But Could Anarchy Ever Work?

People often wonder if anarchy could ever work. But the fact is it already works. Interpersonal anarchy is already totally ubiqutious. Anarchy of course means without rulers. This means that any consensual interaction between people constitutes as anarchy. Anytime someone isn’t bullying someone else is anarchy. It’s a shame that we have to name such a basic common sense thing because the thing itself under discussion predates the word. The word is the descriptor of the actual thing. The actual thing we’re talking about is freedom. Freedom, you might agree, is a co-existence in which people are not being dominated over by others.

Some people are turned off by the word “anarchism” because it’s an “ism.” Other people are turned off because it conjures chaos in their minds. That is how it’s always portrayed by the corporate media. That’s also usually how people use the word in everyday life. For this reason it may seem fruitless to use the word since so many people have negative associations with the word. The word tends to be associated with riots in certain people’s minds but the fact is that anarchy — again, etymologically meaning without rulers — is actually a synonym for equality. Others are turned off by the word “anarchy” because it conjures an aesthetic they’re less than comfortable with. The word is very charged. It inevitably sounds confrontational to certain folks. Personally, I love the word. The more I say it the more I love it. I love it because of what it means. Anarchism, again, means freedom, but it is stating it in the apophatic sense. Freedom is not being ruled over. That’s probably what makes it sound confrontational. Because it’s saying “NO” to rulers, to kings, to queens, to the ruling class, to politicians, to slave masters, to bullies; because it’s confronting the control system at the philosophical root, which is really the State’s weakest point. In a single word, anarchism exposes the fallacy that a ruling class is based on: that is, its alleged right to rule you. Yet, if one wants to avoid using the word, another approach is to try to not name it at all. This can also be a powerful approach. People may very well see eye to eye with you on the principles themselves, and you don’t necessarily need to label it. Once you name it, it can appear to be a pre-packaged thing; like some ideology of someone else’s making; something that someone is trying to sell you. But if anarchy truly means freedom (not being ruled over and not ruling over others), then anarchism wouldn’t be an ideology. An ideology is based on ideas after all. There’s nothing wrong with having ideas, but ideas can also be wildly off base; and wildly harmful. Freedom is not just some idea. It’s not a mental construct that somebody invented in their mind. It’s something that plays out (or doesn’t) in physical reality. It’s a condition of human or animal coexistence just like slavery is. Anarchism is a life philosophy. Etymologically, philosophy means “love of wisdom.” Wisdom wouldn’t be wisdom if it was divorced from real-world coexistence. Wisdom would take into account people’s wellbeing, their suffering under injustice, and their right to be free.

Other languages have their equivalents, but in the English language, “anarchy” is one of the only words that stands up to all forms of domination, whether that comes in the form of a patriarchy, matriarchy, monarchy, or oligarchy.  I, for one, don’t always use the word “anarchy.” One is often able to communicate the philosophy without using the word. However, if you never name it, not even when pressed, you also run the risk of sounding vague. If you exclusively use synonyms, then one also has to clarify what these words mean as well. You can use a word like “sovereignty” since it has the same meaning. Etymologically, sovereignty means above rulership. In other words, not being owned or ruled over by others. Yet, if you only use the word “sovereignty,” especially without defining it, people may assume that sovereignty is compatible with government. After all, “national sovereignty” is a common phrase. Another approach is to try to use all the synonyms interchangeably in order to provide as panoramic and precise a definition as you can. Another synonym for anarchy is abolition, of course. Granted, not abolition of any old thing, but abolition of all forms of slavery; and only that. Some people get carried away and want to abolish other things as well, but when you think about it, only slavery in all its forms needs to be abolished. Unfortunately we are stuck inside the confines of language; and every word carries some kind of connotation within people’s minds, and it’s difficult to account for it all. I would just as soon use the word freedom, but people also have a warped sense of that word as well. People might equate freedom to anything from conservative ideology to liberal ideology to democracy to Marxism. But, if we’re going to be honest about it, freedom would be to have no ruling class at all. Some have also called this “voluntaryism”. Some have called it a voluntary society. I like these terms as well. With these terms we are stating what freedom is in the affirmative sense. Freedom is voluntary. Freedom isn’t coercive. It’s consensual. The word “voluntary” conjures an aura of non-aggression, whereas “anarchism” conjures an aura of self-defense against aggression. Some people prefer the word “voluntaryism” because it readily brings to mind collaboration and peaceful coexistence. A word like “voluntaryism” has the advantage of giving people a fresh start to approach the philosophy, but has the disadvantage of potentially sounding obscure, or like some new  “ism” even though freedom versus slavery is the age-old question. When you refer to a voluntary society, people might assume you’re talking about a society that’s run on volunteer work; as opposed to voluntary meaning consensual, i.e. non-coercive. Even the word “consent” is so often interpreted to mean “agreement,” but they are not the same thing at all. We can remain free while disagreeing on literally anything except the fact that we have no right to own each other as property (whether we claim that right implicitly or explicitly). We can have any other disagreement and still remain free! Consent is not agreement. It is the absence of rape, murder, coercion, assault, invasion, theft and psychological abuse (i.e. fraud, deception, gaslighting). In other words, basic respect. If we’re going to be honest, the State claims to own its citizens as property, and does this in a variety of ways all over the world. Take a look at the list of transgressions just named. The State claims the right to do all of these except rape.

Any fair exchange between people is anarchy. Cars coexisting on the road, for example, is anarchy. Riding a bus or a train among friends or strangers is anarchy. Consensual sex is anarchy. Having a drink with a friend is anarchy. Having dinner with your family is anarchy. Cooking food for your children is anarchy. Working—so long as you’re not being stolen from in the process, and have consented to do this work—is anarchy. Growing food without being enslaved is anarchy. Building a bridge without being enslaved is anarchy. Teaching children a subject matter without being bullied and without bullying them is anarchy. A game of chess or basketball is anarchy. Any interaction at all where one person is not abusing or violating the consent of another is anarchy. Of course, at a societal level, we live under the political and economic rule of governments, banks, corporations, etc, but at an interpersonal level, anarchy is already all around us. Anarchy doesn’t mean without rules, mind you. It means without rulers. People may assume that rulers are needed to have rules, but this is not at all the case. Rules worth honoring don’t come from rulers. Rules worth honoring are principles that stem from a deeper source. People also often imagine that anarchy is without structure. But this is also a misconception of anarchy. Any consensual structure or collaboration is anarchy! The reason rulers are not needed to have rules and structure is because rulers destroy the one real rule that there is: the fact that we are not each other’s property. To not rape and murder, for instance, is a rule that many people already respect every single day of their lives. To be clear, murder is of course distinct from self-defense. Who made this rule to not rape and murder anyway? Did a so-called “lawmaker” make up this law? Is it a rule because somebody wrote it down in a law book? Or because government passed a law? Is that what makes rape and murder wrong? Or is it a natural law? Natural because of the harm that such deeds objectively cause. Why do so many people respect this rule to not rape and murder? Why is it that you yourself have respected this rule (if that is indeed the case)? Is it because you would have been too afraid to get caught? Or is it because you wouldn’t want to do these things in the first place? Is it because you’re aware that there would be severe physical, mental and emotional consequences to raping and murdering someone? Consequences exist with or without government, mind you. To rape and murder naturally wreaks havoc not only on the victim, not only on the perpetrator’s life as well, not only on the friends and family members of the victim, not only on the friends and family members of the perpetrator, but also on society at large. The more people do such things to each other the less people can be free. Would it make you sick to do such things to another? Is there something inside of you that would not allow you to do those things? Would it make you suffer to cause suffering to others? This force has been called conscience. It has been called morality. It has been called love. Love is not something that human beings made up in their minds, but is a force innate to existence itself. Love would exist in nature with or without human beings here to experience it. Needless to say, people can grow disconnected from this force, but the force remains. Every child is born needing love. We are wired to receive it. Without it, we grow traumatized. There is no higher law in the land than this force. Living according to this force is what produces true law and order among us. Living according to this force produces an organic order that we co-create in real time. It’s not the so-called order derived from being externally ruled over and controlled by authority figures and dominators. It’s an order that emerges when people respect each other’s right to live and prosper without controlling and dominating others: an order that arises when people refrain from bullying one another. Or else, it’s an order that is restored when people defend themselves—whether physically or psychologically—from bullies and dominators. This force we call love or conscience is what makes structure and collaboration healthy as opposed to abusive. When speaking of love, one is not necessarily referring to an intimate love, but basic respect of another’s freewill and life-force. Conscience is a principle (or a rule) among us, though it often goes unspoken. Anarchy certainly doesn’t mean without rules, because moral principles still apply. The old saying to not do onto others what you wouldn’t have done onto you sums it up as well as any other phrase. Again, this rule has also been defined as “consent,” “respect,” “bodily autonomy,” “sovereignty,” “self-ownership”, “liberation,” “justice,” among other terms. Honoring this rule is what makes freedom possible. When people do not respect this one rule, then freedom cannot be sustained. Humanity has been duped to think that freedom needs to be protected by authority, whereas in reality authority (i.e. some people’s right to rule over others) is antithetical to freedom. How can people free when their own bodily autonomy is not factored into the one-sided, coercive contract (with the State) that they were born into?

