Controversial social issues are equally difficult. The matter of children is particularly tedious. Is there going to be an “age of majority”? If so, what? Can runaways be forcibly returned to their parents? Until what age? Can parents sell their children to other families? Are sexual relations between adults and children going to be legally prohibited and, if so, what will be the age of consent? Can parents be held legally liable for the material neglect of their children? Would this not be a forcible redistribution of wealth? Can a man impregnate a woman and then refuse to provide any support for the resulting child? Do fathers have equal custodial rights to their children or are children the sole property of their mothers? Is abortion aggression or is a woman who desires an abortion simply exercising her property rights over her own body? Should animals have any legally enforceable protection? Or should even gratuitous cruelty to animals be beyond the reach of the law? How are criminals to be handled? According to the paradigms of retribution, restitution, restoration, rehabilitation or some combination of these? Is there ever going to be capital punishment? Is mercy killing ever acceptable and, if so, under what circumstances? Is drunken driving an act of aggression if no one is actually harmed? Has a crime taken place if someone attempts murder but fails to kill or even injure their intended victim? Is blackmail a form of extortion or the simple acceptance of payment for withholding information? Are acts of “consensual violence” such as dueling or Roman-style blood sports akin to “victimless crimes” such as drug use or prostitution or are these activities something entirely different?15 If someone sells me a television set I know is stolen am I a participant in a theft or an honest buyer of merchandise whose source is not my responsibility? Is “mental incompetence” ever a legitimate defense on the part of those accused of a crime? Of course, environmental problems provide many unique difficulties of their own.

  More complications arise when the matter of the presence of “authoritarian” cultural or ideological groups in an anarchist society are figured into the equation. David Friedman speculates that anarchist legal institutions could even generate drug prohibition laws if public support for such laws was overwhelming enough.16 For reasons I will explain, I tend to be skeptical of this claim. However, it is quite likely that local communities would form that would enforce their own cultural, moral, philosophical or religious norms within their own ranks. These could include not only anarcho-socialists, anarcho-syndicalists or anarcho-capitalists but also anarcho-conservatives, anarcho-theocrats, anarcho-nationalists, anarcho-white separatists, anarcho-black nationalists or anarcho-monarchists (yes, all of these actually exist). Additionally, there would likely be territories or enclaves dominated by communists, nationalists, Nazis or theocrats as well as remnants of the present system. There might even be localities controlled by overtly criminal organizations. For example, sections of urban areas might come under the control of gangs following the disappearance of the state. Even this might not be wholly undesirable.17 Tribute rates tend to be lower than tax rates. I once met an anarcho-Satanist who insisted that in a stateless society contract murder and car theft would become legitimate, respectable professions. While it is theoretically possible that mafia-like organizations might develop their own courts and “defense” organizations that did not recognize their favorite forms of aggression as crimes, such groups of outlaws would still be opposed by nearly everyone else and would find themselves in a state of perpetual war against the rest of society.

  At this point, one might be tempted to argue that the kind of pluralistic anarchism I have described here could end up more closely resembling Beirut circa 1984 than any sort of social system conducive to freedom, prosperity and peace. However, I doubt this would be the case. The ideas of decentralization and voluntary association that are central to anarchist thought imply that those with common beliefs and values will naturally drift towards one another and engage in mutual self-segregation with those whose views are incompatible with their own. We see elements of this even in the current system. Some states have capital punishment, others don’t. Gambling is legal in some localities and illegal in others. The “age of consent” is thirteen in some states and eighteen in other states. Some remote counties even continue alcohol prohibition. The primary disadvantage of decentralization is the persistent threat of tyranny of the majority. Kirkpatrick Sale notes that is will always be difficult to be the black in the white supremacist community, the Nazi in the Jewish community or the atheist in the fundamentalist community.18 The antidote to this problem is the relative ease with which persons who is outcast in a particular community can migrate to a more hospitable community, or perhaps form their own community, in a decentralized system.19

  To some degree, the current international system is a “state of anarchy.” America, China, Saudi Arabia and the Netherlands all have radically different cultures and social systems. Yet persons from each of these nations regularly travel to other nations and maintain personal or business relationships with others of completely different belief systems or cultural backgrounds. Secular, democratic, capitalist America regularly exchanges people and goods with theocratic, monarchical, feudal Saudi Arabia. I suspect that a particularly effective anarchist method of eliminating the persecution of some social groups by others would be the abolition of state-organized, tax-funded police, courts and prisons. Under the present system, the state seeks to expand its power by aligning itself with private power groups seeking to use the state to repress their ideological, cultural or economic competitors. The “process costs” and “enforcement costs” of such state actions are then passed on to the whole body of taxpayers and distributed throughout society as a whole. When this avenue is closed off, those seeking to attack others will simply have to pay for such efforts themselves. No matter how much some people may disapprove of guns or drugs, how many of them would be willing to pay the salaries of DEA or ATF agents out of their own pockets? Economic incentives would likely restrict protection services and legal institutions to the chores of settling interpersonal contractual or common law disputes and the repression of serious crimes. Consensual activities and even some “petty” crimes would largely be ignored or handled by means of informal sanctions. For example, the simple apprehension and expulsion of shoplifters from retail outlets without formal legal prosecution. Coercive enforcement of cultural mores would largely be impossible beyond the neighborhood level.

