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Anarchist Anthropology: Power Without Hierarchy

Sat, 01/19/2013 - 20:37 -- worker

From Wild Culture - by Sarah Lester

Anthropology is known – most notoriously – as a discipline still grappling with the shackles of its murky colonial past. It’s perhaps slightly less well known for its affinity with anarchy. But if we take anarchism to mean the belief in democracy free from state apparatus, then it’s unsurprising that there’s a natural resonance between the two. A certain propensity for analysing societies without asymmetrical power structures goes a long way to explaining why so many anthropologists prefix their job title with the word ‘anarchist’. They have empirical evidence that stateless societies are within the realms of possibility. As David Graeber – an academic anthropologist recently hailed as the anti-leader of the Occupy Movement – insists, any belief in a system of anarchy has to stem from the optimistic assumption that another world is possible.

For all its paradoxes and exoticising tendencies, anthropology is arguably the only discipline which attempts to consider the full range of societal and political structures on equal terms. It has attempted to better understand societies that operate without a formal law or state, even – or especially – where these societies have been deemed irrelevant. Modernity’s fixation with progress gave rise to a view of stateless societies as static and embryonic, as existing outside of history. Without the propelling force of the dialectic, so-called primitive societies stagnate in prehistory. Such societies are seen, therefore, as “entirely outside the concern of the philosophy of history” – in the words of Hegel, buffeted along by his commitment to teleology.

Hegel’s view of history emphasises the importance of reason, rationality and progress. Above all else, Hegel’s philosophy focuses on the state, which he views as the universal principle with which the subjective wills of the citizens must coincide to reach some kind of perfection. Whilst anthropologists’ close scrutiny of stateless societies always risks incurring accusations of facile primitivism, on a most basic level, direct experience of fieldwork amongst the – dare I say – savages, has highlighted the fact that valid alternatives to the state model do exist. They’ve found that societies can successfully operate without constant regulation from a systematic structure of coercion. And, counter to prevalent beliefs, they don’t all end up killing each other. Regardless of how practical its implementation might be, analyses of power which is not hierarchal, and leadership which is not authoritative, can challenge the very notions upon which our conception of civilisation is based. The results can be astonishing.

As early as 1925, the founder of French anthropology, Marcel Mauss was famously advocating the alternative morality of stateless societies in his “Essay on the Gift”. His study of gift exchange in kinship societies – like the potlatch of the American Indians of the Pacific Southwest and the elaborate Kula rings of the Trobriand Islanders – challenged the universal assumption that economies without markets or money must operate by means of barter. Far from seeking to engage in market behaviour, in which each party strives to get the best goods possible at the least cost to themselves, Mauss postulated that gift economies were not based on calculation at all, but on a refusal to calculate. It was not that they had failed to develop a system sophisticated enough to yield profit in an efficient way, but rather that these exchange systems were rooted in an ethical system which consciously rejected the basic notions on which we generally believe economics to be based.

Mauss, a revolutionary socialist, aligned himself with many classic anarchist positions, but he never actually described himself as one. Significantly, another Frenchman, Pierre Clastres – who was a self-proclaimed anarchist – became well known for making a similar argument to Mauss on a political level. Whilst Mauss used anthropology to illuminate ways in which it was possible to build an anti-capitalist economy (as a response to the crisis of Lenin’s socialism), Clastres used anthropology to demonstrate how it was possible for power to operate in an egalitarian, non-coercive manner. By considering the power structures of stateless societies on their own terms Clastres found a way to politicise primitive societies. In doing so, he radically challenged the notion, outlined most prominently by Thomas Hobbes, that state power is a necessary illusion.

When Hobbes wrote Leviathan, his treatise on the social contract, in response to the bloody English Civil War, he claimed that submission to an all-powerful state was not only favourable for an egalitarian society, but in fact essential to the survival of the species as we know it. Society left to nature would descend to a state of “warre, where everyman is Enemy to every man”. For the past three centuries, Hobbes’ claim that civilised society can only exist through coercive power has become a central tenet of mainstream political activity, both on the left and right. Since the threat of war is omnipresent; we enter into the social contract and become subjects to the great Leviathan, the state, because without it there’d be nothing but carnage lying in wait.

