One thing I’ve noticed recently is a number of comments by a man known as Professor Coldheart who always seems to have something interesting to say. IOZ recently laid down a little introduction to anarchism and in the ensuing comments the good professor gives his own definition that wouldn’t be entirely out of place as a response to the Ouroboros state.

Similarly, anarchism is the belief that there is no State. By “State,” I mean “some independent body of law that limits the unjust use of power.” There is no such animal. I can’t sum up my entire argument in a blawg’s comment box, but, in brief: (A) what we call the State is not a singular entity but a network of agencies with different agendas; (B) the State is no more immune to human folly than the humans it governs; (C) the State is a concentration of power, not a bulwark against it.

My ultimate point: we are already living in anarchy. We are already living in the world that you predict anarchy would turn into – a world where the biggest gang has grabbed all the guns and cowed everyone they can’t shoot. That’s the state of affairs right now. Anarchism, as a philosophy, simply exposes that. Anarchism states that the idea of Power Subservient to Justice – a/k/a, a benevolent State – is a myth.

From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country — not just the existence of poverty amidst wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black people, but something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society — cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian.

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people for a purpose which is unattainable.

Why should we accept that the “talent” of someone who writes jingles for an advertising agency advertising dog food and gets $100,000 a year is superior to the talent of an auto mechanic who makes $40,000 a year? Who is to say that Bill Gates works harder than the dishwasher in the restaurant he frequents, or that the CEO of a hospital who makes $400,000 a year works harder than the nurse or the orderly in that hospital who makes $30,000 a year? The president of Boston University makes $300,000 a year. Does he work harder than the man who cleans the offices of the university? Talent and hard work are qualitative factors which cannot be measured quantitatively.

If those in charge of our society — politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television — can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.

Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens.

Scholars, who pride themselves on speaking their minds, often engage in a form of self-censorship which is called “realism.” To be “realistic” in dealing with a problem is to work only among the alternatives which the most powerful in society put forth. It is as if we are all confined to a, b, c, or d in the multiple choice test, when we know there is another possible answer. American society, although it has more freedom of expression than most societies in the world, thus sets limits beyond which respectable people are not supposed to think or speak.

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory

– Howard Zinn

Poor and free rather than rich and enslaved. Of course, men want to be both rich and free, and this is what leads them at times to be poor and enslaved.

– Albert Camus

Juan Cole of Informed Comment not so recently wrote a piece on the worst things about the Bush decade and in the process described what he sees as the rise of american oligarchs. The picture he paints is one I’m rather familiar with because it’s the same picture that I’ve seen painted by anarchists and the more sensible libertarians. It’s a picture of politics as the, at best, bloodless sport of the elite. A picture of government as a haven for scoundrels and tyrants. A picture that envisions multinational C.E.O.s and Senators as little different from the medieval nobility. While I’m generally quite the eternal optimist and don’t take well to the kind of cynicism that one might associate with such a dim view I can’t help but see the truth of it again and again in political conflict.

Here are Juan Cole’s exact words:

I declare it the decade of the American oligarchs. Just as the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union allowed the emergence of a class of lawless ‘Oligarchs’ in Russia, so Neoliberal tax policies and deregulation produced American equivalents. We have always had robber barons in American politics, but the Neoliberal moment created a new social class. At about 1.3 million adults, it is not too large to have some cohesive interests, and its corporations, lobbyists, and other institutions allow it to intervene systematically in politics. It owns 45 percent of the privately held wealth and is heading toward 50, i.e. toward a Banana Republic. Thus, we have a gutted fairness doctrine and the end of anti-trust concerns in ownership of mass media, allowing a multi-billionaire like Rupert Murdoch to buy up major media properties and to establish a cable television channel which is nothing but oligarch propaganda. They established ‘think tanks’ like the American Enterprise Institute, which hires only staff that are useful agents of the interests of the very wealthy, and which produce studies denying global climate change or lying about the situation in Iraq. Bush-Cheney were not simply purveyors of wrong-headed ideas. They were the agents of the one percent, and their policies make perfect sense if seen as attempts to advance the interests of this narrow class of persons. It is the class that owns our mass media, that pays for the political campaigns of ‘our’ (their) representatives, that gives us the Bushes and Cheneys and Palins because they are useful to them, and that blocks progressive reform and legislation with the vast war chest funneled to them by deep tax cuts that allow them to use essential public resources, infrastructure and facilities gratis while making the middle class pay for them.

It is the duty of righteous men to make war on all undeserved privilege, but one must not forget that this is a war without end.
– Primo Levi

The existing order is corrupt and ineffective. I’m not talking about the Obama administration or even our relatively conservative first-world social democracy. I mean the whole kit and caboodle. Corporate capitalism, an over-extended and stratified federal government, a bloated welfare state, nannies and storm troopers, and an entrenched oligarchy of CEOs and professional politicians. So what’s left? Anarchism? I’ve read from the quintessential thinkers and a share of anarchist blogs. There’s definitely value to be found there. But even given that I have reservations. Aside from the  logistics of it all my main issue is the potential inevitability of the state.

