Government Kritik

8/6/2019 Government Kritik

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1 Kritik of Government and Capitalism

A) Framework: GOVERNMENT-FREE SOCIAL LIBERTY WOULD TRANSCEND OURCURRENT CAPITALIST SLAVERY.

Bakunin, Mikhail, a labor organizer, 1870, The Commune, the Church, and the State, (Bakunins

Writings, 1947)I am a passionate seeker fortruth and just as strong an opponent of the corrupting lies, through

which the party of order this privileged, official, and interested representative of all religions,

philosophical political, legal economical, and social outrage in the past and present has tried to

keep the world in ignorance. I love freedom with all my heart. It is the only condition underwhich the intelligence, the manliness, and happiness of the people, can develop and expand. By

freedom, however, I naturally understand not its mere form, forced down as from above,

measured and controlled by the state, this eternal lie which in reality, is nothing but the

privilege of the few founded upon the slavery of all. Nor do I mean that "individualistic,"

selfish, petty, and mock freedom, which is propagated by J.J. Rousseau and all other schools of

bourgeois liberalism. The mock freedom which is limited by the supposed right of all, and

defended by the state, and leads inevitably to the destruction of the rights of the individual. No:

I mean the only true freedom, that worthy of the name; the liberty which consists therein for

everyone to develop all the material, intellectual, and moral faculties which lie dormant in him;

the liberty which knows and recognizes no limitations beyond those which nature decrees. In this

sense, there are no limitations, for the laws of our own nature are not forced upon us by a law-

giver who, beside or above us, sits on a throne.

B) Links

1) The affirmative plan works through the federal government, a structure of social control.

2) [insert specific link]

C) Implications:

1) STATISM LEADS TO MECHANIZATION AND THE DEATH OF LIBERTY, BEAUTY,

AND SCIENCE.

Goldman 40, Emma, a journalist, 1940, Anarchism (1970), p.40Real wealth consists in things ofutility and beauty, in things that help to create strong, beautiful

bodies, and surroundings inspiring to live in. But if man is doomed to wind cotton around a

spool, or dig coal, or build roads for thirty years of his life, there can be no talk of wealth. What

he gives to the world are only gray and hideous things, reflecting a dull and hideous existence

too weakto live, too cowardly to die. Strange to say, there are people who extol this deadening

method of centralized production as the proudest achievement of our age. They fail utterly to

realize that if we are to continue in machine subserviency, ourslavery is more complete than

was our bondage to the king. They do not want to know that centralization is not only the

deathknell of liberty, but also of health and beauty, of art and science, all these being impossible

in a clocklike, mechanical atmosphere.


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2) HIERARCHICAL SOCIETY DEVOURS NATURE LIKE AN UNTREATED DISEASE.

Bookchin, Murray, president of Goddard College, 1990, Remaking Society, p.15

Finally, liberal environmentalism suffers from a consistent refusal to see that a capitalistic society

based on competition and growth for its own sake must ultimately devour the natural world, justlike an untreated cancer must ultimately devour its host. Personal intentions, be they good or

bad, have little to do with this unrelenting process. An economy that is structured around themaxim, Grow or Die, must necessarily pit itself against the natural world and leave ecological

ruin in its wake as it works its way through the biosphere.

3) GOVERNMENT-BASED SOCIETY EXPLOITS AND DEGRADES THE POOR WE

NEED A COMPLETELY NEW SYSTEM.

Kropotkin, Peter, editor of Le Revolt, 1880, The Spirit of Revolt (within Le Revolt)

Those who long for the triumph of justice, those who would put new ideas into practice, are

soon forced to recognize that the realization of theirgenerous, humanitarian, and regenerating

ideas cannot take place in a society thus constituted; they perceive the necessity of a

revolutionary whirlwind which will sweep away all this rottenness, revive sluggish hearts

with its breath, and bring to mankind that spirit of devotion, self-denial, and heroism, withoutwhich society sinks through degradation and vileness into complete disintegration. In periods

offrenzied haste toward wealth, of feverish speculation and of crisis, of the sudden downfall of

great industries and the ephemeral expansion of other branches of production, of scandalous

fortunes amassed in a few years and dissipated as quickly, it becomes evident that the economicinstitutions which control production and exchange are far from giving to society the prosperity

which they are supposed to guarantee; they produce precisely the opposite result. Instead of

order they bring forth chaos; instead of prosperity, poverty and insecurity; instead of reconciled

interests, war; a perpetual war of the exploiter against the worker, of exploiters and of workers

among themselves.

4) GOVERNMENTS ARE INHERENTLY DESTRUCTIVE AND CAUSE CRIME.

Goldman, Emma, 1940, Anarchism (1970), p.43

The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from

the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law,

stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an

absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the

horrible scourge of its own creation.

5) CAPITALISM AND GOVERNMENTS LEGITIMIZE EVIL AND IMPOVERISHMENT.

Einstein, Albert, 1949, Monthly Review, New YorkThe economic anarchy of capitalist society as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of

the evil. We see before us a huge community of producers, the members of which are unceasinglystriving to deprive each other of the fruits of their collective labor not by force, but on the

whole in faithful compliance with legally established rules. In this respect, it is important to

realize that the means of production that is to say, the entire productive capacity that is needed

for producing consumer goods as well as additional capital goods may legally be, and for the

most part are, the private property of individuals.


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Hierarchy Is Hypocritical

HIERARCHY IS HYPOCRITICAL AND DOOMED TO EXTINCTION.

Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.33The system under which we live checks in its turn the growth of the social sentiment. We all

know that without uprightness, without self-respect, without sympathy, and mutual aid, human

kind must perish, as perish the few races of animals living by rapine, or the slave-keeping ants.

But such ideas are not to the taste of the ruling classes, and they have elaborated a whole system

of pseudo-science to teach the contrary.

Fine sermons have been preached on the text that those who have should share with those who

have not, but he who would carry out this principle would be speedily informed that these

beautiful sentiments are all very well in poetry, but not in practice. To lie is to degrade and

besmirch oneself, we say, and yet all civilized life becomes one huge lie. We accustomourselves and our children to hypocrisy, to the practice of a double-faced morality. And since the

brain is ill at ease among lies, we cheat ourselves with sophistry. Hypocrisy and sophistry

become the second nature of the civilized man.But a society cannot live thus; it must return to truth, orcease to exist.

Hierarchy Mechanizes

CAPITALISM FORCES WORKERS INTO A REPULSIVE AND MECHANIZED

EXISTENCE..

Marx and Engels, Karl and Friedrich , 1848, The Communist Manifesto

Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labor, the work of the proletarians has

lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an

appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easilyacquired knack that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted,

almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for his maintenance, and for the

propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labor, is equal to its

cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage

decreases.

CAPITALISM MECHANIZES HUMANS.

Goldmann, Emma, 1940, The Individual, Society, and the State

One of the insane characteristics of this struggle is the complete negation of the relation of theproducer to the things he produces. The average worker has no inner point of contact with the

industry he is employed in, and he is a stranger to the process of production of which he is amechanical part. Like any other cog of the machine, he is replaceable at any time by other

similardepersonalized human beings.


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HIERARCHY MECHANIZES AND IMPRISONS SOCIETY.

Goldman, Emma, 1940, The Individual, Society, and the State

The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest

crime. The wholesale mechanization of modern life has increased uniformity a thousandfold. It

is everywhere present, in habits, tastes, dress, thoughts and ideas. Its most concentrated dullnessis "public opinion." Few have the courage to stand out against it. He who refuses to submit is at

once labeled "queer," "different," and decried as a disturbing element in the comfortable

stagnancy of modern life. ...

In pre-war time the individual could at least escape national and family boredom.. The whole

world was open to his longings and his quests. Now the world has become a prison, and life

continual solitary confinement.

Classism /Division of Labor Bad

CLASS INEQUITIES OPPRESS THE MASSES, ROBBING THEM OF THE ABILITY TO

AVOID PAINFUL DRUDGERY.

Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.26

In our civilized societies we are rich. Why then are the many poor? Why this painful drudgery

for the masses? Why, even to the best paid workman, this uncertainty for the morrow, in the

midst of all the wealth inherited from the past, and in spite of the powerful means of production,

which could ensure comfort to all, in return for a few hours of daily toil?

