The enigma of anarchy rests in its obstinacy in reconciling two paradoxical propositions: one, the inherent right and need of humankind to secure and realize the virtues of liberty, equality, and freedom (in an unadulterated manner), if not for all, then for oneself individually; two, the innate tendency of humankind to covet a greater degree of power, authority, and influence (economically, politically, or socially) than others (whether this tendency is a form of self-preservation or malevolence is, at the moment, unimportant; however, it suffices to categorize it as a manifestation of selfishness). Though let it be said that this latter predilection is both experiential and hereditary—nurture and nature. Lurking not solely amid the forest repressed within, but, likewise, cultivated adeptly as to transcend that beast that humanity once was. Truly, this is the apotheosis of the intellect: sophisticated barbarity.
To be sure, many of the classic anarchist thinkers have wrestled with this tension directly: William Godwin argued, in line with his emphasis on necessity (or universal determinism), that humanity is born ignorant to vice and virtue, and this tabula rasa is molded according to environment and schooling; likewise, Godwin believed that humans were progressive and, although not perfect, strove towards a state of continuous improvement; Pierre-Joseph Proudhon held a negative interpretation of human nature, believing the species to be inclined toward selfishness and oppression of others; however, he championed reason as the cure for this condition, claiming that there is an inverse relationship between rationality and barbarity; Max Stirner, the clear outlier of this bunch, and, consistent with his extreme individualism and egoism, observes no clear universal moral principle in nature, and, because of this, advocates for the pleasure of the individual ego as the highest good; Mikhail Bakunin echoes Godwin, believing that, although intellect and the ability to understand the ethical are instinctual (along with the faculty of rebellion); moral character, and, in particular, “innate moral characteristics,” are not innate, and are intricately connected to one’s societal heritage and personal tutelage; furthermore, Bakunin argues that humankind is the sole creature able to “modify…instinctive drives and regulate…needs,” with this power relating to one’s free will, autonomy, and self-determination; Peter Kropotkin was in favor of the idea that it is in the nature of humankind to be moral (rejecting the egocentric individualism of Stirner and Friedrich Nietzsche), arguing against Proudhon that, rather than epitomizing pugnaciousness, humanity typically fancies stillness and tranquility.1
To transcend the hypotheses of these paragons of anarchy, one must either attempt to abandon and outgrow the endeavored reconciliation of the antipodes of human nature to their necessary (if one is to be truly absolute and exhaustive) elimination, or experiment with an intentionally divergent synthesis of ideas (these ideas being the two monoliths of human nature). Both goals, as Nietzsche would affirm, go beyond the traditional standards of good and evil. In any case, there are three equally unsustainable and unsatisfying outcomes that embody these goals (for, indeed, as in any political scheme, it is impossible to successfully juggle the satiation of all with sustainability and order of the system as a whole), two for the former and one for the latter: apathy proper (of which can be further broken into categories of benevolence and malignance), conscious desolation, and noble falsehood. These three theories are also likely unrealizable in their scope and are akin to the anarchist vision in this vein.
This hopelessness is not necessarily a product of anarchy (as a political theory or philosophical concept) in itself; instead, at least in contemporary (and first-world) societies entrenched in some manifestation of capitalism (and, in particular, the United States), the resignation, despondency, and severance between individuals and ideologies (particularly those progressive and liberative in their disposition) is to blame for the incompatibility of truly revolutionary reform (for instance, anarchism, and other far-reaching emancipatory philosophies).
This resignation is partly due to the breadth of the machine. The craftsmanship of this penitentiary is spatiotemporal—labyrinthine in its layers. Mutiny, or, put attractively, a sincere and forceful (as in perceptible) change in the sociopolitical structure (or nature) of society, is too great an inconvenience for most to fervently rally behind. These idealistic aspirations fail to acknowledge (or comprehend) that the concern for societal oppression is a luxury—it is a form of opulence.
There is a seemingly endless assault of numbers that, for many, are prioritized (and, rightly so, or, at least, one cannot be condemned for doing so) over grand schemes of utopic egalitarianism. What is the cipher of the contemporary person? Is it one’s definable qualities: social security numbers, credit scores, illimitable codes of identification, often across numerous distinct domains (the driver’s license, passport, insurance—and this itself could be broken down further: homeowner, auto, life, health, dental—employee and student documentation, phone numbers, and email addresses), bank account number, and debit and credit cards. Or, is it the innumerable expenses that constitute one’s (mostly) fundamental needs, often, if not always, prioritized in terms of what they represent in value rather than the essence of the service or thing that is being provided: rent (or one’s mortgage), car and insurance payments (and, as stated earlier, this element is multifaceted), food and water, electricity and heat, deductibles and copays, tuition (and so on). Both of these lists, of course, are not, in any way, exhaustive.
