Anarchism has gone from intellectually complicated and violent to just plain silly, por Todd Seavey, no WSJ.
Anarchism, the idea that society would be better off without the constraints of government, has a long and often sordid history. What is arguably the first book urging the complete abolition of government, "A Vindication of Natural Society," was written 250 years ago by the man usually credited with founding conservatism, Edmund Burke. The British philosopher and politician, who served in the very Parliament building that Fawkes tried to destroy, argued that the same sort of anti-authoritarian reasoning that was being used in the 18th century to dispel religious belief could be used to undermine earthly political leaders.
Scholars long accepted Burke's assurances later in life--when he had become a conservative member of the (generally liberal) Whig Party--that "Vindication" was merely satire. But 20th-century "anarcho-capitalist" economist Murray Rothbard argued that Burke's views had simply evolved over time and that Burke was embarrassed by his youthful ideological excesses. Indeed, anarchism has often been an attractive notion for young people. Paul Avrich, a historian of anarchism who died a few weeks ago in New York, suggested that James Joyce, Bernard Shaw and Eugene O'Neill were all anarchists early on in their intellectual development.
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As anarchism has aged and largely eschewed violence (fantasies like "V for Vendetta" notwithstanding), its members seem to have gone one of two routes, either becoming fringe figures who produce manifestoes and performance art of no great political impact or, ironically, choosing to replace the chaotic violence of old with allegiance to the more predictable, systematic coercion of laws and government. The ideal of the ending of all political control has gradually, perhaps inevitably, been pushed aside by the more familiar one of shaping political control to suit one's own agenda.
In fact, modern so-called anarchists are usually working to increase government power. They form an important faction of the antiglobalization movement, agitating for stricter regulations on international trade. To judge by the sometimes violent protests at World Trade Organization conferences, the latest anarchists are usually grungy kids with strange hair and piercings; it is hard to say for certain, but they have probably spent more time listening to Rage Against the Machine and the Clash than reading Godwin or Proudhon.
Perhaps the greatest evidence that there is little intellectual heft left in the anarchist movement is the occasional protests in Albany, N.Y., where self-proclaimed anarchists turn up to protest budget cuts at state-run schools. It's a satire Burke never could have dreamed of.
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