Signs! Endless signs marched down Portland streets, gripped by hundreds of hands. Che Guevara T-shirts peppered the crowd like herpes on a downtown prostitute. On May Day 2007, Portland residents packed the Park Blocks, advocating immigrants’ rights. Toward the front stood the families most affected by President Bush’s callous immigration reform package.
They wore work clothes and listened intently to a line of knowledgeable speakers. When approached, they told personal narratives, how they or their parents came to America, how they love their new country but cannot abandon their roots. They sported red, white and blue, or red, white and green, showing the city and world their colors and cause.
In the back, a bit removed from the actual protest, stood a slovenly pack of Portland youth, dressed head to toe in blacks and browns. From appearances, we would venture a guess that few had showered since the turn of the millennium.
Who were these angsty young souls wrapped in torn hoodies and smothered by threadbare bandanas? At a distance, one might have mistaken them for Old Western bandits, wandering aimlessly in search of a defenseless stagecoach. Up close, though, their patches and insignias became unmistakable.
These are the anarchists, that misbegotten band of political vagabonds who constitute at least 78.8 percent of Portland’s youth. They roam the streets, scouring our fair city, seeking any opportunity to don their cotton masks and unintentionally undermine an otherwise legitimate protest.
They must mean well. The anarchists show up for every protest, march, rally, demonstration, boycott, sit-in, scream-out, walk-out, fall-out, call-out, bawl-out, egg-toss, stare-down and picnic.
Whether the cause is anti-war, anti-Bush or anti-puppy, they make their presence known. You cannot miss them. Even if they’re out of sight, they are never out of scent. Filthy or fresh, they forever carry the curious m퀌�lange of sweat, ganja and the underside of the Hawthorne Bridge.
Based on appearances, one risks assuming that anarchism resides solely in the minds of these youthful Portlandites. On the contrary, these boys and girls stand on-sometimes trample on-centuries of brilliant political musings. Henry David Thoreau once wrote, “The government is best which governs not at all.” Thomas Paine, quite possibly the greatest writer in American history, dubbed government a necessary evil and sometimes an intolerable one. More modern thinkers from Emma Goldman to the venerable Noam Chomsky have espoused anarchist sympathies.
Unfortunately, the contemporary anarcho-activists ignore certain truisms recognized by their predecessors. Thoreau, Paine and even Chomsky acknowledge that selfish elements in our current nature prevent the assumption of an anarchist non-state. Only a society comprised of the selfless and serene could allow for the anarchist paradise. Modern humanity cannot sustain it.
What Park Block anarchists fail to realize is that in today’s society, anarchy would lead at best to tyranny of the majority and at worst to tyranny of people with guns.
Still, they continue to show up. They disdain organization and group action but organize week after week and act as a group. Does anybody else have a problem with this?
Speaking of problems, many anarchists attach the delightful adjective of “socialist” to their title. We may be wrong, but in the course of our studies, we have noticed that socialism necessitates government control over the means of production. Anarchists reject not only government but of centralized production as well! Bwaahh? Socialists and anarchists should not want to speak to each other, let alone be each other. These must be some conflicted kids.
“But,” you say, “both socialism and anarchism advocate the abolition of all private ownership.” While this is true, socialists want state ownership of land while anarchists would deny all ownership of anything–not to mention denying the state itself.
Please observe the latter’s impossibility. In our industrialized, urbanized society, who decides where families get to live? Do the strongest get the best apartments? Do the fastest? Does the allocation of resources become an irreverent free-for-all, with 7 billion people struggling to get a piece of the proverbial pie?
Starvation poses yet another problem. The indigent billions living in the Third World would have no U.N. to provide aid, no subsidies to improve their agriculture, no AIDS vaccine created by private enterprise and funded by government. Without government, billions of people would die.
Imagine, though, that socialist anarchy were somehow implemented. Let us venture so far as to ignore the problems of starvation and overpopulation. Let us simply suppose that socialist anarchists take over. What might their world be like? The faint of heart should probably stop reading now.
In the socialist-anarchist fantasy, we have no electricity, no sanitation, no running water, no paved roads, no public transportation, no schools, no fire department, no internet, no phone, no mail, no money and no barter, and yet, the government controls everything.
It should be noted that we see anarchists walking to class. Do they understand that government funding pays for their education? Do they use the drinking fountains? Do they use the bathrooms? Do they recognize that in their you-topia, the book that first informed them of anarchism would have required 493 hours of personal labor, as they produced it themselves from the single tree in their hut’s backyard?
Socialist anarchists, we call on you to end your hypocrisy. Drop out of school. Turn off your water. Give up your iPod. Move to the mountains and wait like Zarathustra for the ubermensch (the only way this will ever, ever, ever happen). We’ll let you know when the revolution comes, although without a mail service, you’ll be tough to reach.