This stems from a review of an interesting new book by the always interesting James Scott: The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia. As the reviewer, Daniel Little, states,
The book takes up the argument that Scott began in Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed: that a central task of the state it to render its territory and population "legible". The state needs to be able to regiment and identify its subjects, if it is to collect taxes and raise armies; so sedentary, mobile, peripheral peoples are antithetical to the needs of the state. This argument begins in Seeing Like a State; and it gains substantial elaboration here.
What's significant about that argument is the way in which it provides us with quite a different view of the state as an institution than we're used to -- here the state starts to appear as a kind of predatory social entity, benefiting its own political class at the expense of the mass of people whom it must make "legible" in order to prey upon. Somewhere, I think, Scott refers to himself as a kind of Marxist-lite, and this view of the state is certainly in keeping with Marxist notions of the state as an instrument of class oppression. But, if you adjust the notion of "class" -- throwing out the outmoded Marxist categories based upon economic role, and substituting a simpler and clearer classification based upon proximity to state power -- then this view is also quite familiar to modern conservative and libertarian critiques of our current political systems.
What's also interesting, then, is the portrayal of resistance to state predation, something that people seem to do when- and wherever they can, which is typically in mountainous as opposed to lowland regions*. Contrary to Hobbes' famous summary of the life of man in the state of nature -- his notion of what "not being governed" meant -- their lives may be harsh but seem quite sustainable, and they've adapted their cultures in a number of ways to make them illegible to the state; in contemporary terms, they've opted to live "off the grid". Their very persistence is a testament to the fact that not being governed is not only possible but, in many ways, preferable.
Perhaps not in all ways, however. The cultures being examined here are not complex in comparison with the modern world and not what we would call "advanced" in terms of wealth and individual opportunity. And were it not for the surrounding modern world, from which they can borrow, their conditions of life would no doubt be worse than they are. There is, in other words, a limit to what can be achieved by anarchic societies. To get beyond those limits, we need to add more complex forms of property than simple anarchy can manage -- we need, in other words, as Hernando de Soto has argued, codified and legible property rights, and a justice system to enforce them. Which gets us back to the state, true, but a state restricted in its predatory inclinations by its limited mandate -- it gets us, in fact, to the state of classical liberalism.
*See also a comment to this effect referring to a passage in Braudel's The Mediterranean.
You have made this rather ludicrous suggestion that anarchists are libertarian-conservatives a few times. I don't defend Anarchism ("A.") per se (def. not the cheap, college party boy sort) but obviously you don't understand the A. tradition of, say, Bakunin or Kropotkin. A's. opposed the State AND capitalism, and really ownership of about any form (excepting perhaps ones own personal goods). So, your property rights pseudo-arguments would not hold (and any property rights would demand a rights-enforcer, ie, parliament, judiciary, constabulary, etc.--ie a State. So you're back to Hobbes as far as enforcing those rights go).
ReplyDeleteThe marxists considered the Bakuninists ultra-left--dreamy, impractical, dangerous (Bakunin may have met Marx, and supposedly shared a few shots of vodka or something--tho Marx laughs at him, mostly). Marx...and Lenin-- considered the proletarian State (ie, the replacement of the bourgeois or aristocratic regime) a temporary necessity anyway: in theory, it eventually would wither away.
A's on the other hand hoped for some eco-topian dream but rarely if ever achieved it. The Bakuninists did not bother with any sort of practical planning (they considered any bureaucracy bourgeois, more or less).
There are men more sinister than Bakunin or Kropotkin but their writing generally sounds naive. Yes people should cooperate, take on barons of all types, and work towards utopia, but they don't. Political power flows out the barrel of a gun, as Mao said.
So, your property rights pseudo-arguments would not hold (and any property rights would demand a rights-enforcer, ie, parliament, judiciary, constabulary, etc.--ie a State....
ReplyDeleteAgain, J, just read before reacting. Read the title of the post first, and note the the "vs.". Then read the last paragraph of the post. Then read the last sentence (not the footnote).
I'll also point out that neither this post, nor the review, nor, as far as I can tell, the book by James Scott, is referring to the anarchist tradition, interesting though that may be -- but instead (as the book's title should make clear) simply to the definition of anarchy as the state of "not being governed".
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ReplyDeleteNo, you need to read. Start with the wiki on Bakunin. You can spout off about what you take to be "anarchism" all you want, but your libertarian interpretation has nothing to do with A. tradition.
ReplyDeleteFinally, you don't really approve of them, except to advance your usual own anti-statist hype: codified and legible property rights, and a justice system to enforce them...yada yada . In other words....Hobbes (not that many Mericans--or canadians for that matter, would even bother with Hobbes' aged chestnuts, and the problems thereof--).
... your libertarian interpretation has nothing to do with A. tradition.
ReplyDeleteYes, that's my point.
their lives may be harsh but seem quite sustainable, and they've adapted their cultures in a number of ways to make them illegible to the state; in contemporary terms, they've opted to live "off the grid". Their very persistence is a testament to the fact that not being governed is not only possible but, in many ways, preferable.
ReplyDeletethat is, until whatever Govt. happens to be in charge decides to shut them down. At that point, the A's capitulate, head for the hills, or perhaps have ala Makhno, formed an insurrectionary "Black Army" (as in....Black flag)--that was anarchism with a capital A.
At that point, the A's capitulate, head for the hills,...
ReplyDeleteBut this is anarchism with a small-a -- and they're already in the hills, as the review and title of the book indicate, as does the sentence preceding your quote, and the link in the footnote. The point of the book, in fact, seems to be the difficulty of whatever govt. in charge has in shutting them down -- why its title is the "Art of Not Being Governed".
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ReplyDeleteZomia's an interesting, exotic area (mainly northern burma--Yunnan), but the Chinese could take them out rather easily, were they suitably motivated (Mao and the Peoples' army did plenty of damage in southern china/sichuan). The Zomian highlands peoples aren't really free, but tolerated--in about the same situation as survivalist nuts in western USA (but with the Asian exoticism that moves product). Hopefully Scott's book won't give them any ideas--.
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