Many would no doubt find the idea of “anarchist law” to be an oxymoron. One of the most common objections to anarchism raised by lay people involves the misperception that “anarchy” would be no more than a free-for-all on the part of brigands and criminals. Informed people know better although some anarchists do profess opposition to “law” rhetorically. However, this is simply a matter of semantics. With the possible exception of certain extreme Stirnerites, nearly all anarchists believe that such acts as robbery, rape and murder should be socially disallowed. It is not my aim here to outline a model for an anarchist crime control system as I have done that elsewhere.1 Instead, I want to address the broader questions of how anarchist legal institutions might be structured and what the content of anarchist law would be, along with the thorny matter of the presence of non-anarchist or non-libertarian ideological or cultural groups in a predominately anarchist society.

Unfortunately, the classical anarchists left this area of their respective ideological systems quite underdeveloped. Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin each indicate in their scattered writings that the inviolability of contracts would serve as the basis of an anarchist legal order.2 Each of these classical European anarchists claimed to oppose “The Law” as an institution. Yet each of them hinted that something similar to common or customary law would replace formal statist legislation following the demise of the state. Something akin to the modern libertarian notion of the “non-aggression axiom” is implicit in many of their comments on these matters. It is important to remember that Proudhon, et al. came out of what was largely a feudal society and were heavily influenced by continental European and, to some degree, classical Greek conceptions of justice, freedom and the like. The Anglo-American notions of individualism were largely absent from their culture. Some of their ideas in this area seem a bit muddled from the perspective of modern North American libertarian sensibilities.

Contemporary leftist-anarchists are hardly any help on these matters. The more articulate and thoughtful persons among their ranks generally claim to favor a social system that resembles nothing quite so much as a New England town meeting combined with economic arrangements closer in form to the Israeli kibbutzim than anything else with a prevailing egalitarian - humanist - multiculturalist - feminist - ecologist - gay liberationist - animal liberationist cultural ethos. I see nothing inherently “wrong” with this model although the way it is described it often sounds more similar to old-style British Fabian municipal socialism than any sort of actual anarchism. “Anarcho-social democracy,” as I call it.3 (3) On one hand an America composed of hundreds of miniature Swedens might well be preferable to the current system (at least World War Three would not be looming).4 However, given the fractiousness of left-anarchist groups, I doubt their ideal of “consensus-based direct democracy” could maintain much of an actual consensus for long. Also, given the infatuation with neo-Leninist “political correctness” displayed by many in this milieu, I suspect “direct democracy” would more closely resemble a synthesis of a Maoist self-criticism session and outright mob rule. Perhaps mob rule at the neighborhood level would not be all that pernicious.

Not surprisingly, it was the American anarchist Benjamin R. Tucker who had the most well developed conception of law of any of the classical theorists. His ideas on these matters were quite similar to those of modern free-market anarchists and, indeed, Tucker was a major influence on Murray N. Rothbard. Tucker did not reject “law” per se and accepted the possibility of prisons, torture and even capital punishment under an anarchist legal system. He seemed to favor something akin to common law juries and regarded what is now called “jury nullification” as the primary safeguard against potential oppression by legal institutions. Rothbard developed the idea of free market law much more thoroughly and modeled his system on non-statist legal codes from the past-Roman private law, medieval Law Merchant, admiralty law and British common law.5 Rothbard’s views on the proper application of libertarian law could be rather doctrinaire and the British classical liberal writer Geoffrey Sampson once speculated that Rothbard probably would have considered any deviation from his system to be a form of crypto-statism to be suppressed by force.6

Other anarcho-libertarian legal theorists including David Friedman, Bruce Benson, Randy Barnett, Morris and Linda Tannehill, Jarrett Wollstein, Hans Hermann Hoppe and George H. Smith have attempted to outline models for potential anarchist legal systems. Typically, this will include some scheme where private insurance agencies are the primary providers of crime control or “law enforcement” services with legal institutions resembling the private arbitration services currently in existence. This perspective seems to me to be as legitimate as any. However, critics of these schemes who suggest such a system might more closely resemble a form of industrialized feudalism than anarchism do not seem to be without some justifications for their arguments. Also, it should be remembered that one of the things that caused the anarchical Icelandic Commonwealth to drift into statism was the securing of a monopoly over protection services by a handful of individuals or families.7 Randy Barnett suggests that “Rights-Maintenance Organizations” might provide protection services in the same way that HMOs currently provide health care. However, HMOs are to a large degree oligopolies made possible by state intervention and the rate of consumer satisfaction with HMOs does not seem to be particularly high.8

A number of other possibilities exist. Some in the militia-patriot-constitutionalist movement have sought to set up “common law courts” as a parallel to the state’s legal system. There are some fairly solid ideas to be found in this milieu-opposition to victimless crimes, jury nullification, an emphasis on self-defense and victims’ rights, an implicit free market economy. Critics have expressed concern that such a system might result in vigilante violence and private lynching. Vigilantism is over-criticized in my view, and vigilance committees often served as a rather effective and beneficent force in the Old West and other frontier societies, yet the legacy of racist lynching and mob action at certain points in the history of the US is unfortunately still with us.9 The model of “participatory democracy” practiced by the ancient Athenians is sometimes praised by modern anarchists and libertarians.10 However, a closer look at the actual social structures of Athenian society shows a self-indulgent aristocracy that kept most of the population as slaves, relegated women to a similar status as that imposed by the Taliban and practiced military aggression against neighboring city-states and on the Mediterranean with its superior navy. The Athenian practice of choosing “leaders” through a random drawing of lots might be an interesting model to draw from, but it should also be remembered that it was Athenian democracy that sentenced Socrates to death, thereby souring his successors Plato and Aristotle on the very idea of democracy.11

