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Worshiping Power: An Anarchist View of Early State Formation
According to Worshiping Power , we need to stop thinking of the State as a potential vehicle for emancipation. From its origins, the State has never been anything other than a tool to accumulate power. This innovative and partisan study of human social complexity cuts through inadequate theories of early state formation to uncover social practices and institutions that have stifled egalitarian forms of self-organization throughout history. Just as importantly, it shows that the difficulties and consequences of state formation are not relegated to prehistory. Despite a ubiquity that renders them almost invisible today, states are constantly trying to augment their power, and all are closer to the brink of collapse than they would like to let on.
Peter Gelderloos is an anarchist writer originally from Virginia. He is the author of How Nonviolence Protects the State , Consensus , and Anarchy Works .
Table of Contents
Introduction
I. Take Me to Your The Politics of Alien Invasion
II. Ze A State-Making Technology
III. Save Me from The Statist Spread of Salvation Religions
IV. Sleeper States and Imperial Authority’s Afterlife and Reincarnation
V. The Modern A Revolutionary Hybrid
VI. A Topography of Positionality
VII. Chiefdoms and On the Stability of Non-State Hierarchies
VIII. They Ain’t Got No Surpluses and the State
IX. All in the Kinship and Statehood
X. Building the Walls From Raiding to Warfare
XI. Staff and A New Symbolic Order
XII. A Forager’s Dreams of Power
XIII. From Clastres to Cairo to Learning from States
Bibliography
Index
Peter Gelderloos is an anarchist writer originally from Virginia. He is the author of How Nonviolence Protects the State , Consensus , and Anarchy Works .
Table of Contents
Introduction
I. Take Me to Your The Politics of Alien Invasion
II. Ze A State-Making Technology
III. Save Me from The Statist Spread of Salvation Religions
IV. Sleeper States and Imperial Authority’s Afterlife and Reincarnation
V. The Modern A Revolutionary Hybrid
VI. A Topography of Positionality
VII. Chiefdoms and On the Stability of Non-State Hierarchies
VIII. They Ain’t Got No Surpluses and the State
IX. All in the Kinship and Statehood
X. Building the Walls From Raiding to Warfare
XI. Staff and A New Symbolic Order
XII. A Forager’s Dreams of Power
XIII. From Clastres to Cairo to Learning from States
Bibliography
Index
286 pages, Paperback
Published January 24, 2017
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About the author
Peter Gelderloos
26 books117 followersPeter Gelderloos is an American anarchist activist and writer.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
March 22, 2019
A whole mess. I was really looking forward to this one, as I previously read Against the Grain by James C. Scott, which deals with the same subject but ended up disappointing, so I was hoping a more deliberately anarchist viewpoint might get clearer results. I shouldn't have bothered: James C. Scott is Gelderloos' main source (not Against the Grain, of course, which came out a year after Worshiping Power, but The Art of Not Being Governed), and where Gelderloos isn't regurgitating Scott he's... a lot worse.
There's an anthropological model of cultural evolution that goes band → tribe → chiefdom → state, and while Gelderloos obviously denies both its unidirectionality and its implied ranked value judgement and adds a caveat to accommodate an imaginary, that is the model he consistently starts from. On this basis, he denies statehood to a whole host of different societies, from the Minoans over Biblical Israel and the early Roman Kingdom to a whole host of Noble Savages in the Global South—not necessarily controversial in the context of anthropology, but becoming somewhat contentious when he then also routinely equates statelessness with anti-authoritarianism or anarchism, conflating his anthropological definition of a state with the colloquial one.
And actually, in practice a lot of it does end up being controversial in the context of anthropology, since Gelderloos' claims often rest on the flimsiest evidence, presenting as facts conclusions drawn from a very ambiguous historical record (sometimes even just the Bible itself), long-debunked hypotheses (Gimbutas on Old Europe, though eventually even he has to admit that's ``disputed''—The Civilization of the Goddess is listed in the bibliography), or outright factual errors (one of his reasons for considering the Minoans stateless is the fact that Linear B wasn't used to record the accomplishments of leaders—Linear B wasn't used by the Minoans). It's clear Gelderloos read a handful of books in research for Worshiping Power—they keep coming back in the footnotes—but they all seem to have been pop history (if that†) rather than scholarly works, much less primary sources. He even seems to take perverse pride in the low quality of his sources, at one point citing an article in The Daily Mail, of all things, talking about a paper rather than the paper itself.