The Socialists have said it and repeated it unwearingly. Daily they reiterate it, demonstrating it by

arguments taken from all the sciences. It is because all that is necessary for production the land,

the mines, the highways, machinery, food, shelter, education, knowledge all have been seizedby the few in the course of that long story ofrobbery, enforced migration and wars, ofignorance

and oppression, which has been the life of the human race before it learned to subdue the forces

of Nature. It is because, taking advantage of alleged rights acquired in the past, these fewappropriate today two thirds of the products of human labor, and then squander them in the most

shameful way.

OPPRESSION OF THE MASSES WILL OCCUR SO LONG AS DIVISION OF LABOR

EXISTS.


We understand that all men have but one dream that of emerging from, or enabling their

children to emerge from, this inferior state; to create for themselves an independent position,

which means what? To also live by other mens work!

As long as there will be a class of manual workers and a class of brain workers, black hands

and white hands, it will be thus.


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Capitalism Is As Bad As Feudalism /Monarchy

CAPITALISM IS AS BARBARIC AS FEUDALISM.

Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.31We cry shame on the feudal baron who forbade the peasant to turn a clod of earth unless he

surrendered to his lord a fourth of his crop. We called those barbarous times. But if the forms

have changed, the relations have remained the same, and the worker is forced, under the name of

free contract, to accept feudal obligations. For, turn where he will, he can find no better

conditions. Everything has become private property, and he must accept, ordie of hunger.

The result of this state of things is that all our production tends in a wrong direction. Enterprise

takes no thought for the needs of the community. Its only aim is to increase the gains of the

speculator. Hence the constant fluctuations of trade, the periodical industrial crises, each of which

throws scores of thousands of workers on the streets.

DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENTS ARE JUST AS OPPRESSIVE AS ANY MONARCHY.

Bakunin, Mikhail, 1870, Statism and Anarchy

The essential difference between a monarchy and a democratic republic is reduced to the

following: In a monarchy, the bureaucratic world oppresses and plunders the people for the

greater benefit of the privileged propertied classes as well as for its own benefit, and all that is

done in the name of the monarch; in a republic, the same bureaucracy does exactly the same

thing, but in the name of the will of the people.

Hierarchy Hurts Workers

CAPITALISM NEVER HELPS WORKERS IT LEADS TO SEXISM, RACISM, AND

EXPLOITATION.

MacSimin, Alan, a mine labor reformer, 1993, Workers Solidarity, No.38

Anyone who talks about 'social partnership', about labor and capital working together for the

benefit of all is talking nonsense. What rights we have and gains we have made have been the

result of long and often bitter struggles. The bosses only give such rights and concessions as

they are forced to. In times of recession, such as now, they try to make workers pay through job

losses, cuts in real wages, cuts in public spending, productivity deals, etc. for the crisis that is aperiodic and inevitable product of capitalism.

Although capitalism oppresses people on many different levels, race and sex to name but two; it

is the exploitation of our labor that is fundamental to the system. It is on this front that the fight

for a new society will be won or lost. If we can reclaim that aspect of our lives, the system can be

overturned and replaced with something much better.


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THE WAGE SYSTEM DENIES WORKERS THE NECESSITIES OF LIFE.

Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.84We must offer to the peasant in exchange for his toil not worthless paper-money, but the

manufactured articles of which he stands in immediate need. He lacks the proper implements totill the land, clothes to protect him properly from the inclemencies of the weather, lamps and oil

to replace his miserable rushlight or tallow dip, spades, rakes, ploughs. All these things, under

present conditions, the peasant is forced to do without, not because he does not feel the need for

them, but because, in his life ofstruggle and privation, a thousand useful things are beyond his

reach; because he has no money to buy them.

Governments Exploit

GOVERNMENT IS THE NEGATION OF HUMANITY THE OPPOSITE OF

FREEDOM AND JUSTICE AND THE CAUSE OF WAR.

Bakunin, Michael, 1870, The German Crisis

Whosoever mentions the State, implies force, oppression, exploitation, injustice all these

brought together as a system are the main condition of present-day society. The State has never

had, and never can have, a morality. Its only morality and justice is its own interest, its existence,

and its omnipotence at any price; and before its interest, all interest of humanity must stand in

the back-ground. The State is the negation of Humanity. It is this in two ways: the opposite ofhuman freedom and human justice (internally), as well as the forcible disruption of the

common solidarity of mankind (externally).The Universal State, repeatedly attempted, hasalways proved an impossibility, so that as long as the State exists, States will exist and since

every State regards itself as absolute, and proclaims the adoration of its power as the highest law,

to which all other laws must be subordinated, it therefore follows that as long as States exist wars

cannot cease. Every State must conquer, or be conquered.

CAPITALISM IS THE SOURCE OF ALL OF OUR SOCIAL EVILS AND

EXPLOITATION.


Indeed, capitalism completely incarnates Bakunins notion of evil without the qualification

that it is socially necessary. Beyond the capitalist system there are no further turning points in

history. Capitalism marks the end of the road for a long social development in which evil

permeated the good and irrationality permeated the rational. Capitalism, in effect, constitutes the

point ofabsolute negativity for society and the natural world. One cannot improve this socialorder, reform it, or remake it on its own terms with an ecological prefix such as eco-capitalism.

The only choice one has is to destroy it, for it embodies everysocial disease from patriarchalvalues, class exploitation, and statism to avarice, militarism, and now, growth for the sake of

growth that has afflicted civilization and tainted all its great advances.


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GOVERNMENTS DO NOT FOSTER JUSTICE THEY DEHUMANIZINGLY COERCE.

Thoreau, Henry David, 1849, Civil DisobedienceIt is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation

which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said, that acorporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with aconscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect to it, even the

well-disposed are daily made agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue

respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-

monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills,

ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and

produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which

they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? Or small

movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power.

Governments Exploit/Coerce GOVERNMENTS CANNOT AVOID POVERTY AND EXPLOITATION.


Poverty, we have said elsewhere, was the primary cause of wealth. It was poverty that created the

first capitalist; because, before accumulating surplus value, of which we hear so much, men had

to be sufficiently destitute to consent to sell their labour, so as not to die of hunger. It was

poverty that made capitalists. And if the number of then poor increased so rapidly during the

Middle Ages, it was due to the invasions and wars that followed the founding of States, and to

the increase of riches resulting from the exploitation of the East. These two causes tore asunder

the bonds that kept men together in the agrarian and urban communities, and taught them to

proclaim the principle ofwages, so dear to the exploiters, instead of the solidarity they formerlypractised in their tribal life.

GOVERNMENTS COERCE AND DOMINATE, DESTROYING SOCIETY.

Carter, April, a professor of political science, 1971, The Political Theory of Anarchism, p.25

But for anarchists and many socialists, society becomes the opposite of the State. Society is the

repository of all the good aspects of social life and organization co-operation, sympathy,

affection, initiative, and spontaneity, while the State incorporates all the bad aspects of social

interaction coercion, force, and domination; and politics tends to be seen as the arena of force,

fraud, and trickery. The state is an incubus upon society a distorting factor.


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WE MUST NOT BE COERCED BY GOVERNMENTS THEY DONT WORK FOR THE

GOOD OF THE PEOPLE.

Thoreau, Henry David, 1849, Civil DisobedienceThus the State never intentionally confronts a mans sense, intellectual or moral, but only his

body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength.I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.

What force has a multitude? They can only force me who obey a higher law than I. They force me

to become like themselves. I do not hear ofmen beingforcedto live this way or that by masses of

men. What sort of life were that to live? When I meet a government which says to me, Your

money or your life, why should I be in haste to give it my money? It may be in a great strait, and

not know what to do: I cannot help that. It must help itself; do as I do.

Governments Kill Liberty

GOVERNMENTS ARE INHERENTLY VIOLENT AND OPPRESSING.

Bakunin, Michael, 1870, The German Crisis

To strive forinternational justice, liberty, and perpetual peace, and at the same time to uphold

the State, is contradictory and naive. It is impossible to alter the nature of the State, because it is

just this nature that constitutes the State; and States cannot change their nature without ceasing to

exist. It thus follows that there cannot be a good, just, virtuous State. All States are bad in that

sense, that they, by their nature, by their principle, by their very foundation and the highest ideal

of their existence, are the opponents of human liberty, morality, and justice.

