The "C" Word

“[…] raising the curse of poverty from society must become the transcendent objective of all men of good will.”

-Edward Bellamy

Communism. At this point in history this social-economic form has been an abject failure, and in the west we have a still standing, but comparatively muted, tradition of viewing anything associated with its concepts as base, ignorant, tyrannical or just plain Godless. Even though no country has successfully applied the tenets of communism the fault does not lie entirely with the ideas and practices it preaches, but with the dictatorships or autocracies that implement themselves as rulers during the often chaotic revolutionary period that served to uproot the old regime. There has never been a truly communistic state.

Anarchism serves as the political mate for communism’s economic principles of a classless society and common ownership of the means of production. The “State” is incompatible with economic equality, as the old adage says “power corrupts” and as long as there are governments there will be people with more influence, wealth and power than others. The one thing people with power want is more power.

There are many people in the world angry at capitalism and the financial inequality it inevitably breeds. This has been made obvious by the multitude of protestors occupying the streets and financial sectors. Why one man sits in a multi-million dollar mansion and another is struggling simply to stay out of the gutter is a question we are beginning to ask in mass. This has served to intensify interest in the ideas of socialism, and in smaller numbers, communism, and how these systems might improve the quality of living in a society still governed by the democratic process.

In 1887 the writer Edward Bellamy published the book Looking Backward: 2000 - 1887
a utopian novel about a wealthy man from the late 19^th century who, through the bizarre habit of sleeping in a hermitically sealed room, wakes up one morning to realize that he has been asleep for 113 years. The man finds that the America he knew from the 1880’s has transformed into a thriving socialist society where poverty has been eliminated. In a nutshell the book is told through discussions the man has with his guide, Dr. Leete, and others in the doctor’s household, about how the new society works and why the old society was destined to fail. It’s something like Rip Van Winkle…if it had been written by Karl Marx.

The book is far from flawless, although it proved to be very influential to the Marxist communities of the day, it is predominantly a utopian fantasy. When I originally read the book a year or two ago I was not impressed, it seemed no more than a dreamer’s dream of a perfect society governed by flawless, industrious people. But there was one concept that stood out to me; everyone, whether a doctor, government official, store clerk or an assembly line worker, received the exact same annual salary, or “credit” as it is referred to in the book, for their labor.

Originally I shared the sentiment of the main character when he exclaimed “Some men do twice the work of others! […] Are the clever workmen content with a plan that ranks them with the indifferent?” How can it be fair, no matter how hard one works or how valuable ones profession, to receive the exact same amount of money as anyone else. It wasn’t until recently when I came upon a Princeton University survey about happiness and money that I reevaluated the concept.

According to the survey 75,000 is the magic number when it comes to income. “The lower a person’s annual income falls below that benchmark [$75,000], the unhappier he or she feels. But no matter how much more than $75,000 people make, they don’t report any greater degree of happiness,” writes Belinda Luscombe in an article for TIME magazine about the study. The survey reminded me of Bellamy’s book when I thought to myself (and got out my calculator) “what if everyone received a weekly salary of $1,442? What sort of impact would this have on society if people were given the optimal salary to be happy, and would productivity in the industrial and business sectors rise, fall or stay the same?”

But once again the issue of fairness rears its head. Should a waitress really make $75,000 in a year, while the oncologist down the street working 60+ hours a week helping cancer patients is making the exact same amount? The issue revolves around the individual’s impact or importance to society. Usually our point of view focuses unconsciously on the microcosm, the individual job holder. The waitress’s job looks unimportant when presented next to the oncologist in the microcosm, but when viewing the whole of society, the macrocosm, the distortion fades out. What if there were no restaurants, so no waitresses, or grocery stores, so no cashiers to check out customers, or food distributors, and going a little further, no farmers. Individually the jobs of a waitress, cashier, wholesaler and farmer seem less important or prestigious than the oncologist, but without them there could be no oncologist since the person’s main focus now wouldn’t be on a health care career, but on finding food. Looking at the macrocosm of society the people, down to those running the cash register, involved in creating, distributing and selling food are as essential to the structure of civilization as a physician. Take out one element and the system has to restructure, or perhaps cannot function at all.

