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Since the world is overrun by automobiles, I enjoy strolling in the park. While enjoying my perambulations, I occasionally hear someone on a soapbox preaching "anarchism" of one kind or another, as if anarchy could be anything but incomprehensible chaos. I usually chuckle inwardly and pass on by, suppressing my urge to stop and laugh out loud at the presentation of yet another oxymoron and the credulity of innocent bystanders deluded by it.



But I am not such a stand-offish passerby or spoil-sport every day. I have paused today to listen to a soapbox anarchist speak - I shall no doubt  have a few guffaws at the sheer absurdity of the proposition that anarchy can have any form at all, let alone the form he declaims, and still be anarchy.



It is often said that "anarchy" means "without a leader." It is plain enough to any observer that a society without any leadership is a joke and a rather bad one at that.



No matter how democratic or communistic the formal structure of a group might be, underneath the pretext of social equality we observe an informal hierarchy with all the power struggles that that implies. And in the midst of the perpetual struggle for leadership, we may find a self-fashioned anarchist representing his brand of leadership in order to convince others of the merits of his absurd position. If he is unwise, unware of his self-contradiction in his anarchic proposal, he certainly has lost his sense of humour; not to worry, however, for if he is in wiser company, he will soon be corrected, maybe rudely laughed down as a fool.



Every genuine order requires a leading principle. If the professed anarchist were really an unprincipled man, no argument would be availing to him except those advancing the destruction of the social entity including himself. He might and probably will claim that he is self-led, that he is his own natural born leader. Yet if we examine the principles of his self-leadership, if he is able to state any, we shall find them adopted from the society in which he resides and with which he cannot do without and still be a human being. And that society itself is organized in a range of low to high, from vulgar to noble, so let us hope his principles are the leading ones, namely, the highest ones, and that he is not a deranged anarchist who, once retired to the forest, is still so much in need of society that he sends bombs to it. In the former case of higher principles, the self-styled anarchist is, despite his semantics, not really an anarchist. In the latter case of unwisdom irrespective of intelligence, the anarchist shall realize his devastating  dream only in death and destruction, for the perfection of anarchy is chaos: nothing can be known about chaos for it is the total absence of order; man is a classifier requiring ascending abstractions to perceive and conceive anything at all.



Notwithstanding the foregoing, perhaps it remains unclear just what a real anarchist is. I have prevously defined the real anarchist in my brilliant dissertation, 'The Real Anarchist,' which I highly recommend to soap-box anarchists and to the audience endangered by them - a bomb can be easily concealed in a soap box. Since I love to quote no author better than myself, I provide this quote from my tribute to the real anarchist, a man with a bomb under his coat and a crumpled-up, incoherent manifesto in pocket:



"I am in an anarchic mood at this very moment, so I am not about to cite some authority's definition of anarchy! There are library shelves full of definitions if you care to research the concept, and ample web sites to boot. We find all sorts of hyphenated anarchies: anarcho-syndicalism, anarcho-environmentalism, anarcho-capitalism, anarcho-collectivism, anarcho-Christianity, anarcho-communitarianism, anarcho-individualism, and so on. Allow me to add anarcho-neanderthalism.



"No matter what definition of anarchy I might make, I know the intellectual piranhas will devour its flesh down to the bare bones, then pound them into a plaster from which they will fashion an idol in their own image. They would deprive me of my anarchy in the form of The Real Anarchist just as shamans tried to grab people's favorite totems and give them a big sky-god. The shaman failed - people hang on to their animals and other natural objects for dear life. Today, the environmentalists still refuse to allow Mother Earth to be ravaged in Father Heaven's name. They have congregated in Seattle to protest against the arrogant behavior of the World Trade Organization. What a motley conglomeration of protesting groups!



"Each group is decked out with its favorite totem. The unions carry the emblems of their threatened species, the working man. But the real anarchists get out of hand, and give the Seattle police their golden opportunity to behave like a fascist organization of well- trained thugs. Besides dealing with the anarchists, the police finally enjoy some longed for indiscriminate assaults on "civilians", kicking them in their groins, shooting gas into their faces point blank, whacking them with clubs, grinding their faces into the cement with their boots, and other cathartic methods of conflict resolution.



"What a marvelous example of organized violence supporting organized greed, of how laissez-faire liberalism dovetails with totalitarianism to free the police state to protect accumulated capital. Why, this calls to mind how a liberal philosopher praised Mussolini for being more liberal than liberals are! Under the ideal neo-liberal regime, there is no right to assemble and speak against the accumulation of capital and private destruction of natural resources. Forty square blocks of downtown Seattle are declared off limits to demonstrators. The authority heading the WTO refers to all those demonstrators opposed to its agenda and excluded from its meetings - hence kept in the dark - as the "forces of darkness." Commentators on the all-pervasive CEO News cites "tribalism" as the cause of the disorder. All this is certainly enough to drive destabilized persons to define the practice of anarchy with demented deeds.



