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Bouvard on Command Structures and Anarchistic Critique

Reddit · Apr 17, 2017 · 3 min read
bobbyburnaby

Adam, as you know I'm sympathetic to your arguments (you asked me check out this place in an email some weeks ago), and i can't but feel that the anarchist will quickly turn your question back on you. From what command structure do you inquire into Soros-like funding labyrinths? Now if I'm a Hungarian nationalist fighting Soros U., i think I can answer in terms of some sacred source of Hungarian nationhood that S wishes to dismantle. But if I'm an American intellectual who probably can't invoke the command structure of his employer, or any arm of the "government", nor the "constitution" or "revolution", from whence comes the answer? A religious imperative? From what we can infer is necessary to civilisation or civility? The defence of the nuclear family perhaps... But how to express such in terms of coherent or accountable commands that contrast well with Soros' lust for Utopian power.

The anarchist always targets a specific institution--a business, law enforcement, a university. In each case, there has to be a command structure, however corrupted or degraded--something makes a university a university and not a PR firm. In defending a command structure, you are defending it as well, maybe even more, against the forces within as those without. So you're right that it may be more a virtual than actual command structure--still, if the institution persists, there must be some actuality.

reactionaryfuture

If you ask a BLM activist what their command structure is, they would likely not be able to answer. But it can be answered. Firstly, they have their immediate organizers, the people who arrange the protest dates and logistics. There are many organization for this. The next step up would be to inquire where these people get their orders/ commands. These organizers are themselves organized. We can see that foundations and panels of elites at conferences, and in unofficial groups, organize the grass roots organizers. This is evident from available primary sources such as the hacked Open Society meeting notes from 2015. There is always a tone of embarrassment in these sources, as if they struggle with the oxymoron of "organised" grassroots movements. So here we have a command structure BLM activist -> local organizer -> foundation/ elite organizers of the organizers. So we have gone from a magical spontaneous uprising, to an organised and hierarchical machine. Turning this on a Hungaria

All true, but I suspect bobbyburnaby is addressing my suggestion that we, in saying all this about the BLM activist, have an at least tacit (absolutist) command structure of our own that enables us to expose theirs. By including the Hungarian nationalist in the tentacular anarchist command structure, you add urgency to that question. Where is the bearer of absolutist ontology to be found? How do we "become worthy"? That is, I think the question he is pressing, and it is indeed one I find central.

of_ice_and_rock

Have you encountered Curt Doolittle's Propertarianism yet? His project is basically one of formalism, bringing into consciousness what he calls 'property in toto', which are all the subtle investments made into social conventions that as commons serve their members. I don't find him enough of a reactionary as a rationalist liberal, but if you're wanting to explore what formalism might gradually look like, it's worth reading through. I'm not sure I take the formalist project seriously anymore. Red Queen (informalism, linguistic asymmetry) is here to stay; humans can't manage scale right as they generate it, and as illuminating was your claim about harmonizing traditions as a way of losing resentment, I don't see why this should be evolutionarily stable. Perhaps, the better mindset is to understand formalism well enough to manage it to the degree it evolutionarily manifests.

Much of what you say is unfamiliar to me, but I'll try to respond. The generation of scale can be either centrifugal or centripetal--it can create new power centers that are less controlled and feel compelled to test, break with or undermine the center. But it can also give back to the center which is, after all, the basis for increases in productivity and reward for discipline. We can look to the sovereign center to integrate increases in scale across the board. This would involve constant formalizing and nominalizing--that, indeed, may be the main job of the sovereign, giving titles.

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