TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction: Autonomism at the Gates
2. Aphorisms 1-11: Social Dictatorship
3. Aphorisms 12-24: State Power
4. Aphorisms 25-38: Guilt and Exculpation
5. Aphorisms 39-52: Confusion and Control
6. Aphorisms 53-61: The Myth of Order
7. Aphorisms 62-83: Mechanisms of the State Apparatus
This is the seventh installment in the series, although it appears as section 1 in the overall work.
Introduction: Autonomism at the Gates
In the following series of aphorisms, I develop a concise anti-Statist, individualist critique of the modern State, its inner nature, and the way in which it branches out into all modes of (post)modern life. Expect no linear argument. In the time of memetics, the aphorism is a potent thinking tool. As a potent tool for thinking, it has a certain conciseness and sharpness, and therefore possesses therefore a clear and effective expressive force.
Aphorisms can be used to explore a variety of loosely-structured thoughts, working out the many relationships that connect them. The advantage of this way of working is that the depth of an initial thought can be gradually explored and adumbrated in various directions. On the one hand, the disadvantage is that the clarity so characteristic of a linear argument is largely lacking. But on the other hand, is this a problem at all? Clarity may come about by following the single line of an argument but can equally thought of as a process of cognitive sedimentation, in which the contents of one’s thinking gradually settle into a cognitive picture that has an internal, thought-shaping logic of its own (Hanna and Paans, 2021).
To my mind, the philosophical doctrine of anarchism always has had trouble in conceiving alternatives to the current philosophical and political status quo. Why is this?
First, the various versions of anarchism that emerged during the 19th-century are inadequate as models for thinking about the new forms of organization that a 21st-century society has to assume. This is simply because the very term “anarchism,” coined by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1840 in “What is Property?,” is a purely negative one: it is the presence of any (State-organized) hierarchy that is being rejected. The difficulties ensue when one attempts to imbue this initially negative term with some positive content. To conceive a world without centralized coercive authoritarianism requires some ideals that cannot be derived from (philosophical) anarchism as a critique of State coercive authority. In short, we require a positive foundation instead of a negative one. I will come back to this point later on.
A second reason why the anarchisms of the (recent) past cannot cope with current political and societal circumstances is that the nature of the State has changed substantially, due to the global interlocking of State power, corporate capital, military-driven firepower, the rise of political authoritarianism, and the influence of what we could call “Big Tech” on the one hand, together with the influence of the “spirituality-industrial complex” (Hanna, 2023) on the other. To criticize a type of State power that does not exist any longer is to engage in a strawman argument. Worse still, it appears as serious political philosophy, while it is overtaken by reality from the left and the right alike. The comfortable illusion that one is performing some “subversive” act is by itself a bourgeois trope that one must discard as soon as possible.
The older versions of anarchism have dealt extensively with the problematic character of coercion and its institutional entrenchment, but have had comparatively little to say about what seems to me the core of Statism. I will call this the Will-to-Dominate or State-impulse. Like Schopenhauer’s ceaseless Will-to-Live, the Will-to-Dominate is a sociopolitical impulse that is comparable to the Will-to-Live, or to the Freudian Death-drive, i.e., the volition towards total annihilation and destruction. The main reasons for the existence and manifestations of this drive are best located in our survival-stricken evolutionary history. Yet, this cannot be the entire explanation. As Peter Kropotkin has pointed out in Mutual Aid, our capacity for mutualism is at least as basic as our capacity for strife and competition. Any society that wishes to survive requires to negotiate between both. So, the goal of these aphorisms is not to argue against competition or even rivalry. These are very real forces in a finite world where resources are scarce, Instead, it should make us self-critical when thinking about the institutionalization of this drive. As the survivalist traits of our species become institutionally entrenched and codified, they tend by their very (competitive) nature to obliterate or weaken all alternative conceptions of what it means to form a society. Yet, these survivalist impulses cannot survive on their own, and even if they give rise to a society of some sort, it will turn out to be a very unpleasant society indeed if they are carried through to the end.
Once communities grow above a certain scale, the State-impulse will occur at some point, and the foundation of contemporary State-power is born. Yet, we have now advanced so far that even the State is not the same any longer. Due to its scale and its highly networked, ubiquitous structure, it has developed into the Hyperstate: that is, the global network of political, corporate, and military organizations that have converging self-interests (Paans, 2021). It is an organizational pattern intended to deploy authoritarian coercion via nudging, more overt forms of control like police or military force, monitoring or surveying, and ideology and other forms of mechnical, constrictive thought-shaping, in order to amass ever more power and ever more wealth, and to exert ever more control.
I have dealt with some of its characteristics elsewhere, so I will not repeat that discussion here. Suffice to say, if we develop a critique of coercive authoritarian power, we must direct it against that form of the State that is current, and not against a strawman conception.
By way of concluding this Introduction, this series of aphorisms is anti-Hyperstatist and not merely anarchist or anti-Statist, although many of the ideas discussed here will be smoothly compatible with that particular philosophico-political outlook. So, the point of departure is that the Hyperstate in its current form should be replaced by a radically different form of sociopolitical organization; that the State-impulse is a recurrent phenomenon; that there are certain strategies of authoritarian coercion that will always emerge, although in various contexts; and that the Hyperstate is the noumenal, and barely perceivable, yet constantly and immensely present form of the State as we encounter it in our daily lives today.
Do I criticize only the Hyperstate and the State here? Certainly not. Many of the aphorisms deal with thought-experiments, observations, and speculations about the role, status and agency of the individual. In short, I advocate an autonomism for individuals and groups alike. That is, one ought to emancipate or liberate oneself as much as possible from authoritarian coercion, no matter how this authoritarian coercion is presented. Correspondingly, one also ought to develop the skills and mindset to act as a mature individual, or a morally responsible agent. There is certainly much more to say about this doctrine; but for now, I’ll just introduce this concise definition: if anarchism as anti-Statism is the negative doctrine, then autonomism as post-Statism is the positive doctrine that has guided my thinking here.
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