Brainpolice : Anarchism, Self-interest

Insurrection vs. Pacifism: A False Dillema

Brainpolice — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 02:34:00 GMT

There is a general traditional strategic split among anarchists between insurrectionary anarchism and pacifist anarchism. Insurrection is generally associated with either individual or public violent revolution, although if one wants to be specific it is etymologically linked closely with the concept of an "insurgent", and an "insurgency" could be seen as a spontaneous defensive response to an initial invasion by a political and/or military power (like the "insurgency" in Iraq, for example). On the other hand, pacifist anarchists completely reject any degree or kind of violence, likely viewing it as inconsistent and hypocritical, and this is more than just a strategic question for absolutist pacifists because they reject self-defense as a matter of principle.

However, it would be decieving to assume that these are the only two possible options. Reasonable arguments could be given against both of them and they could be constrasted from an explicitly "libertarian anarchism" that makes a clear distinction between defense and arbitrary violence. On one hand, pacifism can be criticized on the grounds that it doesn't make any room for defense and it consequentially leaves one in a submissive position relative to power; rulers aren't likely to just voluntarily give up their power, especially when there isn't even a moderate threat of resistance. On the other hand, the traditional violent revolution can be critisized on the grounds that it threatens to undermine the end that it is a means towards and often just leads to a vangaurd state; arbitrary violence contradicts the principles that one is "fighting for" to begin with and is not likely to lead to the goal of a free society.

For a hasty insurrectionist, violence is the first resort, while for a libertarian anarchist, violence is more of a last resort of defense in comparison (there is a difference between defending yourself in the face of a police state and simply taking people out arbitrarily), and the kind of measures supported by some insurrectionists definitely crosses well over the line of defense and into the realm of assassination and rioting. From a libertarian perspective, it is hard to see how simply storming city hall and shooting the place up like it's Duke Nukem is reasonable or consistent. Aside from the possible horrors that may be endorsed by an insurrectionist as a means, the main problem that an insurrectionist faces is the question of how to avoid the phenomenon of the revoltionists becoming the new power center. Instead of "the new society in the shell of the old", there are valid concerns about "the new power center in the shell of the old". While insurrectionary anarchism is contrasted from marxist vangaurd statism on a certain level, there still may be a context in which such a distinction essentially breaks down.

The conundrum of the pacifist is sort of the opposite one: namely, that when it does come down to a question of defending oneself in the face of aggression, pacifism constrains the individual to the point of powerlessness. There are certain situations in which peaceful resistance will simply be crushed with violence, and in this sense pacifism is simply suicidal as a strategy. While the argument that anarchism could only work if everyone in the world agreed or if everyone was perfectly peaceful is not valid, it may be valid as an argument against pacifism in the sense that pacifism offers no real means to counter violence when it comes down to the nitty gritty of situations in which people use violence; that is, it could be viewed as giving carte blanch power to those who do use violence precisely because organized resistance to it is prohibited to everyone else (by their own code even).

With that being said, this should not be construed to imply that violence is necessarily the only way to counter power - I think that is too pessemistic and Hobbesian of a view. There are numerous non-violent ways to counter power that can potentially have an effect, particularly if one is focusing on the long-term. At a meta level, the most basic of these ways to combat power is a matter of philosophy and ideas, by not allowing the ideological constructs of power to hold weight for you and to spread the demystification of such ideological constructs. On another level, another way to combat power is through a myriad of forms of civil disobedience, which can potentially be effective if the proper precautions are taken. There *is* a certain extent that there's a sense in which power is dependant on compliance or asequiesance, and power can be sterilized sometimes through sheer lack of consensus and compliance. And to put the matter in positive terms, one can combat power through association to foster competition with power and more of a degree of self-reliance that lessens one's unchosen dependancies on power.

However, one shouldn't take too idealistic of a view of the matter either. Power does not dissapear overnight and in some sense anarchism is inherently a long-term project. The traditional notion of revolution can be critisized for precisely this reason, I.E. that it naively expects a singular violent uprising to dissolve power. It doesn't really work that way. On the other hand, the notion of a purely peaceful process seems naive when one considers the likelyhood (or lack thereof) of those in power to cooperating with those who wish to dismantle their power. When it actually does come down to one being explicitly threatened with violence, it seems like violent resistance is essentially the only way to counter it, and a pacifist is simply a sitting duck in such situations for the obvious reasons already mentioned. This is why a "3rd way" makes more sense than either pacifism or insurrectionism.

