by The Dragon 9 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Would a person wanting others to be dependant upon them see a society of self-disiplined, self relieant, people capable of solving their own problems as "anarchy" defined?
Why does everyone want other to depend on them so bad?
Is their independance a threat to their plans and intentions?
Any thoughts?
Anarchy means without government. WTS is against independent thinking. They think and you do or you are an Apostate. Independent thinking is a threat to them.
French geographer Elisée Reclus called anarchy "the highest expression of order".
(And if you are in for a few nice quotations, http://recollectionbooks.com/siml/library/anarchQuotes.htm)
I was the sort of child who liked to read encyclopedia. I remember my amazement the day I read the definition of anarchy in the Ideas and Beliefs section of Pear's Cyclopedia - that the true meaning of anarchy was almost the complete opposite of the popular usage meaning discord, chaos and lawlessness.
"An anti-authoritarian society that is based on voluntary association of free individuals in autonomous communities, operating on principles of mutual aid and self-governance" sounds idyllic, but I think that human nature would prevent it ever working. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy)
I remembered this thread when the BBC Radio 4 programme "In Our Time" discussed Anarchy last week. I subscribe to the presenter, Melvyn Bragg's newsletter. Here are his comments:
There?s always discussion after a programme about what was not said. This was the
fiercest and most intense discussion that there has ever been! Perhaps it?s something
in the subject itself. All sorts of things came up. John Keane drew my attention to
a quotation from George Woodcock, the Canadian writer, that ?anarchism is aristocracy
universalised?. Peter Marshall said that that referred not so much to aristocracy
itself, but to a view of the innate nobility and the goodness inside human beings.
I think it was John Keane again who noticed the conjunction of aristocrats, craft
workers and intellectuals who favoured anarchism, all of whom, he said, needed to
stand against being ?bossed around?. Peter Marshall observed that a great number of
British intellectuals had been drawn to Marxism in the last century or so. Not only
Oscar Wilde, one of whose observations was that Marxism accommodated eccentricity, but
Aldous Huxley, Herbert Reed, Bertrand Russell and many others.
The notion of anarchism in the community today was not given the amount of time we
would have liked. Afterwards it was pointed out that the idea of running things in a
pyramid fashion was rapidly going out of fashion and the horizontal/anarchist method
was being employed not only by Japanese corporations, but by movements such as the
Global Justice Movement which were essentially aiming towards a condition of
leaderlessness. When it was brought up that Al Qaeda might be called an anarchist
movement in that sense, this was immediately slapped down because of the strong and
charismatic leader in the Al Qaeda movement, around whom the ideas and the people
themselves gathered.
As always, a great deal was left out. Perhaps two or three quotations will do. First
of all from John Keane to reiterate where the word anarchism came from and how it grew
initially:
?Anarchism is a term that entered the English language in the 17th century. It was
used in a derogatory and abusive fashion by royalists in favour of the restoration
against their opponents. An anarchist was thought to be someone who endorsed
disorder, violence and chaos. It also implied the person was ?godless? (the word atheist?
had not yet been invented), a characteristic that was deemed both
threatening and dissident. The actual term ?anarchism? derives from the Greek word,
?anarchos?, meaning ?without government? or ?without rulers?. The meaning of course
in translation is exactly the same.
The connotations of anarchism were almost entirely negative until the 18th century
when a semantic rupture occurred and the word began to be associated with a legitimate
political movement during the time of the French Revolution. There are clues to this
change in meaning if we consider, for example, the presence of Anacharsis Clootz
(1755?94) at the meetings of the Convention, the revolutionary French assembly, where
he was an ardent supporter of the liberation of Europe in the name of the ideals of
the Revolution. Clootz was only one of two people invited to take part in the
Convention (Thomas Paine, the radical propagandist and voice of the common man, was
the other) who were not French. Their political clout, ideals and popularity meant
they were treated as honorary citizens. Clootz had changed his name to reflect his
ideals (he was originally christened John Baptiste). He was fanatically devoted to
humanitarian ideals and despised royalty and absolutism. Reportedly a wild figure,
wild in dress and wild in speech, he could hold an audience in the palm of his hand.
Clootz was also strongly in favour of the de-christianisation of France and it was
this ?godlessness? which later brought about his execution at the hands of the
Jacobins during the Terror.?
Secondly, we did not mention Malatesta and Emma Goldman. In his notes, Peter Marshall
had this to say about both of them:
?The Italian anarcho-communist, Errico Malatesta (1853 ? 1932), shared Kropotkin?s
belief that the Anarchist revolution would occur soon. He also believed that violence
would form a necessary part of the emancipation of the working classes.?