ULTIMATE FREEDOM CAN BE ATTAINED ONLY WHEN THE STATE IS

DESTROYED.

Carter, April, a professor at Somerville, 1978, Nomos XIX: Anarchism, p.323There are well-known difficulties in defining freedom, but it is reasonable to start from the basic

assumption that an individuals freedom depends on the absence of immediate and hurtful

physical constraints and of extreme sanctions: an individual is freer out of jail than in it, freerwithout the constant threat ofarrest and torture, and freer if he is not in fear for his life. Thus

freedom in general increases the more the powers of violence wielded by the state against the

individual are restricted, and the more the use of these powers is restricted. Anarchists, instead of

looking to the rule of law to maximize personal freedom, look to the total abolition of the organs

of state violence.

GOVERNMENTS UNNECESSARILY DESTROY LIBERTY AND FREEDOM.

Hocking, William, of Harvard, 1970, Anarchism, p.120First of them is the restriction of liberty; and liberty, in the anarchists ideal, is the chief of all

political goods. If liberty is the chief political good, then no sacrifice of it for any other good can

be other than a bad bargain.

Society stands to lose by every diminution of general freedom; for it runs the risk of checking its

most original, and therefore most priceless, developments. Though not every divergent genius is aprophet, the prophets are bound to be among the divergent and intractable. Yet it is not in the

name of the social welfare that the anarchist primarily pleads his cause. It is in the name of the

individuals own destiny and right.


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Governments Kill Liberty

GOVERNMENT, OR A CONTROLLING SOCIAL STRUCTURE IS THE DEVIL OF

HISTORY.

Bakunin, Mikhail, 1870, Protestation of the Alliance

The instinct to command others, in its primitive essence, is a carnivorous, altogetherbestial, and

savage instinct. Under the influence of the mental development of man, it takes on a somewhat

more ideal form and becomes somewhat ennobled, presenting itself as the instrument of reason

and the devoted servant of that abstraction, or political fiction, which is called the public good.But in its essence it remains just as baneful, and it becomes even more so when, with the

application of science, it extends its scope and intensifies the power of its action. If there is a

devil in history, it is this power principle.

CAPITALISM TYRANNICALLY CONTROLS.

Chomsky, Noam, a linguist and policy analyst, 1995, interview with Kevin Doyle,

http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/rbr/noamrbr2.html

What is called 'capitalism' is basically a system of corporate mercantilism, with huge and

largely unaccountable private tyrannies exercising vast control over the economy, political

systems, and social and cultural life, operating in close co-operation with powerful states that

intervene massively in the domestic economy and international society. That is dramatically true

of the United States, contrary to much illusion. The rich and privileged are no more willing to

face market discipline than they have been in the past, though they consider it just fine for thegeneral population.

Governments Kill Humanity

GOVERNMENTS MECHANIZE HUMANS, CAUSING EVIL.

Thoreau, Henry David, 1849, Civil Disobedience

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies.They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most

cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement or of the moral sense; but they put

themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be

manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of

straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as

these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others as most legislators, politicians,

lawyers, ministers, and office-holders serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they

rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the Devil, without intending it, as

God.

TRULY HUMAN COMMUNITIES CANNOT DEVELOP UNDER GOVERNMENTS.

Bakunin, Mikhail, Letters To A Frenchman

Collectivism can be imposed only upon slaves and then collectivism becomes the negation of

humanity. Among a free people collectivism can come about only in the natural course of things,

by force of circumstances: not by imposing it from above, but by a spontaneous movement from

below, which springs forth freely and necessarily when the conditions of privileged individualism


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State politics, the codes of civil and criminal law, the juridical family and inheritance rights

have been swept away by the Revolution.

GOVERNMENTS ARE HIDEOUS MONSTERS WHICH CONSUME HUMANITY.

Goldman, Emma, 1940, The Individual, Society, and the StateFriedrich Nietzsche called the State a cold monster. What would he have called the hideous

beast in the garb of modern dictatorship? Not that government had ever allowed much scope tothe individual; but the champions of the new State ideology do not grant even that much. "The

individual is nothing," they declare, "it is the collectivity which counts." Nothing less than the

complete surrender of the individual will satisfy the insatiable appetite of the new deity.

Governments Kill Humanity

CAPITALISM PRODUCES INNUMERABLE SOCIAL ILLS, THREATENING

HUMANITY.

Kothari, Rajni, of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, April 1997, Alternatives,

p.233It is a model of global integration built on all-round splintering and polarizing, producing

destruction and annihilation not through wars and military machines but through starvation,

pestilence, crime, social erosion, and loneliness, growing trade in juvenile and gender-based

populations, drugs, violence, and free-trade in guns and bombs, urban collapse and unexpected

deaths caused by ever more hazardous industries and energy use. Much of the price of all this is

paid by the already unprotected, the insecure and vulnerable, the poor, the minorities, the

refugees, and the least secure of all, women and children. If it is a global order that is being

envisaged, it is a global order built on the social erosion of diverse civil societies and shunting to

the margins of existence ideas of individual freedom and primary bonds, of the pride and dignity

that comes from belonging to a clan or a community, a caste or a tribal ancestry. This is what

capitalist development and the forced urbanization and migration and displacement that are

entailed in it will produce, indeed is producing.

GOVERNMENTS ARE OPPOSED TO THE BASIC HUMAN VALUES.

Wolff, Robert Paul, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, 1970, In defense of

Anarchism

The defining mark of the state is authority, the right to rule. The primary obligation of man is

autonomy, the refusal to be ruled. It would seem, then, that there can be no resolution of the

conflict between the autonomy of the individual and the putative authority of the state. Insofar as

a man fulfills his obligation to make himself the authors of his decisions, he will resist the states

claim to have authority over him. That is to say, he will deny that he has a duty to obey the laws

of the state simply because they are the laws. In that sense, it would seem that anarchism is the

only political doctrine consistent with the virtue of autonomy.


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THE INJUSTICE OF LAWS AND GOVERNMENT TURN OUR LIVES INTO A

DELUSIONAL HELL.

Thoreau, Henry David, 1854, Slavery In MassachuesettsAt last it occurred to me that what I had lost was a country. I had never respected the government

near to which I lived, but I had foolishly thought that I might manage to live here, minding myprivate affairs, and forget it. For my part, my old and worthiest pursuits have lost I cannot say

how much of their attraction, and I feel that my investment in life here is worth many per cent

less since Massachusetts last deliberately sent back an innocent man, Anthony Burns, to slavery. I

dwelt before, perhaps, in the illusion that my life passed somewhere only between heaven andhell, but now I cannot persuade myself that I do not dwell wholly within hell. The site of thatpolitical organization called Massachusetts is to me morally covered with volcanic scoriae and

cinders, such as Milton describes in the infernal regions. If there is any hell more unprincipled

than our rulers, and we, the ruled, I feel curious to see it. ...

I feel that, to some extent, the State has fatally interfered with my lawful business. It has not

only interrupted me in my passage through Court Street on errands of trade, but it has

interrupted me and every man on his onward and upward path, on which he had trusted soon to

leave Court Street far behind. What right had it to remind me of Court Street? I have found thathollow which even I had relied on for solid.

Governments Kill Equality

GOVERNMENTS DESTROY EQUALITY WITH BRUTAL DOMINATION.

Bakunin, Mikhail, 1870, World Revolutionary Alliance of Social DemocracyEquality of political rights, or a democratic State, constitute in themselves the most glaring

contradiction in terms. The State, or political right, denotes force, authority, predominance; it

presupposes inequality in fact. Where all rule, there are no more ruled, and there is no State.

Governments Cause Crime

GOVERNMENT-CAUSED SOCIAL HIERARCHY LEADS TO CRIME.


Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political,

social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels; so long as most

people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime

will be inevitable, and all the laws on the statutes can only increase, but never do away with

crime. What does society, as it exists today, know of the process of despair, the poverty, the

horrors, the fearful struggle the human soul must pass on its way to crime and degradation?

GOVERNMENTS ARE THE CAUSE OF CRIME.

Hocking, William, of Harvard, 1970, Anarchism, p.121

For however worthy of obedience the law may be, governments, seduced by force-using, seldom

are; and the disaffection from rulers extends to the law behind them. There is an element ofarrogance in their wielding of principles more sacred than themselves; and if they insist on being

inseparable from the law, the resentment due to them will not be withheld because it strikes the

law also. Law which allies itself with force begets lawlessness.