People largely already expect you to not be a bully in your daily life. If you are one, it will be resented by the people around you. You’ll probably be called out on it eventually. Your children, students, colleagues, friends, or lovers will likely hate you. Your relationships with people will likely fall apart. People generally don’t like being bullied and bossed around by authoritarians. So why is anarchism considered fringe? If all anarchy means is no rulers, no slave masters, no bullies, then shouldn’t it be a wildly popular philosophy throughout the world? If anarchism doesn’t shun structure, but merely insists that the structure not rely on slave labor, shouldn’t this be the most common sense worldview among everyone who says they want justice? If not liking bullies is common, then shouldn’t anarchists be everywhere you look? Of course, bullies and bully-supporters are ubiquitous too. Yet, so are those who denounce bullying. I personally think anarchism is still relatively unpopular because of confusion regarding what anarchism is. Fear plays into it as well: fear of freedom; and fear of a having the responsibility to get free. This is not to say that anarchism isn’t already embraced by millions, or at least hundreds of thousands, of people around the world, because my impression is that it is. I would have no way of knowing the actual numbers, but the fact is that anarchism has been around for a very long time; well before it would have even been called anarchism. I think the number of worldwide anarchists would be far higher if anarchism were more understood. Ever since there was slavery and domination, there would have been people who were against it. Ever since there was human co-existence there was the choice between two essential ways of coexisting: freedom versus slavery. Freedom can take on many forms societally, as can slavery. Slavery can call itself by many names which euphemize and disguise its true nature. Slavery is a spectrum with some forms of slavery being more severe than others. Yet, freedom and slavery are objectively not the same thing in the same exact way that consent and rape are objectively not the same thing. Indeed, there are many people around the world who have come to understand that government itself is a form of slavery, but there would have to be billions of us to realize this in order to actually live in a stateless world, or at least millions of us in one geographical region to live in a stateless society. I’m personally convinced that most people would be anarchists if they hadn’t been taught otherwise: if they hadn’t, for example, gone through approximately 15,000 hours of State education before the age of 18 where they learned obedience to authority, and the inevitability, desirability and legitimacy of government. Yet, even after all that conditioning, people are still so often just a conversation or two away from realizing that they’re anarchists. Again, calling yourself an anarchist is not necessary if you prefer other verbiage. Anarchy, as a word, carries baggage just like any other word. One could make up a new word—“freedomist”—and yet, the word “freedom”, too, has negative connotations to certain people, which is amazing when you think about it. Unfortunately—and you might say by design—there is not a cultural consensus on what any of these words mean, and so, again, one approach is to use them all, and define them as you go, in order to get one’s point across. As long as people equate freedom, liberation, equality and justice to things like democracy, liberalism, conservatism, and Marxism as opposed to statelessness then people will never liberate their minds from their own authoritarian ideology (i.e. ideologies that, at the root, rely on State coercion and violence). But saying that is meaningless to someone who conflates anarchy with mass violence and chaos. I am convinced from my own experience that many people are already anarchists at heart, but perhaps too stunned by what acknowledging this would imply. I would go so far as to say that most children are born anarchists deep down. Many children are, of course, also bullies. Yet, much of this behavior is also learned from a societal standard in which the bigger bully you are the more successful, powerful and rich you become. Human nature is not fixed, but malleable: our nature is to be shaped by our condition. Most everyone is born with the capacity for doing good and doing harm. Therefore, the example that is set by society does wonders in shaping our worldview and behavior as we grow up. People so often blame human nature for everything, even though so much of our negative behavior is stemming from our conditioning. A distinction between human nature and the human condition is vital, or else we descend into a nihilistic worldview where nothing can be improved upon because the human being is innately corrupt.

If I say anarchy is freedom, then now we have to define freedom. If I say that anarchy is consent, then now we have to define consent. Yet, people already intuitively understand what these words mean even if we make an intellectual mess out of them. People already know what a bully is. Bullies force people to do things against their will. Bullies don’t respect people’s bodily consent or freewill. They threaten people (sometimes subtly and sometimes overtly) if people disobey their commands. They don’t take no for an answer even when it’s your body in question. Bullies force themselves onto others violently and sexually. Bullies dominate, harass, gaslight and torment. Bullies step on people to achieve their own ends. It’s an absurd situation that the one philosophy that actually acknowledges that government itself is a bully is considered by many folks to be espousing violence. But this word “violence” also needs defining. If you are enslaved and held captive by a group of people and were to kill those specific people in order to free yourself, then that wouldn’t be violence. People may call it that, but an act of killing in true self-defense is not violence. It’s self-defense; aka protection. It comes from a much different spirit than violence. Violence, etymologically, shares the same source as “violation” or the French word, “viol,” which means rape. Protection, on the other hand, comes from the spirit of love: love for life and freedom, and that of your fellow human beings. Sometimes deadly force is needed to free yourself and loved ones from your captors. What is someone to do if another comes to rape and murder them? Doesn’t someone have the right to reach for a heavy object and crack the skull of one’s attacker? Or is one supposed to just allow oneself to be dominated and mutilated by lunatics? There are times that distinguishing violence from self-defense might not be clear to the onlooker, but wouldn’t it always be important to try to figure this out? Why did so-and-so punch his classmate? Was he being a bully? Was he being bullied by the person he punched? Were they both being bullies? Who punched who first and why? Did he overreact to what was said? Who initiated the actual physical violence? Who’s lying and who’s telling the truth? Are both people lying? Understanding where there is culpability always comes back to the question of who was bullying and dominating whom. People tend to use the word “violence” even when they’re referring to self-defense, which muddles the issue, but, when you think about it, you can’t arrive at a holistic understanding of justice without distinguishing one from the other. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t a free society be the result of a population that knows and acts on the difference between aggression and protection? Instead of justice being something that is decided on our behalf and enforced by a select subset of society (people in black robes and wooden mallets), shouldn’t justice be something we know and understand for ourselves? Folks often wonder what justice would look like in a free society. For one thing, justice is not revenge or punishment. This is what justice has been presented to us as, but the reality is that the “justice” systems in this world create an unimaginable amount of harm and devastation. This is stemming from a misconception of what justice itself is. If someone murders someone else, this is of course a horrible situation to have to deal with. In order to know how to deal with it, a truth discovery process is necessary. You might call this work investigation, but it doesn’t require authority, but rather knowledge and understanding. If the murderer is caught in the act of murder, then people of course have the right to defend someone’s life (or themselves) with up to deadly force in order to prevent that murder. Someone may choose to use less than deadly force, but the point is if one dares attempt to murder another, one is inevitably forgoing their own right to exist in a state of peace. If the murder has already taken place, then there’s a question of what to do now. Most murders (that aren’t done by the State) are done in the heat of the moment, which is to say that no one—police or otherwise—is able to prevent it. Police mostly show up after the murder has already taken place. And so, government doesn’t actually solve the problem of rape and murder in this world. The fact that there is so much rape and murder and assault and domestic abuse in a world that’s rife with police and military and surveillance and State authority proves that these things don’t actually prevent violent crime. If the murderer is someone who is likely go on to murder and torment others, then there’s the moral responsibility to deal with this person or else face the culpability of allowing them to go on a murder spree. To determine whether you’re dealing with a psychopath or someone who actually does feel remorse and did it impulsively or accidentally in the moment requires an understanding of human psychology. The murderer, mind you, may also be a skilled liar and so one should be careful not to be manipulated. But the point is, if people can determine with a high degree of accuracy that the act of violence was done by someone who is unlikely to do it again, then no further intervention may even be necessary at all. This is because the karmic blowback and consequence for doing this will naturally manifest in that person’s life. If they are able to experience remorse, then they themselves will have to live with the guilt and shame of having done something horrible to someone else. Their relationships will also likely suffer; and perhaps these life lessons will teach them how to coexist with others in a more fair and just manner. There are so many natural incentives already built into coexistence to not rape, murder and assault. That being said, once again, self-defense is legitimate when facing one’s own violent domination. If someone murders someone’s family member, and another chooses to end the murderer’s life for that reason, then this, too, can be understood as a consequence that is likely to spin out from the initial violent crime. This is to say that children from a young age can be taught all the reasons why certain transgressions are karmic no-no’s. Doing this alone would already drastically reduce the violent crime in this world. Instead, children are taught in so many words that murder can be OK as long as you work for the State. This creates a moral confusion and incoherence in the human psyche. Furthermore, violent crime would be drastically reduced if the inhumane conditions people are growing up in and living in as adults were to be addressed. It goes without saying that poverty feeds into violent crime and theft. Instead of building a prison industrial complex to deal with this, it makes infinitely more sense to address the societal conditions people are being raised in. This would entail confronting the artificial scarcity paradigm of economic warfare, racism, classism, banking, government, and corporate monopoly.

