Why do some of us have a positive view of the State – whereas others take a more negative if not anarchistic approach? Patrick Dunkelman’s recent book may be about the US situation but raises much wider questions of this sort. The book is Why Nothing Works – who killed progress and how to bring it back (2025) and argues that
progressivism is defined not by one, but rather by two divergent impulses - the progressive head and the progressive heart are in different places. Alexander Hamilton, leader of the Federalists, worried primarily about chaos. He wanted to place more authority in the hands of centralized officials and financiers capable of developing America into an industrial dynamo—a “Hercules” on the global stage. His worry was that America would remain too disorganized, too divided, too chaotic to make the most of its opportunity. Putting power into a leadership class would deliver more for the public. Thomas Jefferson’s narrative, by contrast, was born of an entirely different frame. Horrified by the English Crown’s treatment of the colonies, he was determined to thwart overbearing authority—to protect individuals (or, at least, white, male, landowning individuals) from the abuses of public authority.
the two impulses have waxed and waned through time such that the movement’s underlying zeitgeist has shifted, a bit like the tide.
the balance that’s emerged since the late 1960s—the excessive tilt toward the Jeffersonian—is a seminal political liability for the progressive movement.
I have to admit to some ambivalence about the State – despite my fixation on it and how it might be “reformed” to ensure it better serves the interests of the ordinary citizen. Occasionally, I confess to a streak of anarchistic makeup in me. Rebecca Solnit had this to say about David Graeber, one of anarchy's proponents -
In the first book of his that I read, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, a literally tiny book bursting with big ideas, he wrote, “In the United States there are thousands of academic Marxists of one sort or another, but hardly a dozen scholars willing openly to call themselves anarchists … It does seem that Marxism has an affinity with the academy that anarchism never will. It was, after all, the only great social movement that was invented by a Ph.D., even if afterwards, it became a movement intending to rally the working class.” And then he argues that anarchism was not, by comparison, an idea created by a few intellectuals; instead “the basic principles of anarchism—self-organization, voluntary association, mutual aid”—have been around “as long as humanity.” David was an anarchist by disposition as well as inclination.
In a 2017 essay, he declared, “There are many mysteries of the academy which would be appropriate objects of ethnographic analysis. One question that never ceases to intrigue me is tenure. How could a system ostensibly designed to give scholars the security to be able to say dangerous things have been transformed into a system so harrowing and psychologically destructive that, by the time scholars find themselves in a secure position, 99 percent of them have forgotten what it would even mean to have a dangerous idea?” That is, he was of the academy and also an outcast and enemy of it, but more than that it was full of animosity toward him, because he did not operate by its rules. So he also writes, with his usual jaunty bluntness, “I agreed to write this because I have no intention to apply for an academic position in America in the foreseeable future. There is probably not a single paragraph in this essay that I would not have self-censored had that not been the case.” I regret he never did a full anthropological analysis of academia, with its strange initiation rites, entrenched hierarchies, dysfunctional systems, absurdist rules, and use of language as a means of exclusion as well as inclusion and communication. And what better way to do that than to dip into some of the books on my shelves here in the mountain house where I spend my summers
Recommended Reading
Anarchy in Action Colin Ward (1973) – very much a British take Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow David Goodway (2006/12) a very discursive UK text Black Flame – the revolutionary class politics of anarchism and syndicalism ed Lucien
van der Walt and Michael Schmidt (2009) A bit too enthusiastic Two Cheers for Anarchism James Scott (2012) a classic although a bit weak on the
theory The Government of Noone – the theory and practice of anarchy Ruth Kinna (2019) a more
academic approach Means and Ends - the revolutionary practice of Anarchism in Europe and the US Zoe Baker
(2024) A pretty comprehensive study with an extensive bibliography
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