Anarchism and Truth

Anarchism and Truth

A Treatise of the Spiritual Aspects of Anarchism

by Peter Ostrowski

excerpts:

1. OUT OF DARKNESS

... Who will endow our words with meaning if not we? We speak of work, of god, of society, yet have no common understanding of their meaning, nor even acceptance of their existence. Our words are chosen for us and inhuman forces decide on what they are to mean. So when these shells of language are finally passed down for us to use we find them to be but empty sounds. In fear of losing language and returning to darkness and not knowing, we look to the word-maker to lead us to their meanings.

From upon our tower, high over Babel, we see a land imbued with confusion. Some of us manipulate the chaos to create meaning for those who wish to believe; for for them to refuse to believe in that which is not true would be to believe in nothing. But what is truth? Can the absolute and the subjective both be truths? Cannot the allegorical and metaphysical be truth?

When meaning is taken away from our words, they will become the tools of the word-manipulators. Words with which we cannot communicate are not needed; they will become intersynonymous and then be lost. We must reclaim their meaning, for only then can we use language to speak of building mankind's future. New words will be needed and created as our understanding grows and new questions about our universe are asked.

We speak of jobs and professions as pertaining to purpose in existence. What are these things? Are they what we do to obtain money which we need to stay alive? If so, then we claim that survival is the purpose of our survival. In thinking of professionalism we vaguely acknowledge a tenuous divide somewhere between unskilled labour for money only and jobs which require skills or qualifications; something somehow higher yet still paid. So in a world with no money, will people cease to have professions? We face a plethora of ambiguity and non-definition and a paucity of words themselves. But to define the profession as vocational work towards revolution and, moreover, towards the realisation of humankind's highest potential, is to envision a money-less world in which all have professions; a world in which work becomes that which is chosen by the individual, and choice is truly choice, not submission to necessity, not the coercion of poverty and death, as all the paths of option will be leading away from the heart and mind and will of the individual.

I believe that there can be no political mechanism to act against famine, war, material and spiritual poverty and the daily murder of millions which is perpetrated by nationalism and capitalism. The revolution, when it comes, will be a spiritual one, for change can only be born of a new way of seeing the world, a new consciousness. A profession is, immediately, work towards such an end. It is work which is internationally illegal, for all governments actively stifle or legislate against its facilitation. But it also has a greater purpose. There will come a time when we no longer need to fight against our self-imposed oppression, and professional work will then become pure art and science, pushing us towards achievements we cannot even contemplate today. We will no longer be burdened by mere survival, but be free to explore Creation in any way we can, elevating ourselves ever onwards towards ultimate truth.

It is a lie that more than a very few of the labouring and administrative tasks set for us are necessary, for it is a lie that money exists, and without imagining money all but one in many thousands of the jobs that are being done today would be inconceivable. We tell ourselves that employment should be exploitative to have value, that to labour out of the greed of others is to have a job. Let us not belittle the worth of our lives so. Even accepting capitalism's compromises, that to work pragmatically and selflessly we need funding for food, shelter and materials, let us believe that one can only be said to be employed, to have a job, if one is financially able to live and work professionally, alone if need be. Self-funding through unrelated labour is unemployment if the work suffers, as it inevitably must, through the time that is thus wasted. We must reclaim all that which has been stolen from us by exploitative labour.

Even for those who want for nothing other than survival, labour, day after day, year after year, which merely supplements another's income, must be named, for surely then it does not provide a 'living wage'. Furthermore, if the supplemented income is insufficient, then it also cannot be funding for a job. Thus we must question how many 'jobs' (in the lower sense of the word) actually exist. How small a minority of people do this thing which is ostensibly compulsory?

To speak of 'earning' a living is surely mankind's greatest self-deprecation. It is as if we are stating that some people, through their own sloth or fecklessness, do not deserve to live. In this way we belittle art and science, which exist to benefit all mankind, not merely to provide the artist or scientist with money for survival. Yet we perpetuate massed fear and resistance of these highest of human activities, our only tools for realising our future, our common destiny.

We follow those who ensure that we believe we need to follow by reducing all human endeavour and aspiration to a simple choice between right and wrong. But is it right to deny one's own self and follow blindly? Is it right to lead? Is it wrong to believe that human worth lies beyond the making of money or mere survival? No one declares what the difference between right and wrong actually is.

