Anarchism is Dystopia
By “William Buckley”
Imagine a society made up of self-interested, atomized individuals, each pursuing their diverse ambitions and desires. Though their chosen ends may be at odds with one another, they tolerate each other, if only so that each of them can achieve their personal goals. Despite this, everyone in this society is utterly miserable. The people of this society were once united under a hierarchical order they thought was natural before the revolution. Ironically, though the revolution was done in the name of rebelling against tyranny, the revolutionaries were far more oppressive and authoritarian than the old order. This is because the leaders rejected even the pretense of ruling for the sake of the common good. Like their self-interested citizens, they work to ensure that their own private vices are fulfilled. They put a great deal of effort into manipulating the population with diversions, sometimes in the form of entertainment, comfort, or promises thereof. The go-to diversion is generally some looming threat, either foreign or domestic. In fact, hatred of a common enemy is perhaps the only thing that could unite such a “community.”
How could this society (if you could call it that) be anything but the worst possible of all societies? Certainly, this proposed imaginary society has much in common with fictional dystopias such as George Orwell’s 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. But what if I told you that there was a rising political philosophy that justified such nightmarish regimes? In this essay, I argue that this political philosophy is, in fact, anarchism.
Anarchism is the theory that proposes abolishing any kind of hierarchical or authoritarian structures, especially the state. It is derived from the Greek word anarkos, meaning “without a chief.” In the colloquial sense, “anarchy” tends to refer to political chaos, but this is not what most anarchists seek. Rather, anarchists believe that one can have rules without rulers, laws without lawmakers, and authority without hierarchy.
Anarchism encompasses a broad range of thinkers—from atheistic nihilists (Max Stirner) to Christians (Leo Tolstoy), from socialists (Pierre-Joseph Proudhon) to capitalists (Murray Rothbard). What they all have in common is a rejection of “social constructs” or arbitrary social conventions. To them, each man is a free, intelligent agent who is the best judge of his capacity, so any restraint outside self-restraint is an invasion of his rights. Furthermore, when people are free to pursue their interests, all is peaceful, since all humans are roughly equal in power and intelligence. Institutions such as the state, organized religion, and large corporations give some men an inordinate advantage, stifling the pursuit of self-interest by people who happen to be lower than them on the social hierarchy. Only by freeing themselves from such oppressive constructs can individuals regain their natural dignity.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Genevan Philosopher and Author of Discourse on Inequality and The Social Contract
This view of humanity stems largely from the political work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Contrary to Thomas Hobbes, Rousseau believed that, in the pre-societal “state of nature”, the weak and sick would die swiftly, leaving mankind to be uniformly strong, healthy, and active. Men were “noble savages” who pursued his wants with aloofness and grace. In this world, mankind was truly free, for there was nothing to steal, nothing to fight for, and no reason to interact with other human beings.
However, this “state of nature” was never real. It was a thought experiment invented by philosophers to understand human nature. There was never a “pre-societal” man, for human beings are social animals by nature. Everywhere we look, we see that human beings organize themselves into families and villages and form institutions to govern these societies. Even where a social contract is voluntarily formed to unite people into a political community, all the people involved share the same language and a similar culture, demonstrating that some society existed before the formation of that particular contract.
The anarchist view might seem idealistic—utopian even. However, it is ultimately cynical. It posits that the highest ideals of civilized life are, in fact, mere masks for oppression. To the anarchist, family life, patriotism, and faith are all pretenses for tyranny. Human beings cannot strive for higher causes, the anarchist claims, nor should they pretend to. The anarchist believes everyone is inherently self-interested, and they are simply being honest about the truth.
This assumes that the good of being an organic part of a larger social whole is not itself a good above the private goods each individual enjoys on his own. It assumes that our good as individuals has nothing to do with the good of the communities we grow up and live in. Since man is a social animal, this view is patently false. Worse than that, it becomes a justification for tyranny – which Aristotle defined as “Any sole ruler, who is not required to give an account of himself, and who rules over subjects all equal or superior to himself to suit his own interest and not theirs.” Far from being a tool for eliminating tyranny, anarchism as a philosophy turns each man into the tyrant of his domain.
In this, we see how anarchism is the dystopian philosophy. Pure anarchy – that is to say, pure lawlessness – is impossible given mankind’s social nature. Thus, anarchism is inevitably parasitic on societal organization. An ‘anarchistic’ society tends to be unstable for the reasons given above – every man is in it for himself and no person is willing to follow another unless they get something out of it. The ruling tyrants must then use more aggressive methods to ensure the security of their rule, creating the nightmarish conditions found in dystopian fiction. This is not to say that every possible dystopia is a form of anarchism or justifies itself with this ideology. Rather, the more anarchist ideology is implemented by institutions and instilled into the masses, the more that society will begin approximating the kinds of fictional dystopias envisioned by Orwell and Huxley.