  Hayek concluded that the hallmark of totalitarian law is not so much its brutality as much as its arbitrariness. This describes the legal regime that currently rules over us rather aptly. Orwell once remarked that the perfect totalitarian state would be a formal democracy where thirty percent of the population lived directly or indirectly off of the government. This too has a ring of familiarity about it. The only good thing about Leviathan states is that they eventually collapse under their own excess weight. When the American Empire finally dissolves, perhaps pluralistic anarchist law will be given a chance to thrive.

  The Politics of Keith Preston

  A reader writes asking me to briefly describe what my own political views actually are. My views are rather complicated and are certainly outside the paradigms and narratives that most people are familiar with. It’s rather difficult to attempt a brief description of all that but here’s a try:

  I consider anarchism, libertarianism, and anti-state radicalism in their myriad of forms to be an evolving form of generalized political radicalism in the same way that classical liberalism evolved in the 17th and 18th centuries and classical socialism evolved in the 19th and 20th centuries. I consider these modes of thought rooted in critiquing and opposing the state to be the probable next wave of radicalism that continues the trajectory rooted in Enlightenment rationalism, liberalism, and socialism.

  This evolving anti-state radicalism in its mature form will have the same relationship to the Left that classical socialism had to the classical bourgeoisie. Just as 19th and early 20th century states were a hybrid of feudalism and capitalism, an overlap of traditional society (the “old order”) and liberalism, modern states are a hybrid of capitalism and socialism (liberalism fused with social democracy and the managerial revolution). Just as the historic socialists, like Marx, regarded the liberal bourgeoisie rather than the conservative aristocracy (which was a dying force) as their primary enemy, I regard the historic Left (which is now the status quo in all Western industrialized countries) as the primary enemy as opposed to the historic bourgeoisie, “conservatism,” or, in the case of the USA, the dying traditional WASP elite.

  Just as classical socialism was a myriad of sects and philosophical tendencies that eventually coalesced into a political mass movement, the varying sects and philosophical tendencies that today comprise the anarchist, libertarian, and anti-state milieus will eventually coalesce into an actual mass movement. We see some of that in a very embryonic form at the present time.

  Theoretically, I’m a synthesist in the tradition of anarchists like Voline or an “anarchist without adjectives” like Voltairine de Cleyre who favors creating a united revolutionary front of anti-state radicals from across the sectarian spectrum on the model of Spain’s historic FAI. This anarchist front will then fill the role of what Bakunin called “principled militants” who are the leadership corps of a much larger populist movement with an anti-state, anti-imperialist, and anti-ruling class orientation. In North America, this radical populism would be oriented towards organizing what I have elsewhere identified as the “ten core demographics” that would be our natural constituents and the vast array of anti-state or marginalized political, social, and economic tendencies I have identified as part of the “liberty and populism” strategy. The primary tactical position of this anarchist-led anti-state populism movement would be what I called “pan-secessionism” i.e. secession by regions, cities, towns, and communities from centralized national regimes and the global plutocratic order in a way that cuts across conventional cultural, economic, ethnic, religious, linguistic or political boundaries. As no state steps down without a fight, the anarchist and anti-state revolutionaries will eventually need to achieve victory through “fourth generation warfare” i.e. an insurgency on the model of groups like Hezbollah or the Peoples War Group.

  While the strategy outlined above was designed primarily for North America, some modified variation of it as well would likely be applicable in the struggle against other states and empires, i.e. the EU, PRC, etc.

  Beyond this very general task of overthrowing states, empires, and ruling classes, there are also many other secondary or wider projects to pursue, of course. These include creating an alternative social infrastructure that will replace the functions currently assumed by the state (e.g. health care, social services, education, transportation, and et. al.), alternative economic arrangements to replace business corporations, state bureaucracies, and the international financial apparatus, and many single-issue and population-specific tasks to engage in.

  Note than none of this has anything to do with wider philosophical orientations. While I am a Nietzschean, there are many others with politics similar to my own who are Kantians, Lockeans, Hegelians, utilitarians, contractarians, implicit Marxists, or who have some kind of religious or mystical perspective.