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Governments Kill Independence

GOVERNMENT ACTION CREATES COMPLETE DEPENDENCY.

Taylor, Michael, a professor at the University of Washington, 1987, The Possibility of

Cooperation, p.168Men who live for long under government and its bureaucracy, courts, and police, come to rely

upon them. They find it easier to use the state for the settlement of their disputes and for theprovision of public goods, instead of arranging these things for themselves, even where the

disputes and the publics for which the goods are to be provided, are quite local. In this way, the

state mediates between individuals; they come to deal with each other through the courts, through

the tax collector, and the bureaucracies which spend the taxes.

Capitalism Causes Nuclear Extermination

CAPITALISM CAUSES WARS AND RISKS NUCLEAR EXTERMINATION.

Leight, Samuel, a professor at the University of Arizona, 1984, The Futility of Reformism, p.31Second, the cause of war is inherent in capitalism this is a chronic condition that is both

irremovable and incurable as long as the system survives. Given a society organized as a gigantic

market place, wars will continue to be fought over private property and related issues when

diplomacy and negotiations fail. The big question is: will the small wars continue on daily

basis, as they have for decades, or will they be interrupted by a worldwide nuclear disaster?

Hierarchy Kills Nature

HIERARCHY RISKS ECOLOGICAL EXTINCTIONS.

Bookchin, Murray, president of Goddard College, 1994, Reflecting On Nature (ed. Gruen andJamieson), p.123

Our present society has a definite hierarchical character. It is a propertied society that

concentrates economic power in corporate elites. It is a bureaucratic and militaristic society that

concentrates political and military power in centralized state institutions. It is a patriarchal society

that allocates authority to men in varying degrees. And it is a racist society that places a minority

of whites in a self-deceptive sovereignty over a vast worldwide majority of peoples of color.

While it is theoretically possible that a hierarchical society can biologically sustain itself, at least

for a time, through draconian environmentalist controls, it is absolutely inconceivable that

present-day hierarchical and particularly capitalist society could establish a non-domineering and

ethnically symbiotic relationship between itself and the natural world. As long as hierarchypersists, as long as domination organizes humanity around a system of elites, the project of

dominating nature will remain a predominant ideology and inevitably lead our planet to the brink,if not into the abyss, ofecological extinction.


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HIERARCHY IS INHERENTLY DESTRUCTIVE TO ALL LIFE.

Bookchin, Murray, president of Goddard College, 1994, Reflecting On Nature (ed. Gruen and

Jamieson), p.124

Capitalist society, whether in Western corporate or Eastern bureaucratic forms, is fundamentally

destructive. The power of this society to destroy has reached a scale unprecedented in the history

of humanity and this power is being used, almost systematically, to wreak havoc upon theentire world of life and its material bases. In nearly every region, air is being befouled,

waterways polluted, soil washed away, the land desiccated, and wildlife destroyed. Coastal areas

and even the depths of the sea are not immune to widespread pollution. More significantly in the

long run, basic biological cycles such as the carbon cycle and nitrogen cycle, upon which all

living things depend for the maintenance and renewal of life, are being distorted to the point of

irreversible damage.

OPPRESSION OF HUMANS MUST CEASE BEFORE WE CAN STOP OPPRESSION OF

NATURE.


Whatever has turned human beings into aliens in nature are social changes that have mademany human beings aliens in their own social world: the domination of the young by the old, of

women by men, and of men by men. Today, as for many centuries in the past, there are still

oppressive human beings who literally own society and others who are owned by it. Until society

can be reclaimed by an undivided humanity that will use its collective wisdom, culturalachievements, technological innovations, scientific knowledge, and innate creativity for its own

benefit and for that of the natural world, all ecological problems will have their roots in social

problems.

Hierarchy Kills Nature

THE CAPITALIST-BASED ECOLOGICAL CRISIS THREATENS SURVIVAL.

The Monthly Review, November 1997, Joel Kovel, p.6

The ecological crisis is defined by the brutal fact that the normal course of social production

inexorably destroys the natural basis of society. Until as recently as the 1960s nature was able to

buffer the effects of production. Now this function is breaking down in a proliferating and

incalculable way across multiple ecosystems. Climate change, species loss, disease, depletion of

soils and groundwater, intoxication by pollutants... the list can be extended, but its message is

clear and harrowing: survival depends upon coming to grips with what is wrong at the

mainspring of our civilization.

CAPITALISM KILLS BEAUTY, THE EXISTENCE OF NATURE, AND THE HUMAN

SPECIES.

The Monthly Review, November 1997, Joel Kovel, p.12Wherever capital has its way, the ecological principles that underlie the emergence and flowering

of life, beauty, and consciousness are broken down through the intrusion of the commodity

form. Quality is replaced by quantity; differentiation and balance are replaced by brutal

expansion; and the fruits of billions of years of evolution are transformed into cash. And as

ecosystem damage grows and interacts upon itself, the survivability of the species is itself

thrown into doubt.


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CAPITALISM DRIVES ALL FORCES WHICH DESTROY NATURE.


It is capital that conditions and drives separate determinations in an ecologically destructive way,

and so becomes the efficient cause of the crisis. Development or industrialization, as such, is anempty construct. But development or industrialization under capitalist aegis, in which capitalist

corporations, markets, lifestyles, even psychologies and character structure, all interact, is whatdestabilizes ecosystems all over the planet.

AT: Anarchy Would Harm the Wealthy

1) Extend- Bakunin in 1870: Government-free society would help everyone.

2) CLASSISM CRIPPLES BOTH THE RICH AND THE POOR.


We know the consequences of the division of labour full well. It is evident that, first of all, we aredivided into two classes: on the one hand, producers, who consume very little and are exempt

from thinking because they only do physical work, and who work badly because their brains

remain inactive; and on the other hand, the consumers, who, producing little or hardly anything,

have the privilege of thinking for the others, and who think badly because the whole world of

those who toil with their hands is unknown to them.

3) We must not allow a minority of the people to benefit from the suffering of the majority.

4) Todays upper-class could continue to live excellent lives they would just have to work for it,

rather than exploiting the labor of others.

Governments Dont Represent the People

GOVERNMENTS FAIL TO REPRESENT THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE.


I heartily accept the motto, That government is best which governs least; and I should like tosee it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which

also I believe, That government is best which governs not at all; and when men are prepared

for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an

expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient.

The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty,

and deserve to prevail, may also be brought up against a standing government. The governmentitself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable

to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it.


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GOVERNMENTS OPPRESSIVELY IGNORE THE NEEDS OF SOCIETY.

Hoffman, Robert, a professor of history, 1970, Anarchism, p.8

The reasons for this conviction are many; most are summed up in the notion that the State, no

matter how constituted, is alien from most or all of the society it governs. It can not be theembodiment of the citizenry, but is instead an institution with needs, views, and the goals peculiar

to itself. Rather than expressing and enacting the needs and wishes of societys members, theState has a life of its own, and serves society as it sees, imposing its will on a largely helpless

and often resentful population, and prevailing over it only through compulsion.

A FREE SOCIETY CAN ONLY BE CONSTRUCTED FROM THE BOTTOM UP.

Bakunin, Michael, The Commune, the Church, and the State

he organization of the society of the future must and can be accomplished only from the bottom

upwards, through the free federation and union of the workers into groups, unions, and societies,

which will unite again into districts, communes, national communes, and finally form a great

international federation. Only thus can be evolved the true vital order of liberty and happiness

for all, the order which is not opposed to the interests of the individual or of society, but on the

contrary strengthens the same and brings them into harmony.

AT: Humans Are Naturally Competitive /No Cooperation

1) THE IDEA THAT IT IS HUMAN NATURE TO STRIVE FOR POWER IS FLAWED AND

SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED.

Dixon, Keith, of Simon Fraser University, 1986, Freedom and Equality, p.72

What most of us take to be natural, aint necessarily so! We may feel that incentives and

rewards are necessary to sustain an efficient level of work; that men will necessarily strive for

power and status and that human wants are limitless. But these assumptions may be socially

derived. Were we to live in a culture where cooperation and not competition were the norm ourconception of human nature might be fundamentally different.