No matter what your politics (I'm an anarchist myself), it's clear Gelderloos is way out of his depth as a historian or anthropologist, and Worshiping Power can only be seen as a work of pseudohistory. That it was conceived specifically as anarchist propaganda isn't the problem (it's the reason I read it in the first place)—the fact that Gelderloos values stories that confirm what he wants to believe over any kind of rigour is.‡
I really wanted this one to be good, but it just wasn't.
--------
† One of them is Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English by John McWhorter (though he becomes John McWorter later in the book, and in the bibliography), from which he gets the claim (ultimately going back to Theo Vennemann, bless him) that Proto-Germanic had a Semitic adstrate or superstrate, courtesy of an entirely imaginary Phoenician settlement in Jutland.
‡ Here's an example that will seem petty but has always been a good litmus test for me in the rare cases where it's come up: when the French Empire applied the Code Napoléon to the Netherlands in 1810, it insisted all of its subjects declare a surname, which was not always common in certain rural areas. There's a persistent myth that a lot of Dutch people just made up funny names to spite the French, of which Naaktgeboren (``born naked'') is probably the most commonly mentioned example. Gelderloos explains his own name as meaning ``without money'' (with an anomalous -r- which, to be fair, could have a few possible explanations), because his ancestors realised the reason the French wanted people to have surnames is to make them easier to tax.
In fact, the vast majority of the Dutch already had surnames, and those that didn't took patronymics, house names, or pre-existing nicknames. Odd-sounding Dutch names, including Naaktgeboren, predate the French and are mostly just a consequence of the Dutch being who they are, and this myth has served as a great way to distinguish shallow geeks from turbonerds since it came to prominence in the last century. It's niche, but I've never met a person who enthusiastically repeated it who wasn't also comprehensively full of shit when it comes to everything else.
FWIW, I would expect ``Gelderloos'' to be derived from a toponym Gelderloo or Gelderlo, with Gelder- being connected to the Duchy of Guelders and -loo meaning forest (/ clearing).
There's an anthropological model of cultural evolution that goes band → tribe → chiefdom → state, and while Gelderloos obviously denies both its unidirectionality and its implied ranked value judgement and adds a caveat to accommodate an imaginary, that is the model he consistently starts from. On this basis, he denies statehood to a whole host of different societies, from the Minoans over Biblical Israel and the early Roman Kingdom to a whole host of Noble Savages in the Global South—not necessarily controversial in the context of anthropology, but becoming somewhat contentious when he then also routinely equates statelessness with anti-authoritarianism or anarchism, conflating his anthropological definition of a state with the colloquial one.
And actually, in practice a lot of it does end up being controversial in the context of anthropology, since Gelderloos' claims often rest on the flimsiest evidence, presenting as facts conclusions drawn from a very ambiguous historical record (sometimes even just the Bible itself), long-debunked hypotheses (Gimbutas on Old Europe, though eventually even he has to admit that's ``disputed''—The Civilization of the Goddess is listed in the bibliography), or outright factual errors (one of his reasons for considering the Minoans stateless is the fact that Linear B wasn't used to record the accomplishments of leaders—Linear B wasn't used by the Minoans). It's clear Gelderloos read a handful of books in research for Worshiping Power—they keep coming back in the footnotes—but they all seem to have been pop history (if that†) rather than scholarly works, much less primary sources. He even seems to take perverse pride in the low quality of his sources, at one point citing an article in The Daily Mail, of all things, talking about a paper rather than the paper itself.
No matter what your politics (I'm an anarchist myself), it's clear Gelderloos is way out of his depth as a historian or anthropologist, and Worshiping Power can only be seen as a work of pseudohistory. That it was conceived specifically as anarchist propaganda isn't the problem (it's the reason I read it in the first place)—the fact that Gelderloos values stories that confirm what he wants to believe over any kind of rigour is.‡
I really wanted this one to be good, but it just wasn't.
--------
† One of them is Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English by John McWhorter (though he becomes John McWorter later in the book, and in the bibliography), from which he gets the claim (ultimately going back to Theo Vennemann, bless him) that Proto-Germanic had a Semitic adstrate or superstrate, courtesy of an entirely imaginary Phoenician settlement in Jutland.
