I wrote yesterday about the Brady Campaign's belief that an armed population is useless in preventing tyranny by the state. And now I want to add a few more thoughts.
If a foreign power were to occupy your hometown and impose its culture, laws, and political, economic and religious views on you and your neighbors, how long do you think it would be before that occupier and its dupes and lackeys started getting victimized by IEDs, ambushes, snipers, and other such clandestine armed resistance? My opinion is not very long at all. And why do I say this? Because such resistance works! As numerous examples from modern history show us.
The IRA drove the English to negotiate with them over the status of Ireland (1916, 1997), the Vietnamese drove out the US (1975), and the Afghans drove out the Soviets (1989), just to name a few examples. Some of these nation-states went easily, and some went hard, after thousands of deaths, casualties, and much money spent, but they all eventually went, and that is my point.
Some states, such as Russia, have dug in their heels, (as they have in Chechnya) for strategic and/or economic (i.e. the oil) reasons they believe are vital, and so it will take longer and result in more deaths, but eventually I predict, they too will go. Long term war is sure bet for political unpopularity and unrest (even for despots) and is a proven economy killer. Skimming off money, which would otherwise be used privately for productive purposes, to make war, eventually bankrupts even the richest of societies, as the modern history of imperialism has shown. The US and Russian empires will be no exception to this dynamic.
Imperial powers will be the first to go into extinction, followed by the huge multi-ethnic imperialist nation-states. Smaller entities will emerge as the norm. Where it'll all go from there I don't know, and can't honestly predict. I am not a Marxist historical determinist or Fukuyama-ist neoconservative that believes in so-called "scientific laws" of historical progression. Instead I believe that as Mark Twain observed, "[H]istory doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.”
3 comments:
this is something i have wondered about for a while. it seems that most market anarchists are completely against violence as a means to obtain freedom. why? isn't violence in defense of rights appropriate? am i missing something? of course, i'd much rather affect change peacefully. but why rule out non-peaceful means? i mean, let's get real, does anyone really think that government is going to just give up without a fight? they are willing to kill or imprison us even now for most any reason, so that's no problem for them. any thoughts?
Let us explore the path you propose.
Really the violent path diverges into two options, apply very painful chemotherapy to the host (The "Nation") and kill the parasite (The State) by doing so. Or go with the less effective, more time consuming: kill the parasite and leave the host as unmolested as possible.
The quickest and most effective path is to shatter the economy the State is feeding off of and drive the people in terror from the State into more traditional and private institutions. You strike the vast, unprotected, vulnerable infrastructure to which the economy is reliant upon. Internet cables and the critical nodes they intersect at, oil and gas pipelines, etc... You commit heinous crimes in the name of other groups in order to break up society and divide groups against itself. Religions, regions, races, communities, gangs, etc... People start seeking support and safety in families, religion, communities, militias, gangs, and other more local and private institutions in this horrible new world. The State is weakened tremendously if it does not fall apart outright in the ensuing chaos. It is isolated, alone, relatively powerless, easy pickings.
Hurrah. Victory over our enemy..right? Not exactly. You don't actually believe the new establishment is going to be a network of voluntary, peacefully cooperative private security and arbitration firms do you? If you were stupid enough to have given any association between market anarchy and the chaotic violence and fear gripping the American people; then the stain upon us would be so deep and dark as to not come out for millenia. New governments would rise out of the ashes in that case. If you somehow managed to keep seperate the violence and the identity of its' perpetrators seperate, you still wouldn't be able to establish market anarchy out of a Hobbesian nightmare. It wouldn't be tolerated by the people who would be clinging for life and order onto savior strongmen. Either way, people would be far less receptive to anarchy than now.
Let us say instead we remain "pure" by narrowing our targets to State only. Start intimidating, hurting, kidnapping, and killing government bureaucrats, politicians, police, soldiers, private people willingly empowering the government. You would have ceded the most important battleground to our enemy, the moral one. We would be murderous anarchists trying to create chaos by attacking the American People's Public Servants. Trying to destroy the great institution the founding fathers made, which while now corrupted, is fixable through improving our democracy and returning to the sacred Constitution. You couldn't do the State a better favor, you think people rallied around the State during 9/11? That would be nothing compared to a massacre of an ROTC batallion while they PT on a university campus. It would be unlikely that you would destroy the State in this way, and even if you did, no way would any mass, meaningful consideration of market anarchy fly.
None of this really touches what would happen to you personally, and our anarchist brethren in arms, if violence is to be taken against the State. We would morally destroy ourselves in a way no one and nothing else ever could. I've come very close to walking down the paths of violence as a means to anarchic ends numerous times. It is incredibly seductive, I still desire to take up arms from time to time.
Not long ago I had many more delusions of grandeur and big dreams than I do now. I was going to be a Drug Emperor, wielding enormous wealth against the multitude of incarnations of evil in our world. I was already gearing up. I had an outline of my long term plans and the short term plans were near completion and execution. I was ready to go to some dark places, cross dark people, and do dark things to get my chemists, laborers, and land hidden away from civilization. I'd make that illicit product, get smugglers, sell to dealers and profit, quietly growing. And do it all with considerable anonymity to boot; with out a face, name, home, no identity. I would turn children adopted from dismal, hopeless lives into soldiers, by their mid-teens they would be some of the greatest fighters on this earth. Tearing into my rivals and government enemies with out mercy, an anonymous terror extinguishing them one by one as the empire grew stronger and stronger. I'd finance our revolution in secret and establish our market anarchy. I could do this because I was extremely ambitious, dedicated, intelligent, knowledgeable, and I had such a powerful fire inside me that would come out and save me in any dire circumstances.