This is an old issue as far as anarchists are concerned, a tired canard they are sick of answering. Anarcho-capitalists answer back that, like some perpetual motion device, once a genuine free market is started up it will provide just the right level of competition so that no one can gain enough leverage to start bossing others around. Social anarchists might reply that once people are enlightened to the superiority of anarchism they will be resistant to allowing the state to reform. Right-Libertarian anarchists have, on occasion, said something similar but throwing in the phrase natural law and natural rights as they are wont to do. Without being ungenerous to those whom I respect that hold these positions I have to say that these strike me as “just so” stories that rely on incredulous odds.

The scant examples of working anarchist societies tell us little about the potential future of any given model. Especially in the post-modern virtual age the first world enjoys. If existing capitalist systems are any indication of the workings of anarcho-capitalism then it seem to me that the emergence of a state would simply a matter of time. I was born and raised in rural Kentucky where dozens of counties are powered by a single generating source that is of course controlled by a single company. If you give this company carte blanche they will gouge you for everything they can get right up to the point of losing a few customers. Geographic monopolies are common in areas like this and even more more remote areas of the midwest and Alaska.

So what happens when there is no mechanism for curtailing these geographic monopolies. What happens when instead of sewer or power it’s law enforcement. What is to stop a geographic monopoly mercenary police force (or wealthy land baron) from becoming a de facto dictator? If they don’t allow you to move out and if they control resources so that you can’t hire another mercenary force to come in and restore order (perhaps trading one boss for another)? Are you to hope to find seven honorable samurai to defend your village or wait for the man with no name? Will there be an anarchist league that goes about toppling these rural dictators? Who then will watch the watchers?

Let’s forget about geographic monopolies for a second and ask ourselves if people are ready and willing to manipulate the market and the government to ensure financial success now would we honestly expect that behavior to simply disappear now that the state no longer exists? Or to put it another way, if fat cats are deprived of the mechanism of government by which to profit and exploit isn’t it more likely that they will look to new mechanisms rather than abandon their sinful ways? Like the classic cattle baron damning the river to force out his down stream competitors. If businesses are answerable to no one but themselves then there is nothing stopping a particularly successful business from manipulating the market through violence, deceit, or through dictatorial control over their employees. Wouldn’t an anarcho-capitalist society have the very real potential to become a William Gibson-esque distopia where corporate espionage is waged with 007 lethality? Even giving that to be a gross oversimplification, the market has winners and losers and a sufficiently monied winner could buy out entire towns, crush competition, impose slavish contracts on employees who have no where else to turn. Money is power, power is control. A state by any other name. Quite possibly far worse than what we grumble over now.

The social anarchists have their own problems. There is an old saying about pacifists that I think can be applied to a world of communes and soviets. The saying goes that if we were all pacifists it would only take one unscrupulous man to rule the world. What would happen if a handful of decentralized communities were faced with an old school imperial regime complete with slavery, exploitation, and high militarism? Could they rise to the challenge? If the worker’s cooperatives enterted into federations that were part of other federations wouldn’t you end up with a structured hierarchy capable of making decisions on behalf of people who they never met? What if one commune gives birth to a generation of republicans (comical example but you get my meaning) that decide that they have so many resources that maybe they can do better on an open market? What if they then decide not to trade with other communes unless they too are free markets? What if they fund the opposition in these places or orchestrate campaigns to move in mass in order to create a pliant client state? It doesn’t even have to be ideological capitalists, it could just be a black market that concentrates power into the hands of the most ruthless criminals. How can these collectives maintain order when everyone around them is pushing their own path to political nirvana?

Of course there are answers to these concerns, or at least replies, but I’m not convinced. The state is not some alien concept imposed upon mankind from the outer darkness. It is in our nature as social animals to create hierarchies. We are born into and raised in the context of the most basic template for the state, the family. We form communities and it is inevitable that some men in those communities will become more successful than others by genetic blessing or turn of luck or strength of character and with success comes the spoils, power. And while in my soul I am an old liberal who just wants peace, love, and understanding but I’ve come to accept that old conservative maxim of lord Acton that power corrupts. Of course what if this alone is not a sufficient argument against anarchism? What if human civilization is doomed to see the growth of decadent empire, it’s fall into parochialism, and then the slow calcification of power?

What would the Ouroboros state mean for political thought? What position could a good man take in the face of this eternal return? Must we abandon all hope and resign ourselves to the nihilism of the status quo? Maybe the answer is to put one’s faith behind anarchy and take pleasure in the eternal struggle?