in the new world will be a collapse back into reactionary nationalism, plutocracy and global corporate power, or the rise and liberation of a new model for social power — not concentrated, but distributed social power on a global scale.

“While today’s states are very powerful, cracks in their power can open as they adapt to a changing world. […] Possible courses for the changing role of the state in an era of globalization can be represented by three general tendencies: reactionary nationalism, global corporate rule, or global distributed power.

“Reactionary nationalism involves the cultivation of local or national chauvinism, the closing of borders to people, products, and capital, and the suspicion of those perceived as others oroutsiders. Global corporate rule means the rule of political and economic elites, where political power typically is applied so that risk and cost are socialized while profits are privatized as much as possible.

“Global distributed power means that powers held by political and economic elites become more widely dispersed among the population, with no region or body dominating others. It means trade between strong communities. It means that more people are able to exercise more decision-making power over their own lives. […] Of course, most of today’s powerful probably do not want to let go of their power, and they have many resources and techniques to steer events and discourse their way. The solution is to dismantle power structures and create alternative social groupings to disperse power horizontally. […]”

Darian Worden is a left-libertarian writer and activist living and working in New Jersey. He is a News Analyst for the Center for a Stateless Society, a frequent contributor to ALLiance Journal and a host of the internet radio show Thinking Liberty.

“…the worst is yet to come. What begins with a military escalation of France’s own, today, will eventually end with the region in the hands of private military businesses and warlords, following the US model. Decomposition is characterized by fragile alliances, and if the Tuareg, who were recently allies of AQMI, offer their help to the French army, tomorrow, some of them might break away into local feifdoms that happen to be tempting to those occupying them.”

Mientras que un mercado genuinamente libre crea el tipo de competencia por consumidores que sirve a la sociedad en general, asegurando la calidad y mitigando la amenaza de la monopolización, el estado crea un proceso competitivo para controlar los centros de poder coercitivo. En un ambiente social y económico definido por los caprichos de la élite, la tentación por hacerse de las palancas que controlan el aparato de poder siempre estará presente.

Son los corruptos e inescrupulosos de la sociedad los que aspiran a usar la fuerza para su propio bien en lugar de acercarse a sus vecinos a través del libre mercado, osea, a través del intercambio y la cooperación. Según NPR News, la reciente muerte de Ahmed Wali Karzai, hermano del presidente afgano Hamid Karzai, “deja un vacío de poder en el sur del país”, o mejor dicho, una oportunidad para que un nuevo matón suplante al fallecido.

Ahmed Wali Karzai ha sido acusado de muchas cosas, entre ellas el ser un agente de la CIA y una figura central en el narcotráfico afgano, aunque él mismo siempre dijo que era víctima de “los vicios más bajos de la política”. Durante años se ha debatido si Karzai era un zar de la corrupción en Afganistán o simplemente un participante más en un juego de sobornos políticos parecido al que predomina en los Estados Unidos.

Para aquellos entre nosotros que abogamos por una sociedad basada en asociaciones y acuerdos voluntarios, la diferencia entre ambos sistemas es difícil de definir. Debido a que la política es un proceso que utiliza sistemáticamente la fuerza para tomar de los muchos y enriquecer a los pocos, ésta es necesariamente corrupta, incluso cuando toda ella sea legalmente legítima.

Cuando los aparentemente “respetables” comentaristas de noticias de los medios tradicionales hablan sobre el vacío que deja Karzai, alabándolo por haber sido alguien que “trajo un grado de estabilidad” a la región, revelan sus descuidadas premisas sobre el estado. Para los miembros de la clase dedicada a lo que ellos llaman “discurso razonable”, el poder político es como mínimo necesario, y nunca es cuestionado en sí mismo.

Por lo tanto, cuando alguien como Karzai muere, sin importar que tan detestable pueda parecer, los voceros de la clase gobernante se alinean para asegurarse de que la discusión es sobre quién debe tomar su lugar para llenar el temido “vacío de poder”. El hecho de que el lugar en sí mismo, la posición de poder político, sea la causa fundamental de los problemas sociales, no es siquiera considerado.

Son éstas posiciones de poder arbitrario las que el anarquismo de mercado busca eliminar, no a través de la violencia, no para fomentar el caos, sino para permitir que la sociedad se gobierne a sí misma a través del mutuo respeto individual. Tal como lo expresó el filósofo Roderick Long, “si por ‘política’ se entiende la opresión legalizada practicada por los gobernos, entonces los libertarios ciertamente estamos peleando por la abolición de la política”.

Gente poderosa como Karzai no son necesarios en lo absoluto para amortiguar los conflictos o mediar las diferencias entre grupos. En una sociedad en la que no existiese el estado para acumular riqueza para unos cuantos, bloqueando la genuina competencia, los conflictos podrían resolverse a través de un gran número de métodos pacíficos.

El proceso político parece ser necesario hoy en día solo porque crea una guerra dentro de la sociedad en la que distintas facciones comerciales y grupos de interés regatean por una porción mayor del botín obtenido por medio del saqueo. Si algo demuestra la familia Karzai no es que la ambiguedad moral sea una consecuencia ineludible de hacer funcionar a la sociedad de manera estable.

