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Spring 2011

The Longest Con

Calculated Chaos: a Review

Vol. 6.1

Anna O. Morgenstern

Jeremy Weiland



The Longest ConThe simplest way to put it is that they’re all a bunch o crooks.

The bankers are the chie con-men. They print up (so to speak) a bunch

o ake money out o thin air. I can do that too, but no one is going to take

“Annabucks” at the coee shop. Where the government comes in, is that

they “tax” people, orcing them to use that money to pay their “taxes”,thereby giving the ake money some sort o base value. In exchange or

being the muscle behind this con, they get to use basically as much o that

money as they want (up to a limit, they don’t want to spend so much they

break the system) which goes largely into the hands o private contractors

at the end o the cycle.

The rest o it ollows rom this basic cycle: the banks ow that money into

the big corporations to keep them aoat and help them crush their competi-

tion, the government regulates away any opportunities to work outside thesystem, orcing people to compete to work inside the system. The “insiders”

are outside the system in a sense o course. They can basically ignore the law.

Once in a while the government has to put on a show trial, just to keep the con

going, but by and large they only enorce the law against the outsiders.

You’ll oten hear that cliché that only 1 out o 10 small businesses ends up

successul. They say that like it’s a law o nature, but it’s not. They have to

keep it that way. I 3 out o 10 small businesses were successul, or 4 out o

10, they’d be ruined. I everyone “leveled up” mentally, and became morecompetent, economically nothing would change or the little guy. They

would just adjust the parameters o the system again. In act, all that would

do is make more money or the insiders, because they’d have more to steal.

(Which is why they push education so hard, a society with 10 million engi-

neers is a society where engineering is cheap)

Libertarians don’t do their cause any good at all when they try to deend

big business on ree enterprise grounds. There is no ree enterprise at that

level. No business is going to become big, in this economy, without approval

rom the gatekeepers. Free enterprise is a system which never existed, ex-

cept or brie periods o time during historical social unrest. Once an elite is

re-established, it’s back to the game.

Once you understand that they’re all a bunch o crooks, and that we already

live under a system that’s under total (statistical) control, then you don’t get

caught in so many contradictions, trying to fgure out what’s going on. The

power elite are all working together, at least they’re all playing by an agreed

upon set o rules. I someone tries to change the deal or sabotage it, they be-

come public enemy #1. But wait, you say! “I don’t believe that people are smart

enough to control things rom the top... central planning doesn’t work!”

You are correct. That’s why there’s a crisis ater every crisis. They have

total power, but not total knowledge. The experiment o Leninism proved

itsel a ailure. So they rely on statistical control. They increase this or that

lever, watch the results and then react to it, until things are “dialed down”

to where they want them to be. I you pay close attention to the language

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Rule 1: Never call the cops unless you’re in mortal danger and there’s no

other option.

You can go anywhere online and fnd story ater story about how

the police brutalized someone who initially called them or help, or

not being passive enough. The police have become paranoid ego-

maniac thugs. They’re unlikely to help you, but very likely to harmyou, just or “talking back” or “not ollowing instructions.” The

police are not on our side; let’s not make their job easier or them.

Rule 2: Keep silent about particulars. Don’t report things, don’t list things,

don’t announce things, and don’t fll out any orms you don’t have to.

Don’t entangle yoursel visibly, in ways that can be traced back

to you. I you become too visible on the radar o the con men, that

increases your chances o being a victim, should you decide to

change the way you play the game. Open rebellion against themisn’t going to work very well at this point. They no longer ollow

their own rules, even on a basic level.

Rule 3: Let other people know the rules.

The more o us that understand these things, and act on them,

the more space opens up or action outside the system. Without

us helping them to keep the con going, it becomes more and more

difcult or them to do so.

This is essentially a good beginning or what I have come to call Autonomism.It includes Agorism (principled black and grey market business), TAZs (tem-

porary autonomous zones), Direct Action/Sabotage in the workplace, and ba-

sically any action that takes place outside o the authorization o the system.

As we become more autonomous, they will push harder, which is why the rules

above are necessary. We need to ollow James Joyce’s dictum o “Silence, Exile

and Cunning”. We must be invisible to their eyes, yet visible to each others.

And yet, these rules and the larger program will “work” because they

ollow people’s own basic sel interest in a way that doesn’t require extended

time preerence. Deep down, despite ideology and brainwashing, most

people are simply pragmatic when it comes to their own lives and the lives

o their loved ones. The path to liberation must be one that can be ollowed

without sel-sacrifce. It must be immediate and basic enough that anyone

who hears it may begin to ollow it and reap the rewards.