So is it then 'right' that in our schools there exists such an extraordinary and profound dichotomy in what is taught as the basic truths of Creation? For science and religion are both presented as such truths. The purpose of compulsory state education was, ostensibly, to educate all our people, so that the fetters of superstition and ignorance would be removed and truth, that is, knowledge and understanding, would prevail, and thus free-thinking and our spiritual awareness of the world and our place in it would grow in all of us. But our chosen minister for education, responsible for the teaching and popularisation of science, declares that schools should be institutions where these undefined terms, right and wrong, are taught and explained. He tells us this can only be achieved through the teaching of religion to our children. Thus they will believe it right that the world was created in six days. That supernatural creating entities spoke to men, before murdering them all in divine deluge. That decaying corpses can rise and live again, that there is a world just above the sky to which they then levitate and enter. That it is right and preordained that we will destroy ourselves in a final battle and be judged good or evil, right or wrong, holy or irredeemably damned. Thus we are taught that the responsibility for our survival and progress and for our Armageddon does not lie in our collective hands, for if the blame for total and final genocide were held by all mankind, then who would be holy, who would be good, who would be right?

The lessons for life which are taught and learned in schools are inculcated through lies, intimidation and hostility; the last people in the world who should be teachers are teachers. We learn that respect is something to be demanded, and that it may be commanded through violence. We learn that, if our strength is sufficient, assault is to be used for coercion, that others will obey our orders if we kick and punch them. And then we take our lessons with us, scars proudly borne, into our solitary, final journeys. This is how we are building our future.

Hence we despise, fear or ignore true science and the highest art - our only means of progress and, indeed, survival. This is why we speak of employment and work as we do; they are to us the infrastructure of our conservative, stagnant world, and we are but epiphenomenal to it - sentience is seen as being no more than machinery. Those whom we regard as working are said to be employed, that is, the labouring are used - we regard labour as exploitation, something with which to be graced by others, and then regard it as our personal strength. But what of the unemployed? Do they not live? If so, why must we labour? Would we too not live without employment? It is possible that we would, but we must realise that those whom we term unemployed live only through a trick of language, because the unemployed are not the dead. In any case, we must conclude that we keep people alive who do not keep us alive. For the criterion for accusing those who do not earn money of irresponsibility and non-contribution to society is whether or not they need more money to stay alive than they already own. Inactivity, sloth and greed by the financially independent is at best envied, at worst lauded, while the unfunded professional is seen as a parasite in the world he loves and whose future he is fighting to work for, for such work is adjudged meritorious solely by the practitioner's financial solvency, and not its intrinsic value. The activities which people who have professions (in this sense of the word) demand to do are not just for their enjoyment or to alleviate boredom - theirs is anarchist work, which mankind must do because capitalism is murdering millions daily and for that reason alone has to be eradicated. Capitalists claim that we should let the unemployed die, for mankind has no future anyway and that there can be no social progress.

The Babel brought upon us by this inhuman force, the creator and annihilator of words, is its life blood. If the intangible remains nameless then it will not exist within our confounded language, and so will be unspoken, invisible, untouchable and perfectly armoured. Hence to name it would be to speak of it and to begin to understand that which cannot survive in our sight. We name it Mammon and expose it.

Mammon must defend itself. Its greatest strength is in knowing that human spirituality is the one force which would destroy it and so must be kept in perpetual twilight - capitalism ensures that anarchism and revolution do not pay and are therefore very difficult work for most people to do. Mammon's greatest weakness, and the reason why its own murder is inevitable, is in not understanding at all what the soul is, what it means to touch the numinous.

Then we must name the forces of Mammon which, like puppet strings, bind and violently repel us, keeping us as fractured tribes, strangers before our own people. This we name nationalism.

We are living in the time that history will remember as the dark ages. A time when good citizenship is taken to mean the willingness not to contribute, but to compete, to work only towards one's personal interest and gain; to show deference and obedience to the winners, the vanquishers. The ultimate winners are those who command deference even from those others who name themselves winners. But clearly, to hold such values is the antithesis of citizenship. And nowhere in these rules we dare not write down is there any reason why the thief and murderer should not serve self-interest at any cost to the other.