Without garbage collectors, truck drivers, manufacturers, store clerks, teachers, grunt laborers, construction workers, programmers, cooks, janitors, etc. etc. there would be huge gaps in society that would disrupt daily life enough that those in other careers would have to adjust, or even completely change, what they do. While these jobs lack the prestige of a surgeon, CEO or engineer, these latter three examples exist only because others, in the capacity of their employment, provide through goods and services the necessities that allow them to focus their energies elsewhere.

Society is like the human body. We often refer to the heart or brain and think of these organs as essential or more important than other parts, but without the intestines, bones, stomach, liver and kidneys, the heart and brain cannot function.

In his book Bellamy broached the subject of wage equality and how capitalism makes it impossible for the majority of society to receive a truly fair compensation for their labor or services.

“How […] can you adjust satisfactorily the comparative wages or remuneration of the multitude of avocations, so unlike and so incommensurable, which are necessary for the service of society? In our day the market rate determined the price of labor of all sorts, as well as of goods. The employer paid as little as he could, and the worker got as much.”

With capitalism society marches under the banner “your necessity is my opportunity.” Even though each part is necessary to the whole, they are not treated as such. As Bellamy pointed out, “the most perilous, severe, and repulsive labor was done by the worst paid classes…” If the argument against a universal standard wage is that it is unfair to certain professions, then why isn’t that same argument applied to the current system where the lowest paid people often work longer hours under more physical strain in potentially more hazardous conditions?

In a society organized under the principles of anarcho-communism compensation for work wouldn’t be dictated by a job title but by participation, the only requirement would be that each person work to the best of their abilities at the job they do, which, do to individual differences, would fluctuate greatly from one person to the next.

On a fundamental level humanity is essentially consistent. The argument that a greater number of people would make less of an effort at work if their compensation was guaranteed and unalterable seems unlikely. Undoubtedly those people would exist, as they exist today under the current system, but society will have its flaws in any form. The best we can do is organize ourselves under the principles of a system that allows the greatest amount of happiness, freedom and equality. Utopias do not, and cannot, exist, as their very name implicates (the word “Utopia” was coined by Thomas Moore in 1516 from the Greek words ou and topos, roughly translated as “not a place” or “nowhere”).

In the United States, as in many democratic nations around the world, we claim to value freedom and equality above all else. But those who have managed to grab onto power through their affluence and deception value only more money and power, while claiming to be champions of liberty. Communism, anarchism, socialism: they have become taboo words and concepts because of the fear the upper class has of a system in which it is impossible to become rich and grab power. Equality in compensation is not an idea at odds with our values, but one that embodies them at a higher level under the edict "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."

The New American Revolution: Occupy Wall Street

“In a society based on exploitation and servitude human nature is degraded.”

-Peter Kropotkin

Finding truth in media is like finding honesty in politics – it is there in small doses, but it’s hard to define and filter out from the subjective white noise droning through the airwaves and cluttering up popular publications. Searching for information on Occupy Wall Street, what it is and what it stands for, brings in results as varied as the protesters themselves. TIME magazine says one thing, radio pundits another, T.V. coverage finds a different angle (depending on the channel, and the channel’s corporate owner) and the internet is like a myopic game of bobbing for apples.

The information can be confusing and conflicting. Our poll-manic media has already released a number of surveys to establish how popular the movement is with Americans: the TIME/Abt SRBI poll claims 54% of Americans have a favorable view of the protesters, supposedly from a ‘random’ group of 1,001 people. Another survey found 59% are favorable, while the Wall Street Journal’s survey has only a 37% approval rate (no surprise there). Obviously each organization has its own opinion and the so-called ‘random’ groups being surveyed are probably randomly selected from subscribers of the publication, so a liberal leaning magazine like TIME will have more favorable results and the more conservative Wall Street Journal less so. Such polls are essentially pointless, as are most claims and ‘facts’ perpetuated by corporate media, no matter where their sympathies lie.

Trying to pin down an amorphous movement like Occupy Wall Street and present it in a specific light will serve only to make the matter more confusing. The protests are not about any single objective or idea, the best way to describe it is as the anger of the people at the vast inequality of this county come to a head.

