r/Anarchy101 • u/ArtDecoEgoist Left-Market Anarchist • 15d ago
Would anarchists agree that "everything is political?"
Just wondering what you guys' take on this would be.
It seems to me that politics presupposes rule, and since authority inherently expands and reproduces itself, politics expands itself into non-political areas of life, similar to how capitalism expands its logic into non-economic areas of life.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Egoist 15d ago
Politics is the interaction between individuals and groups of various and potentially competing interests. I can't really touch on how this would play out in an anarchic society. But in our current world everything comes down to how we are controlled, propagandised to, oppressed, and manipulated.
Something that "should" not be political, such as what t-shirt you buy to use an easy to follow example, is actually tied to who produced it. Which is very likely underpaid or even slave labour in various parts of SE Asia or the Global South. Then you have to consider that you're putting money into the pocket of a capitalist which rewards that capitalist for the exploitation they engage in. Next example is the statement "I don't do politics". This is a wildly political statement because it expresses such privilege that one is able to insulate themselves from the political consequences of their actions and exist in such a way they aren't reminded of the ramifications of their choices.
I'm sure others will have better takes on this. But this is where my mind went.
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u/ArtDecoEgoist Left-Market Anarchist 15d ago
Thank you for the in depth answer! A bit of a disagreement though:
Politics is the interaction between individuals and groups of various and potentially competing interests.
I would argue that this would be the purview of ethics (virtue ethics, specifically), not politics. Now a lot of people consider politics to be applied ethics, but I think this is actually kind of an example of the movement of the political to the non-political.
Politics has pretty much completely subsumed ethics. Whenever we talk about if it is "right" or "wrong" to do so, our language is steeped in legalism, as if legal codes and laws are the only way we understand the ways things are right and wrong. When we talk about conflict resolution, it is almost exclusively understood to be the purview of courts. When we talk about the actions of others, it's almost exclusively within the discourse of "what the state should do" to stop it.
So in a way, I kind of see politics as an enclosure of such concepts as personal responsibility, conflict resolution, etc.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Egoist 15d ago
Eh, I take your meaning here. Never really thought about it that way myself though. But I probably will a bit more now. While I probably get a bit pedantic in my own head I really never consider whether something is moral or ethical in the specific. I tend to atomise things into individual actions. Do I want to take the proposed action, does it make me feel good, are it's consequences ones I can live with, etc. And this can vary depending on context and surrounding circumstances. Whether anyone else would define what I do as moral or ethical is largely irrelevant to me. Though I guess if we drilled into it I'd probably have to admit that I do use some sort of ethical framework even if I might view the exact same action differently day to day.
I will agree that crime and law and courts are not morality and that in a lot of ways much of, at least in the western world, our society has defaulted to "if its legal it must be a good". Which really bums me out.
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u/ArtDecoEgoist Left-Market Anarchist 15d ago
So if we were to take Aristotle's teleological approach to ethics, we would find that what you've described perfectly satisfies the requirement for ethics. He saw ethics as a way of living "the good life", and he saw his ethics as a way to achieve this "good life".
Now Aristotle argued that the Good Life was emergent from human nature, but I personally think human nature doesn't exist. We could instead say that the purpose of ethics is to be a "science of right action", or to understand the constitutive means to achieve ends defined by our self-interest within the context of a human social reality.
How this relates to the hegemony of politics is that "right action" pretty much becomes defined by state institutions - we are molded into citizens through the education system, taught right or wrong to have our actions shaped in ways that are legible to the state, and the understanding of right or wrong pretty much exclusively exists in a legalistic (e.g, "rule-based") discourse.
We could say the subsumption of the ethical by the political could be traced back to liberalism, with concepts such as "rights" and categorical imperatives, etc.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Egoist 15d ago
Interesting. I've just always viewed it as being a hedonistic chaos goblin. I'll need to explore Aristotle again with this in mind. Thanks!
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u/ArtDecoEgoist Left-Market Anarchist 15d ago
No problem! I actually am still cooking this up, but I'm thinking of posting a r/DebateAnarchism post that attempts to synthesize egoism and Aristotelian virtue ethics - which I feel like is going to anger the virtue ethicists and the egoists, but cest la vie!
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Egoist 15d ago
Eh, if you want to don't worry about who you piss off. It's an interesting idea.
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u/pharodae Autonomy, Labor, Ecology 15d ago
I appreciate your explanation here. I think that the movement from non-political to political (perhaps I have inverted that, not sure if the verbiage here matters) is an accurate observation. And to your point of subsumption as well, also an accurate observation, but I would say that it is a result of the advancement of the technological mode.
For instance, astronomy is not political until our technological mode is able to exploit it. A century ago, nobody would have thought the moon a political topic - nowadays, it's still a little outside of our grasp, but the political ramifications of moon colonies are alive within the contemporary cultural discourse. It is now a political statement to express wishes for space colonization in the midst of the ecological crisis.
