EXPLORATIONS OF A STATELESS WORLD The Conscience of an Anarchist The Conscience of an Anarchist Why It’s Time to Say Good-Bye to the State and Build a Free Society GARY CHARTIER COBDEN PRESS • Apple Valley, CA Copyright © Gary Chartier 2011 Published by Cobden Press 20258 US Hwy. 18, Suite 430-500 Apple Valley, CA 92307 (480) 684-2651 www.fr33minds.com The photograph of the author is Gary Chartier , by Cheryl Richman. It is licensed under the Cre - ative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. You are free to copy, distribute and transmit each image and to adapt it —provided that you attribute the image in the manner spec - ified (but not in any way that suggests that the photographer endorses you or your use of the work) and that, if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same license as this one or a relevantly similar license . The cover image is London: The Thames and the City of London from Richmond House (1747), by Giovanni Antonio Canal (Canaletto). This book was printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper. This is the corrected fifth printing of this book. ISBN 978-1-935942-02-3 The Conscience of an Anarchist is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License, and can be copied without limit—including for commercial distribution— so long as it is attributed to Gary Chartier. Gary Chartier. The Conscience of an Anarchist: Why It’s Time to Say Good-Bye to the State and Build a Free Society Includes bibliographic references 1. Anarchism. 2. Politics and Government—United States. I. Title For Elenor Contents Contents vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Open Your Mind to Anarchy 1 1. The Dissent of the Governed 5 2. Fish, Bicycles, and the State 11 3. The State, Big Business, and Economic Privilege 25 4. The State, War, and Empire 53 5. The State and Personal Freedom 69 6. Where Do We Go from Here? 87 Resources: Stuff to Check Out on the Way to the Future 105 Notes 115 About the Author 119 Acknowledgments HIS BOOK REFLECTS MY attempt to bring together insights I have had since I Tfirst began to read about anarchism over a quarter-century ago, insights fre - quently gained as a result of my encounters with other writers. I have drawn freely on the ideas of a variety of anarchist thinkers who have argued, in dif - ferent ways, for the superiority of cooperation over violence, of peace over ag - gression, of freedom over coercion. Thus, while I have as much as possible avoid - ed specific references, I have attached a list of resources for the benefit of any - one who wants to think more about anarchism. I am grateful to a variety of people who devoted time and energy to read - ing and reflecting on some or all of this book during its development: Kevin A. Carson, Brad Spangler, Teresa Warmke, Sheldon Richman, Thomas L. Knapp, Stephan Kinsella, D. Frank Robinson, James Tuttle, and Gene Mayes. Jeff Riggenbach, David Henderson, Tom de Lorenzo, Pennelope Aletras-Leight, and Armando Benitez copy-edited the manuscript and saved me from embar - rassment at multiple points. Eduardo Brugman, Esteban Salcido, Brandon Snider, A. Andrew Truong, and Roderick T. Long, among others, contributed helpfully to the design process. The assistance of Jim Person and the other mem - bers of the Cobden Press team has ensured the production and rapid distribu - tion of an attractive and affordable book. I’m very pleased by and appreciative of their work, and I’m honored to be associated with the Press’s eponym, Richard Cobden, co-founder of the Anti-Corn Law League, who challenged aristocrat - ic privileges that limited ordinary people’s access to inexpensive food, promot - ed the cause of peace and non-intervention, urged reductions in military spend - ing, and rejected the evil of slavery. And thanks, of course, to the usual suspects: Elenor Webb, Jeffrey Cassidy, Annette Bryson, Aena Prakash, Alexander Lian, Andrew Howe, Angela Keaton, x THE CONSCIENCE OF AN ANARCHIST Anne-Marie Pearson, Bart Willruth, Carole Pateman, Chelsea Krafve, Craig R. Kinzer, David B. Hoppe, David R. Larson, Deborah K. Dunn, Donna Carl - son, Ellen Hubbell, Eva Pascal, Fritz Guy, Jan M. Holden, Jesse Leamon, Joel Sandefur, John Elder, John Thomas, Julio C. Muñoz, Kenneth A. Dickey, Lawrence T. Geraty, Ligia Radoias, Marc A. Benzakein, Maria Zlateva, Michael Orlando, Nabil Abu-Assal, Patricia Cabrera, Roger E. Rustad, Jr., Ronel Har - vey, Ruth E. E. Burke, Sel J. Hwahng, W. Kent Rogers, and Wonil Kim. I am particularly indebted to Elenor for moral and logistical support and for wel - come opportunities for dialogue and exchange. I intend to donate all of the author royalties I