Many traditional societies maintained a system where village or tribal elders were called upon to arbitrate or adjudicate disputes among members of the community but, as the anarchist anthropologist Harold Barclay points out, such systems amounted to a gerontocracy more than anything else.12 An anarchist society could theoretically develop a type of hereditary system whereby those trained in the mediation of disputes passed their skills and their position down through their line of descendants or where specially trained communities of scholars, kind of like medieval monks, served as ultimate legal authority. However, it should be easy enough to recognize that such arrangements could become the foundation for a caste system that could eventually evolve into a formal state. Coming back a little closer to institutions with which we are most familiar, a network of “protection and arbitration” cooperatives, modeled on contemporary neighborhood committees, homeowners’ associations and neighborhood watch programs, could potentially replace the state system. Yet neighborhoods and small towns alike are frequently known for their clannishness and intolerance of outsiders or non-conformists.

It appears that virtually any alternative to the modern state one can conceive of is not without its flaws. This in no way diminishes the viability of the anarchist critique. I believe any one of the models outlined above would be an improvement over the current police state and gargantuan bureaucracy. Even a return to blood feuds, dueling and formal bribery of the type still practiced in some remote areas of the world would not be particularly unattractive when weighed against the status quo.13 The current system is an abomination that all decent people should vehemently oppose. The US maintains the world’s largest prison population, with the worst prison conditions of any industrialized nation. Most of these people are imprisoned for “offenses” that are entirely arcane, esoteric, archaic or victimless. The US is second only to China in the number of its citizens it executes annually, many of them no doubt wrongfully convicted. When Republican governors begin commuting the sentences of death row inmates and even some law and order “conservatives” start to come out against capital punishment, we know something is seriously wrong. Murders of unarmed civilians at the hands of the police have become routine. Under the guise of the “war on terrorism”, a parallel totalitarian legal system is being created along Orwellian lines. Compared to what the future likely holds, a system of neighborhood-based mob rule, feudatories run by private defense insurance agencies or local gerontocracies with occasional vigilante lynching would be a veritable paradise.

Whatever the structure of anarchist legal institutions might be, this has nothing to say about the content of anarchist law itself. This would likely be a source of considerable controversy if the anarchist “movement” were to continue to expand. Most free market anarchists hold to some variation of the non-aggression axiom: “No one may initiate force against the person or property of another.” Immediately the conflicts between leftist and market anarchists become apparent. Many leftist anarchists consider virtually all forms of private property ownership to be a form of violence. I suspect many of these people would also regard any act or even opinion that could be construed as racist, sexist, homophobic, et al ad nauseum to be the equivalent of a violent crime as well. Leftist anarchist communities of this type would likely be enclaves of politically correct totalitarianism. As for other anarchists, there is the matter of defining “initiating force” and property rights. Most anarcho-libertarians recognize the right of self-defense but how far are self-defense rights to be expanded? Is a “preemptive strike” against someone who has repeatedly made credible threats but has yet to act ever justified? If someone murders a member of my family am I allowed to retaliate in whatever way I choose, or do I have to call the local protection cooperative or defense company, and summon the offender to a common law court? If someone threatens me with their fists am I allowed to defend myself with a gun?

As for the question of property rights, most libertarians favor defining such rights according to the dictates of John Locke or Murray Rothbard. This seems to me to be fairly arbitrary. The idea of property rights defined according to traditional usufructuary principles (occupation and use) seems equally valid. Why not define property rights according to the ideas of Henry George or Hilarie Belloc or Peter Kropotkin or G. B. H. Cole or Ronald Coase or, for that matter, Karl Marx or Gregor Strasser? What about property currently owned by the state or by “private” groups whose ownership is derived from state intervention? Who will receive the title to “public” roads and highways following the demise of the state? Private road maintenance companies? A motorists’ cooperative? Will neighborhood associations obtain the rights to streets in their own precinct? Will individual homeowners receive exclusive rights to the sidewalk in front of their residence? What about state-owned industries? Will these be taken over by the workers, sold to bidders on the market or forfeited to creditors? What if the creditor is a state-supported bank? Will government buildings and facilities become the property of former government employees, opened to squatters and homesteaders or turned over to organizations of those who consume their services? Can a village or community claim the right of “common property” to certain resources?14 Can corporations originally created or chartered by the state continue to claim property rights following the demise of the state?

