anarchist social reform

Donald Bokor (boko7751@uidaho.edu)
Thu, 8 Jan 1998 12:09:41 -0800 (PST) 

The Role of Social Reformer

1. Anarchist social reform uses civil disobedience.
     In one sense, anarchism is the critique of statist societal forms,
including nationalism, centralism and authoritarianism.  In this sense,
federalism and the American revolution followed anarchist tenets when
calling for autonomy of the individual and direct democracy.  Yet, in
America at least, the defeat of the confederacy legitimated centralist
authority such that the laws of the states are now subordinate to the
laws of the nation, and neither the states nor the individuals within
them retain the right of voluntary exit from the center.  What was once
an innovation in efficient management of collective resources, has become
an albatross around the neck of free society: just as our forefathers
warned us would happen.  When the periphery can, better than the center,
manage the collective resources available for sustainability, then it is
time to throw off the yoke of centralist government through direct action
and in particular, civil disobedience.
2.  Civil disobedience derives from direct action by the reformer.
     Why would anarchists choose civil disobedience as a tactic in
reducing centralist tendencies in government?  As proponents of direct
action, anarchists know that the best governor of the individual is the
self.  By committing moral acts which result in punitive treatment from
the government, these individuals sacrifice their personal comfort in
order to make explicit the injustice of oppression.  The social reformer
is , in one sense, an ethnographer of social change movements.  And, most
reformers have sacrificed their lives so that society could better
understand its effects on individuals.  Their ethnographies were written
post-mortem, by observers of the ritual sacrifice, as individually related
biographies of the commonly shared experience.  Hypotheses concerning
ritualistic society and individual welfare were proved or disproved with
the taking or saving of life.
3.  Reformers use a moral calculus to explore the legitimate boundaries of
society.
     Civil disobedience, therefore, is seen as a moral imperative of the
individual when the self realizes that the cost of central control
exceeds the value of exercising self-control.  People are driven to crime
by availability of victims and by extremeness of self-deprivation
experienced by the individual criminal.  But, unlike biological and
sociological determinism as causes of criminality, an ethical determinism
enters into civil disobedience which balances the costs of social
participation with those of disassociation.  Here, we find the legitimate
boundaries of society.  At least in a theoretical sense, if the costs of
participation exceed those of disassociation then individuals are likely 
to choose civil disobedience as a moral imperative.  And the pacifist
anarchist gains the further moral advantage of returning hate with love,
and intolerance with acceptance.
4.  Principled reform involves sacrificing self for the benefit of others.
     The practicalities of civil disobedience, however, require the
weighing of jail time, unemployment, homelessness, and hunger.  Simple
hedonists are not going to submit to such self-deprivation and thus are
only "reactive" anarchists, and then only to governmental measures deemed
as "too extreme".  On the other hand, the social reformer is willing to
sacrifice self to gain an ethnography of the individual will as
overcoming social ritual.  The experience will certainly not be
pleasurable in a materialistically hedonistic sense, but it may be in the
accumulation of knowledge sense.  Thus, it is possible that there is an
information rationality that overrides hedonism to create a rationally
principled anarchism.  Such "proactive" anarchists can be seen as turning
points or watersheds in social reform.
5.  Society benefits from shared food, shelter, healthcare, and knowledge.
     Although pacifism tells the civil disobedients what they are not
supposed to do, it is the information rationality that guides the
principled anarchist's social reform actions.  Because information is
necessary for knowledge, and knowledge is necessary for individual
autonomy, social reform is concerned with sharing access and control of
all information among every individual.  Furthermore, because information
must be processed by a material individual, then reformers have been seen
first tending to the provision of food and shelter for the poor and
needy.  But not all of the oppressed are in poverty, and some are in need
of physical healing which is the second level of material concern to
social reformers.  A healthy individual can use the information available
to grow in understanding or knowledge, and then to determine their own
way of utilizing this knowledge to best benefit self and society.
6.  Growth in understanding is the primary goal of the reformer.
     It is this emphasis on a cognitive growth in understanding that
differentiates proactivity in social reform from the reactivity of
hedonism with its emphasis on growth in material pleasure.  Such a
radical individualism fails to take into account the social cost of
providing a consumerland of satisfactions.  In contrast, it is the
radical individual who determines that the moral costs outweigh the
benefits of the present social control system, and who chooses
individually to develop a public consciousness and a means of subverting
immoral laws or policies.  A principled social reformer will measure
success by the degree that the standard of living of the lowest common
denominator is improved.  Food, shelter, and healthcare, these are the
primary material concerns necessary for the nurturance of a physical
individual.  Of primary concern to cognition is growth in the
understanding that each must voluntarily assist in the provision of these
life sustaining materials.