I am engaging the project for ambiarchy in an attempt toward both personal growth and social effectiveness.
As I proceed, I want to be clear that there is nothing inherent in the project of anarchism, to which I have hitherto attached myself, which pushes me away from it. Rather, it is the followers of the doctrines, with whom I cannot seem to see eye to eye, or mobilize to action, despite my attempts in good spirit. This gives me cause to rebrand an organization-focused (pl)anarchism of my particular variety as something other than anarchism.
I am changing my rhetoric, but the vision remains the same, when accounting for a usual rate of improvement. As I have championed anarchism already, however, and in my never ending quest to be complete, I have of recent been reading more widely from the statist traditions, and have been considering their positions as they may apply to the administration of a free society. Many of the improvements heretofore will likely take specific suggestions from these traditions, having largely exhausted research into the anarchist ones, and modify them to our purpose. The goal is not to create a bad government, but to inform our position of state strategies, which we may wish to adopt toward ambiarchist ends as policies of associations.
Now, as to anarchism: It attracts the socially inept. I do not know what it is about the philosophy–whether the moniker does the real damage, that those who need it most are most psychologically damaged from not having it, if there was a conspiracy to ruin anarchism, or what have you–, but it is fair to say that anarchism does not attract the successful, the influential, or honorable, except in rare and bright occurrences (which do however shine more loudly than anywhere else, giving anarchism the little social currency it has).
Indeed, there are classist reasons for much of anarchy’s advocation demographic, but I’d have to suggest that, even among the workers, the successful among them rarely hold the welfare state to be at odds with their goals. It attracts the marginal from both ends of the bell curve, the extremes of short-sighted and far-sighted, always socially impractical, or so it seems. To be an anarchist, one must think too much, or not at all. One must not fit in.
Again, having read the philosophy behind the vision, I do not see the work of Proudhon, Bakunin, or even Kropotkin as being responsible for the problems of anarchists. Proudhon and Bakunin had both been Freemasons, which one cannot be without doing some work on oneself and in one’s craft. These were not idle losers or dreaming complainers, but actors upon reality. Proudhon upheld law and saw order arising from liberty. Bakunin supported the organization of workers into federations of collectives, Kropotkin into communes. But the anarchist of today is not about building anything, only removing. What fools!
Social anarchists such as Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin understood the necessity of organization in abolishing bad government. Yet, they came up to the same hurdles that I do today. The workers simply don’t care. They have a will to bondage and voluntary servitude, as Etienne de la Boetie so clearly pointed out before them still.
Among the places where glimpses of organized anarchy are strongest, we find a culture to prop such organized attempts up from below. Mondragon Cooperative in Spain, for instance, despite its shortcomings, is an important example for cooperative production, and owes its existence to the anarchic culture that lasted past the Spanish Civil War long enough to support the cooperative. In the United States, such a model will have a much more difficult time getting up and running.
Cooperation implies initiative. Anarchy implies initiative. Yet, at least in the United States, people treat anarchy and cooperation as the removal of something, rather than their participation in something. For instance, people assume that not having a boss means nobody does the work the employer used to do– of organizing, filing, ordering, securing, planning, etc.– instead of everyone taking responsibility for delegation of that work. These anarchists lack confidence and initiative to act, creating a tragedy of the commons.
These acts are not inspired by the words of their heroes, but because of their assumptions about the words and positions taken, which they have not rightly considered. Unfortunately, these assumptions, when well enough combined, seem to have a gravity stronger than the actual words of the founding thinkers of anarchism, and begin to redefine the momentum and movement itself. Anarchy today doesn’t put into the mind an international confederation of common people, which can abolish the state through sheer force of organizational capacity, but the removal of the government by… who the hell knows what? Ranting on the internet with no follow-through? Buying things with corporate cryptocurrency?
Anarchists I talk to are always afraid of taking a positive form. Ask them what their ideal society would look like and generalities abound, but ask about the specifics and there is the same old lack of confidence in the form to be taken.
Crickets.
This leads me to believe these anarchists still just want to follow a pack, but a non-existing one of their unformed-fantasy flavor, and don’t have an alternative they’d prefer, but just like to complain about what someone else has already achieved. If they’re not ready to try to govern themselves, create their own structures, I’m not sure why they complain about the government. It seems suicidal, and they’re holding me back.
Ask an anarchist, “What if…?” and they will reply from their various generalities, that “the assembly will vote on it” or “the market will take care of it,” almost never becoming the actor in such a scenario. For instance, rarely is it “I would make such and such a motion at the assembly, which would resolve the problem in such and such a fashion” or “I would set up such and such a firm to handle that.” No, it’s always someone else– some ghost of a person– doing the work, just like it is with bad governments. Some abstraction will fix things. Anarchists, in being afraid to govern, are afraid also to take a positive form, even as hypothetical proponents of a motion or firm. They lack confidence and initiative, and only work to remove authority, which has those things.