Humanity certainly does not live in a state of anarchy or freedom at a macrocosmic level. But microcosmically or interpersonally, people do enjoy anarchy (or freedom) amongst each other. By interpersonal anarchy, once again, we are talking about when people honor each other’s bodily autonomy and consent. How does consent differ from consensus? When people use the word “consent” sometimes others imagine that they mean “consensus.” But again, consent is not derived from consensus or agreement, except for the one agreement that we don’t own each other. Some people would like to suggest that because we are interconnected, there are actually no boundaries between us at all. Some people suggest that human beings don’t actually have any individual rights; that human rights are a western concept. The glaring problem with this framing of coexistence is that it gets genocidal really fast. If human beings don’t have rights, then what would be wrong with mass murdering them? One’s right to exist unharmed is not a western idea, but rather an eternal principle that many civilizations have ignored, but not without dire consequences. It’s true that we are interconnected, of course, but it’s precisely for this reason that sacred boundaries ought to be respected. What I do affects you, and what you do affects me. Therefore, you have the right to tell me to stop doing something that is negatively affecting you, and vice versa. Consent is not about being in accordance on what we think or feel. Consent is simply to refrain from physically and psychologically abusing each other. Of course, plenty of regular people abuse each other (not just the ruling class), but it is also widely understood to be intolerable when we do, especially when irreversible harm is caused. If one respects another’s bodily autonomy, then one should not condone transgressions against it. It’s only one logical step further to not condone the State since the State inescapably claims the right to transgress upon people’s bodily autonomy. All ruling class systems are based on domination, so when people ask if anarchy could ever work they are asking if we can coexist without violent domination being the underlying contract that we all sign onto (whether wittingly or not). It’s true that you would never be able to eliminate all the bullies in the world. It’s true that the world can never be a perfect place. But this doesn’t mean that the masses should base their worldview on the bully dynamic as if that’s OK to do. This also doesn’t mean one necessarily has to excommunicate from their lives everyone who’s ever been a bully. It would be more about not condoning or enabling that side of people; and also, to not vote for them when they run for office! Bullies create trauma in this world. They make a mess out of everything. They add new souls to the cycle of abuse. If one wants more peace in the world, then one shouldn’t be a bully or condone bully behavior since that feeds into their power. The only difference between an anarchist and the average person is that the anarchist points out the obvious fact that government inherently claims the right to be a bully. Some obvious examples of this include the fact that the state implicitly claims to own you by telling you how much you owe it in the form of taxation, and punishes you if you refuse to pay. That is a fundamentally coercive dynamic, not consensual. Taxation is not a suggestion or a recommendation, but a command that is made under the threat of physical punishment. The State also implicitly claims the right to own you by passing laws that apply to your body against your will. This includes, but is not limited to, what substances you have the right to place in your body and what substances you don’t. You simply cannot claim the right to abduct and cage someone on that basis without claiming to own their body. If one individual were to do this to another, it would be considered kidnapping and enslavement. It should go without saying that enslavement is wrong whether or not you claim to have some special status due to your uniform and training. Underneath the uniform is a flesh and blood human being with no more or less human rights than anyone else. Further examples of the State’s claim of ownership over people’s bodies include enforcing certain standards for what paperwork people need to cross invisible lines on earth. This, too, is implicitly claiming to own people’s bodies as well as the Earth itself. Other examples of the state claiming to own the masses is when the agents of the State stop and frisk people, invade their home, invade their country, murder them, murder their children, drop bombs on their homes and schools and hospitals, throw people in cages for disobeying them, assault them for having resisted, and even torture them behind closed doors in secret prisons. There’s just absolutely no way to claim that kind of authority over people without implicitly claiming them as your property. Anarchism is common sense to someone in touch with their conscience. The absurd truth is that so many more people are anarchists at heart even if they would tell you otherwise.

Similarly, many people will tell you that they are moral relativists, but then will turn around and decry the horrors of human rights abuses. If nothing can ever be right or wrong, then there can be no basis for justice. What reason would there be to care what happens to other people or even to yourself if nothing can be right or Wong? But if certain things can be wrong—such as genocide—then doesn’t this prove that a Natural Law exists? If a Natural Law exists, then shouldn’t we just try to understand it as best we can instead of relying on so-called authority figures to unilaterally determine what the law is? Is murdering your neighbor wrong because government says so? Is it wrong because you and I said so? What if we changed our minds tomorrow and said that murdering our neighbor was fine? Does that mean it’s now OK? Does law come from people’s dictates? What about the person being murdered though? Shouldn’t their freewill and existence be factored in? What about that person’s loved ones? Shouldn’t their wellbeing be taken into account as well? What does telling ourselves it’s OK to murder change for them? What about the consequences the murder would have on us? What about the feelings of guilt, isolation, loss and regret that we will more than likely feel? What about the shame and heartbreak it will bring to our families? What about the blood and the physical wounds? Aren’t these real and objective? Are these consequences only optional mental constructs that the human mind has invented? Or do such consequences naturally play out in physical and psychological reality whether we want to acknowledge them or not? Isn’t murdering innocent life just naturally harmful no matter what people tell themselves about it? If you acknowledge that murdering your family at the dinner table for no reason at all would be objectively harmful, then you implicitly acknowledge the existence of a Natural Law. It’s a law written into the human heart. The source of this Law is not something created by a judge or a lawmaker. It comes from the same source as any other natural phenomenon: light, sound, vibration, electromagnetism, love, etc. One’s conscience can of course be developed or neglected throughout one’s life, but the fact is that most people are born with the capacity for conscience. The conscience is, for one thing, the emotional intelligence that causes you to cringe when you see another being in pain. This force within us is actually the real thing that produces peace, safety, freedom, joy, wellbeing and justice among us. When you look around you, most people don’t actually murder and assault each other when they sit down next to each other in movie theaters, on planes, on trains, on buses, or when they cross each other on the street or in the grocery aisle. People can largely trust perfect strangers to be anarchists in this sense. Thank goodness that this is the case. If we didn’t know how to go about our daily lives without assaulting each other everywhere we went, then there would be almost no point to have this conversation. But most people do want to live their lives and get through the day without violent mayhem following them everywhere they go. Thankfully there is a force within most people that guides them away from certain behaviors. It’s a lie that mass surveillance and authority is what keeps humanity safe. It’s actually the conscience. Without conscience, it would be mass murder everywhere all the time. People may assume that the reason most people don’t violently dominate each other in public is because the police exist. But the truth of the matter is that vast numbers of us don’t want any part of committing violence or having violence committed to us. And anyway, a free society—though there would no longer be police—could still have protection.