What absurd bullshit. What would likely happen is that I would either become discouraged when I confronted by the full enormity of the task or I would die trying.
But what stopped me from going through was a very vivid dream I had that amply explained to me what the horrors of success would be. It was the all knowing wisdom of the non-conscious self talking to the utterly deluded conscious self. I'll briefly relate the relevant parts. I came across two demons. They were tall and ridiculously wide, heavily muscled. They looked like glass eyed neanderthals, a gross parody of humans. Their names were The 9th and Baklavey. Baklavey was larger, wearing boots, jeans, plaid and carrying a black tome. The 9th was slightly smaller, wearing a loafers, slacks, a mint green polo shirt and a nice wind breaker.
I knew them as enemies as soon as I saw them, they had done something insidious with impunity. I felt like they had done this many times, they were able to get away with their deeds because the memories of all those who witnessed their passing was whiped after they left. So I had to confront them before I would forget they ever existed.
I attacked Baklavey, but he was impossibly hard, I did not even wrinkle his jacket and bounced several feet off of him, barely landing on my feet. They turned around casually and stared at me with dead eyes. I darted at Baklavey again and instead of striking him I stole the black book he carried. I roared at them like a lion in triumph. They were unphased.
In a bizarre, reverse echoing voice, The 9th asked Baklavey if this was a problem, in a similar voice Baklvaey replied that it was not because I would join them in time. I scoffed with false bravado that I am uncorruptible.
The 9th is a drug lord who tries to hide the fact. But his clothing does not hide the evil that he has become as demanded by his true profession. He is forever tainted as are all his projects no matter how noble. He can not forever hide all the skeletons in his closet.
Baklavey is a true guerilla, and a berserker who has consumed himself. He is wholly unfettered by the mission of destroying his enemy, the State. But in this mission he has lost himself in the ways of addictive violence. He does not liberate, but simply destroys and perverts any goodness in his goals.
The black book is the knowledge to succeed in the illicit drug business, 4th Generation Warfare, and how to apply these things in destroying the State. Within 9 years of this path, I would have become The 9th and Baklavey embodied, a demon.
This is what will happen to any who pursue a violent course against government. Nothing will destroy our movement more surely than corrupting it with such evil.
The only way market anarchy will come about is through non-violence. It will come from birthing a society within a society. One which will gradually displace the places where the State once was, security, arbitration, education, transportation, etc... When enough people become reliant on our counter-institutions the State will be fully displaced from those areas we hold sway.
When the State inevitably threatens what we have created, it can only be properly defended through the plethora of non-violent tactics and strategy available. They will not be able to defeat us because they do not have the will to so publicly attack an opponent whose only desire is to be left alone and who will not strike back. And even if they did, even if they collectively emraced their own monstrosity and violently exterminated us wholesale, they can not kill ideas which would only gain more credence and power in the face of such a blatantly evil opponent. The moral ground would be ours, market anarchy would survive its' infancy, and its' immense success would ripple over the entire world, delegitimizing and peacefully destroying the State everywhere. All this would be lost if we used violence to achieve our aims, because our ideas would be sullied in the minds of the people.
So I beg you, brethren, DO NOT use violence against the State. None of us question that agents of the State have moral immunity from being treated like the criminals they are. It is only for utilitarian purposes that we should refrain from taking arms against them.
The Brady Bunch know nothing, every day it becomes easier for smaller and smaller groups to become more and more militarily powerful. When they spew ignorant slander about "pop-guns" and wanna-bes playing soldier in the woods, ignore it and do not let it push you towards violence to prove them wrong.
I apologize for the ridiculous length of this comment and my poor writing style (Run-on sentences and over use of flowery language). So I'll just finish this up with this.
Our time is coming. The first half of this century is going to be the most turbulent humanity has ever experienced. By the end of it, humanity will have in its' hands the Hammer of God and an Artificial God manifest. Whether these will create an unimaginable paradise or an unthinkable hell will depend upon whether market anarchy dominates, or the State does. If we are not triumphant by the time the technological singularity comes, we will be introduced to the true meaning of total, absolute, complete control by the State. We will not let this happen though, we will succeed. Much like technology, the returns on our movements' investments are accelerating exponentially. The purity and brightness of its' light will blast away the shadows which is slowly overtaking our world. Do not blot out the light with violence. Have faith, patience, and take action brethren.
Nah. Small communities can rule themselves without gigantic states. Small communities of like-minded folks would tend to be harmonious, eh?
Small but effective armed volunteer militias with elected officers and who only principally exist for public safety or emergencies, rescues and not conquest or oppression.
What would prevent a Microsoft from establishing it's own militia or armed gang? Quite simply, without state-privilege style state capitalism in place to allow them their power and money, big corps will be about as dangerous as a beached shark.
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