  Nor does any of this have anything to do with specific opinions on contentious public issues like abortion, the death penalty, immigration, religious beliefs, sexual morals, race relations, gender norms, animal rights, etc. There are anti-state radicals on all sides of these kinds of issues. My view is that disputes of this type should be handled by invoking the wider anarchist principles of individuality, decentralization, federalism, mutual aid, and free association. This means that social, cultural, or moral conflict should be a matter of individual freedom, free association to form groups of individuals with like minded values, pluralism, and peaceful co-existence to the greatest degree possible. To the degree this is impossible (for instance, there’s no reconciling the views that abortion is child genocide or that abortion is a sacred inalienable right), we should invoke the principles of decentralization, secession, local autonomy, and mutual self-separation of those with irreconcilable differences (like a divorce).

  An Interview with Keith Preston

  This is an interview I recently gave to a journalist who is writing a book on political undercurrents in the U.S.

  Can you tell me a little bit about the American Revolutionary Vanguard and what it stands for?

  American Revolutionary Vanguard was founded in the late 1990s by a coalition of anarchists in the North American anarchist movement who wished to pursue a different direction from what was the norm among anarchists in North America at the time. The rest of the anarchist movement was usually oriented towards promoting one of three perspectives: countercultural lifestyle concerns (ranging from veganism to alternative sexuality to squatting to punk music and bicycling), or a kind of clichéd ultra-leftism of the kind that had been developed by Marxist-Leninist and Maoist tendencies within the New Left (such as an emphasis on “white skin privilege” and radical feminism), or old-guard anarcho-syndicalism that had been influenced by early twentieth century syndicalist tendencies such as the Industrial Workers of the World.

  We wished to pursue an entirely new direction which would be oriented towards uniting all forms of anarchist, decentralist, libertarian, anti-state, and anti-authoritarian thought around the common purpose of abolishing the state and decentralizing power towards the level of the natural community, and forging a society-wide consensus for this purpose. Much of what we did at the time was a bit tongue in cheek as well. For example, our original name, American Revolutionary Vanguard, doesn’t really mean anything. The word “vanguard” is something of a taboo in anarchist circles because of its association with the Marxist-Leninist idea of the “vanguard party.” So we always claimed we were trying to reclaim the good name of the word “vanguard.” Ironically, back then many in the anarchist milieu were suspicious of us and thought we were Communists, but now we’re more likely to be mislabeled as fascists. But the original purpose of American Revolutionary Vanguard was the same as it is now: the formation of an anti-state front.

  Can you explain a bit about pan-secessionism and what it means to your philosophy?

  Pan-secessionism is a tactical concept that involves the actual application of our philosophy to real world political events. Simply put, our goal is for smaller political and economic units to secede from larger ones. State and provinces would secede from national governments, and cities and communities would secede from states and provinces, all the way down to the neighborhood level. “Power to the neighborhoods” is a common slogan we like to use towards this purpose. Presumably, there could be a parallel economic secession where local and regional branches of industries and managerial units secede and begin to practice autonomy and self-management as well. The concept of pan-secessionism has its roots in two basic ideas. One is the idea of political secession in the form of regional or local autonomist movements such as those currently found in Scotland, the Basque and Catalan regions of Spain, in multiple regions of the US, in Palestine, Tibet, Chechnya and many other places. In the United States, this is a particularly relevant concept given that the United States was essentially founded as a secession of the original thirteen colonies from the British monarchy.

  The other idea which has influenced the concept of pan-secession is the old anarchist idea of the “general strike.” The notion behind the general strike is that workers establish control over production by means of a mass strike that turns into a popular revolution.

  The old anarcho-syndicalist labor organizations like the IWW and the IWA used to advocate for this idea in the era of classical anarchism. However, the concept of pan-secessionism takes this idea much further and advocates a general strike not just in the industrial sectors, but a popular strike against the state and its institutions altogether in the form of regional and local secession, a labor strike, a tax strike, a tenants’ strike, a students’ strike, and a military strike, in such a way that ruling class institutions are completely undermined.

  In certain segments of our population it is cool to say that one is an anarchist. I know some people that call themselves “anarchists” but yet pay their taxes, follow established laws, and generally do what the government tells them to do. Is it possible to be an anarchist and also follow the established rules of one’s government?

  Anarchism is a philosophy that advocates for the abolition of the state, not a prescription for how one should live within the context of a state-saturated society. Some anarchists choose the route of becoming what have been called “illegalists” and act in open defiance of the state and its laws and commands. Others prefer to live within the system and work for more piecemeal reforms, or simply try to obtain the maximum degree of individual or collective self-sufficiency possible given the circumstances. No one way is the correct way. Instead, it is best for there to be different kinds of anarchists working to undermine the state in many different ways. There are many different ways in which anarchists go about fighting the state. At present, some anarchists in the Kurdish region have formed militias that are involved in direct armed resistance to ISIS and have formed a quasi-anarchist community in Rojava. Other types of anarchists have formed intentional nations like Liberland, and others are working through unconventional political parties like the Pirate Party, and still others are engaged in direction action around such concerns as environmental preservation. The best approach for anarchists to take towards these questions would be to let a thousand flowers bloom.