But what freedoms, choices and opportunities can there be for those who live within this artificial fortress we have constructed? When there is nothing to achieve or contribute, only competition and winning or losing, then the enterprise of the winner is negligible against the infrastructure within which such victory has been forged. For this game, this battlefield, has been created by the hundreds of generations before us and, of course, by the vanquished, the losers. The only achievement of the winners is to maintain this tyranny of our own making to create future winners and losers.

But our games are played and won with loaded dice. Those who do not win are bound and helpless at the start. We cannot even refuse to compete. And what is there to win but the right to throw our lives away, to beg for mindless labour? Capitalism would reduce free-will to a choice between unending toil and extermination. Those who think they have won, in so viewing their position in Creation, have nothing; Mammon feeds on such beliefs, leaving the winner with the greatest imaginable loss.

We believe that there are many different political systems in place in the world, other natures of nationalistic tyranny. We speak loosely of capitalism, socialism, communism, and think that there are fundamental differences in the ways that various countries maintain their existence. But what is capitalism if not the need to labour for money, while a ruling elite control the citizens by force? This is the only political system there has ever been in this world where no country can exist in isolation, and where each builds its armour of nationalism by creating, and maintaining or distorting, an abstracted economy.

So we will define capitalism as the building of economic fortresses, as nationalism, as inter-state economic competition. Thus to define communism will be to speak of a world without money, a world which must be all Earth, no less, for Mammon will not allow such a state to exist in isolated seclusion, surrounded by its totalitarian barbarism. It will be to recognise that there are no countries, and hence to never again speak of such arbitrary land areas nor of mindless allegiance to them. It will be our return to the allegorical Eden. Moreover, we will name this bridge we are building over genocide's canyon socialism. This will be the work and lives that are to take us to this great ending and beginning. It will be the name of our changing.

Out of all arrogance and presumptiveness, the worst is for one to demand obedience and deference from another. Communism will be lawless, for no one has the right to command others. At that time we will be united by anarchy. Each will have unreserved respect for every sentient mind, every being living, dead or unborn; human, animal or a future intelligence beyond imagining; terrestrial or other-worldly. For not only do we exploit and abuse that which is human, but also we exploit, abuse and even feed on, devour, all that is sentient, all that which knows. Never again will it be so; the revolution will facilitate the liberty of all. At such a time the anarchist will finally live by anarchy; today he must live by anarchism. Anarchy will be born of anarchism at the end of socialism's path toward our future.

Anarchism is the name of mankind's struggle against ignorance. Both science and the highest art have this ultimate aim, so they are both anarchist activities, but we also suffer in part from social ignorance, and fighting this is the third class of anarchist work. Social ignorance is ultimately blindness to our own spirituality, and it is our spirituality which fuels art and science, so clearly then our work must proceed in all three areas simultaneously if we are to achieve anarchy. But even in an anarchic Utopia, progress will not be finished, of course. We will still be living in a vast, unexplored, barely understood universe, only we will have then achieved a level of spiritual enlightenment - present in all individuals - which will allow us to finally pass the boundary between anarchism and anarchy. It will be like emerging from a global childhood.

It is preferable for anarchists to speak of the eradication of capitalism rather than its abolition. To use the word abolition would imply that mammon may be legislated against, when in reality it must be removed from our hearts, forever. When capitalism has been eradicated there will be no laws, not even those which promote freedom. (In fact, it is not even wholly correct to speak of the removal of capitalism, for capitalism's cause is not something solid and tangible, rather it is a great hole in our souls which must be filled with spiritual awareness and a sense of the numinous.)

Lastly, we must understand that which we call democracy. Through promulgated lies we believe unquestioningly that democracy, when taken to describe organised voting for government, is a man's highest freedom, that it creates a world of the people's choosing, of equality, that it is a levelling power. This is not so. Democracy must allow any action of the individual's own choosing. It is to assert and facilitate the right for each to achieve their full potential as human and spiritual beings. It is to never again vote for government, for no one has the right to govern another, even when claiming to be empowered to do so by the fiat of a majority consensus within a land area he chooses to name Country. Voting is enslaving and deference, and is not democracy. When capitalists speak of democracy and capitalism facilitating equality and freedom of opportunity for all, they speak solely of only one kind of opportunity - that to make money, and nothing else. In fact, all other freedom is denied unless, as a secondary consequence, it generates money.

