The ability of individual people to defend themselves is a central aspect of anarchism of every variety. One of the first things every state does is monopolize violence and so prevent people from defending themselves as they see fit. Every anarchist understands that under the state “people are institutionally prohibited from defending themselves.”1 Every anarchist understands how absolutely necessary this prohibition is for the survival of the state.
How can this be true?! As a recent interlocutor had it, “I’m not sure where you get the idea that most people are institutionally prevented from defending themselves. There are statutes in every state that delineate the legal means of doing so, up to and including homicide.”2
But self defense to an anarchist is a very different thing from self defense as defined in state laws. The ruling class writes laws to serve their purposes, and self defense laws are no exception. Sure, if someone is trying to kill you or your family right at this moment the law lets you kill them to prevent it. This doesn’t hurt the state, and the possibility helps them in at least a couple of ways.
First, allowing this increases the state’s legitimacy. If they punished people for defending themselves like this people would tend to rebel. Second, the state needs people to exploit. There’s no percentage in allowing its victims to be killed off if it can be prevented. Anyway, deadly self defense by private citizens is incredibly rare in the US. Since 2007 the number of such killings ranged between 250 to 450 per year.3 From the point of view of ruling class policy makers, considering how many people they kill every year, this is negligible.
State self defense laws only allow people to use force against immediate threats of violence, but, as the numbers in the last toot show, this is an incredibly rare situation. As I said above, these laws are written by the ruling class for their own benefit, and as such they absolutely forbid people from defending themselves against a large, large majority of the actual threats they face, which mostly involve violent exploitation by the ruling class. Violent exploitation is how the ruling class lives. They’re not going to make it legal to defend yourself against it.
Just for instance, here in Los Angeles County we have about 75K people living on the street.4 Every year about 2,000 of them die, mostly from being homeless.5 This is a death rate of about 2700 per 100K people, approximately three times the overall US death rate of 984 per 100K.6 Meanwhile there are close to 100K empty homes (including both apartments and single family houses).7 There is close to a million acres of publicly owned parkland in the county.8 Homeless people are dying because it’s illegal for them to occupy those empty homes or build homes on public land. The cops will hurt or kill anyone who tries to save themselves, their family, using these empty homes, this empty land.
And yet they can’t defend themselves against the cops. The ruling class needs trespassing laws to be enforced or it wouldn’t be possible to make money from being a landlord. No matter what state laws about self defense allow they’re never going to allow people to kill cops who are trying to drag their family out of a squat, even though that’s a real, significant threat to people’s lives, much, much more common than the threat of immediate violence. You can’t defend yourself against cops, and cops violently prevent people from defending themselves against the real threats they face. Homelessness, hunger, eviction, wage theft, rape, and so on.
But when anarchists talk about self defense they mean actual self defense. As @HeavenlyPossum put it, “The point is to empower every person to be able to be free to defend themselves if and how they choose, alone or in voluntary cooperation with others.”9 If the state has a monopoly on legitimate violence then the only kind of self defense they’ll allow will either further their goals or be neutral. And yet most of what we need to defend ourself against is state violence. The words are the same but they mean very different things.
States habitually redefine common words to suit their purposes. Self defense is one example, and Orwell has plenty of others. It’s even easy for anarchists, to whom nothing I’ve said here comes as a revelation, to be fooled. For instance, the Los Angeles City Council is forever authorizing new “affordable housing” projects. Dozens of them every year. And when people ask them about homelessness they’re happy to list the projects.
But “affordable housing” in this context means privately owned apartment buildings with a few units set aside for people making less than the average amount but still more than homeless people can afford. These requirements often expire after a few decades, subjecting tenants to ruinous rent increases and impending eviction. When normal people hear the words “affordable housing” they think it means housing people can actually afford, but that’s not what it means at all.
And it’s easy to be fooled, I know it has been for me, because it’s hard to remember just what violent cynical liars our masters are. I know none of this is a revelation to anarchists, but it was useful for me to think it through, to try to internalize how thoroughly deceptive these people are. Maybe it’ll be useful to others to read it.
- https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/112961155204138076
- https://kolektiva.social/@TessRants@mastodon.social/112965895241148429
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/251894
- https://www.lahsa.org/news?article=927-lahsa-releases-results-of-2023-greater-los-angeles-homeless-count
- http://www.publichealth.lacounty.gov/chie/reports/Homeless_Mortality_Report_2022.pdf
- https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
- https://www.acceinstitute.org/thevacancyreport
- http://www.laalmanac.com/parks/pa01.php
- https://kolektiva.social/@HeavenlyPossum/112961155204138076
@adrian
I appreciate your thoughtful exploration here.
