Pseudo-anarchists & Quasi-anarchists

national | miscellaneous | news report Friday April 19, 2002 22:42 by John Falconer, Phd. falconerjay at hotmail dot com

They have good ideas. But beware of the explosive, genuine anarchists.

We must not be deceived by quasi-anarchists and pseudo-anarchists and their misguided utopian daydreams which if implemented would produce terrifying nightmares, violent revolutions and dictatorial reigns of terror to restore order.

As everyone knows only too well by now, "utopia" has a double-meaning: "good-place" and "no-place." There can be no universal utopia on Earth, nor can any group or individual pursue happiness without some suffering. In any case, the realization of a particular utopia would require the exercise of force in a specific direction. Obviously many people will disagree with any particular definitive direction, otherwise no force would have to be exerted and the highest good would be had without resistance, as if the society were one god who could will everything in place just by thinking it. That simply cannot occur on Earth. Of course, painful progress toward various ideals will occur; in crucial situations that requires, as history has amply proven, the rule of social authority as represented by rulers, whether they be obeyed as legitimate authorities or as illegitimate tyrants. No matter how much those who have heads over their shoulders deny it, under natural law, higher states of organization require hierarchies for their existence.

No doubt the genuine anarchist is opposed to leading principles as well as to the governing authorities who represents those principles. The genuine anarchist is not a hypocrite like the hyphenated-anarchists. S/he will admit to the well-guarded meaning of 'anarchy': "an" (against or without)- "arche" (leader), or "leaderless." Let's not twist the meaning of words around to suit our confusion. Anarchy means "without a government", or "a state of lawlessness". Here are a few usages from The Oxford Dictionary, Clarendon, 1989:

(1539) Taverner: This unleful lyberty or lycnece of the multytude is called Anarchie.

(1605) Bacon: Pompey.. made it his design.. to cast the state into an absolute anarchy and confusion.

(1664) H. More: A Polity without a Head.. would be not a Polity, but Anarchy.

(1667) Milton: The waste Wide Anarchie of Chaos.

(1821) Byron: The satraps uncontroll'd, the gods unworshipp'd, And all things in the anarcy of sloth.

(1875) Hamerton: A moral anarchy difficult to conceive.

(1959) Daily Telegram: The spirit of anarchy today current in the visual arts... A form of emotional anarchy even more destructive of talent than the slovenly disregard of technique.

Anarchy has always been dismissed by reputable philosophers as inconceivable; the very idea of a "leaderless principle" is logically absurd and does not correspond to empirical observation - there is no "chaos" absent order. "Chaos theory" is an oxymoronic term, for "chaos" is nothing, for which there can be no valid theory - chaos theory is rather the observation of unexplained order and an attempt to explain how it is ruled.

Those who seriously style themselves as philosophical anarchists may be able to survive in a mental hospital until they are rehabilitated by critical theory; their anarchic propositions are unsupportable either in symbolic or in real action. They are either lying, telling a dangerous joke, or are deceived by their own hypocrisy. If the non-principle they propose were translated into action, they would be real anarchists in the classic sense, anarchists who are famous for bombs under their overcoats and incoherent manifestoes tucked in their pockets.

Modern anarchists will use assault rifles and handguns, but their preferred instrument until very recently has been the homemade bomb, a perfect symbol for the exploding ego. In psychic isolation one tends to blow little things way out of proportion to their size. In the physical world, bombs will do nicely. And what remains after an effective explosion? Etymological utopia, or no-place. Perhaps the bomber is still alive, however, at some remote undisclosed location, observing self-destruction, for the self is social: there is no individual identity without relation. The whole event is absurd and tragic. It is a colossal goof.

The anarchism of the anarchist can be expressed in a simple formula: Critical Reaction plus Explosive Means plus Nebulous Future equals Anarchism.

Yes, "anarchism" is just a label, but it should be properly applied. Unless one is a real anarchist, s/he might find a more appropriate or safer term such as "democracy." And for the religiously inclined, religions also have more generally acceptable terms to indicate the chaos that seems to support a conglomeration of contradictions.

Quasi- and pseudo-anarchists do offer many good ideas, and they do make many valuable contributions to society; yet rather than adopt the name for essential absurdity, rather than adopt "anarchy" as their preferred label and live out their lives as hypocrites, or waste time justifying an absurdity that cannot be justified and is understandably subject to ridicule, they would in my opinion be much better off working towards specific, directed, socially valuable ends.

As for self-styled anarchists who sincerely enjoy social criticism, critical theory would probably be their best and most practical guidelines. Critical theory is a theory with working principles. Critical theory supposes that a theory without a criterion is no theory at all. If society seems to warrant improvement, gather the facts, study the authorities, make proposals, engage in self-criticism and criticise the criticism, arrive at the best consensus possible, and if a decision is made to act, know what results are expected, and do make sure the project has competent leaders. In any case, do not use the absurd term "anarchy" in the project description.