‡ Here's an example that will seem petty but has always been a good litmus test for me in the rare cases where it's come up: when the French Empire applied the Code Napoléon to the Netherlands in 1810, it insisted all of its subjects declare a surname, which was not always common in certain rural areas. There's a persistent myth that a lot of Dutch people just made up funny names to spite the French, of which Naaktgeboren (``born naked'') is probably the most commonly mentioned example. Gelderloos explains his own name as meaning ``without money'' (with an anomalous -r- which, to be fair, could have a few possible explanations), because his ancestors realised the reason the French wanted people to have surnames is to make them easier to tax.
In fact, the vast majority of the Dutch already had surnames, and those that didn't took patronymics, house names, or pre-existing nicknames. Odd-sounding Dutch names, including Naaktgeboren, predate the French and are mostly just a consequence of the Dutch being who they are, and this myth has served as a great way to distinguish shallow geeks from turbonerds since it came to prominence in the last century. It's niche, but I've never met a person who enthusiastically repeated it who wasn't also comprehensively full of shit when it comes to everything else.
FWIW, I would expect ``Gelderloos'' to be derived from a toponym Gelderloo or Gelderlo, with Gelder- being connected to the Duchy of Guelders and -loo meaning forest (/ clearing).
June 7, 2017
A fascinating radical anthropological/historical perspective on state formation.
Let me start off with what I didn't like. I didn't give the book 4 stars for one thing because I was made a little uncomfortable by sparse use of sources, although I did like that the footnotes were all available to read in detail on the pages themselves.
While Gelderloos is clearly a stringent opponent of the state, and he shows how violent and exploitative the state really is, I'm a little bit unconvinced as to the nature of the alternative. I would've liked to see more exploration of violence in stateless societies, how this was managed and what he could say about the fact that many stateless societies have been extremely violent and warlike as well. He briefly acknowledges stateless societies can wage war often and violently, but chalks it up to "sport or a tradition of raiding" if I recall. Surely other books have touched on this, such as Pierre Clastres' "Society Against the State" but in order to sell alternative models, I would really liked to have seen more here. I plan on reading Steven Pinker's "The Better Angels of Our Nature" soon which offers the opposite perspective on the necessity of the state.
Now for what I did like. I really liked the recurring theme, as the name of the book would suggest, of "worshipping power." He really explains well the role religion played in creating states and the role States had in creating and shaping religion. I like how he explains early states' obsession with erecting monuments, grand temples and worshipping of god-kings, not just for kicks, but as a deliberate method of solidifying central and hegemonic power. It was also interesting to read about how the religions of many state societies were patriarchal and hierarchical, and these came to conquer or displace stateless societies with religions more geared towards egalitarianism, spirituality, paganism, etc. I like how he references James C Scott when discussing certain ethnicities as a "state-making technology" based on characteristics I just mentioned, and how the Germans as an ethnic group could have been first invented by the Roman historian Tacitus during his observation of Germanic tribes. This was more than a thousand years before the German state ever became a reality.
Gelderloos' description of how the persecution of "witches" by early modern European states/the Church was indeed a simultaneous effort to stamp out female healers, midwives, and nurses, to subordinate them to male power was quite intriguing. He seems to have an admiration for the Middle Ages and treats them as a kind of generally decentralized, egalitarian period between two eras of central state power, which is debatable. I'm noticing some nostalgia of late in the works of many academics writing about the Middle Ages.
I also liked his analysis of how states, in their effort to wipe out all challengers, would often clear out spaces like forests and swamps that had so often been the refuge for rebels and those resisting state power.
All in all, I think the average reader would enjoy the book even if you're not strictly anarchist. The last chapter is kind of a manifesto as well as a conclusion, so you can skip that bit if you like. But if you're interested in a book that is critical of state power and the genesis of state formation, this has got some excellent stuff in here. It seems a lot more nuanced and correct to me that while states have thousands of methods of forming, all have one goal: to accumulate power. Political, military, economic, religious, patriarchal, and so on. I think this core concept is indisputable, and can easily be accepted across the political spectrum. The difference lies in whether this can be consistent with social good and welfare or not. I myself don't quite know.
Let me start off with what I didn't like. I didn't give the book 4 stars for one thing because I was made a little uncomfortable by sparse use of sources, although I did like that the footnotes were all available to read in detail on the pages themselves.
While Gelderloos is clearly a stringent opponent of the state, and he shows how violent and exploitative the state really is, I'm a little bit unconvinced as to the nature of the alternative. I would've liked to see more exploration of violence in stateless societies, how this was managed and what he could say about the fact that many stateless societies have been extremely violent and warlike as well. He briefly acknowledges stateless societies can wage war often and violently, but chalks it up to "sport or a tradition of raiding" if I recall. Surely other books have touched on this, such as Pierre Clastres' "Society Against the State" but in order to sell alternative models, I would really liked to have seen more here. I plan on reading Steven Pinker's "The Better Angels of Our Nature" soon which offers the opposite perspective on the necessity of the state.
