By Lawrence K. Helm
Roger Bishop Jones said...
I think you are both party to the most elementary mistake that can be made about the nature of "anarchism", which is to suppose that anarchy is in this context a lack of order.
The "archy" at stake here, which is being rejected by anarchists, is not order, organisation, structure or cooperation. It is control, compulsion. It is the idea that society should be organised by subjugating the will of the many to the authority of the few, or even to the dictatorship of the majority as in democracy.
The anarchist believes in wholly voluntary cooperation and in sufficiency of social order based on cooperation rather than compulsion.
Or (for the anarcho-capitalist) he believes that the most efficient society arises from competition in free marketplaces, this is the chaos from which all good things emerge as if by magic.
The "archy" at stake here, which is being rejected by anarchists, is not order, organisation, structure or cooperation. It is control, compulsion. It is the idea that society should be organised by subjugating the will of the many to the authority of the few, or even to the dictatorship of the majority as in democracy.
The anarchist believes in wholly voluntary cooperation and in sufficiency of social order based on cooperation rather than compulsion.
Or (for the anarcho-capitalist) he believes that the most efficient society arises from competition in free marketplaces, this is the chaos from which all good things emerge as if by magic.
Lawrence K. Helm Responds:
I rather think it a mistake to assume that any grand expression like "Anarchy" means one thing and one thing only -- even when qualified by "in this context." By "in this context" I assume you mean the discussion we have been in. I traced an historical thread from the French Anarchists through the artistic Anarchists, to the disorganized rebellion against the "Establishment" in France. It involved both elements you discuss, disorder and rejection of authority. The two went hand in hand. Shattuck found as much "order" as was available for his book The Banquet Years, and there wasn't much -- other than the disorder of everyone doing his own thing as long as it resisted established ways of doing art and criticism.
So instead of attempting to make a principle out of just one aspect of "anarchism" wouldn't it be better, especially since the history of French Anarchy describes another aspect, to say that your Anarchic expression, anarcho-capitalism, has more order to it than some other expressions. Besides, why would an anarcho-capitalist wish to take all the other anarchists with him?
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The anarchist believes in wholly voluntary cooperation and in sufficiency of social order based on cooperation rather than compulsion.
ReplyDeleteThe anarchist, then, is a fool, and I see no reason to take him seriously. Indeed, the idea of voluntary cooperation in life's multiplayer plus-sum games is so dumb that one has to assume that it is a rationalization for something else, a defense mechanism for a temper tantrum born of material failure.
Certainly one can establish anarchic communes of like-minded folk, but such communes will suffer moral entropy as the advantages of defection become obvious to one, two, and then a critical mass of freeloaders and thieves. There's really no there there. (Even Chomsky's anracho-syndicalism recognizes that anarchy works only until you actually want to accomplish something, at which point an organization, with rules and everything, becomes necessary. Duh.)
I would not say that anarchy or existentialism precludes cooperation, at least not as a matter of principle. Even a Randian objectivist may conclude that submission to an appropriately limited Leviathan or voluntary cooperation in the absence of compulsion is the best strategy in any given circumstance. I consider myself as a cooperative existentialist, and I imagine many other people who think of themselves as existentialists, at least as to metaphysical matters, have no problem with cooperation, or its nanny coordination.
I apologise for my tone, which was rather more confrontational than The Grice Club likes to be.
ReplyDeleteAs to the substance, let be first explain, and then offer further justification of my point.
My reference to context was intended to place my comment about "anarchy" in the context of a discussion of "anarchism". The word anarchy does have a usage in which it means simply disorder or chaos, but the word anarchism does not.
Doubtless some people will have used the word anarchism in that sense. Many people think that an anarchist is someone who throws bombs. However, as a political doctrine, we should be considering primarily what the people who called themselves anarchists meant by so doing. (and I do exclude here non-political uses, no doubt an artistic use will not be the same).
I am not a scholar, but I have read Peter Marshall's compendious history of anarchism, which ranges well beyond its strictest confines, and I recall no mention of anyone who meant by calling himself an anarchist that he advocated chaos or disorder.
There is a very great diversity in anarchist thought, which ranges from the "left wing" anarcho-syndicalists to the "right wing" anarcho-capitalists and many others less readily classified.
Probably all attempts to realise the political objectives of anarchists have resulted in chaos, and some of them may have promoted chaos as a means to realising their political ends, but so far as I am aware, none of them held chaos to be an objective or a defining feature of their anarchism.
RBJ
Thanks to L. Helm, L. Kramer and R. Jones for their points! What an excellent case study for 'do not multply senses beyond necessity!', provided we want to abide by it! -- Jones is right that we could perhaps focus on uses of "an-archy" itself. I intend to do so, if chaos does not prevail! Again, should say that my favourite brand of anarchism (to oppose) is A. G. N. Flew calling an egg (Humpty Dumpty) 'anarchic'. So add the anarcho-semanticist to the list!
ReplyDelete---- Cooperation is dumb -- but hey. I love Rosenschein's definition of cooperation in terms that will appeal to the Griceian and Carnapian in us ('doxastic' and 'boulomaic' -- consider, 'do not lie') etc.
COOP (A, B) iff
F(A (G (B, p)) --> G(A, p).
--- I.e. to cooperate is to honour your partner's goal. This can be VERY transitory and even higher level. As Grice says, 'cooperation' may coexist with 'a high degree of chicanery' (WoW:369) and his cooperative principle is meant to be understood minimally even as a 'second-order' thing (there is "a common aim even if ... it is a second-order one, namely that each party should, for the time being, identify himself with the transitory ... interests of the other" -- WoW:29).
Note again back to p. 369, where he mentions the chicanery (a fine French word if ever there was one! -- Trust the French to coin it!):
"The institution of decisions" -- that is at the bottom of something like the CHOICE to abide by 'cooperation', as it were, Grice notes,
"within the dimension of VOLUNTARY exchanges"
-- cfr. Jones's on 'wholly voluntary cooperation' -- which, Grice adds, "are all that concern us", "collaboration in achieving [it: the institution of a decision] [will] coexist with a HIGH DEGREE of
1. reserve
2. hostility
3. chicanery
--"
and he adds:
"AND with a HIGH degree of
DIVERSITY in the [ground-floor, as it were] MOTIVATIONS [read: interests, or impure motives!] underlying quite meagre [Helm's favourite word when describing the Gallic types] common objectives."
Throwing bombs is NOT what is at stake here! I can think, rather, more of -- 'is there uncooperative talk?'. I recall a study on foreign-policy conversation. The author -- I think it was in Critica -- was arguing that in a belligerent situation, there is indeed a total breakdown of cooperation.
Oddly, it is in THIS scenario, that the real talk of 'strategy' STARTS to make sense. It is the means-end, even 'strategic' reasoning of the general (or strategos) as he goes to war! I once analysed this, elsewhere, vis a vis the Loeb Classical Library with Fontinus. The general's point is indeed to 'deceive', if he can. A strategy tends to be deceptive, for -- who wants to lose the war?
I was amused that Fontinus has an example of the general even misleading his own troops. The scenario was simplistic, and it involved the general misleading the troops towards some goal that was favourable for the general outcome.
But again, I echo Jones in revising how 'anarchist' have used THEIR label! And stuff!