Anarchism – the abolition of all government and the organization of society on a voluntary, cooperative basis without recourse to force or compulsion – might not be possible.
As a long-time member of the Open Source community, I have long leaned towards meritocracy; a form of positive anarchism where a person is elevated based on the merits of what they do. I now see that natural (or elective) meritocracy is impossible and it must be artificially constructed to exist at all. It might – just about – exist in digital communities (run by code) but not in systems run by people.
The reason I claim that elective meritocracy cannot exist is the same reason I know that socio-anarchism (the stateless society) will always be doomed – human nature. More specifically, one aspect of human nature – the desire for things to go on being how they currently are combined with the desire to have more than the next person.
This desire results in a form of protectionism. An attribute antithetical to all of the more liberal or anarchistic hopes for community building. Once a group, body, or council forms – really, any assembly that comes together for a purpose – human nature tends towards wanting to keep the group going.
Gangs, tribes, and factions
Human society is divided into tribes, cliques, factions, and gangs. We define ourself by our membership (or non-membership) of such affiliations. Be that church, university, sub-culture, political party, clique, clubs, gender, or race. We are inclined towards grounding our identity in the “us”.
Were some form of voluntary coming together to happen – and it does happen – we lack the ability to then terminate said collective gracefully. Even if the group officially disbands, tribalism – that sense of “us” distinct from “them” can allow an unofficial faction or clique to persist. Not that cliques need much reason to form. You only have to look back to your school days and teenage years to see the self-selecting tribes and cliques that formed.
While merit-based authority can exist on the Internet it does so only because an underlying rules system (a digital state, if you will) enforces and allows it. Even so, natural pack mentalist can set in to create an unofficial elite. Sometimes that elite is not even all that unofficial. One need only look back to the high days of Digg when a network of “top influencers” boasted how, for the right reward, they could elevate a story to prominence.
Having found themselves with power – such as in the case with the Digg community – humans tend towards seeking their own self-interest. To counter that we have, as a race, tended to want to put in place mechanisms – checks and balances – to prevent abuse of accumulated power. The state by any other name…
Protectionism and ego
The other hurdle to stateless living is the human ego. Not to mention our inability – on the whole – to admit to having been deceived.
In theory, people would come together in common purpose to solve problems and create. That common good collectivism is the ideal that (many flavours of) anarchism looks towards. What it fails to acknowledge, though, is that having started something with our sense of self now invested we will back an even obviously wrong idea.
The tribe of Brexit
Take for example the Brexit fiasco. Even now the truth has come out and all of its promises have been shown to be lies, a very powerful minority is still trying to push Brexit at any cost. Despite the apparent impossibility of Brexit, those that have married themselves to its cause are still prepared to die upon that hill if need be.
In fact, despite layer upon layer of state – the EU, parliament, The Lords, and The Courts (not to mention district and county councils) – those few who will benefit from Brexit at the expense of the majority are still pushing forward. Furthermore, this minority has very vocal support whipped up not by facts or reason by the emotional high of popularist newspapers.
If our most base and mindless side can derail a strong and reinforced state, what chance does ad-hock collectivism have?
The problem of influence
Once we have embraced the idea of “the state” we are nevertheless left with just as many problems. The same undercurrent factions that would easily collapse a stateless society are also the threat from within in one ruled by the state.
This is because, for good or for ill, organisations no longer run the world. Be that organisation the state, ad-hoc community problem solving, or some hybrid of the two, something else entirely runs the world.
I’m talking, of course, of the force that is popular opinion. More specifically, the power that a few men have to shape that opinion. Which is how we got into this Brexit mess in the first place. That use of power for one’s own ends is no different to the abuse of a few well-placed Digg users offering up-votes for rewards. The only difference is that the stakes are much higher.
This problem of influence, while a danger to a society run by the state, is even more deadly for a stateless society. It is an unfortunate truth that the system of state-led governance is simply better able to weather the storm of undue influence.
The inequity of schools
On the face of it, the solution would seem to be better education of the people. Indeed this would go a long way to declawing rampant popularism and the mob-mentality it can so easily incite.
However, there is another flaw – one based on the same problems – hidden within this answer too. That of schools. Right now, “going to the right school” and being in the network of said houses of education creates a tribal clique every bit as powerful as the common mob ruled by opinion creators. Right now it is the class re-enforcing schoolboys that threatens no-deal Brexit.
You cannot have mass education without the inequity of status quickly leading to tribal factionism. The “old boys network” might not exist officially but it is something those (often of lower merit) have traded on throughout history. Today we call that class privilege. Whatever we call it, this class reinforcing process is the price of inequity in education. Inequity of education being caused by inequity of class.
This is just another form of that tribal tendency towards the good and great “us” and the other “them”.
The invader from within
While it is natural to fear the “them”, it is too often that which is hidden as part of the “us” that is the bigger danger. A stateless society is, for now, one ripe for takeover by a rising faction – the invader from within. Without the state to keep them in check how many gangs (both criminal and political) would at once try to rise to the power once held by the state?
Had the UK been a stateless utopia, it is quite likely that the Murdock newspaper empire with the old-boys network of the privileged rich could have whipped up the mob required to decimate our place in the Europian community. There would have been damn-all anyone could have done about it. By the time the horrendous truth of food shortages, drug shortages, and deaths was apparent, it would be far too late. As it is, it remains to be seen if it not already “far too late”.
The glimmer of hope for those of us that like the idea of a no-state or minimal state world is that this hijacking of democracy for the self-interest of the few has galvanised and united an opposition strong enough to offer a credible counter to it.
While we are in no way ready as a society to live without a state to guard us against outrageous abuse from within, we might at least be approaching a point where we are ready to talk about it. Assuming, of course, that UK isn’t about to be regressed into a second-world county for the gain of a tiny minority.
Excecellent post. It does appear we’ve wandered through a “post-truth” dystopian nightmare, where division is used to create levers to move the masses. All it took was the promotion of belief over critical thinking. To allow the the truth to be held up beside a blatant lie and debate them as if they were equal. Imagining solutions to such a problem is ripe ground for some great fiction. Sadly I agree, it will require a seismic shift for any solution to become reality.
The only ray of hope I can see, is that journalists, going into this election, appear to be doing more fact checking. The more outrageous lies that circulate social media seem to be being called out as just that, paraded for all to see. The problem is so many are already programmed to believe the last lies, and are unlikely to change their beliefs in time. Weaponised belief, their targets identified, the control wires cut.
We can only hope that the net result of this is better reporting (and better fat checking). Even if it does leave me with less to complain about – something that would make me if not actually happy somewhat more contented.