The matter could be thought of in terms of an anarchist contextualization of Neitzsche's dichotomy between "master morality" and "slave morality". One could say that the masses tend to embrace and follow a "slave morality" that restrains them from engaging in self-assertion while those in power tend to embrace and follow a "master morality" that gives them free reign of self-assertion (although there is a sense in which this does not absolutely hold - there are people in power who genuinely believe in a "slave morality" but are working within an institution of "master morality", and not all of "the masses" believe in a strict "slave morality"), and the combined effect of this is that "slave morality" actually has the function of enabling the master class in that it tends to render the masses powerless by virtue of their own moral dogma.

But I would say then that the purpose should not be to expand "master morality" to everyone but to overcome and transcend both "slave morality" and "master morality". By analogy, pacifism is "slave morality" and insurrectionism is "slave morality" manifested as "master morality". In the context of the state, something like state-socialism could be seen as "slave morality manifested as master morality". The problem isn't restricted to "slave morality" but to the dualistic paradigm itself. "Master morality" as it is actually generally manifested in politics is an outwardly-oriented form of self-assertion in the sense of dominating the lives of others, which is not the same thing as a more inward form of self-assertion in the sense of genuine self-improvement or concern with one's long-range interest. So I would say that both "slave morality" and "master morality" suffer from the same fundamental problem; they are both, in some sense, not "properly egoistic".

Struggling With Max Stirner

Brainpolice — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 22:07:00 GMT

I have a great amount of respect for the near-forgotten figure Max Stirner. His ill-famed "The Ego and His Own" is probably the most radical, thought provoking and challenging writting that I have ever read. Not only did Stirner explicitly take an egoist position, question the very foundation of morality and critisize modern liberal secularism as not going far enough numerous decades before Neitzsche (and arguably manage to be even more radical than Neitzsche), but he did this as what many think is meant to be the logical completion of Hegel's project and during the same period as and loosely being associated through academia to Karl Marx and Engels.

The "young Hegelians" or "left-hegelians" such as Ludwig Feurbach and Karl Marx all had interacted with Stirner on a personal level in Academia prior to the release of "The Ego and His Own", and from their own perspectives they were trying to surpass Hegel. These young Hegelians came to take an explicitly atheist position, hence aschewing all of the overtly religious elements from the Hegelian project and shifting the emphasis more towards man or humanity. The end result tended towards some kind of secular humanism, and eventually communism as proposed by Marx and Engels (although the communism of Engels was arguably less collectivistic than that of Marx).

Stirner was a student of Hegel himself and passively participated in some of the interactions that took place among the left-hegelians. When he formally released "The Ego and His Own" it greatly shocked many of his collegues, since it took the Hegelian project in an entirely different direction and quite explicitly critisized the left-hegelians as only replacing the old godhead with a new one. Stirner did not critisize the left-hegelians on the grounds of their atheism, but on the grounds that they still cling to concepts that function in the same way as religion. From Stirner's perspective, they had not followed the logical progression far enough. The modern secular liberal had destroyed the basis for an incorporeal god but then proceeded to divinize earthly things and "humanity" in the abstract. In short, the cloak of power had only been secularized, not eliminated. The higher cause of the god had been functionally replaced with the higher cause of the state, the nation, humanity and all sorts of abstract concepts.

This realization of Stirner's and the period during which he realized it is not a trivial matter. Stirner's criticism applies about just as much to contemporary secularism now as it did when he wrote about it. Furthermore, the implications of what Stirner realized is more far reaching than a criticism of secular humanism, it has immense epistemological implications. Stirner effectively denied transcendentalism and rationalism long before anyone classified as a post-modernist did and he reached the conclusion of what by the very least is a strong nominalism using an egoist framework. Stirner had technically surpassed the entire enlightenment project by proclaiming that we should not be ruled by concepts. The enlightenment and secular humanist emphasis on the mind, from his perspective, was just as filled with "spooks" as religion. This is really just an extension on the phenomenology of mind.

