Anarchy 101

Between rowdy G-8 protestors in Germany and the Basque separatist group ETA announcing an end to their already tenuous cease-fire in Spain, the hard eye of public scrutiny has been turned once more to the concept of anarchy. \nOur pop-culture understanding of anarchy has been skewed by misguided entities, such as those who use the philosophy for their own selfish means and thus themselves become the oppressors anarchists claim to despise. ETA still hopes to attain an independent Basque state, while the G-8 protesters resent the perpetuation by corporate governments of global economic disparity. \nBoth are viable anarchist causes, driven ultimately by the desire to burn the outdated and unfair establishment. However, the ETA’s killing of innocents and the G-8 protesters’ stupid altercations with local law enforcement doom their hopes of stable anarchic states anywhere in the world.\nAnarchy, strictly speaking, is not the embrace of chaos or the employment of terror to attain political power. It is instead a commitment to a fluid balance of power that is not tied to antiquated political structures but flows with the needs of the whole. As societies grow, they invent means of facilitating social goals, but these means can quickly become conduits for oppression. The key to building a society in which all sectors of the population are cared for is not an inflexible political structure, but instead a hyper-localized system of self-government, where the workers, who are the economic drivers, toil together to meet each other’s needs. By eliminating the power struggles of post-imperial political organization, the interlocking gears of society are lubricated and become far more efficient.\nIt is a grave injustice to anarchy that our modern conception of it has become so inexorably tied to violence. Anarchy does not mean the suppression of anyone’s freedom to obtain individual goals of power, for that is merely transference of same age-old oppression from one power-monger to a new one. \nAnarchy is simply being open to the fact that antiquated political structures do not ensure equality. One must be willing to adjust the political structures to best serve the social needs at hand, not the needs of citizens in previous eras.\nSome pass off such a hope of utopianism as naively idealistic, but without some level of idealism – a modicum of faith in the ability of humanity to work together – there will never be hope for a society without oppression, regardless of the political hierarchy (or lack thereof). Idealistic though it may be, only in a state of absolute freedom from political constraints can the absolute goals of egalitarianism and human dignity be obtained as a society. \nWe cannot rely on the self-serving bourgeoisie to do the work for us, nor can we resort to terror if we expect to obtain true political freedom. Only in peaceful cooperation and solidarity among the oppressed majority can the necessary revolution in social thought occur that would bring about a renaissance of freedom from fear and exploitation.