A Little Study in Anarchy

A short but violent storm hit here yesterday, and while I was largely unaware of it in my dark little cubicle, it wreaked a bit of carnage outside. On the way home from work, I came to a very busy intersection of two major roads where the traffic lights had very recently gone out and there was not yet an officer on the scene to impose order. Behind my anxiety and eager desire to get home, I found the situation interesting on a conceptual level. What would happen, I was curious to know, in the absence of some kind of arbitration of order, without the presence of law? Last year an acquaintance of mine tried at great lengths to convince me that any kind of prescriptive law or governing body was by its very nature repressive and restrictive and that the only truly free and happy society would be found through anarchy. In the absence of these repressive orders, he argued, there would not be violent chaos but some kind of spontaneous and natural order that needed no enforcement by some kind of higher power. I disagreed with him completely, much to his frustration and mine.

I know my traffic light situation was a weak comparison to an entire society bereft of laws, but it was a chance to see how people would behave in a suddenly chaotic situation. There had already been a minor accident, which I assume happened before anybody even noticed the lights had gone out, but it had been moved out of the way. Long lines of cars streamed out of all four exits of the intersection, and for a moment there was brief confusion. Then, I am pretty surprised to say, a kind of spontaneous order did indeed develop. There was some kind of mass agreement between most of the cars to behave as if the light was still working. One direction went and, after a while, came to a gradual stop and then the other direction was allowed to go. It was a little bumpy, and people were obviously nervous, but the system seemed to be working. I was impressed.

But then there was the jerk in the SUV. You know this guy. He’s the one with the worldview so narrow that he can’t see past his own interests and desires, and has no concept of the greater good. He’s the one who sees other people only as obstacles, and every situation only as a competition. This philosophy is rampant in our country. I myself know whole families raised in this belief. Though clearly some kind of tentative order had been established and it was not his turn to cross, SUV guy decided that all that really mattered was that he had the bigger vehicle and the guts to really press the gas, and that all of us timid cooperators would have no choice but to give way. This would be bad enough except that a large number of other cars, inspired by the SUV’s bold action, decided to throw out all caution and fight for themselves. The system pretty much broke down completely leaving one car, which had pulled into the intersection during the appropriate time to turn left, stranded in the middle. And since you’re going to ask – yes, that car was mine.

This was a good example of why I don’t think a lawless anarchist paradise is actually possible, as nice as it may sound sometimes. Sure, MOST people would, left to their own devices, probably be more or less decent and rational, and treat each other more or less with respect and courtesy. But the problem is, and always has been, the SUV guys among us who see in the absence of law only opportunity for them to “win” and to dominate. It's generalizing and an oversimplification, but its these guys, and those who follow them, who make all the complicated, detailed, circuitous, and unorganized laws our Congress has passed in the last couple hundreds years necessary. I know it kind of ruins my cool intellectual anti-government Marxist image, but I am not, nor have I ever been, an anarchist. The rule of law, in my book, is the lesser of two evils.