Peter Marshall describes Malatesta as calling for ?Anarchism without adjectives?, and
by this he means a kind of pure Anarchism ? Malatesta supported propaganda by the deed
as opposed to propaganda by the word. He believed in insurrection and encouraged
peasants to rebel and occupy the factories.
Malatesta?s voice is echoed in the philosophies of Emma Goldman (1869-1940), who also
believed in direct and violent action in order to effect revolutionary change.
Goldman played a pivotal role in the development of Anarchist political philosophy in
the United States and Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. She
emigrated to the United States at seventeen and was later deported to Russia, where
she witnessed the results of the Russian Revolution firsthand. For some time she was
considered the most dangerous woman in America for saying that most men seemed to want
women to simply shut their mouths and open their wombs. Goldman was also a joyful
Anarchist. She declared that: ?If I can?t dance then it?s not my revolution!? Her
lively embrace of Anarchist principles is an important one and represents a reaction
against the grim worker spirit of some of the hard-line sectarian groups.
Marshall reflects that the majority of the towering figures in the Anarchist movement
come from the 19th century, although Anarchism still had its voice in the 20th and
21st centuries. An anarcho-syndicalist sympathiser, Noam Chomsky, in his For Reasons
of State (1973), wrote how the problem of "freeing man from the curse of economic
exploitation and political and social enslavement" remains the problem of our time. As
long as this is so, the doctrines and the revolutionary practice of libertarian
socialism will serve as an inspiration and guide.
Most importantly of all, Peter Marshall pointed out that we did not mention Gandhi who
called for a decentralised society based on village council and he viewed anarchy as
the most enlightened form of society. His influence may prove to be the strongest
yet.
Nor did we mention Tolstoy who described himself as a Christian anarchist ? nor did we
mention ? the conversation went on and perhaps we ought to return to it as soon as we
can.
Best wishes
Melvyn Bragg
Visit the In Our Time website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/
or download the latest edition as an mp3 file: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime.shtml
Anarchy in application has always been awful. I think there will always be a requirement for external controls. For those of us who refuse to behave out of anything other than pure self-interest.
jgnat,
When/where do you think anarchy was "applied"? And what do you mean by "applied"?
I personally don't think of anarchy as a political regime, or system (even utopian). Rather, perhaps, a sort of "faith" in one's and others' desires which sometimes and to some extent is allowed to inspire individual and collective actions.
Anarchy does threaten the middle-class ideal of "security". But otoh the worst of history is the result of hierarchically organised systems. Wars and genocides are planned and organised from "above".
What the media usually describe as "anarchy" (riots, plunder, etc.) are actually crises of the hierarchical systems and institutions. When people have to organise themselves beyond the failure of institutions they can do a lot better than that.
I don't think it can realistically work. We have a herd instinct that promotes leaders. We feel more comfortable when being led, with only a few psychotics feeling truly comfortable leading, hence a hierarchy where even leaders are led...
We see this even in the simplest and most primal gatherings where the aged lead with their years of wisdom.
Didn't we discuss the virtues of a system being led by 8yr olds, a few years back? It was an interesting and humorous thread
I don't think it can realistically work.
Same remark as above on "application". If it "works" it is more as a way or trend of change than as a stable system imo.
This must have been said a thousand times, but I do find some convergence between the network structure of the Internet age and anarchist thinking. Large power structures can no longer control information and communication, which might make an increasing number of people less easily "governable" in the long run. Meanwhile we gradually learn the skills to deal with each other without resorting to any central authority. Nobody can say which feedback this will eventually have on social, economical and political structures, but it is unlikely that there will be none. So far international capitalism rides the beast pretty well, but for how long?
Nark,
Anarchy does threaten the middle-class ideal of "security". But otoh the worst of history is the result of hierarchically organised systems. Wars and genocides are planned and organised from "above".
I agree 100%.
For untold hundred of thousands of years humans had no government, they say the land area we now call Iraq, was the cradle of civilization(maybe a not so correct term) or governments(empires) which no doubt had it roots in domination of humans thruogh fear, of attack, and the amassing of armies to gain control and the wealth of nieghboring cities and branching out more and more to the building of empires which have been won by killing on a greater scale than when there were just independant villages, and before that we as a speicies where hunter gatherers mostly rooming free.
The larger the land area that these rulers gained, the larger these armies had to become and the bigger the slaughter, and the greater the cuelty. They also brought us organized religion who catered to these rulers, and formulated doctrine to gain the rulers favor, and pronounce God's or the gods blessing and on them and make them blind to compassion as they carved out these empires.
