The True Face of Anarchy

From Doctor Zero, at Human Events:

Anarchy is difficult to pin down as a political movement. Anarchist groups, unsurprisingly, squabble among themselves quite a bit. Many of them are essentially leftist or Marxist groups trying to rebrand themselves, but others declare themselves equally opposed to capitalist and Marxist concepts of order. The Greek militants organizations have flourished during riots caused by austerity measures designed to hold off government collapse, which gives us the spectacle of “anarchists” furious that a bankrupt government won’t keep giving them stuff. The Italian anarchist movement has deep roots in communism, dating back to the 19th century.

The Anarchist International Information Service defines their philosophy as “system and management without rulers, i.e. co-operation without repression, tyranny, and slavery.” For the record, they don’t think much of the Informal Anarchist Federation. It is, however, difficult to follow the ideal of “horizontal organization” to any other conclusion except violence and repression. In practice, anarchy is not the absence of rulers. It is the rule of brutality.

Society does not naturally assume a “horizontal” configuration. It must be beaten into that shape. People willingly cooperate and seek leadership, for better or worse. They must be violently prevented from doing this, and those who wield the violence become the new leaders, selected by their willingness to kill off those who would have assumed the position through merit.

Communism, Marxism, socialism, and every other incarnation of supposedly “compassionate” collectivism are sold as pathways to horizontal organization. “From each according to his means, to each according to his needs” is meant to express the moral superiority of demand, in which needs dictate the allocation of resources. This ignores the tremendous amount of deadly force necessary to take “from each according to his means.”

The anarchist is really just another species of collectivist, who holds romantic notions about the level of violence necessary to destroy the existing order, while pointedly ignoring the level of violence needed to sustain the “anarchy” he would replace it with.

There's more at the link.

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