This being my first entry on this site, I think, first I should give some sort of simple introduction. I am Nathan Sturgess, younger brother of Crissy Williams who is Adam’s wife. I have been an inactive member of no less days for several months and only now was I informed by my sister of the intriguing discussions being had here. This interest mostly stems from current events which I feel will have a very pivotal affect on our near tomorrows.  The current economic situation, international issues such as Afghanistan and Gaza, as well as the recent changing of the guard here in America all have weighing measures of influence in our lives and in the life of our nation. The other reason for this entry is because of literary study that I have been doing of late about an author named G. K. Chesterton, who I believe lived in a time, which in many ways was similar to our own. His life spanned from 1874 to 1936 in a time when Britain was experiencing the same pains of imperialism that we seem to be now, as well as the threat of a rising and philosophically divergent power, namely Prussia, which, in a general sense, corresponds to China today; except in that, unlike Prussia, China owes a large portion of American dept.  Because of all this information which I have been learning about, both old and new, I would like to focus now on the position of anti-statism, if such a term exists.

Before we go further it is imperative that we decide the meaning of the word “state”, the dictionary answer is not important to the argument but rather the meaning itself. The word could, and does mean many things to many people, but as long as the meaning is the same for us here, no other interpretation of the word is necessary for our discussion. To do this we will do what is simplest and use the definition posed by Christopher in one of his previous blog entries. The one I refer to is the one where a list of examples were given of what a state is, in which were included both our current government here in the US and the Mafia, as well as others. Now if we take these examples as the basis for our meaning of the word state it is clear to me that it is quite a abroad view of what a state is. I say this because I see a wide difference in how a Democratic-Republic such as our own functions as compared with how the Mob operates. The chief difference being that a Democratic-Republic is, idealistically, about striving for what the people want as a whole, as expressed in the Constitution of the United States, where as the Mob, characteristically, is about striving for what is best for the family, according to the immediate needs of the family. One is duplistic and the other tribal in their organization.  Of course there are similarities, especially when looked at from a non-idealistic point of view, which I wish to speak to later. But the chief similarity is that they organize people under some code of conduct or behavior; there is a due process for every action and reaction in the public spectrum. And this, I think, must be at the core of our meaning for state; to have organization of people based on a code whether constitutional or familial, and if this be the case then a meaning for our word “anti-state” would be the opposite, or rather, unorganized people lacking any written standards of conduct.

Now that we have more narrowly defined the key word in this discussion I think it is important now to define our perspective, or rather the world that we will observe with our definition in play. I feel that there are three logical perspectives that we can use to help us discover the implications of both a state and non-state world. The first is rather simple and commonly used, if not often without notice; that of the idealistic perspective which I will define as the perspective in which both human nature and environment are perfect. The second is what I will call the realist perspective in which human nature is in its fallen state but the environment in which they live is still perfect. The third is what I will call the practically realistic perspective which I will define as the real world in which we neither have a perfect human nature nor a perfect environment, not to mention the implications of past decisions and prejudices. The reason for this is because different types of organizations of people can work perfectly in one perspective, or world, but horribly in another. Take communism for example, I think anyone would agree that in an idealistic perspective communism makes the most sense. All you need is at your fingertips and you have no instinctual desire to do wrong to anther or to be greater or more powerful than another. I an idealistic perspective a system such as capitalism would be wholly worthless because no one would want to compete for the bigger and better if his neighbor didn’t have it; representation in government would be a waste of time because the people’s needs would always be met and nothing would need changing through due process of anything. This would clearly not be the case if we looked at a realistic world with a fallen human nature because no longer is it about, “Do I have enough?” but rather, “Do I have more than the next guy?”.  In this case it is obvious to me that a system like capitalism is far superior to one such as communism because capitalism functions on the principle of human greed while striving to create duplicity in economics as well as politics. In a practically realistic perspective this is only more strongly agitated by simple human sociology. Of course, all of this only makes sense if we agree that a system is better if it has a better chance of survival, and a brief look at history tells me that more capitalistic states have lasted longer and have also preserved the rights and prosperity of its people longer. Though, as we follow history further we realize that, while the system has its advantages, it perpetually will fail due to the fact that perfect competition is impossible and eventually one world view wins out, a certain elite group or groups take control of politics, and a relatively small group of huge corporations take hold of the economy. All of these things we can see right now happening in front of our eyes.  

But now we must revert back to the issue of anti-state. In my mind it is not a fallacy to say that, based on our meaning, an anti-state position is very much communistic as well as anarchical, and there is nothing wrong with it being so, in fact it makes it much easier to refer back to those who have come before us, because, where I have heard of few anti-statists I have heard of many anarchists, and thankfully for us anarchy is a well traveled road, at least in an intellectual sense. As we have seen, an anarchical or anti-state system in the form of communism, it does very well in an idealistic environment, but rather falls apart in a realistic perspective and more so in a practically realistic perspective due to the fact that the first person to ‘discover’ a form of capitalism, in whatever application, would quickly decimate the communistic society based on simple economics and sociology. This is true because people always tend to buy what has the greatest value, and also tend, in a general sense, to want to “Keep up with the Jones’”. Therefore it would be imperative to prevent such an event from occurring in the communistic society, necessitating certain controls, which are easily observed in history. Massive amounts of propaganda, education control, ceasing of property, and distribution of capitol would all be required to accomplish such a goal, which, is usually referred to as socialism. And Russia itself couldn’t get past this “stage” of the journey to communism because someone has to be in charge of who gets what, and usually that person realizes it should be himself.

The biblical support for such a system has certain arguability in that the early Christians lived in a similar fashion to what the early communists felt would be ideal, but the differences abound as well. In some sense the early Christians were more subjects of a divine dictator rather than ruler of themselves, and furthermore they had a code to live by in “love thy neighbor as thy self” as well as a spirit within them to complete that promise through them. They neither had out of control populations nor greedy leadership, but rather a movement that transcended political pursuits and an omnipresent judge in tough disputes.

Where I cannot agree that anti-statism is more advantageous in a fallen world than the state, I can say that I, in no way agree with what statism has done to our world, not because of what it idealistically couldn’t do, but rather what it practically wasn’t capable of, by that I mean that statism was never capable of remaining tyranny free, and tyranny has seemed to have fully enveloped our nation and our world.  Even so, I do feel that there are other possible options that can be taken that neither sink to unorganized masses nor rise to structured policemen states of the world. Where as G. K. Chesterton was staunchly anti-anarchism, and wrote many books about it such as The Man Called Thursday and The Appetite for Tyranny, both of which are very good, he had a very radical idea about social structure different from those of his time. What he adhered to, as well as others such as Dorothy Day, was something called Distributism, something I found out about only very recently. But it appears to be both pro organization of people and pro community and small industry, as well as anti-imperialism by design; essentially attempting to maintain competition in a smaller arena. I’m not sure about it totally myself either practically or philosophically, but it does give me some hope that there really is something different we can turn to when the super powers finally give way, falling into the sea of human blood that has been shed for supremacy.