Letter to an Official

Cotye Allen

ENG 170-31

Dylan Haughton

16th April 2023

 

Anarchy Defies Itself

Dear Revolutionist,

 

I have written to you in earnest, as I am worried about the future of the country that you invoked an anarchist revolution upon with your powerful words. I am one who enjoys traveling wherever the world will let me and the collapse of our country’s government has put no stop to it. I have seen towns and villages before and after rule, and I’ve made several observations when revisiting previous locations. Each settlement I have come across has a different sort of community after the revolt. However, more than every other is one with new laws and somehow a different shape of what was before the revolution. Here is where I realized that despite the circumstances, people have the instinct to follow a herd which has a shepard. But part of my concerns lie in the fact that the wrong shepard can lead a herd astray and a herd without a shepherd will end up in the same place.

To begin, I would like to say that I do adore your intentions and what a utopia it would be if only people were simple enough to live peacefully amongst each other when without rule. A world where we don’t need to abide by what the government tells us and money isn’t controlling or allowing monopolization of the bare necessities. We aren’t forced to fight wars by the government’s demand and aren’t subjected to prejudice and persecution by police. You believed we could escape these things and live in a world with peace and equality, free from economic cannibalism.

However, the world is essentially the same. Instead of one big government there are plenty of smaller ones, whether the people realize it or not, with those who desire power or authority. If the majority respect someone or view them in a good light, then they will listen to what they say and that individual becomes a new government of sorts within themselves if they choose to use the power of having respect. More often than not, this corrupts an individual. These governments are more cruel and less structured than the old overarching government, as we’ve lost the majorly moral laws with a system that had been put in place to keep the country in order. And to those other villages that have no person in charge, the dangers of disorder still apply. Though you said that our anarchy was not founded on violence, it has resulted in more as there is lack of punishment and so those without restriction commit more acts of violence or malicious intent without law enforcement or a government holding them back. The people continue to do labor, but without labor laws. People continue to abuse their neighbors, but without law enforcement to stop them.

If you do not believe that there are so many people falling back under one figures rule, tell me, how easy was it for you to spark an uprising by simple persuasion? If you managed to make people reject a government, what makes you believe that another person with a suasive tongue wouldn’t be able to convince them to subscribe to a new authority? Humanity, even folks from poor backgrounds or have been subjected to prejudice, are not as kind hearted as you may hope or want to believe. Just as you placed your wholesome values into your speech, another can place tainted goals into theirs that are just as bad and if not worse than the government before. If they are perceived as righteous by means of being cunning, then people who see them in rose colored lenses will follow them. And the one who manages to get a following, will use the granted power to get what they want and will simply feed off of the people they fool for their own benefit and make rules around their personal beliefs. This could entail oppressing minorities, allowing slaughter, or even allowing those with antisocial goals to gather and pillage other communes. 

I am appalled at the horrendous violence and criminal activity that this lawless country has plummeted into, as I am sure you should be too as violence was said to not be your goal, but freedom was. What freedom is there in stripping away the government that kept those with discrimination and prejudice from harming or restricting who they oppose? To keep democracy and prevent dictatorship? This is not anarchy anymore, this is the invitation for tyranny and chaos that entirely defeats the point of what we fought for. 

I surmise that rather than demolish the government, we should have fought for change. It wasn’t the government that was bad, it was the corrupt ways within it that could have been dealt with by protesting one issue at a time, rather than the whole thing. If the garden is full of weeds, pluck the weeds to have a beautiful garden. You are still widely respected by those who followed, you can use your strong voice that resulted in this mess to fix it before it is too late and our land is left in a violent, corrupt, pit that is ruled by warlords as opposed to democracy. 

 

Sincerely, 

A very concerned traveler

 

Page of Reflection

After analyzing The Moral Foundations of Anarchy by Gori, I have learned that anarchy has wholesome intent but is incredibly contradictory. Anarchy means well, those who desire it are against oppression and seek freedom or equality. I believe wholeheartedly in the righteous morals anarchists fight for, however I believe that a society completely without structure or a law enforcement of some form will inevitably create a more toxic and dangerous world that the well meaning anarchists wouldn’t want. 

