There are some wise words of advice in this post Carne. The stuff about preserving one's conscience resonated with me. I'm someone who calls themselves an anarchist, but I work for an arm of government (a local council).
I'm lucky not to have a job that involves enforcing the wishes of the state on anyone - at least not directly. Neither do I have any positional authority - I am nobody's boss.
I have a family to support, so I can't afford to quit. Instead, I look for opportunities to do stuff that aligns with my values (anarchist or otherwise), and try and make small changes in my tiny corner of the universe.
For example, I'm in a union. I use whatever small influence I have to encourage colleagues to give more power to local communities. I challenge hierarchical ways of working, trying to cultivate curiosity about things like self-managed teams, distributed decision-making, etc. I sow seeds to try and get people interested in things like complexity and systems thinking (which were some of the strands that led to me having anarchist views). I'm a 'green champion'. I challenge as much as I can without risking getting sacked (I won't be able to change anything if I do).
All this stuff is quite benign compared to what some of the public servants in the US must be going to. But I felt maybe there is some value to this comment in sharing the small things public servants might be able to do to make small differences, or even to simply maintain one's sanity!
Anarchism and government work are not incommensurable, there is no contradiction between your anarchist sentiments and working for a government. There is a difference between the anarchism of Chomsky (macro-level anarchism in Glenn Wallace's lexicon), which is straight out of the 1930's and the anarchist thought of Bookchin, Graeber, Wallace, or Scott. In varying degrees, these modern authors consider the state something that needs to routed around, not something that can be directly overthrown. The revolutionary anarchism of the 19th--early 20th century is anachronistic, and emerged during a very specific time period. Anarchist thought has to adapt to the present condition of global capitalism. Despite sentiments expressed in books like Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism, we must face the fact:
"...that the entire globe now operates according to the same economic principles—production organized for profit using legally free wage labor and mostly privately owned capital, with decentralized coordination—is without historical precedent."
Milanovic, Branko. Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World (p. 2). (Function). Kindle Edition.
I think Wallace, who also happens to be a Buddhist scholar, has the right idea:
"At this meso-level, anarchist society originates in the very doing of anarchism in, moreover, the very places where individuals form into community. Macro-level anarchists, with a vigilant eye on class struggle and total revolution, might accuse this approach of being a “nonviolent, bourgeois, sanitized anarchism," but if I want to get anywhere with my readers I will have to take that risk. I believe that the “life-force” of anarchism may manifest either in micro-level personal ethics, meso-level organizational modeling, macro-level political agitation, or in some combination of these locations. It is precisely its location in the very “sensuousness” of our continuously unfolding lived experience, private and communal, that makes anarchism such a compelling and imperative proposition."
Wallis, Glenn. An Anarchist's Manifesto (pp. 18-19). (Function). Kindle Edition.
So I would say your meso-level acitivities are exactly what modern anarchism should look like.
This is great Malcolm. Thank you. I very much agree and it's helpful to have some guides to further reading, which I will do. The idea of the overthrow of government in the current circumstance is idiotic. Instead, we must work where we are, more incrementally, and within our own heads.
The basic problem with anarchism today is not anarchism, but marxism. Because of the close connection of Proudhon, Kropotkin, and Marx during the mid-19th century, anarchism then was tightly connected with the labor movement. There was strong disagreement about the role of the state, but not much about economics, class struggle, and so on. Anarchism under late-stage capitalism must look different than the anarchist movements from 1850 to 1940. Graeber's writing (with Wengrow) in particular is I think among the best anarchist writing ever:
"Back in the 1960s, the French anthropologist Pierre Clastres suggested that precisely the opposite was the case. What if the sort of people we like to imagine as simple and innocent are free of rulers, governments, bureaucracies, ruling classes and the like, not because they are lacking in imagination, but because they’re actually more imaginative than we are? We find it difficult to picture what a truly free society would be like; perhaps they have no similar trouble picturing what arbitrary power and domination would be like. Perhaps they can not only imagine it, but consciously arrange their society in such a way as to avoid it."
Graeber, David. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (p. 73). (Function). Kindle Edition.