For many, according primacy to revolution is a wager in which one sacrifices both their flaccid and shallow sense of individuality and self and the possibility of affording the necessities of modern living (and, indeed, these necessities are fundamental in their function, yet bestowed solely by the economic forces of exchange and capital). In truth, it is simply too inconvenient for many to willingly cultivate social, political, and economic transformation. Again, this attitude symbolizes the immense spatiotemporal influence of, for lack of a better label, the State on the contemporary person. Its intricate layers develop in four dimensions—it is outside the realm of perception. Indeed, oppression is a tesseract.
Despondency funnels from these circumstances. The incorporeal maze of capitalist value and exchange obfuscates (due to its concomitant invisibility and omnipresence) where one fits in its matrix. Due to its accretion, this apparatus fails to provide security and certainty, substituting counsel with hypoxia. Likewise, we are beyond the dialectic of class—but not as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels envisioned. Sagaciously stating in The Communist Manifesto that societal history is “the history of class struggles,”2 they failed (understandably) to vaticinate the dawn of an age in which the virtues of alienation, immiseration, and exploitation are displaced from the human subject and supplanted by vague, cryptic, and nebulous modes of production and distribution. To be sure, Antonio Gramsci in “The Intellectuals” seemed to elucidate an antiquated microcosm of such a system, noticing the “great mass of functions which are not all justified by the social necessities of production, though they are justified by the political necessities of the dominant…group.”3
This Aufhebung developed through increased modes of mechanization, although this definition does not do its structural ingenuity justice. Perhaps metricantilism or algocommerce would suffice to complete the tripartite taxonomy. Or, in short, the virtues of engagement, surveillance, telemetry, algorithms, optimization…all things synthetic and artificial, faux and ersatz. Technology (that crude expression) has fully encapsulated human alienation and labor. Now, that proprietorship that humanity once possessed—even through the tyranny and despotism of another—has atrophied. Oh, how humanity yearns for the bygone days of oppression and enslavement! For at least it was exploitation of man, by man. At least if the enslaved cannot lay claim to the toil of their labor…they can to the labor of their agony! Suffering is extinct, meaning has been confiscated; indeed, work is just…work, one is merely a drudge within it.
Severance, likewise, goes hand-in-hand with despondency. This trident of alienation subsumes oneself, others, and vocation. One is degaussed from a foundation that one was unable to ground initially. For, simply, one does not know nor adequately witness the social, political, and economic system that one is buried within. This estrangement unmoors oneself from one’s telos—one’s raison d’être.
Some of the classic anarchist thinkers similarly advocate (or romanticize) for a return to the past, in terms of a bygone mode of existence that is increasingly alien (to the point of disgust) to people today (not to mention the later development of anarcho-primitivism and the glamorization of a direct return to nature, the Earth—the archetypal jungle—itself). Although, this restoration of the past is often in a dialectical relationship with evolution to a better future, often, as Marshall puts it, “drawing inspiration from a happier way of life in the past and anticipating a new and better one in the future.”4
One cannot critique these thinkers harshly, though, for their ambitions—now a mere utopic myopia. Indeed, it would be far too much to ask of them to prophesize the advent of a culture inseminated by compounded xeroxes—squared simulacrums (to take a similar concept from Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism). For, one today does not sincerely want to live in a former era (no matter how much one condemns the present, or thirsts for the past, as stated earlier), in a bygone time devoid of modern simplification and convenience. The far simpler alternative is the adoption of an aesthetic: an epochal veneer. Is one to truly expect the pampered and privileged to abandon the modern splendors (now increasingly available to those of historically lower economic class) of contemporary living? To be sure, the metamodernist condition is a spectre pushed to exhaustion and athenia, to the sapping of sympathy, compassion, passion, sorrow, and of anxiety itself. A will-o’-the-wisp flickering toward its conclusion, its termination, toward the virtues of anemia and apathy. And from this we progress…
Apathy proper is less to be thought of as ennui or acedia than intentional (but spontaneous and organically volitional) detachment, renunciation, and estrangement from the, as Leo Tolstoy describes, “wicker basket” of “state organization,” one in which the “ends are so hidden” as to be impossible to find, and in which all “responsibility for…crimes committed” by humanity against itself is so thoroughly diffused and dispersed that the “most atrocious acts” will be perpetrated “without seeing…responsibility for them.”5
To be sure, Tolstoy in his Christian anarchist treatise, The Kingdom of God Is Within You, and Kropotkin in the anarcho-communist classic, The Conquest of Bread, both present intriguing analyses on the intertanglement of societal responsibility and its blurring of the ethical (although this is more emphasized by Tolstoy). Tolstoy is more thorough in his investigation, as it spans much of the latter half of the aforementioned book; Kropotkin, on the other hand, touches on the issue in a less overt manner, yet his chapter critiquing the collectivist wage system offers a profound and percipient interpretation, not unlike the conclusions of Tolstoy.