2) People compete now because they have been taught to do so. The new society would teachdifferent ideals.

3) HUMANS COOPERATE TODAY WITHOUT GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION.


Accustomed as we are by hereditary prejudices and our unsound education and training to

represent ourselves the beneficial hand of Government, legislation and magistracy everywhere,

we have come to believe that man would tear his fellow-man to pieces like a wild beast the day

the police took his eye off him; that absolute chaos would come about if authority wereoverthrown during a revolution. And with our eyes shut we pass by thousands and thousands of

human groupings which form themselves freely, without any intervention of the law, and attain

results infinitely superior to those achieved under governmental tutelage.

4) This is an utterly pessimistic view of humanity. If you believe that people can never worktogether, theres no reason for wanting to live.


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AT: Humans Are Naturally Competitive /No Cooperation

5) COMMUNALISM WORKED UNTIL IT WAS CRUSHED BY THE INEQUITIES OF

GOVERNMENTS.

Kropotkin, Peter, 1913, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.17One of the current objections to Communism and Socialism altogether, is that the idea is so old,

and yet it has never been realized. Schemes of ideal States haunted the thinkers of AncientGreece; later on, the early Christians joined in communist groups; centuries later, large

communist brotherhoods came into existence during the Reform movement. ...

At first sight, this objection seems very serious. However, the moment we consider human history

more attentively, it loses its strength. We see, first, that hundreds of millions of men havesucceeded in maintaining amongst themselves, in their village communities, for many hundreds

of years, one of the main elements of Socialism the common ownership of the chief instrument

of production, the land, and the appointment of the same according to the labor capacities of the

different families; and we learn that if the communal possession of the land has been destroyed in

Western Europe, it was not from within, but from without, by the governments which created a

land monopoly in favor of the nobility and the middle classes.

6) The affirmative team insists that cooperation is impossible, yet you can see multiple examples

of it in this debate round. All four debaters have agreed to work alongside their partners and you

have agreed to judge the round.

AT: We Can Reform the System

1) CAPITALISM CAUSES MERE REFORMS TO INTENSIFY PROBLEMS AND CREATE

DICTATORSHIPS.

Leight, Samuel, a professor at the University of Arizona, 1984, The Futility of Reformism, p.6

Reforms never live up to their expectations because the very nature of capitalism invariably

sabotages the performance of the reformers. Even when certain problems get resolved they are

replaced with new ones, generally of an equal or greater magnitude. Apart from the wasted

energy and time that reformism engenders, the danger of such activity lies in the inevitable

apathy and disillusionment that arises in the aftermath. These are the breeding grounds for

dictatorial regimes.

2) Extend- Kropotkin in 1880: Hierarchy is inherently destructive. We need a completely new

system.


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3) ITS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE TO DEMAND REFORM FROM THE GOVERNMENT

INDIVIDUALS MUST ACT AGAINST OPPRESSION.


The broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it. Theslight reproach to which the virtue of patriotism is commonly liable, the noble are most likely to

incur. Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield toit their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so

frequently the most serious obstacles to reform. Some are petitioning the state to dissolve the

Union, to disregard the requisitions of the President. Why do they not dissolve it themselves,

the union between themselves and the state, and refuse to pay their quota into its treasury?

4) CAPITALISM DESTABILIZES NATURE IN WAYS THAT CANNOT BE CURED BY

MERE REFORMS.


So long as the money nexus is the expression of capital, the actual, concrete limits of nature will

continue to be brushed aside. For as long as capitalism endures, it tends to reign; and as long as it

reigns it extends itself, and as long as it extends itself it tends to destabilize ecologies bydegrading the conditions of production in the hunt for surplus value. Thus the regime of capital

leads inexorably to an ecological crisis that cannot be resolved within the terms of capital.

5) Reform-based policy has been tried since the birth of hierarchy and hasnt worked yet. Wehave to try something new.

AT: We Can Reform the System

6) WE MUST HAVE COMMUNAL LIVING NOW MERE REFORMS ONLY HINDERS

THE PROCESS.


The deluge of propaganda surrounding the reformist administration of capitalism produces the

distractions, confusions and purposeful misrepresentations that have so drastically hampered the

presentation of the socialist case. We are always being advised that socialism is for the distant

future and that immediate needs must receive attention. Quite the contrary the highest, most

urgent, immediate need of the working class is the establishment of socialism within the shortest

possible time.


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AT: Some Are Oppressed For the Good of the Whole

1) ANY GOVERNMENT OPPRESSION IS WRONG WE MUST ADVANCE TO THE

NEXT STAGE OF FREEDOM.

Thoreau, Henry David, 1849, Civil DisobedienceThe authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit to, for I will cheerfully obey

those who know and can do better than I, and in many things even those who neither know norcan do so well, is still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of

the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it. The

progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a limited

democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual. Even the Chinese philosopherwas wise enough to regard the individual as the basis of the empire. Is a democracy, such as we

know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further

towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man?

2) Government-free society would allow everyone to be happy while oppressing none.

3) THE ADVANTAGES OF CAPITALISM ARE NOTHING COMPARED TO THOSE OF

HIERARCHY-FREE SOCIETY.


Life for the working class under capitalism, past and present, cannot be compared favorably with

the social benefits of a classless society in socialism which will convey to all common ownership

rights to the means of production and distribution, and democratic privileges that no reformation

of capitalism can ever attain. Attempting to make the working class better off is no match forthe advantages of socialism; and the wages system, irrespective of wage levels, should justifiably

be rejected when compared to free access to all goods and services for all human beings.

4) Exploitation is never justified. We must not sacrifice any more lives.

AT: Anarchy Oppresses the Rich

1) A government-free society would not eliminate any rights. It would just stop the privileged

from exploiting others. Exploitation is not a natural right.

2) By destroying hierarchy, we abolish the source of all oppression. In a totally-free society like

ours, it would be impossible for coercion to occur.

3) What the affirmative team sees as oppression, we see as a return of rights to the disadvantaged.

Their view is comparable to saying that abolition of slavery oppressed slave owners are taking

away their property.


19/33

Hierarchy-Free Society Saves Nature

HIERARCHY-FREE SOCIETY WOULD HARMONIZE HUMANS AND NATURE AND

FOSTER BEAUTY.

Bookchin, Murray, president of Goddard College, 1990, Remaking Society, p.17I submit that we must go beyond the superficial layer of ideas created by biocentricity,

antihumanism, Malthusianism, and deep ecology at one extreme, and the belief in growth,competition, human supremacy, and social power at the other extreme. We must look at the

socialfactors that have created both of these extremes in their many different forms and answerkey questions about the human condition if we are to harmonize humanitys relationship with

nature.What, after all, is human society when we try to view it from an ecological perspective? A

Curse? An unmitigated blessing? A Device for coping with material needs? Or, dare I say,

a productof natural evolution as well as culture that not only meets a wide variety of humanneeds, but, potentially at least, can play a major role in fostering the evolution of life on the

planet.

DEPRIVATIZATION IS ESSENTIAL FOR HUMAN AND ECOLOGICAL SURVIVAL.

Hayward, Tim, of the University of Glasmorgan, 1994, Ecological Thought, p.189

This claim was already forcefully advanced in Murray Bookchins seminal writings of the 1960s

which argue that ecological and anarchist principles are mutually reinforcing. Bookchin believes

there is not hierarchy in nature and that a society free of hierarchy is a precondition for putting

ecological principles into practice; decentralization is therefore not only desirable but even

necessary for human survival.

AN END TO HIERARCHY WOULD BRING HUMANITY INTO PEACE WITH NATURE

AND ITSELF.

Bookchin, Murray, president of Goddard College, 1995, Re-Enchanting Humanity, p.32

Social life, far from being divided from or placed in opposition to the natural world, would then

be rationally integrated with first nature as a self-conscious dimension of a new, creative, richly

differentiated, and meaningful whole. These goals, rooted in the still-unfinished Enlightenment,

constitute a vision and passion that takes full note of humanitys singularity and potential ability

to ultimately create ecosocial institutions institutions that will bring human beings into

harmony with one another and humanity into harmony with the natural world.


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Anarchy Gives Plenty For All

HIERARCHY-FREE SOCIETY WOULD PROVIDE PLENTY FOR ALL.


