I find no more fitting way to open this entry than with this epigraphic quotation from Nietzsche’s Antichrist (#57): “The anarchist and the Christian have the same ancestry.” At the very least, it sets the tone.
I like Nietzsche’s “in-your-face” breath of fresh air. I also like Noam Chomsky’s description of himself as a “fellow traveler to the anarchist tradition,” and his self-identification with anarcho-syndicalism. In essence, anarcho-syndicalism does not merely “abolish” the State, but provides a competent substitute for the State, in the labor unions, working on socialist/communist principles, ideally, in a stateless society. (My lengthy entry on this subject: Syndicalism And Its Apostle Sorel, will be posted later.)
It should be clear right away that both anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism are not really some viable social alternatives for an immediate, or even gradual, practical implementation, but they are rather theoretical, and primarily intellectual exercises in social engineering, even if the actual historical practice of anarchism has led to some demonstrable excesses. The reader will be correct to surmise that I am by no means an advocate of social violence, but I do find an inexhaustible source of intellectual fascination in the genesis and subsequent development of challenging ideas, even if some of them prove too controversial and end up condemned, not on the basis of their intellectual merit or demerit, but as a result of their failed, or otherwise discredited and disavowed malpractice in real life.
Returning to the title subject, in my mind, anarchism brings an immediate association with none other than Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, one of the most colorful characters in history, whose name has a special ring to the Russian soul. I have several Bakunin entries in this book, some of them already posted, others to be posted later. Ironically, a Bakunin biographer can do his job in two very different fashions: one as a joke and a caricature, and the other as a serious philosophical study, not so much of the man (whose life has been an unwarranted distraction from his work, to historians), as of his controversial ideas, and their perennial significance. Having read his works, and having read works about him, I can confidently conclude that an adequate book about Bakunin’s intellectual legacy is yet to be written.
Thus, I believe, the most interesting thing about anarchism is not its history of political action, but a history of its political thought. There is another word for it: libertarian socialism, the kind of political philosophy that Chomsky gladly subscribes to, summarized by him as challenging all forms of hierarchy and attempting to eliminate them, if they are unjustified. He says that libertarian socialist values exemplify the rational and morally-consistent extension of classical liberal ideas to an industrial context.
The words libertarianism and anarchism are inextricably linked: one literally created as an euphemism for the other. The first man to describe himself as a libertarian was Joseph Déjacque, a French anarchist, who made up this word to fool the censors under a French ban on anarchist publications.
There is, however, a chasmal gap between the traditional European meaning of the word libertarian and its usage in the United States, where, paradoxically, it has come to denote the antipode of libertarian socialism which is libertarian capitalism, a fraudulent usurper of the name libertarian, described in my next entry as “a case of stolen identity.”
Libertarian socialists (thus called out of necessity, to distinguish them from the identity thieves now going under the name of “libertarians” in the United States, or of libertarian capitalists, as a compromise) differ from socialists in that the latter rely on the power of the State to deliver socialist policies, while the former stand for individual freedoms to such an extent that they view even the most dedicated, welfare-promoting state as the enemy. Not a very practical attitude, of course, logically making them the inheritors of Thomas More’s Abraxa (after all, why should anti-statists prefer the name of the state-founder King Utopus and its phantasmal, “no-such-place” pseudo-etymology, contained in the name Utopia?), but, by the same token, Thomas More’s successors in his idealistic, yet inspired, form of social thought that has stood the test of the ages.
I like Nietzsche’s “in-your-face” breath of fresh air. I also like Noam Chomsky’s description of himself as a “fellow traveler to the anarchist tradition,” and his self-identification with anarcho-syndicalism. In essence, anarcho-syndicalism does not merely “abolish” the State, but provides a competent substitute for the State, in the labor unions, working on socialist/communist principles, ideally, in a stateless society. (My lengthy entry on this subject: Syndicalism And Its Apostle Sorel, will be posted later.)
It should be clear right away that both anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism are not really some viable social alternatives for an immediate, or even gradual, practical implementation, but they are rather theoretical, and primarily intellectual exercises in social engineering, even if the actual historical practice of anarchism has led to some demonstrable excesses. The reader will be correct to surmise that I am by no means an advocate of social violence, but I do find an inexhaustible source of intellectual fascination in the genesis and subsequent development of challenging ideas, even if some of them prove too controversial and end up condemned, not on the basis of their intellectual merit or demerit, but as a result of their failed, or otherwise discredited and disavowed malpractice in real life.
Returning to the title subject, in my mind, anarchism brings an immediate association with none other than Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin, one of the most colorful characters in history, whose name has a special ring to the Russian soul. I have several Bakunin entries in this book, some of them already posted, others to be posted later. Ironically, a Bakunin biographer can do his job in two very different fashions: one as a joke and a caricature, and the other as a serious philosophical study, not so much of the man (whose life has been an unwarranted distraction from his work, to historians), as of his controversial ideas, and their perennial significance. Having read his works, and having read works about him, I can confidently conclude that an adequate book about Bakunin’s intellectual legacy is yet to be written.
Thus, I believe, the most interesting thing about anarchism is not its history of political action, but a history of its political thought. There is another word for it: libertarian socialism, the kind of political philosophy that Chomsky gladly subscribes to, summarized by him as challenging all forms of hierarchy and attempting to eliminate them, if they are unjustified. He says that libertarian socialist values exemplify the rational and morally-consistent extension of classical liberal ideas to an industrial context.
The words libertarianism and anarchism are inextricably linked: one literally created as an euphemism for the other. The first man to describe himself as a libertarian was Joseph Déjacque, a French anarchist, who made up this word to fool the censors under a French ban on anarchist publications.
There is, however, a chasmal gap between the traditional European meaning of the word libertarian and its usage in the United States, where, paradoxically, it has come to denote the antipode of libertarian socialism which is libertarian capitalism, a fraudulent usurper of the name libertarian, described in my next entry as “a case of stolen identity.”
Libertarian socialists (thus called out of necessity, to distinguish them from the identity thieves now going under the name of “libertarians” in the United States, or of libertarian capitalists, as a compromise) differ from socialists in that the latter rely on the power of the State to deliver socialist policies, while the former stand for individual freedoms to such an extent that they view even the most dedicated, welfare-promoting state as the enemy. Not a very practical attitude, of course, logically making them the inheritors of Thomas More’s Abraxa (after all, why should anti-statists prefer the name of the state-founder King Utopus and its phantasmal, “no-such-place” pseudo-etymology, contained in the name Utopia?), but, by the same token, Thomas More’s successors in his idealistic, yet inspired, form of social thought that has stood the test of the ages.
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