The hunter-gatherer of the stone ages had anarchy without organization, and yet it fell to the state. Lacking strength, it failed, became extinct. But that is the anarchy of hunter-gatherers, not the anarchy of the future.
Social anarchism seems to be an essential ingredient of early statecraft. Early stratification involved only two clear-cut male classes, warriors and slaves. One was either one or the other. This was a matter of early social anarchists dominating their primitivist kin, becoming states to them and governing over them. Amongst the ruling class of warriors, there was social anarchy, classlessness, but also organizations capable of enslaving their disorganized peers. Rulers are always themselves anarchs, at least insofar as they are not ruled by a class higher than themselves. This has always been achieved through the cooperation of the rulers to the expense of the ruled over.
Ambiarchists don’t hold to a classical natural rights view, but instead to a view of emergent law and order. The ambiarchist story starts with jungle law, and follows with varying degrees of association. Jungle law has had its victors, who have since filled the gaps with state law. This state law stands, to the ambiarchist of today, where jungle law did for the states long passed. As such, ambiarchists live ruthlessly within the confines of this law, extending anything more than predatory capitalism and state control only to those willing and able to reciprocate better, but never stooping to lower jungle law. Those who would live under the state and capitalism without helping to turn them over deserve nothing better. To be an ambiarchist requires seeing beyond good and evil, as Nietzsche titled it. However, we must recognize that the state has set a new bar, which is higher in evolutionary form than raw jungle law, and which has effects that should be considered, as it relates to the reaction of the public, who have come to expect its application.
Ambiarchists have a kind of admiration toward their successful opponents, which is not readily found amongst anarchists of today. Ambiarchists acknowledge the successes of the ruling class as such, even when their consequences are not found to be personally desirable.
Ambiarchy takes a compatibilist view toward the state (although from the perspective of the outsider or dominated, who is not fond of it, and disproportionately suffers its downsides). That is, ambiarchy holds the state to have a dual nature, being both conflictarian and functionalist in nature. The question for the ambiarchist is for whom it is conflictarian and for whom it is functional, and, further, how to do away with the conflictarian elements, leaving the functional elements in tact. Ambiarchists hold that the state at any given moment is functional for its ruling class, but conflictarian for its abiding class. Further, the abiding class is understood to exist as such because of its own inability to organize to such an extent as its ruling party, among other reasons. Still more, without organizing to such an extent, it will continue to be ruled. This view was once held by classical social anarchists, and still is today by anarcho-syndicalists, but has since been largely abandoned, except by the ultra leftist varieties of anarchism, which have largely forsaken class struggle for identity politics in today’s world.
The state, or estate, is a trust relationship between its government and its ruling class, with the government as trustee to the ruling class which acts both as grantor and beneficiary of the state. In monarchies, this beneficiary class is incredibly small, but has been widened significantly in republican societies to include what, in the monarchical societies, was the middle class into its ruling ranks. Ambiarchy is intended not to eliminate the pyramidal trust and execution structure, which is rather perennial, and found throughout human societies, but to widen its base of beneficiaries to everyone, including the lowest classes, but only after they have demonstrated merit through the degree structure, an opportunity afforded to all who care to participate.
As metaphor, consider the Eye of Providence. The eye at the top of the Masonic emblem represents some form of understanding that the rest of the population does not have, which remains exclusive to the elite.
Now, consider for a moment that anarchism would typically bring one to think of the removal of the eye from the pyramid completely, leaving a pyramid of only normal bricks behind. But this is the removal of understanding.
In contrast, ambiarchy aims to illuminate the entire pyramid with understanding, to fill the entire pyramid and not just the top, with the Eye. While this was also the goal originally of social anarchism, this goal seems forgotten.
The project of ambiarchy is not about eliminating the ruling class through annihilation, but about bringing everyone up to the level of the ruling class in a merited fashion, thereby destroying the distinction between ruler and ruled in an upward, rather than downward or toppling (as is associated with anarchism today), motion. This is not immediate, but a process.
As part of the process, ambiarchy supports meritocratic forms of cooperation, with degrees of participation and achievement, governed through a constitution. This is somewhat different from the often flat organizational structures preferred by lefty anarchists today, though is still in all technicalities non-hierarchical, owing to the collective control of the constitutions by all levels of degree. Degrees do not give one permission or opportunity to manage people, but only to conduct collective affairs.
Ambiarchy, in promoting strict adherence to constitutional agreements, and being disciplined, is intended to move past the assumptions of the adherents of anarchism. Instead of insecure losers without initiative who complain on the internet, ambiarchy is intended to foster a strong sense of order and organization within its associations, which are to be composed of virtuous members, who take initiative with confidence.
