The following post is a paper I wrote for no particular reason when I was about 17. I would have been in 8th grade or so the year (yes, I am dating myself) would have been 1980. It is possible it was 1978 or 79, but it really matters little. I do not claim this has any great inherent value. IN fact, parts of it I now disagree with completely. I also apologize for the poor grammer. However, the piece does give a glimpse into what adolescents at that time may have thought about the theory of anarchy.
Anarchy is a form of government in which government has no form. This contradictory statement means simply that the only government in anarchism is the individual governing that people impose between themselves and without any organized structure. This form, or rather lack of form, is seem by many as an ideal form of government. The problem arises on how to affect the changeover from the exisitng forms of government to that of anarchism. Anarchy can be accomplished by destroying the credibility of the existing forms of government, organizing the people into a political party based on pure democracy, and overthrowing the existing government by means of concensus.
The first step in establishing anarchy is to discredit the existing form of government and destroy any faith the people may have in it. Propaganda is an essential tool. One work in the right place can cause a person to lose faith in his government. Capital manipulation is another good way to discredit the administration in power. Controlling the wealth, or large blocs of this wealth, in order to cause inflated prices and bribe government officials coupled with propaganda blaming the inflated prices on the greed of the bribed official catering to
special interest groups is a difficult blow for a government to recover from. Many experiments in destroying credibility have become famous. The inability of the Russian politburoto feed its people, the break in at the Watergate building in America, and the world wide problem of inflation are three of the most famous examples.
The second step in accomplishing anarchy is the formation of the masses into a political party. This party must have a loose form and in reality only has two rules: everyone votes on everything and majority rules. These two rules make the party purely democratic and allows a broad basis for the overrthrow of the existing government. All that is needed is a maority to take control. THis party should be ready at all times to vote and should have no fear of making decisions contrary to those of the existing government. The best known examples of this organization, or disorganization, taking precedence is in the draft resistance during the Vietnam Was and the recent labor strikes in Poland.
The final step toward anarchy is the actual overthrow of the existing government. A majority of all of the members of the party must vote that the form of government in power at that time no longer have power. The party members then proceed to actualize this by refusal to comply with the government policies and open defiance in strikes, demonstrations, and other forms of civil disobedience. In case the government reacts violently the party should be prepared to overthrow and destroy the government by force. It has been shown that existing governments can be smashed by miliraty force since ancient times and Mohatma Ghandi has shown the world how civil disobedience can topple a government.
The realization of an anarchical form of government is a long process often involving physical danger which should be undertaken only after considerable study and thought. If all the steps are taken, in the proper order, for a revolution vefore it was demonstrated anything was wrong with the existing government woudl be senseless, anarchy can be accomplished.
Anarchy requires responsibility from every single human within that society. Are we there? No. Will we ever be? The answer is within all of us when we are ready to see it.
ReplyDeleteHow can one reconcile the demands of society with a life of total freedom?
KRISHNAMURTI: What are the demands of society? Tell me, please. That you go to the office from nine to five, or the factory, that you go to a nightclub for excitement after all the boredom of the day's work, take a fortnight or three weeks' holiday in sunny Spain or Italy? What are the demands of society? That you must earn a livelihood, that you must live in that particular part of the country all your life, practise as a lawyer, or a doctor, or in the factory as a union leader, and so on. Right? Therefore one must also ask the question: what is this society that demands so much, and who created the wretched thing? Who is responsible for this? The church, the temple, the mosque, and all the circus that goes on inside them? Who is responsible for all this? Is the society different from us, or have we created the society, each one of us, through our ambition, through our greed, our envy, our violence, through our corruption, through our fear, wanting our security in the community, in the nation -- you follow? We have created this society and then blame the society for what it demands. Therefore you ask: can I live in absolute freedom, or rather, can I reconcile with society and myself seek freedom? It is such an absurd question. Sorry, I am not being rude to the questioner. It is absurd because you are society. Do we really see that, not as an idea, not as a concept, or something you must accept? But we, each one of us on this earth for the last 40,000 years or more, have created the society in which we live: the stupidity of religions, the stupidity of the nations arming themselves. For God's sake, we have created it because we insist on being American or French or Russian. We insist on calling ourselves Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, and this gives us a sense of security. But it is these very divisions that obstruct the search for security. It is so clear.
So there is no reconciliation between society and its demands and your demands for freedom. The demands come from your own violence, from your own ugly, limited selfishness. It is one of the most complex things to find out for oneself where selfishness is, where the ego very, very subtly hides itself. It can hide politically `doing good for the country'. It can hide in the religious world most beautifully: `I believe in God, I serve God', or in social help -- not that I am against social help, don't jump to that conclusion -- but it can hide there. It requires a very attentive, not analytical, but an observing brain to see where the subtleties of the self, of selfishness, are hidden. Then when there is no self, society doesn't exist; you don't have to reconcile with it. It is only the inattentive, the unaware who say, `How am I to respond to society when I am working for freedom?' You understand?
If I may point out, we need to be re-educated, not through school, college, university -- which also condition the brain -- nor through work in the office or the factory. We need to re-educate ourselves by being aware, seeing how we are caught in words. Can we do this? If we cannot do it we are going to have perpetual wars, perpetual weeping, always in conflict, misery and all that is entailed. The speaker is not pessimistic or optimistic; these are the facts. When you live with facts as they are, not with data produced by the computer, but observing them, watching your own activity, your own egotistic pursuits, then out of that grows marvellous freedom with all its great beauty and strength.