Mischaracterizations of Anarchism

Recent news of Michael Badnarik's heart attack prompted both my best wishes for his speedy and complete recovery and some musings about common misperceptions about anarchism.

In a debate at Drexel University with Stefan Molyneux (I prefer the audio recording over the video, just cause the audio records more of the debate), Badnarik defended the existence of a minimal state on the grounds that we need recourse to defend ourselves and our property rights, among a few other things. He seemed to argue that without government there wouldn't be any shared notion of legitimate force or property or any social life whatsoever. Part of this is a misunderstanding of government, and some of it could have been that he was using the wrong words; but a lot of it is due to a misperception of anarchism that anarchists themselves are not guiltless in propagating. Below I'll go through some mischaracterizations that I hear almost every time I see someone react to anarchist ideas.

1. That anarchism demands everyone be hermits. No, anarchism does not demand that everyone wander off into the hills, build their own shacks, grow their own potatoes, and interact with other humans only for the purpose of procreating. Granted, some anarchists do that. And a few actually have espoused ideas similar to that. Some might have said we shouldn't even procreate. But as a set of political ideas, anarchism demands only that humans interact without violating each other's sovereignty; it does not condemn interaction outright. And if you think about it, anarchism is really pro-interaction. It condemns any threat or use of violence that prevents people from peacefully interacting with each other.

2. That anarchism demands non-resistance. It is true that if you are an all-out pacifist who believes that any force is morally reprehensible, then you have to be an anarchist. But anarchism as a set of political ideas does not condemn all force outright. What it condemns outright is the initiation of force, threat, or fraud. The anarchist's dogma is individual sovereignty (or at least, this is the individualist anarchist's dogma). Since you are entitled to remain whole against the intrusions of others onto your person and justly-acquired property, you have the right to use discriminate and proportionate force to maintain your control over what is yours. Granted, anarchists would condemn just about every modern war they could think of, and maybe every ancient war too, since almost every war involves the death and deprivation of noncombatants. But this is a far cry from "Thou shalt and may only persuade the rapist to stop raping thy daughter, and thou art a criminal if thou offend the dignity of the rapist by intervening in any way more physical than persuasion or distraction." This misunderstanding isn't helped much by the fact that many anti-war people who aren't practitioners of non-resistance still call themselves pacifists.

3. That anarchism means homemade bombs. This is a funny one, because libertarian anarchism can justify some acts that fit the dictionary definition of terrorism (and while we're on the dictionary definition, what is government but the organized use or threat of force against persons or their property to compel those persons or others to adhere to some politcal agenda?). You have the right to destroy the property of someone who actively aggresses against the property of others. The mere fact that the government bans it and calls it "terrorism" is irrelevant to whether you have a right to do it. And you have the right to kill people who are actively murdering others, or are presently making a living by murdering others. The mere fact that the government will most surely send you (or someone it confuses for you) to the gurney is irrelevant to whether you have the right to do it. I myself think that any violence that the establishment can put a spin on is very unwise, since it gives anarchism a bad name and provokes a retaliation that would further restrict liberty. But besides terrorism's imprudence, a lot of anarchist terrorism actually was illegitimate by libertarian anarchist standards. Some of Ted Kaczynski's projects caused the deaths of people who were flat out innocent, and it's very hard for me to imagine why Garfield deserved to die. If we look at anarchism as a set of ideas that demand the complete liberty of every individual over his or her own body and his or her own affairs, then a lot of "propaganda by the deed" doesn't even deserve to be called anarchist. It should instead be branded as the authoritarianism that it is.

4. That anarchism is anti-family. Well, it depends on what you call "family". If by "family" you mean a father's supposed right to beat his kids, lie to them to impel subservience, mutilate their bodies without their say-so, lock them in their rooms, and hunt them down and drag them back when they run away with express intent to not be under such authority, then yes - anarchism is very anti-family. But if by "family" you mean a father's right to pull his kid away from a hot stove, then no. Anarchists have a wide range of opinion on this, but those anarchists who have their ideological feet on the ground recognize that a parent has the right to restrict his or her very young child's movement in order to protect that kid from immanent harm. Parental authority becomes purely contractual, though, once the kid gets old enough to make his or her own decisions. What age that is is where all the disagreement happens.