Controversial social issues are equally difficult. The matter of children is particularly tedious. Is there going to be an “age of majority”? If so, what? Can runaways be forcibly returned to their parents? Until what age? Can parents sell their children to other families? Are sexual relations between adults and children going to be legally prohibited and, if so, what will be the age of consent? Can parents be held legally liable for the material neglect of their children? Would this not be a forcible redistribution of wealth? Can a man impregnate a woman and then refuse to provide any support for the resulting child? Do fathers have equal custodial rights to their children or are children the sole property of their mothers? Is abortion aggression or is a woman who desires an abortion simply exercising her property rights over her own body? Should animals have any legally enforceable protection? Or should even gratuitous cruelty to animals be beyond the reach of the law? How are criminals to be handled? According to the paradigms of retribution, restitution, restoration, rehabilitation or some combination of these? Is there ever going to be capital punishment? Is mercy killing ever acceptable and, if so, under what circumstances? Is drunken driving an act of aggression if no one is actually harmed? Has a crime taken place if someone attempts murder but fails to kill or even injure their intended victim? Is blackmail a form of extortion or the simple acceptance of payment for withholding information? Are acts of “consensual violence” such as dueling or Roman-style blood sports akin to “victimless crimes” such as drug use or prostitution or are these activities something entirely different?15 If someone sells me a television set I know is stolen am I a participant in a theft or an honest buyer of merchandise whose source is not my responsibility? Is “mental incompetence” ever a legitimate defense on the part of those accused of a crime? Of course, environmental problems provide many unique difficulties of their own.

More complications arise when the matter of the presence of “authoritarian” cultural or ideological groups in an anarchist society are figured into the equation. David Friedman speculates that anarchist legal institutions could even generate drug prohibition laws if public support for such laws was overwhelming enough.16 For reasons I will explain, I tend to be skeptical of this claim. However, it is quite likely that local communities would form that would enforce their own cultural, moral, philosophical or religious norms within their own ranks. These could include not only anarcho-socialists, anarcho-syndicalists or anarcho-capitalists but also anarcho-conservatives, anarcho-theocrats, anarcho-nationalists, anarcho-white separatists, anarcho-black nationalists or anarcho-monarchists (yes, all of these actually exist). Additionally, there would likely be territories or enclaves dominated by communists, nationalists, Nazis or theocrats as well as remnants of the present system. There might even be localities controlled by overtly criminal organizations. For example, sections of urban areas might come under the control of gangs following the disappearance of the state. Even this might not be wholly undesirable.17 Tribute rates tend to be lower than tax rates. I once met an anarcho-Satanist who insisted that in a stateless society contract murder and car theft would become legitimate, respectable professions. While it is theoretically possible that mafia-like organizations might develop their own courts and “defense” organizations that did not recognize their favorite forms of aggression as crimes, such groups of outlaws would still be opposed by nearly everyone else and would find themselves in a state of perpetual war against the rest of society.

At this point, one might be tempted to argue that the kind of pluralistic anarchism I have described here could end up more closely resembling Beirut circa 1984 than any sort of social system conducive to freedom, prosperity and peace. However, I doubt this would be the case. The ideas of decentralization and voluntary association that are central to anarchist thought imply that those with common beliefs and values will naturally drift towards one another and engage in mutual self-segregation with those whose views are incompatible with their own. We see elements of this even in the current system. Some states have capital punishment, others don’t. Gambling is legal in some localities and illegal in others. The “age of consent” is thirteen in some states and eighteen in other states. Some remote counties even continue alcohol prohibition. The primary disadvantage of decentralization is the persistent threat of tyranny of the majority. Kirkpatrick Sale notes that is will always be difficult to be the black in the white supremacist community, the Nazi in the Jewish community or the atheist in the fundamentalist community.18 The antidote to this problem is the relative ease with which persons who is outcast in a particular community can migrate to a more hospitable community, or perhaps form their own community, in a decentralized system.19

To some degree, the current international system is a “state of anarchy.” America, China, Saudi Arabia and the Netherlands all have radically different cultures and social systems. Yet persons from each of these nations regularly travel to other nations and maintain personal or business relationships with others of completely different belief systems or cultural backgrounds. Secular, democratic, capitalist America regularly exchanges people and goods with theocratic, monarchical, feudal Saudi Arabia. I suspect that a particularly effective anarchist method of eliminating the persecution of some social groups by others would be the abolition of state-organized, tax-funded police, courts and prisons. Under the present system, the state seeks to expand its power by aligning itself with private power groups seeking to use the state to repress their ideological, cultural or economic competitors. The “process costs” and “enforcement costs” of such state actions are then passed on to the whole body of taxpayers and distributed throughout society as a whole. When this avenue is closed off, those seeking to attack others will simply have to pay for such efforts themselves. No matter how much some people may disapprove of guns or drugs, how many of them would be willing to pay the salaries of DEA or ATF agents out of their own pockets? Economic incentives would likely restrict protection services and legal institutions to the chores of settling interpersonal contractual or common law disputes and the repression of serious crimes. Consensual activities and even some “petty” crimes would largely be ignored or handled by means of informal sanctions. For example, the simple apprehension and expulsion of shoplifters from retail outlets without formal legal prosecution. Coercive enforcement of cultural mores would largely be impossible beyond the neighborhood level.

Hayek concluded that the hallmark of totalitarian law is not so much its brutality as much as its arbitrariness. This describes the legal regime that currently rules over us rather aptly. Orwell once remarked that the perfect totalitarian state would be a formal democracy where thirty percent of the population lived directly or indirectly off of the government. This too has a ring of familiarity about it. The only good thing about Leviathan states is that they eventually collapse under their own excess weight. When the American Empire finally dissolves, perhaps pluralistic anarchist law will be given a chance to thrive.

