A single term can be used in so many incompatible ways. This
leads to the problem of words and meanings becoming detached. Talk becomes a
way of confusing and clouding rather than informing and illuminating. Speech
loses its grip on meaning. Words and ideas become malleable.
This may seem to be a mere academic problem, but it is, in
fact, a central human problem, a problem whose effects, if they could be
counted in human deaths, would number in the millions. This is my introductory
article as a political columnist, and the two points which follow provide the
central framework for all of my coming columns.
The first point is very simple. Only by decoding the system
of imposed language can we even begin to really question power. Only by paying
close attention to the relation between words and meanings can we stop the
imposition of “Newspeak.” It is via controls over our discourse that our
language is destroyed, that our thoughts are kept within safe, non-challenging
bounds.
Second, anarchism is the natural, sensible view towards systems
of power, which is at the root of all of our conceptions of fairness. Also, the
only reason that people reject anarchism — clinging to the idea that the term
means “no government” — is because of the manipulation of language which is
possible via powerful groups’ control over discourse. “Anarchism” did not
originally mean “no government,” and most of its adherents would not have made
eliminating government a goal.
Then why do people define the term so? What changed the
meaning? Well, some groups have much more influence over what information is
prevalent, and there is no better way to defeat the detractors of your power
than create a campaign against them in which you convince the population that
what they believe is something other than what it is –– something crazy and
disagreeable.
Powerful groups successfully utilize this tactic against
anarchism.
One important note here is that I’m not advocating any sort
of conspiratorial view. There is no conspiracy in which the elite class met
under a volcano and decided to corrupt the use of the term “anarchism” or
language in general.
It is crucial to my argument that the elite groups in the
society somehow do this, though, and it is argued very thoroughly for in
literature on the subject, most famously in “Manufacturing Consent” from
Chomsky/Herman. Basically, groups naturally do what is in their power
interests.
In highly complex industrial economies, institutions evolve
extremely sophisticated mechanisms for upholding their power. Branches of
corporations work on tasks independently, and the firm becomes an organism,
operating as a whole in ways that none of the members themselves intend to or
realize. If certain information causes a firm to lose power, the firm has an
interest in suppressing it, and firms do just that.
Since nearly all of the information that we get is filtered
through this system, the effect that centers of power have over our thought is
immense. Our thoughts are deeply poisoned by systems of power. The best we can
ever hope to do is decode our language enough to think clearly about how to
restructure these systems so that their ideological poisoning can be
eliminated.
Finally, what is anarchism, and why was that idea so
dangerous to systems of power that they had to effectively delete it from the
political discourse? Anarchism is a simple, common-sense view of power. When
people have power over other people, they misuse it. When we create systems of
human organization in which there are hierarchies, the system will represent
the interests at the top of the hierarchy.
Since human beings care about fairness and equal
representation, we do not favor hierarchies. Hierarchies are antithetical to
the political virtues inherent in human beings. Hence the prefix “an” attached
to the suffix “archy.” An (as in “no”) archy (as in “power”).
No power: that is anarchy.
It is general skepticism toward all authority, toward any
hierarchy, toward any information that is the product of power or systems of
power. That is a dangerous idea to powerful institutions. That is why systems
of power naturally propagated straw man versions of anarchism –– in order to
neutralize it.
Anarchism is where all political analysis starts. What do we
mean, and how might this meaning have been affected by power groups? This
question must arise at every step of inquiry if we are to ever be liberated.
(Source)
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