The Face of Anarchy

There seem to be a lot of young people who sing the praises of anarchy. Anarchism advocates;

“a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy. It seeks to diminish or even abolish authority in the conduct of human relations.”
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The Anarchist will tell you that it is the state or capitalism or the world bank, or some conspiracy of rich and powerful that is responsible for the woes of modern society. They will tell you that if we were all just free to act as individuals without the confines of state or multinational corporations with their laws and force, money and power we would all be better off.

Right.

Last weekend Toronto got to see what anarchy really breeds. It’s not peace, it’s not freedom, it is brutal, mindless violence and destruction. It is the law of the pack, and as an individual you are one with the pack or you are its prey.

Now I do not hold a Hobbesian view of man. I do not believe that a man must completely subordinate himself to a “sovereign” (state or king) or face a life that is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”, but I do believe that there is a proper place for the state as a protector of unalienable rights and those rights alone can make individuals sovereign.

The Anarchist dismisses the role of the state, and while they lay claim to some notion of rights they rely on the individual alone to assert his own individual sovereignty, they call for each man to be his own law. The result of course is that if one man's “law” is stronger than another's, by hook or by crook, with no one to counter their will or force, then the brute will win, and the weaker man will loose.

Now the Anarchists involved with the G20 protests would probably tell you that they only vandalized the apparatus of the state - police cars and the like - or the establishment - multinational corporations and banks. What is more they would claim that this vandalism is in keeping with their view of sovereign individuals, but those attacks are a dire warning to any real individual.

The small businessman ought not to heave a sigh of relief at being spared this weekend but he and everyone else ought to consider that under anarchy, the moment the mob recognizes you or your life’s work as established (and by definition, of the establishment) then you are doomed. Any right to property or person that you may have had while the mob’s focus was elsewhere is gone, suddenly you are not a person; you are not of the mob. You don’t matter.

Dog eat Dog is a euphemism often used in conjunction with capitalism and capitalists but I’ve yet to see a businessman operate with the sheer animal violence of the Anarchists. So when you watch TV tonight and you see the businessman cleaning his ruined storefront and when the news flashes the images of black clad hoodlums smashing burning and destroying bear in mind that you are seeing both the true face of capitalism (productive effort) and Anarchism (mindless destruction).