The Politics of Keith Preston

A reader writes asking me to briefly describe what my own political views actually are. My views are rather complicated and are certainly outside the paradigms and narratives that most people are familiar with. It’s rather difficult to attempt a brief description of all that but here’s a try:

I consider anarchism, libertarianism, and anti-state radicalism in their myriad of forms to be an evolving form of generalized political radicalism in the same way that classical liberalism evolved in the 17th and 18th centuries and classical socialism evolved in the 19th and 20th centuries. I consider these modes of thought rooted in critiquing and opposing the state to be the probable next wave of radicalism that continues the trajectory rooted in Enlightenment rationalism, liberalism, and socialism.

This evolving anti-state radicalism in its mature form will have the same relationship to the Left that classical socialism had to the classical bourgeoisie. Just as 19th and early 20th century states were a hybrid of feudalism and capitalism, an overlap of traditional society (the “old order”) and liberalism, modern states are a hybrid of capitalism and socialism (liberalism fused with social democracy and the managerial revolution). Just as the historic socialists, like Marx, regarded the liberal bourgeoisie rather than the conservative aristocracy (which was a dying force) as their primary enemy, I regard the historic Left (which is now the status quo in all Western industrialized countries) as the primary enemy as opposed to the historic bourgeoisie, “conservatism,” or, in the case of the USA, the dying traditional WASP elite.

Just as classical socialism was a myriad of sects and philosophical tendencies that eventually coalesced into a political mass movement, the varying sects and philosophical tendencies that today comprise the anarchist, libertarian, and anti-state milieus will eventually coalesce into an actual mass movement. We see some of that in a very embryonic form at the present time.

Theoretically, I’m a synthesist in the tradition of anarchists like Voline or an “anarchist without adjectives” like Voltairine de Cleyre who favors creating a united revolutionary front of anti-state radicals from across the sectarian spectrum on the model of Spain’s historic FAI. This anarchist front will then fill the role of what Bakunin called “principled militants” who are the leadership corps of a much larger populist movement with an anti-state, anti-imperialist, and anti-ruling class orientation. In North America, this radical populism would be oriented towards organizing what I have elsewhere identified as the “ten core demographics” that would be our natural constituents and the vast array of anti-state or marginalized political, social, and economic tendencies I have identified as part of the “liberty and populism” strategy. The primary tactical position of this anarchist-led anti-state populism movement would be what I called “pan-secessionism” i.e. secession by regions, cities, towns, and communities from centralized national regimes and the global plutocratic order in a way that cuts across conventional cultural, economic, ethnic, religious, linguistic or political boundaries. As no state steps down without a fight, the anarchist and anti-state revolutionaries will eventually need to achieve victory through “fourth generation warfare” i.e. an insurgency on the model of groups like Hezbollah or the Peoples War Group.

While the strategy outlined above was designed primarily for North America, some modified variation of it as well would likely be applicable in the struggle against other states and empires, i.e. the EU, PRC, etc.

Beyond this very general task of overthrowing states, empires, and ruling classes, there are also many other secondary or wider projects to pursue, of course. These include creating an alternative social infrastructure that will replace the functions currently assumed by the state (e.g. health care, social services, education, transportation, and et. al.), alternative economic arrangements to replace business corporations, state bureaucracies, and the international financial apparatus, and many single-issue and population-specific tasks to engage in.

Note than none of this has anything to do with wider philosophical orientations. While I am a Nietzschean, there are many others with politics similar to my own who are Kantians, Lockeans, Hegelians, utilitarians, contractarians, implicit Marxists, or who have some kind of religious or mystical perspective.

Nor does any of this have anything to do with specific opinions on contentious public issues like abortion, the death penalty, immigration, religious beliefs, sexual morals, race relations, gender norms, animal rights, etc. There are anti-state radicals on all sides of these kinds of issues. My view is that disputes of this type should be handled by invoking the wider anarchist principles of individuality, decentralization, federalism, mutual aid, and free association. This means that social, cultural, or moral conflict should be a matter of individual freedom, free association to form groups of individuals with like minded values, pluralism, and peaceful co-existence to the greatest degree possible. To the degree this is impossible (for instance, there’s no reconciling the views that abortion is child genocide or that abortion is a sacred inalienable right), we should invoke the principles of decentralization, secession, local autonomy, and mutual self-separation of those with irreconcilable differences (like a divorce).

An Interview with Keith Preston

This is an interview I recently gave to a journalist who is writing a book on political undercurrents in the U.S.

Can you tell me a little bit about the American Revolutionary Vanguard and what it stands for?

American Revolutionary Vanguard was founded in the late 1990s by a coalition of anarchists in the North American anarchist movement who wished to pursue a different direction from what was the norm among anarchists in North America at the time. The rest of the anarchist movement was usually oriented towards promoting one of three perspectives: countercultural lifestyle concerns (ranging from veganism to alternative sexuality to squatting to punk music and bicycling), or a kind of clichéd ultra-leftism of the kind that had been developed by Marxist-Leninist and Maoist tendencies within the New Left (such as an emphasis on “white skin privilege” and radical feminism), or old-guard anarcho-syndicalism that had been influenced by early twentieth century syndicalist tendencies such as the Industrial Workers of the World.

