Anarchists know that a long period of education must precede any great fundamental change in society, hence they do not believe in vote-begging, nor political campaigns, but rather in the development of self-thinking individuals.
We look away from government for relief, because we know that force (legalized) invades the personal liberty of man, seizes upon the natural elements and intervenes between man and natural laws; from this exercise of force through governments flows nearly all the misery, poverty, crime and confusion existing in society.
– Lucy Parsons, The Principles of Anarchism
Too often in discussions of the sins of capitalism do people today turn to the government for answers. The government which, here in the United States, genocided the native, enslaved the African, and robbed Latin America, which treated (and still treats) minority populations as second class citizens, bombed its own people in the name of the rich, silenced dissent through COINTELPRO, experimented on its own citizens through MKUltra, regulated the rich into more riches and the poor into more poverty, and which still today upholds the private property norms that make the exploitation of wage labor possible in the first place, norms that make possible the ability of CEOs to do whatever they wish with their serfs – it’s this government that liberal propaganda assures us will save us from the powerful. What a joke!
Already I can hear the liberal naysayers insisting I must be some kind of Republican operative looking to sabotage the Democratic voter base. They’ve become so near sighted by capitalist media they can’t see beyond the two party duopoly, a duopoly that more and more people are recognizing for the illusion it is. I speak not to those liberal dullards but to anyone who’s begun to see through the duopoly: it was never your government and it was never going to save you. To many this revelation feels new but it’s older than any of us here. You never learned about it, no authority ever told you who Lucy Parsons was, because that is not knowledge they wanted you to have. The oppressor will never give you the education you need to overthrow them. And if Lucy Parsons is new to you, let me learn you something else:
The aristocracies of old used their wealth and power to divvy up the resources so they had all the best things and the rest of us had nothing. When that was done they crowned a new king – an abstract monarch named “The People” – who agreed with them that this distribution was fair. To ensure this ‘fairness’ they created the law and government, whose enforcers are the ones who show up whenever the poor steal bread to eat, whenever the worker tries to organize for his own well being, and whenever a dark skinned body forgets its place. They convince the individuals that make up society that “The People” is them – if “The People” is in control of the government then they are in control of the government.
Please, I beg of you, if only for one moment, look away from what the authorities have taught you and think. Do you feel as if you are in control of this government? Think: “The People” has no single unified will, no single voice, it does not exist in a single place, it cannot be spoken to by any one single individual, it is – an abstraction! How can any one say that they’ve ascertained The People’s desire? They cant’! It’s this majoritarian farce that has allowed this nation to carry out terrible atrocities, up to and including the obliteration of human beings with nuclear weapons. Government did not stop those things from happening – government is the tool through which they were done!
I am aware of the effect of my rhetoric: to suggest that one can live without authority frightens people. But please, think about that too: no one ever wants the law to control them, they want the law to control those others who might do them harm. But aren’t all those others thinking the same of you? We want the state to compel people into action because we think we know better than them – but don’t those others also think they know better? You can romanticize democracy if you like, insist that it’s the best people and ideas that make it to the top, but ask yourself: is it the masses or the money that decides elections?
This will probably die in new. But if you’re still here I urge you to please visit any of the radical subs in the sidebar or to go to somewhere like the anarchist library to learn more, just don’t let the mouthpieces of the rich and the government (but I repeat myself) tell you what to think. Of course they’d tell you the government is necessary – they’re the government!