Kropotkin skillfully, through his depiction of workers in a coal mine, shows that this labor is not an individualistic task; there is not a singular person that one can attribute the majority of the work to, for, according to Kropotkin, each worker “contribute[d] to the extraction of coal in proportion to their strength…and their skill,” and, accordingly, it is impossible to “draw a distinction between the work of each,” as that would interpret the work done solely in terms of output and return—the individual and their unique contributions in the system would not be not taken fully into account; likewise, Kropotkin distinguishes not only between the workers directly in the mine, but also those who “built the railway leading to the mine,” those who “tilled and [sowed] the fields, extracted iron, cut wood…[,] built the machines that burn coal, slowly develop[ing] the mining industry altogether.”6 There can be seen, then, a certain interconnectedness of the entirety of the economy of sweat, one that was hardly realized nor appreciated in Kropotkin’s time…and in the current. Tolstoy, on the other hand, focuses more on State-sanctioned violence and how the culpability for such callousness evanesces as it permeates further into the heart of its citizenry. Specifically, he points out the weaving of society’s web and its invisible infusion into all aspects (and classes) of society, making each individual complicit in the State’s widely diffused malice; however, the meticulous division of cruelty makes each blind to their involvement and continuation of the “circle of violence.”7
The conscious adoption of apathy concurrently eliminates the conceptualizations of Kropotkin and Tolstoy, rendering both (State-sanctioned violence and the intentional ignorance of the complexities of labor) inefficacious and impotent. Apathy is the subversive stripping of the power of the State over oneself; if one fails to confer legitimacy to an institution’s exigent claim to authority, then the foundation of this sovereignty putrefies and, in time, buckles from its own necrosis. As a matter of course, the institutions of power, as scattered and ubiquitous as they are, will sense no noticeable putrescence when impeded by small factions, minute coteries, or nugatory parties—no matter how perfervid and ardent their cause appears. A comprehensive and large-scale efflux of apathy is needed to, in the best-case scenario, bring the machine to a halt. In the worst-case scenario, this hegemonic ethos of apathy would lead to a temporary lull, hitch, or hiccup in the system, an abeyance that, with repetition, creates a feedback loop—a sentinel of plodding amplification. To be sure, is apathy not hitherto the spirit of the time, the zeitgeist of the age as things stand? What is needed is not a shift in attitude, but an aqueduct—a conduit—of this pneuma into more productive means. Is this the destiny of the Übermensch resuscitated…awakened for the present age? Perhaps, though, there is a rebrand (of sorts) needed for the infamous Übermensch; for who, in the psyche of contemporary humanity, truly wants to be super? No, rather, this is the epoch of the Gleichgültigen—the indifferent, the apathetic…homo!
The fork in the road of apathy leads to either benevolence or malignance (although one can very well stay in the lane of apathy proper). For the latter, one’s apathy extends to the realm of carelessness and negligence, and, rather than being an exercise in detachment (in the form of civil disobedience), it becomes a practice of boredom and sanguinary phlegm. Thrasymachus’ claim that “justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger”8 is confirmed true if one replaces stronger with the one who is the most unfeeling, frigid, and averse. The malignant society is one enveloped with inferno…blazing with equanimity and insouciance. On the other hand, the essence of benevolent apathy is invoked best in the law of equal liberty. This would likely be the quintessential society if humanity could live up to its tenets. In particular, the rule to extend one’s freedom and liberty only as far as not to intrude on the augmented freedom and liberty of others.
Conscious desolation, the second option in the nullification of the bilateral nature of humanity, is fairly straightforward. Philosophically speaking, it calls on the ideas of antinatalism, promoting the extermination of humanity through the cessation of reproduction. Indeed, this is, in all probability, the only scenario in which these differences could be thoroughly (and ultimately) reconciled.
