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Çatal Chattel No More

By on July 11, 2009 5

Yabba Dabba Anarchy!Check out Ken MacLeod’s discussion of possible evidence for a Neolithic revolution that may have replaced a sanguinary theocracy with a non-hierarchical society that lasted for the next three millennia.

While one must be wary of succumbing to wishful thinking when evaluating such hypotheses, it’s certainly interesting. Plus it’s nice to see Çatalhöyük spelled correctly for a change. Outside of Turkey, Höyük is frequently, and used to be almost invariably, spelled Hüyük – a most unlikely spelling given how Turkish syllable formation works. (I don’t remember much of the Turkish I once learned, but I remember that much!)

The Caucus Race

By on July 9, 2009 22

Alice and the DodoAn LP Anarchist Caucus has just formed.

I’m not a big fan of the “five key points” – taken literally, there’s a couple of them that I actually disagree with, and taken humorously, they’re just not especially funny. But hey, I’ll join. See also Tom’s comments.

I’m still waiting for someone to take Brad up on his suggestion of a Libertarian Socialist Caucus ….

Anarchy in the Comics

By on July 6, 2009 20

I figure if we want to combat the use of the term “anarchy” to mean violence and chaos, we need to start calling people on it when they so use it. Here, then, are two letters I just wrote:

Joe Casey
c/o Marvel Entertainment, Inc.
417 5th Avenue
New York NY 10016

Dear Mr. Casey:

In Zodiac #1 (which lists you as the writer), Zodiac says “I had a vision of a world where anarchy is a way of life.” Unless Zodiac’s vision is of a peaceful, egalitarian world without coercive authority, where all human relationships are voluntary, this is an inaccurate and defamatory use of the concept of anarchy.

Now I’m sure you can find a dictionary that supports your use of the term “anarchy” to mean violence and chaos – just as older dictionaries sometimes endorse defamatory uses of terms like “Jew,” for example. But the fact that dictionaries still promote negative stereotypes of anarchists and anarchism is no excuse for imitating them.

Etymologically, “anarchy” does not mean violence or chaos; it means “without a ruler” (an, without; arkhos, ruler). Those who equate the absence of a ruler with violence and chaos should ask themselves which group has caused more violence and chaos throughout history – rulers or the rulerless.

Andrew Kreisberg
c/o DC Comics, Inc.
1700 Broadway, 7th Floor
New York NY 10019

Dear Mr. Kreisberg:

In Green Arrow/Black Canary #21 (which lists you as the writer), the villain says that “anarchy came swiftly.” Unless he’s referring to the advent of a peaceful, egalitarian society without coercive authority, where all human relationships are voluntary, this is an inaccurate and defamatory use of the concept of anarchy.

Now I’m sure you can find a dictionary that supports your use of the term “anarchy” to mean violence and chaos – just as older dictionaries sometimes endorse defamatory uses of terms like “Jew,” for example. But the fact that dictionaries still promote negative stereotypes of anarchists and anarchism is no excuse for imitating them.

Etymologically, “anarchy” does not mean violence or chaos; it means “without a ruler” (an, without; arkhos, ruler). Those who equate the absence of a ruler with violence and chaos should ask themselves which group has caused more violence and chaos throughout history – rulers or the rulerless.

Drop ’em a line of your own if you’re so inclined.

Zodiac at work

A couple of other comics-related notes:

  • In Mighty Avengers #26, Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) tells Hank Pym that Zeno of Elea’s paradox “states that a traveler must always cover half the distance towards a goal before reaching it. Then half again. And again. And so on to infinity.” While I’ve often see Zeno’s paradox misdescribed this way, the smartest man in the world should really know better. Zeno’s paradox is not that after covering half the distance he then has to cover half the remaining distance and so on. Rather, it’s that before he can cover half the distance, he has to cover half of that first distance, and before he can do that he has to cover half, and so on. In other words, it’s not that a traveler gets closer and closer but never arrives, it’s that he can’t even start.
     
  • I dropped Mike Grell a note about his Atlantis story (got up in his grell, as it were) (sorry) and heard back from him! Cool, no? Given that I’ve been a Grell fan since age eleven.
     
  • ALERT for Orson Scott Card fans: Marvel Comics has been adapting Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow in comic book form, but they recently came out with a brand new one-shot Enderverse comic titled Ender’s Game: Recruiting Valentine, which, while it takes place during the same timeframe as those books, is not based on any pre-existing story. The credits list Jake Black as the writer, but Card as Creative and Executive Director, so the story clearly has Card’s blessing and probably some degree of input.

Afghanarchy

By on July 3, 2009 13

I received an email today asking why the anarchic situation in Afghanistan hasn’t evolved toward a peaceful system of protection agencies as market anarchist theory predicts. Here’s the answer I sent back:

For one thing, anarchy doesn’t fully exist in Afghanistan; the u.s. is desperately trying to prop up a government, and they’re importing plenty of money and guns to make it happen. (Ditto for Somalia, mutatis mutandis; though Somalia’s been working out better because the population has a longer history of polycentric law.) For another, so long as everyone shares the default assumption that there’s going to be a monopoly state sooner or later, then everyone strives mightily to make sure their gang rather than some rival gang is in position to control that state once it materialises. Now a relatively peaceful anarchy can sometimes emerge even from a situation like that (there are some medieval examples), but it’s a lot easier when that assumption is given up.

A good analogy is the wars of religion that ripped Europe apart during the 16th and 17th centuries. The common assumption that fueled those wars was the assumption that every territory had to have a single monopoly religion. Obviously that generates a zero-sum game where everyone strives to make their religion the monopoly one – since if one religion is going to have the monopoly, everyone would rather have that be their own rather than the other guy’s. What brought religious peace to Europe was the idea of religious toleration – or in other words, the realisation that something other than a single victorious monopoly religion might count as a peaceful resolution of religious differences. Once people realise that the same thing applies to political toleration, it’ll be a lot easier to develop and maintain a polycentric legal order. (This is also a good example of how politics depends on culture. Just as governments end up better or worse depending on the prevailing cultural assumptions, so do anarchies.)

Any further suggestions, O readership? If so, I’ll send my questioner to the comments section here.

LeviathAnarchy

By on July 1, 2009 15

Gary Chartier offers an interesting challenge to the Hobbesian: namely, to identify at what point along the spectrum between Leviathan and free-market anarchism we supposedly lose whatever it is the Hobbesian claims is essential to social order.

Iran Update

By on June 24, 2009 4

This story by Al Giordano (CHT Jesse Walker) gives some interesting info about what’s going on in Iran.

The interaction between the protests from the bottom and the power struggle at the top bears on the whole anti-political debate as well. On the one hand, the situation illustrates the benefit to bottom-up movements of having someone friendly on the inside up top; score one for the partyarchs, I guess. On the other hand, what’s motivating the friendly forces at the top seems to be in part a desire to get away from the “defilement” of politics; score one for the voluntaryists, I guess.

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