I won’t say the issue is entirely the act of being an anarchist- which I believe can be described as fighting for freedom from government, economic cannibalism, and abolishment of oppression. This is based on Gori’s explanation as opposed to any other examples of the ideals of an anarchist since it is his idea of anarchy we are speaking of. In the first section of the pamphlet, Gori says that he rejects the idea that anarchy was based on violence as it is often associated with, saying that the stigma was placed there by authoritarians. Later in the pamphlet he adds that there are more peaceful anarchists than there are violent ones. I have no issues with wanting freedom and equality. My problem instead stems from what would come from what they believe a utopia would be as they assume everyone else will conform to what they believe as well and have no consideration for what those will ill intents could do when there is no governed law enforcement to restrict them. 

I won’t say Gori didn’t acknowledge evil or wrong doings of man. He had provided a statement on the vagueness of what is good and bad in the second section that included a phase “the good is when I steal the wife of another- evil is when another steals my wife,” which essentially makes the point that if you’re doing it it’s not bad, but if they are it is. Though there are some things that morals are dubious when considering if good or bad, there are some things I believe everyone can agree that is bad and that is murder, rape, and generally crimes that inflict pain or violence on others. Gori even said himself “freedom is incompatible with violence,” in the fourth section of his pamphlet. So, it is in agreement that violence is bad if you want freedom. But, if law enforcement provided by a government are stripped, who will prevent violence from happening? Who will keep the ones who oppress others from committing acts of violence against them? Or punish them for doing so? If one were to say “well, we could make rules against that and a form of law enforcement to keep it at bay,” well how is that any different from a government? My overall point is that without law or some form of control, then that means no control. And no control means chaos. This glorified anarchy means not only the freedom to love or live but the freedom to hate and kill.

 

Work Cited

diegodelavega 7 years 10 months ago In reply to Welcome by libcom.org Submitted by diegodelavega on June 15, et al. “The Moral Foundations of Anarchy by Pietro Gori.” Libcom.org, https://libcom.org/article/moral-foundations-anarchy-pietro-gori.

 

Rhetorical Analysis

Cotye Allen

ENG 170-31

Dylan Haughton

3rd May 2023

Sympathizing with Gori’s Idea of Moral Anarchy

When one thinks about anarchy, you may think about what that entails. Freedom from organized control or freedom for people to do whatever they want (dictionary.cambridge.org). Usually, the way of this being obtained is thought to be through violent means against the authority. However, Gori states that violence has no place in anarchy. He believes that freedom is incompatible with violence, and anarchy is actually the negation of violence. He has his own controversial views on what it means to be an anarchist and the moral means it is intended for. He also views authority and today’s economy to be the true villain. Using a sense of relatability, Gori aims to win over those who empathize with ones who are subject to the government’s authority. 

Based on The Moral Foundations of Anarchy, Gori believes that there are two primitive human rights: the right to live and the right to love. These are brought by the basic instincts of man, the need for conservation and the want for procreation. You cannot do the second without the first, and so the primary objective is to live. He makes a statement that if you are born, you have the right to live, and that anyone who disagrees is violating the foundations of existence. Here, Gori could likely be using pathos to try and win over people who have been told or think otherwise based on what is considered lawful or correct in their society. There are a great deal of people who have been told they can’t love a certain person based on their gender, class, or skin color by those who hold authority over them, or who’s rights have been restricted based on these same categories. By saying that everyone has these basic human rights, it is setting every person as equal unlike big portions of society at that time, and therefore the words make some who fit into oppressed categories more willing to listen to what he has to say.

Expanding upon the statement that every human has a right to live, many things have resulted from humans’ perseverance. From the need to live, self-preservation was born. Self-preservation has what Gori refers to as “soft cannibalism” where instead of eating humans, man realized the value in making other men work for them as slaves because it was found to be more profitable. Rather than using man for food, man began using them to monopolize many natural resources. Gori then says that in the second stage of this economic cannibalism came privilege and hierarchy, where money had become the world ruler.  In other words, this is where classes were created- or the separation of others in a society based on their financial standing. To summarize what I believe Gori has said, he thinks that the basic needs of humans have led our current societal structure down a path of using others to preserve their own self and has made money a dictator.