We wished to pursue an entirely new direction which would be oriented towards uniting all forms of anarchist, decentralist, libertarian, anti-state, and anti-authoritarian thought around the common purpose of abolishing the state and decentralizing power towards the level of the natural community, and forging a society-wide consensus for this purpose. Much of what we did at the time was a bit tongue in cheek as well. For example, our original name, American Revolutionary Vanguard, doesn’t really mean anything. The word “vanguard” is something of a taboo in anarchist circles because of its association with the Marxist-Leninist idea of the “vanguard party.” So we always claimed we were trying to reclaim the good name of the word “vanguard.” Ironically, back then many in the anarchist milieu were suspicious of us and thought we were Communists, but now we’re more likely to be mislabeled as fascists. But the original purpose of American Revolutionary Vanguard was the same as it is now: the formation of an anti-state front.

Can you explain a bit about pan-secessionism and what it means to your philosophy?

Pan-secessionism is a tactical concept that involves the actual application of our philosophy to real world political events. Simply put, our goal is for smaller political and economic units to secede from larger ones. State and provinces would secede from national governments, and cities and communities would secede from states and provinces, all the way down to the neighborhood level. “Power to the neighborhoods” is a common slogan we like to use towards this purpose. Presumably, there could be a parallel economic secession where local and regional branches of industries and managerial units secede and begin to practice autonomy and self-management as well. The concept of pan-secessionism has its roots in two basic ideas. One is the idea of political secession in the form of regional or local autonomist movements such as those currently found in Scotland, the Basque and Catalan regions of Spain, in multiple regions of the US, in Palestine, Tibet, Chechnya and many other places. In the United States, this is a particularly relevant concept given that the United States was essentially founded as a secession of the original thirteen colonies from the British monarchy.

The other idea which has influenced the concept of pan-secession is the old anarchist idea of the “general strike.” The notion behind the general strike is that workers establish control over production by means of a mass strike that turns into a popular revolution.

The old anarcho-syndicalist labor organizations like the IWW and the IWA used to advocate for this idea in the era of classical anarchism. However, the concept of pan-secessionism takes this idea much further and advocates a general strike not just in the industrial sectors, but a popular strike against the state and its institutions altogether in the form of regional and local secession, a labor strike, a tax strike, a tenants’ strike, a students’ strike, and a military strike, in such a way that ruling class institutions are completely undermined.

In certain segments of our population it is cool to say that one is an anarchist. I know some people that call themselves “anarchists” but yet pay their taxes, follow established laws, and generally do what the government tells them to do. Is it possible to be an anarchist and also follow the established rules of one’s government?

Anarchism is a philosophy that advocates for the abolition of the state, not a prescription for how one should live within the context of a state-saturated society. Some anarchists choose the route of becoming what have been called “illegalists” and act in open defiance of the state and its laws and commands. Others prefer to live within the system and work for more piecemeal reforms, or simply try to obtain the maximum degree of individual or collective self-sufficiency possible given the circumstances. No one way is the correct way. Instead, it is best for there to be different kinds of anarchists working to undermine the state in many different ways. There are many different ways in which anarchists go about fighting the state. At present, some anarchists in the Kurdish region have formed militias that are involved in direct armed resistance to ISIS and have formed a quasi-anarchist community in Rojava. Other types of anarchists have formed intentional nations like Liberland, and others are working through unconventional political parties like the Pirate Party, and still others are engaged in direction action around such concerns as environmental preservation. The best approach for anarchists to take towards these questions would be to let a thousand flowers bloom.

It is obvious to most thinking people that our current system is way too wrong to last, but still the vast majority of people do not take anarchy seriously. What are today’s anarchists doing wrong? What needs to happen to change that? Is there a place for violence?

Most people are not anarchists because anarchists have not yet succeeded at the task of educating others about anarchism to the degree necessary for a popular consensus in favor of anarchism to develop. Our goal should be to grow all forms of resistance until these collectively become a political majority, and then a super-majority, along with the overarching strategic concept of pan-secession and other related ideas. But this is something that takes a great deal of time, and patience is very much in order. The idea that the emperor is to be worshipped as a sun-god did not disappear overnight, nor did the idea of divine right of kings. The false abstractions that are used to justify modern states will not disappear immediately either. However, we as anarchists should be working to undermine and destroy the false pieties that are used to uphold modern states such as the idea of the social contract, the idea that the state is somehow a protector of natural rights or human rights, the idea that the state is somehow based or could ever be based on the idea of popular sovereignty or some kind of mythical general will, and the idea that a mere 51% vote legitimizes whatever a particular state wishes to do.

Instead, we need to promote recognition of the fact that the state is merely a “robber band write large” as St. Augustine said over 1500 years ago. The purpose of the state is to monopolize territory, control resources, exploit subjects, protect an artificially privileged ruling class, and expand its own power. Other claims on behalf of the state are merely evasion and obfuscation. It might be said that the state is merely a mafia with a flag, and a far more insidious institution than the mafia given the much greater level of destructiveness and deceptiveness. Our ambition as anarchists should be to develop a social consensus towards the viewpoint that the state is no more legitimate than slavery or the divine right of kings and other such ills that existed in the past.

As for what today’s anarchists are doing wrong, many anarchists have put the proverbial cart before the horse in the sense that their primary focus is on many of the things that we decided were a distraction from the building of a social consensus towards anarchism when we started American Revolutionary Vanguard nearly twenty years ago. Many anarchists have allowed themselves to become absorbed by so-called “progressivism” and consequently are no more effective at challenging the legitimacy of the state than ordinary political tendencies that accept the state as a matter of principle or presumption. Many anarchists are merely activists around popular social issues, or promoting countercultural lifestyles, and consequently have lost sight of the wider picture that involves the need to forge a consensus towards the abolition of the state.