We allow ourselves to believe that in Britain and other countries which we deem to be democracies, the laws we have 'chosen' to live under are equal for all individual citizens in each of those states. We consider this to be entirely just and condemn any alien state which we believe sets and upholds different laws for different groups of people within that state. But in fact we know of nowhere where this is not so, for we are all citizens of Earth and this is exactly the system nationalism necessarily creates for us all. And in any case, is it in fact just to homogeneously and oppressively attempt to regulate the behaviour and lives of so many people, all of whom are so very different from each other, having such widely varying aspirations and talents?

We are blind, silent, paralysed, numb and barely sentient. But we are here, and we look to see what this place is and what it is that we are. Is there a way to create our eyes and tongues and wings? I believe we know of a way; we must have the courage to take this path. And I believe that as I write, fewer than five hundred more years thus remain for humanity as it exists at present.

And so we point our radio telescopes toward the countless billions of stars, listening, waiting. But there is only silence, only the aching loneliness of being lost and alone in an unimaginably vast universe. It is for us to find what is beyond this darkness and to become something more than predators and prey in the primeval swamps and jungles. For, as long as there is no one here to be contacted, the sky will remain black, forever silent.

2. DIGNITY

Exactly what is anarchism? Why is it important and what will we achieve through it?

The lower, most primitive parts of the mind are the cause of war, murder and capitalism. The higher regions are all we have with which to overcome these insentient urges - they comprise our only weapon against instincts which could eventually destroy us all completely. These highest echelons of our humanity are neglected in us all, and in some they lie totally unrecognised by that individual. Human culture must therefore embrace and exalt these facets of ourselves which point us to the full potential of sentience in the universe, for only such a culture can possibly ensure the survival of life on Earth. Such work - the gestalt sum of individuals' vocational professions - is called anarchism.

But all societies actively repress the use and development of these most highly evolved faculties of the mind, allowing the violent, unthinking, primitive parts to control us both as individuals and as a world society. Anarchism is the process by which we must reverse this trend if we are to have any future.

This concept of vocational professions [our ministry] - work towards both the spiritual revolution and the further development of Man - differing from labour for money, is very difficult to explain popularly because the great majority of us do not have such professions. Anarchists - the only people who do such work - comprise only a handful of members of the human race.

The people who are working towards the spiritual revolution are insultingly and vindictively accused of sloth and parasitism, when in fact the only true work is theirs. Such remarks and attitude come from those of no vision, aspiration or commitment to anyone other than themselves. They are the true unemployed. They are the ones who are lazy, the majority who are wholly reliant on a very few.

Facts must be demonstrable. We must find a way to articulate exactly why anarchism, art and science are important. Even if we give part of the answer - that these things are vital to our survival and progress - we must then give a reason as to why our survival should concern us, why progress has value and, indeed, define precisely what progress is. In any argument between anarchist and capitalist, the former will be able to deliver an unshakable counter-argument against every attempt to justify the capitalist system, the ultimate such refutation being that capitalism will destroy mankind. This leaves the capitalist with one last riposte - final and desperate, yet still seemingly impossible to refute. He will ask why we should care for anyone else, why we should care what happens on Earth after our own deaths. To find a reply is truly difficult.

When anarchism is such a seemingly arcane philosophy - the remit of a small number of individuals, each isolated from the others - then can the basic tenets of anarchism be expected to be embraced by humanity as a whole? They will not be if these concepts are philosophically complex and difficult to understand on an intellectual level. But they are not! The precepts of anarchism rest on the spiritual base which I believe is present in all people. If not for the social forces - in actual fact, anti-social, pernicious forces - which blind us and bury our spirituality, the spirit of anarchism would pervade the world we live in. Capitalism, by its very nature, leads people away from the sight of their own spirituality - it actively prevents us from living spiritual lives. We are denied true education, and are forced to engage in activities (under pain of death) which are humiliating, degrading, damaging to our physical and mental health, and are a waste of the time we need in which to work. We dedicate our lives to waiting for our own ends: for five o'clock, for Friday, for retirement, for death. Under Mammon, ambition consists of but wishing our entire lives away. And the paths along which capitalism does send us could lead anywhere - to violence, war or total genocide. We have lost control over our own directions.

