Understanding Anarchism: The Politics of Basic Decency

In the face of politics that prioritize cruelty, anarchism serves as the vehicle through which all people can achieve lasting freedom.

Republished from The Free Thought project

In our increasingly polarizing political schism it can seem to some like basic human decency is continuing to fall evermore to the wayside amid the rise of growing radicalism.

Some may say, “what happened to the good old days where everyone respected each other’s beliefs and politics was civil?”

And to that I would say, you’re recalling a fairytale. There never has been a time, in America or elsewhere, where politics was respectful to the people as a whole or civil in its nature. Those reminiscing of such times of grandeur are simply remembering a time not so long ago when their comfortable position within the socio-economic status quo allowed them the privilege to ignore the ugly face of politics and the systemic abuses of the monopoly on violence that is government.

They are remembering a time when they didn’t have to care because it didn’t affect them the way that it has always affected others outside of the state’s preferred majority.

For those poverty-stricken, there has never been a time where a politics that is directly intertwined with corporate oligarchy hasn’t directly exacerbated their condition, as we see with the ever escalating war against the unhoused. Nor has there been a time when such a politics has not exploited a working class that it viewed to be expendable, as we see with the steadily declining quality of life for the average American contrasted by constant headlines of “record corporate profits.”

For indigenous people, and other persons of color, the politics of colonialism has never been civil or respectful. It has been brutal, vicious, oppressive, and cruel. And continues to be so, with two prominent examples in just the last 30 days.

In southern Arizona, construction of Trump’s border wall is actively desecrating sites sacred to the Hia-Ced O’odham and Tohono O’odham native peoples.

Meanwhile, in Jackson, Mississippi, the US 5th Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled in a staggering example of environmental racism that the city’s residents, over 80% of whom are black, do not have a constitutionally protected right to safe drinking water amid Jackson’s decade old lead contamination crisis which has reached levels worse than that of Flint, Michigan.

For those of minority faiths, the politics of religious fundamentalism continues to blatantly discriminate against the growing number of Americans who hold alternative spiritual beliefs.

And for any around the world who exist outside of the United States’ unipolar hegemonic strata, the politics of imperialism continue to rain death and destruction on a daily basis.

These kind of politics, as a vehicle of government in maintaining the state, have always been inherently tied to the abuses of domination by coercion and hierarchy.

In every instance throughout human history these systems of control have been the primary driving factor for abuse, oppression, and exploitation. Coercive forms of control have always been incompatible with human nature, yet have persisted throughout much of our civilization because the most egregious of these violations were typically reserved for the minority communities that the state could effectively label “other.”

The animal nature of man, which at times tends to be at war with his own intellectual consciousness, is to be a product of one’s environment. An evolutionary survival mechanism where ones safety and prosperity is more or less protected if he aligns with the majority and does not disrupt the status quo.

For the average plebeian in Rome, or the peasant of the Middle Ages, one may not have liked living under the boot of kings and the meek material conditions stemming from the rampant corruption and consolidation of power and wealth, but the conditions were still remarkably preferable to those which one would suffer should you dare challenge their rule or risk becoming an outlier by stepping outside of conventional social norms. Such has always been the history of state dominance.

Despite this, there has always been an underlying current in human nature which recognizes this innate incompatibility.

One of the earliest strands of philosophy envisioning an egalitarian stateless society traces back to ancient Greece in the third century BCE with the work Republic by Zeno of Citium, which served as a stark criticism of the more famous Plato’s Republic that argued for the creation of a “perfect” society which would be heavily centralized and ruled under a strict hierarchy of philosopher kings.

Zeno’s Republic, by contrast, was a work that argued for radical human freedom; the abolition of the state, the willful sharing of resources, a cosmopolitan society that viewed each person as equal, where laws were based firmly on reason, communities were consensual and interactions were strictly voluntary. Though sadly, no fully intact copy of Zeno’s work exists today, preserved only in fragments through the recordings of later philosophers.

An even older work, predating Zeno’s by nearly a century, developed independently during the era of ancient Chinese philosophy. Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching carries a significant thematic overlap with regard to politics, power, and personal agency, criticizing coercion, control, and hierarchy as being in opposition to natural law.

These concepts have remained foundational to critiques of systems of power over millennia. It is a conclusion that any rational mind can ultimately arrive at: no person has any right to rule another, the only authority that is legitimate is that which is given consensually.

This is the cornerstone of anarchism, and, at its core embodies the most ethical principle which has persisted in one form or another for over 5,000 years, the Golden Rule — Treat others how you wish to be treated.

Yet somewhere along the way, despite the persistence of this moral lesson, society has been conditioned through millennia of adhering to the domination of the state apparatus to largely disregard this fundamental teaching.

Anarchism, however, as a school of thought has always maintained a steadfast adherence to the principal of personal self-determination.

Anarchism has always firmly rested within the revolutionary movements that place people over power, perhaps best outlined in Emma Goldman’s classic work Anarchism: What It Really Stands For —

Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations.

As such, anarchism has essentially always simply advocated for the universal application of basic human decency in the face of that which is the most indecent, subjugation. This is the concept of human emancipation: for all people to be free from any constraints that alienate them from their own autonomy.

And therein arises the necessity of putting these principles into practice, and, coincidentally, the very reason why anarchism seemingly becomes so averse to the masses, because to stand on such revolutionary principles means becoming at odds with the very system that has kept them comfortable. Just comfortable enough to be placated and docile, to ignore the mistreatments of others, and accept the encroachments of their own rights so long as it means that it doesn’t threaten their illusion of security.

The recognition of these ideas is not passive. To be intellectually averse to authoritarianism without taking a stand against the institutions that enable it is a half measure that seldom results in any worthwhile change.

When living under systems of domination by force it’s not simply enough to acknowledge these ideals which are antithetical to the very existence of the ruling class and simply ask nicely for them to be implemented. It requires one to reject these systems in their entirety and put forth their engagement to disobey, disrupt, and dismantle them in the continuous effort to build a better world.

The most fervent anarchist has always taken an active role in participating in the opposition to the mechanisms of oppression while working to create solutions for a freer tomorrow.

To that end, may we all have the courage to do what we can.