An excess of sectarianism also exists among anarchists. The anarchist movement is largely divided into multiple hyphenated tendencies such as anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, anarcha-feminism, anarcho-primitivism, anarcho-collectivism, anarcho-capitalism, egoist anarchism, and many, many other tendencies. It would be preferable for anarchists to attempt to find ways to move past these sectarian ideas and find common principles around which anarchists can unite, and common issues through which anarchists can broaden their appeal to larger numbers of people. As for the question of violence, that is a subject on which anarchists do not agree and have never agreed. In the past, there have been anarchists who used terrorist methods to advance their ideals, and other anarchists who are pacifists. I lean towards the idea that different kinds of tactics are appropriate or necessary in different kinds of circumstances.

Another word other than anarchy that gets thrown around without people knowing what it means is “fascist.” I have read a few articles that claimed your pan-secessionism tends towards fascism and white nationalism, can you shed any light on that?

Fascism is a concept that has absolutely nothing to do with either anarchism, as a political theory, or pan-secessionism as an anarchist tactic. Fascism is an idea which proclaims “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state” which is how fascism was described by its founder, Benito Mussolini. Clearly, this is the polar opposite idea of anarchism which seeks to abolish the state. Fascism and Nazism are totalitarian ideologies of the Right just as Marxism-Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, Pol Potism and Kim’s Juche Idea are totalitarian ideologies of the Left. But anarchism stands resolutely opposed not only to totalitarian manifestations of the state but to the state in any of its manifestations.

The concept of nationalism is also viewed with suspicion by anarchists because historically nationalism has been used to justify statist oppression, imperialism and inter-state warfare, and nationalism continues to be used for these purposes in some instances. However, there are also people who call themselves anarcho-nationalists, tribal-anarchists or national-anarchists who will affirm the legitimacy of nations, regions, and communities based on a shared culture, language, ethnicity, heritage or religion while denying the legitimacy of the state or the exploitation and cooptation of these things by the state. An example is the way in which the Native American and First Nations tribes, the Australian aboriginals, the Kurds, Tibetans, and many other identifiable population groups are nations but not a state. An even bigger controversy among anarchists involves the idea of whether European or Caucasian ethnic groups can have legitimate claims to identities of these kinds given the past legacy of the European states in perpetrating colonialism, imperialism, the slave trade, ethnic cleansing of indigenous people, apartheid, world wars, and the Holocaust.

While there is strong disagreement among anarchists on this question, I hold to the view that anarchism should recognize the principles of self-determination for all, including all ethnic groups, cultures, religions, nationalities, regions, and communities, and for people of all races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, and lifestyles. There are also anarchist tendencies representing black or African-American anarchists, Zapatista anarchists, native or indigenous anarchists, Buddhist anarchists, Christian anarchists, pagan anarchists, and Islamic anarchists. For this reason, anarchists should give those anarchists who identify with some kind of European ethnicity, culture or religion their seat at the table as well. This the perspective that I believe is most compatible with the ideals of anarchism as a movement that stands in opposition to statism, capitalism, imperialism, aggressive war, and authoritarianism, and which upholds individual liberty, decentralism, voluntarism, federalism, mutual aid, cooperativism, syndicalism, communitarianism, pluralism, human scale institutions, intellectual freedom, free inquiry, free speech, and freedom of association.

The Cat is Out of the Bag

When the future history of the former United States of America is written, the pivotal turning point that likely marked the downfall of the USA will be the events of September 11, 2001.

The United States emerged from World War Two as the most powerful nation-state in the world, rivaled only by the second-rate Soviet Union. American hegemony and dominance spread throughout the world as the countries of Western Europe became protectorates of the USA, and the colonies of the former European colonial empires in Asia, Africa, and Latin America became U.S. client states.

However the postwar era and the late 20th century were also a time of anti-colonial insurgency, leading the U.S. to get bogged down in the anti-colonial war in Indochina and eventually experience defeat. This had the effect of de-legitimizing U.S. militarism to a great degree. For example, the military draft disappeared after Vietnam never to return, and the U.S. has not embarked on a military effort on the level of Vietnam since.

Meanwhile, the unprecedented levels of economic prosperity that the U.S. achieved during the postwar era began to dwindle by the early 1970s. Multiple factors contributed to this ranging from the growing economic power of trade rivals such as Germany and Japan which had originally been cultivated as export markets by the U.S. following their defeat in WW2, to the rise of neo-liberal economic ideology which has contributed to an increasingly widening gap between social classes in the subsequent forty years.
Another was the ongoing growth of the global economy, and the implementation of a variety of economic policies too numerous to mention that have led to either stagnation, inflation, unemployment, excessive credit expansion, or other economic ills. This has been a lengthy and cumulative process that has occurred over a period of four decades, but whose effects were really only seriously realized by the Great Recession of 2007-2008, and the ongoing economic deterioration and class polarization that has occurred since then.

The events of September 11, 2001 were pivotal because they had the effect of luring the United States into two wars that proved to be lengthy, costly and tiresome, with de facto defeat being the end result.