And this passage we really need to take seriously:
"To make that shift means retracing some of the initial steps that led to our modern notion of social evolution: the idea that human societies could be arranged according to stages of development, each with their own characteristic technologies and forms of organization (hunter-gatherers, farmers, urban-industrial society, and so on). As we will see, such notions have their roots in a conservative backlash against critiques of European civilization, which began to gain ground in the early decades of the eighteenth century. The origins of that critique, however, lie not with the philosophers of the Enlightenment (much though they initially admired and imitated it), but with indigenous commentators and observers of European society, such as the Native American (Huron-Wendat) statesman Kandiaronk, of whom we will learn much more in the next chapter.
Revisiting what we will call the ‘indigenous critique’ means taking seriously contributions to social thought that come from outside the European canon, and in particular from those indigenous peoples whom Western philosophers tend to cast either in the role of history’s angels or its devils."
Graeber, David. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (p. 5). (Function). Kindle Edition.
In other words, what Graeber is pointing out is that rather than romanticizing indigenous cultures (like the endless parade of plastic shamans in new age circles), or demonizing them, as the case may be, we who hew to the anarchist call need to look for the roots of anarchism in genuine confederalist societies that had never heard of Karl Marx or, anarchism, for that matter. These cultures were all around us until very recently. Unfortunately, they have been or are being eliminated by neo-liberal forces. Thus, for myself, I have delved rather deeply into indigenous studies coming out of the US, Australia, and New Zealand. We also have the modern example of the Zapatistas and the Kurdish PKK's "Democratic confederalism."
"So I would say your meso-level activities are exactly what modern anarchism should look like." Thank you Malcolm - it's genuinely one of the nicest things someone has said (or written) to me in a while!
I also found the rest of your comment really interesting, and will no doubt set me off down a number of new rabbit holes
I think there is another form if resistance that is more long term and constructive, which entails the actual building of the alternative structures that are needed when this experiment in dictatorship inevitably collapses. Over on Chris Smaje's 'a small farm future' we're actively discussing the structure and skills base of these Refugia. This is a tough call for the professional managerial class who are, as you say, used to BEING the government. Who will also being hoping, at best, that this is just a blip, or at worst if they can find a cosy place in the new fascist corporations where they won't have to actually get there hands dirty. I can assure them, this is the corporate identity playing out, Trump, Musk, Putin, all the rest are just convenient place holders for a machine in motion.
The resistance is rural. Learn a craft, be actually useful to your actual community.
Thanks Joel. I am of course supportive. I believe the solution lies in structural and systemic change. Rural reform and local action is one area where this can play out.
Thank you Carne, and others, for some very adult thoughts in a situation where playground bulies have the upper hand in public. I support whatever choices people feel they can make, and personal changes and small actions can be the safest ones, and can encourage others to do the same at grass roots level. This supports ones own soul and conscience and causes ripples that could turn into tsunamis.....deep respect to all of you living with and surviving these horrendous actions.
I am not in government, but I am disgusted with the US Government for many reasons, going all the way back to the Reagan years. Nevertheless, this is the first time I see the US Federal Government posing a threat to its own citizen in many decades.
There is some hope however. Americans generally don’t like kings, nor aristocrats. Americans are famously noncompliant. Sufficient numbers of the people who voted for Trump are experiencing buyer’s regret. This makes certain the GOP will be unlikely to pull enough votes to keep the house and senate in 2026.
One key feature of anarchist theory is that people are already anarchists by nature, and rarely need leaders to bring about necessary changes in their immediate communities. Trump will have a hard time dealing with groundswell of leaderless opposition that’s already moving against him.
What Trump cares about most is not the 2025 Project, but golf and his polls. You can bet that people around the US are engaged in communal resistance, and come spring, there will be massive protests. Will the National Guard fire at fellow Americans? They did at Kent State and Nixon suffered from national disapproval. Trump will certainly lie to the public about his polls, but we know from past experience that he shies away from direct conflicts. He will try to blame the left during summer uprising, the ‘“egg riots” let’s call them, but everyone but him will know that his policies resulted in a tanked economy, massive inflation, and graft and corruption “in levels never seen before.”
