Condemning Domination Versus Justifying Anarchism

My argument for anarchism differs fundamentally from many that are popular today. Rather than assuming some moral axiom—the "non-aggression principle" for instance—and deducing that anarchism is morally imperative, I analyze what institutions are required to domesticate communities and deduce that they inevitably cause mass human suffering and destruction of the habitat. No new moral idea is needed to conclude that such institutions are intolerable and must be abolished. Anarchism follows from this conclusion.

Further, I believe attempting to morally justify anarchism is a weak argumentative position compared with showing why Domination is intolerable. As the philosopher Karl Popper said in a different context, one doesn't have to define "good meat" to know "meat gone bad." Far better to say Domination should be abolished because it causes intolerable effects on us and our world than because an abstract moral argument condemns it. And far better to say domesticating communities is intolerable because it inevitably produces such disastrous effects than because the institutions of political power violate a moral principle. The moral arguments stand or fall on the validity of their premises. Mine rests on a more substantial basis of facts.

Finally, I believe attempts to morally justify anarchism embody the authoritarian thinking anarchism opposes. Communities don't need moral authorities to dictate how they should be organized, and anarchism needs no justification. If anarchism is truly the natural way communities lived for all but three percent of our human family history, then communities would naturally restore anarchism in the absence of Domination—and restore it by creating forms of community that serve human well-being better than anything anarchist theoreticians could imagine.