The protestors have resisted forming a list of demands or any specific idea as a primary objective; they want it to remain open. It is a noble practice, preventing any small group involved in the protests from taking charge and speaking their opinions in the guise of the entire crowd’s opinions. It is a waiting game to see what impact, if any, will eventually come from the protests. That is one of the problems of the lack of specific demands, because the movement is more emotional than cognitive, what will the government do in response? Increase taxation on the wealthy? It seems unlikely that congress will pass any legislation to this effect. Another commonly heard protest associated with O.W.S. is that corporations, and the wealthy, have too much power is Washington. If that is true, appealing to Washington to end this practice is futile.

Anarchists were among the first to show up on Wall Street on 17 September. There are a few members of O.W.S. that say the President has become irrelevant, it is likely that the anarchists are the preachers of this doctrine. The depth and complexity of the bureaucracy that truly controls the U.S. government does appear to limit presidential power; the people, and not any branch or member of government, are the only ones with any true power to change the establishment. The only sure victory is if O.W.S. continues indefinitely and continues to grow.

The universal goal of anarchism is complete individual liberty. With corporate power growing (Mitt Romney is now referring to corporations as “people”), what limited liberty we currently enjoy, thanks to the founding fathers forethought in drafting a Bill of Rights, is under threat. The movement still growing on the streets could be the first step towards breaking the chains that government and an unrestrained free market forge to keep the populous in check. One of the definable objectives that all the occupiers share is that the wrong groups have too much power over this country, and that these groups have taken control of the American government with their bottomless well of money.

Occupy Wall Street has proven that the people are well aware of what is happening to this country, and that powerful minorities are halting the natural growth of society to their own advantage. The people are not as ignorant as these minorities like to fool themselves into believing. The people are not blind to these facts, and they are becoming very tired of it, and very angry.

While the government is bogged down in disputes and partisan bickering, and the President views O.W.S. as little more than a way to gain support and win another election, the people involved, walking the streets, not only in New York City, but in Oakland, Detroit, Bloomington, Hong Kong, Tokyo and other cities in the U.S. and around the world, are the ones working for change.

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Why the Constitution is Irrelevant, and the Bill of Rights is Indispensable

“It has been said that all of us are naturally anarchists at heart, - which is only to say that we all desire the largest possible personal freedom and the least possible external restraint.”

-Roger N. Baldwin

Much is often made of our “Constitutional rights” in political debates; it is a phrase evoked in the context of explaining the legal rights of Americans or to attack something that is considered contrary to these rights. The mistake in the usage of the phrase is in the content of the Constitution, which hardly mentions individual freedoms and instead establishes our government’s structure, term lengths, which branch has what powers, financial issues, etc. (transcript of the Constitution). The document that should actually be evoked is the Bill of Rights.

Technically, of course, the Bill of Rights (transcript of the Bill of Rights) is a series of amendments to the Constitution and therefore a part of it. But in our minds it is often seen and treated as a separate document, which in many ways it really is, or should be.

The Constitution without the Bill of Rights has little impact on individual liberties, nor is it the perfect document we are led to believe in grade school. The original document devised in 1787 actually had a section that limited personal freedom and supported the right to own slaves.

Article IV

Section 2

No person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

Most of us are familiar with the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857. We can criticize the Supreme Court’s decision that Scott had no rights as “a person of African descent,” but according to the Constitution, which the Supreme Court is supposed to view as the “law of the land,” they did exactly as they should have done, legally speaking. So the Constitution actually supported an extreme case of injustice by law. For 78 years this was an acceptable segment of the United States highest laws, until the passing of the 13^th Amendment of the Bill of Rights in 1865 which superseded that section of Article IV.

The entire purpose of the Bill of Rights was to prevent just such travesties from occurring; it is the true great achievement of America’s founding fathers that still resonates in the modern world. Before the Bill of Rights was drafted, some at the Constitutional Convention feared the central government would use the “laws of the land” to “open the way to tyranny.” Their fears were obviously justified.

The Constitution is irrelevant because its only purpose is to establish a form of government, and all governments, even republics, will suppress and trample the inherent rights of its citizens at some point. The United States government has even used its power to use the Bill of Rights, a document that’s purpose, by its very name, is to protect and uphold freedom, to take away certain rights they deem inappropriate or to use it to further the government’s own needs at the people’s expense.