In modern day, there is struggle between man and man; Antagonism between classes as well as competition between industrialism and commercialism are only two of Gori’s examples. Gori also speaks on the current freedom of our modern society. “As there isn’t in the world the moral any free will, except as inherited illusion of our senses, so in an absolute sense, there isn’t complete autonomy of the individual in society” (II.I). What Gori is trying to say is that despite how free we seem in today’s society, we are not completely free to do as we please. It can be assumed that Gori is referring to laws put in place to restrict others or dictate how they live, as well as the dependance you are born with on the government or society to simply exist. The government’s laws take what the authority believes to be bad, and keep those living under its rule from doing said bad things. Gori provides a question a European traveler asked to a Papuan- or as he referred to as a “savage”- which was “What is evil and what is good?” and the Papuan answered “The good is when I steal the wife of another – evil is when another steals my wife” (II.II). Based on this, Gori is trying to get across the point that what one deems bad is based on the individual. If you do something bad, you justify it. But if someone does something bad to you, then of course it’s unjustifiable. 

Gori brings up that throughout history there have been honored massacres in the name of an abstract principle; women, children, and old people have been killed because of what the government believes to be a good cause. By saying this, he makes you empathize with him as killing women or children are considered heinous acts, and by saying that these forms of authority have done these acts it also creates disdain for that authority. Following that statement, Gori continues: 

“Those to whom the measure has been or will be the most relentless threat, they will dip more their hands in the blood of their own kind. And not only against him they shout: Crucify!; but against all those who profess the same ideas, or the ones who say to follow – it doesn’t matter then if he has never met them, or whether or not they have ever endorsed his actions.They will be persecuted, imprisoned, tortured in mass – everything will be done against a party, or rather against a huge and irresistible current of principles and ideas, a real cross revenge for the fault of one – and raising the cruelest forms and wicked inquisition to the thought.” (II.II)

This demonstrates Gori’s belief that when others disagree with anothers ideals, it results in violence. Even if it is one person of the group that says or does something and the others do not actively agree with what they are doing, they will also be subject to whatever punishment the individual faces. To emphasize just how brutal the retaliation against those with a different mindset than the masses, he uses terminology like “tortured” that may make one uncomfortable or give one a greater understanding of the harshness. Essentially, the overall point Gori is bringing to the table is that authority inflicts violence to take down any principles that that authority is against. Which is why Gori raises the affirmation that “…anarchy is the complete negation of violence,” because anarchy is against authority (II.II).

Gori’s beliefs can be boiled down to: our world is ruled by money and classism, modern freedom is not genuine freedom, and anarchy is combating the violence of authority. Proceeding to his main point that anarchy negates violence, Gori says “Violence, whether it is made to me by a government agent, or by some other bully, it excites in me the right to self-defense” (IV). By saying this, he essentially states that rebellion or anarchy is not needless violence, but self defense against the oppressors. It can be derived from this that he is trying to put a separation between malicious violence and necessary violence as well as justify the form of physical retaliation against authority. Using the word “bully” may also let the reader see Gori’s desired perspective as most have an image of what a bully is and comparing that to the government could provide a better understanding to the audience of how he views it and it’s similarities to what one would traditionally think to be bad. 

Over the course of Gori’s manifesto, he is building up a portfolio of corruption within the government or society, to paint a picture of its antagonisms on freedom. He also brings up the hypocrisy in our so-called free society; ”In fact isn’t also an enemy of freedom, the one who imprisons a man, to punish and force him to think in one way rather than another, just as one who injures or kills him in order to force him to think like him?” (IV). With this statement, Gori is saying that authority is an enemy to freedom. The government’s laws are what is restricting one’s freedom and forces you to live however they dictate, and that they are the one inflicting violence when they don’t get their way. By carrying this point with a question, he is making the reader think, or in rhetorical terms, he is using logos. Overall, the message that Gori is likely sending is that the government or forms of authority are the ones committing acts of violence and controlling others, while all anarchy is doing is combating what could be considered tyranny. By structuring his manifesto like this, he is aiming to make people view anarchists as the good guys, that they are rebelling for the sake of freedom through acts of self-defense against a great hypocritical oppressor who uses violence to get their way.