Clastres, perplexed by the question of voluntary servitude, puts this axiom on trial. His work constantly reiterates the question: Why do we forsake autonomy and obey a government? If the state relies on the strict authority of the few against the many, then how did the state triumph? Or, in the words Etienne de la Boétié, “What misfortune so denatured man?”
The use of the word ‘denatured’ here is particularly instructive, as, arguably, it is differing conceptions of ‘human nature’ that lie right at the heart of this debate. The Hobbesian stance assumes that human nature is something wild, warlike, and irrational, to be tamed by the civilising forces of state control. Today, Western politics maintains this stance. But by examining cultures with different attitudes towards power what anthropology can show us is that such an assumption is just that: as assumption.

Through his extensive fieldwork among the Guayaki Indians of Paraguay, Clastres relayed how power can be effectively organised without a separate apparatus outside the social body. His analyses suggest that it is possible to speak of power outside of the domain of command-obedience relations. Take, for example, his descriptions of the seemingly paradoxical ‘rule’ of American Indian chieftainship. Whilst western sensibilities would automatically assume that a chief would necessarily possess some means of exerting power over the rest of the group, Clastres highlights how, in many instances, the most notable characteristic of the Indian chief is his almost complete lack of authority. Clastres insists that the role of the chief is essentially reconciliatory; he is not a man of power but a peacemaker and arbiter. A chief is required to possess great oratorical talent which, alongside his prestige and generosity, he uses in an attempt to maintain the social order. But, at any point, the chief remains in danger of being disavowed.

Anyone who associates political power with ruling authority would surely find chieftainship in this vein not just unrewarding, but worryingly unstable. Yet, Clastres insists that the point is not to question the chief’s lack of authority in itself but to understand such power relations on the terrain involved. How can one explain the bizarre persistence of a power that is practically powerless?

Clastres describes the ritualised act of the chief’s speeches, which take place daily at daybreak and dusk. A chief does not acquire the right to speak simply on the grounds of his chieftainship – but his chieftainship obliges him to speak. The tribe demands to hear him: a silent chief is no longer a chief, but, in yet another assault on our expectations, Clastres goes on to relay that as the chief talks, nobody pays him any attention. Regardless of the strength of his voice or his oratory skill, the rest of the group appear to carry on about their business as if nothing were happening. Power is not found on the side of the chief, so it follows that his words cannot be authoritative or powerful.
Clastres uses these ethnographic findings to claim that it is in the nature of primitive societies to know that violence is the essence of power, and that speech is the opposite of violence. By restricting the chief to the area of speech alone, the tribe makes certain that no displacement of forces will come to upset the social order. The chief cannot use words for his own personal gain or for reasons of political expediency, because the chief who tries to appropriate power in this way is abandoned. Primitive society is the place where separate power is refused, because the society itself, not the chief, is the real locus of the power.

Clastres’ work opposes the Hegelian notion that the state is the ultimate destiny of all societies. Far from the state being the precise object of world history, stateless societies, he argues, actually possess specific preventative mechanisms to ward off the formation of a state; the chieftain’s powerless oratory being one such device. Similarly, Clastres describes the ritualistic act of marking bodies as another way of thwarting the human desire for power. Unlike the written law of hierarchical society which is imposed by the few on the many, the law of primitive societies, which is inscribed onto all bodies says: “You are worth no more than anyone else; you are worth no less than anyone else.” These societies are not simply lacking a state. They are, in Clastres’ words, societies against the state.

As Mauss challenged the assumed logic of the market economy, so Clastres questions the notion that power can only be identified as coercive authority. Both anthropologists challenge the evolutionist logic which assumes that the state and the market economy are the inevitable destiny of all societies. But, more than that, they both make the radical suggestion that – far from being incapable of reaching a stage of such perceived advancement – they are making a concerted effort to contain human capacities for greed and power in a way that prevents these social structures from forming.

In opposition to Hobbes’ description of primitive warfare as perpetual and chaotic, Clastres identifies war as the ultimate preventative mechanism which enables such societies to ward off the arrival of the state. As Clastres’ one-time collaborators, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, have suggested, just as Hobbes saw clearly that the state was against war, Clastres insists that – for primitive societies – war is also against the state.
Here we can see anthropology’s value, not only as a discipline which analyses old, existing, and so-called primitive cultures, but which also allows us to imagine new ones. Anarchy, today, is variously judged as destructive, violent and nihilistic; it is used synonymously with chaos and disorder. Yet, anarchy, as understood by most anarchists, actually means the exact opposite. An anarchic society – like the egalitarian ones that Clastres studied – is based on order, autonomy of the individual and cooperation without rulers. Whilst many anarchists, following Russian revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin, believe that chaos and disorder have inherent potentiality, and that destruction can be a creative act, their ultimate aim is to create a social order which eliminates the need for lawful violence altogether. Striving for the abolishment of social institutions that use coercive force to make way for a new order, is a far remove from the desire for a permanent state of disorder and violence. In fact, some of the world’s best-known anarchist thinkers, Henry David Thoreau, Tolstoy and Gandhi, were tellingly also pacifists.

