Anarchy

[paul barrett]

belimah at neomailbox.net wrote:
> I'm curious what others think of Pynchon's anarchists, or his 
> "principle" of Anarchy.  Guess I once assumed that an anarchist throws 
> bombs for the hell of it, and randomly to boot.  But Webb Traverse, now, 
> he has both a purpose and a target . . .

I'm really not meaning to offend, but...

no one could think that without being completely ignorant as to what 
anarchy actually is.

anarchy is not terrorism.

anarchy is not chaos.

anarchy has nothing to do with throwing bombs, although anarchists may 
do so.

"Anarchy (Greek: αναρχία) is the anarchist society, the stateless 
society of free people. Anarchism is the name of a political philosophy, 
or a generic term for a group of more-or-less related political 
philosophies, derived from the Greek an-archos ("without archons" or 
"without rulers"). Thus, "anarchism," in its most general meaning, is 
the belief that all forms of rulership are oppressive and should be 
abolished.

Anarchists are those who believe that all people are imbued with a sort 
of commonality, common sense, that would allow for people to, in the 
absence of the government, come together in agreement to form a 
functional existence. Morality falls in line with functionality, and its 
forms differ. Anarchy does not reject ethics, or principles, but rather 
imposed morality."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy

I'm not sure if Webb is really an anarchist, it's not made that clear 
(to me, maybe I am not reading closely enough) whether he is a true 
believer in anarchy or whether he is simply against the bosses but would 
accept government if he felt the people in charge were fair and honest 
(riiiiiight) - a true anarchist would not want any form of government, 
but at the time of the story, the industrialist bosses *are* the 
government, right?  So I think calling him an anarchist is probably fair.

I'm a believer in the principle of anarchy, I simply think that people 
will mess it up, because I do not think greed and mistreatment of other 
people is the exclusive domain of government and big business. 
Individuals are quite capable of being petty and selfish all on their own.

I do certainly think it could work within limited size communities, I'm 
just unsure about the entire human population embracing the idea rather 
than exploiting it to do whatever they choose.