It's a Duck

“I agree with you on everything except your conclusion.” I had been discussing politics with my friend Dagar* for years.

Dagar was the smartest person I'd ever argued with, including my time as a Philosophy major at an Ivy League college. We had read all the same books (though they'd read many more). We'd agreed on all our definitions and priors (e.g. “there are not some people who do not count as people”). We'd agreed on all the underlying mechanisms (e.g. “you don't need a conspiracy to explain phenomena when incentives can do the job”). We'd talked about everything, but that last step to a conclusion was just too steep. So after years of agreeing that something walked like a duck, talked like a duck, swam like a duck, and looked like a duck, I was still here insisting “that can't be a duck.” Because admitting Dagar was right meant I had to be insane.

Because Dagar was an anarchist.

“You already agree with me,” they said. “You're already an anarchist, you just don't know it yet. Here, read this. And get over yourself.”

“Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!” was my introduction to anthropologist David Graeber. It was 2014 and I was very late to the party. Graeber had already written Debt: The First 5,000 Years. He'd already co-coined the phrase “We are the 99%” during Occupy Wall Street. He'd had a whole career as an academic and an activist, but all of that was lost on me because it was 2014 and I was a Good Little Liberal. I had no reason to listen to The Radical Left.

Until I was very obviously staring right at a duck that I refused to believe was a duck. I mean Anarchism?! What the hell kind of idea is that, anyway?!

“Most people don't think of anarchism as a bad idea; they think of it as insane!” – David Graeber, “Finance Is Just Another Word for Other People’s Debts“

When I read that quick, little 2,035 word essay, came to two quick epiphanies:

“Anarchism” doesn't mean what I thought it meant. Read anarchist writers and you will not find them advocating for chaos, nihilism, or even violence. Instead you'll read a lot more about “consensus”, “responsibility”, and “democracy.”
Anarchy is not only a viable option for organizing human endeavors—it's the default option! When you're waiting to get on a bus, do you and your fellow riders form a line or do you immediately start punching each other to get on first? When you and your friends want to go out for dinner, do you discus your options and then reach a reasonable consensus that meets most people's needs for schedule and diet, or do you let whomever is richest command everyone meet at a time and place of their choosing? “Anarchy” comes from the greek “an” meaning “without” and “arkhos” a ruler. Which is actually a pretty simple description the vast majority of human relationships.

“The most basic anarchist principle is self-organization: the assumption that human beings do not need to be threatened with prosecution in order to be able to come to reasonable understandings with each other, or to treat each other with dignity and respect.”

Today would have been David Graeber's 64th birthday. He left a huge body of work, and those 2,035 words that he wrote in 2009 were the ones that finally took me down that last step. To look at the waddling, quacking, paddling water fowl of my own beliefs about how humans can organize themselves and start to think, “oh shit. That might be a duck.”

And I might be an anarchist.

*not their real name

Signed, Your Friendly Neighborhood Anarchist