Solidarity is the guiding principle for any egalitarian philosophy. The basic idea is that all oppressed people face the same enemy and the only way any of us can defeat our collective oppressor is with the collective force of a diverse people united against it in all its demonic manifestations. Today they call this principle intersectionality. The uncivil union of big government and big business that calls itself the state murders black people, rapes trans folks, objectifies women, dehumanizes workers, and bombs the third world into, well, the third world. Separated we are weak, impoverished, crippled. But united we are dangerous, we are a force to be reckoned with.
In my mind, the natural objective of solidarity and intersectionality should be anarchy in one form or the other and only the concept of panarchy allows for one form or another to be properly explored. In spite of their once lofty ambitions and their recent rise in trendiness, state socialism and communism don't destroy the class system, they just replace it. Ultimately the only difference between a bureaucrat and an oligarch is a title. The Bolshevik interpretation of the Marxist Dictatorship of the Proletariat is just asinine. If creating a state to dismantle the state worked, the Soviet Union would exist as a Kropotkinite workers paradise and Sweden wouldn't be slowly dissolving into neoliberal hell. I'm not unsympathetic to these brave and honorable experiments in collective governance. I still admire the courage of comrades like Fidel Castro and Olaf Palme. But the experiment has failed and it's time to move on. The Sandernistas are living in another century. The state ultimately exists for one purpose and one purpose only and that is to quite simply exist. You can call it capitalism or communism but when you create a state you create a business that relies on wage slavery and all to often war to justify its own solipsistic existence.
The only way to end oppression is to destroy hierarchy in every form, private or public, and the only way to achieve this is through a voluntary society in which consent reigns supreme against all else. True freedom only comes through self determination and this is what too many on the left today fail to grasp. You can't give someone their freedom. It's not a privilege to be asked for politely. It's a right to be fought for ruthlessly. Those who advocate for a state that rewards the downtrodden with the privileges of welfare deny these people of their god given right to true liberation through struggle.
Emancipation didn't free the slaves, it simply moved them from the plantation to the projects to the Prison Industrial Complex. Nat Turner had the right idea but he failed because he did it alone. If their had been a few more John Brown's who realized that their own fate rested in the liberation of all the oppressed through solidarity rather than charity, the statist horror show that was the Civil War may not have been necessary and the slaves may have been able to truly emancipate themselves the way they did in Haiti. Many ex-slaves and even a few white paupers attempted to use the chaos created by the fall of the Antebellum South to do just that, but the state remained. The Confederacy became Jim Crow with the full complicity of the Northern Establishment and by the time Jim Crow was erased, his policies had already been hardwired into the fascist ecosystem of the state. So much blood for nothing.
Black people remain oppressed for the same reason that queer people remain oppressed and women remain oppressed and brown people remain oppressed. We remain oppressed because the state continues to exist. The achievements of the Civil Rights Movement were ultimately superficial because they failed to address the root problem that unites us all. Much like the unsung black rebels of the Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement began revolutionary before it was assimilated into the half-measures of state reform. In fact, the radical left of the Sixties and Seventies may have briefly shown us the best example of truly revolutionary intersectionality in modern American history.
Black Panthers helped organize disgruntled veterans who showed pissed off white draft dodgers how to shoot straight so they could bust Timothy Leary out of prison for the acid freaks who supplied closets full of queer people with the high-powered entheogens that helped them to realize that their bodies didn't represent their Radical Faerie spirits that empowered them to join the riots fought to honor the spirits of slain Black Panthers. Once again, they only failed because they lacked the dedicated opposition to the state that would have made them impervious to the establishments face-saving sweetheart deals vis-a-vis the welfare state. Sadly, some the Twentieth Centuries finest American radicals were ultimately reduced to the status of yuppie Clintonites because with statists of every stripe, the ends always justify the means.
In the Twenty-first Century, anti-statist intersectionality has become more relevant than its ever been. In the growing shadows of the American Century, society is rapidly re-atomizing into its natural tribal state. The awesome power of the internet has left no lost soul without a tribe. Genderfuckers. Transhumanists. Gutter Punks. Adult Babies. Sex Workers. Rivet Heads. Phychonauts. Third Positionists. Primitivists. The Freaks. The Weirdos. The Broken Toys. We're already organized and empowered, now we just need to get radical, together. Posse Comitatus needs to start making undocumented farmers fake I.D.'s so they can move their guns to the Zapatistas in exchange for Psilocybin to sell on the dark web to Chaos Magicians trying to hack the DEA's database so they can tip off MS-13 so they can sell street-sweepers to the militia men at the gun shows cranking out fake I.D.'s.
And that's what the concept of panarchy is really all about, diversity. In spite of all the breathless rants from the supposed social justice warriors of ANTIFA, Panarchism and it's rough-trade gay brother National Anarchism are the only revolutionary currents accessible to anyone who wants to break free from the purgatory of state-sanctioned rebellion and actually fucking do something with our movements aside from selling out. It's full spectrum intersectionality. Either we all get free or we all get fucked. A successful revolutionary society is kind of like the clock on a time bomb. It's a thousand little gears grinding together to make one great big bang. Let's work together, dearest motherfuckers, and make some motherfucking noise.
Peace, Love, & Panarchy- CH
Soundtrack; songs that influenced this post
* All My Friends by LCD Soundsystem
* Come Together by the MC5
* Loaded by Primal Scream
* I'm Set Free by the Velvet Underground
* Waterfall by the Stone Roses
* Street Fighting Man by the Rolling Stones
* Karma Police by Radiohead
* Turn! Turn! Turn! by the Byrds
* Sit Down by James
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