We're All Anarchists Now
Leo Tolstoy, beyond War and Peace...
“The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without Authority, there could not be worse violence than that of Authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution. But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require the protection of governmental power and by there being more and more people who will be ashamed of applying this power. There can be only one permanent revolution – a moral one: the regeneration of the inner man.”
~ Leo Tolstoy, On Anarchy (1900)
We're All Anarchists Now
By Joel Bowman
Were he still alive today, Leo Tolstoy, a self-described “spiritualist anarchist,” would be 195 years old. The modern world of A.I. (Alleged Intelligence) could learn a lot from this towering, 19th Century intellectual. For one thing, Tolstoy understood well the anarchist attitude of “live and let live,” and he spent a good many words railing against The State and its brutal, oppressive nature.
Tolstoy’s ideas on civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
He saw The State for what it really is, “an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.” And he understood the “conspicuous compassion” of the collectivist class, who affected love for humanity, all the while burdening others with their meddlesome ideologies.
I sit on a man's back, choking him, and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back. (From Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence, 1886)
Love over Hate
And yet, at heart, Tolstoy was a lover, not a hater. In his most famous work, War and Peace, he wrote:
“Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.”
This is not the kind of “warm and fuzzy” sentiment one might expect from an anarchist, at least not given the current and widely misunderstood definition of the word. The term “anarchist,” for the average voter, is a pejorative used to describe jackbooted hooligans rampaging through the streets, hurling Molotov cocktails through Starbucks windows and generally making a nuisance of themselves.
In point of fact, nothing could be further from the truth. The word has been hijacked and, in accordance with the Newspeak of our time, has come to mean the exact opposite of that for which what it stands. This is a convenient confounding of the definition, one that serves directly the goals of The State, the brutish institution that presides over the enslavement of individuals within a given border and, not infrequently, declares wars against those living within foreign borders.
Properly understood, the term anarchy, which derives from the Greek anarchia, literally translates: an, “without” + arkhos, “ruler.” Freedom from being owned...enslaved...forced against one’s will. Freedom to act voluntarily. Freedom to associate with whomever one so desires and under whatever conditions he or she sees fit...provided they do not diminish the ability of another to enjoy the same freedom.
Tellingly, when one looks around today and sees who has the guns, the clubs, the Tasers and the jackboots...when we identify correctly those who wield the power to tax, detain, imprison, torture and to commit the lives of young men and women to battle...when we realize who badgers businesses, hampers trade, regulates progress, debases monies, and claims private property for their own ends, we see, emblazoned right there on the perpetrators’ uniforms, the bold, unmistakable badge of The State.
And yet, curiously, it is to The State that most people look for protection against these very same evils. Tragically propagandized individuals are left to wonder, for example, who will safeguard them against theft and violence...if not for the institution that relentlessly steals and aggresses against them. They entrust the course of justice to an institution that daily and obscenely perverts it. And they surrender unto The State all the liberties and opportunities they wouldn’t dare be caught without.
But as Javier Milei, the world’s first anarcho-capitalist president, told the parasites and globalist leeches at the WEF a few months back...
The State is the problem, NOT the solution.
The Revolution Within
Far from being something to fear, anarchy is, in many ways, the natural solution to our troubles. Anyone who doubts this will have trouble reconciling the fact that 99% of their most critical life decisions are made in a private state of anarchy. We’re all anarchists, for example, when it comes to choosing a mate. At the risk of belaboring the point, imagine for a second if the government claimed the right to tell you whom to marry. What do we suppose would happen to the quality of human relationships under such a regime?
Now imagine the government chose your friends for you too, scheduled your social events, dinner parties and planned your weekends. Imagine a panel of bureaucrats assigned you a hobby of their choosing, prescribed for you a television channel and allotted you a specific time to watch it. Imagine the Minister of Gastronomy chose your restaurant for you, made your menu selections and decided on your wine. What do you suppose might happen to your overall quality of life?
Few, if any, people would tolerate such gross intrusions on their personal liberties. And with good reason! Who would want to consummate a state-imposed marriage or, worse still, impose that obligation on an unwilling, state-selected partner? Decent individuals reserve — and, should the need arise, will defend — their right to choose these things for themselves.
When it comes to the most important things in life, when it comes to our family and friends and to deciding how we spend the precious time we have in their company, we’re all anarchists. As to Tolstoy’s “moral revolution,” that begins at home. He wrote:
How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself.
We can each of us begin on the path to freedom today, by recognizing the power within our own two hands, declaring our own personal independence, here and now.
Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...
Cheers,
Joel Bowman
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Without counting words, I think Joel just said more in less space than any current commentator than I’ve recently read.
"Do unto other as you would be done to, etc." Jesus was an anarchist.