Notes Toward a Manifesto of Palæo-Anarchism
Cathal Liam McFee
Black Oak Presents
Autumn 2008

We assert that anarchism is, first and foremost, a moral philosophy and must recognize and present itself as such. We assert that freedom is a moral principle, and the necessary condition for moral thought and behavior. We assert that only a free person can be moral. The average citizen (read inmate) of this society (read prison), may sit, "fat and happy,” in this charnel house of the soul, endlessly “cajoled, flattered, stimulated” until he can no longer think for himself, and he will obey, sullenly, but obedience is not moral behavior.1

Obedience is done by rote, moral behavior is done consciously, with full knowledge of its consequences. Anarchists frequently describe themselves as "those who will not obey," but we must go further. It is not enough to encourage disobedience amongst a populace whose moral fiber has been weakened by dependence upon the welfare/warfare state and a market increasingly interested in selling nothing more than the empty image of unrestrained freedom and the nihilistic attitude of the "too-cool-to-care" sociopath.

Disobedience, as rote response to authority,2 is no more a form or expression of anarchism (as we think of it) than obedience is an expression of morality. We should keep in mind Solzhenitsyn's advice—in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union—to his fellow Russians on how to treat those who had once exercised power: expect nothing of them; show them neither fear nor respect; treat them neither better nor worse than any other person.

In this way, as we interpret his words, the moral force of the citizen, whether alone or in small groups, performs a kind of jujitsu against the state and its agents, neither answering the violence or power being exerted, nor accepting it. The state, which has always assumed for itself the moral right to exercise power with at least the tacit threat of violence, has its arrogant assumption rejected, not with anger or loud condemnation, but with a humble silence, as people create community outside of the state's long and menacing shadow.

With these thoughts in mind, we see revolution as simply another turn of the wheel, which, when the wheel comes to rest, leaves another pack of murderous criminals in power. We reject "revolutionary violence" as a tactic, and any all adoption of the state's practices in an attempt to rid ourselves of the state. Those who gain power with the garrote and the pistol eventually turn to the noose and the firing squad, if only for the sake of "efficiency." We will have none of it.

Every armed cadre is a state-in-miniature. Every armed militant a potential thug in jackboots. Only concentration on an "everyday practice" of anarchism will succeed: the rejection of power and violence; the cultivation of parallel institutions and "means of livelihood and ways of life," to use Paul and Percival Goodman's apt phrase, that provide for human needs at the level of the communitas.

Beyond the rejection of revolution, we feel it necessary to reject the ideology of progress altogether, and the scientism and materialism which are inseparable from it. We do not believe in the perfectibility of humanity and reject any institution, ideology, or movement which is based on this wrong-headed notion. The desire to perfect humanity, to create the social structures in which humanity is to progress toward perfection, has led to horrors appropriate for a Bruegel painting.3

Anarchism is not an extreme form of liberalism, nor is it liberalism by other means. The corruption of the anarchist movement in recent years is due, in part, to the accommodation of liberals and former liberals in the ranks, and the embrace of liberal categories of speech, i.e., political correctness, and the categories and subcategories of humanity with which liberalism concerns itself. Since when does anarchism equate to the kind of empty legalism with which liberalism has become obsessed in the last 30 years?

This influence must be cleared out, root and branch, and anarchism must return to its origins as a moral philosophy opposed to the exercise of power—even when said exercise is alleged to be in the "best interest" of those upon whom the power is being exerted. In this regard, as well as others, palæo-anarchism has much more in common with the conservatism of the Old Right than it does with what passes, these days, for liberalism. We reject liberalism, we reject the managerial state, we reject the "citadel of expertise," and we reject the technocrats who "tend the machinery" and would turn humans into machines.

Palæo-anarchism looks to the person, not to mass and class identities, not to ethnicity, race, age, gender, sexual identity or any of the other demographic groupings so beloved by bureaucrats and politicians. They can divide, sub-divide, and Balkanize a population down to the smallest groupings whose wants or fears can be manipulated, but they can never make a direct moral appeal to a person's soul or conscience precisely because they fail to recognize the existence of same. Anarchism fails itself, and fails the people to whom it attempts to address itself, when it fails to recognize, or even specifically rejects, the existence of the soul and the conscience.

We heartily embrace the old-fashioned—some would say out-dated—values of courage, chivalry, and faith, and we argue that these values are a necessary adjunct to anarchism's historic concern with individual freedom. The idea of a “quest for freedom,” an unending quest, a series of moments lived to the fullest in the service of that cause, this is, to us, the highest calling to which an anarchist can aspire. We embrace the image of anarchist knights-errant, like Proudhon's dream of the revival of the Holy Vehm devoted to this cause, taking an oath, and holding to it whatever comes. This is our challenge and our call.

Tolkien once said that the “most improper job of any man, even saints... is bossing other men,” but that saints “were at least unwilling to take it on.” He made this statement as part of a brief argument on behalf of anarchism, which he said he was starting to embrace. It is to this argument that we turn, in our quixotic quest, like Diogenes with his lamp, looking for those true men and women who will renounce power, devote themselves to the cause of freedom, and ride with us over that next horizon. We need not be saints, but we can strive to live better and to live free.

Notes:

1Bill Kauffman, Look Homeward, America, p. 141. Kauffman's argument, drawing on Robert Nisbet's The Quest for Community, is that the atomized, deracinated citizen of the United States is no more “free,” in any meaningful sense, than a citizen in a society showing the outward signs of totalitarianism. The possibility of “spontaneous, autonomous association” is still absent, and what remains is “a mass of anchorless individuals whose wasted lives are lighted only by the hideous bluish glare of the TV set.”

2It is necessary to draw a distinction between an authority, in the sense of someone with a specific knowledge of a subject, and a ruler, who has and exercises power over others. In some cases, the two may be the same, but not always and not automatically. If, for example, the co-op needs plumbing work done, the person with the most knowledge will the authority in that situation, but will not have power, and will certainly not be a ruler.

3We think, in particular, of Bruegel's “Mad Meg,” with its surreal display of madness, violence, and destruction acted out beneath a sky as red as blood and black as sackcloth.

Cathal Liam McFee is a Catholic, anarchist, and a science fiction writer
living in Bloomington, Indiana.  He dedicates this essay to Lara, who first showed
him some of these words; and to Greg and Carrie, who have always been willing to listen.

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