To the extent that there isn’t a conscience inside everyone, self-defense of course comes into the picture. People will often respond to all this by saying that knowing Natural Law is all fine and dandy, but what happens when people don’t respect this Law? Not everyone has a conscience, after all, so what is to be done about psychopaths and abusers that actually do enjoy causing others to suffer? Again, this is where self-defense comes into view. Needless to say, the way people respond to harmful behavior depends on the situation they find themselves in. One might be able to get away from a dangerous person without having to defend themselves. Other times actual physical self-defense would be needed. Sometimes people would take that self-defense into their own hands. Sometimes folks would enlist the help of others if they weren’t able to defend themselves against their attacker. This already happens anyway. As many have pointed out, a condition of true freedom is maintained through the balancing of two essential aspects of justice: the principle of non-aggression and the principle of self-defense. In order for self-defense to be non-aggressive, the self-defensive force ought to be done in a spirit of true protection. This means that self-defensive force ought to be proportional to the severity of the harm being done, and ought to be directed at those who are specifically causing them the harm. Otherwise wouldn’t it just be a new act of aggression? For example, if a friend punches you in an act of aggression, but then you respond by punching someone else entirely, have you not just punched someone new and created yet more harm? Or if someone punches you once, but then you beat them to death as a response, this, too, would constitute as an act of aggression. Not protection. It’s not to say that someone should never punch back. That’s pacifism, which is an untenable worldview inside a planet unfortunately populated with so many bullies and dominators. Yet, the context of the punch and the amount of punches you throw in self-defense also matters. If you were able to stop your attacker with just a couple of punches in response, and your life was not actually under threat, then you would have no good reason to continue beating them to death. What is true for an individual is also true for a group of individuals in this respect. If your dominators have enslaved you, you probably won’t be able to break free by asking nicely, and yet, some random act of violence towards innocent life wouldn’t do anything to free oneself either. One might wonder what should happen when the harm being done is not physical. What if someone psychologically abuses you over time, and one day you snap and punch them in the face? Would that be considered self-defense or an act of aggression? Again, the context of the altercation always matters. Justice is not some cookie-cutter pre-determined construct that we just superimpose over every situation. Justice is something to live and practice every moment of our lives. The principle of justice (non-aggression and self-defense) is very simple, but there can be complexity in how to apply these principles in each moment. Justice, to a large extent, is a process of self-inquiry and self-honesty. One can ask oneself, “Would it be wrong for me to do this thing?” If so, why? If not, why not? Am I causing harm to innocent people? If there’s no harm, there’s no crime. If people want justice in their lives, then justice ought to be something widely discussed among children and adults in open-discussion settings so that people can air their concerns and questions. Justice would have to be the topic of conversation on the tip of our tongues. It’s more important than learning anything else when you think about it. Yet, in the 15,000 hours of school that we go through before 18, not to mention the thousands of hours of higher education, justice and moral principles barely come up except as authoritative and top-down concepts that the legal system is in charge of. Only when we, the masses take responsibility for knowing and understanding justice oursevles can people ever expect to be free. The fact remains that large-scale societal freedom cannot happen until enough minds are free.   

Again, anarchy is the absence of slavery. Or, in other words, freedom. That’s all it’s ever meant. For a long while I myself didn’t understand this. It’s certainly not taught in any school or university that I ever heard of. But thankfully overtime I was able to unlearn false definitions of the words that I use. Freedom, you might agree, is defined by the absence of being ruled over by others. Rulers are people who implicitly claim to own you by telling you what you can or can’t do with your own body even though you’re not causing harm to others. Rulers are people who tell you how much labor you owe them, and harm you if you disobey them. Rulers—such as kings, queens, dictators, presidents, prime-ministers, military, police, tax-collectors—implicitly claim to own you by threatening or enacting harm to you in order to enforce your obedience to their arbitrary dictates in spite of your moral objection to those dictates. Anarchy proposes the common sense response to such a morally indefensible and unequal arrangement: no rulers at all. There’s no other equal deal for everyone, when you think about it, because any other deal proposes a ruling class, which is inescapably unequal and unfair. Why advocate for any form of enslavement at all? Not the fake variety of freedom under democracy, mind you, where people are still being controlled by a ruling class, but get to pretend to themselves that they’re choosing a representative when in fact they are just choosing between a pre-selected cast of insiders (and fake outsiders) to rule over them in perpetuity and steer the course of history. After all, to govern, etymologically, means to control and steer. It does not mean to serve and protect and represent. No ballot gives you the option to opt out: to vote for true freedom. Why would it? When we vote for politicians, we pretend that we own each other. Unless I own the people of the world, what right would I have to vote for a system that controls and steers the people of the world? Unless I have the right to tax people, invade people’s countries, murder people, cage people for putting substances in their bodies, then what right would I have to vote for a system that does all these things to people? Anarchism proposes a voluntary society, which could take on a variety of forms. People often have trouble imagining a free society, but the truth is that no single individual needs to be able to imagine it all. The mind does not have to be able to picture the entirety of a free society or world. One only has to commit to the inherent sovereignty of the other beings within a society, and if enough of us did that, and coherently acted upon that conviction, then our aggregate actions would organically produce an infinitely freer and more just society. It may seem too simple to be true, but how else could a free society ever manifest? No one should be expected to detail what everyone else will do in a free society. That would get back to having a ruler. Anarchy is not a new system imposed upon us all by some social architect, though suggestions of how things could work can certainly be useful. Anarchy is not some new legal or economic control system that is being proposed. It’s not a specific blueprint for a society that everyone else must live inside or else be exiled, excluded, punished, caged and/or killed. Historically, that is the strategy of communism and fascism, and other systems of control. Anarchism advocates for human freedom, not the destruction of human freedom. What people do with that freedom is their own choice to make obviously. No ruler has the right to determine and control the autonomous actions of others. Yet, the fact remains that the choices people make have consequences for others. If someone’s choices result in other people’s harm, then people have the right to see to it that that these acts of harm are stopped. As remarkably simple as it is, we could have free societies if enough people within those societies knew and understood Natural Law and acted upon that knowledge. People may assume we need judges and lawmakers to determine what the law is, but the reality is that Natural Law flows from the fact that we do not own each other, and therefore we have no right to act as though we do. Understanding Natural Law is to understand the objective difference between actions that harm and enslave others and actions that don’t. Synonyms for Natural Law include Karma, cause and effect, choice and consequence, consent (meaning to refrain from rape, murder, assault, coercion, theft, invasion and deception (defrauding and gaslighting), the non-aggression principle balanced with principle of self-defense, Justice, Cosmic Law, the Law of Love, the Law of Conscience (con meaning together science meaning to know; aka knowing together; aka common knowledge; aka common sense; aka common ground; aka common cause). Living by this Law is what produces freedom.

