Levithan-Behemoth

The anarchist and the State:

It is one of those irregular verb – one to depress Hegel, and defy reason, a verb that sets up an internal and unsynthesisable dialectic – one that goes I anarchy-You state; We state-They anarchy. I assert my rights an individual, my independence while you lot drag me down. But at the same time elsewhere, I am part of the gang, fighting the dread monster of anarchy: Human both Leviathan and Behemoth. The point being that there is a strange wavy line, a line that at all point and parts of society we think state ought to each, and we really ought to be allowed to be on our own. The trouble with this line is that it is so indistinct and volatile. There are places where by long tradition – the line is always fixed. We ‘agree’ then that the army, is always in the we a state part of the verb – while the free market by and large aspires to be in the ‘I’ anarchy that is at least its jargon). But very many element of modernity slip between lines, and slip between classes. Many other arguments (for instance the facile one currently waging in Britain about fairness, as if anything a government does is fair) are really argument about where one draws this line. That is, where one helps out or navigates the state, and where one allows freer organization (as is the big society). The line is moving then around fairly much at the movement.
In a sense there is a reason for that. One of the very big differences between the political parts is that the Right are more comfortable on the lines they draw. They know there then the we’s and I's state an anarchy are draw There might be at times parochial extension of the state to include some welfare; or again there might be an extension of anarchy to extent the free market and its innovation into some matters of the state (big societies). But by large the lines are clear. The same of course is really not true for the left – who rationally cannot even readily agree who their 'we's are (is it the unions, the working class, or the country) let alone have sensible places to draw the at.
This last point in a sense was the point that straddled ‘New Labour’ and destroyed it. There was in sense no-good place for the party to draw its lines. The party talked then endless about responsibility as well as rights, but found no effective way to incarnate those responsibility. A fact that had of course disastrous effects- as neither government, individuals or even banks were responsible where they incarnated their greed – with the result that the global financial system nearly collapsed. ’New Labour’ wanted to have its cake and firmly eat it. That is it wanted to both allow for anarchy, and game the rights to demand individuals were responsible, at the same time as imposing the state -an impossible dream. But the line is not like that - however fast flowing it is, it is in its incarnation always clear which side an individual is on. If one extends and then retracts, one looks either ,mad or disingenuous.
New labour failed then in that it failed to sensibly incarnate liens for the sate and lines for the anarchist, leading to dodgy dealing, lack of trust and a perceptions (which was not true) that the state was muscling in, in the form of health and safety into anarchies,. It was then these perceptions that killed off new labour and created the current coalition of the others What is ,more the crazy line – and where one draws it is shot through with ideas of fairness or unfairness. Or perhaps better it is only the line that makes this argument of fairness make sense – for of course in the essence of society not to be fair. That is it is n the essence f society for have hierarchies, explicit and implicit, and to lauds certain talents irrespective of their vale in a highly complex society) and deride other societies. Likewise the point of money is to create inequities. The entire debate then about a fair society is on one level infantile. Or at best is merely a reaction to the fact that we know society is unfair, and dream of something else (in an open ended vapid way at least).
However if one talks of fairness, one an effect creates places to draw our line -our line that incarnated the dialectic of fair and unfair. One can the rail against the state and its unfairness in taxing or regulating the initials – onsets people free to be themselves. One incarnates the line so that it, is the name of a greater society, wipes out the state (or justifies a wipe out one was committed to anyway). Or alternative one can use the same language of fairness or not to demand that the states rights are respected, and individuals, be they cod classes such as bankers or the poor should not take the piss; that is they should not take more from the system that was somehow their birth right. We the state then gain the rights one only to fairness but to name the anarchies that threaten us. We therefore, in the name of being so very fair (to ourselves at least) have the right to create otherwise meaning categories such as befit cheats and rail against them as if they were a threat.
The lines then matter- as it defines the exact level we incarnate not merely the sate, but the enemies of the state. What is more than that it is the distinction in this line, between I-the-anarchist and they the anarchist that defends states from certain acts. That is we do not loose sight of the fact that multiple anarchy is threatening and risks everything, while personal anarchy (within rules) is something to be lauded. In a sense this is after all the point of the category individual. The individual at any age, marks the paint at which a personal responsibility (that is an individual anarchist) starts to have the rights to assert themselves against the state. It marks then the point that the individual and their anarchy matters against all the power of convention and the state’s the individual, what is more it is clearly the peculiar responsibility of the state to foster this individual, and cede them there rights.
The state will then have to harbour from this ‘We’ ) those individuals who actually deride from their I. The reason for this of course is that the asserting of that I actually keeps the state itself safe. That is it prevents the anarchists acting as inchoate mob or fast moving unit – a unit that can so easily destroy the state. It is one of the hidden secrets of the ideology of capitalism, that it forces all power potential anarchist into the ‘I’ role, and so undermine or delimits their power to act.