No, plenty for all is not a dream though it was a dream indeed in those days when man, for allhis pains, could hardly win a few bushels of wheat from an acre of land, and had to fashion by

hand all the implements he used in agriculture and industry. Now it is no longer a dream, becauseman has invented a motor which, with a little iron and a few sacks of coal, gives him mastery of a

creature strong and docile as a horse, and capable of setting the most complicated machinery in

motion.

But if plenty for all is to become a reality, this immense capital cities, houses, pastures, arablelands, factories, highways, education must cease to be regarded as private property, for the

monopolist to dispose of at his pleasure.

This rich endowment, painfully won, builded, fashioned, or invented by our ancestors, must

become common property, so that the collective interests of men may gain from it the greatest

good for all.

There must be expropriation. The well-being of all the end; expropriation the means.

HIERARCHY-FREE SOCIETY WOULD PROVIDE EVERYONE WITH BOTH FOOD

AND LUXURIES.


We see that the worker, compelled to struggle painfully for bare existence, is reduced to ignore

the higher delights, the highest within mans reach, of science, and especially of scientific

discovery; of art, and especially of artistic creation. It is in order to obtain for all of us joys thatare now reserved to a few; in order to give leisure and the possibility of developing everyones

intellectual capacities, that the social revolution must guarantee daily bread for all. After bread

has been secured, leisure is the supreme aim.

No doubt, nowadays, when hundreds and thousands of human beings are in need of bread, coal,clothing, and shelter, luxury is a crime; to satisfy it, the workers child must go without bread!

But in a society in which all have the necessary food and shelter, the needs which we consider

luxuries today will be more keenly felt.

Anarchy Gives Plenty For All


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ELIMINATION OF HIERARCHY WOULD FREE WORKERS FROM MISERY, GIVING

THEM THE LUXURIES OF HUMANITY.


What interest, in fact, can this depressing work have for the worker, when he knows that the fateawaiting him from the cradle to the grave will be to live in mediocrity, poverty, and insecurity of

the morrow? Therefore, when we see the immense majority of men take up theirwretched taskevery morning, we feel surprised at their perseverance, at their zeal for work, at the habit that

enables them, like machines blindly obeying an impetus given, to lead this life of misery

without hope for the morrow; without foreseeing ever so vaguely that some day they, or at least

their children, will be part of a humanity rich in all the treasures of a bountiful nature, in all the

enjoyments of knowledge, scientific and artistic creation, reserved today to a few privileged

favourites.

It is precisely to put an end to this separation between manual and brain work that we want to

abolish wagedom, that we want the Social Revolution. Then work will no longer appear a curse

of fate: it will become what it should be the free exercise ofallthe faculties of man.

Anarchy Frees

HIERARCHY-FREE SOCIETIES PROMOTE INDIVIDUAL AUTONOMY AND

LIBERTY.


Freedom, expansion, opportunity, and, above all, peace and repose, alone can teach us the real

dominant factors of human nature and all its wonderful possibilities.

Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion ofreligion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the

shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free

grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will

guarantee to every human being free access of the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities oflife, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations.

A HIERARCHY-FREE SOCIETY WOULD PRODUCE HAPPINESS, LIBERTY, AND

JOY.


For the day on which old institutions will fall under the proletarian axe, voices will cry out:

Bread, shelter, ease for all! And those voices will be listened to; the people will say: Let us

begin by allaying our thirst for life, for happiness, for liberty, that we have never quenched. And

when we shall have tasted of this joy, we will set to work to demolish the last vestiges of middle-

class rule: its mine and yours institutions. In demolishing we shall build, as Proudhon said;

and we shall build in the name of Communism and Anarchy.


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ANARCHISM ALONE FORWARDS TRUE HUMANITY AND FREEDOM.


Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings man the consciousness of himself; which

maintains that God, the State, and society are nonexistent, that their promises are null and void,since they can be fulfilled only through mans subordination. Anarchism is therefore the teacher

of the unity of life; not merely in nature, but in man. There is no conflict between the individualand the social instincts, any more than there is between the heart and the lungs: the one the

receptacle of a precious life essence, the other the repository of the element that keeps the essence

pure and strong. The individual is the heart of society, conserving the essence of social life;

society is the lungs which are distributing the element to keep the life essence that is, the

individual pure and strong.

Anarchy Frees

IN A HIERARCHY-FREE SOCIETY EQUALITY WOULD REIGN.


So Utopian are we that we go the length of believing that the Revolution can and ought to assure

shelter, food, and clothes to all an idea extremely displeasing to middle-class citizens, whatever

their party colour, for they are quite alive to the fact that it is not easy to keep the upper hand of a

people whose hunger is satisfied.

All the same, we maintain our contention: bread must be found for the people of the Revolution,

and the question of bread must take precedence of all other questions. If it is settled in the

interests of the people, the Revolution will be on the right road; for in solving the question of

Bread we must accept the principle ofequality, which will force itself upon us to the exclusion of

every other solution.

A SOCIETY WITHOUT GOVERNMENT WOULD GRANT THE ONLY TRUE

FREEDOM.

Wolff, Robert, 1976, In Defense of Anarchism, p.81

The argument runs thus: men cannot be free so long as they are subject to the will of others,

whether one man or several. But if men rule themselves, if they are both law-givers and law-

obeyers, then they can combine the benefits of government with the blessings of freedom. Rule

for the people is merely benevolent slavery, but rule by the people is true freedom.

Anarchy Grants Independence

WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, HUMANITY WOULD BE INDEPENDENT AND FREE.


In destroying government and statutory laws, anarchism proposes to rescue the self-respect andindependence of the individual from all restraint and invasion by authority. Only in freedom can

man grow to his full stature. Only in freedom will he learn to think and move, and give the very

best in him. Only in freedom will he realize the true force of the social bonds which knit men

together, and which are the true foundation of a normal social life.


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Anarchy Solves For Crime

GOVERNMENT-FREE SOCIETY WOULD ELIMINATE CRIME.

Rothbard, Murray, an economist, 1978, Nomos XIX: Anarchism, p.193

I assume with most observers that mankind is a mixture of good and evil, of cooperation andcriminal tendencies. In my view, the anarchist society is one which maximizes the tendencies for

the good and the cooperative, while it minimizes both the opportunity and the moral legitimacy ofthe evil and the criminal. If the anarchist view is correct and the state is indeed the great legalized

and socially legitimated channel for all manner of anti-social crime theft, oppression, mass

murder on a massive scale, then surely abolition of such an engine of crime can do nothing but

favor the good in man and discourage the bad.

GOVERNMENT-FREE SOCIETY IS THE BEST ANSWER TO CRIME.

Carter, April, a professor of political science, 1971, The Political Theory of Anarchism, p.40

Where the level of violent crimes is exceptionally high, or gangsterism particularly well

entrenched, the anarchist case for abolishing the police may be most persuasive. In the United

States, for example, an official Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence has

stressed that poverty is the main cause of the crime rate, and urged the need to completely rebuild

American cities. Nor does the existence of a police force sufficiently reassure the large number of

householders who fear to walk outdoors at night, or have invested in their own guns a truly

Hobbesian picture.

AT: Cant Reject Capitalism

1) We have to at least try to undo our mistakes. There are still vestiges of free humanityremaining. These could be expanded.

2) WE CAN REJECT CAPITALISM AND SAVE OURSELVES.


Therefore capitalism must go if we are to survive as a civilization and, indeed, a species; and allpartial measures and reforms should be taken in the spirit of bringing about capitals downfall.

Nothing could seem more daunting than this, indeed, in the current balance of forces, it seems

inconceivable. Therefore the first job must be to conceive it as a possibility, and not to succumb

passively to the given situation. Capital expresses no law of nature; it has been the result of

choice, and there is no essential reason to assume it cannot be un-chosen. Conceiving things this

way is scarcely sufficient. But it is necessary, in both a moral and a practical sense.

3) Im rejecting capitalism right now. All we have to do is convince more people to think like me.


24/33

Anarchy Solves For War

A HIERARCHY-FREE SOCIETY WOULD BE IMMUNE TO WAR AND MOST SOCIAL

PROBLEMS.


