Introducing Anarchy
This article is the first chapter from the book, The Essence of Anarchy, available here.
‘Introduce a little anarchy, upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos.’
The Joker
Hello and welcome to this book exploring the philosophy of anarchism; and, as the title suggests, boiling it down to its very essence. Does it, as the Joker claims, imply chaos and disorder? Or, does it in fact lead to a far greater state of societal harmony than we currently experience? These are the questions we’ll be getting into.
Anarchism is a concept which, at the time of writing, I've been actively exploring for the past ten years. I experienced about a three year learning—or maybe better to say unlearning—curve, before I felt comfortable asserting it as: ‘my political position’—ironic as that may sound. Doing so has led me into all sorts of trouble whenever political discussion has arisen. If you say you're—Left or Right, Labour or Conservative, Democrat or Republican—people of the opposite persuasion might roll their eyes, but it's not likely they’ll look at you as if you have two heads. They’ll certainly have encountered your type before. That expression of incredulity will become normal however, should you start to hint that you might be an anarchist, and talk about such things as doing away with the nation state altogether.
As long as you’re prepared for elongated dinner table discussion, people’s suspicion need be no bad thing. Everything and the kitchen-sink will be thrown at you as you progress from one ineffectual way of explaining yourself to another. When sufficient years have passed, you might feel bold enough to write down the very best of your ineffectual explanations and publish them in a book.
In this book I won't be focusing on the history and breadth of anarchist thought. When I do mention historical figures, it will just be to add a bit of colour and not as an essential part of any explanation. I will simply be offering the most concise and meaningful ways I have found to express what anarchism is—and why that’s so important.
I won't be basing my arguments on empirical data, quoting potentially spurious statistics you'll have to go off and verify. Rather, I'll be employing philosophical thought experiments that you can contemplate for yourself. I’ll use statistics only to complement these. I will present my own conclusions and build upon them, but I fully anticipate that you may not agree. I’m happy with this. I’d much prefer you get to the end agreeing with nothing I’ve written, but having deeply engaged with the questions I’m raising, rather than just uncritically absorbing my point of view.
There are a lot of question marks in this book (my last count was one hundred and thirty three). When you encounter them I would encourage you to pause and think the question through for yourself. If you really want to gain maximum benefit, I would even recommend taking the time to write your answers down.
The only logical place to start then is by asking: what does the word anarchy actually mean? What images does it conjure up in your mind?
If you're like most people—including the Joker—They'll be ones of chaos and disorder, lawlessness and destruction. That’s certainly the common perception, but such things have really nothing to do with what the word actually means.
Anarchy comes from two Greek words: an, meaning without, and archos, meaning rulers. It is then simply to be without rulers. This is quite different to how it's commonly understood, which would be more like: to be with chaos.
Indeed, the term anarchy first appears in the English language to imply a state of chaos, with the Royalist forces of King Charles describing as anarchists those Parliamentarians who sought to depose the monarchy. Now it may well be that the absence of rulers will inevitably lead to chaos, but we certainly wouldn’t want to accept this on the word of monarchs seeking to hold onto their crowns and heads.
Before we get to such an examination however, we must first decide what constitutes a ruler and what kind of people fall into this category. We may very well not come up with the same answer. Nevertheless, I’m hopeful there is at least a starting place on common ground where we can meet.
We’d probably agree that monarchs (in the historical sense) and dictators constitute rulers. We might also add slavers to the list. These categories of people claim the right to control the lives of others. With other categories it may not be so obvious. What about politicians, up to including presidents and prime ministers? Does the nature of the countries they run make any difference? What about bosses and business owners? Does it make a difference whether they're running a small business, making a humble income, or whether they are the CEO of a major corporation, earning a vast salary compared to their employees? We may also think there are good and bad rulers and we should really want to be without bad rulers, as opposed to having no rulers whatsoever.
One thing we can perhaps state, is that when we are speaking about rulers, we are really describing the nature of a relationship between ruler and ruled. With that in mind, I will attempt to offer up a basic definition which hopefully we can build upon. See how you feel about it:
Whether someone is a ruler or not is determined by whether the relationship in question is based on consent or coercion.
How does that sit with you?
If a relationship is consensual, it is, by its very nature, anarchic. No person can be considered the ruler of the other. If, on the other hand, a relationship is coerced—if one person is forced to be a part of it against their will—then it is not anarchic. Rather it is archic or with rulers.
If this premise is true it should be true at any scale. The principle would hold whether we are talking about an individual forced into a marriage of two, a slave on a plantation of hundreds, or a person living in a dictatorship of millions. The relationships here are coerced, not consensual, and therefore not anarchic.
By contrast, when a person chooses their partner, employment and governance of their own free will—these relationships are anarchic.
Now we must acknowledge it might not always be straightforward to determine what exactly constitutes consent. Economic relationships for example, could pose a problem. If a person is dying of thirst they may sign their life away for a glass of water, but can they really be said to have freely given consent? This is an extreme example, but I'm sure it's not hard for you to think of others where you may feel exploitation is taking place. Additional areas might include the application of psychological pressure. For example, can a person raised inside a cult freely consent to their continued involvement as an adult? Tricky!
I’d suggest that to stand any chance of engaging with such complex questions we should lay solid foundations first. There are many shades of grey, but it seems to me there is also black and white. If we can establish a way of thinking about the clear-cut cases, we will be in a better place to take on the challenging ones.
And so that concludes this introductory chapter. All I’ve wanted to convey here is the most basic sense of anarchism as concerning questions of consent and coercion. Whilst that may not seem like much, it is my experience that the unwillingness to spend time laying proper foundations, is what leads to the construction of shaky political theories. Taking time to fully contemplate the basics will pay dividends as we go.
Before proceeding to the next chapter I would encourage you to really think over the definition of anarchy I’ve offered, and what the difference between consenting and coerced relationships means to you. We’ll then move on to laying another foundational slab, by looking at the concept of property.
This article is the first chapter from the book, The Essence of Anarchy, available here.