What Unitarians Taught Me About Anarchism (Anarchism for Civilians series)
Introduction to the “Anarchism for Civilians” Series
“I’m an anarchist,” said Rhyd.
“Sure you are!” I thought to myself, inwardly rolling my eyes.
We were at Pantheacon, a large Pagan convention in San Jose, California, several years ago. Rhyd, who I had only known online before this, was sitting across a dinner table from me.
At the time, I didn’t know what anarchism was. I had in mind punk teenagers wearing black t-shirts with big red A’s painted on them. I also had in mind the adolescent antinomianism of so many Pagans I knew. If I had known Rhyd better at the time, I would have known he didn’t fit either of these stereotypes.
I didn’t know Rhyd well, but I also didn’t know anything about anarchism. I didn’t know at the time that there is a difference between anarchism and being anti-social. I didn’t know that anarchism is actually a sophisticated political philosophy with a long and respectable history. I didn't know that, for decades in the United States and elsewhere, anarchists formed the backbone of movements for economic and political justice. I didn’t know that there have actually been real communities which have practiced forms of anarchism more or less successfully. I didn’t know that there are many different forms of anarchism. And I didn’t know that my own political orientation was, even then, drifting toward anarchism.
After having learned more about anarchism since, I feel more than a little embarrassed about my earlier eye-rolling. Now, whenever I mention anarchism to people, I’m the one getting the eye rolls. And it’s not just from conservatives. Progressives and even some leftists don’t know what anarchism is. I was surprised when a friend who was a “red diaper baby” and a lifelong communist admitted he didn’t know anything about anarchism—despite the fact that the two movements were closely related at one time.[FN 1]
This isn’t entirely the fault of the eye-rollers. I have discovered that a lot of writing about anarchism can be abstruse.[FN 2] Even many introductory texts fail to build a bridge between the average reader and anarchist thought. I have read several introductions to anarchism, which I thought I was understanding as I read them, but as soon as I closed the book, I realized I was still confused about exactly what anarchism is. And I suspect I’m not alone in this.
Most introductions start with the fathers of anarchism, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, and Peter Kropotkin, in the 19th century. And then things get really complicated from there. The term anarchism is heavily contested today, and there are people on completely opposite ends of the political spectrum who claim the term. It is easy to get bogged down in these internecine conflicts.
For a while, I’ve wanted to write a short introduction to anarchism for folks who have no background in the subject.[FN 3] It is inevitable that there will be some people who will disagree with my representation of anarchism here.[FN 4] For one thing, I’m still learning about it. In any case, I could never do justice to the complexity of anarchism. So rather than attempting any kind of authoritative definition of anarchism (which would really be contrary to the spirit of the thing), I want instead to dispel some of the myths that I had to unlearn, in order to grasp what anarchism is about—starting with something I learned from Unitarians.
Lesson 1: Anarchy does not mean chaos. Anarchy does mean the absence of hierarchy.
In the minds of most people, “anarchy” has come to mean a state of social chaos. But anarchy is not chaos. Anarchy is simply the absence of social hierarchy.[FN 5] It is the absence of domination of some people by other people. This includes all forms of hierarchy, including authoritarianism, classism (which capitalism is a form of), racism, sexism, hetero- and cis-normativity, and even anthropocentrism. Anarchism recognizes the interconnectedness of all of these forms of oppression and, thus, how opposition to these different forms of hierarchy must also be connected.[FN 6]
Contrary to what some people may believe, there are ways to order society that don’t involve hierarchy. In its essence, anarchy is simply pure democracy. It means letting people make decisions for themselves in community with others, without abdicating power or responsibility to a group of elites. This necessarily requires keeping things small, because the bigger things get, the more people are involved, the harder it is to maintain real democracy.