Large portions of judiciary are poised to resist him, they in turn control the US Marshalls, who report to, but are not under the control of the executive branch. 48% of the legislature will oppose him, and after 2026, it will be much higher. I think most active-duty officers in the armed forces will refuse to carry out unlawful orders, especially in the Air Force.
The governors, who generally do not regard US presidents as being their superiors, have already signaled their noncompliance with the Trump regime in states where they are democrats. New England and the Left Coast will be the centers of resistance, as usual.
Oil needs to remain at $70+ per barrel, otherwise the oil companies stop drilling new wells. Trump thinks cheap gas/petrol will sustain his popularity, but it won’t. It will lead to layoffs in the Permian Basin, the Bakken oil shales region and so on, causing a recession in the oil producing states.
There are many known unknowns for the Trump administration, and their hopes are pinned on nothing. America has the largest economy of any country in the world, and from a common sense point of view, Americans are not going to be happy with that standard of living declining any more than it has. That decline is certain if Trump continues his present course of action.
The outcome of all of this is that Americans, through stupidity, have twice voted in a man who ruins our international standing. That standing is like a credit rating. I’d say that credit rating is around 300 right now.
I am not a diplomat, but I do read a lot of history, political economy, books on international relations, and so on. We live on a tiny globe, and getting along with neighbors is a good skill to have. The best thing Europe can do right now is begin to shun the US, shut down trade with us, respond to tariffs with higher tariffs, sanction US officials who cooperate with Russia, etc.
Sadly, since the Iraq invasion of 2003, America has made mistake after mistake. It’s pretty depressing.
Thanks Malcolm. This is a very compelling forecast of what might happen. My worry is that Trump will declare a state of emergency as a way of overcoming all checks and balances, or resistance from eg the military or courts. He's already done so for the southern border. The mid-terms may be too late.
There are some wise words of advice in this post Carne. The stuff about preserving one's conscience resonated with me. I'm someone who calls themselves an anarchist, but I work for an arm of government (a local council).
I'm lucky not to have a job that involves enforcing the wishes of the state on anyone - at least not directly. Neither do I have any positional authority - I am nobody's boss.
I have a family to support, so I can't afford to quit. Instead, I look for opportunities to do stuff that aligns with my values (anarchist or otherwise), and try and make small changes in my tiny corner of the universe.
For example, I'm in a union. I use whatever small influence I have to encourage colleagues to give more power to local communities. I challenge hierarchical ways of working, trying to cultivate curiosity about things like self-managed teams, distributed decision-making, etc. I sow seeds to try and get people interested in things like complexity and systems thinking (which were some of the strands that led to me having anarchist views). I'm a 'green champion'. I challenge as much as I can without risking getting sacked (I won't be able to change anything if I do).
All this stuff is quite benign compared to what some of the public servants in the US must be going to. But I felt maybe there is some value to this comment in sharing the small things public servants might be able to do to make small differences, or even to simply maintain one's sanity!
Thanks for the great comment Sam. I very much agree with Malcolm's comment on what you say.
Anarchism and government work are not incommensurable, there is no contradiction between your anarchist sentiments and working for a government. There is a difference between the anarchism of Chomsky (macro-level anarchism in Glenn Wallace's lexicon), which is straight out of the 1930's and the anarchist thought of Bookchin, Graeber, Wallace, or Scott. In varying degrees, these modern authors consider the state something that needs to routed around, not something that can be directly overthrown. The revolutionary anarchism of the 19th--early 20th century is anachronistic, and emerged during a very specific time period. Anarchist thought has to adapt to the present condition of global capitalism. Despite sentiments expressed in books like Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism, we must face the fact:
"...that the entire globe now operates according to the same economic principles—production organized for profit using legally free wage labor and mostly privately owned capital, with decentralized coordination—is without historical precedent."
Milanovic, Branko. Capitalism, Alone: The Future of the System That Rules the World (p. 2). (Function). Kindle Edition.