This overall framing of anarchy as true freedom is, of course, not how everyone uses the word. Many people imagine that the word “anarchy” means violent chaos, or else structurelessness. But once again, without rulers is the true etymological meaning of the word. If you are initiating violence against innocent people, then you are inescapably ruling over this innocent life. Therefore, initiating violence against innocent people can never be anarchy. This brings up the question of who among us is actually innocent and who isn’t. Within these governmental and economic systems of control under which humanity lives, we are complicit in each other’s suffering and enslavement. People’s votes and tax dollars routinely go to the bombings and prison sentences of innocent life. Does that mean that the one who votes and pays taxes to a murderous government deserves to be killed though? How to get out of this predicament of interconnected complicity and bondage? Do random acts of killing actually get anyone anywhere? Or is the real solution something else? Wouldn’t the solution to human bondage actually be for people to change their mindset in the aggregate? How else to change our aggregate actions except through the mind and heart? What else can actually change people’s actions except their own thoughts and emotions? Even if only the people of the world who do possess a conscience were to step fully into that conscience, that would be more than enough to make the shift happen. Thoughts and emotions can of course be set into motion by the words and actions of others, which is obviously the power of influence that we all have. The way anarchist philosophy would become popular worldwide is, of course, the same way that liberal ideology, conservative ideology, Marxism, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam became so massively popular. None of those ideologies or religions formulate a coherent philosophy of freedom, which has everything to do with why humanity is where it’s at. Anarchism—or whatever synonym you use—would have to be widely discussed, taught, published and distributed by a wide variety of voices in every conceivable language, with as many approaches taken as possible to communicating the philosophy. A message of true freedom would have to be spread so widely through all physical and digital media so as to reach as many hearts and minds as possible, and reach them as early in life as possible. Of course, this includes artworks, books, podcasts, theatre pieces, presentations, group discussions, and so on and so forth. Mass publication and distribution is precisely what has come to pass with an ideology such as Marxism, which is yet another ruling class ideology underneath its layers of deception. It deceives so well, in fact, that many well-meaning people conflate Marxism with liberation, even though it leads humanity right back into the slaughterhouse. Once the number of worldwide anarchists (or abolitionists of slavery, voluntaryists, or freedom advocates) was high enough, the people of the Earth could then live in an anarchist or free world instead of a neo-liberal or fascist world. Yet, as peace-loving as this process of achieving an anarchist society (or world) sounds, everyone knows that the control system wouldn’t just roll over and let themselves be undone. Perhaps one reason that people imagine anarchy to be chaos is that they know that getting out of this system would be an epic showdown. A period of chaos and upheaval would likely ensue. People know that violent chaos would likely be hurled at them from the State itself. This has everything to do with why massive numbers of people would be needed for this shift to actually take place at all. With strength in numbers (that is to say, a critical mass of people whatever that exact number is), people would then be able to defend themselves from a control system trying to cling to its control. How else could true freedom happen without a massive effort and commitment on the parts of massive numbers of people? How else unless massive numbers of people made a genuine effort to heal themselves from the belief in authority and all authoritarian ideology in all its many iterations, help others do the same, unite among a critical mass, and then be prepared to defend themselves from those who want to dominate and control them if necessary? People might assume that you need a new authoritative structure to successfully defend against such a unified and organized enemy with endless resources (i.e. the State). But a few things should be noted that will help disprove this myth. Many Marxists, for instance, argue that a new State is needed in order to defend the people from the old State. This is a clever and insidious ruling class spells cast over the minds of people seeking societal change.

Can one be so sure that a new State is not needed to defend from the old State? How would people be able to defend themselves from a unified and organized enemy with endless resources which is willing to viciously murder in order to hold onto its control? First of all, one is wise to remember that the military and police are funded by taxpayers, so if the taxpayers stopped paying their taxes, then who is it that would foot the bill for the salaries of the police and military to come assault, arrest and murder those who are trying to break free from the State? A global tax walkout among a critical mass would certainly undo the control system, and no shot would have to be fired except those shot in self-defense. Even a local tax walkout might send ripple effects that could build and spread. The State’s resources are only as endless as people’s willingness to pay. The more widespread the willingness to labor for the State is, the harder it is for unwilling folks to figure out a way to break free from the State without harm and exclusion done to them. The more viable alternatives become, the more willing people would be to stop paying their taxes. If businesses stopped paying their taxes, then customers wouldn’t have to pay sale’s tax. If property owners stopped paying their property taxes then tenants wouldn’t have to absorb the cost of taxes in their rent. If workers stopped paying their income tax, then the people of the world could actually bring this whole system to a halt. The ruling class would have to pay the police and military directly themselves if the regular people refused to pay, which would make it very obvious who works for whom. Plenty of police and soldiers, especially the most sadistic among them, would still be happy to take orders and a pay check directly from the ruling class without the pretense of being a public servant. But the veneer of protection and service would be gone. The job would be far less attractive to wide-eyed youth who erroneously think that the police and military are the institutions to join to be a hero bravely defending the lives of citizens. The amount of inter-millennial brainwashing that has gone into turning young people into obedient order-followers is staggering. It’s been thousands of years of programming in the making. This form of social engineering is largely accomplished by appealing, in particular, to a teenage boy’s sense of masculinity and virility. It’s not that masculinity should be eradicated, mind you, but, correct me if I’m wrong, masculinity disconnected from conscience is one of the most terrifying forces in the Universe.

If massive numbers of people were reached who had internalized a true philosophy of freedom, and, in turn, refused to pay their taxes, the people themselves could organize in order to defend themselves from aggressing armies when needed. It wouldn’t be about conquering new people, but liberating oneself from conquest. It’s a totally different mindset that would have to be present in the minds of large numbers of people. If such state of consciousness among a critical mass could first be achieved through philosophical and educational outreach, then people’s aggregate choices would of course result in much less harm overall. If the conscience was the most prized and nourished aspect of education, then young people would be much more likely to gravitate towards joining forces with those who truly want to protect people as opposed to teaming up with invading and occupying armies. People may assume that an authoritative chain of command is necessary to organize a self-defensive response against invaders, but the fact is you don’t need authority for effective self-defense. What is actually needed is intelligence, expertise, strategy, self-discipline, experience, resources, know-how, listening and thinking, strength, the ability to learn on the fly, and the will to live. None of these things necessitates a hierarchical chain of command when you think about it. It necessitates wiser people. Authority is so often presented as the solution, but this is the lazy approach. A wiser coexistence can never happen until the people themselves are wiser. The danger with following a hierarchical chain of command is that you’ll end up killing on command without even understanding the true purpose of that killing. You’ll get manipulated; used as a pawn, and led to do horrible things against people who are not even your true enemy. An actual and bonafide warrior who defends in the spirit of love and justice is not an order-follower, but someone who knows why to take a particular action and why not to take another action. That’s not authority. That’s wisdom. Most of the mass murder in this world has come from armies in which soldiers are compartmentalized and excluded from pertinent knowledge. Instead, more knowledgeable people could mount effective self-defensive efforts when necessary. Obedience is the nemesis of wisdom. Obedience leads to mass murder. Obedience leads to deception, and deception will have you killing your own human family for no good reason at all. It’s often assumed that authority is needed to have cohesion and structure. If everyone’s opinion has equal weight doesn’t this lead to confusion and mayhem? But the antidote to mass confusion is not actually authority. Yes, authority does simplify such decision-making in the short term. Instead of asking ourselves the question of what the right thing to do is, people are expected to submit themselves to the alleged authority of someone else; and this might make decision-making go faster. People may perceive that it is their obligation to follow someone else’s commands, and therefore set aside their own misgivings. It may makes things appear orderly to set aside your questions and misgivings, but in the long run, it generates much more chaos. We are so often trained, as children, to not question the alleged authority of adults; trained as citizens to not confront the alleged authority of officers, of doctors, and of teachers as well. And yet, the notion that an individual in a position of alleged authority is infallible and should be obeyed regardless of what they say is, once again, the very dynamic that has led to most of the mass murder in this world. Not only might commanders be morally and factually wrong in what they’re telling you to do, but the order-givers themselves may also very well be taking orders from those who are nefarious and corrupt. There is simply no human being who should be treated as an infallible god who can say or do no wrong. If this is true for everyone, why should anyone be expected to blindly follow the commands of anyone? Isn’t thinking for ourselves and openly questioning each other when we have concerns a much healthier approach? If someone has an idea to share, people are wise to consult their own conscience and critical thinking in order to consider the veracity of what is being said. A group of people who think for themselves, and hash out their misgivings amongst each other, are much more likely to avoid murderous catastrophe. Instead of breeding a culture of obedience, wouldn’t it be far healthier to spread a cultural habit of confronting authority, and speaking one’s mind aloud? This would totally disrupt the chain of command. The problem with a chain of command is that you never know where those commands originated from and what the true intentions of those commands are. It’s important to mention that people with basic common sense and wisdom are far more likely to be able to come to group decisions. Group decisions are obviously not easy to make. People who are knowledgeable, understanding and caring are more likely to put their egos aside and consider ideas on their own merit. If one person comes up with a strategy or idea, there’s also no good reason to do the opposite of it just because somebody else suggested it. The strategy or idea should be weighed on its own merit. Rejecting other people’s ideas just because it wasn’t your idea is different from being an autonomous thinker. This is general defiance to anything that anyone else suggests: i.e. being a rebel without a cause. This, too, is coming from an immature ego. But blindly following what other people say is certainly not the solution either. That’s why we all require knowledge. Knowledge empowers us to think for ourselves while also considering the point of view of others. Listening to and considering other points of view has nothing to do with obedience. A free society wouldn’t be about being commanded by an external source, but using your own heart and mind to consider the implications of the choices you’re about to make; and suffering the consequences when the choices you make result in other people’s harm, or your own. By openly discussing different perspectives, people are more likely to arrive at an understanding of whatever situational complexities are worth taking into account. But instead of this approach taken to teaching and learning far and wide, many people instead truly think that human beings need to be controlled and steered from above rather than empowered and uplifted through knowledge. The more messed up we are as a species, the less we trust ourselves to be free. But the less free we are, the more messed up we become. One might assume we are too dangerous to be free, but being unfree is precisely what makes us so dangerous. It’s a cycle that is difficult to escape from. But the bottom-line is that being unfree traumatizes the spirit. Why? Because we are made (by nature) to be free.