These military defeats were being experienced during the same time that the economic downturn was dramatically escalating. Further, the forty year escalation of the domestic police state that began with President Richard M. Nixon’s initiation of the “war on drugs” continued to expand into a general war on crime, guns, gangs, terrorism, and other more obscure and seemingly innocuous categories. This had the effect of allowing state repression to grow the point where it began to impact not only traditionally marginalized populations, but strands of “Middle America” as well (particularly the rural gun culture). Meanwhile, incarceration rates have reached record levels in U.S. history and on a worldwide basis.

This has had the effect of de-legitimizing “the system” across the board. Now, every major institution consistently maintains a negative approval rating. Meanwhile, political opposition movements have begun to grow, both in the mainstream society and on the margins. The Tea Parties, Occupy Wall Street, and the Ron Paul libertarian/anti-Federal Reserve movement are examples of mainstream opposition politics. The militia movement, which is now larger than it was during its supposed 1990s heyday, and the recent riots in Ferguson are examples of opposition emerging from the margins. Further, movements with a radically anti-state bent are continuing to grow and develop, including anti-capitalist anarchists, libertarianism in all its forms, the right-wing patriot movement, and the sovereign citizens. All of these movements have grown substantially in the past decade, as have new movements with a serious contrarian stance such as the so-called “neo-reactionaries.” Additionally, opinion polls now say that 1 in 4 Americans would favor the development of a secession movement in their region or locality. This is up from 1 in 6 in 2008, and would have been unthinkable 20 years ago.

This is also a time a rapid cultural, generational, and demographic change. Caucasian-Americans, the historic ethnic majority of the United States, are now only two-thirds of the U.S. population, down from 90% a half century ago. Mass immigration will insure even greater demographic change in the future. Same-sex marriage, an unthinkable concept a generation ago, is well on its ways to being legalized in every state and culturally normalized.

Support for military intervention is now at an all time low. The fastest growing religion in America is now non-religion. Opinion polls even indicate that public opinion is turning against the war on drugs. Support for marijuana legalization now has a majority, and opposition to the mass incarceration state is growing on the Left and Right. Meanwhile, domestic political conflict within the U.S. is becoming increasingly hostile, polarized, and lacking in civility. Cultural leftists are becoming ever more fanatical and social conservatives are becoming ever more militant in their opposition.
It is unlikely that very many of these trends will be reversed in the foreseeable future (or ever). Perhaps none of them will be reversed.

The result of this situation that is likely to emerge in the years and decades ahead is one where an increasingly diverse society begins to fracture on a very significant level. While U.S. military intervention overseas will likely decrease due to its increasingly cost prohibitive nature and lack of popular support, domestic repression will likely continue to increase.

The wider society will become ever more diverse and multicultural. The prevailing cultural trends will lean leftward in every major area, but the socially and culturally conservative opposition will continue to become increasingly militant, and extremism from the Left will become increasingly prevalent as well. Deep cleavages will emerge in society along racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, and geographical lines. Class divisions will continue to widen and the ranks of the poor, unemployed, and homeless will continue to grow.

The middle class will continue to shrink. Wealth will continue to become concentrated at the top and pockets of Third World levels of poverty will increasingly appear in North America. Meanwhile, millions of young adults will discover that their worthless degrees in cultural anthropology and gender studies are just that…worthless.

More and more adult, middle aged and elderly people will be working in bars, restaurants, retail chains, and fast food outlets. More young adults will be living in their parents’ basements, and more elderly people will be living with their adult children.

Meanwhile, everyone will be ruled over by a political class that no one likes or respects. Government will increasingly be seen as oppressive, unreasonable, and incapable of accomplishing anything. Opposition movements will continue to appear both in the mainstream and on the margins. Breakaway movements will continue to pop up in regions and communities as the state continues to lose its legitimacy. Meanwhile, the BRIC axis will be rising on the international level and challenging American hegemony. Then there is the potential impact of pending ecological crises, and various wild cards that will likely emerge from rapid technological expansion.

The cat is out of the bag. Hold on, folks. The roller coaster ride is starting to begin.

The Coming Golden Age of Anarchism

It is not unreasonable to suggest that the decades ahead will witness the unfolding of a golden age of anarchism. What is the evidence for this?