This is actually something that the American “Founding Fathers” understood. They were terrified of pure democracy, because it was a threat to their (unearned) wealth and their privileged positions in society.[FN 7] James Madison, himself a slave plantation owner, justified the need for a large federal government by arguing that identification with large political entities tends to alienate people from each other. In the Federalist Papers, he explained that, in smaller societies, it is easier for people to act in concert. Whereas in larger societies, it is harder for people to discover their “common motive”, and it becomes “more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other.” A lot of people might be surprised to learn that the Founders understood that a large central government was an obstacle to real democracy, and that’s why they wanted it!
A lot of objections which people raise to anarchism take the scale of our society for granted. Leopold Kohr was someone who did not. Kohr was an Austrian economist and journalist who reported on anarchist communities during the Spanish Civil War. After fleeing the Nazis and settling in the United States, Kohr wrote The Breakdown of Nations (1957), in which he theorized that small communities are more peaceful and prosperous than the great nation-states. He argued that social problems are not caused by particular political or economic arrangements, but by their size. In his view, any political/economic system could work well on what he called the “human scale,” the scale at which people can play a determinative role in the governance of their lives. But once it grows too large, then any political or economic system becomes oppressive. [FN 9]
Americans like to claim to be the paragon of democracy, but in reality we embrace authoritarianism in many aspects of our lives.
I was raised in a hierarchical and authoritarian religion, Mormonism. Mormons have a “prophet” (also called the “president” of the church) who is at the top of the hierarchy. Below him are twelve “apostles”. Below them is a council of seventy. And so on. (Of course, they are all men.) Mormons believe that the will of God flows down from the prophet to the individual members of the church. The same structure is replicated in the Mormon home, with the father at the top, followed by the mother, and then the children. (Of course, the structure is cis- and hetero-normative.)
While Mormons do believe in “personal revelation”, this does not disturb the hierarchical structure, as there is no upward flow of revelation. Those above you in the hierarchy can receive revelation which is authoritative for you, but you cannot receive revelation which is authoritative for them.
About ten years ago, I joined a Unitarian congregation. It was very different from my experience with the Mormon church. Unitarians are congregationalists, which means that their church governance is democratic. Number five in the Unitarian Universalist Principles is “The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large”.
In practice, this means that every member has a vote on important issues. And the day-to-day running of the church is delegated to a board which is elected annually. Important decisions are made through formal congregational meetings and recording of votes. But other decisions are made less formally through a consensus-style of decision making.[FN 10]
Mormons would find the Unitarian-style of democratic governance very strange. While the hierarchical structure of the Mormons will seem strange to many who were not raised in an authoritarian religion, it will be familiar to others who were, such as current and former Catholics. And while you may not have experienced a hierarchical religion, you have experienced hierarchy in other aspects of your life. For example, your family of origin may have been patriarchal. You probably were educated in a school that was authoritarian—not just in its discipline, but in its pedagogy as well. Did your teachers strive to produce freethinking individuals, or did they want copies of themselves?
The point is that, we tend to reject hierarchy instinctually in some parts of our lives, while accepting it uncritically in others. Anarchists strive to eliminate all hierarchy, in every aspect of life: government, work, religion, family. This is called “total liberation".
Americans like to think of their government as democratic, but it is actually very hierarchical. “A person no less a slave because they are allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years,” wrote 19th century anarchist, Lysander Spooner. “But our elected representatives embody the will of the people!” you might object. But do they really? In the United States, democracy has been undermined by elites in myriad ways: The electoral college. Voter suppression. Gerrymandering. The revolving door of government and industry. The absence of campaign finance reform. Citizens United. The focus on national over local politics.
The anarchist asks, Why does hierarchy belong in any part of our lives? Many of us uncritically accept hierarchy in the workplace, for example. But why should the capitalists (the people who own property) be the bosses? Why doesn’t everyone who participates in the functioning of a workplace, right “down” to the janitor, have an equal say?