I think Wallace, who also happens to be a Buddhist scholar, has the right idea:
"At this meso-level, anarchist society originates in the very doing of anarchism in, moreover, the very places where individuals form into community. Macro-level anarchists, with a vigilant eye on class struggle and total revolution, might accuse this approach of being a “nonviolent, bourgeois, sanitized anarchism," but if I want to get anywhere with my readers I will have to take that risk. I believe that the “life-force” of anarchism may manifest either in micro-level personal ethics, meso-level organizational modeling, macro-level political agitation, or in some combination of these locations. It is precisely its location in the very “sensuousness” of our continuously unfolding lived experience, private and communal, that makes anarchism such a compelling and imperative proposition."
Wallis, Glenn. An Anarchist's Manifesto (pp. 18-19). (Function). Kindle Edition.
So I would say your meso-level acitivities are exactly what modern anarchism should look like.
This is great Malcolm. Thank you. I very much agree and it's helpful to have some guides to further reading, which I will do. The idea of the overthrow of government in the current circumstance is idiotic. Instead, we must work where we are, more incrementally, and within our own heads.
The basic problem with anarchism today is not anarchism, but marxism. Because of the close connection of Proudhon, Kropotkin, and Marx during the mid-19th century, anarchism then was tightly connected with the labor movement. There was strong disagreement about the role of the state, but not much about economics, class struggle, and so on. Anarchism under late-stage capitalism must look different than the anarchist movements from 1850 to 1940. Graeber's writing (with Wengrow) in particular is I think among the best anarchist writing ever:
"Back in the 1960s, the French anthropologist Pierre Clastres suggested that precisely the opposite was the case. What if the sort of people we like to imagine as simple and innocent are free of rulers, governments, bureaucracies, ruling classes and the like, not because they are lacking in imagination, but because they’re actually more imaginative than we are? We find it difficult to picture what a truly free society would be like; perhaps they have no similar trouble picturing what arbitrary power and domination would be like. Perhaps they can not only imagine it, but consciously arrange their society in such a way as to avoid it."
Graeber, David. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (p. 73). (Function). Kindle Edition.
And this passage we really need to take seriously:
"To make that shift means retracing some of the initial steps that led to our modern notion of social evolution: the idea that human societies could be arranged according to stages of development, each with their own characteristic technologies and forms of organization (hunter-gatherers, farmers, urban-industrial society, and so on). As we will see, such notions have their roots in a conservative backlash against critiques of European civilization, which began to gain ground in the early decades of the eighteenth century. The origins of that critique, however, lie not with the philosophers of the Enlightenment (much though they initially admired and imitated it), but with indigenous commentators and observers of European society, such as the Native American (Huron-Wendat) statesman Kandiaronk, of whom we will learn much more in the next chapter.
Revisiting what we will call the ‘indigenous critique’ means taking seriously contributions to social thought that come from outside the European canon, and in particular from those indigenous peoples whom Western philosophers tend to cast either in the role of history’s angels or its devils."
Graeber, David. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (p. 5). (Function). Kindle Edition.
In other words, what Graeber is pointing out is that rather than romanticizing indigenous cultures (like the endless parade of plastic shamans in new age circles), or demonizing them, as the case may be, we who hew to the anarchist call need to look for the roots of anarchism in genuine confederalist societies that had never heard of Karl Marx or, anarchism, for that matter. These cultures were all around us until very recently. Unfortunately, they have been or are being eliminated by neo-liberal forces. Thus, for myself, I have delved rather deeply into indigenous studies coming out of the US, Australia, and New Zealand. We also have the modern example of the Zapatistas and the Kurdish PKK's "Democratic confederalism."
"So I would say your meso-level activities are exactly what modern anarchism should look like." Thank you Malcolm - it's genuinely one of the nicest things someone has said (or written) to me in a while!