Now for what I did like. I really liked the recurring theme, as the name of the book would suggest, of "worshipping power." He really explains well the role religion played in creating states and the role States had in creating and shaping religion. I like how he explains early states' obsession with erecting monuments, grand temples and worshipping of god-kings, not just for kicks, but as a deliberate method of solidifying central and hegemonic power. It was also interesting to read about how the religions of many state societies were patriarchal and hierarchical, and these came to conquer or displace stateless societies with religions more geared towards egalitarianism, spirituality, paganism, etc. I like how he references James C Scott when discussing certain ethnicities as a "state-making technology" based on characteristics I just mentioned, and how the Germans as an ethnic group could have been first invented by the Roman historian Tacitus during his observation of Germanic tribes. This was more than a thousand years before the German state ever became a reality.
Gelderloos' description of how the persecution of "witches" by early modern European states/the Church was indeed a simultaneous effort to stamp out female healers, midwives, and nurses, to subordinate them to male power was quite intriguing. He seems to have an admiration for the Middle Ages and treats them as a kind of generally decentralized, egalitarian period between two eras of central state power, which is debatable. I'm noticing some nostalgia of late in the works of many academics writing about the Middle Ages.
I also liked his analysis of how states, in their effort to wipe out all challengers, would often clear out spaces like forests and swamps that had so often been the refuge for rebels and those resisting state power.
All in all, I think the average reader would enjoy the book even if you're not strictly anarchist. The last chapter is kind of a manifesto as well as a conclusion, so you can skip that bit if you like. But if you're interested in a book that is critical of state power and the genesis of state formation, this has got some excellent stuff in here. It seems a lot more nuanced and correct to me that while states have thousands of methods of forming, all have one goal: to accumulate power. Political, military, economic, religious, patriarchal, and so on. I think this core concept is indisputable, and can easily be accepted across the political spectrum. The difference lies in whether this can be consistent with social good and welfare or not. I myself don't quite know.
April 17, 2021
An eye-opening look at the development of states over time. Major props to the author for proving that there is nothing natural about state formation.
June 21, 2020
I think the historical knowledge and the ideas in this book are amazing. I have no regret to spent enormous amount of time to read it. I 100% agree with the comments above regarding the structure of the text though. I felt like a great editor could help the situation, and make the content inside the chapters more structured. Anyway, highly recommended to anyone who is interested in understanding of whose interests states with its party system usually serve and how such unities as states have been appearing in the world, and how the world functioned before states happened to us :) Now, few people know that there is a possibility to live in a community with its politics and with no states and party politics. So enjoy your discoveries of different societies, have a great travel, and be prepared to suffer a bit :)
February 1, 2021
Fantastic journey of historical and theoretical intrigue... I have marked about a half dozen of the sources he cites in the bibliography to read soon as well. As a lifelong anarchist (well at least since my teens) it is profoundly inspiring and about damn time that a deeply researched history of the shackles of exploitation and domination come to light. I genuinely appreciate this work and Peter for writing it.
October 1, 2017
It is impossible for me to judge its scholarly merits, so in that sense I find it hard to review this book. Probably a much better book is possible, it is a bit jumpy from topic to topic and covers thousands of years of human history. Peter Gelderloos is not an academic historian. This is a political work, by an anarchist who thinks there lacks an anarchist perspective on early state formation, with the belief that such knowledge can aid us in destroying the state. It is an autodidactic work of someone diving into history for a couple (?) of years and obviously a much better and more researched work on the topic than this is possible. But I very much appreciate the effort and there is lots of thought-provoking stuff in here.
Everyone enjoys a bit of history. And especially history from a radical anarchist anti-authoritarian perspective is fascinating and rare. It is very much a re-telling, upside-down from the usual accounts, with a focus on how states were formed, spread and were resisted. Rather than accepting the 'Dark Ages' mythology of the time between the collapse of the Roman Empire until the Renaissance, we can also celebrate that as a time where state control was diminished and people were able to live more egalitarian and free lives. There is so much history I don't know, I very much enjoyed the anarchist reading of the Roman historian Tacitus' writing on the Germanic tribes. And yea, on how the concept of 'Germany' is a Roman invention.
