How I Became an Anarchist

As I mentioned in my introduction, anarchism defines my political stance. However, you might find something unique about how I came to identify as an anarchist, That happened some six or seven years ago, just as finished The Once and Future King.

I feel no remorse at spoiling the finale of White’s adaptation of Arthurian legend: the myth stands (more or less) as common knowledge, and White retains the characteristic conclusion. I will therefore quote the relevant text, and emphasize those passages which inspired my politics:

The King, drained of his last effort, gave way to sorrow. Even when his visitor's hand lifted the tent flap, the silent drops coursed down his nose and fell on the parchment with regular ticks, like an ancient clock. He turned his head aside, unwilling to be seen, unable to do better. The flap fell, as the strange figure in cloak and hat came softly in.

"Merlyn?"

But there was nobody there: he had dreamed him in a catnap of old age.

Merlyn?

He began to think again, but now it was as clearly as it had ever been. He remembered the aged necromancer who had educated him—who had educated him with animals. There were, he remembered, something like half a million different species of animal, of which mankind was only one. Of course man was an animal—he was not a vegetable or a mineral, was he? And Merlyn had taught him about animals so that the single species might learn by looking at the problems of the, thousands. He remembered the belligerent ants, who claimed their boundaries, and the pacific geese, who did not. He remembered his lesson from the badger. He remembered Lyo-lyok and the island which they had seen on their migration, where all those puffins, razorbills, guillemots and kittiwakes had lived together peacefully, preserving their own kinds of civilization without war—because they claimed no boundaries. He saw the problem before him as plain as a map. The fantastic thing about war was that it was fought about nothing—literally nothing. Frontiers were imaginary lines. There was no visible line between Scotland and England, although Hodden and Bannockburn had been fought about it. It was geography which was the cause—political geography. It was nothing else. Nations did not need to have the same kind of civilization, nor the same kind of leader, any more than the puffins and the guillemots did. They could keep their own civilizations, like Esquimaux and Hottentots, if they would give each other freedom of trade and free passage and access to the world. Countries would have to become counties—but counties which could keep their own culture and local laws. The imaginary lines on the earth's surface only needed to be unimagined. The airborne birds skipped them by nature. How mad the frontiers had seemed to Lyo-lyok, and would to Man if he could learn to fly.

The old King felt refreshed, clear-headed, almost ready to begin again.

There would be a day—there must be a day—when he would come back to Gramarye with a new Round Table which had no corners, just as the world had none—a table without boundaries between the nations who would sit to feast there. The hope of making it would lie in culture. If people could be persuaded to read and write, not just to eat and make love, there was still a chance that they might come to reason.

I would feel as if I’d done you all a disservice without explaining why that passage had such a profound effect upon me, to the extent that it fixed the South and North of my political compass. So, I’ll take a few moments to analyze what I’ve emphasized. Nonetheless, and despite imagining Arthurian legend stands as common knowledge, first I’ll offer some context from my own perspective for that quote.

In the passage I quoted, you read the thoughts and recollections of a king who spent his childhood believing himself an orphan or a bastard. According to Wikipedia (as of 7:25am GMT, 9 Dec 2017), the unrecognized son of King Uther Pendragon spent his childhood as the foster son of Sir Ector, before starting

his initial training by Merlyn, a wizard who lives through time backwards. Merlyn, knowing the boy's destiny, teaches Arthur (known as ‘Wart’) what it means to be a good king by turning him into various kinds of animals: fish, hawk, ant, goose, and badger. Each of the transformations is meant to teach Wart a lesson, which will prepare him for his future life . . . . Merlyn instills in Arthur the concept that the only justifiable reason for war is to prevent another from going to war, and that contemporary human governments and powerful people exemplify the worst aspects of the rule of Might . . . . Merlyn leads him to envision a means of harnessing potentially destructive Might for the cause of Right: the chivalric order of the Round Table.

If you’ll forgive me some degree of exaggeration for the sake of making my point, King Arthur assumes the throne as a proletarian, and develops a plan to manipulate the current social structure (under which ‘Might makes Right’) into producing one to foster a morally-just society within which ‘Right’ decides ‘Might.’ Thus, knowing himself to stand at the end of his life, our proletarian king considers the flaws in the plan he developed upon assuming his throne.

Returning now to the passages from White that I quoted above, the emphasis I applied in cases one through five represents what our proletarian king considers his plan’s fatal flaw: national borders and trade barriers. Given recent arguments advocating open borders ranging from George Eaton in The New Statesman and even in (a more even-handed article) from The Economist, many would advocate the same as White’s King Arthur concludes while knowing he advances to his certain death: that is, an internationally borderless (both politically and economically), planet-wide society.

Considering the plot in its entirety, however, I cite Wikipedia once again:

As the young Arthur becomes king, he attempts to quell the prevalent ‘might makes right’ attitude with his idea of chivalry, even as he foresees the ascendancy of another form of might, namely legal prowess in the courtroom, and, from without, a form of fascism.

Given that we can have no courtroom without jurisdiction, and no fascism without nations, I can only conclude that the final thoughts of White’s King Arthur about the harm produced from the mere existence of borders (and particularly the fifth case I emphasized) would imply that White’s King Arthur would recommend confining judicial operations to the municipal scale. Fortunately, modern examples of an anarchist (or, more specifically, "democratic confederationalist") method for resolving civil conflicts already operates in Rojava.

Those seem like worthy goals to me, and I stand in solidarity for those (anarchists and others) working to create a world without political borders. Particularly, of course, with the riot dogs, who have no concept of those borders in the first place.

Sadly, the sixth instance wherein I added emphasis to White’s text will require another post to discuss. Still, I hope I’ve given you some idea about the genesis of and logic for my political position.

Best (as always),

@riotdog