Ambiarchists do not strictly adhere to majoritarian democracy, though it may be a useful tool when found mutually desirable, or when matters are relatively inconsequential and in need of expedience. Rather than elections, ambiarchists select their officers through ongoing peer-review and demonstration of merit on behalf of the leaders. Through peer-review and free competition over official positions, officials “bubble up” as they are found to perform functional duties appropriately by those they lead and serve, who remain ultimately responsible for their ratings over a long term process. Ambiarchists don’t just vote every so often and hope for the best. They continually review their officers, and their officers fluctuate according to their performance ratings, with opportunities left wide open for free competition
An ambiarchy would be a cellular confederation, in which each cell subscribes voluntarily with promises of cellular autonomy, and which is governed through a spokescouncil, using consensus to manage the Articles of Confederation. It is both a panarchy and an anarchy. It is totalitarian about consent (between members).
Upon joining the confederation, one is assigned a compartment of participation, according to economic class. Each compartment has its own conditions attached to it, but, most importantly, Rentiers are demanded to operate in the common interests of the confederation. A Rentier may maintain tenants, debtors, or employees, but must transfer their surplus value to the confederation at large, and does not maintain the right to a vote, but only a say, in the general spokescouncil. Rentiers may not take action against syndicates associated with the Renter compartment.
The cells agree to hold land in a common trust and share the rent of the Earth between them, to practice non-aggression and fair regard toward their individual leaseholds and movable property, and to accept the notes of the General Mutual Credit Clearing House for all debts owed to them.
In order to fully participate in the affairs of the ambiarchy, including the matters of its general spokescouncil, and to gain its full protection, one must demonstrate merit through graduation from its school. However, to avoid power-seeking individuals, in its early days the school will not be publicized in relation to the ambiarchy, so as only to appeal to and draw forth from those naturally adept toward its goals and values.
Ambiarchy is not so much about the removal of authority as it is about its earned proportionality. Ideally, everyone asserts their own authority to a similar extent, rendering institutionally centralized authority obsolete. Such is the vision of the true anarchists anyhow. But the advocates of anarchism, let alone the workers at large, do not live up to this vision. They want to remove authority only to be left alone, to do nothing, rather than to do more. But really, what is needed is more virtue, not sloth.
Leadership is held up as a virtue in ambiarchy, but leaders must constantly prove their worth. Not everyone is a leader in early stages of ambiarchy, but all graduates in good standing are, together, ruler. No individual or interest group rules, though plenty lead, in an ambiarchy. Rules, once created, are strictly and unquestionably adhered to by executives, but are legislated collectively by consensus, with respect always for the autonomy to differ, except when agreed otherwise by consensus.
The ambiarchic process of membership building, spiritual maturation, and personal development is expected to last for a good while before maturing. As such, ambiarchists grandfather in systems of authority, such as bad governments and capitalism, and maintain an understanding of governables and ungovernables themselves.
Governables include previous ruling classes and the socially apathetic, who lacks merit of participation. Unlike many anarchists, who extend solidarity to the worker qua worker, the ambiarchist extends solidarity to the worker, among all others, as revolutionary, and only if active as such. The apathetic worker is treated much the same as the hunter-gatherer who lost anarchy long ago, after failing to organize.
Plato suggested that those who refuse to participate in politics are fated to be governed by those who do. To my view, a true anarchy– or good government– occurs when everyone participates, leaving none to be governed by a ruling class. Current structures do not allow for this, and so must be replaced. The same must be said of current attitudes, which gives rise to the need for a meritocratic substructure, which promotes ascension to higher values, as they are required in civil society.
A fully-realized end-of-process ambiarchy would be the good government which is achievable only through a virtuous population. It is said that within such a population the structure of the government matters not, because a virtuous population restricts government of any form from abuse. But the ambiarchy is fundamentally non-hierarchical within the association, in that all official actions are sanctified by the whole, and not a ruling class, as the anarchists of old would have had it. Any apparent hierarchies within an ambiarchy are hierarchical only in form, not substance. It turns out that anarchy and good government require the same objective conditions for their destinies to take hold: virtuous people and a just structure. For sake of this paper, virtuous people are those who develop their interpersonal skills and who are reasonable, honorable, and maintain their integrity.
Ambiarchy does not distinguish between good governance and the confederation of social anarchy, but holds instead that social anarchism is the correct position for governors to seek for themselves, and encourages all to become co-governors. Those who have enlightened themselves have good cause to feel that their authority over the unenlightened is natural and necessary, and so to pursue good government for themselves (good, in good government, refers to the varying degrees of mutual autonomy and consensus, and their protection).
To the ambiarchist, an anarchist (internally non-hierarchical) government which rules over non-anarchists by their own principles isn’t so bad. Is it a state or not? Those who want government or who are too willfully ignorant to become anarchists are governed, and those who don’t want to be governed, and who put in the effort not to be, aren’t. It’s more voluntary than anarcho-capitalism (consider the ambiarchy a landlord, rather than a government), and does to others what they would do to a stranger. It’s arguably the only rendition of anarchy or good government that would allow everyone to go about their own preferences, with the supreme dictate, enforced by good government, which states: “Anarchy is Law.” Anyone who tries to establish a bad government– one which is not truly an anarchy– will be stopped by the long arms of good government, the organized anarchists and their friends.
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