receive from the sale of this book to AntiWar.com. I am enormously grateful for the ongoing contributions those associated with this remarkable journalistic endeavor make to the cause of creating a society organized on the basis of peaceful, voluntary cooperation. INTRODUCTION Open Your Mind to Anarchy S AN IDEA , ANARCHISM is the conviction that people can and should cooper - Aate peacefully and voluntarily. As a political program, it’s the project of do - ing without the state. Because governments are rooted in the use of force, anarchists maintain that no actual government is legitimate and that, in any case, we would be bet - ter off without the state. Anarchists reject any kind of authority acquired or maintained through aggressive violence or fraud. More broadly, many anar - chists—including me—maintain that the same ideals that motivate their oppo - sition to aggressive violence prompt them to challenge social institutions and cultural patterns that subordinate, exclude, or impoverish people, stultify their lives, or force them into soul-numbing conformity. People can and should organize their interactions on their own terms. We can defend ourselves against aggression; we don’t need the state to force us not to kill each other. And we don’t need the state’s help to coordinate our interac - tions. Working together, we can craft meaningful lives and livable communities. Anarchism as a Positive Vision Sometimes, people wear the anarchist label, or hoist anarchist black flags, when their primary goal is just to spread a little chaos. Even people who know better may sometimes act as if “anarchy” were just another word for disorder. But anarchism as I understand it is about the best kind of order imaginable: the kind that emerges voluntarily, spontaneously, as people work creatively together to shape their lives and plan their futures. Anarchy is what happens when social order flows, not from the state’s gun barrels, but from peaceful, voluntary cooperation. Roughly speaking, a state is an organization that claims to have legitimate authority over who uses force in a given territory and that does at least a mod - 2 THE CONSCIENCE OF AN ANARCHIST erately effective job of keeping unapproved violence under control. (More on this later.) The state in the modern sense has been with us for over three hun - dred years, and states of various kinds are much older than that. So it’s easy to treat the existence of states as inevitable. But, for anarchists, there’s nothing nec - essary about the state at all. States persist because of the self-interest of the pow - erful people who manage or manipulate them and because ordinary people haven’t realized their own power to imagine and implement alternatives. In this book, I want to help to loosen the hold the state still has on people’s imaginations. I want to point out that, as in Hans Christian Andersen’s famous tale, the emperor really has nothing on at all. I want to encourage you to shift your point of view—to come to see the state as a group of people no different from your neighbors, with no more inherent authority, no greater right to tell you what to do. (Of course, your neighbors are unlikely to threaten you with guns if you don’t do what they tell you to do. But this difference hardly counts in the state’s favor.) I want to undermine the myth that the state represents us in any meaningful sense, that when politicians and generals act, they’re acting on our behalf. I want to underscore the fact that the people who make and imple - ment state decisions are pursuing their own agendas, often in conflict with our own—just like powerful people in big businesses and other similar institutions— and that we have no reason to treat them with reverence, to view them as any - thing other than ordinary people with rights just like ours . This isn’t a primer, a narrowly academic work in philosophy or econom - ics or political science or history, though it’s informed by the results of inquiry in all those disciplines. It’s a manifesto , a call to action: not to more violence that’s just the mirror image of the state’s own destructiveness, but to the creative work of envisioning a new kind of society and beginning to construct it here and now, right under the noses of the people in power. Why I Am an Anarchist I’m an anarchist for several reasons. I’m an anarchist because I believe there’s no natural right to rule . I believe people are equal in essential dignity and worth, which means, in turn, that they have equal moral standing. That makes it hard to justify giving some people—those who rule the state and those who enforce rulers’ decisions—rights that others don’t have.