Altruism and Anarchism: A Brief Rant

“Only the power of unbounded love practiced in regard to all human beings can defeat the forces of interhuman strife, and can prevent the pending extermination of man by man on this planet. Without love, no armament, no war, no diplomatic machinations, no coercive police force, no school education, no economic or political measures, not even hydrogen bombs can prevent the pending catastrophe. Only love can accomplish this miracle, providing, however, we know well the nature of love and the efficient ways of its production, accumulation, and use.”

- Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin

Aggression is bad and cooperation is good. All of anarchism begins with this basic premise. In all aspects of our social affairs, whether that be political, economic, or otherwise, there is a fundamental preference towards collaboration instead of conflict. Indeed, any attempt to argue and justify an alternative preference for violence over peaceful interaction is, in fact, to express one’s actual preference for the latter in performative contradiction to any verbal case being made for the former. This Non-Aggression Principle is at the heart of the anarchist worldview.

That much is well-known and agreed-upon Theory 101 to most anarchists out there, but nonetheless, disagreement over the implementation of this principle seems to be the source of much infighting in the movement. Like subgenres of metal, so too has anarchism fractured into ever-more-niche branches of the same political plant, and as was the case with the fragmentation of metal, so too have these anarchists subgenres become ever-more-annoying in their insistence that their worldview is the correct one. These Anarcho-Dashes are one of many root causes of anarchism’s political dysfunction.

So let me take this moment to hypocritically assert that, as a matter of fact, it is my worldview that is the correct one, not theirs.

Unlike them, however, I am unable to make myself an Anarcho-Dash, for if I were, I would be an Anarcho-Altruist. The problem being, of course, that this would inevitably be shortened to AnAl, and that is simply unacceptable for branding purposes. This inability to become just another Anarcho-Dash, to its credit, has led me to focus on the portion that matters at the end of the day: the Anarcho portion. Consider this piece to be, in large part, a call for anarchist unity.

Anarchy, etymologically speaking, means the absence of rulers; note that it does not suggest the absence of cooperation or order altogether. The anarchists’ mission, the point that the movement must strive to prove first and foremost, is that order and peace and prosperity can emerge from a rulerless and chaotic system.

And to burst the bubble of many beltway libertarians out there, it is not a point that will be provable simply by enacting the right set of reformatory laws. Near-universal compliance with the NAP cannot be legislated into existence. There are a number of social problems, matters of connection and organization, that must be resolved prior to breaking away from current state structures.

To try and legislate near-universal compliance with the NAP is to put the cart before the horse. Communities do not embrace the NAP as the law of the land because it is declared as such; rather, near-universal compliance emerges naturally as the result of cultures and communities fostering and maximizing the altruistic and virtuous tendencies of the individuals who live within them. There are many small social networks that we participate in every day without any authority mandating compliance with the NAP. Not fighting, in many ways, is the default condition over fighting. In a line at the store, in our homes around the dinner table, or during a walk around the park, compliance with the NAP emerges naturally out of our innate preference for cooperation over conflict in trusted environments.

But even in these small-scale social networks, we see how easily dysfunction can arise in only slightly improper conditions. Someone in a hostile mood from extreme food insecurity upsets the order with much less provocation than someone who’s well-fed. Those undergoing psychological distress due to poor familial, social, or economic circumstances without the necessary resources and support structures often fall in that same category. Even more, those alienated from their work, from meaning altogether, are anything but healthy members of the community. The point is self-evident and undeniable if one chooses to put any amount of thought into it: sociality and altruism — the ability and willingness to engage with those around you in a cooperative, creative, and peaceful manner — is critical to the success of the anarchist mission.

The hyperindividualists on the anarchist-right may say that the placement of community over the individual runs contrary to the very foundations of anarchism itself, and to that I say “phooey!”

One cannot separate the task of achieving peace and cooperation through voluntary means from thinking on the level of families, communities, and larger social networks more generally. Atomization of individuals is not what creates the bonds and bridges that keep groups peaceful and cooperative; Unification does that.

