Ambiarchy is the resolution that your good government can look and feel just like my anarchy does, and that my anarchy can look and feel just like your good government. I suggest it is therefore better to address the substance of our positions and their compatibility, than to get caught up in semantic disagreements.
As it goes, an organization that was functional and not conflictarian– an ambiarchy– could equally be called an anarchy de jure or a good government, without contradiction, depending on the syntax. Ambiarchists recognize that language is not entirely objective, and present Ambiarchy to signify both anarchy de jure and good government equally, as interchangeable terms in a new thought paradigm with a new syntax. That is, Ambiarchy allows a translation between the two syntaxes.
How could Ambiarchy actually be both a good government and an anarchy de jure?
The debate between statists and libertarians (including anarchists) is rooted in the age-old dispute between conflict theory and functionalism, with conflict theory suggesting nefarious origins of the state, and functionalism suggesting its benevolence. Ambiarchy takes a stance of radical compatibilism; that states in the past have been functional for society as a whole, as well as for some individuals, but conflictarian for most individuals.
According to Ambiarchist analysis, the ruling class is always more self-governing and better organized than the class they govern, which remains unorganized. They are organized through the state, which often becomes less stringently hierarchical and more participatory the higher one moves up the chain of command. The higher one’s rank, the more participation, influence, and benefits can be expected. At the top of the hierarchy is the person or group who is ultimately ungoverned. They have for themselves a private anarchy or estate, which has been acquired through discipline and organization. But this anarchy or estate governs the rest of us.
The state is functional for some, then, but not for others. It is, however, collectively functional for the society, in that organized societies are more materially productive than unorganized ones (but can also be more environmentally destructive on behalf of individuals, though not collectivities), and so can afford a better standard of living even for the lower classes in the long term. The state, in utilizing order and displacing anarchy de facto, is responsible for this increase.
Nonetheless, individuals of the lower classes suffer from it, because they do not get a fair share of the collective benefits, which the upper classes have tended to privatize, despite sacrificing their time for it. They are also the first to feel the environmental consequences of authority. For the lower classes, the state is conflictarian, because they individually suffer lost time and energy, and environmental wellbeing, in the process.
So, the state is conflictarian for one set of individuals, but is functional for another, and for society at large, in terms of overall production.
The state’s functionalism and success has established itself on the grounds that organization is more powerful than disorganization. This demonstrates the power of organization, and suggests that the state was inevitable, when involving populations with different levels of appreciation for order, in a universe that demands it. The victor populations displaced and enslaved local populations resistant to order, and those which commanded the best land, capable of producing a surplus, established themselves as regional governments, states, and empires.
The implication here is that mainstream functionalist theory is correct as to the origins and collective good of the state, that it arose to establish order. This doesn’t make the state’s actions toward individuals morally correct or subjectively tolerable, but it does suggest an underlying principle in nature, which can be found all throughout the biological sciences: living things tend toward greater order and complexity, and the more orderly and complex establish themselves in positions of dominance over others. See, for instance, the differences in reasoning capacity between carnivores and their prey. All too often, predators rely on outwitting their prey, as by sneaking up on them, or creating traps. This is highly ordered and complex behavior. The anarchist Proudhon reminds us that laws are spiderwebs of the rich.
Ambiarchy is interested in understanding the niche that the state has filled. Because it is an ecological niche, it didn’t require superiority on anyone’s behalf to utilize it, but bestows an advantage upon the user. Luckily, this niche can in fact be utilized by everyone in unison. Whether this supplanting of the establishment would represent the end of the state will be left up to the interpretation of the beholder. For some it will represent the coming of anarchy de jure, while for others it will be the return of good government. It is, however, inevitable. When is a matter of spiritual enlightenment and social evolution.
If we study the general evolutionary development of authority in society, we can point to a rough sine wave in action, in which authority is concentrated and then distributed. For instance, from hunter-gatherer to agricultural society, we see the concentration of power. But from agricultural to industrial society we have seen the opposite trend, toward more freedom and political participation. If this libertarian trend continues, as I expect it to in the long run, it’s only a matter of time and effort before we have our way, because each step forward represents a greater enfranchisement of people.
Full and equal enfranchisement from voluntary participants is what we’re after: that would be the (ruling-) classless, stateless society anarchists are after; as well as the good self-government of the statist traditions (so long as the participants are virtuous). The step from monarchy to modern republics was a step toward such a good government, but did not go far enough. We still have a ruling class, though a larger one.
As republics found methods of increasing the numbers of stakeholders in the state, they surpassed the order and complexity of monarchies, thereby displacing them. Anarchy de jure or good government must do the same. The difference between anarchy/good government and bad government is whether there is a ruling class or not.
What’s important to recognize is that the development from republics to ambiarchy is not going backward in time, but, because it requires an increase in order (syntropy), is movement into the future. The idea here is that primitive anarchy was supplanted by states of the past, whose leaders established themselves as ruling classes, and that future anarchy or good government (without a ruling class) is therefor tasked with creating a higher level of order than those who have come before. In other words, nature favors order in life’s processes, and so allowed primitive anarchy to be overtaken under that principle by authorities, who established order.
However, the new rulers also presented a tension. The conquered disliked to be ruled, a condition which would create demand in the lower levels of society to order themselves, so as not to be ordered by others (thereby increasing overall order). Eventually this demand will mature into anarchy de jure or good government, which must supplant bad government. This could never occur, had bad government (then good government?) not first established itself as dominant over primitive de facto anarchy, and thereby provided an incentive to create anarchy de jure, or good government. This is the Universe at work, which subsumes good and bad alike into a perfect unity.
Despite the differences in statist and anarchist theories of the state, anarchists and statists, conflict theory and functionalism, exist, and share a universe together. This universe and its laws must be used to explain the viability of, and adherents to, both of these two outlooks, simultaneously. It must explain how both sides exist, seem to have relatively genuine adherents, how both sides are “live.” I don’t believe that either side’s simple dismissal of the Other as stupid or confused can be considered a full explanation. I think the Truth is a matter of uniting their divergent truths. Traditionally, anarchists and statists have stood in glaring contrast and in opposition to one another. But rarely have these two schools of thought agreed so far as definitions or understandings of the world, let alone amongst themselves. They’ve always lacked a common syntax.
It is common in disputes amongst the two for an anarchist to describe the world they would like to see and for a statist to reply that such an orderly society as described, facilitated through a confederation, is in actuality a state, with the confederation’s officials being its government. Further, it is common for statists to speak in terms of self-government or national autonomy, suggesting voluntary foundations for government, and so on, only for anarchists to deny this not only as a material fact, but even as a possibility.
Yet, if the conversation could move past this semantic polarizing, and get to the heart of the issues, what good could we achieve? I think we could do a whole lot more, and be much more relatable.
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