This is why the three rules are a good beginning point. They do not ask

anything o someone that they would not be inclined to do anyway and they do

not involve risking the present or the sake o the uture. All they ask is that you

become aware o how you’re helping the system unction… and then to stop.

By Anna O. MorgensternALLiance Contributing Writer Anna O. Morgenstern is also a Feature Editor or

C4SS.org. She has been an anarchist o one stripe or another or almost 30 years.

Her intellectual interests include economic history, social psychology and voluntary

organization theory. She likes piña coladas, but not getting caught in the rain.

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A Review of Butler Shaffer’s “Calculated Chaos”My shit rom minarchism to anarchism was not completely, over even

substantially, motivated by a distaste or government (I already had that).

Rather, anarchism is a way o looking at the human condition that does not

presuppose the power relationships we take or granted. I grew to view state

politics as but one maniestation o these underlying relationships.I the way in which we organize and think about ourselves precipitates certain

outcomes, perhaps we can eect dierent, more desirable outcomes by choos-

ing dierent organizing ethics. Such an examination leads one in an extremely

open-ended — yet liberating — direction, where these ethics and their premises

are fnally considered on their own merits. To quote Einstein, “The signifcant

problems we have cannot be solved at the same level o thinking with which we

created them.” So how do we start to talk about that next level o thinking?

The existence o this uncharted territory, outside the pragmatic confneso our regimented, conservative society, is not directly explored in Butler

Shaer’s Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Sur-

vival . Admirably, Shaer wastes no time arguing or his — or any — par-

ticular solutions to mankind’s many crises and problems. Instead, he takes

the revolutionary step o removing the veil o indierence and deerence to

the primary units through which we realize our agendas: institutions. The

book is a cataloging o the myths we tell ourselves and each other to keep

things comortable and stable at the expense o our reedom.Written almost a quarter century ago but still penetratingly relevant,

Calculated Chaos tries to strip down our modern managerial society into

its basic organizing ethics. Shaer’s thesis may seem awkward at frst, but

through careul examination o society the weight o this argument is estab-

lished throughout the book:

“Briey stated, the basic theme o this book is that institutions are the prin-

cipal means by which confict is produced and managed in society. Peace is incom-

patible with institutional activity. Stated another way, the success o institutions de-

pends upon the creation o those conditions in which personal and social confict will

fourish. We experience so much conict in our lives because we have permit-

ted ourselves to be organized into sel-perpetuating, sel-justiying organiza-

tions with which we have identifed our personalities and to whom we look or

direction. We have allowed our lives to be taken over and monopolized by a

variety o political, religious, educational, economic, and social agencies over

which we have little, i any, inuence. These entities have helped us construct

the barriers that not only restrain us, but keep us separated rom one another

and serve as the boundary lines or the intergroup struggles o which we are

part. Through these groupings, we have helped to institutionalize conict, to

make it a seemingly permanent and necessary eature o human society. Such

conict has not resulted rom mere accident o inadvertence, nor has it been

the product o vicious or depraved minds. Rather, or reasons to be developed

herein, conict is a condition upon which the health and well-being o institu-

tions is absolutely dependent.”

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It is crucial or anarchists and libertarians to note that he is not confning

this argument to the state, though he devotes a whole chapter to “the people

pushers” o politics. In order to appreciate the weight o this book, you must

understand that his argument applies just as much to the Catholic or Baptist

churches, to the activist groups o the let and right, to the corporations, to

the Kiwanis and Rotaries, and so on.Not all groups are institutional, Shaer argues. By institutions, he means:

“any permanent social organization with purposes o its own, having or-

malized and structured machinery or pursuing those purposes, and mak-

ing and enorcing rules o conduct in order to control those within it.”

A key distinction or Shaer between institutional and noninstitutional

orms o organization lies in part in the ormality o such groups. People

coming together or a common purpose o their own is not institutional, be-

cause the group is merely a convenience or each individual pursuing theirinterests. The problem arises when the group becomes something more than

that: an entity in its own right, with interests and purposes independent

o its members’. Surprisingly (or a LewRockwell.com columnist) he even

challenges some Austrian sacred cows:

“What begins as a simple division o labor , a system o specialization designed

to allow the work o the group to get done more efciently, becomes a division

o purpose, with group members segregated into a chain o command. When

this takes place, the organization is no longer a tool serving its members: themembers have become conscripts in service to the organization.”

It should be clear by now that Shaer plays no avorites in his critique o

institutional society — everything is game or the thinking individual.