In defending itself, Mammon doesn't merely suppress the word anarchism, but understands the power of ridicule and reduces the meaning of the name to something which people will equate with no more than terrorism and rioting, and which for them will have no political meaning or ideology at all.

Thus the police seek to exculpate themselves from any responsibility for incidents of violence at public demonstrations or rallies by directing the blame for any such confrontations onto 'anarchists', immediately gaining public support through the years of the misappropriation of the word. National and global television and other media networks duly and authoritatively report and disseminate this unchallenged libel. Anarchism is thus continuously fighting such world-wide reactionary political misinformation, becoming reduced to no more than a purely perjorative and abusive term, whilst being denied virtually any media access at all in which to expound its actual aims and viewpoint.

Mankind's destiny may only be realised through anarchism, yet it is the one political creed which is completely censored and suppressed by all aspects of modern society, including the popular media and all children's state education.

Would the creation of an anarchist political party help to strike back against this misinformation and media neglect? It is difficult to see how anarchism's work could be placed in the party political arena. Anarchism transcends leftism and rightism, and if it were to be placed in the political spectrum, there could be nothing to the left of it, and to its right would only be ranged various degrees of watered down capitalism. In any case, its voice would be tiny and unheard. Perhaps the formation of an anarchist union is possible, however - a society bringing individuals together so that they do not feel so alone in their work [the "anointed" community].

We need to identify the areas in which fundamental social changes must be made. For example, the problem of unemployment may be addressed by attempting to spread work out among all citizens. But in a society so advanced that a concerted effort has been made to share out jobs in a fair way, money will have been abolished too. This would eradicate 99% of the jobs which exist at present. Conversely, many more vocational human activities will be created by this monumental advancement in our spirituality. Necessary labour would then be done as a form of voluntary national service and would not impinge to an intrusive degree on liberty and the time which people need to work at these professions. Such labour would be performed during natural breaks in a person's career, if such gaps happen to arise. Inevitably, some professions would allow for little such time, and so people would have to give as much as they were able to, even if this meant that some could only contribute very little. But under anarchy we would understand and allow for this.

The 'industrialised' countries, of which Britain is one, garner a disproportionate part of the world's wealth and possessively hold it close, prepared even to murder in order to defend it. For not only is war murder, but so is the world-wide economic competition which starves millions. Moreover, given the arbitrary nature of country boundaries, all war is therefore civil war, whether it be in the form of armed combat or interpersonal socio-economic competition; we are citizens of one planet.

It appears that this is how most of the employed want the world to be. It is how most of the unemployed want the world to be. To then have the temerity to complain of being victims of such a system, or to pity the poor they themselves have created, is hypocritical, arrogant and wholly self-centred [we are complicit]. We speak of the concessions by which the unemployed are allowed to survive as being safety nets'. But why are we walking tightropes?

Countries do not exist - we have fabricated them from our bigotries. We have made them up. This is the most fundamental tenet of social organisation. Exploitative labour is maintained not by the ruling class, but by the exploited themselves. The exploited comprise the army, the one and only tool available to the rich and powerful with which to subjugate the majority, and to protect their own riches and power. The control of armed forces is ultimately the root of their power, the coercive mechanism which enables men to force their will onto others and to steal the common land. It was only because people who possessed this violent might took and divided the land long ago that exploitative labour ever came into being. People were spread so sparsely over the Earth that it was possible for anyone to find a plot of land, build their own home and grow their own food. If people had not been prevented from continuing to live so freely, trade and money could never have come into existence.

The existence of armed forces, therefore, is both a direct consequence of capitalism and a major prerequisite for its continuing survival. One cannot be without the other.

It is often said that prostitution is the world's oldest profession ('profession' is always misused in this common aphorism, of course - it is actually used here to mean exploitative labour). But this cannot be so, for military activity must be older still. Prostitution exists because of money - capitalism - which is forced upon us only by military means. Therefore there had to have been armies before there had been prostitution. The first exploited workers were soldiers.

The people of our world - the citizens of our global society, present and past - are lacking almost totally in pride, self-respect, dignity, a sense of the numinous and hope for our collective future. In place of these things fester violent hatred and nationalism, religion and superstition, and a fear of science, coupled with an inability to understand either it or the nature of its spirit. If we do not respect ourselves, then how may we ask for respect from others? We allow people to demand deference from us, and then meekly give it. This is my life - nobody has a right to tell me what to do, and I have no right to do likewise to anyone else - others' lives are their own. Only when we have first accepted this fundamental truth can we possibly accept responsibility for working towards mankind's future.