Another common criticism lodged against anarchism is that it is too idealistic. Anarchists’ alternative moralities and visions of a freer world, with – of all suggestions – shorter working hours, have inevitably been dismissed as utopian; it’s an occupational hazard of re-imagining existing social structures. Still, a more considered look at anarchism would reveal that it fosters a view of humanity that is resolutely realistic. Humans are neither innately bellicose nor are they naturally benign; they have the capacity for both good and evil. The question, as writer and social critic Paul Goodman has perhaps most eloquently expressed it, isn’t whether or not people are “good enough” to exist in a particular society or not. But rather, how can social institutions be developed in a way that is most conducive to bringing out human capacities for intelligence, grace, sociality and freedom. Anarchists may need the necessary hope and imagination to envision a different world; anthropologists are particularly well-situated to guide them on how to make it a reality.

Category: 

Comments

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

"...anthropologists are particularly well-situated to guide..."

No thanks!

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

As an anarchist-activist David Graeber makes a good Anthropologist :-)

Signed - professor rat

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

I like the tone and tenor of the article. There are just two points where one must be careful, i think: one, where anthropology is part of the discip;ine of colonialism, where the rest of the world will be forced to learn like Western people; and two, that our language, as D&G were quick to show, is inherently hierarchical and has to be seriously mutated to free itself from authority. They tried to mutate it in their writing.
I would like to see anthropology's criticism of the present info-spectacle which is foisted upon the inhabitants of the slum cities of the south, who have no shelter, no running water, no health care and little food. It seems like the nice, old days of the quiet study of middle-class scholastics is increasingly an image of detachment, indifference, and a dinosaur of intellectual life. Just thoughts. All the best.

Submitted by emile on

i agree with your two points, which refer to the same problems as i try to bring out in a discussion on two ways of seeing justice', here

"There are just two points where one must be careful, i think: one, where anthropology is part of the discip;ine of colonialism, where the rest of the world will be forced to learn like Western people; and two, that our language, as D&G were quick to show, is inherently hierarchical and has to be seriously mutated to free itself from authority. "

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

Make sure women never have a say and keep on elevating the white males to the exclusion of countless others. This is the true road being paved....

Submitted by Not sure what y... (not verified) on

but over 60% of anthropologists are women

Submitted by emile on

discussions of ‘anthropological views of society’ bypasses the question of ‘what exactly is the nature of the individual and the collective and the social dynamic. that aboriginal ‘anthropologist’ sees the individual, NOT as a local, independently-existing material system with its own locally originating, internal process driven and directed behaviour, but INSTEAD, as a node or strand within a relational web of social context wherein “the dynamics of the inhabitants are conditioning the dynamics of the habitat at the same time as the dynamics of the habitat are conditioning the dynamics of the inhabitants.” [Mach’s principle].

the question of which ‘lens’ to view the individual and the collective through; i.e. the lens that portrays people as independent machines made of meat whose behaviours are fully and solely their own inside-outward intention directed behaviours, ... or the lens that portrays people as nodes or nexa, uniquely, situationally included within a relational web of social context, makes a fundamental difference in the how the anthropologist INTERPRETS social organizing. the aboriginal elder and chief accedes to his appointment by the people, in the manner in which the eye of a hurricane accedes to its centrality in the relational symmetry. The central figure does not ‘drive’ the collective within which it is centred, it mirrors back the flow in which it is centrally situated.

the question of ‘which lens’ through which to look to see individual and society, inhabitant and habitat, crops up in the dual lenses through which a people can look at ‘justice’; in his book, Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime and Justice, Howard Zehr discusses how the aboriginal view of justice as ‘restorative justice’ is steadily subsuming the colonizer view of justice aka ‘retributive justice’ (see pages 211-214).

