Anarchist Alternative Institutions
I haven’t really thought about anarchy much lately. Perhaps it’s my deviation into the nerdcore sub-genre of hip hop and my current low level of access to old school British punk. But perhaps it’s also probably the fact that I don’t think anarchy is a natural resting state for human collectives and so I don’t tend to take it very seriously in political discussions.
Last week, C-SPAN had a call-in program on the radio while I was driving to work where callers could talk to two very erudite columnists and commentators on politics. I forget their names, but one was from Slate and the other was from… forgot that too. One was a liberal and the other was a conservative. But they were friendly and agreeable. Like sausage and mayonnaise—very different, but they went well together.
So, one guy called in to criticize government, period. He was an anarchist and was concerned that our system was not a Republic, but instead a Corporate Theocracy. That is, a company run by some guy named Theo. Anyway, he asked why more people didn’t consider alternatives to the two party system. So one of the commentators, probably the taller one, said something that I thought was very fresh, insightful and interesting:
If you want people to steer away from government, you have to provide alternatives. Anarchists like to whine, but they don’t often provide any alternative systems that address some of the needs leading to government.
Like, provide free, quality education in your neighborhood. Or something like that. I thought that was a new way of thinking about anarchy. What could anarchists, or just anti-government folk actually do, rather than just talk about, to convince people on the fringe that they should move in that political/philosophical direction.