Yet, looking out into the world, and certainly when taking in the daily news, it’s understandable why people don’t necessarily trust one another. This has everything to do with why government seems appealing. People might think a voluntary society sounds totally unrealistic considering that it’s hard enough for two people to get along in a relationship, let alone five people in a family, let alone millions of people in a city, and so on. This is indeed a problem, but authority doesn’t fix this problem. It actually creates this problem. Again authority is the lazy approach. It forces people to fall in line, and this might temporarily give the illusion of law and order. But a relationship, family, organization or society in which some people use threats or acts of harm to force others to do things against their will cannot produce cohesive and healthy bonds between people. It creates emotional turmoil, which breeds physical chaos. Getting along isn’t necessarily the end goal in life anyway. Agreeableness and submissiveness are often encouraged and rewarded, yet it is precisely this kind of behavior that leaves abusers and brainwashed people unchecked. So much misguided and wicked behavior is allowed to continue because others are too scared to challenge people on their bullshit. Insane cultural habits are allowed to proliferate because it’s awkward and inconvenient to challenge someone’s political or religious beliefs. Yet, we don’t have to all hang out and have the same lifestyles. We can go our separate ways and still remain free. But according to a lazier way of thinking, humanity is already sufficiently messed up as a species that now we need to continue having a ruling class to keep us in line and control us since we would be too unruly on our own. Yet, having a ruling class for thousands of years has everything to do with why so many of us are messed up in the first place. Not only is humanity not free, but then we are told that we are. Knowledge and wisdom so often get confused with hierarchy and authority. Isn’t knowledge about access to, and an awareness of, information though? Isn’t understanding about processing this information? That is to say, grappling with any contradictions and uncertainties with regard to this information, and then coming to an understanding of this information. Isn’t wisdom about speaking and acting upon one’s knowledge and understanding of this information? Knowledge may be intuitive and automatic, or it may be affirmed in books and broadcasts, or it may be acquired experientially throughout one’s life, but one cannot very well arrive at wisdom without knowledge and understanding. None of this, you may notice, has anything to do whatsoever with the right to dominate others. This word “authority” is used as a stand-in for knowledge, wisdom, expertise, decision-making, parenting, and protection, but authority, when it comes to kings, queens, slave masters and agents of the state, means the right to enforce obedience through the initiation of harm (e.g. through invasion, abduction, confinement, violence, coercion, dispossession, etc). People use the word “authority” to denote someone’s responsibility within an establishment or business. For instance: “So-and-so has the authority to make that decision in the company.” But having responsibility to make decisions within an enterprise has nothing to do with your right to harm and dominate others within that business. If someone has accepted certain responsibilities within a job description, then it would be a misnomer to call this “authority” since this is also the word used to identify those who claim the right to violently dominate others. The word “authority” is so often used to mean responsibly and decision-making, but then also used when an officer locks people inside cages for putting substances inside their own bodies. Don’t you think it’s dangerous to use a single word to mean responsibility sometimes and slavery other times? Government is entirely based on the belief in authority, and yet the true meaning of the word “authority” is obfuscated by its multiple usages. Order-followers are instructed to give their freewill over to the will of their commanders, which is the belief in authority taken to an extreme. This is an inherently ass-backwards way to live. No one can safely deliver their freewill at the doorstep of another. Wouldn’t a healthier appraoch to coexistence be to uplift each other through knowledge? This latter approach drastically increases the likelihood that people will be conscientious enough to make their own decisions without causing harm to others. Authority, on the other hand, is designed to circumvent the conscience: to force other people’s obedience in spite of their reservations.

Again, this word “anarchy” often has wild connotations within people’s minds, and it’s not always necessary to use this word to articulate the principles. But if we are going by the etymological meaning of the word, then we are merely talking about a moral stance against bullying. To not understand the benefits of such a philosophy is to not understand the harm caused by domineering, abusive behavior. Regardless of the exact form this behavior takes on, anarchy says no to all forms of external rulership and external ownership over human life. Anarchy is not the absence of control, mind you. Anarchy—or freedom—manifests when enough people know how to control themselves! Self-control is of course valid and necessary, but external control and domination is an imposition against autonomous life; and is antithetical to genuine love and protection. You don’t protect someone by being a control freak. Anarchism is not against all forms of ownership either because anarchy can only happen when enough people acknowledge that they own themselves, and no one else. Because people own themselves, they also own their energy and labor, and the fruits of their labor, but no one else’s. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t share the fruits of our labor. Sharing is essential to coexistence. But sharing is not produced by authority or State coercion. Sharing comes from a spirit of care, generosity and kindness; and the way to encourage this is by setting good examples and spreading a message of care and conscience far and wide. Anarchism is portrayed as violent mayhem, but the truth is that it has an infinitely higher moral standard than statism (the belief in the legitimacy of government), which promotes domination and the implicit ownership over others. People may call anarchism utopian but the fact is that it would be utopian and naive to imagine that State authority can produce actual law and order. It’s delusional to base your worldview on coercion and violence and think that you have the moral high ground. It’s crazy, but it’s true: no left-wing or right-wing political ideology even factors in people’s own bodily autonomy and consent with regard to their labor. All statist ideologies accept the premise of State authority and taxation, which is inherently coercive and monopolistic. Most people you’ll encounter seem to understand that consent is important when it comes to sex. Some very harmful folks obviously don’t get this, but many of course do. Isn’t it obvious that the same should be true for people’s daily labor? Isn’t it absolutely insane that so many of us have accepted an ideology based on the coercive extraction of people’s daily life-force; where people are forced to labor for a ruling class under duress? Would it be right to force another to labor for you? If not, then what legitimacy would taxation have (given the fact that the threat of State aggression is lurking behind the command)? Do you have the right to control how someone else uses their own body or do you not? To be an anarchist when it comes to sex would of course be to honor people’s consent with regard to who they choose not to have sex with. It should be fairly obvious that you cannot determine who sleeps with whom by taking a vote. Likewise, when it comes to people’s labor, shouldn’t it also be obvious that people have no right to vote for who must labor for whom, and how their labor is to be used? Don’t people have the right to make such choices themselves? If you say that people will never share on their own, and so we need to all be controlled and steered from above, just recognize what you are condoning. You are enslaving people in your mind and telling yourself that it’s in the name of sharing! But coercion is not sharing because it’s not voluntary. Sharing of our own freewill is what would produce a wiser coexistence, rather than funding a monopolistic State that uses your energy for harm. If people were to share directly with those in need instead of funding monopolistic institutions, then people’s energy would go much farther in actually helping others. If everyone who defends taxation (in the name of sharing) were to actually share with others of their own freewill, then worldwide poverty could actually be rectified. On the other hand, funding warmongering governments run by politicians who are in the pockets of corporate oligarchs, banks and secret societies is certainly not a tenable way to solve poverty. If people’s freewill choices result in other people’s harm, then an intervention of some kind is of course warranted. But otherwise, how someone uses their own energy isn’t anyone else’s jurisdiction to control. It’s something they can work out with their families and communities. Anarchy is to not enslave and steal each other’s labor. It’s unfortunate that such a common sense philosophy is so often perceived as fringe and utopian. The fact that anarchism doesn’t recognize the alleged authority of those who rule society is, no doubt, alarming to many people because pointing this out is to propose massive change. But if anarchy seems extreme it’s not because the philosophy of anarchism is proposing anything extreme in and of itself, but because we, as a human species, are extremely far from actual freedom. To be clear, true freedom is not doing whatever you want regardless of the consequences to others. True freedom takes into account other people’s wellbeing and freedom. If your actions are destroying other people’s freedom then you are not creating freedom, but destroying it.