There can be no poverty in a classless society, technologically capable of satisfying the needs ofthe population, with free access to all goods and services. There can be no unemployment, when

all men and women are co-owners of the means of production and distribution, giving of their

abilities in useful work for society as well as for themselves. There can be no insecurity when all

needs can be satisfied as the result of common ownership and free access. There can be nowar when humanity is united as a whole without states, national boundaries, or armed forces;

with production and distribution solely for use, and not for profit, eliminating money, wages,

exchange, and the market place.

AT: Governments Would Take Over Communes

1) Societies of free individuals would have nothing to offer nations they would have no

marketable goods.

2) ANARCHIST SOCIETIES COULD DEFEND THEMSELVES.

Wolff, Robert, 1976, In Defense of Anarchism, p.81

If we assume a society of anarchists a society, that is to say, which has achieved a level of

moral and intellectual development at which superstitious beliefs in legitimacy of authority have

evaporated then the citizenry would be perfectly capable of choosing freely whether to defend

the nation and carry its purpose beyond the national borders. The army itself could be run on the

basis of voluntary commitments and submission to orders.

3) Extend- Bookchin in 1971: Once the U.S. acts, freedom will spread, communitizing the

possible enemies.

4) ONCE PEOPLE HAVE LEARNED ABOUT THEIR FREEDOM, THEY CANNOT BE

ENSLAVED.

Douglass, Frederic, civil rights activist, August 4, 1857

Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount ofinjustice

and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with

either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of

those whom they oppress.

5) It has been empirically proven hierarchy-free communities dont go to war.


25/33

6) ANARCHIST COMMUNITIES WOULD USE SOCIAL MEANS TO PRESERVE

LIBERTY.

Sharp, Gene, of the Albert Einstein Institute, 1990, Civilian-Based Defense, p.33

The degree of liberty or tyranny in any political society is, it follows, largely a reflection of therelative determination of the subjects to be free, of their willingness and ability to organize

themselves to live in freedom and, very importantly, their ability to resist any efforts to dominateor enslave them. Social power, not technological means of destruction, is the strongest guarantee

of human freedom.

AT: Anarchy Promotes Chaotic Individualism

1) GOVERNMENT-FREE SOCIETIES WOULD BE COMMUNITIES NOT PLACES FOR

CHAOTIC INDIVIDUALISM.

McIntosh, Don, a professor of philosophy, 1978, Nomos XIX: Anarchism, p.269

Anarchism, however, is not for the individualist. It is inherently collectivistic. Those who have

espoused anarchism on individualistic grounds are in error. Their views have not been internally

coherent, or have rested on weak psychological or sociological grounds.

2) Extend- Bakunin in 1870: The new society would not favor individualists.

3) THE VIEW OF HIERARCHY-FREE SOCIETY AS CHAOS IS FLAWED.

Chomsky, Noam, a linguist and policy analyst, 1995, interview with Kevin Doyle,

http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/rbr/noamrbr2.htmlThe general intellectual culture, as you know, associates anarchism with chaos, violence,

bombs, disruption, and so on. So people are often surprised when I speak positively of anarchism

and identify myself with leading traditions within it. But my impression is that among the

general public, the basic ideas seem reasonable when the clouds are cleared away.

4) Turn/ Todays society is horribly individualist People are oppressed for the good of

exploiters.

AT: No Incentive To Work In Anarchy

1) PEOPLE IN A FREE SOCIETY WOULD WORK BETTER AND ATTAIN GREATER

WELL-BEING.


Well-being that is to say, the satisfaction of physical, artistic, and moral needs, has always been

the most powerful stimulant to work. And where a hireling hardly succeeds to produce the bare

necessities with difficulty, a free worker, who sees ease and luxury increasing for him and forothers in proportion to his efforts, spends infinitely far more energy and intelligence, and obtains

first-class products in a far greater abundance. The one feels riveted to misery, the other hopes

for ease and luxury in the future. In this lies the whole secret. Therefore a society aiming at well-

being of all, and at the possibility of all enjoying life in all its manifestations, will give voluntary

work, which will be infinitely superior and yield far more than work has produced up till nowunder the goad ofslavery, serfdom, or wagedom.


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2) This assumes modern societys tendency toward exploitation which will disappear once

hierarchy is removed.

3) PEOPLE ARE ONLY LAZY AND BAD WORKERS BECAUSE HIERARCHY FORCES

THEM INTO MISERY.

Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.156Somebody has said that dust is matter in the wrong place. The same definition applies to nine

tenths of those called lazy. They are people gone astray in a direction that does not answer to their

temperament nor to their capacities. In reading the biography of great men, we are struck with the

number of idlers among them. They were lazy so long as they had not found the right path;

afterwards they became laborious to excess. Darwin, Stephenson, and many others belonged to

this category of idlers.

Very often the idler is but a man to whom it is repugnant to spend all his life making the

eighteenth part of a pin, or the hundredth part of a watch, while he feels he has exuberant energy

which he would like to expend elsewhere. Often, too, he is a rebel who cannot submit to being

fixed all his life to a work-bench in order to procure a thousand pleasures for his employer, while

knowing himself to be far the less stupid of the two, and knowing his only fault to be that of

having been born in a hovel instead of coming into the world in a castle.

4) Those who refuse to work could be excluded from the community. The majority would not

suffer.

AT: No Incentive To Work In Anarchy

5) FREEDOM WILL ELIMINATE LAZINESS TO THE EXTENT THAT LAWS WOULD BE

UNNECESSARY.


Give the workman who cannot condemn himself to make all his life a minute particle of someobject, who is stifled at his little tapping machine, which he ends by loathing, give him the chance

of tilling the soil, of felling trees in the forest, sailing the seas in the teeth of a storm, dashing

through space on an engine, but do not make an idler of him by forcing him all his life to attendto a small machine, to plough the head of a screw, or to drill the eye of a needle.

Suppress the cause of idleness, and you may take it for granted that few individuals will really

hate work, especially voluntary work, and that there will be no need to manufacture a code of

laws on their account.

6) LIBERATION OF THE SLAVES AND SERFS PROVES THAT PEOPLE WORK HARDER

WITHOUT COERCION.

Kropotkin, Peter, 1906, The Conquest of Bread (Elephant Edition, 1990), p.144They fear that without compulsion the masses will not work.

But during our own lifetime, have we not heard the same fears expressed twice? Once, by the

anti-abolitionists in America before the emancipation of the Negroes, and, for a second time, by

the Russian nobility before the liberation of the serfs? Without the whip the Negro will not

work, said the anti-abolitionist. Free from their masters supervision the serfs will Leave thefields uncultivated, said the Russian serf-owners. It was the refrain -of the French noblemen in

1789, the refrain of the Middle Ages, a refrain as old as the world, and we shall hear it every time

there is a question of sweeping away injustice. And each time the actual facts give it the lie. The


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liberated peasant of 1792 ploughed with an eager energy, unknown to his ancestors; the

emancipated Negro works more than his fathers; and the Russian peasant, after having honoured

the honeymoon of his emancipation by celebrating Fridays as well as Sundays, has taken up work

with an eagerness proportionate to the completeness of his liberation. There, where the soil is his,

he works desperately; that is the exact word for it. The anti-abolitionist refrain can be of value toslave-owners; as to the slaves themselves, they know what it is worth, as they know its motive.

Anarchy Is Better Than Authoritarianism

WE PROTECT FREEDOM BETTER THAN BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISTS.

Falk, Richard, a professor of International Law, 1978, Nomos XIX: Anarchism, p.65Bureaucratic socialists, those who seek to seize state power rather than to decompose it,

contemptuously dismiss anarchists or libertarian socialists as utopians, or worse, as reactionaries.

But the anarchist response is more credible than the challenge here presented. The anarchist quite

properly contends that merely to seize power is to default upon the humanist content of socialism

and to create a new form ofdespotism.

Representative Democracy Is Oppressive

EVEN REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACIES ARE OPPRESSIVE.

Hoffman, Robert, a professor of History, 1970, Anarchism, p.12

Anarchists believe that this ideal can not be fulfilled: those to whom the peoples authority is

delegated do not and can not act as their constituents require. Instead, representatives and

officials act in their own interests, those of political parties, and those of privileged minorities

with powers far in excess of ordinary people. Anarchists are cynical about the possibilities of

officials acting disinterestedly; there is too much occasion for corruption by the prerogatives of

power and by the methods needed to attain power. Even when relatively uncorrupted and

impartial, those in authority are too distant from the bulk of the populace really to know theirneeds and beliefs.