now, this article on anthropology by sarah lester is by way of the usual perspective of the excluded voyeur observer that sees all these different people-colonies or ant colonies and their ways of organizing, through the default lens which RE-presents people as; “local, independently-existing material systems with their own locally originating, internal process driven and directed behaviour” whose ‘organizing’ is determined by their purposeful intellection. aboriginal societies do NOT organize by way of purposeful intellection as central-authority-directed societies do (‘central authority based direction’ is ‘self-similar’ to the ‘independent self-directed individual’ or ‘ego-directed individual’).

as can be seen in comparing ‘restorative justice’ (aboriginal style justice) and ‘retributive justice’ (central authority style justice), there are two very different assumptions involved, as to the relationship between the one-and-the-many. the central authority directed society believes that the individual is fully and solely responsible for his own behaviour while the society practicing restorative justice believes that the individual’s behaviour derives from the relational web of social context he is uniquely, situationally included in.

as an excluded voyeur observer, the anthropologist can look at the central authority directed society, and then look at the non-hierarchical anarcha-indigenist societies, and conclude that; “these people over here decided to organize this way, and those people over there decided to organize that way” .... WRONG!. these two peoples have radically different views of ‘who they are’ relative to the world they live in. the people with the central authority directed organization believe that the are all local, independently-existing material systems with their own locally originating, internal process driven and directed [purposeful intellection directed] behaviour [hence retributive justice] while the people with the peacemaking circle processes [restorative justice] believe that they are nodes that are uniquely, situationally included within a relational web of social context.

there is no suggestion in this article on anthropology, that organization derives from how people think of themselves. it assumes that the way that people organize derives from their rational choices of how they should organize, which is NOT the case. people who believe they are local, independently-existing machines-made-of-meat [things-in-themselves] are NOT going to organize in the same manner as those who believe they are uniquely situationally included nodes in a relational web of social context. ‘justice’ is primary ‘organizing tool’ and the radically different organizing tools of ‘retributive justice’ practiced by people who believe they are independently-existing machines-made of meat, and ‘restorative justice’ practiced by people who believe they are nodes in a relational web of social context [Mach’s principle] DERIVE FROM THEIR RESPECTIVE, RADICALLY DIFFERING SENSE OF ‘SELF-AND-OTHER’;I.E. FROM THEIR RESPECTIVE, RADICALLY DIFFERENT UNDERSTANDING OF PHYSICAL REALITY, not from an ‘intellectual decision’ to go with ‘central authority directed organization’ or ‘camelotian round table organization where there is no head, no foot of table, where all are equal’. these different approaches to organization derive from different understandings of the self-other relationship.

bottom line: our manner of organizing reflects our sense of ‘who we are’ relative to ‘the others’ and to the ‘space we live in’.

however, in this article;

[Anthropologists] have empirical evidence that stateless societies are within the realms of possibility. As David Graeber – an academic anthropologist recently hailed as the anti-leader of the Occupy Movement – insists, any belief in a system of anarchy has to stem from the optimistic assumption that another world is possible.”

there is no mention here of the radically different views we may have of the self-and-other relationship and thus of ‘physical reality’, thus we are left with the suggestion that transitioning from hierarchical society to anarchist society will require our belief in our ability to bring it about by an optimistic belief in it being possible and determined efforts to make it happen.

but without a shift in our understanding of our self-other relationship, as implied by the shift from retributive to restorative justice, our transitioning will degenerate to ‘treading water’, ever more furiously and frenetically.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

Restorative justice doesn't necessarily prefigure a less authoritarian society or correlate to a general world-view that is more likely to reject authority including among native americans. See for example the northeast woodlands practice of "Mourning War", in which captives were taken to replace the dead killed in war and forced to live out their lives a prisoners within the capturing society.

Also, Mach was a complete crank who denied atomic theory and relativity long past the point at which they had been proven true; which is to say, a more accurate image of the dynamics at play in the "spatial plenum" and "web of relations" (just in case you felt like lecturing on the meaning of dualism again).

There's also the old issue of how such generalized distinctions as "dualism" and "non-dualism" can even be said to coherently refer to the same things when people have no effective way of understanding how the world works. Particle physics is informed and vedantic or aboriginal mysticism is not, sorry to say, despite them both being "non-dual" in a very general sense.

Submitted by emile on

In case you missed it, ‘restorative justice’ as in the aboriginal tradition, assumes that the community is a relational system wherein the community takes responsibility for conflicts that emerge within the community, by way of a circle process which is devoid of ‘a supervising authority’; i.e. there is no invoking of absolute authority, such as the ‘state’ or the ‘crown’ that takes things out of the hands of the community and seeks ‘retribution’ to any action taken against the absolute authority of the state.