The voluntary coalescence of two I’s into a single We is at the heart of a successful political project free of coercion and traditional governance. This mission presupposes not merely individuals (albeit they are the primary actors), but individuals acting in a social environment.

The political right must spend more time thinking about sociological problems. Economic problems may be in vogue, but they must soon go out of fashion alongside our sensate and materialist culture. Economic concerns are secondary to the underlying social and cultural problems at hand. I have demonstrated in previous works why the concept of social capital is antecedent to financial and human capital and why the issue of culture, of fostering altruism in our communities, is at the heart of achieving a non-coercive society.

The realization that we must come to en masse in order to have any sort of political relevancy or success as anarchists is that we exist within a complex network of complex systems, and as such, we’re inextricably bound to one another from birth to death. Considering this, we must embrace the fact that neither the individual nor society is perfectible, malleable to our every wish and whim. Despite our utopian inclinations as a species, we’ve yet to demonstrate any ability to shape man into God or God into man, to craft a man perfectly fit for society or a society perfectly fit for man.

Yet, there is still hope. Evidence nevertheless suggests that there are indeed ways in which we can maximize the bonding forces — the social capital and love energy that propels a society as much as any gallon of gas or chunk of coal — being produced by a community. To summarize in the words of renowned scholar Pitirim Sorokin once again, “only a rural lifestyle based on a traditional model of the family, an economy of manual labour and home-based business, and a strong link of the individual to the inhabited territory is sociologically, demographically and economically sustainable.”

We must become experts in the field of amitology, the study of altruism, amity, active love, and mutual aid in interindividual and intergroup relationships, as well as their cultivation and application.

It is here that we turn towards the prescriptive and actionable portion of this rant: the subject of anarchism and localism.

Aristotle wisely noted that politics begins in the household, the very first social context into which an individual is placed. They find themselves defined by their traditional roles as a family member, a son, daughter, brother, sister, or cousin to others. Being taught (and independently learning) how to navigate the social world begins here, and as such, its influence is arguably unparalleled. It is from the family that the individual emerges into the broader world around them. Ensuring its vitality, warmth, and reverence is critical then. It stands to reason that an individual who comes from a household in which the NAP naturally governs as the law of the land, they are far more likely to engage with the larger community under the same rules.

But the placement of a familial household into a larger community, though, is when things start to get a little bit trickier.

I will begin by noting, perhaps controversially, that we are not nearly picky enough as a society about who we choose to surround ourselves with, who we choose to live alongside. Freedom of association is our most important, for all other freedoms and liberties are maintained only under conditions which produce proper amounts of cooperative and loving energies. Mass gun ownership is most sustainable where social capital and trust are high. Freedom of speech is most sustainable when there exists a common value and respect for it among community members. In short, your rights are only as numerous and maintainable as the people you surround yourself with help them to be.

The localist solution, then, is clear. Whereas the technological limitations of prior history may have limited our ability to choose with clarity who we want to live alongside, the unprecedented freedom of movement and information grants us the newfound opportunity to plant roots in the garden of our choosing. We would be fools not to take advantage of us.

The truth is, the distinction between left and right anarchism is as trivial as which community you choose to freely associate yourself with, which kind of values and rulesets by which you voluntarily decide to live your life.

And in this way, local political experiments ought to be encouraged as much as possible, for separation from the current state necessitates the pre-existence of a demonstrable, viable alternative. Whether one decides to live in an agrarian commune or a corporate city-state is irrelevant; all that matters is that the community being formed is voluntarily and thoughtfully constructed. That community, one would reckon, is far more likely to naturally self-govern under the NAP than those arranged by the current Powers That Be.

Considering, though, that I already titled this a “brief rant” before writing, I feel obliged to end here, having laid out the core premises behind my arguments and beliefs. The egoist, hyperindividualist strain of anarchism is in its twilight years, and the dawn of an altruistic anarchism, a lens through which the emergence of a non-coercive order out of social chaos is seen not as the consequence of an atomized, “liberated” individual, but of a loving community.