How can the exploited complain of their lot if they are not anarchists? About whom do they complain if not themselves? If they want capitalism, then they want to compete to stay alive, they want the ever present threat of redundancy, they want to be at constant risk of losing the game of Mammon. However, perhaps they do have this right of resentment if they have been enslaved and repressed, for a lifetime or for generations, and have had their intellectual and spiritual development stunted to such a degree that they don't even know what their basic human rights are. So many times I have tried to speak of rights and pride to such timid, obedient people as these, and have always found it frustratingly difficult to do when they so easily take deep offence at such frightening ideas.

Thus people who are trying to instigate anarchy are not trying to tell others what to do - they simply wish to ensure that individuals are fully capable of both making and exercising choices in their lives. A social system which allows this is by definition named Anarchy.

We allow God's land to be carved up and owned by a few and call the land - our land - property. Almost the whole world is chartered in this way, and we offer no opposition to this theft of our common heritage. Indeed, the popular use of the word heritage has been vulgarised to imply the ownership of the world by a few. Yet the ownership of the one thing which is above anything else the personal property of the individual - our very lives and minds and will - we unquestioningly throw away. We have damaged ourselves so badly that we cannot see that no one has the right to tell another what to do, to give orders, to starve, to murder, to imprison. We even surrender time. Our lives are so short, like the blinking of an eye compared to the cosmic time-scale, and still we speak of this time, this handful of years, as if it were not our own. We sell it to our masters so that we may live, and regard these contracts as just and fair. The 'theft of time' from these exploiters - shirking, impunctuality, sick leave - are condemned as anti-social, and we even speak of 'spare time', when we are not being abused and enslaved. But this time is ours! It is our lives! Must we be so helpless and obsequious? A day is such a precious thing, yet we let them all slip by, unused, one after the other until we die.

If people are not anarchists, then it is only they who must justify their reactionary stance. Yet although non-anarchists have vastly more opportunity than anarchists to expound their views, I have never heard anyone attempt to do so using a logically consistent argument. Not only do capitalists not understand anarchism, but it appears that they do not understand capitalism. Its proponents cannot justify it. There can be no subjective argument about right or wrong - if the mental handicap responsible for capitalism is responsible for the daily murder of millions, then it is wrong and must be cured or eradicated. It is not possible for there to be a logistically consistent counter-argument to this, and it is a waste of time to listen to anyone attempting to expound one. Anarchists need not justify that which is, by definition, the only way to facilitate mankind's survival and progress. Choosing and supporting capitalism entails wanting to live in poverty or under the constant threat of redundancy and poverty equally as much as wanting to live in wealth and luxury, for it is not possible for capitalism to exist without all these things. It also entails wishing such restriction and injustice on all other people. Capitalism's apologists claim that such a system facilitates the individual's freedom and choice. It does no such thing, because the free would not choose servitude. Under capitalism, social responsibility consists of being compliant, deferential and obedient, and merely deepening the age-old furrows worn by the machine of the system we live by. This social responsibility includes no form of contribution to society other than interpersonal and international economic competition - ultimately, to the death.

In places of exploitative labour (and, indeed, outside of such environments) so many people are quite prepared and willing to show deference to those who tell them what to do. No man has a right to give orders to another under such circumstances - that is, under the blackmail and violent coercion of capitalism - and conversely, for humanity's sake, no one has the right to give in to such false authority and offer such abject deference to others.

Governments aim to combat insurrection by exploiting this human weakness and seeking to create a strong and pervasive sense of hierarchy in society. In the workplace, if individuals are forced to compete within an infrastructure of fluid, meritocratic pay scales, then this will serve to destroy any sense of solidarity between those fellow workers, for everyone will then be at everyone else's throat - there will be no coherent 'mass' of employees, strong in their number. Also, by creating a culture where everyone is considered a 'consumer' or 'provider', governments ensure the fragmentation of industrial organisations, again stifling any possible spirit of solidarity.