Until the last 100 years the Bill of Rights was exactly as its name implied, but since 1913 the government has added new amendments that negatively affect people’s liberty. The 16^th Amendment was used to increase the central government’s power to levy taxes (no amendment that increases the government’s power is to the people’s benefit) and in 1919, the most famous amendment to take away freedom, congress ratified the 18^th Amendment which took away the right to sell and imbibe alcohol. This amendment is one of the main reasons we have large networks of organized crime flourishing in the U.S. to this day.

Recently there has been talk about another proposed amendment, this one used to legally establish a definition for marriage: one man and one woman. This amendment is obviously an attempt at conservatives to make gay marriage illegal in all states permanently. Definitions are the work of dictionaries, not laws. It seems the Bill of Rights, in the hands of a government, has lost its original intention to protect the people under that government’s authority and now is predominantly used to suspend certain freedoms that some elected officials believe should not be granted. They believe this as if they had the power to grant or take away freedom. That is a dangerous and slippery slope.

When taking into account the Bill of Rights, the Constitution seems like a superfluous document. The idea, during the time of the American and French Revolutions, that there should be a universal Declaration of the Rights of Man, is the lasting achievement of the enlightenment era. The evolution from monarchy to republicanism served a great purpose 230 years ago, but the evolutionary process is not complete and seems to have stalled because of the vested interests of a tiny minority of the population obsessed with greed and power. With anarchism the Bill of Rights still has a place in society; a universally accepted document that prevents one person, or group of persons, from suppressing others. That should be the “law of the land,” that there is no law besides universal freedom.

No Taxation Without…

[Andrew Carnegie] was a very great millionaire who proved that it pays to work hard and save your pennies. He was wrong, but that doesn’t make any difference. He’s dead now and he left us a chain of libraries which makes the working people more intelligent, more cultured, more informed, in short, more miserable and unhappy than they ever were, bless his heart.

-Henry Miller from The Colossus of Maroussi

With the ‘Buffet’ tax on the wealthy and the American Jobs Act in the news the idea of taxation and how it affects us is prevalent on many minds. A little over 230 years ago the United States began when the American colonies rose up and demanded “No Taxation Without Representation.” The idea that began our country was formed because of taxation, but the colonists didn’t hate the idea of taxation, only the fact that by English law they shouldn’t have been taxed without a representative in parliament, but were anyway.

Facing the reality of this nation’s current situation the proposed laws don’t seem like such a bad idea. When one man is raking in 100 million dollars a year and another is barely scratching by with 12 grand (the wonders of a free market system), it hardly seems like a travesty to force the first man to pay more. Our current necessities aside, the moral idea of taxation of any kind is a different story.

Taxation is theft. Legally sanctioned theft. We are not asked to pay for social works, not asked for financial support to fund government spending, we are forced by the threat of penalty. Democracies and Socialists justify taxation as a way to pay for public provisions like education, health care and other social welfare programs, which are the cornerstone of our ideas of modern civilization. Very good, even though we fund these programs today through these means it is amazing how ineffective they are, the state of the education system, health care, social security, etc. are somehow all in shambles and generally sub-par. This system obviously isn’t working. Taxation is a law violating our basic liberties. Without our consent part of our income is taken by the government for their own uses-which we have little, if any, say in. An entity forcing another to hand over money, whether they are willing or not, with the threat of force behind it is essentially the basic definition of theft.

I don’t believe this system can change overnight, as of today, and for the foreseeable future, it is a necessary evil. But that doesn’t change the fact that it is wrong and we should gradually move away from it. Moving into the future, one step at a time, the middle ground between our current federal government and free market economy and true anarchism (anarcho-communism) would be the mix of anarcho-capitalism.

Anarcho-capitalists believe in the balance of the natural laws of the market. Free markets take care of themselves and any government interference can only be negative. In other words, government is superfluous to the system we are currently in. The social works we depend on can be funded through a variety of different means, including voluntary contribution. This may sound farfetched to say people will voluntarily give up some of their income to fund these programs, but odds are, if you have the choice to give up a small percentage of your pay check to ensure you’ll have proper hospital care and your children will go to a good school, you’ll do so willingly. No laws demanding a certain amount, or threat of force, necessary.

Over 200 years ago our ancestors fought against taxation under certain terms. The world may be readying itself for the next leap to abolishing taxation. Instead of “No Taxation Without Representation,” our new slogan would be much simpler: “No Taxation…” It may still be somewhere in the unforeseeable future, but it is possible. People have been naturally organizing themselves for the entirety of known history. Governments have made us believe it is impossible to do so without them; in reality governments are a hedonistic excess that drains wealth instead of creating it.

