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.

Object-Oriented Ontology

I find the most interesting philosophers are ones that make me rethink my previous ideas while still not quite sitting well enough with me to fully sign on to their philosophy, thus forcing me to develop my own ideas in response.  Such is the case with Graham Harman and his object-oriented ontology.

I've long been fascinated by Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy(a fascination that runs in the family).  Actually, it would better be described as "process-relational philosophy," as Whitehead, like Wittgenstein and a few other philosophers of his day, took relations as the fundamental building blocks of reality.  Reality, for him, is constructed of single "actual occasions" which are relational in nature, and which form complex occasions called "societies" or "actual entities."  Some of these actual entities form what are called "enduring objects," which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like.  But the enduring objects have to recreate themselves at every moment to maintain their identity.  Thus, instead of a continuity of becoming, what you have is a becoming of continuity.  I won't yet go into the role that God plays in Whitehead's system, because that's not really important for the point at hand.  The point is that in his system, objects are defined by their relations, and maintain their identity through a process of inheritance from the past.

Harman, starting from a Heideggerian perspective comes to a very different view.  Heidegger famously spoke about the use of a hammer.  While you're using a hammer, its status as an object is invisible to you.  It exists purely as a tool that is "ready-to-hand."  We can use it with theorizing about it.  Only when it breaks does it become "present-at-hand" -- that is to say, present as a real object.  But whereas this analysis has traditionally been interpreted from a phenomenological angle, in terms of what tools are "for us," Harman offers the more radical suggestion that whether he knew it or not, Heidegger is actually giving us an ontology of objects.  Using the example of a hammer is a bit deceiving, since hammers have to be wielded by the person using them.  But the ready-to-hand can be found all around us at any moment.  As I speak, there are wood beams holding up the roof over my head, which in turn are held together by nails.  Solar radiation is penetrating the Earth's atmosphere and warming up the planet to a temperature at which I am able to survive.  Plants are producing oxygen I require to breathe.  Electricity is being supplied to my house, thus allowing me to type this sentence on the keyboard and have it show up on the internet.  Objects all around me are exerting a real force upon the world to form a background of order that is invisible because it functions so perfectly.  Only when these things break down do they become present to me.  These objects don't exist the way they do for me.  They exist in their own right, and they exert a real force upon the world because of some inner quality that gives them the capacity to relate to other objects.

Welcome

For those who followed my old blog, I decided to start this new one for a couple reasons.  First of all, I've undergone some significant ideological changes since I last updated it.  I no longer identify as a Georgist, and now consider myself an anarchist.  In addition, while my previous blog was almost exclusively devoted to economics, I've been wanting to branch out and talk more about philosophy, sociology, and other social sciences and humanities.  You may be wondering about the name "morphic revolution."  I use the word "morphic" as a tribute to Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance.  I've been attempting to work out a deeper ontology based on his theory.  The word "revolution" has a double meaning, referring to both the revolutionary potential such an idea has for cosmology, as well as the political revolution I seek as an anarchist.  I hope that over time, I can bridge the gap between my metaphysical views and my political philosophy, and show the intersectionality between them.