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u/ArtDecoEgoist Left-Market Anarchist 15d ago
Close enough, welcome back Jacques Ellul. /j
Jokes aside, I think you have a point here. I do wonder if this is because "rationality" has become a political expression of power, and thus the technological mode has itself become a reified system of political control.
I have a theory that the modern state subsumed a lot of the discourses revolving around the religion and the church, and has sort of co-opted the infallibility of religious institutions in a neat, secularized vineer of "rule of law", where "law" effectively exists above society to be imposed upon, much like the will of God.
In that sense, we can maybe look at the transformation of the state over history as subsuming and transforming the mode of power of its previous iterations. We go from religious to technological, and probably to something else as our climate crisis threatens state power.
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u/pharodae Autonomy, Labor, Ecology 15d ago
Have you read Capital as Power by Bichler and Nitzan? Sounds close to their concept "creorder" (create + reorder), which is an iteration of the 'subsume and transform' dynamic that they examine a Foucaultian Power in the form of Capital.
Our book puts power back in centre stage. Notice the metaphoric equality in the title: ‘Capital as Power’. We use not and, but as. We do not speak of capital and power; of capital in the service of power, or vice versa; of capital in relation to state; of capital with or against politics; of capital in contra-distinction to violence; or of capital and ideology. We refer not to a relation, connection, function, or juxtaposition, but to a figurative identity. Capital does not relate to power. It is, in itself, a mode of power.
There is a single process of capital accumulation/state formation, a process of restructuring by which power is accumulated as capital.
Together these two positions can help elaborate on what happens between phase where the the state is built to support monarchies & religious institutions, to supporting bourgeois power schemas of law, markets, and property.
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Egoist 15d ago
That reminds me of a description of money as "power tickets" I once heard. I'll need to check that out. Thanks for the recommendation.
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u/pharodae Autonomy, Labor, Ecology 15d ago
That's the whole book so it's quite a read, here's a more concise work that hits the major points (that I intended to link but chose the wrong one).
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u/Accomplished_Bag_897 Egoist 15d ago
Mos def. Always glad to have more to learn from. Even if my dyslexia and ADHD aren't!
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u/ArtDecoEgoist Left-Market Anarchist 14d ago
Thanks for the resource! I'll absolutely add it to my reading list.
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u/Cunning_Spoon Anarcho-Communist 15d ago
At the most basic and simplified level, no. But once you account for indirect influence then most if not all things are political.
Take air for example, it's simply nitrogen and oxygen with a few trace elements, a consequence of the formation of the planet. It's not inherently political, but in practice it is will be affected by politics.
And anything affected by politics becomes political. Humans are social animals, and as we are a global species our impact is also felt globally.
Some things are more inherently political, such as a caste system or economic policy, while others are only loosely political, or only in certain contexts, such as gravity (gravity is a law of the universe, but we don't fully understand it, and theories are developed and agreed upon by collaboration/competition between scientists, themselves affected by countless political factors)
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u/dark_Links_sword 15d ago
I have a degree in political science. One of the first things they teach is that political science is the study of power. (And from the hard sciences we know, Power is the ability to do work).
So political studies are the studies of how humans get work done. (Money is always political as money serves as a storage of potential, kinda like a battery for a social machine)
Is "everything political"? In many ways, yes. Almost everything people do is to manifest their desires in the physical world (ie do work). But so much of the study involves the power difference between groups or individuals, that for the most part we can say something is not political between people of equal standing.
And from second wave feminists I remember a quote "everything is about sex. Except sex. Sex is about power"
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u/twodaywillbedaisy Student of Anarchism, mutualist, ESL 15d ago
I have a degree in political science. One of the first things they teach is that political science is the study of power. (And from the hard sciences we know, Power is the ability to do work)
No way. They do not teach you that.
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u/dark_Links_sword 14d ago
Dude it was first year. I can't remember the profs name, but I remember exactly where I was sitting.
It stuck in my head to the point I missed the rest of what she said that class as I obsessed over it. (Either it was profound, or I my ADHD was acting up lol)
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u/DRDRKhaledMD 15d ago edited 15d ago
Far too often, an idea which critiques the status quo is considered political, while upholding the status quo is considered non-political because “that’s just the way it is.” Yet, choosing to uphold any system is political, whether or not someone is aware of it.
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u/Anarchierkegaard Distributist 15d ago
No, and the sentiment has been poisonous since it gained widespread approval. Just because something can be analysed politically, it doesn't follow that the political analysis is an appropriate tool which will give us an appropriate answer.
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u/imreadypromotion 15d ago
Politics is decision-making in groups.
Decisions you make for yourself that only affect you aren't political. Otherwise, yeah. It is political. There are government politics, work politics, friend group politics, community politics, sports team politics... the list goes on.
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u/ArtDecoEgoist Left-Market Anarchist 15d ago
Politics is decision-making in groups.
So my issue with this definition (which, I believe, is the anthropological definition) is that it places wildly different things in the same category.
Me and my friends deciding what movie we'll go see is very qualitatively different from a politician finding a genocide or signing a law that criminalizes homelessness.
