The Start that points North
I’ve lost count how many times I’ve said in the past ten years that I’m an anarchist. To most people, when I say this, it sounds like I’m declaring war against the world. I think that reaction exists because the propaganda has already won most of the battles.
You see, it’s not true that anarchism is the lack of order. It’s definitely not about wanting to throw Molotov cocktails at police cars. The ideology may not be monolithic, but it does revolve around a core idea: decentralized governance.
The idea we call democracy is, in my estimation, not much more than an illusion. We don’t really pick the laws we want or the rules we deem necessary. We pick representatives—people who are supposed to work for us, to convey our collective needs to other elites in order to evoke change.
And it’s probably right there where the illusion breaks.
A good friend of mine likes to tell me I’m not grounded enough. That change is slow, gradual—and that’s a good thing. It’s not that I don’t see his point, but I insist it’s just not good enough for me.
I don’t think I’ve done a great job explaining anarchism to him. But I do think I finally got my wife to understand my position.
“If we could only vote on policies,” she said to me, “then things would make sense. Where do you want your taxes to go? A menu. A buffet. A way to vote with your money.”
What does that sound like to you?
A flavor of anarchism, I’d say. Not pure, I admit—but clearly of the same vine.
Anarchism proposes direct governance. People participating voluntarily, organizing to effect change. In that sense, you could argue it’s the purest form of democracy there is.
I’m not naive. It has shortcomings. It seems to work best in small groups and tends to break down at scale. But we’ve also never had the tools we have today.
The idea of a DAO—a Decentralized Autonomous Organization—is so new that most people outside the crypto space haven’t even heard of it. For the first time, though, coordination at scale without centralized authority doesn’t feel impossible.
It may never be the case that society as a whole becomes anarchistic in nature. But I like having the ideal clearly visible—like a star that always points north.
Real authority cannot be imposed, even if we pretend to obey.
And no matter how old I get, I don’t think I’ll ever accept our current systems of governance as ethical. All I’ve seen in the four-plus decades I’ve been alive are mafias fighting for bigger pieces of the pie—actors who learn to play the game, feeding the masses just enough to keep them satisfied with crumbs.
-MenO
People believe in caricatures of anarchists as violent hoodlums, vandals, and terrorists out to destroy society, but Robert Higgs had a superb response.
I would add that anarchists did not bomb nearly 200 schoolchildren in Iran, devastate the economy and environment by blowing up oil infrastructure, level entire city blocks in Lebanon, raze most of Gaza to the ground, embroil Ukraine in years of war, or disrupt trade with arbitrary tariffs impositions either.
But we are the bogeymen used to justify ongoing political plunder?
what is happening in the middle east makes my blood boil most days...
I have a lot of sympathy with many of the anarchist ideas and ideals. Part of the problem is that I don't see politics in the traditional left/right terms, but rather in terms of individualism/authoritarianism. So I tend to reject both authoritarian socialist ideas, and those of a democracy that has become so corrupted as to become an oligarchy.
An issue I see is that anarchism and true democracy only seem to work up to town scale. Anything above that allows vested interests, money and bureaucracy to take control.
So my ideal form of government, appreciating that nothing is perfect, would be for cities and below to be governed on anarchist principles. Not direct democracy, because most people will vote for personal self-interest irrespective of the larger consequences.
Above city level, the world should be broken up into states of approximately early medieval size, i.e. large enough to be useful but too small to develop nuclear weapons or a military-industrial complex. The states should be culturally homogenous, so they have something binding them together. Now here's the controversial bit.... the states should be ruled by hereditary constitutional monarchs. While monarchy has it's problems, it is less vulnerable than democracy to power-grabbing politicians or vested interests trying to buy elections. Making it hereditary means you've got someone in charge who has been trained from birth to do the job, rather than some power-hungry political operator.
If we did this, we'd have a world full of squabbles and petty warfare, but without the kind of all-encompassing destruction we see in places like Gaza, Iran and Ukraine, without the kind of surveillance state inflicted on us currently by over-powerful governments and unaccountable corporations, and enabling the kind of competition which can spur human achievement and growth.
this!