The following is an article I wrote a few months ago
I am taking a class on extremist politics in my university, and out of all of them, the one that I find the least workable is left anarchism.
I don’t find any sort of anarchism appealing because I believe that ultimately, a state of some form is needed in order to ensure that the rights of people are protected and that society doesn’t fall into barbarism. You could say I am somewhat of an adherer to Thomas Hobbes in this regard.
There is right anarchism, of course, however I don’t place the same amount of scrutiny on right anarchism because right anarchists are honest about what they want and how they achieve their perfect society.
Right anarchists don’t deny that anarchy will eventually lead to people defending what is their own at the cost of everyone else. There is no collective good, only the individual good. This is honest anarchism.
Left anarchism, though, is based on a delusion. Left anarchists believe that in the absence of the state, people will band together and erase hierarchy, establishing communes where the collective good is prioritized over everything else and exploitation is eradicated.
The problem with this though is that it requires everyone in society to come to this collective epiphany where they realize that exploitation and domination of one over the other is wrong, which has never happened in the course of thousands of years of human history.
My professor assigned us a piece of Emma Goldman’s Anarchism: What it Really Stands For, and at the end of it, she addresses the argument about human nature. Well, she doesn’t really address it, but brushes it off, stating:
“Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. Yet, how can any speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every heard fettered, wounded, and maimed?”
While it could be said that Goldman’s point is that human nature, or at least, true human nature, has been twisted beyond its initial self, her anarchism still doesn’t actually provide a solution on how to revert this corruption. Simply that when the state is overthrown and that left anarchism is introduced, that everyone will suddenly see the light.
Such thinking is absurd. While it definitely sounds nice, the fact of the matter is that a left anarchist society is idealistic, not realistic. Say the anarchist revolution comes and the state is abolished. Is the first thing on your mind going to be to join with your community in a commune and give up your wealth and property to everyone else?
Unlike Marxism, which calls for a transition period to the state withering away called the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, there is no transition period in anarchism, and many anarchists despised Marx for his theory on transition.
So, the state is gone. The left anarchists say you are free; now let us all join up together in communes and own everything collectively. Yet there is no transition period. No educating people on how to do this. It is simply expected that it will happen. Never mind the fact that most people in society don’t subscribe to left anarchism.
What we would get is simply anarchism in the rawest form. There will be no mass epiphany where we all form communes and share all of our things. People will be focused on their own defense.
And for the actual left anarchist communes that are out there, they would be destroyed by the person who has more men and more weapons. Essentially, society would fall into warlordism. There will be no central authority, but numerous mini authorities spread out across the land.
The truth of the matter is that you cannot have an idealistic ideology like anarchism or socialism or communism without some sort of state authority to educate the people and organize society among those lines. Given that, we can strike left anarchism as a viable ideology off the bat, since if there were a state, it could not be anarchist anymore.
Say what you will about the Communists, but at least the concept of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat makes their ideology viable enough to get off the ground. “Yeah, we’re gonna abolish the state eventually, but first we are gonna destroy the bourgeoisie and take over the means of production by force.”
Left anarchism though? “We are gonna destroy the state. Then people are going to get along and form communes. How will this happen? It just will. Trust me bro. The state is what is holding us back.”
Actually, the state is what is holding back the more savage aspect of humanity. The entire reason the state was formed in the first place, if you subscribe to Hobbes, was a way for people to give up their agency in return for safety and security, which before the formation of the state was up to the individual to provide.
Of course, you could argue that in the age of liberalism that the state is doing a bad job of keeping its end of the bargain, but even then, the ability of protection is still there even if the people running the state currently are problematic.
Left anarchism disregards Hobbes argument entirely yet at the same time provides no refutations other than vague platitudes and expectations. Such an ideology is unworkable on a national scale.
But what do you think? Do you see left anarchism as appealing? If you are a left anarchist and you happen upon this piece, what are your solutions to the issues that I have brought to attention?