As you can see in the title 'Worshipping Power, one of the main recurring arguments is on how religion is a necessary part of state formation. Worshipping ancestors and erecting monuments is one of the constant ways for elites to create a more hierarchical culture to enable societal stratification. I also found Gelderloos argument that there is a link between patriarchy and state formation quite convincing. More hierarchical societies (that are more likely to form early states) tend to have a more patriarchal religion. If it is not monotheistic, the pantheon will be hierarchical. Egalitarian cultures on the other hand tend to have religions that are more spiritual and pagan, usually polytheistic; involving adoration of Mother Earth or of local-based deities, worship of animals, rivers and trees. With the persons fulfilling religious roles more likely to be be female or 'queer'.
One of my favourite parts was Gelderloos' Bronze Age collapse hypothesis somewhere in the middle of the book. Again, I cannot judge its scholarly merit, but to me it was convincing and very thought-provoking. Between 1250 and 1100BC the Mycenaean (Greek) civilization collapsed. This was followed by a 'Greek Dark Age' until 900BC where there was a loss of writing and decline of Mediterranean trade. There are numerous propsed causes for the collapse, ranging from barbarian invasions, climate change and volcanic eruptions. But there is no scientific consensus on any of the hypotheses. Gelderloos hypothesis as potentially the most important factor for the Bronze Age collapse: internal rebellion and struggles for freedom.
"I propose that we would attain a far more accurate view of history if, every time a state collapsed, we assumed rebellion was a principal cause, unless evidence existed for another cause. We know that states provoke resistance from their own subjects, and that struggles for freedom are universal [..] Too often, historians and archaeologists fabricate cheap mysteries, "Why did this great civilization suddenly collapse?, " because they refuse to accept the obvious: that states are odious structures that their populations destroy whenever they get the opportunity, and sometimes even when they face impossible odds. The scholars of power are staring Ozymandias in the face."
and
"In complex systems, it is instability and turmoil that cause systemic collapse and the spontaneous emergence of new systems. But instability is not just the sum of discrete forces acting on a static equilibrium. On the contrary, the instability comes to constitute a force in itself that triggers more destabilizing events. It unifies the total array of forces that cause individuals and communities to reproduce the dynamic equilibrium of the system or to rebel against it. These forces are economic, ecological, technological, political (in terms of administrative structures, discourses of legitimacy, and also relations of war/peace between polities), spiritual, and also psychological. This last, often ignored, and approaching what George Katsiaficas terms the "eros effect", is undeniable on the ground: a society is more likely to rebel when the power structure that dominate it appear unstable, or when neighboring societies also rebel, no matter what their reasons."
This world system approach that includes each of these factors causing instability may be a good way of looking at the collapse of the Bronze Age, but it obviously is useful for contemporary times as well if you look at the spread of social rebellion since 2008 and the civilizational collapse that is likely to come.
Finally, I do think I disagree a bit with Gelderloos politically. I have not completely made up my mind and perhaps I do not understand the social war and counterinsurgency perspective enough yet, but I can't really agree with the constant attacks on progressives and social movements throughout the book. To pick a quote:
"Progressive movements systematically redirect popular rage, which is inspired by nothing less than the violence of beings governed, at elements of power that are ineffective and potentially obsolete. The goal (at least of those who command such movements) and the result is to make power more powerful. (pg 91)"
I mean, really? Following Gelderloos on the dynamic between social movements and states, it would probably mean that progressives and social movements inevitably get co-opted, resulting in power and states then become more powerful. There sadly is no chapter on more modern state formation and how this dynamic would play out. But analytically I do not think it really stands. And politically I much prefer talking on "non-reformist reforms" rather than upholding some purist and principled critique of power. Also, I do understand the critique on democracy, but not sure yet if I agree or find it helpful, as I think there may be merit in a populist reclaiming of (direct) democracy. To challenge myself I will try to get a better understanding of social war and counterinsurgency theory and read the crimethinc pamphlet on Democracy.
Everyone enjoys a bit of history. And especially history from a radical anarchist anti-authoritarian perspective is fascinating and rare. It is very much a re-telling, upside-down from the usual accounts, with a focus on how states were formed, spread and were resisted. Rather than accepting the 'Dark Ages' mythology of the time between the collapse of the Roman Empire until the Renaissance, we can also celebrate that as a time where state control was diminished and people were able to live more egalitarian and free lives. There is so much history I don't know, I very much enjoyed the anarchist reading of the Roman historian Tacitus' writing on the Germanic tribes. And yea, on how the concept of 'Germany' is a Roman invention.