The Problems of Prisons and Government Authority

I have never voted in my life…I have always known and understood that the idiots are in a majority so it’s certain they will win.
-Louis-Ferdinand Céline


Imagine it is sometime in the future; the United States no longer exists and in its stead no nation exists at all, but a thriving society, organized and peaceful without any central authority, laws or capitalistic markets.
This may be construed as a Utopian fantasy, and perhaps it is, there is no way to know for sure because no society to that extent has existed, at least not since before recorded history, but even then it is fairly safe to imagine mankind as a conglomerate of petty chieftains, warlords and the like. Is the idea of a society without laws, police, prisons and military feasible in any sense? The concept frightens most people, and for good reason. Logically when we think of the term ‘lawless’ it brings to mind chaos, thugery, unchecked murders and crime, so a lawless society must be a bad thing.
The truth is that so far anarchistic philosophers and theoreticians have not brought about any satisfactory answer to the question of dealing with what we’ll term as ‘anti-social’ behavior. Peter Kropotkin’s answer was that the system’s we are using now: prisons, capitalism, etc., breeds this behavior and crime is a result of it. People are inherently good and decent and if treated so will act so, the rare few that still behave to the contrary and commit offenses that harm others should simply be jointly excluded from society, not through literal banishment, but basically ignoring them to the extreme.
A charming concept, but its foundation lays completely on an assumption of what normal human behavior is and how it will adapt to this idea of society. I like the idea that inherently we are all good, and decent for the most part, but thousands of years of human history has shown us what humans are capable of, how far we can stretch greed and pettiness. The people that actually act this way are relatively few compared with the majority, but their effects can be far reaching and devastating.
Realistically the idea of a society without government, an anarcho-communistic society, still lacks complete practicality. What to do with those that still act as criminals, or anti-socially, has not been satisfactorally answered. While it is true that capitalism by its very nature creates crime, and an anarchistic society would greatly reduce the urge to commit crime by eliminating the "route of all evil," crime will always exist in some form. It is an issue that must be addressed.

Anarchy in the U.S.A.

The decisive moment in human evolution is perpetual.
-Franz Kafka

Anarchy is a name synonymous with chaos and disorder; either that or it’s a red ‘A’ spray-painted on the bottom of a skateboard or the angry phase-like pseudo-belief of a rebellious teenager listening to punk rock.

True anarchism is more akin, definition wise, to atheism. Atheism, which is often incorrectly categorized with religion, is in fact the lack of religion. Likewise anarchism is often associated with a political belief, but it can more accurately be described as the lack of a political belief. Anarchism, put as succinctly as possible, is society without government.

Those unfamiliar with anarchist theory and principles may find this idea as oxymoronic. Society, without government, cannot exist because there are no sets of enforceable laws, no central organizing authority, territorial boundaries, etc. What is a society without these seemingly fundamental elements? Again, it would seem to be deterioration into chaos and disorder - after all hasn’t the entirety of the known history of civilization been that of the progressive development of different forms of government: despotism, republic, feudalism, principality, monarchy?

Peter Kropotkin, a 19^th century Russian scientist and philosopher, developed a basic system of anarchistic beliefs he labeled as anarcho-communism. The name can be a little misleading today with the stigma still resonantly surrounding communism, which is almost exclusively thought of in the Marxian ideology or with the Bolshevik revolution. Anarcho-communism is the avocation of a stateless society where the means of production are in the mutual hands of everyone, not some central organizing party that distributes goods like the common view of communism, but directly.

The aim of this blog is to look at, in depth, the theories of anarchism, their relevance in the modern world and how technological developments, such as the internet, provide us with the practical necessities to lead society into direct democracy wherein government is not only obsolete and unnecessary but detrimental to the further development of society. It also aims to observe, as objectively as possible, how government institutions affect the lives of those that live among them.

Jon Bekken summed up these ideas: “the purpose of anarchist economics, indeed of any viable economic theory, was to satisfy human needs as efficiently as possible - to promote ‘the economical and social value of the human being.’”

The heart of the United States, its primordial ideal, what it was founded to believe in, was freedom. Anarchistic principles are the logical next step towards a truly free society.