The latest news from Norway is the prison that might, for the next 21 years, be a home for Anders Behring Breivik. After reviewing the videos and photos, I must say, Ohio State offered me no better when I went there on scholarship some years ago (and my scholarship was only good for four years). My dorm mates were generally more presentable, perhaps, but I never got a hot blonde personal trainer. Halden Prison almost seems designed to entice the vacillating young psychopath, who has not yet worked up the gumption, to go ahead and follow through on his dreams.
It is a subject that, for the modern American, is begging for ridicule and parody. I myself nearly dipped into it in the first paragraph, and I admit that the idea of a man murdering so many innocents and thereby earning an all-expenses-paid stay at the Halden Resort rankles a bit. The fact that the descendants of the Vikings are responsible adds another fascinatingly perverse element to it.
And yet… does the modern American, currently occupied with mocking Scandinavia, not have a closer target for his contempt? Is the prison system that he is forced to subsidize any less perverse and appalling? Might one not even argue — I almost hesitate to type the words — that the Norwegian way, though indisputably stupid, is superior to the American way? Not if one is running for office, of course, but those of us not connected to politics, i.e., those of us who can still afford to use our thinking organ, might wish to examine things with a critical eye.
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Many left-anarchists are fairly civilized. But many others are not. An ex-vegan was going to give an anti-vegetarianism speech at an anarchist book fair in San Francisco, and these criminals threw cayenne-laced pies at her. What completely indefensible behavior. These people might want to bring down state power, but I don’t know that we’d be better off being ruled by them than the current power elite.
One reason “anarchism” — the rejection of the state or, more generally, the rejection of authority—is not enough can be seen in the way left-anarchists often violate private property or even commit acts of personal violence against political enemies. Property rights and the non-aggression axiom are key. Anarchism is best seen as the logical consequence of libertarianism, grounded in property and self-ownership, rather than being an end in itself. All radical libertarians should be anarchists. But not all anarchists are truly libertarians.
Of course, even private criminality would be infinitely more tolerable than the state, and certainly this is the case in a relatively civilized culture that can handle some deviants here and there, as ours can. Indeed, the fact that America is relatively civil despite the state doing everything to undermine civil society—through war, drug prohibition, gun control, welfare, public schools, etc.—demonstrates the workability of anarchy. But culture must come first to maintain any free or even civilized society. And on the question of culture, many left-anarchists are on the wrong side. They would reduce us to tribalism, primitivism and chaos. By the way, I am not talking about the mutualists or pro-market, pro-law left-anarchists. I’m not talking about Tuckerites or followers of Proudhon. These people all have views on social order and economics than differ from mine, but at least they believe in society and tend to oppose violence against the innocent. I am talking about the social anarchists even to the “left” of these folks, who have no love of the market, no respect for property at all, no compunctions about watching the world burn.
Perhaps in a sense they are the true “anarchists”—opposed to all order, hierarchy and law, not just statism—whereas the strictly anti-statist meaning of anarchism is the actual misnomer. But on the other hand, how can one be against order and hierarchy altogether? Even to be philosophically opposed to hierarchy puts hierarchy below disorder, thus bolstering a hierarchy of ideas. The extremist anarchists oppose all social conventions and norms, and even language and technology. You can read about it on their websites. This kind of anarchism is incoherent and contradictory, even if it is more true to the etymology of the word “anarchism.” But anarcho-libertarianism, anchored in private property rights and non-aggression, is far more achievable, humane and civilized, and eschews the type of aggression we often see left-anarchists personally involved in.