5. That anarchism means debauchery. True, there are some anarchists that fervently exercise their right to wallow in their own vomit. But none of them would consider it an enforceable duty (unless, maybe, wallowing in one's own vomit were the prescribed restitution for some criminal wrongdoing, in which case I would still deny that it's enforceable). Most of the anarchists whose material I've viewed online (which I confess are overwhelmingly individualist anarchists) embrace some kind of egoist personal morality, where they abstain from any act they perceive to go against their rational self-interest. That would include unsupervised binge drinking, other kinds of substance abuse, unprotected sex, some other kinds of sexual promiscuity, and basically anything else that would likely have undesireable consequences. But that's a personal morality - it's about what you should and shouldn't do to yourself. It isn't about what you should and shouldn't do to others, which is primarily what anarchism is concerned with. All that anarchism demands regarding debauchery is that you let those enjoying it to continue enjoying it, and that you not force it onto those who don't want to partake. Whether you yourself should partake is an issue that anarchism as a set of political ideas just doesn't address.

6. That anarchism demands total chaos. Only if you march in the streets with revolutionary Marxists. Do read 1 and 3 again.

7. That anarchism is anti-religion. I am one of the few anarchists who readily admits that anarchism is a religion. It has its own scriptures, liturgy, prophets, and saints. Like any other religion, it has schisms between denominations. And like any other religion, it upholds a set of ideas which it supposes to be the Fundamentals on which everything else in that sphere must stand (yes, anarchists are fundamentalist libertarians). Saying that anarchism is anti-religion is like saying that apple pie is un-American. And there's no reason anarchists can't be bi-sect-ual. There are numerous Christian anarchists, there are some Buddhist anarchists, some anarchists find inspiration in the Tao Te Ching, a denomination of Hinduism was propagated in America by an anarchist missionary, there's at least one Muslim anarchist, the list could go on. So no - anarchism is not, never was, never will be, and cannot possibly be anti-religion. A noticeable number of anarchists, though, display anti-God sentiments which can be connected to their anti-authoritarian views. And there's nothing anti-religion about that.

Of Course God is a Jew...

The other day I posted as my Facebook status this mildly derisive note:

"Of course God is a Jew. How else would you explain Him choosing the Jews as the superior race? Surely, you don't think God's an American Evangelical Christian!"

After one member of the Christian Republican Party of Kentucky *liked* it, and a libertarian-conservative mourned that he knows "lots of people who actually really do", a friend of mine who watches Glenn Beck as fervently as I read LRC started a conversation which turned into a debate on Zionism, nationalism, and the state. Below is the transcript of those wall posts.

Post-Bush Neocon: Well if God is Jesus, and vis versa, than didn't God separate the line between Jews and Gentiles when He died on the cross for all of mankind?

Me: I'm not sure I know what you're trying to say here.

Post-Bush Neocon: Nothing.. just that while we always hear how Jews are the chosen people, is it wrong to say that is no longer the case since Jesus died for all of mankind, jew and gentile?

Sorry.. I know your comment was probably strictly meant for humor, but it was something that popped into my head anyways.

Me: No yeah, that's a noble way for a Christian to view it.

The comment was meant as a jab at Christians who use their religion to justify what amounts to Jewish supremacism.

Post-Bush Neocon: Ahhhhh....I don't know if I've ever met a Christian who viewed Jews as the supreme race. I can't speak for others, but for myself, I've always viewed them as God's original chosen people, but when Jesus died on the cross, that line of supremacy vanished. Maybe this is why Jews don't believe Jesus was the real Messiah?

However, if this is also in regards to the land that God promised his "chosen people", well if you believe scripture, than yes, the palestinians need to back off, as that land was meant for the Jews. And even if you don't believe that, well Britain owned the land anyways, and split it up between the Jews and Palestinians. Palestinians didn't like this, and started a war and allied with most of the middle east. Israel kicked their butt and everyone else, and kept the land they conquered. That alone gives them the right to defend what they deem as their land today.

Me: If you believe the Israelites' chosenness makes it okay for the State of Israel to run non-Jewish people off land that their families lived and worked on for decades, to bulldoze their houses and chop down their orchards, to divert water away from their fields and villages and towards new neighborhoods built exclusively for Jews, to build walls with checkpoints that the non-Jewish subjects can only pass with work permits that are conspicuously hard to get, to inflict embargos and steep tariffs that dry up the flow of goods into the non-Jewish territories, to set up blockades cutting off access to even basic nutrition, to put on military galavants that result in the deaths of countless non-Jewish men, women, and children, and in the face of all this subjugation of non-jews, to make Israeli citizenship infinitely easy for any Jew to get and much much harder for anyone else to get, then you use religion to justify Jewish supremacy. Not to mention whether you believe the Israelites' chosenness means Americans have to hand over their tax dollars to the State of Israel no matter how severely it abuses its non-Jewish subjects. I don't know whether chosenness actually does justify all those things - I'll leave that to be figured out by someone who actually believes in chosenness.