So many accept and never question a great divide between 'manager' and 'worker'. Yet managers - secretaries and supervisors - serve no purpose other than to assist workers by organising their work for them. They have no other possible use, and if they do not perform competently then the workers must replace them with others. It is possible for entire companies - banks and suchlike, for example - to comprise no workers, in which case that whole organisation exists for no reason other than to serve and assist those who do work.

All the media perpetuate the capitalist ethos of home-owning, that is, the belief that a home is an investment and not a place to live. Anyone who regards their house as a monetary gamble and not a dwelling place must be prepared for the value of their investment to decrease as well as to increase. People who simply want a roof over their heads obviously desire low house prices, whereas capitalists speak of such a housing market as being 'depressed', and wish for prices to increase, which they then regard as being a 'recovery' of this market. People who choose to attempt to scale such a property ladder forfeit all rights of complaint against any loss or state of poverty they themselves suffer at Mammon's hand.

Consider also all the many exploited people who think nothing of calling others, whom they see as being in some sense 'above' them, Sir, Doctor or Mister, whilst they themselves accept being addressed by these people by their surnames or, more patronisingly still, their christian names. Those who demand deference must be prepared and willing to be themselves deferential to those who, under the system which they choose to embrace, are their masters. The implication is that there is yet another ladder to climb, and those at the bottom, if they take any opportunities to climb up, will treat their 'inferiors' - the very group of people of which they themselves were once members - in the same supercilious manner. Again, people who choose to play on this ladder forfeit their right of complaint against redundancy and any personality clashes in their place of exploitative labour which upset them, for the rules they choose to play by are of their own making. Ultimately all the players are on their knees throughout their lives, and their desire to demand and give deference is born of a gaping spiritual vacuum in their hearts which denies their own basic rights, indeed, suppresses knowledge of what those rights are, and veils and clouds all perception of the potential of what it means to be human. People seem determined to achieve absolutely nothing. It is a triumph of the human spirit, a magnificent achievement, that we have progressed even as far as we have, despite these seemingly insurmountable obstacles and this repression of the soul.

The second most profound act of this government's current residence in office has been the declaration that 'there is no such thing as society, only individuals and their families'. The most profound political act of this period has been for the electorate to then re-elect the party at the following general election (albeit after a cosmetic change of leadership - which I believe to have been precipitated by the immediate realisation by the government that this outrageous statement was politically grossly inexpedient, and urgently needed to be disowned and expunged from the people's collective memory). And now these same overlords have the hypocrisy to tell us that it is unacceptable for there to exist a social underclass of people who do not share the same values and aspirations as everybody else.

If the people who appoint themselves as our rulers claim that society does not exist, then what do they believe it is that they have dominion over? Nationalised industries - both manufacturing and service - and administrative bodies are steadily and systematically being privatised and the people are told that it is not the job of governments to organise such work. We are to believe that transport is not the government's concern - although the railways and roads have been and are still being built solely with public money. Nor do they wish to administer the distribution of gas, electricity or water. Such a philosophy, such a complete abrogation of their administrative responsibilities, is quite consistent with the belief that there is no such thing as society. So what is it then that has made the government contrive, organise, publicise and sanction the official national dream that is The Lottery? Why do they wash their hands of all the vitally important work which a government is elected to perform, while setting up and overseeing something which they claim has no importance other than being 'a bit of fun'.

The purpose of the lottery is to create, through an insidious, Machiavellian inculcation, a culture in which capitalism is customary and unquestionable, appearing to us to be as natural as the sky and trees. For the players are taught to be concerned only with a quest for their own luxury, just as it is in the capitalist world of exploitative labour and interpersonal economic competition.

This culture the lottery is aimed at creating is also one in which charity is not questioned. We are each expected to fight each other in serving our own, individual self-interests, and any pennies we have left over may then be thrown to charities. If we were to believe the truth, that important things such as feeding, housing and educating the citizens of the world should be funded and supported as a matter of principle, and not through charities and lotteries, then this would be a monumental step towards destroying capitalism. And Mammon is aware of this.

It is in capitalism's survival interest that people believe that there is no such thing as society, and creating a handful of millionaires will help to inculcate such a belief in us. If we aspire to win the lottery above all else, then there will be no room within our hearts for anarchist, revolutionary aspirations.

