Having recently read and digested Leon Trotsky's "The Revolution Betrayed," I recognize that I could not possibly live a more
bourgeois life. All the elements of it are there, lined up neatly like boxes on some Bolshevik's "Is Your Neighbor A Enemy of the Proletariat: To Gulag or Not To Gulag" worksheet.
I own a somewhat rumpled little hobbit-hole of a rambler in a classic American suburb. I own three vehicles. I've got an array of possessions, an embarrassment of riches by all but the bloated standards of contemporary consumerism. I work in a little suburban church, where we gather regularly to take long luxuriant drags off the Opium Pipe of the Masses. I've got an array of diversified investments, which weave me pretty neatly into the oppressive power of multinational corporations. All in all, I'd fare not so well in an uprising of the workers. Fortunately for me, America doesn't really have a proletariat any more. We've outsourced 'em. All part of the plan, think I.
But here's the thing. If I had to peg my political philosophy, I'd say I'm probably somewhere between an anarchist and an anarcho-syndicalist. Preposterous, you say? Sure, I'm not one of those black-clad silly people who storm around throwing bricks at Micky D's. I don't have an advanced degree in The Performance Puppetry of the Resistance. I don't live in a self-sustaining vegan collective in the wilds of West Virginia.
Why would I need to? I mean, really. Why? If you're truly an anarchist...well...you can be whatever you want.
What I tend to believe is that any system of human social organization is inherently flawed. Capitalism tends to become self devouring profiteerism. Socialism tends to become soul crushing autocracy. Yet at the same time, human beings must seek social order. Those structures just flow forth from our having been created in the image of God, the one who takes the
tohu wabohu, the "no-thingness," and forms it into being.
Problem is, we do a pretty wretched job of it. We start to worship our structures, to serve them as the idols that they are. There are those who worship the market. There are those who worship the state. Both are equally wrong. Being a Christian...and understanding the radical nature of the Kingdom...lends itself to an anarchic perspective towards any human social order.
So the choice that any anarchist faces is simple. Do you spend your entire existence engaged in a futile struggle against "the system," or do you say..."what's the point?" Call it as you see it, sure. Refuse to accept the final authority of social systems. Resist those things that lessen our love for one another and our care for creation. But live where you are. Resist from a heart at peace.
Comments (1)
But ultimately, you were predestinated unto anarchy, right?