The most powerful state in the world, the United States, the mother country of the empire, is slowly losing its internal legitimacy and serious political discontent is beginning to rise.
Antiwar sentiment in the United States is at an all time high. War fever could rise again in the event of a war with ISIS or Iran, an intervention in Syria, or a confrontation with Russia. But none of these scenarios would turn out well for the United States in the long run. Instead, the state would continue to lose its legitimacy and antiwar and anti-imperialist feeling would come back on an even stronger level.
Class divisions are the widest they have been in a century in the United States. This all but guarantees the re-emergence of class-based politics at some point in the future. Proponents of alternative forms of decentralist economics will then begin to find a ripe audience for their ideas.
Public opinion is slowly turning against the police state, prison-industrial complex, and the war on drugs. Sentiment of this kind will likely begin to grow exponentially in the future. It is likely that resistance to domestic American fascism will be the civil rights movement of the 21st century.
One in four Americans are now sympathetic to secession by their region or community, and these sympathies will probably increase as the system begins to deteriorate.
One in four American adults now has a criminal record due to over criminalization. This can only have the effect of undermining respect for the state and its legal decrees.
The idea of the state as the savior of humanity is an idea that is coming under increasing disrepute. The fiscal debts alone of modern welfare states likely guarantee their ultimate demise.
National patriotism is on the decline everywhere in the developed world, and citizens are rarely if ever willing to make sacrifices on behalf of the states that rule over them.
Traditional forms of out-group hostility are increasingly unpopular and socially unacceptable, particularly among younger people, making it difficult for states to legitimize themselves on the basis of appeals to national, racial, cultural, or religious chauvinism.
Past liberation movements for traditional out-groups have opened the door for the development of still more liberation movements.
We are observing in the United States the gradual emergence of a libertarian-oriented “grey tribe” as a third force in opposition to the conventional state-centric “red” and “blue” tribes.
The rapidly accelerating demographic change in the United States will render it increasingly more difficult for the United States to cohere as a continent-wide centralized regime, and to maintain control over an increasingly diverse society.
The rise of the fourth generation warfare model is having the effect of undermining the legitimacy of states on a worldwide basis.
The growing rift between the political class, and the military and law enforcement class, is having the effect of undermining the morale of the latter, and their loyalty to the former. Increased diversity within the ranks of the police and military will undermine the cohesion of those institutions.
Technological innovations ranging from 3-D printing to crypto-currency will make it increasingly easier to evade the state in a variety of ways.
The internet is allowing for the proliferation of an ever greater variety of independent media outlets, and is allowing information consumers to have access to an ever greater variety of sources of opinion.
Anarchist and related or overlapping movements are continuing to grow at a significant pace in part because of the availability of social media and contemporary communications technology.
Electoral participation continues to continue thereby undermining the legitimacy of the state’s coronation process.
Growing concern about environmental difficulties will increasingly expose the inability of governments and corporations to effectively protect and preserve the environment.
The adoption of totalitarian humanism as the self-legitimating ideology of the ruling classes will undermine the loyalty to institutionalized authority of those sectors that are normally the most conservative, and most likely to, for instance, join the ranks of the military and the police.
Very timid opposition or protest movements have already appeared in the form of Occupy, the Tea Party, and the Ron Paulistas. These will be prototypes for much more radical movements in the future.
The totalitarian humanist ruling coalition is inherently unstable, and ultimately has no unifying thread other than opposition to traditional W.A.S.P. hegemony. Eventually, this coalition will crack due its own internal contradictions.
The state-centric Left will be increasingly discredited and people who want to rebel against society will ultimately have nowhere to go other than to libertarianism (of some kind) or to fascism. However, fascism maintains a level of social standing that is frequently comparable to that of pedophiles. This is not likely to change in an increasingly diverse society. Therefore, its growth potential is minimal.
The excesses of totalitarian humanism will likely provoke a right-wing backlash in the future. Such a backlash may well be necessary. However, the prospect of fascists becoming genuinely competitive in Western politics at any point in the future is very remote. Even the populist-nationalist parties of Europe have had to moderate their ideology, rhetoric, and tactics to a great degree in order to obtain electoral legitimacy.
The excesses of totalitarian humanism are indeed troublesome, but already opposition movements are beginning to rise in the form of such tendencies as the men’s rights activists, the dark enlightenment, and the neo-reactionaries. It is highly unlikely that these opposition movements will grow to dominant status, but they may fill the necessary role of obstructing the worst ambitions of the totalitarian humanists. Meanwhile, totalitarian humanism increasingly gives the appearance of being criticized in leftist and libertarian circles as well.
The appearance of a libertarian-oriented radical opposition movement, or movements, in the United States that eventually brings down the ruling class of the mother country of the empire will have a worldwide ripple effect, and comparable movements will begin to appear in many different countries.
Anarchism is historically to the left of Marxism. The Marxists dominated radicalism in the 20th century. Now it’s our turn.

1 See my Dealing With Crime In A Free Society

2 Anarchism: Exponents of the Anarchist Philosophy by Paul Eltzbacher

3 See my “Anarchism or Anarcho-Social Democracy?

4 Lest I be accused of socialist bias, let me say that I would also consider an America composed of hundreds of Hong Kongs to be an improvement over the current system.

5 For A New Liberty by Murray Rothbard

6 An End of Allegiance by Geoffrey Sampson

7 Anarcho-Iceland, from the Ludwig von Mises Institute

8 The Structure of Liberty by Randy Barnett

9 Gunfighters, Highwaymen and Vigilantes by Roger McGrath

10 London Spectator

11 Of course, it needs to be recognized that decentralized Athenian participatory democracy had little in common with “mass democracy” of the modern corporate statist variety.

12 People Without Government by Harold Barclay

13 Tribe Still Means All In Afghanistan by Charles Lindholm March 31, 2002 Richmond Times-Dispatch

14 Carlton Hobbs, for Anti-state.com

15 Some libertarians argue that dueling or gladiatorial competitions involve an alienation of the self and the “right to life” and cannot be consented to just as voluntarily agreed upon slavery contracts cannot be consented to as they involve alienation of the will. Personally, I find this logic highly questionable.

16 The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman

17 I am widely criticized for holding the view that street gangs are a bulwark against the state. I once saw a Chicago police official on television saying that many of these gangs view themselves as independent nations at war with the government. I see no difference between them and secessionist movements in the US who are not necessarily libertarian but whom many libertarians nevertheless support as a decentralizing force.

18 The ‘Necessity’ of the State by Kirkpatrick Sale in Reinventing Anarchy, Again

19 The Green Panthers, a drug war resistance group, favors establishing a “stoner homeland” in the marijuana farming regions of northern California and southern Oregon.