I believe it suffers from the same flaw I see in most anarchists' posts about the subject:
It acts as if (in the context of the US) "The State" isn't made up of the citizenry. It is us.
We may be a plutocracy – in a fairly technical sense – but we have not allowed this democratic republic to yet slide into oligarchy. (The wealthy demonstrably want that, but it hasn't happened, yet.) We still have power if we're willing to protect & use it
@TessRants
First of all, regardless of whether we have power it’s still the case that what the American state calls self defense is mediated by laws created and controlled by the ruling class, so saying that the law allows self defense is not a response to the anarchist claim that the law doesn’t allow self defense. It’s equivocation on the polysemous term “self defense.”
That being said, the United States government is not made up of the citizenry, and it never has been. The government was designed in 1789 by the ruling class to protect their ability to profit from the coercive exploitation of labor and this has never changed, although the means of exploitation have been continually modified in response to threats from popular uprisings, which are the only effective form of power that we have. Threats of uprisings hardly count as having power within the system, which I assume is what you’re talking about.
The founders didn’t even try to hide this. In Federalist #10 Madison is explicit that a republican form of government as opposed to democracy is essential for preventing tenants, workers, anyone without property, who necessarily form the majority, from voting away private property rights. Even now tenants, who form the vast majority of voters, can’t even get effective rent control laws, let alone laws that weaken their ongoing exploitation through private property rights.
So when you say “we have not yet allowed this democratic republic to yet slide into oligarchy” you’re begging the main question. It explicitly began as an oligarchy, so when did it become a “democratic republic?” This is a serious question. What day, through what means, was the oligarchic character of the constitution transformed into a democracy capable of being slid away from? You’re making an actual factual claim, that this country is not an oligarchy, so you ought to be able to provide some actual evidence for it. What is it?
@adrian
First: The laws – and yes, I've read Rousseau – in the US are written by our elected representatives. Even by the most outlandish standards, they are not a ruling class, (although, I grant some of them do seem desperately to be trying to become one.) Do lobbyists have more sway than the average citizen? Yes, with the elected officials that allow that corruption.
Because that's what it is: a corruption of the system of representation.
These are simply facts.
They’re not facts, they’re fantasies. You’re right that these days politicians aren’t generally members of the ruling class, although some of them still are. In the beginning they all were. But they work for the ruling class, who generally writes legislation via its lobbyists. It’s wrong to theorize lobbyists as “having sway.” They communicate the needs and desires of their employers to politicians, who have the same employers. You’re confusing the propaganda for the reality. This isn’t a corruption of the system of representation, it’s the explicit intentional point of having representatives in the government rather than direct democracy. Like I said, this isn’t a secret. It’s really worth reading Federalist #10. It’s not that long.
Seriously, try to find a historical time when the US became a democracy. It never happened.
@adrian
You do know there are multiple varieties of democracy, yes?
If one is eligible to vote in the US, one's vote still matters – why else do you think the GOP is working so hard to suppress the vote and purge voter rolls?
But, consistency also matters.
Decisions are made by those that show up, and the crazies & profit-driven amongst us are world champions at showing up consistently.
If we, progressives & the left show up consistently, we win.
That is evident.
@adrian
The US was, from the time of its inception, a Republic; which is a form of democracy.
(I can see where the term 'democratic republic' could cause confusion, which I'd hoped to alleviate by using the lower case. Mea culpa there.)
Yes, it was founded – at least in practice, if not in law – as an oligarchy, but it didn't remain as such, which should be self-evident.
As for equivocation re: "self sefense" – make your case, b/c I tried stridently to avoid that fallacy.
when did it stop being an oligarchy? What were the means by which it became no longer an oligarchy?
In modern usage a republic is a form of democratic government, but this isn’t how the founders understood it. Madison and his allies pushed for a republic as opposed to a democracy in order to protect their interests:
@adrian
Specifically 1920 – the 19th Amendment.
How about the Voting Rights Act in 1965?
@adrian
And, as for the vast majority of voters you mentioned – what was the percentage turnout of registered voters for the last presidential election? How about the midterms?
Go look. I'll wait.
(for those unwilling or unable to look, according to Pew research: 2020 – 66%, 2022 – 46%, 2018 – 49% bonus: percentage of eligible voters who voted in all three – 37%)
So, maybe it has more to do with voter engagement than corruption.
*Although, still not ruling corruption out completely*
I feel like we’re talking past each other at this point, but thanks for your interest.
@adrian
I think we are, as well.
So it goes.