From an anarchist’s point of view, liberals and conservatives, left-wing and right-wing are on the same side at the end of the day even though they also fight among one another; and even though one side might be right on any number of individual issues. But when push comes to shove, they all condoning enslavement. I myself thought I was left-wing. Though to be honest, I was always confused why bigger government was considered the solution by the left-wing. Why would more government authority and managerial power to economically regulate you and everyone you know be the solution if government itself is also the problem? The idea that socialism will save us relies on a fantasy that people who have authority over everyone’s bodies and labor will use that authority beneficently, when the premise of someone owning someone else and having the right to rule over them (whether implicitly or overtly stated) is anything but beneficent. Coercion simply cannot be benevolent! Socialist ideology fantasizes that government will take care of us all and foot the bill, whereas in reality government doesn’t pay for anything. The taxpayers fund everything. Why would you expect people in the government to spend other people’s energy more wisely than the people can themselves? On one hand you have conservatives who say they want limited government (which used to be a liberal point of view), but then will also tend to support the military and police. Quite often this is because their friends and families are members, and so they have an emotional attachment to these institutions. On the other hand you have left-wingers who say they want smaller police and military budgets, but then end up advocating for more taxation and bigger government. I think a lot of people are in the same boat in feeling that something is amiss within this whole left-right spectrum. Could it be that the political spectrum presented to us has always been a scam? From an anarchist’s point of view, most friends and family members still condone slavery unfortunately. But the beauty of anarchism is that it can appeal to both left-wingers and conservatives alike. After all, everyone is invited to the tax walkout. Who really likes paying their taxes anyway? Why not share with others of your own freewill instead. People have been known to come to anarchism from both political sides. Anarchism helps remind people that they are anything but free under these political and economic systems; and reminds them also that they have a right to be. Anarchism, in this sense, is the antidote to divide and conquer.

Some may say that this is all well and good, but want to hear how an anarchist society would actually work. What would it look like? Such a question is up to our own imagination. No one is in charge of a voluntary society, after all. The larger point being made here is that we would only need to heed Natural Law in our interactions to remain free. It’s a simple formula, but it tracks. Many others have said this throughout history. Perhaps it seems too simple to be true, but when you think about it, no one needs to control the actions of others. One only needs to be able to trust that other people understand Natural Law (whether we call it Natural Law or something else). Yet, someone who already has come to understand all this might still ask, “Yes, but can you describe what a voluntary society might look like in the day to day?” Well, let us consider some possibilities. What do human beings need for survival and wellbeing? Correct me if I’m wrong, but food, water, shelter, clothing, tools, knowledge, love, companionship are the basics. So the question becomes how can we have these things without enslaving each other? How can we have these things without a centralized authority which governs us all? How can we pool our resources without relying on coercion to do so? How can someone be trusted to self-govern? What if some people want to reap the benefits of the community that they live in, yet not contribute to it? All the what-ifs and fears of things going wrong are important to consider, though no fear could ever justify slavery, so let us not forget that either. Let’s start with the basics though. How to have thing like food, water, shelter without government? These are all problems that human ingenuity solves in relationship to the natural world. The human imagination, resourcefulness and willpower is what is actually needed to complete projects. Human inspiration and technology doesn’t come from the State. Authority does not give birth to these things. People sometimes imagine that we have government to thank for technology, but the reality is that technology can be developed with or without a State. You don’t need a government to have running water in a city. You merely need a population that wants running water enough to figure that out amongst themselves. One thing to keep in mind is that regular people already do all the work. It’s not like the politicians are doing the plumbing or paving the roads. Another thing to consider is that regular people already fund everything as well. It’s not like politicians spend their own money. They spend ours. So regular people already build everything, design everything, maintain everything, and fund everything. So it merely becomes a question of how to do all this without a coercive and violent middleman extorting everyone in the process. This is a problem to pose to the human imagination and conscience. One way to have infrastructure and goods and services is obviously for people to offer them as a service in exchange for something else; a currency of some kind, for instance. Another approach is for people to exchange expertise and labor for actual items of real-world value such as food and shelter. Another approach is a gift economy, where love and care are the currencies that put food on the table: a society in which sharing becomes the norm. Obviously people take a combination of all these approaches already. One counterargument to a gift economy is that people cannot trust each other to exchange fairly unless the exchange is standardized in some way, i.e. a currency. But the point being made here is that no one has any authority to control how other people exchange amongst themselves. If folks can work out a gift economy, or barter and trade, amongst themselves without needing a digital or paper currency then it’s no one’s business to interfere with that. On the other hand, if people want to use a currency (so long as it’s aa fair means of exchange, which banking, of course, is not), then that’s also not anyone’s business to interfere with. Doing all this without enslaving each other through coercion, deception and violence is the key. It comes down to basic fairness. When there is the demand for running running and roads and bridges, the supply of those things naturally follows. People will see to it that the infrastructure they need is in place or else live without that infrastructure. If we can’t have infrastructure without human slavery, then wouldn’t it be better to just live without that infrastructure? Yet, the fact remains that infrastructure doesn’t necessitate slavery. Furthermore, infrastructure already exists—roads, plumbing, bridges, etc—and so the bigger question is how to maintain these without the coercive and violent extraction of human labor.

Let’s consider an example of a voluntary society in which some people are taking advantage of others. Let’s say someone wants to use a road or a city bus without contributing to its construction or maintenance or towards the labor of others. First of all, such a problem does not warrant having a ruling class. Why set up a system based on theft just because you’re afraid of people stealing from each other? Besides, these kinds of problems, too, are best solved through an evolution of consciousness. Currently, we are born into a dog-eat-dog world. The overall societal arrangement, although resisted by vast numbers of people, also breeds a greedy and law-of-the-jungle mindset among certain folks who could have otherwise adapted to a voluntary society had they been born into one. In order for people to avoid being taken advantage of, people could think of any number of resources. For one thing, certain benefactors might be willing to fund the bulk of projects. Another approach is crowdfunding for mutually beneficial projects. People already do this anyway, but this approach could be adopted for things like roads as well. If certain people don’t pay, but the money was raised anyway, is it really that big of a deal that they use the road away? Maybe they couldn’t afford to pay. If some people have more resources than others due to intergenerational privilege, then maybe one way to account for that inequality and inequity is to encourage people to voluntarily share their resources if they have them, and not expect everyone to share as much if they don’t have the resources. Also, if people are taking advantage of others in any way, one way to deal with that is by confronting people publicly or even privately. No one’s perfect, but confronting people can certainly be an effective way to encourage people to grow and improve upon themselves so that they stop taking advantage of others; if indeed there is a problem. Another approach is for people to pay—if people still  want to use a currency—each time they use a service. There is no reason that people should be forced to pay for every service in advance, which is how taxation works. People can pay for each individual bus or subway ride, for instance. People now fund public transportation (and postal service, and others services) through taxation and then once more as customers. People pay in advance as a taxpayer, and then are stuck with whatever service they are given in return; and generally have to pay for it again. Similarly, with a protection service, if you wanted one, you wouldn’t have to pay in advance for it, but could call a number in an emergency and pay for the service after the fact. This is a common sense approach. Also, communities and municipalities can figure out how to share work. Some grocery stores are of course already run by co-ops. Instead of contributing to a store with a monetary currency in exchange for food, people can contribute directly with their own time and energy, and then have affordable access to food in exchange. A similar approach can be taken to other services as well, especially ones that don’t require a high degree of training and specialization; but ones that almost anyone can learn to do fairly quickly. As for the kinds of jobs that most people don’t want to do, people can share this work so that no one is stuck with doing this work their entire life. Certain manual labor jobs or certain jobs that involve menial tasks can be voluntarily shared among a larger number of people. If no one wants to do these jobs, then simple, the jobs just won’t get done! If the service is that important to people, then they’ll be willing to contribute somehow or someway to make sure the service continues. Garbage retrieval, for example, could be done by a larger group of people. People could do it once every couple of months, for instance, as opposed to five days a week for years of their lives. Again, this is not to suggest in any way that people should be forced into doing anything, but would do so of their own freewill. If no one wants to do pick up the garbage, then, again, the garbage just won’t get picked up. This will cause a problem that people will have the natural incentive to rectify. You don’t need coercion to get people out of bed in the morning. People already have the incentive to use what they have to get what they need. If very few people were willing to do such work, then the people who are willing to do it could charge whatever they considered to be worth their time.