You say;

“restorative justice doesn't necessarily prefigure a less authoritarian society or correlate to a general world-view that is more likely to reject authority”

it is a practice that BY DEFINITION transparently rejects hierarchical authority. your statement doesn’t bother to even attempt to engage with the facts.

You further say;

“Mach was a complete crank who denied atomic theory and relativity long past the point at which they had been proven true;

Mach’s principle is core to General Relativity (Einstein’s major accomplishment) and is core to the leading current attempt in 'relational theory', Quantum Gravity (Carlo Rovelli), to reconcile relativity and quantum theory. Rovelli writes, in Quantum Gravity (2004);

2.4.1 Mach principles

Ideas of Ernst Mach had a strong influence on Einstein’s discovery of general relativity. Mach presents a number of acute criticisms to Newton’s motivations for introducing absolute space and absolute time. In particular, he points out that in Newton’s bucket argument there is a missing element: he observes that the inertial reference fram (the reference frame with respect to which rotation has detectable physical effects) is also the reference frame in which the fixed stars do not rotate. Mach suggests then that the inertial reference frame is not determined by absolute space, but rather it is determined by the entire matter content of the universe, including distant stars. He suggests that if we could repeat the experiment with a very massive bucket, the mass of the bucket would affect the inertial fram, and the inertial frame would rotate with the bucket.

In the light of general relativity, the observation is certainly pertinent and it is clear that the argument may have played a role in Einstein’s dismissal of Newton’s argument.

Mach principle 7: There is no absolute motion, only motion relative to something else; therefore the water in the bucket does not rotate in absolute terms, it rotates with respect to some dynamical physical entity. True. This is the basic physical idea of general relativity.

Mach principle 8: The local inertial frame is completely determined by the dynamical fields in the Universe. True. In fact, this is precisely Einstein’s key idea.

* * *

Mach, in addition to mentoring Einstein, Poincaré, Lorenz and others, was also influential in research into consciousness and psychology and a mentor of William James, contributing to ideas that have not ‘gone away’.

“Between 1910 and 1914, the Nobel Committee in Stockholm received a series of letters and petitions from scientists nominating Ernst Mach for the Nobel Prize in Physics. Among them H. A. Lorentz praised Mach’s “beautiful works” in acoustics and optics, and added that “all physicists” know his books, and “a large number of physicists honor him as a master and as a guide of their thoughts.” (A few years later, in his obituary for Mach i n 1916, Einstein said it more strikingly: “I believe even that those who consider themselves as opponents of Mach are hardly aware of how much of Mach’s way of thinking they imbibed, so to speak, with their mother’s milk.”) Ferdinand Braun’s nominating letter indicated that while the Nobel Prize may soon have to be considered for the new theory of space and time, it should first go to Mach as an early advocate of ideas along the same lines; and as we now know, this was written during the very period when young Einstein and Mach were in correspondence, Einstein signing one of his letters “Your admiring student.”

Let’s see, what else are you claiming in that sentence;

... who denied atomic theory and relativity long past the point at which they had been proven true;

Unless you are Al Gore, the notion of scientific theories being ‘proven true’ so that we can tell the researchers to go home and just trust and use them, is bullshit. There are all kinds of complexities remaining to be sorted out which Mach’s ideas continue to be in contention for, like the notion that ‘the atom’ is NOT a thing-in-itself, which Schrödinger also contends;

“What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space. Particles are just schaumkommen (appearances).” --- Erwin Schrödinger

In other words, atoms can be seen as local, independently-existing material systems-in-themselves, or they can be seen as ‘expressions of the transforming relational-spatial plenum’ (resonance complexes).

Your remaining comment is more of the same sort of crap which makes not the slightest attempt to engage with what has been said; i.e. you say;

“There's also the old issue of how such generalized distinctions as "dualism" and "non-dualism" can even be said to coherently refer to the same things when people have no effective way of understanding how the world works. Particle physics is informed and vedantic or aboriginal mysticism is not, sorry to say, despite them both being "non-dual" in a very general sense.”

Look up ‘relational theory’ in wikipedia and you will see comments like;

“The relational point of view was advocated by in physics by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Ernst Mach (in his Mach's principle), and it was rejected by Isaac Newton in his successful description of classical physics.