AT: Permute

1) Extend- Friedman in 1989: Any remaining government returns society to statism.

2) HIERARCHY-FREE SOCIETY AND STATISM ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE

GOVERNMENTS CANNOT ACCEPT OUR GOALS.

Bookchin, Murray, president of Goddard College, 1971, Post-Scarcity Anarchism, p.78

Anarchism is not only a stateless society but also a harmonized society which exposes man to the

stimuli provided by both agrarian and urban life, to physical activity and mental activity, tounrepressed sensuality and self-directed spirituality, to communal solidarity and individual

development, to regional uniqueness and worldwide brotherhood, to spontaneity and self-

discipline, to the elimination of toil and the promotion of craftsmanship. In our schizoid society,

these goals are regarded as mutually exclusive, indeed as sharply opposed.


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3) You cant simply have the affirmative policy standing alone as the sole governance structure.

Its solvency requires enforcement, funding, and political passage all responsibilities of other

government agencies.

4) Extend- Bakunin in 1870: Any act of government control is oppressive.

5) In order for a hierarchy-free society to succeed, a clear message must be sent to the people that

government is wrong. The permutation would muddle this message and pervert the counterplansideals.

6) HISTORY PROVES THAT LIMITED GOVERNMENTS EXPAND.

Friedman, David, a professor at the University of Chicago, 1989, The Machinery of Freedom,

p.146

Would it not be better to have a severely limited government doing those few things which it

could do better? Perhaps it would be if the government stayed that way. Here we run into the

problem discussed in Chapter 4. One cannot simply build any imaginable characteristics into a

government; governments have their own internal dynamic. And the internal dynamic of limited

governments is something with which we, to our sorrow, have a good deal of personal

experience. It took about 150 years, starting with the Bill of Rights that reserved to the states andthe people all powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government, to produce a Supreme

Court willing to rule that growing corn to feed to your own hogs is interstate commerce and can

therefore be regulated by Congress.

AT: Anarchy Would Lead To Primitivism

1) Turn/ A hierarchy-free society would actually find more, better, and more liberating uses for

technology than exist in the status quo.

2) Our counterplan doesnt say that we reject technology! For this argument to carry any weight,

the affirmative team has to prove that our authors are against technology.

3) A GOVERNMENT-FREE SOCIETY WOULD EMBRACE TECHNOLOGY TO ENHANCE

HUMANITY AND NATURE.

Bookchin, Murray, president of Goddard College, 1971, Post-Scarcity Anarchism, p.134

A liberated society, I believe, will not want to negate technology precisely because it is liberated

and can strike a balance. It may well want to assimilate the machine to artistic craftsmanship. By

this I mean the machine will remove toil from the productive process, leaving its artistic

completion to man. The machine, in effect, will participate in human creativity. There is no

reason why automatic, cybernated machinery cannot be used so that the finishing products,

especially those destined for personal use, is left to the community.

4) Kropotkin and Bookchin, primary authors, specifically rely upon advanced technology to

reduce drudgery and toil.


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Laws Bad

LAWS ARE CORRUPT AND FAIL.

Hoffman, Robert, a professor of history, 1970, Anarchism, p.5

Thus, in the anarchist view, people are deluded when they suppose that order and justice are

created and regulated by law and powerful institutions. Such order is mere appearance, behind

which actually is the chaos of men struggling to subjugate and hurt each other, to gain at the

expense of others. Such justice is a sham, called righteous by those able to dominate while

making law serve their own interests.

AT: Anarchy Wont Work With A Large Population

1) Government-free society would consist of decentralized communities. We could liberate the

entire world and still have small communities by simply shunning cities.

2) A LARGE POPULATION WOULD NOT HINDER GOVERNMENT-FREE SOCIETY.


Nor can populations be so large or the number of assemblies so numerous that they cannot be

coordinated in a manner that perpetuates their integrity as face-to-face policy-making bodies.

Delegates to town, city, and regional bodies, can be regarded simply as the walking mandates of

the local assemblies.

3) With the increase in efficiency of production attained by liberation, government-free society

would be able to deal with large populations betterthan the status quo.

Everything Must Be Deprivatized

ALL MUST BE DEPRIVATIZED ARTICLES OF CONSUMPTION ARE AS

IMPORTANT AS THOSE OF PRODUCTION.


Some Socialists still seek, however, to establish a distinction. Of course, they say, the soil, the

mines, the mills, and manufactures must be expropriated, these are the instruments of production,

and it is right we should consider them public property. But articles of consumption food,

clothes, and dwellings should remain private property.

Popular common sense has got the better of this subtle distinction. We are not savages who canlive in the woods, without other shelter than branches. The civilized man needs a roof, a room, a

hearth, and a bed. It is true that the bed, the room, and the house is a home of idleness for the

non-producer. But for the worker, a room, properly heated and lighted, is as much an instrument

of production as the tool or the machine. It is the place where the nerves and sinews gather

strength for the work of the morrow.


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AT: Unfair To Reward Skilled and Unskilled Labor Equally

1) In modern society, not everybody has the opportunity to get a job which requires skills. The

wealthy have great advantages that are inherited by their children while poor families suffer

eternally.

2) In a hierarchy-free society, everyone could choose their own job. People who decide to take up

skilled labor would do so because they enjoy it.

3) Unskilled labor is no worse than mind work. Its only in modern society where people are able

to get away with exploiting others that physical jobs are seen as degrading.

4) In a free society, everyone would have everything they needed. It would be impossible to give

extra bonuses to certain workers.

5) The only advantage to getting paid more than others is that you are brought into a position ofgreater power. This power can only be used to enslave.

Wage System Will Fall With Capitalism

THE WAGE SYSTEM WILL FALL ALONGSIDE CAPITALISM.


The wage system arises out of the individual ownership of the land and the instruments of labor.

It was the necessary condition for the development of capitalist production, and will perish with

it, in spite of the attempt to disguise it as profit-sharing. The common possession of the

instruments of labor must necessarily bring with it the enjoyment in common of the fruits ofcommon labor.

AT: Anarchy Is Utopian

1) Extend- Kropotkin in 1906: All we have to do to destroy hierarchy is to strike at it once.

2) THE ACTS OF A FEW, BRAVE INDIVIDUALS COULD BE ENOUGH TO SPUR

SOCIETAL CHANGE.

Kropotkin, Peter, an anarchist theorist, 1880, The Spirit of Revolt (within Le Revolt)

When a revolutionary situation arises in a country, before the spirit of revolt is sufficiently

awakened in the masses to express itself in violent demonstrations in the streets or by rebellionsand uprisings, it is through action that minorities succeed in awakening that feeling of

independence and that spirit of audacity without which no revolution can come to a head. Men of

courage, not satisfied with words, but ever searching for the means to transform them into action,

men of integrity for whom the act is one with the idea, for whom prison, exile, and death are

preferable to a life contrary to their principles,--intrepid souls who know that it is necessary to

dare in order to succeed, these are the lonely sentinels who enter the battle long before the

masses are sufficiently roused to raise openly the banner of insurrection and to march, arms in


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hand, to the conquest of their rights. In the midst of discontent, talk, theoretical discussions, an

individual or collective act of revolt supervenes, symbolizing the dominant aspirations.

3) Hierarchy-free societies existed before in ancient Crete and the Middle-ages. It can happen

again.

4) WE CAN REJECT HIERARCHY AND SAVE OURSELVES.


Therefore capitalism must go if we are to survive as a civilization and, indeed, a species; and all

partial measures and reforms should be taken in the spirit of bringing about capitals downfall.

Nothing could seem more daunting than this, indeed, in the current balance of forces, it seems

inconceivable. Therefore the first job must be to conceive it as a possibility, and not to succumb

passively to the given situation. Capital expresses no law of nature; it has been the result of

choice, and there is no essential reason to assume it cannot be un-chosen. Conceiving things this

way is scarcely sufficient. But it is necessary, in both a moral and a practical sense.

5) We have to at least try to move beyond the current system of enslavement.

6) WE CAN ADVANCE TO THE NEXT STEP IN SOCIETY TO ATTAIN FREEDOM.

Thoreau, H

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