There’s only ever a problem if the people who are doing the actual work or are funding the work are being taken advantage of. In our current reality corporations offer services, but then profit endlessly off of that service at the expense of the ones who do the actual work, as well as the ones who are paying for the service. Take phone bills, for instance. Erecting phone lines, repairing phone lines, putting up satellites, and doing all the administrative work definitely requires human energy and know-how. That human energy should be compensated according to what is reasonable and fair. But when millions or billions of people are paying every month in the double digits for that service, then this of course means that the people at the top of these companies are getting extremely rich. The mindset of profit prevails. Profit over fairness has of course become the model. It’s not to say that people who offer helpful or ingenious services to others shouldn’t live well. Nor do I own those people, and so I don’t have the right to tell them how to live, or to deprive them of an abundant life. Nor am I suggesting that everyone should live exactly the same way, with the exact same amount, or that everyone should be forced to do the same manual labor. You could only achieve total equality of outcome by forcing it on people. People do not want the same things, and so it’s impossible to create a society in which everyone has the same exact things without enforcing it through the threat of violence. You would have to monitor and control people to make sure that they had the exact same amount at all times. This is a communist or authoritarian mindset. Not a mindset of freedom and consent. Who would do the monitoring and controlling anyway? Don’t forget that those who claim the right to control the lives of others are a ruling class. Once you have a ruling class, your society is no longer equal; and so you can’t actually get to equality through authority. Again, the best one can do is to break out of artificial scarcity imposed upon us by a ruling class, and spread a message of conscience so that people are less likely to be greedy to begin with, or at least know how to defend themselves against greedy people, instead of striving to become them. It would have to be widely seen as unsavory to be greedy in the same way that it would have to be widely seen as unsavory to be a statist. Collective consciousness does shift over time and, in some cases, the things that the masses once condoned in the past are now seen as backwards; and so a similar shift in mindset would have to occur. One doesn’t have the right to tell someone to not live in abundance, but you can certainly make a judgement call as to whether or not their abundance was achieved through fair means. You can certainly make a judgment call as to whether they took advantage of others and stole from others to achieve their abundance. You can certainly make a judgment call as to whether it’s fair that they live in so much abundance if other people are being prevented from living in abundance. You can certainly make a judgment call as to whether the people who live in the most abundance are the very same people preventing others from accessing the natural abundance of the Earth. In our current world, the fact that a handful of people own the equivalent as billions of people combined is made to seem normal. But obviously you cannot achieve that level of abundance through fair and honest means as others are literally starving to death. In our current world, corporations own entire bodies of water (as if anyone has the right to monopolize such a thing) while others are without enough water to drink. In our current reality, customers of corporate brands also pay for most things twice. They pay once as a taxpayer (since the biggest corporations in the world are all tax-subsidized) and then they pay again as a captive consumer since alternative options are increasingly crushed under monopoly. Paying twice has everything to do with why people at the top (who don’t do any of the actual manual work) are getting richer while the poor stay poor. In a free society populated with more conscientious people (if one can imagine such a thing), the deals people offer would increasingly be expected to be fair. If the offer wasn’t fair, it would become an unpopular service. There is no way to form mega corporate monopolies without government coercion and violence. This is because corporations couldn’t achieve their monopolies without tax-subsidies, sweatshop labor, forced labor camps, and prison labor. In a free society, diversity of thought, and diversity of enterprises and services would of course flourish. But there’s no way to force such a thing to happen. It could only happen due to a shift in consciousness among a critical mass. It always gets back to that mental and spiritual shift. There’s no way to set up a control system to enforce fairness.

It may seem bold to say that there is a solution to such a complex array of problems in the world, but it would be a huge mistake to honestly think there is a solution but not say it for fear of sounding bold. It’s also of course nothing new. People have been saying all this since time immemorial, and in different ways. Anyone has the power to internalize a philosophy of freedom and speak it to others. None of these principles or ideas actually belong to anyone in particular, but to everyone. If only hundreds of thousands of anarchists could help millions of people become anarchists, if only millions of anarchists could help tens of millions of people become anarchists, if only tens of millions of anarchists could help hundreds of millions of people become anarchists, and so on, then humanity could one day be free from all forms of slavery. Imagine what humanity could do with the kind of potential that we have as a species. Imagine if we could only drastically reduce the cycle of trauma and mind control that we are caught within. Anarchism helps one love oneself. Statism is to rely on the promises of politicians to fix the world’s problems. Statism, therefore, gives the individual very little to actually do or hope for. It’s a totally disempowering proposition, and hence, feeds into self-loathing and delusion. The way the world is set up, and the way one might perceive oneself as powerless within it, and how this feeds into apathy and depression and nihilism, and the way this can all make you hate the very species you belong to, and how this generates a lack of love in one’s heart, and how this can make one’s relationships cold and brittle: all of this and more makes it easy to hate oneself. Anarchism, on the other hand, points to the fact that the responsibility is in our own hands. Thus, there is no end to the work to be done! Doing the work makes one feel good, builds self-respect, and helps one love oneself, which also helps you love others. Anarchism offers the hope that perhaps you can reach somebody new today, and remind them of their natural-born sovereignty, and persuade them to discontinue condoning the immorality of the State; and, in so doing, help push collective consciousness that much closer towards a mutual state of freedom.

Who can really say what the chances are of actually one day achieving freedom. Looking around at the state of the world, someone might understandably give humanity very little chance. Perhaps we are too far gone. Perhaps there’s simply too much trauma and ego calcified within our psyches to undo this system. Perhaps we will go extinct as a species before ever getting our collective act together. Perhaps thousands of years from now humanity will still have rulers and despots claiming to be the arbiters of law with massive numbers of people still believing in them. Perhaps we won’t even be around thousands of years from now. Perhaps the hole is too deep to climb out of. But how could anyone know the answer to any of these questions for sure? The future hasn’t happened yet, but is dependent on the actions taken in the here and now. To imagine the future as pre-determined is another ruling class spell we tend to reinforce with doomsday ideology. Also, how could know for sure that unity is impossible until massive numbers of people tried their hardest? If people decide ahead of time that it’s impossible (or undesirable) to unite, then now we have given ourselves the perfect reason to never try. If one admits that it’s at least possible, then, correct me if I’m wrong, this alone would be enough reason to try. When we’ve arrived at this answer, the next question is what would actually unite us. Can you think of anything other than Natural Law (or whichever synonym you use) that could actually unite us. Natural Law (which can also be translated as equal human rights) is unifying precisely because it doesn’t favor anyone over anyone else. Sometimes this entire human reality seems too epic to be true, and yet, here we are. All the signs are there that we are barreling towards a world of ever-increasing disaster, conflict, centralization and top-down control. What will the masses choose? Will a critical mass of people go with the societal flow towards long-term bondage in exchange for a short-term sense of comfort, security and normalcy (if even that)? Or will enough people choose to pursue long-term liberation in spite of whatever short-term uncertainties that it brings? No one can make such a choice for another. It is a freewill choice. In spite of the gargantuan efforts made by so many thinkers, activists, and regular people in general who have worked tirelessly towards creating a better world, and in spite of the fact that their work has helped make this world more livable for so many people, a unified critical mass of people alive on Earth at once who recognized their common enemy has yet to be reached. The ultimate common enemy, you might agree, is not even the global ruling class, mind you, but the belief in authority still lodged within so many of our hearts and minds; for without this belief, the ruling class would have no way to enforce their paradigm of control. It’s an ideological enemy at the root; like an evil spirit possessing the minds of many. And yet, there is no law in the Universe that says things must remain this way forever. Folks would have to give up their allegiance to an ideology that promotes the ownership of human life. We don’t have to see eye to eye on anything else, truth be told, but, as a thought experiment, if we could only see eye to eye on this one thing alone, and did it among a critical mass, just imagine the other worlds and societies we could co-create. I think most people, had they been born into a voluntary society instead of an involuntary one, would much prefer it than a society run on State coercion and violence. This means to me that most people are born anarchists at heart. But getting there from here is the tricky part. All one can really do is to choose freedom and try to influence others to do the same. Whatever the masses choose, whether consciously or unconsciously, will be what we co-create in the aggregate: both now and in the future.