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Lord of the Flies and Anarchism

From a discussion in my Anarcho-Capitalism group on MySpace:

kriztofr (L-LA) wrote:

Also, the kids in the novel never worked toward an anarchist society in the first place. It started off democratic, then split into democratic and authoritarian factions, whith the latter eventually gaining all of the democrats. If anything, the book could be used as literature against government (ie Simon's death, etc).


Exactly. A peaceful, prosperous civilization cannot spring up amongst humans all on its own. To achieve that requires the individuals in the community to think and to have coherent values that hold peace and prosperity as goals. Clearly, looking around us today and even through history, that's hard enough as it is with adults. This was a group of 6 to 12 year-old kids (who, if I remember correctly, were being evacuated in the middle of a war) who were presumably raised in a post-WWII British culture drenched in statism and who already contained violent elements within. Hell, Lord of the Flies was written in the mid-1950's, probably the low-point of the last 100 years in regards to comprehensive anarchist thought. How the can anyone expect this cursed-from-the-beginning community to respect free exchange, individual rights, and other foundations of anarcho-capitalism?

These are high-order concepts. It is certainly possible to teach these to children as they grow up, but I seriously doubt that foundation was there except in the most general terms (the Golden Rule, for example) and without any serious justification. All I remember the most responsible of the children could do is to issue pleadings for peace and the necessity of "rules." Is it any surprise that those kids, unable to articulate the why of their vague need for stability, dwindled in number in the face of instant-pleasure savagery?

There's a good argument to be made that Mr. Golding intended the book to show humanity is predisposed to barbarism and cruelty. If so, then the book was rigged from the beginning and is utterly useless as a weapon against those calling for stateless societies.

Posted by drizzten on July 30, 2007 09:53 AM |

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