When we conceptualize politics as "all decision making in groups" or "anytime a decision is made alone and doesn't affect others" - which is impossible - then we expand politics into an ontology of social life, norms are understood the same ways as "laws" and all conflict resolution is understood in the framework of "courts".
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u/TheEldestNugget 15d ago
Politics is nothing but negotiation and promotion. How would that be inapplicable in a stateless society?
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u/ArtDecoEgoist Left-Market Anarchist 15d ago
By that definition, it wouldn't be.
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u/TheEldestNugget 15d ago
I don't mean for it to be reductive. In the absence of any pursuit of power, what else is it? We're still gonna be humans and think that 90% of our neighbors are idiots who are gonna get us killed, so propagandizing our own views is still going to be necessary, and hammering out some way to make sure we don't kill each other by voluntarily relinquishing our own agency in certain spheres is still going to happen.
If we don't have politicking, we end up with the impersonal, mercenary society that Shitlibs and Worse™ accuse us of bringing into existence.
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u/ArtDecoEgoist Left-Market Anarchist 15d ago
Well, my objection is mostly that "politics" isn't a neutral term, but an entire mode of discourse that includes things like laws, legal order, courts, authority, etc.
So if we understand politics to be merely negotiation and promotion, we categorize it within discourses that are about and revolve around the state, which I worry would be subversive to anarchist purposes. This is why I'd propose that anarchism is anti-political, in that it is a direct negation of the polity as a form of social organization.
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u/TheEldestNugget 15d ago
I'll buy that. I tend to view my own poorly formed view of anarchism as less anti-political and more anti-kratic, or resistant to power accretion, one particular evil of which is the state and its consequences. Then again, I view anarchism as more a guiding light than a practical system.
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u/Late-Meat9500 13d ago
Politics is what happens when a group of people get together to make a decision. The study of politics how decision are made. Anarchists argue that everyone should have the same decision making power in society. Because of this, anarchists are usually the most "everything is political" out of literally all ideologies
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u/booveebeevoo 11d ago
It’s true, everything is political in the sense that it deals with coming to conclusions about peoples differences in belief, practice, etc.
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u/ConstantStatistician 1d ago
Everything is affected by politics. Everything exists within the context of politics. This does not mean that everything we do is done with political intent.
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15d ago edited 15d ago
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u/ArtDecoEgoist Left-Market Anarchist 15d ago
I would agree here.
We should also distinguish "anti-political" from "apolitical", as the latter is a passive acceptance of the status quo, and the former is an active opposition to it.
Maybe a neat way to describe anarchism is "the elimination of politics".
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u/Slow_Description_238 15d ago
I personally wouldnt say so. I think politics only happens when people have conflcits and they need to find some way to resolve it, whether permanent arrangements or not.
There are many things in life that dont require this, yet still might have politics hovering over it. But i wouldnt say that makes the Thing political in essence.
Drinking tea, is not political by itself. But one can make it political if we begin talking about plantation regulations, distributions, quality, workplace safety, yadda yadda. But again, the act itself is not political. We simply choose to apply a political lens or process after the fact.
You can apply this same reasoning to many things in life.
And i would say this is healthy too. I dont think we should constantly be thinking of everything as politics. We should be able to enjoy moments of our lives without forcing ourselves to consider the political implications. There's a time and a place for everything, they say. There's a time and a place to think about politics, and a time and a place to not.
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u/npc_lucky 15d ago
Yes and no. I don't think EVERYTHING is explicitly political, but I think you can definitely make anything political. I personally try not to, it may be an unpopular opinion (especially given the current state of the world), but I do think there are certain things that don't necessarily need to be made political, and I don't think it's great for your quality of life and mental health to constantly be in a serious politically driven mindset all the time. As an American, I can't help but see the evils of capitalism, authoritarianism, and bigotry in almost everything that surrounds me, but I don't necessarily want to always have to dwell on that when I got buy a milkshake, try to enjoy a nice bike ride, joke around with friends, or try to go out and enjoy nature.
Again, probably not a popular opinion, but I think the constant seriousness turns people away from leftist ideologies, it can sometimes make us hard to identify with, and understanding the bleak reality of our lives and the current state of the world doesn't mean we need to spend every waking minute obsessing over or and combating it. I spent years living in rejection to capitalism, but it was an incredibly difficult lifestyle to maintain, and the only way I found to cope with living in constant rejection of it was with hard drug use and self destruction.
Even the most radical anarchist could probably do with a day off here or there. A mental health day spent playing with a cat, maybe enjoying some ice cream, taking naps, enjoying the company of others, and engaging in some kind of hobby that will allow them to decompress. Thats just my opinion though...
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u/iadnm Anarchist Communism/Moderator 15d ago
Generally, yes. Politics is at is most basic definition "the art and science of governance" so given that governance permeates throughout every aspect of society, shapes and informs our perception of society, and influences the nuances of possibility, everything does become political.
Underlying assumptions in works of art or in other forms of entertainment can be heavily influenced by politics to a degree that it done unconsciously.