"Setting all that aside in brackets, if we synthesize the arid philosophical definitions of anarchy, we shall have a "philosophical anarchist." Then we see that a philosophical anarchist is any virtual anarchist who wants someone else to blow up the powers that be so he can claim all along that he is a non-violent revolutionay, and, after the explosion say, "I warned you, I told you so." It was once said of Parisians in the late Nineteenth century that they were all anarchists in one way or another. But that is to say nothing....



"If we, the human race, are in peril, and if we do need anarchists to at least derail the train rushing to doom, we must have a better idea of what a real anarchist is. On that subject I venture to hazard a rough guess, more in the way of a description than a formal definition. Keep in mind that I do not claim to be an authority on this subject. For, if I were an authority, and inasmuch as I am in an anarchic mood, I would have to kill myself - in which case I would be an absurd man.



"An anarchist is a human time bomb on an unknown schedule. He is often used for political purposes by factions with a more coherent agenda than sheer chaos. The anarchist himself simply engenders chaos. The anarchist is an outlaw obsessed with the authority he loves to hate. In fact, he unconsciously craves the affection of the authority he would kill. Since anarchism is the absurd denial of authority, almost any authority with a radical 'ism' easily influences the anarchist. All political 'isms' have an element of anarchy as their basis, for each political faction rejects the leadership of the other factions, and all would love to have the violent police and military means at their disposal.



"An anarchist is not always easy to spot, at least not until he exceeds critical mass. He might look like anybody. Although there is no reliable FBI profile, sometimes there are clear signs of danger. Although he might be a nice suburban boy, he is most likely living in miserable accommodations; the most typical anarchist is an antisocial, volatile person crammed into tight quarters resembling a pipe or box. Policemen have observed that a visit to the home of an anarchist is sufficient to convince anyone to avoid becoming an anarchist, and that, if anarchists wasted less time making bombs and stewing in their own juices, they would be law-abiding, productive consumers. In other words, hard-core anarchists are usually dropouts who are isolated, immoral, and bad housekeepers.



"We cannot overstate an anarchist's antipathy to society. When real anarchists are employed by communists or fascists, the anarchists have to turn in their anarchic credentials at the cellar door. An anarchist worth his bomb hates socialism, communism, collectivism, and so on, even more than he hates theism. And he hates the means used by the repugnant masses: large-scale technology. Furthermore, he considers democracy to be especially vile, with its mediocre herd-rule. And he even eschews republicanism with its houses of political prostitution. Naturally, he condemns the consequence of social economies: property. Property is the root of all evil. If it were not for the division of labor that eventually resulted in mass production, the anarchist would not be alienated from the natural world and the paternal authority who has become so abstract and remote. After all, the insane cultivated obsession with property has deprived him of a mother and father. Even the mythical primal scene would be better than the modern impersonal life-he might even enjoy solidarity with his brothers without remorse if it were not for civilization.



"The anarchist strikes out violently in random self-defense, in a sort of explosive, hysterical temper tantrum, somewhat like a wild child raised by bears or wolves instead of civilized humans. He is neither stupid nor wise: he has a native intelligence that rebels against all those artificial restraints he would replace with natural restraints-the state of nature is also a state. Yes, the anarchist regresses to a primitive state, hence is reactionary, conservative, and aristocratic: anarchic aristocracy is boiled down to the virtue of might makes right. He is present-oriented, thus has no definite idea of what the future might be-in any case, it should be a return to the simple life of a dim and remote past, to the cradle if not the womb of mankind. This is not to be the simple monastic life-its highly regulated, authoritarian regime simply will not do. It is to be a life in the Wild-not the simple life of an ascetic religious hermit holed up in a Himalayan cave, but the life of, perhaps, a heroic Stone Age cave man. Ironically, the simplicity desired would be rigidly regulated by natural conditions and social customs....



"Finally, the anarchism of the anarchist can be expressed in a simple formula:



"Critical Reaction plus Explosive Means plus Nebulous Future equals Anarchism!"



I shouted out the last quotation to the soapbox anarchist. "Read my red paper, The Real Anarchist!" I added. He paused to that say he had perused my paper in the bathroom, and, as far as he was concerned, I was referring merely to a strict definition of anarchy, as if a definition could disprove it. And now he proceeds with an exhortation on so-called "Pure Anarchy."



His continued declamation gives me further cause for glee and sympathy - and cause for fear. Yes, as a catholicist I must confess that I am amused by people I disagree with because I sympathise with them. You might have noticed that, in my denigration of anarchists, I subtly adopted their attitude in Seatle. Another favorite tactic of mine is to rush to a group's defense and slap them around a little bit while defending them. But I must break off my remarks forthwith and exit this park before our Pure Anarchist finds out the joke is on him and blows everyone up with him.



Indeed, a Pure Anarchist would be bound by the natural logical order to blow himself up, for his actual existence as Pure Anarchist in this world is impossible. Once he realizes that the self-authorization he idolizes is actually derived from society and is the foundation of moral order represented by the state he despises, he must, in self-rebellion against the introjected social authority, destroy himself to be consistent with his absurd principles.



My advice is, therefore, to make a run for it, now.



KABOOM!