Onward To Anarchy

Natural State. The State of the free men. A societal setup exempt of rules, devoid of laws and free from ‘constitutionalised’ concentration of power and public organization. Basically, in simple terms, a time when you could do whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, and your freedom only ended where somebody else’s began.

Anarchy.

Natural State makes an appearance in almost every possible political science textbook as Satan, as if bad marketing would sway the thoughts of anarchy from rising in the minds of their young machines, er, students. Described all too often as a ruthless mosh pit of mindless slaves to the concept of ‘Might is Right’, the very idea of existence without a governing body or a nationality to belong to is dismissed by almost every institutionally sane political thinker alive(and dead). In fact, Thinkers like Fichte, Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel argued that those institutions that constrain human freedom and subject the individual to fear and prejudice insult human dignity and deny the individual his autonomy.

It would be a base fact, imperative to mention in this case, that human’s require order in everything they do. What is ordered and predictable has always formed the basis of aesthetics for any form of art or culture. For example, Da Vinci’s Golden Rule, which finds its way into any modern visual composition, is itself an aesthetics-based law that plays on the human expectation of order and organization (a Gestalt observation) and finds that any picture framed with the subject of the composition at a ratio of 2/3rds distance from either side is the most aesthetic arrangement of elements. Our music itself is nothing but a series of repetitive auditory patterns that are predicted by the mind of the listener, and when they are followed through by the ear they lead to a secretion of endorphins that form the reason music is pleasurable to listen to. Thus, if Human Nature demanded order and organization from every aspect of life and strove to achieve the same, it’s only natural that a form of political organization was just waiting to take birth from the primitive man’s mind, and thus the State was born, and Natural State was abolished.

Perhaps the foremost debaters AGAINST the very idea of Natural State, let us see what Thomas Hobbes and John Locke have to say on the Origin of State and the need for the same.

Hobbes’ and Locke’s theories state that for the attainment of certain greater freedoms, one must first be willing to sacrifice smaller, less necessary freedoms. While the most obvious flaw in this would be the classification of freedoms into ‘greater and lesser’, we will get to the criticism of this theory soon. This can perhaps be summarized best with the help of the Traffic analogy.

For instance, let us take a two-lane highway. One lane going to, and the other from. If, in this case, the drivers of the cars decided that they desire the freedom to go wherever they wanted, however they want(this is described as a lesser freedom), according to the theory, it would culminate in the formation of a traffic jam. Cars would go haywire; here, there, everywhere. Horns would be blaring, and it would lead to utter chaos. However, The theory states, if in the same instance, the drivers collectively agree to give up their lesser freedom of being able to drive however they wanted(basically, formed traffic laws), and decided that one lane would be for travelling only in one direction and the other for travelling in the other direction, it would lead to lesser traffic and easier flow of traffic as well, granting them the greater freedom of being able to reach their destination.

The first flaw in this, as I pointed out, would be the most obvious one. Greater and lesser freedoms are, inherently, subjective in nature. To generalize these to fit to every single person on that highway would be improper; an extension of democratic principles, and democracy as an institution itself is one where 51% of the people can take away the rights of the remaining 49%, claiming overall societal benefit – and nobody can bat an eyelid. The strength of numbers, which say ‘More is Right’, just an extension of the concept of ‘Might is Right’- the very ideal they fight against. Sweet, sweet hypocrisy.

The second flaw in this would be the assumption that life cannot function and freedoms cannot be obtained in the absence of rules. The flaw lies in a complacent attitude in accepting ‘Human Nature’ as it is, and assuming that it cannot be changed. The flaw lies in the assumptions that without chains, we’d be free falling into the abyss of chaos and disarray, without even considering that we may have wings with which to fly. The flaw is the very one which the False Necessity theory, an anti-necessitarian theory, directly addresses.

The false Necessity theory, perhaps the most notable critical argumentation of Locke and Hobbes’ theories, directly contradicts them. While it acknowledges human nature to be allocentric, it also acknowledges our ability to change it. It considers social rules and political rules and laws to be dynamic in nature, easily and drastically changeable over a time frame as small as a single generation. It plays upon the age-old nature vs Nurture debate, and states that the human desires to be self-centric, selfish and chaotic are themselves learned desires, brought about by conditioning of values into our core beings right from birth, through the deep-structure institutions and our prolonged exposure to the need for such institutions. The theory rejects the constraints and focuses on how human behavior is shaped by the deep structures of these institutions, and how they can be remade at will, either in whole or in part. The aim is to rescue social theory and recreate the project of self-affirmation and society. The very concept of ownership being bestowed upon them, the concepts of class distinction in lieu of higher ownership and lesser ownership go forth and condition human beings into the so-called ‘human nature’ that is so talked about talked about and used to argue against every notion of anarchy. Thus, just as the human nature of relative Allocentricism is conditioned, it would only make sense that other desires such as the demand for order and organization also be conditioned to an extent. Even if we consider that such desires DO belong to the category of desires not conditioned, it would still not be too difficult to condition such desires OUT of a human mind as it is growing.

This theory is, in essence, anarchist in nature. It disputes the very need for the existence of state and public organization, whether democratic or anti-democratic in nature. Foremost thinkers of this school of thought dismiss the very idea of democracy as an institution which fuels not collective responsibility in the making of public decisions, but as a rat-race for power-hungry political organizations grabbing the highest seat of power in order to promulgate their own minor objectives of regionalist empowerment, the infamous Oligarchy effect.

Perhaps the most ironic observation of this theory would be that while it is the exact opposite of Communism, that is to say, it preaches maximum and immutable freedom, its crux also forms what would be the greatest defense to the concept of communism. Communism, against whom the greatest argument would be that it doesn’t lie in tandem with basic human nature, is very easily defended by the fact that human nature is conditioned and changeable, and thus can be changed to fit with the ideals of communism.

What holds society back, however, from such a change in Human Identity and Human Nature – the only problem with the False Necessity Theory, arises due to the failure of transformative practice to realize its stated aim, which takes place in three ways –

The constant clamor for ideals such as Democracy, Decentralization, Etc result in the development of structured and rigid institutions.The oligarchy effect in which Political Parties fight for the summit of political power, and strive to be better than each other, as opposed to being better for society at large.the survival effect in which, as mentioned before, the concept of structure is predictable and safe, and thus more aesthetically pleasing and comforting than the concept of everybody having complete at total freedom.

The biggest obstacle, however, to anarchy, would be in the very fact that it would be impossible to ‘establish’ it. The very action of ‘establishing’ an anarchist state would go against the very principal of anarchy. The act of consciously changing the mindset of 7 billion people, (a titanic task in itself) also goes against the extreme c’est la vie ideally of anarchy. Anarchy can only be reverted to, not established.

However, if I must dedicate my passion to a drowning ship, I might as well be the captain that goes down with it.