Yet individualism is not Shaer’s bag, either. To him, that philosophy is

just as reactionary as the collectivism o many institutions:

“The search or human liberty is not one in which every individual is

arrayed against the presumed collective o all others, or o one group strug-

gling against another group, but is a pursuit that should serve to unite us

on the basis o our common desire or the autonomy we require i we are to

experience sel-ulflling transcendence o our continuing evolution.”

I there is an individualistic theme to Shaer’s argument, it is only be-

cause o his insistence on the personal part each o us play in the conicts

that make institutional society unction. In contradistinction to the group

identities o institutions, Shaer discusses the spontaneity and intimacy o

community, and the need to know and be yoursel within it.

Sel-analysis and sel reection end up being the lynchpins o this book.

Much o our dilemma stems rom personal values and assumptions we’veaccepted o our own ree will without careul thinking — sometimes be-

cause o indoctrination, oten out o laziness or a lack o sel-esteem. Calcu-

lated Chaosis in many ways not a call or society to change, but or the reader

to rediscover himsel.

I must admit my surprise at how metaphysical Shaer’s book becomes as

it delves deeper and deeper into the personal nature o the organizational

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ethics and principles underlying our society. For instance, Shaer proposes

that institutions serve as surrogate identities that allow us to expand what

he calls our “ego boundaries”. This imperative to seek outside ourselves

or purpose and meaning arises, he posits, rom ailing to train our atten-

tion on the present moment and allowing narratives o reality to arise that

are incomplete and simplistic. Institutions encapsulate a convenient myththat divorces us rom the responsibility to know ourselves ully, providing

contrived identities to which we can cling. These identities and allegiances

drive the interpersonal and intergroup strie that establishes institutional

primacy because we are acting out o a lack o understanding o ourselves.

Shaer provides very ew answers in his exploration o the conicts we

have established within and without ourselves, preerring to ask questions

that challenge the hidden premises o our institutionalized society. This is

uncomortably deliberate: one o Shaer’s theses is that institutions thrivein regimented, predictable environments where events conorm to articu-

lable principles and systems. To transcend the conicts created by our in-

stitutional manners o thought, we must appreciate that our need or the

certainty is largely artifcial and unessential, serving the purposes o insti-

tutional perpetuation and organization more than our own. A dogmatic,

rule-oriented approach to reality will always be necessarily limited, because

it’s built on assumptions o stability and order based on past experience

instead o present experience. By participating in these rigid, static systemso thought, we lose our awareness or the present, which is dynamic, myste-

rious, and able to be apprehended without inhibition or ormula.

It is in this speculative, inquisitive, inward-directed manner that Sha-

er explores “our well-organized conicts”. Anarchists would fnd the idea

that institutions create the conditions o strie and discord that give them

their social unctions quite unremarkable. But Shaer goes deeper, locat-

ing the origin o institutions in our own minds and hearts. It is through

sublimating our own selves to institutional identities, adopting the views

that reinorce their purposes and interests, complying with and depending

upon their expectations, direction, and mobilization, that we realize a world

so chaotic and conicted.

Calculated Chaos advances the unthinkable political concept that you and

I are responsible or the institutional dysunction o society. This seems hard

to accept because radical politics is built on identiying enemies in things

outside ourselves that compel and control us. Shaer’s book is a new take on

the philosophy o liberation: we have made the agendas o institutions our

own agendas, but we can choose otherwise. To all let libertarians, anar-chists, and advocates o a voluntary society, I give this book the very highest

recommendation possible.

By Jeremy Weiland Written by Jeremy Weiland on Monday, June 02, 2008 or Social Memory

Complex.

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ALLiance Journal: a grassroots, shop-oor, dirt cheap, tabloid aspiring

to inspire the Let-Libertarian Movement to delusions o grandeur.

We are ull o piss and passion; and we will never stop even in the ace

o singularity, peak oil or Ragnarok. Check us out at alliancejournal.net

or libertyactivism.ino; read, eat, then write.

ALLiance aims to bea movement journal for the

Alliance of the Libertarian Left (ALL).

ALL’s “mission statement”: The Alliance o the Libertarian Let is a

multi-tendency coalition o mutualists, agorists, voluntaryists, geolib-

ertarians, let-Rothbardians, green libertarians, dialectical anarchists,

radical minarchists, and others on the libertarian let, united by an

opposition to statism and militarism, to cultural intolerance (includ-

ing sexism, racism, and homophobia), and to the prevailing corporatist

capitalism alsely called a ree market; as well as by an emphasis on edu-

cation, direct action, and building alternative institutions, rather than

on electoral politics, as our chie strategy or achieving liberation.

Center for a Stateless Society

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