I also found the rest of your comment really interesting, and will no doubt set me off down a number of new rabbit holes
I think there is another form if resistance that is more long term and constructive, which entails the actual building of the alternative structures that are needed when this experiment in dictatorship inevitably collapses. Over on Chris Smaje's 'a small farm future' we're actively discussing the structure and skills base of these Refugia. This is a tough call for the professional managerial class who are, as you say, used to BEING the government. Who will also being hoping, at best, that this is just a blip, or at worst if they can find a cosy place in the new fascist corporations where they won't have to actually get there hands dirty. I can assure them, this is the corporate identity playing out, Trump, Musk, Putin, all the rest are just convenient place holders for a machine in motion.
The resistance is rural. Learn a craft, be actually useful to your actual community.
Thanks Joel. I am of course supportive. I believe the solution lies in structural and systemic change. Rural reform and local action is one area where this can play out.
Thank you Carne, and others, for some very adult thoughts in a situation where playground bulies have the upper hand in public. I support whatever choices people feel they can make, and personal changes and small actions can be the safest ones, and can encourage others to do the same at grass roots level. This supports ones own soul and conscience and causes ripples that could turn into tsunamis.....deep respect to all of you living with and surviving these horrendous actions.
Very much agree with these sentiments Jenny. We have to act - and safely - where we're at.
I am not in government, but I am disgusted with the US Government for many reasons, going all the way back to the Reagan years. Nevertheless, this is the first time I see the US Federal Government posing a threat to its own citizen in many decades.
There is some hope however. Americans generally don’t like kings, nor aristocrats. Americans are famously noncompliant. Sufficient numbers of the people who voted for Trump are experiencing buyer’s regret. This makes certain the GOP will be unlikely to pull enough votes to keep the house and senate in 2026.
One key feature of anarchist theory is that people are already anarchists by nature, and rarely need leaders to bring about necessary changes in their immediate communities. Trump will have a hard time dealing with groundswell of leaderless opposition that’s already moving against him.
What Trump cares about most is not the 2025 Project, but golf and his polls. You can bet that people around the US are engaged in communal resistance, and come spring, there will be massive protests. Will the National Guard fire at fellow Americans? They did at Kent State and Nixon suffered from national disapproval. Trump will certainly lie to the public about his polls, but we know from past experience that he shies away from direct conflicts. He will try to blame the left during summer uprising, the ‘“egg riots” let’s call them, but everyone but him will know that his policies resulted in a tanked economy, massive inflation, and graft and corruption “in levels never seen before.”
Large portions of judiciary are poised to resist him, they in turn control the US Marshalls, who report to, but are not under the control of the executive branch. 48% of the legislature will oppose him, and after 2026, it will be much higher. I think most active-duty officers in the armed forces will refuse to carry out unlawful orders, especially in the Air Force.
The governors, who generally do not regard US presidents as being their superiors, have already signaled their noncompliance with the Trump regime in states where they are democrats. New England and the Left Coast will be the centers of resistance, as usual.
Oil needs to remain at $70+ per barrel, otherwise the oil companies stop drilling new wells. Trump thinks cheap gas/petrol will sustain his popularity, but it won’t. It will lead to layoffs in the Permian Basin, the Bakken oil shales region and so on, causing a recession in the oil producing states.
There are many known unknowns for the Trump administration, and their hopes are pinned on nothing. America has the largest economy of any country in the world, and from a common sense point of view, Americans are not going to be happy with that standard of living declining any more than it has. That decline is certain if Trump continues his present course of action.
The outcome of all of this is that Americans, through stupidity, have twice voted in a man who ruins our international standing. That standing is like a credit rating. I’d say that credit rating is around 300 right now.
I am not a diplomat, but I do read a lot of history, political economy, books on international relations, and so on. We live on a tiny globe, and getting along with neighbors is a good skill to have. The best thing Europe can do right now is begin to shun the US, shut down trade with us, respond to tariffs with higher tariffs, sanction US officials who cooperate with Russia, etc.
Sadly, since the Iraq invasion of 2003, America has made mistake after mistake. It’s pretty depressing.
Thanks Malcolm. This is a very compelling forecast of what might happen. My worry is that Trump will declare a state of emergency as a way of overcoming all checks and balances, or resistance from eg the military or courts. He's already done so for the southern border. The mid-terms may be too late.