"We have done this because we love liberty and hate authority." – Voltairine de Cleyre
Posts tagged philosophy
My Homework, Week 1.
Mar 21st
I enrolled and was one of the lucky 15 to test out C4SS’s new ATP101 – An Introduction to Anarchism. The instructor is the always surprising and refreshing Gary Chartier; who has also provided the internet with his lecture series covering ATP-101. Below is my first weeks assignment, a 500 to 600 word critique of the first 15 pages of the primary text: The Market for Liberty by Linda and Morris Tannehill. As will be apparent I have some problems with their, the Tannehills, normative foundations for anarchism as well as their rhetorical strategy, defenses of retribution and Big Business. I look at the whole experience as fruitful, fun and thoughtful. I hope to be publishing my other homework assignments as the weeks roll on. ALL the Best, –James.
“My reading of the assigned pages, 1-15, of The Market for Liberty has stirred up a number of positive and negative emotional responses. The Tannehills, Linda and Morris, seems to be trying to “scorch the earth” of any rival theories that might be in the minds of the audience. They repeat certain phrases over and over again as if, at first, to head off possible questions the reader might have, but, later on, it feels like it is in order to help the reader correct a bad mental habit.
This rhetorical strategy has positive and negative effects: On the positive, for a reader treading water, barely keeping their head above a tumultuous sea of forced and contradictory bromides, a clear and open desert can be a life changing discovery.
“Finally I can breathe and think,” the reader sighs.
On the negative, this desert should just be a rest stop; one cannot stay there. Life, philosophy and morality are in a continuous flux of changing conditions and shifting contexts. If you try to take the desert with you, you’ll do just that, extending it to cover the forests and lakes of your intellectual landscape.
“The only way a man can be compelled against his will to act contrary to his judgment is by the use or threat of physical force by other men. Many pressures may be brought to bear on a man, but unless he is compelled by physical force (or the threat of force, or a substitute for force) to act against his will, he still has the freedom to make his own choices. Therefore, the one basic rule of civilized society is that no man or group of men is morally entitled to initiate (to start) the use of physical force, the threat of force, or any substitute for force (such as taking something from another person by stealth) against any other man or group of men.” Pg 10.
The Tannehills have created a desert call “non-aggression.” It is a place where everything is permitted, but aggression and aggression is initiated physical force. The statement, “initiated physical force is illegitimate,” is easily acceptable, but the stressed, “only initiated physical force is illegitimate,” sounds insane. The evaluative concept “legitimate” is an index that we use to navigate our moral lives; it points us down paths worthy of exploration and identifies obstacles that are worthy of dismantling. To reduce the concept of “aggression” to only identifying “initiated physical violence” as illegitimate is putting ethical blinders on, always looking at the world from one point of view, and strapping yourself into a practical straight jacket, only reacting to physical violence while dismissing all the other ways humans are warped and adjusted by institutions.
The Tannehills mention the concept “institution” many times in the first fifteen pages.
“But more than enough can be reasoned out to prove that a truly free society – one in which the initiation of force would be dealt with justly instead of institutionalized in the form of a government – is feasible.” Pg 4.
“In all of recorded history, men have never managed to establish a social order which didn’t institutionalize violations of freedom, peace, and justice – that is, a social order in which man could realize his full potential.” Pg 6.
The sociologist Alvin Gouldner defines “institution” in his text book Modern Sociology (1963, New York: Harcourt, Brace & World Inc.) as a “societally prescribed system of (more or less) differentiated behavior by means of which recurrent problems are resolved.”
Does “aggression” and “institutionalized aggression” always look, feel or operate the same way? If not, then it might be easy to spot one while the other goes unnoticed all around you, even while you are looking for it. You might even be an active party in its maintenance.”
The Apostasy of the Anarchist Vote
Jan 24th
“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal,” declared Emma Goldman in a ringing indictment of the feeble mechanism by which the state claims to be restrained and directed. Of course, in invoking this quote anarchists argue against counting upon elections to change the status quo. We aren’t going to bring about the voluntary society by listening to politicians, casting votes for them, and pressuring them to abolish their own offices. The statist means and the anarchist ends are clearly opposed.
But there’s another argument against voting: that by casting a ballot, one registers endorsement of the state and its violence. Advocates of this argument do not hold that you must have chosen the politician who wields power. They disregard personal intent, interests, and any issues at hand. The argument is quite simple: by participating in the election, one is bound to its results. Given the anarchist view of those results – violence, fraud, and lies – one can only conclude that voting makes one an accessory to the crime.
This constitutes a body blow for those who define themselves by their rejection of the authoritarianism so intrinsic in the state. It’s one thing for voting to be a silly ritual. But a decidedly different attitude must be adopted if pulling the voting lever leaves one with blood-stained hands. Faced with such an awful truth, the task becomes one of avoiding complicity with the system. An absolute break with the state is the only path of conscience.
In theory, this break seems reasonable to achieve: one simply ceases to cooperate with its agents and directives. But the state reaches far into the world we live in. It doesn’t just direct the police, military, teachers, judges, and other bureaucrats that intervenes in obvious ways. The very civil society we seek to unleash through the spirit of voluntarism, mutual aid, freedom, and solidarity seems hopelessly bound up in the state.