While Stirner has been influential in one way or another on many anarchists (ranging from Benjamin Tucker to Emma Goldman) due to his rejection of the state and some of the aspects or implications of his egoism, he also rejected "morality", at least "morality with a big M", and critisized anarchists such as Proudhon for still clinging to morality. To be sure, Stirner seems to put the anarchist on a somewhat higher level because the anarchist doesn't accept the arbitrary authority of the law while the typical secular humanity or liberal still does, but he nonetheless critisized anarchism on the grounds that it still ultimately clung to a human-based morality. This is the point at which I personally start to struggle with Stirner, for while my own views on secular humanism and modern liberalism mirror his in many ways and I'm intrigued by the directions he took the phenomenology of mind, I am an ethical anarchist. That being said, the extent to which Stirner may really be an ethical nihilist is debatable.

Stirner also rejected the traditional notion of revolution, although this was actually picked up and adopted by many individualist anarchists. Certainly not all anarchists believe in violent revolution, revolution for its own sake or at least revolution in the same of a mere change of the seat of power (state-democratic revolution, if you will). So it's questionable wether this criticism should be interpreted to apply to all anarchists per se or wether the criticism is limited to anarchists. There are plenty of people who advocate violent and state-democratic revolutions who are not anarchists and most certainly only wish to change the seat of power, and there are plenty of anarchists who take either a pacifist stance or are generally not comfortable with the traditional method of revolution. If anything, Stirner's criticism could be applied as an anarchist criticism of political libertarianism.

If Proudhon is considered the first formal anarchist, Stirner is definitely the first formal egoist. To be sure, due to the implications of Stirner's phenomenology, Stirner was not an ethical egoist along the lines of Ayn Rand. There are different types of egoism, ranging from nihilist egoism to psychological egoism to ethical egoism. Nonetheless, it seems undoubtable that Stirner has been indispensibly influential on egoism in general, and he must have at least indirectly influenced Neitszche and Ayn Rand in one way or another. Whether or not Neitszche ever read Stirner (and even if he plagiarized him) is a controversy that hasn't been given a rest and has often been pushed under a rug, but I think it's rather undeniable given the historical period and academic connections that Neitszche must have read Stirner's "The Ego and His Own" at once point or another, and some studies have collected some fairly compelling evidence that he must have.

Stirner is not an easy person to classify. While he appears to very strongly oppose communism, democracy and humanism, there is no evidence to indicate that he was necessarily any more supportive of capitalism, conservatism and traditionalism. A knee-jerk response to Stirner from your average secular liberal may be to misunderstand him in such a way, but this is mostly due to cultural cliches and misunderstandings about egoism and individualism. But if anything, Stirner has surpassed all of these things from an egoist framework and as a consequence of his phenomeology. It is also possible for Stirner to be misunderstood as presenting a religious argument against atheism, but this kind of misunderstanding is only an affirmation of Stirner's criticisms of secular humanism.

The reason why Stirner has been pushed under the rug as a philosopher and figure in general, beyond the mere radicalness of his ideas by itself, largely has to do with Marx's own attempts to counter Stirner and all Marxist and post-marxist scholars more or less accepting Marx's line on Stirner. Marx obviously saw Stirner as a threat to his own project, and effectively denounced Stirner as a "petty burgouesie individualist". Very little criticism was directly aimed at Stirner's ideas, it was more of an emotional or knee-jerk reaction. The philosophical community in large part was either silent or dismissive of "The Ego and His Own". It was clearly far too radical for its time and even our time. But it's a shame that the reaction to Stirner has been to marginalize and ignore him, relegating him to a tiny little footnote in history. I highly suggest that anyone, anarchist or otherwise, read "The Ego and His Own" to challenge themselves and perhaps seek inspiration. Stirner most definitely is not irrelevant, and perhaps will become increasingly more relevant over time.

Re: Moral vs Hierarchical obligations

Brainpolice — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 18:23:00 GMT

The following is a response to this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoXjrlxDSL4

Dear Mr1001Nights,

Unchosen positive obligations are indeed slavery, which should be obvious because the obligations are not chosen. In claiming or bestowing unchosen positive obligations onto other people, you are the authority that must face a burden of proof. The person who claims that others have unchosen positive obligations to them is the one who must prove that others owe some kind of debt to them. In the absence of any objectively definable debt previously accured, the claim is absolute hogwash. To claim an abstract positive right to the servitude of others is to claim authority over them by definition. By all accounts, someone who must fulfill unchosen positive obligations is engaging in involuntary servitude. Involuntary servitude is slavery. Who exactly will enforce these unchosen positive obligations? Obviously everyone is not going to just willingly fulfill them, and when we really start to think more deeply about it, it is impossible for everyone to universally fulfill such positive obligations due to geographical problems and the availability of resources. So some individual or body of men is going to have to enforce these positive obligations, especially for those who resist and refuse to fulfill them. Hence, your system already requires a heirarchy from the get go.

