An Introduction to Interfaces, and Other Theories As Well

[This post assumes a reasonable familiarity with the political philosophy and history of anarchism. This will also be the first of probably many posts about problems I see in the general discourse of anarchy, as well as a particularly interesting consequence of a hypothetical anarchist society with I term "interfaces". In this and future essays, the words "free", "libertarian" and "non-coercive" are often used interchangeably.]

There is a serious problem which afflicts most political and intellectual movements. Sectarianism. The splintering of subgroups into ideologically warring factions, ready to heap unrestrained scorn on those whose views and opinions differ slightly from their own. Radicals are especially vulnerable to this trap, as they have so little practical experience on which to base their political theory. Hence "anarchists" come in every stripe, from capitalist to communist, "lifestyle" to syndicalist. I myself identify as a syndicalist — that being what seems to be the most practicable way to achieving a free society — and would like to live in a libertarian communist society. From each according to his etc. and all that.

However, this does not make me deaf either to the arguments for other systems of organizing a free society, nor to the validity of other people's views on how a free society should be organized. I believe, in fact, that there are many valid ways to organize society so as to minimize coercion while increasing prosperity. And, more importantly, I believe that in an anarchist future, many of these different systems will be implemented simultaneously. Different people will want to live in different ways. There will be primitivists who will continue agitating for the dismantling of technological civilization long after capitalism is abolished. There will be mutualists unhappy in communes, communists unhappy with local banks, market anarchist unhappy in gift economies.

This belief — that many different styles of free society are mutually compatible — leads me to two conclusions. The first is that sectarian squabbling between modern schools of anarchist thought are not only harmful and divisive, but entirely unnecessary. We all agree that State government has to be abolished, and (to consciously evoke the No True Scotsman fallacy here) every real anarchist agrees that capitalism as it exists now has to be abolished. As such, we ought to discuss not the ideological differences between us, but rather the strategic differences. And I think that many anarchists of otherwise widely divergent views would find themselves agreeing on methods for dismantling our current coercive society.

The second conclusion I have come upon is that anarchist theories of a hypothetical future lack several important features. The three most important ones are the lack of emphasis on an anarchist revolution as a necessarily world-wide phenomenon, the necessity of revolution to be a continuous process rather than a historic event, and the problem of interfaces between different types of libertarian society. This idea of interfaces is one which particularly interests me, although it is by far the most speculative and difficult to see clearly.

How would a communistic or gift-based community distribute goods across a world populated by mutualist banks and free markets? How do you determine the price of something produced in another community at your local bank when that community shares alike? I think it's obvious that questions like this become incredibly difficult to answer, given the actual lack of any such communities, but they are still worth at least positing. As vague and speculative as they are, they let us approach the different anarchist theories from different directions, let us compare and contrast the strengths and weaknesses of different theories, and help us work out the hypothetical consequences of different forms of anarchy.

Certainly, more mental energy could be devoted to figuring out how to dismantle the state in the first place. But the best way I personally know to do that is by spreading the idea of anarchy across as many people as possible. And in order to do this, you have to have both a concerted critique of modern society, and a clear view of an alternative society. It is simply not enough for the vast majority of people to have someone tell them, "Well, coercion is inherently bad, so we should remove all coercive institutions." That statement unpacks into hundreds of ideas. How is Capital coercive? How are institutions coercive? How is a representative democracy coercive? Isn't coercion sometimes necessary? Doesn't it sometimes lead to the greater good? Etc, etc, etc.

I will come back to many of the points and questions raised in this post later, to take closer looks at all of them. Most importantly I will discuss in greater detail the anarchism-without-adjectives view I discussed, as well as the question of interfaces between different types of anarchism. The devotion of so many to very particular views of anarchism confuse me, and the vitriol differences in these views evoke disturbs me. We anarchists are an unhappy few, toiling away, either in the workplace, the food shelf or the essay, to change to world for the better in the best way we know how, and we should be doing it together, regardless of what I hope to show to be trivial differences in our theoretical underpinnings.