Wednesday, July 03, 2013

Stateless

Of course to talk about a stateless society in practice is kind of silly. Any society necessarily forms a state to administer itself. This of course relies on a weak definition of "state." Any organizational form that coheres with regularity to run a social body can be considered a state.

The problem now is the nation-state, with its tendency to narrow the conception of humanity for its participants, to declare a "team" in other words. The modern state, with its alienating institutions - this so-called "representative democracy" which is merely a theatrical illusion conjured up for the purposes of laundering the true machinery, the endless rat race towards money and power - is the problem.

The political process of pursuing a stateless society will itself produce a new state, but it will be a state that will be better designed to facilitate our needs, because it arises organically: it arises in sync with what we are and how we actually wish to behave. It arises from the ground, from the need of political actors to properly express themselves; it is generated from an imperative that is recognized when someone says, "I could not do otherwise."