Whether Gori’s depiction or ideas of anarchy is with good intent or not, I see a large flaw with not what he has said, but rather what he has not said. From what I read, Gori not once went into what negatives would come from a lawless land and how one would prevent them. It also seems he underestimates the ill will of a lot of humans who would be without restraint in an anarchist society. With those who want freedom from oppression and would receive that from a lack of authority, comes those who would now be free to be prejudiced and commit hate crimes against those who anarchy’s purpose was to save. Without law enforcement, there would be no rules that have been put in place to protect those who are oppressed. They would be abolished just like the ones that oppress. Anyone would be free to discriminate, and harm those who they hold bigotry for. Though I am sure the majority of people would be able to work well together without issue, what of those who are full of malice? I would have suggested he go into what he’d plan to do about that without just creating government and authority again. And if he just planned to let those atrocious acts of violence from antisocial individuals occur, then the whole point of anarchy is defeated. Someone would suffer the violence of an individual with different views or perception of what is right or wrong, and it therefore would be no better than the government. 

Gori also fails to take into account that even if the corrupt government and classes are no longer a variable, people can still be greedy or monopolize. An example of this comes from warlords who would in a sense still be a form of authoritarian. “…such as warlords, are concerned with maintaining autonomy because autonomy is the root of their power and it provides them with significant economic and other benefits” (Vinci 300). Here, it is described that a handful of warlords are mainly concerned with themselves and how they are affected if they don’t protect what gave them the right to do as they pleased. A warlord named Mohammed Sayid Hersi, or General Morgan, was motivated for his own gain. He was in control of a town- which in itself is ruining this ideal of no authority- and he had feared losing his position of power to other civil leaders. On top of this, there would still be the presence of corporate power. “…warlords have made millions of dollars from the exploitation of natural resources in areas they control,” This doesn’t sound much different from the current, where people fight to monopolize necessities or wants of the many in order to make a profit out of it (Vinci 300). With this information of a warlord in an actual anarchist state, how would Gori go about preventing warlords or the cycle of people just rebuilding what was pre-existing? No idea of mine would be able to keep pure anarchy were I to have a suggestion, as any form or prevention would go against the desired freedom that anarchy entails. 

One last thing that Gori underestimates is the violence in anarchy. Though he views it as self-defense, there are many examples where it would be a stretch to call anarchists acts of self-defense. “Although these actions need not necessarily be violent, they often were: during this period anarchists were responsible for a series of spectacular assassinations and bombings,” and though the assassinations could be argued for the better as they were directed at one individual they could have been preventing from doing anything bad, bombings aren’t controllable (Dissent Magazine). They would have been risking letting innocent individuals get caught in the crossfire which, if you think about it, is punishing individuals for just being around one person or group which Gori specifically is against.
In conclusion, though Gori has a lot of moral views and desires that come from anarchy, his utopia falls through when the logic of it is considered. If he had used more logos in his manifesto, then perhaps it would have come out as a more persuasive piece, but the only matter he convincingly conveyed is that there is a problem with our government and the current economic state. At the end of the day, there clearly are still problems that need to be fixed in our society as displayed by Gori, but anarchy seemingly isn’t the solution.

 

 

Cites

“Anarchy.” ANARCHY | Definition in the Cambridge English Dictionary, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/anarchy 

Berman, Sheri. “No Cheers for Anarchism.” Dissent Magazine, 9 Dec. 2015, https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/no-cheers-anarchism 

Vinci, Anthony. International Studies Quarterly. 2nd ed., vol. 52, 2008. https://www.jstor.org/stable/29734236?seq=6