Mammon is prepared to make some of us millionaires in order for us all to believe the lie of Conservatism. In order to survive, Conservatism must take away all hope and aspiration from the people, except the hope of economic victory and victories of influence, power and command over our fellow citizens, and - apparently - the aspiration to win enough money to be able to avoid the need to do exploitative labour for the rest of one's life. The instigation of the lottery has acted to erode our sense of citizenship, for it has created a culture which actively elicits an expression of desperation, disenchantment and disenfranchisement from society from the vast majority of the populace.

When it is possible to compel people to do such labour, then it is easy to demand that they believe that those who do not do so shirk their social responsibilities and are a drain and burden on our common wealth, our public funds. So many show such blind diligence to their toils and deferential loyalty to their masters, who in turn are subjugated by the master of Mammon. Yet to them winning the national lottery is something to aspire to, a dream to hold and cherish and call a reason for living, so that they may cease labour and join the shirkers (those very people whom they had previously accused of not contributing through any work or labour toward a common good), for their million pounds would be paid directly from our shared national wealth, being in fact a far greater drain on that wealth than a man's unemployment benefit, even if it were paid to him for a lifetime.

Everywhere we turn we hear people saying what they would do if they won the lottery jackpot, how they would ostentatiously resign from their place of labour in an outburst of anger and relief. Yet, while they are still compelled to be exploited, they accept their lot without complaint or any concept of anarchism, denouncing 'scroungers and idlers' and speaking of how the wheels of society must be kept in motion through exploitative labour.

Capitalism demands only one form of contribution to society from its citizens - obedience, compliance and deference. Never does it expect the individual to actually want to do his or her tasks for any reason other than financial gain. This is why workers are subjected to pay scales and supervision, threats of redundancy and financial catastrophes if the earning of money ceases for but a week. If people are constantly being taught, forcefully, that the exploitative labour they are doing serves no purpose other than to make money, then it is hypocritical to expect them to have any intrinsic interest at all in that activity. The government's every public pronouncement is carefully designed to further instill in us such ways of thinking - unemployment benefit assessment explicitly demands that labour serves no other purpose than to make money for the labourer - and even the media, controlled by capitalism, also try to force us to believe these things. We live under the yoke of an insidious despotism. Thus the individual struggles against appalling odds to search for any truth at all.

As well as using the media and the law to control people's thoughts, to mould their ethics and aspirations, the government takes much away from us through censorship. Any society which uses censorship to control what its citizens hear, see or read, claiming that depravity and corruption are the products of social forces, in so doing admits that war (the greatest mass depravity and corruption) and crime are caused by society. Yet the only measures taken to combat these things are aimed solely at civilian criminality, and are merely punitive - deterrents against individual offenders. Punishment is always nothing more than anger, loss of temper and hatred. Those who wish to rule cannot admit this, because they themselves use violent moral crime in order to maintain their own power.

Censorship is but one example of the hypocrisy of capitalism's proponents who claim that their creed is a natural, self-regulating social system by which all of its members and their activities reach their own meritocratic level. For Mammon would destroy itself if it were not tempered by censorship, or the control of drugs and arms, or the regulation of privatised industries to ensure that they do not make too much money, or the provision of state benefits to those whom it has made losers, or the regulation of monopolies and mergers, or the state funding of science and the arts. Capitalism does always fail.

Anarchy will need no such tempering.

Capitalism expects so little from people. It assumes that we will only care for anyone other than ourselves, except maybe our families or close friends, if those others are 'customers'. Anarchism, however, recognises that people have so much more than this to give and to contribute, and because they want to do so. Without spiritual desire there would be nothing driving our work, no fire, no reason, and the whole of humanity would be volatilely simmering with discontent.

Many people who demand deference from those whom they see as being ranked below them in their place of labour (or even, in a general sense, socially) hypocritically claim that people who do not labour are not contributing to society. It is only possible to make such a contribution if one regards all others as being equal citizens. Those who demand deference are in opposition to anarchism and so cannot possibly contribute to society nor believe that such a thing is even possible except through capitalism's serving of 'customers'.

If this psychological subterfuge succeeds, if we are ever truly left with nothing to hope for or aspire to other than personal, selfish, cynical escape from the mindless labour, the fight for survival which we ourselves have created, then we will be left with nothing at all. Mankind will then have no future, because hope, the strongest political force there is, will have been lost for ever.