Where were you and Al Gore when Newton had ‘proved his theory true’ and the denialists had continued to whine about 'relativity' and shit like that?

“Several attempts have been made to formulate a full Machian theory, but most physicists think that none have so far succeeded. For example, see Brans-Dicke theory.”

“Relational quantum mechanics and a relational approach to quantum physics have been independently developed, in analogy with Einstein's special relativity of space and time. Relationist physicists such as John Baez and Carlo Rovelli have criticised the leading unified theory of gravity and quantum mechanics, string theory, as retaining absolute space. Some prefer a developing theory of gravity, loop quantum gravity for its 'backgroundlessness'. A recent synthesis of relational theory, called R-theory, continuing the work of the mathematical biologist Robert Rosen [who developed "Relational Biology" and "Relational Complexity" as theories of life] takes a position between the above views.”

Evidently there’s a lot of people out there who are not listening to you, ... and i have no problem at all understanding why.

‘Relational theory’ implies non-dualism and so does restorative justice; i.e. in a theory where space is purely relational there is no mutually excluding separation between ‘inhabitant’ and ‘habitat’, they are in fact mutually inclusive, there is no ‘duality’, there is ‘non-duality’, as in Schroedinger’s ‘What is Life’.

Non-Duality in consciousness “No single man can make a distinction between the realm of his perceptions and the realm of things that cause it, since however detailed the knowledge he may have acquired about the whole story, the story is occurring only once and not twice. the duplication is an allegory suggested mainly by communication with other beings and even with animals; which shows that their perceptions in the same situation seem to be very similar to his own, apart from insignificant differences in the point of view”
E. Schrödinger, Mind and matter, op. cit.

Thanks for the ‘dialogue’ ... NOT!

I shouldn't have bothered but while i don't mind the regular troll-tripe, i feel like we all have a responsibility to housekeep sleazy obfuscation.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

"Restorative justice doesn't necessarily prefigure a less authoritarian society or correlate to a general world-view that is more likely to reject authority including among native americans. See for example the northeast woodlands practice of "Mourning War", in which captives were taken to replace the dead killed in war and forced to live out their lives a prisoners within the capturing society."

One example from one or a few societies that practice restorative justice does not prove they're "authoritarian". Your example says nothing about how power-structures or decision-making work in Iroquoian societies. Also, it's taken not only from wartime, but an era of apocalyptic colonialism which was more than a bit exceptional.

Oh, and your characterization of the "Mourning War" makes me wonder if you even know what it is. Those captured weren't "forced to live out their lives as prisoners" but granted the identity of whoever was being replaced, including often things like their status and family. Not the most libertarian strategy, I'll concede, but worlds above how most treat prisoners of war.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

I don't know about all that physics talk. I think it has to be something like these tribes but on a greater scale. Or somehow reduce the population without mass genocide.

Submitted by iconoclasta on

"Anarchy, today, is variously judged as destructive, violent and nihilistic; it is used synonymously with chaos and disorder. Yet, anarchy, as understood by most anarchists, actually means the exact opposite...In fact, some of the world’s best-known anarchist thinkers, Henry David Thoreau, Tolstoy and Gandhi, were tellingly also pacifists."

A fact that i think "nihilists" within anarchism should try to come to terms with. Or otherwise one can say that their vision of anarchy is one similar to the worst stereotypes of anarchism propagated by the media.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

Yeah, Gandhi, Tolstoy and HDT rock!! they are totally influential in the anarchist milieu.

sorry iconoclasta, but you're an idiot and a coward.

Submitted by iconoclasta on

instead of throwing pathetic insults you could read the history of anarchism in order to go beyond an adolecent punk rock version of it.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

I agree that nihilist anarchism is sometimes "adolescent" but Tolstoy and gandhi weren't really anarchists and pacifism tends to disqualify itself too. The ivory-tower hippy liberal college student definition of anarchy is just as obnoxious as the "teen angst punk rock" version.

Submitted by iconoclasta on

well. yeah. as far as me i profess the oscar wilde-emile armand-hakim bey individualist anarcho-bohemian version.

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on

heheheh fair enough. Although that stuff about NAMBLA sort of ruined Hakim Bey for me.

Submitted by Red Bayonet (not verified) on

Most anthros admit that human societies are organized in relation to the manner in which production is organized. But few are willing to take it to the next logical step, for fear of damaging their academic careers.

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