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.