Post-Bush Neocon: I get what you're saying, but can you answer me this? Why should Palestinians be allowed any rights at all, being that they forfeited those rights when they lost in a war they started? I mean, it's land that the Jews defended and conquered fair and square (seriously, I mean, the Palestinians practically had the entire middle east allied with them, and Israel stood alone). Why shouldn't they have the right to do what's best for their people first? Isn't that what any state or country should do? Have THEIR people's interests first before all others? I mean, that's why you're against policing the world, right? Instead of policing, we should just focus our energy on ourselves and the many areas we need work, instead of wasting our resources on others. Isn't that your belief? Why should it be any different for Israel?

Me: Palestinians should be allowed rights because each of them is a distinct individual with natural sovereignty over him or herself. Whether "they" started the 1948 war is irrelevant. Let's be honest about that war - MY DAD was a toddler back then. Most of the people we're talking about weren't even conceived yet. They didn't forfeit their rights simply by having the same ethnic background and geographic origin as the soldiers who fought in a war that happened more than half a century ago (and if their rights are forfeited that way, then so are the rights of all today's Egyptians, Iraqis, Jordanians, Lebanese, and Syrians, since all 5 of those states fought for the Palestinians in that war). To treat today's Palestinians as if they did forfeit their rights that way is to treat people according to what group they're stuck in, and not according to their own merit. That sounds a lot like racism to me. Actually, no, in this case it *is* racism.

This is a problem with states in general. Yes, it is the very nature of every government to lump people into different groups and raise up one to dominate the other. This is one of the main reasons I'm an anarchist. There is no individual or group of individuals whose status entitles them to hold privileges over the bodies and property of others. Those rights that belong naturally to one rightfully belong naturally to everyone else. For government to act against one group out of the interests of another is to violate the law of equal liberty. I should say that I'm an American Firster only in rhetoric. True, I think U.S. tax dollars can be better spent at home than on foreign tyrannies; but I really think there shouldn't be taxes.

Post-Bush Neocon: Ok...well while I'm all for rights of the Individual, I believe certain rights are only to be given to citizens of a state. I say this because whether you like it or not, people only work well together in unity. It's why this multiculturism crap in the US is tearing us apart because you have people who aren't assimilating to the American culture, and want to change our way of living to some of the socialist third world crap they came from. So, the path to citizenship is a must, because you then weed out those who won't assimilate (not perfect, but no system is). I mean, if we all believed one system of government, and one world religion, and had the same family values, maybe you could pull your ideas off....But I gotta say, I'm a bit surprised on how Utopian your ideas sound.

So, perhaps you can elaborate for me? What do you consider as individual's rights when it comes to property? Should an illegal mexican that crosses our border and breaks our laws be entitled to buy land? Should an individual be entitled to free healthcare (certainly there are those that view that as a natural born right)? You see where I'm going with this? Better yet, do you believe at all in citizenship rights vs. individual rights, and if so, what would the differences between the two be?

Me: Before we get to my anarchism, let's put together some of the things you said. You think that even some of the most basic rights depend on membership in a state, and that people just don't have these rights if they aren't members. Would you go so far as saying that people don't even have the right to live if they aren't citizens?

You also said, in effect, that it's okay to kill children who were born on the wrong side of a fence, since by being born on that side of the fence they inherited their predecessors' guilt. You said that after initially denying knowledge of any Christians who believe in Jewish supremacy. I doubt you can explain how your belief in the Jewish State's supposed right to kill and rob non-Jews doesn't make you a Jewish supremacist.

You don't have to be an anarchist to believe in individual liberty. Anarchism is just the logical consequence of classical liberalism, and I don't expect all of my acquaintances to be anarchist political theorists. I do, however, expect all my acquaintances to believe that it's murder to kill people who aren't killing anyone else. Now, on to anarchism.

A free society would have no distinction between citizen and non-citizen. This doesn't mean government-provided healthcare for everyone. Like the Leftists, you confuse positive and negative rights. Positive rights are rights to force other people who haven't aggressed against you to do things for you or give things to you. Those generally don't exist. Negative rights are rights to be left alone - your rights to not be killed, beaten, kidnapped, stolen from, etc. So when I say your rights don't depend on citizenship, I'm not saying that illegal immigrants are entitled to every government service that citizens and legal residents get. No one's entitled to profit off theft. I'm only saying that your rights to life, liberty, and property shouldn't depend on which side of a fence you were born on. When you say that people should go through some special procedure for government to not have the license to kidnap them, seize their property, and throw them out of the country, you're saying people's right to be left alone doesn't naturally exist and instead has to be bought.

If you want to read more on governance based on individual rights, here's a link to loads of essays. http://libertariannation.org/b/bibhome.htm