Noble falsehood aims for a mélange of the human condition through the institution of anarchy by means of an invisible and impalpable State. This touches, of course, on the problem of illusion and reality. For, in this hypothetical society, the State would merely work to legitimize, maintain, and optimize the anarchist framework of society. From the perspective of the citizenry, there is no State (as it is imperceptible); therefore, in their mind, they are living in an anarchist society, as the mirage shown to them resembles it identically. Of course, this would only work if those in the State were superlatively altruistic, compassionate, and sympathetic, and, as can be seen throughout the history of humankind, that is a delusory assumption. Needless to say, this noble falsehood is taken from Plato’s Republic. However, while Plato’s deception is used primarily to reinforce hierarchy (as can be seen by sorting society into three distinct classes: the gold class of rulers, the silver class of auxiliaries, and the bronze class of artisans)9, the lie in the anarchist society would be used to dismantle rank.
Apathy proper, conscious desolation, and noble falsehood are possibly best useful as theoretical exercises on the potential limitations and blindspots of anarchist thought and the pervasiveness of institutional and State power (however, apathy proper, to this writer, has some veracity, although this is a topic for another time…). Perhaps, the prime method of change (whether this be toward the vision of an anarchist society or not) for the lower strata of civilization is to utilize what has been effective in the history of humankind thus far: oppression and aggression, the wielding of power and force, and the hoarding and accumulation of wealth.
On this note, and to finalize, Paulo Freire in his brilliant Pedagogy of the Oppressed argues that lest a perennial cycle of tyranny occur, the “oppressed must not…become in turn oppressors of the oppressors, but rather restorers of the humanity of both.”10 This, to be sure, would be accurate if one accepts his conjecture that “to admit of dehumanization as an historical vocation would lead either to cynicism or total despair.”11 However, to deny the objective and enduring gravitational pull toward dehumanization is a perpetuation of the position of the oppressed in its relationship with their oppressors. Concession of this truth is liberty and license for the subservient class. Indeed, Freire, like many others, presents an idealized diegesis in which “the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed…[is] to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well.”12 This take is admirable, and, to be sure, the ethically purest and cleanest option morally. In reality, though, this pedagogy strands the oppressed in a sempiternal recurrence of subjugation. If one is to accept the permanence and stability of this binary system (and where can this dialectic not be observed), then the proper response would be the antithesis of what Freire prescribes. To be more clear, the oppressed, if they seek true liberation from their destitution, must transpose fortunes with their adversaries. Espousing oblique praxis preserves the very hierarchy it vilifies, or, at the very least, morphs the struggle for liberation into an asymptotic pursuit—an infinite redshift. To be sure, ferity is not to be sanctioned by the oppressed group; however, one cannot blame nor condemn such a radical recourse. Tex talionis? Rather, ethical reciprocity. Although Freire does not condone this proposal, he seems to understand the distinctive characteristics of the oppressor caste:
“For the oppressors, ‘human beings’ refers only to themselves; other people are ‘things.’” For the oppressors, there exists only one right: their right to live in peace, over against the right, not always even recognized, but simply conceded, of the oppressed to survival. Moreover, they make this concession only because the existence of the oppressed is necessary to their own existence…For them, to be is to have and to be the class of the ‘haves.’”13
Likewise, Leonardo Boff and Clodovis Boff tell of a harrowing account experienced in the slums of Brazil:
“One day, in the arid region of northeastern Brazil, one of the most famine-stricken parts of the world, I (Clodovis) met a bishop going into his house; he was shaking. “Bishop, what’s the matter?” I asked. He replied that he had just seen a terrible sight: in front of the cathedral was a woman with three small children and a baby clinging to her neck. He saw that they were fainting from hunger. The baby seemed to be dead. He said: “Give the baby some milk, woman!” “I can’t, my lord,” she answered. The bishop went on insisting that she should, and she that she could not. Finally, because of his insistence, she opened her blouse. Her breast was bleeding; the baby sucked violently at it. And sucked blood. The mother who had given it life was feeding it, like the pelican, with her own blood, her own life.”14
And, given these circumstances, the oppressed are called to be forbearing? Expected to don morality in the fight for their lives? Accoutre virtue in a battle fought with vice? In this absurd game, one side not only knows the rules, but is the maker of them itself. One side has the leg up—has been given a head start. The other side not only lacks a full and complete understanding of the rules, but is forced to play handicapped—with one hand tied. This is the accepted notion of justice in human society. True justice is the leveling of these standards (the flattening of advantages), of giving both sides an equal and fair chance to fight for their liberty. Perhaps, instead of taking the high road of patience and nonviolent direct action, one should, as is commonly said, fight fire with fire. To practice peace is to play the game that the State desperately wants one to play. Only when the power of the State is severely threatened by non-belligerence does reform occur, and, when (or, more likely, if) it does, it is the minimum of change possible to quell the salvo of public opinion and fusillade of revolution. The goal for the State is not the well-being of its people. Rather, it is the adequate balance of power to ambivalence that is of the utmost concern (and there is no doubt that this balance is in word alone).