Or to give you a more radical example, the green anarchist asks, Why doesn’t the more-than-human world have a say in how a society functions? Isn’t human society part of an ecosystem (or, more accurately, ecosystems, plural)? Shouldn’t other-than-human beings—animals, plants, and even so-called “inanimate” nature—have a say? Could not human assemblies have spokespersons for the rights of other-than-human beings with whom the human society is in relation?[FN 9] Pagan activist and science fiction writer, Starhawk, imagined such an arrangement in her book, The Fifth Sacred Thing.
Whatever aspect of life we’re talking about, anarchists invite us to ask, Why can’t this be done with more participation from the people it affects?
To be continued in part 2 of the Anarchism for Civilians series: “What Bonobos Taught Me About Anarchism”.
Notes
1. Communism and anarchism diverged over the role of the state: communists seeing it as a necessary means to an end, and anarchists believing it to be the root of all social evil. Early anarchist Mikhail Bakunin anticipated the Soviet Union when he predicted that the “dictatorship of the proletariat” would become a dictatorship over the proletariate, and it “would conceal the despotism of a governing minority, all the more dangerous because it appears as a sham expression of the people’s will.” Bakunin wrote, “When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called ‘the People’s Stick.'”
2. Another challenge for many people is the name itself, “anarchism”, which is associated in people’s minds with bomb-throwers and punk rockers. There is a place for both bomb-throwers and punk rockers in anarchism, but reducing anarchism to those things is not accurate. Sometimes, the fact that a word is commonly misunderstood is indicative of its potential power and a reason for keeping it.
3. The playful name of this series, “Anarchism for Civilians”, comes from a play on the words “civilized” and “civilian”.
4. My own interpretation of anarchism has been most influenced by green anarchism, anarcho-primitivism, and anarcho-communism. The “anarcho-capitalist”, for example, will not find much to agree with here.
5. “Anarchy” comes from the Greek anarkhia, which means the lack of a leader. The word derives from an- (“without”) + arches (“leader”). For example, in ancient Athens, it was used to describe the Year of Thirty Tyrants (404 B.C.), when there was no archon. Archon comes from arkhein which means “to be the first”. Online Etymological Dictionary (https://www.etymonline.com/)
6. The grandfather of anarchism, Pierre Proudon, also recognized the intersection of multiple forms of oppression:
“The economic idea of capitalism, the politics of government or of authority, and the theological idea of the Church are three identical ideas, linked in various ways. To attack one of them is equivalent to attacking all of them. … What capital does to labour, and the State to liberty, the Church does to the spirit. … The most effective means for oppressing the people would be simultaneously to enslave its body, its will and its reason.”
— Les confessions d’un révolutionnaire (1851)
7. For more on this, I recommend A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn.
8. One of Kohr students was E.F. Schumacher, author of Small is Beautiful (1973). Kohr’s ideas also inspired Kirkpatrick Sale’s Human Scale (1980).
9. Unitarian Universalists do have an umbrella organization, the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), but participation in the association by individual congregations is voluntary. The UUA advises, but does not dictate to, its member congregations. And the UUA is itself democratic. Its leadership is elected and member congregations send delegates to general assemblies to vote annually.
10. For more on this, see my essay, “Do Trees Have Rights?: Toward An Ecological Politics”.
JOHN HALSTEAD
John Halstead is the author of Another End of the World is Possible, in which he explores what it would really mean for our relationship with the natural world if we were to admit that we are doomed. John is a native of the southern Laurentian bioregion and lives in Northwest Indiana, near Chicago. He is a co-founder of 350 Indiana-Calumet, which worked to organize resistance to the fossil fuel industry in the Region. John was the principal facilitator of “A Pagan Community Statement on the Environment.” He strives to live up to the challenge posed by the Statement through his writing and activism. John has written for numerous online platforms, including Patheos, Huffington Post, PrayWithYourFeet.org, and Gods & Radicals. He is Editor-at-Large of HumanisticPaganism.com. John also edited the anthology, Godless Paganism: Voices of Non-Theistic Pagans and authored Neo-Paganism: Historical Inspiration & Contemporary Creativity. He is also a Shaper of the Earthseed community, more about which can be found at GodisChange.org.