The line matters therefore. Our society is amalgam of two different takes of the sate and two very distinct anarchy a fact that no doubt makes the’ liberal democracy’, which one is told is the high point’ of human develop so very unreplicatable able across the world. Each element of the verb is simple to make and yet highly destructive in itself. The I- anarchist is therefore at a different place simply criminality. Likewise the We-state is merely an oligarchy. What created the ‘freedom’ or at least that difference we feel in the West to be real (right or wrong) is the very freedom of this line. Tat is it is the fact that we can be in two heads a once, both I and We, and so both an anarchist and member of society. What is more we are free to move then line around a bit, and incarnate differently at different times. A fact that s one is trying either to copy the system from outside, or if one is having it imposed upon one, is exactly hard to replicate. For it is a reasonless and unspoken tension in the system we have.
Were exactly one draws the lines, and creates enemies is always in seen a matter of taste. But even here there is clearly strange romanticism that binds all such construct together. Take then the I anarchist – you sate declination. In a sense this is an assertion of the individual over the collective. And yet this individual is never any individual, it is always the rights of the free thinker, the wheeler-dealer, or the genius over the right of the pack. To assert them the rights to individual anarchy, is to allow oneself ore rights than one allow others. A normal little act of selfishness perhaps. And yet on dressed up in a romanticism and the idea that one is in this assertion is somehow different and special – as we of course we all are to ourselves at least). What is being this assertion is in effect the rights of the world each of us create for ourselves in our own minds (independent of thus in this world), over the rights attribute to the world we feel others create for themselves (the objective them). To assert then the individual of the I anarchist is to assert the rights of a world and not a person – against heights of some collective world structure (which is always attributed and never itself real). It is therefore to create an emotive world in the here and now (my world), a world of some kind of creation (even is that is merely the right to feel), and points it against a mythic general world, a world of order which one critiques. The rights of the free thinker is asserted against here mere chattering classes; or right of the entrepreneur to wheel and deal (and occasionally break the law) are asserted over the rights of the rest of society.
Likewise the opposite move, the We-state: They-anarchy, has behind the romanticism of an idea we all in something together- we are sharing thoughts dream and ideal. What is more this creative we-share is conceived as necessarily having a certain value in and for itself. if we agree- if we share our dream, and like to each other knowing that we do, then this is enough, that sharing makes it valid. This feeling is slightly complex, in that it is both an internal and eternal construction. The we-share is the felt, and yet ought to describe something real. If it does no, it is always open to delusion. Indeed a curtains species of madness binds the I and the we together. – for the I share is mad (and imagines their friends, and so creates their paranoia). What keeps the we-saying actually same is then the genuine appeal beyond itself nature.
This appeal then has two affects of its own. On the one hand it strengthen very greatly the power each of the we-feel, and the romanticism that accomplish this power. If we are together genuinely then we are powerful, and feel ourselves to be such (the fact that we remain tiny force in the world is then occluded I the exhilaration of doing together). And the same time, the very fact of having share keeps the We’s rather simple. We have to share what can be easily shared, and nothing more. The result is then that ideas such s patronise or rally calls about the lights of labours, or the duties of employers, become very easy we’s.- and complex perhaps richer, certainly ones are lost on the way.
The bigger problem, in last two points, is, of course, that the glamour of the romanticism, the feeling we are together, is enough to make the rather simplistic creation (and the They anarchist thy create – the others), feel very important for themselves. The anarchist, the non-shares beyond our simple union then become also rather too easy to define. What is more once of course such outsides age defined (in abstract terms) It becomes next to impossible to change those terms, without having to renegotiate exactly the We-share. Interestingly enough the growth in tolerance over that thirty years has shown this move is possible but not easy, and have a habit of creating new prejudice elsewhere. That is the forces that created the three-anarchy do not go away, and other they ill eventually tumble into being (ones that might in man resects resemble the ones one ought to have left behind; hence our modern racisms about Muslims and asylum seekers).
Our society is therefore full of a strange shifting assemblage of states good and bad and anarchists. A whirled of attributed negatives and only quasi defined and fast moving positives. And yet it is a mistake to see the negatives here as simpler fantasy. The You-State and the They –anarchy are very real in the minds that create. As real as chairs or hiccups. They have a power rooted in the divide they allow. They are then political realties, even if the actual ‘truth’ of the matter is more complex. Indeed the very simplifications involved here in a sense are the point and creator the realty. The world is very big and difficult, and the dialectics of anarchy and state are one way we impose simplification upon it. We then assume it is real, in order that we can live a life. The realty is then in us, and is a product of our romantic (and ill aimed power. a fact that gives it all the reality it needs.
Anarchy and the state are far from opposites therefore in our current political system. On the contrary they are both rather vital pitched within what and who we are. They allow us to define not only who we are, and what we share, both also who we oppose. The advantage of this dialectic lies in that that even at its most selfish, the anarchist it creates a world and two an individuate assume matter; likewise the We-share, creates in definition a form (albeit too simple) of sharing. The dialectic then breaks with individual minds and forces (in a sense) to open . It does so at the coast of creating enemies, assuredly, enemies the government then needs to manage and control more than that who these enemies are is itself highly volatile and complex each age has its own economies of anarchy and state, companies that are themselves in flux. It is the odd power of our current system that it encompasses all this flux. A factor that founds not freedom so much as internal peace. A peace that endless managed the conflicts in our society, and prevents more that ritualized violent, and yet at the cost perhaps of creating violence (in the They-anarchists) elsewhere….