Why I became an Anarchist

Those of you who read my old blog are probably aware that I was Georgist for many years.  I now identify as an anarchist.  I'm sure some of you out there might be confused about this, so allow me to explain how I got here.

In a sense, it wasn't as big a transformation as it might have seemed.  I remember about eight years ago, when I was going through a right-libertarian phase, I nonetheless said that I was an anarchist at heart.  I just didn't have the practical or theoretical knowledge to understand how anarchy might work.  I always had anti-authoritarian instincts, but it took me a long time to rid myself of the notion that there needs to be hierarchy in order for any kind of organization to take place.  I also had also always had a sense of compassion and even duty to those less fortunate than myself, and the conflict between this and my anti-authoritarianism made both liberalism and right-libertarianism uncomfortable fits.  I became a right-libertarian out of shame.  In order to justify the welfare programs I was defending, I had to justify the state's power to coerce individuals into giving up money that they earned(or so I thought -- I did not yet understand the concept of rent and interest).

When I discovered the work of Henry George, it was a breath of fresh air for me.  The state taking money that people had earned from their own labor was theft, but taking unearned income in the form of land rents and rendering them to the commons seemed more than fair.  The fact that doing so would not only fund government, but also reduce the need for government by reducing inequality and thereby eliminating the need for a welfare system appealed to my anti-authoritarian side.  Georgism helped teach me about the difference between charity and justice.  It also compelled me to learn about economics.  While I never pursued a degree in the subject(I was never much of a math person anyway), I read vociferously about economics, particularly heterodox economics, as I had become sickeningly disillusioned by the neoclassical synthesis.  As I read about things like Modern Monetary Theory, Silvio Gesell's theory of interest, John Maynard Keynes' prediction of the "euthanasia of the rentier," and so much more, I developed my understanding of Georgism to a level where I found very few Georgists had anything to teach me.  I was taking it into new territory.  I worked out how land value taxation would not only take the "free lunch" of rent out of the hands of speculators, but would also eliminate artificial scarcities of capital and thereby cause interest to fall to zero as well(I didn't realize it yet, but I had inadvertently stumbled upon Marx's theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall).  This would mean the end of wage labor, and a new economy based on worker ownership. Suddenly, I found myself in a quasi-socialist position.


I had it all worked out.  A simple tax reform, taken far enough, could eliminate the systems of economic privilege that oppressed the poor and working class.  If only I could convince the government to enact something like this!  To do that, I'd first have to convince the people.

Then the Occupy movement happened.  This was the opportunity I'd been looking for.  People were rising up against the plutocracy that had taken over our society.  All these people came together and not only stood up against the powers that be, but also started having conversations with each other about what to do.  I went to the local Occupy camp, and found that they had a place for teach-ins, where anyone could share their wisdom.  It was a perfect opportunity to teach people about the benefits of land value taxation.  I managed to get a small crowd for my lecture, and it went well enough, but I found far more value in listening to people than in pushing my message.

Far more than listening, though, the most transformative thing was observing.  Here was this camp in the middle of a city, set up as an assertion of our right to the commons, feeding a whole community, fostering mutual aid, practicing consensus-based direct democracy, and organizing non-hierarchically with all the other Occupy sites in the country and around the world.  This wasn't just a protest.  It was a vision for a new society.

Then there were the cops.  I had already developed quite a disdain for cops from my job as a delivery driver where I'd see several speed traps along my route every night, and found myself asking whether this predatory behavior was really needed for running a society.  I began to wonder why communities couldn't simply set up their own defensive networks instead of having these thugs of the state patrolling their streets.  The Occupy movement helped dissipate whatever remaining respect I had for this profession.  The eviction night was the first time I saw riot cops.  Now they've become an all-too-familiar sight for me.  I've seen them tackle people for nothing more than jaywalking.  I've seen them target my friends.  I've seen how they prey on people of color.

I saw that the system is not neutral to political speech.  Those dissidents who have a chance of actually effecting change are targeted and made to be afraid.  My perspective broadened as I realized the integral role of the state in a capitalist system.  The state is not a mediator between people or classes.  It exists to serve the class interests of the privileged class.  The politicians, the police, the media...these are all components of the capitalist system, and are governed by the rules that uphold that system.

Now I understood why reformism, especially the very radical reformism I was advocating as a Georgist, was a dead end.  The state exists to serve the privileged class.  They have no interest in abolishing that privilege.  At most, they might implement a modest land value tax or other such concessions as a kind of safety valve to minimize dissent.  But actually achieving social justice through the state was a delusion all along.

And so I became an anarchist.  But at first, I was still a kind of anarcho-Georgist.  My idea was to have decentralized societies that could be run in a direct democratic manner, issue their own currency, and use that currency to pay the land rent back into the commune.  Still a market economy, but one without wage labor, and one in which rents are shared.

It took a little while longer to move in a more radical direction.  I was still operating under the assumption that markets and competition were the best way to run society.  I should have taken a hint from the Occupy encampment and the cooperative society they had created there.  But it wasn't until I read David Graeber's book Debt: The First 5,000 Years that I began to really understand the concept of mutual aid.  The idea of a cooperative economy became more and more plausible, and once it became plausible, it became necessary for me.

I began to see that simply eliminating hierarchy in government and the workplace wasn't enough.  An economy of worker co-ops competing against each other may be preferable to the current situation, but if they can cooperate within the workplace, they should extend that cooperation into all social relations.  One thing that happens when you look at things through an anarchist lens is you start to see all the artificial boundaries put up by society, and you start to see through their illegitimate claims to authority.  So I began to question why we even have this system where someone "has" a job, rather than simply doing a job that needs to be done.  There's no reason someone should have to be confined to doing the same tasks day in and day out.  They should be able to move around to any center of production and produce what they need.  This idea is known in leftist circles as free association.

So I was a full-fledged anarchist at this point, and began to make friends with other leftists.  It was this that helped break me out of the economic reductionism I had been engaged in.  This circle of friends was very adamant about checking checking one's privilege.  As a straight, white, cisgendered male, I had a lot of privilege to check.  And so I had to learn about the struggles faced by women, people of color, the queer community, and many oppressed classes I hadn't even thought about before.  Anarchism, I realized, is not just a politics.  It's an ethics, demanding that one fight for the struggles of the oppressed wherever they exist, until all systems of domination are subverted.

Not that I expect to live to see the day when patriarchy, white supremacy, and heteronormativity are completely eliminated(though I'm optimistic about the fall of capitalism).  But it doesn't matter.  Anarchism is not so much a final destination as it is a guiding principle.  It tells us what we should be fighting for, and whose side we should be on.  It is fundamentally a process-based idea, simultaneously practical and utopian.  Anarchism is the rejection of all systems of domination that exploit, dehumanize, and rob people of their birthright.  No bombs, no borders, no bosses.  Long live the revolution!