The dialectic of human nature stated prior cannot be reconciled; the latter, barbaric half of humanity will, as has been the case thus far, always triumph over the former, couthy, acquiescent, and compassionate half. Given this fact, the oppressed class, in their meekness and patience, will continue to wallow in their oppression and exploitation until an inversion of fortunes is willed.
To conclude, a metaphor of Niccolò Machiavelli’s comes to mind:
“I judge this indeed, that it is better to be impetuous than cautious, because fortune is a woman; and it is necessary, if one wants to hold her down, to beat her and strike her down. And one sees that she lets herself be won more by the impetuous than by those who proceed coldly. And so always…she is the friend of the young, because they are less cautious, more ferocious, and command her with more audacity.”15
Whether this speculative reversal of fortunes ends with the blossoming of a purely anarchist society or the dictatorship of the oppressed, one cannot inculpate nor condemn the persecuted for either remedy. The problem is not in authorization, but accountability. As stated earlier, the oppressors practice violence with impunity, and, because of this, one is oft appalled and astounded by the potential countermanding of this order. How dare these savages, these primitive and crude men, employ the diurnal oppression on those who permit and exacerbate the condition itself! Let them suffer poverty, famine, inanition, utter destitution and insolvency…let them play the beggar, the vagabond, the prostitute…the mendicant, pauper, scrounger, vagrant, etheromanic, morphinist, thief, murderer…yes, let them be criminals, the rabble, the scum of society! Indeed, let them be anything, as long as they do it amongst themselves…as long as they lack agency, a common cause. Cause! What cause? That of revolution, rebellion, revolt, insurgency, mutiny, insurrection, sedition…reformation and transformation, upheaval and provocation, resistance and defiance…conflagration, resistance, opposition, dissidence, subversion, sabotage, refusal, noncompliance, insubordination, catastasis, obstruction, emancipation, agitation…provocation and polemic, heresy and apostasy, iconoclasm and profanation…cataclysm, rapture…consummation…apocalypse, armageddon! What a cause indeed! And what a cause of that pulchritudinous dream, the zenith of all liberty, freedom, and equality. Yes, indeed, that wonderfully divine cause…of anarchy!
Endnotes
- Peter Marshall, Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (Oakland: PM Press, 2010), 201-02, 226, 249, 279, 290-91, 320-22. For William Godwin, see 201-02, for Max Stirner, see 226, for Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, see 249, for Mikhail Bakunin, see 279 and 290-91, for Peter Kropotkin, see 320-22.
- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, trans. Samuel Moore (London: Penguin Books, 2002), 219.
- Antonio Gramsci, “The Intellectuals,” in Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 13.
- Marshall, Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism, 15.
- Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: Cassell Publishing Company, 2006), 140.
- Peter Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread (London: Penguin Classics, 2015), 163-64.
- Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You, 84-5.
- Plato, Republic 338c.
- Plato, Republic 415a-b.
- Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, trans. Myra Bergman Ramos (Bloomsbury, 2014), 44.
- Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 44.
- Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 44.
- Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 57-58.
- Leonardo Boff and Clodovis Boff, Introducing Liberation Theology (New York: Orbis Books, 1989), 1-2.
- Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 101.
Bibliography
Boff, Leonardo, and Clodovis Boff. Introducing Liberation Theology. New York: Orbis Books, 1989).
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos. New York: Bloomsbury, 2014.
Gramsci, Antonio. “The Intellectuals.” In Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Edited by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York: International Publishers, 1971.
Kropotkin, Peter. The Conquest of Bread. London: Penguin Classics, 2015.
Marshall, Peter. Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. Oakland: PM Press, 2010.
Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. Translated by Samuel Moore. London: Penguin Books, 2002.
Niccolò Machiavelli. The Prince. Translated by Harvey C. Mansfield. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.
Plato. Plato: Complete Works. Edited by John M. Cooper. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997.
Tolstoy, Leo. The Kingdom of God Is Within You. Translated by Constance Garnett. New York: Cassell Publishing Company, 2006.