"I am an Anarchist! Wherefore I will not rule, and also ruled I will not be!"

What is Anarchism?

Anarchism is basically the rejection of any kind of government or ruling power. Anarchist believe that all government authority is both unnecessary and unjust.

In our current economic system (Capitalism), is very much a class divided society. You have the Upper Class with is the Ruling Class and you have the middle and lower classes who are the working classes. The working class are the people who perform labour and produce goods which are then sold to the ruling class in return for wages. The ruling classes profits and the wages payed to the workers are inversely proportional, so that the ruling class is constantly pushing down wages to increase profits. The result of this is a tiny minority of the worlds population owning the vast majority of the worlds wealth and therefore the balance of power.

Anarchist reject this system, saying that any kind of chain of command is oppressive and exploitive. In fact, Anarchists reject the to whole idea of 'the State. Instead they believe that we should be living in small socialist communities, working to producing enough to satisfy the needs of the community and share the wealth. Another name for this kind of Anarchistism is 'Stateless Socialism'.

Proposal

Braden Keir

Design Studies Proposal

Anarchism (n) Rejection of all forms of coercive control and authority.

For my studies investigation i will be looking into the idea of anarchism. I will be addressing the
question of whether or not a functional anarchist state is possible and if so, whether or not it would be a desirable option. I will be examining the morallity of imposing laws apon other people and restricting them from having certain experiences. Does anyone really have the right to force someone else to wear a helmet while riding a bike? or to not ingest certain chemicals? or to not take their own life? Sure the governing powers are put in place by the people, but not all the people. What if you dont agree to hand responsibility for your life over to the government? Should people have option of living out side the system? Is this possible in todays society?

Total anarchy, i expect, may be a little too extreme. But there are levels of anarchism and authoritarianism. My current view point is that we should be as anarchistic as well can possibly get away with. In other words, we should only have laws where absolutely necessary (this may change completely over the next 11 weeks.). I will be trying to identify in this investigation, what laws couldn't we do without (are there any?). What laws do we live with now that are not essential for a functional society? Would society crumble if all people were free to take drugs? What if they were free to end their own life? What if they were not required to wear clothes? Would we be better off without these laws? Do we have the right force other to cover up their bodies so that we can feel more comfortable? These are just a few of the hundreds of questions that can be asked of this nature.

There have been many philosopher and political theorists in history have advocated anarchism and there have been writen numerous anarchistic manifestos which i intend to examine in my investigation. I have just begun reading the works or Mikhail Bakunin, one of the founding fathers of anarchism. Another phenomena I am interested in is a bizarra half joke religion called discordianism which is the closest thing you can get to an anarchistic organised religion. I will be looking at this in my investigation and also to a lesser extent, the church of the subgenius which is another anarchistic religion.

In order to gather information for this investigation, i use a range of methods. Using the internet I will look around for discussions of anarchism, anarchistic manifestos and case studies on societies that have lived in and anarchistic communitity (if such cases exist. I'm not yet sure whether or not there are any, but I imagine there probably would be.).
I will be going to the library and reading the works of anarchistic philosophers and political theorist and also looking at authoritarian philosophies in order to contrast the two extremes and evaluate the merits of each. Finally, i will be going out and talking to people, friends and strangers and asking their opinions and proposing senarios in order to get a more objective view of what the community wants and feels. This may also include a servey or questionare.

Ok, new blog...

This is my new blog for Design Studies class. Woot