Positive and negative rights inherently contradict eachother because negative rights implies that one is free from unchosen positive obligations imposed by others. The only obligation they could be said to impose is for others to leave one alone. Positive rights bestow an obligation onto people to serve others. Positive rights lead to claims of entitlement to the labor of other people. The enforcement of positive rights onto someone who is unwilling to serve others inherently constitutes theft or extortion from that individual. If Joe has an abstract "right to food", and Jack has food but doesn't want to give it up, their in order for Joe's alleged "right" to be fulfilled, either Joe himself or some agent or 3rd party acting on Joe's behalf must confiscate the food from Jack. Jack has no choice not to serve Joe and pony up the good.

By all accounts, in the type of society envisoned by market anarchists, there is nothing to stop you from joining together with your fellows who all agree to such positive obligations and to form a community by which you all strive to fulfill them. This would be perfectly fine because all of the people involved actually chose the obligations and believe in them. On the other hand, if someone in this society decides that they no longer favor such obligations, and they do not have any debt withstanding, they are free to opt out of your community and flock elsewhere. I don't know why it's so hard for you to understand that your type of society is only one possibility out of many that may co-exist in an anarchy, not some monolithic model that everyone must abide by. Luke12000 and others have tried to point this out endlessly to no avail. There is no reason why your ideal society cannot exist as one option out of many within a larger framework. Market anarchists are not imposing their preferential society on you, so it would only make sense to mutually extend the same "tolerance" back in the other direction.

The problem with the wage slavery arguement is that it applies to any society no matter what system or lack thereof is in place. No matter what system is in place, including socialism, resources are still scarce and material well-being still requires labor. Things must be produced, they do not just fall down like mana from the sky. It is therefore disingenuous to imply that "work or starve" only applies to a so-called "capitalist" society when it still applies no matter what type of organization a society is constituted by. "Work or starve" or "act or die" is not a human created set of choices, it is imposed by the necessities of nature itself. Humans must act in order to achieve the ends they desire. No social or economic or political system can make it so that some kind of production is not required for survival and material well-being. Put frankly, people can't just sit on their asses all day and expect to have prosperity and material wants, because these things must be produced. What system is in place is rather irrelevant to this fact. This reveals an interesting paradox: your ideal society can exist within a free market, but a free market cannot exist within your ideal society.

Another part of the problem with the wage slavery arguement is that it uses a nonsensical definition of coercion. In my understanding, coercion requires human agency, usually realized as a threat of force. But the wage slavery arguement implies that someone taking no action at all, specifically someone simply not giving their stuff or a piece of it to someone else, "coerces" that person into an unwanted circumstance. Noone actually physically forced you to work. Noone actually imposed starvation on you through their human agency. The negative circumstances created by a lack of productive action is simply a fact of life. Production requires human cooperation. One is perfectly free not to cooperate and not to produce, but in the absence of any mechanism that forces them to not cooperate and not produce, the negative circumstances that may come about as a consequence of this is truly no fault but their own, or, put somewhat more lightly, outside of their control and imposed by the inadequacies of nature. In either case, the wage slavery arguement is nonsensical in that it equates the inedequacies of nature to coercion.

As far as the concept of solidarity goes, human beings inherently are not in a state of absolute solidarity. Rather, human beings are incredibly diverse. Each individual is unique unto themselves. Uniformity in traits and preferences runs contrary to how we work as human beings. People have their own identities as individuals and their own self-interest. Self-interest, however, does not negate all cooperation. To the contrary, as psychological egoism demonstrates quite well, people cooperate out of mutual self-interest. It is an error to assume that everyone's self-interest inherently clashes at all times. It is in people's rational self-interest to cooperate and associate with eachother and engage in a generally peaceful manner. What I see as being amazing about organic society is that cooperation flourishes despite people's vast diversity and disagreement. An anarchist society is pluralist, not a uniform model for all of mankind. Market anarchism, when one actually understands it, is the exact same thing as anarchism without adjectives because it provides a framework by which multiple types of societies can co-exist.

Have a nice day.