Anarchist? What's That?
by Fred Woodworth
WHEN IN THE COURSE OF INHUMANE EVENTS it starts to look like
people might wake up to the fact that government is their worst enemy, political
careerists and the press, often joined by religionists, never fail to howl
about Anarchy and chaos. Naturally, in these days when the world's superstates
have more power than ever before, the existence of any particular government
is threatened far more by other governments than by people who would like
to have no government at all. But even now the idea of an unruled society
still bothers politicians so much that just about every single one of them,
conservative or liberal, sooner or later gets around to some lashing-out
at Anarchists and to uttering some dire warnings against anybody who objects
to the domination of the state.
So who is this Anarchist, anyway? Believe it or not, he really exists. It's
just that he almost never gets a chance to respond after being insulted
on TV or in newspapers, and most people probably think he's just a figure
of speech, like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, or the Specter of Doom.
The Anarchist, first of all, is no bomb-thrower. Neither is he a criminal,
and for political speech-makers to paint such a vile picture of him, the
y have to hope he will never be able to reply where he will be heard, because
he might point out that senators, "representatives," presidents
and others are the real criminals, thriving off funds taken by force from
productive people. The Anarchist might show his fellow inhabitants of the
earth that the caricature of himself with a gunpowder bomb in his hand is
not only a lie but a monstrous lie coming from those in power, who use billions
of stolen dollars a year to manufacture bombs weighing tons apiece.
Actually, if the Anarchist really were a bomber, he wouldn't be worthworrying
about, since the amount of damage he could do would at best be small. What
makes him dangerous is that he is a man who could at any moment stumble
onto the magic words that would snap the populace out of its hypnosis and
make it shake off the endless dream of red tape, laws, and force at every
turn.
The Anarchist is not just another variety of liberal, who tries to patch
over the leaking balloon of the state. He does not try to solve human problems
with more and more laws, each of which creates the further problems that
entail still more laws. Instead, he wants less law-NO law. He wants human
affairs to be carried out through purely voluntary action. Neither is he
a conservative, that other sort of political addict who claims to be in
favor of smaller government but who in fact is always increasing the size
of it.
The Anarchist wants neither the moralistic and biblical meddling law of
the political Right, nor the oily "in the public interest" law
of the Left. He is godless, believing that religion is only superstition,
but he is not Communist, with a state-religion and an even worse form of
authoritarianism.
He shrugs at the authority of constitutions and other documents that he
never signed or agreed to be bound by. He does not vote in elections which
would make him tacitly bound to accept the outcome; to him none of the candidates
is acceptable because the offices themselves are unacceptable.
He is not "in favor of crime," but he is not in favor of police
either, reflecting that more cops and more laws have only bred more lawbreaking
and more police abuse to control it. He thinks police increase crime the
same way that lawyers increase litigation.
He does not want to censor anyone else, no matter how much he disagrees
with their views. He believes instead in expressing his own views as an
antidote, though you'll seldom hear them since freedom of the press is systematically
denied to him, and ordinary channels of exposure for his ideas are usually
closed.
The political spectrum offers a choice among ideologies that try to sugar
the water of the poisonous river. The Anarchist's idea-and this is what
sets him off that map altogether-is to drink from another source: volunteerism,
rather than coercion.
Our Anarchist's beliefs will probably remain an extreme minority position.
The human tendency prefers familiar horrors to unknown delights. But even
if only as a minority of ONE, the Anarchist lives his philosophy as far
as he can, refusing to tell anybody else what to do or to be ordered about
himself.
Somebody will be on the other end of the gun, monitoring the camera, locking
the cell door, burning the sex films and preaching Jesus. Somebody will
be manufacturing new laws at a mile a minute, and seeing to it that everything
you make between January and June goes to pay for protection standing in
between you and "chaos."
Sometimes you may have little idea where these forces come from or who it
is that acts as their representation, but one thing you can depend on: it
won't be that Anarchist.