Todo lo contrario: lo que demuestra es que el estado es inherente y fundamentalmente un tipo de institución que se basa en relaciones que todos nosotros consideraríamos como criminales en nuestas vidas cotidianas. No existe un “vacío de poder” que tenga que ser llenado por el poder político. El poder social, del tipo que emerge de las interacciones e intercambios pacíficos entre las personas, es más que suficiente para crear orden social.

Artículo original escrito por David S. D’Amato el 13 de julio de 2011.

Traducido del inglés por Alan Furth.

It is society’s corrupt and unscrupulous who aspire to use force for their gain rather than approaching their neighbors through the means of the free market — trade and cooperation. The recent death of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, according to NPR News, “leaves a power vacuum in the country’s south,” an opening for a new thug to try to take his place.

Ahmed Wali Karzai has been variously accused of everything from being a CIA agent to a central figure in Afghan narco-trafficking, though Karzai repeatedly cast himself as “a victim of vicious politics.” Debate has ensued for years as to whether Karzai was indeed a fulcrum of corruption in the country or merely a participant in a payola game of “American-style pork barrel politics.”

For those of us who advocate a society based on voluntary agreements and associations, the difference is at least hard to make out and likely completely meaningless. Insofar as politics is a process of employing systematic force to take from the many in order to enrich the few, it is necessarily corrupt even when it’s all legally legitimate.

When the apparently “respectable” talking heads of the mainstream talk about the “gap” left by Karzai, praising him as someone who “brought a degree of stability” to the region, they reveal their hasty assumptions about the state. To members of the class dedicated to what they might call “reasonable discourse,” political power is always at least necessary and is never itself questioned.

Upon the deaths of people like Karzai, then, no matter how venal they were, the mouthpieces of the ruling class line up to ensure that the discussion is about who ought to take their places, to fill the dreaded “power vacuum.” That it is indeed that place — that position of political power — that brings about societal problems in the first instance is not considered.

It is these positions of arbitrary power that market anarchists seek to eliminate, not through violence and not to foment chaos, but to allow society to govern itself through mutual respect between individuals. As philosopher Roderick Long wrote, “if by ‘politics’ is meant the legalized oppression practiced by governments, then certainly libertarians are fighting for the abolition of politics.”

Powerful people like Karzai are not at all essential for smoothing out conflicts or mediating differences between groups. In a society with no state to engross wealth for the well-connected, precluding true competition, conflicts are readily resolvable through any number of peaceful methods.

The political process seems necessary today only because it creates a war within society, one in which various commercial factions and interest groups vie for a larger share of the plunder. If the Karzai family demonstrates anything at all it is not that moral ambiguity is an unavoidable part of making society at large function stably, but rather that the state is inherently and fundamentally a kind of institution that relies on relationships all of us would regard as criminal misconduct in our own lives.

There is no such thing as a “power vacuum” that must be filled by political power. Social power, the kind made up of peaceful interactions and exchanges, is more than sufficient to create social order.

Translations for this article:

• Spanish, El Mito del Vacío de Poder.

Anarchy would mean that power is dispersed among individuals who would rather safeguard each others’ freedom than rule over each other. And if power is firmly in the hands of organized people then there is no power vacuum.

In politics, the word power generally signifies the ability of an individual or group of individuals to influence the decisions of others. Authority is an attempt to legitimate the exercise of power to compel obedience or allegiance to the higher ranks. Anarchists reject authority in favor of individual autonomy. Anarchy means that individuals have ultimate decision-making power over their own lives, and the only social arrangements recognized as legitimate are those that are based on consensual cooperation.

When authority amasses and exercises political power against people, it creates conflict. Hence the axiom that “anarchy is order, whereas government is civil war.”

The very concept of having no rulers often encounters fears of a power vacuum — an unsustainable, dangerous situation that can only end in the re-establishment of rulers. But the rejection of authority does not mean that power is up for grabs — it means that power is widely distributed, making it harder for tyrants to usurp.

The practice of anarchism fills society with empowered individuals, diffusing power throughout society so that no authority can take it over. Interactions of free individuals — the everyday pursuit of needs and desires combined with the recognition that mutual respect for freedom is the best way to realize needs and desires — build counter-power. Organizations of social cooperation established for the mutual benefit of participants, not for the power of some at the expense of others, help keep power dispersed in a fashion that safeguards individual liberty. Institutions of authority can be subverted or seized for the purpose of dispersing power.

Certainly, anarchy requires a number of people to accept the idea, but this true of any state of affairs that does not rest on brute force alone. A state can only exist so long as it can muster a significant level of allegiance. Every individual has the decision of whether to obey the decrees of those trying to amass power, or to follow the logic of appeals to disperse power. The creation of dispersed power establishes a basis from which authority can be effectively challenged.

When individuals possess power over their own lives, it means they have no personal power vacuum that tyrants could exploit. Power held by ordinary individuals gives them a greater stake in a functioning society as well as a more effective means of preventing social catastrophe.

The rejection of authority, as advocated by anarchists, does not mean that a nightmare scenario associated with the phrase “power vacuum” is likely. It means the power that authority monopolizes will be dispersed among the people.