As you can see in the title 'Worshipping Power, one of the main recurring arguments is on how religion is a necessary part of state formation. Worshipping ancestors and erecting monuments is one of the constant ways for elites to create a more hierarchical culture to enable societal stratification. I also found Gelderloos argument that there is a link between patriarchy and state formation quite convincing. More hierarchical societies (that are more likely to form early states) tend to have a more patriarchal religion. If it is not monotheistic, the pantheon will be hierarchical. Egalitarian cultures on the other hand tend to have religions that are more spiritual and pagan, usually polytheistic; involving adoration of Mother Earth or of local-based deities, worship of animals, rivers and trees. With the persons fulfilling religious roles more likely to be be female or 'queer'.
One of my favourite parts was Gelderloos' Bronze Age collapse hypothesis somewhere in the middle of the book. Again, I cannot judge its scholarly merit, but to me it was convincing and very thought-provoking. Between 1250 and 1100BC the Mycenaean (Greek) civilization collapsed. This was followed by a 'Greek Dark Age' until 900BC where there was a loss of writing and decline of Mediterranean trade. There are numerous propsed causes for the collapse, ranging from barbarian invasions, climate change and volcanic eruptions. But there is no scientific consensus on any of the hypotheses. Gelderloos hypothesis as potentially the most important factor for the Bronze Age collapse: internal rebellion and struggles for freedom.
"I propose that we would attain a far more accurate view of history if, every time a state collapsed, we assumed rebellion was a principal cause, unless evidence existed for another cause. We know that states provoke resistance from their own subjects, and that struggles for freedom are universal [..] Too often, historians and archaeologists fabricate cheap mysteries, "Why did this great civilization suddenly collapse?, " because they refuse to accept the obvious: that states are odious structures that their populations destroy whenever they get the opportunity, and sometimes even when they face impossible odds. The scholars of power are staring Ozymandias in the face."
and
"In complex systems, it is instability and turmoil that cause systemic collapse and the spontaneous emergence of new systems. But instability is not just the sum of discrete forces acting on a static equilibrium. On the contrary, the instability comes to constitute a force in itself that triggers more destabilizing events. It unifies the total array of forces that cause individuals and communities to reproduce the dynamic equilibrium of the system or to rebel against it. These forces are economic, ecological, technological, political (in terms of administrative structures, discourses of legitimacy, and also relations of war/peace between polities), spiritual, and also psychological. This last, often ignored, and approaching what George Katsiaficas terms the "eros effect", is undeniable on the ground: a society is more likely to rebel when the power structure that dominate it appear unstable, or when neighboring societies also rebel, no matter what their reasons."
This world system approach that includes each of these factors causing instability may be a good way of looking at the collapse of the Bronze Age, but it obviously is useful for contemporary times as well if you look at the spread of social rebellion since 2008 and the civilizational collapse that is likely to come.
Finally, I do think I disagree a bit with Gelderloos politically. I have not completely made up my mind and perhaps I do not understand the social war and counterinsurgency perspective enough yet, but I can't really agree with the constant attacks on progressives and social movements throughout the book. To pick a quote:
"Progressive movements systematically redirect popular rage, which is inspired by nothing less than the violence of beings governed, at elements of power that are ineffective and potentially obsolete. The goal (at least of those who command such movements) and the result is to make power more powerful. (pg 91)"
I mean, really? Following Gelderloos on the dynamic between social movements and states, it would probably mean that progressives and social movements inevitably get co-opted, resulting in power and states then become more powerful. There sadly is no chapter on more modern state formation and how this dynamic would play out. But analytically I do not think it really stands. And politically I much prefer talking on "non-reformist reforms" rather than upholding some purist and principled critique of power. Also, I do understand the critique on democracy, but not sure yet if I agree or find it helpful, as I think there may be merit in a populist reclaiming of (direct) democracy. To challenge myself I will try to get a better understanding of social war and counterinsurgency theory and read the crimethinc pamphlet on Democracy.
March 28, 2017
One of my favorite books about Anarchy is "Anarchy Works," also by Peter Gelderloos. Whenever anyone asks me for a recommendation for introductory books about anarchism, it's still the first thing that comes to my mind. It covers a more-than-fair amount of sub-topics, but maintains its readability throughout. Although I think Gelderloos got a little repetitive and boring in all his books about non-violence, I was still looking forward to reading Worshiping Power.
It took me almost a month to read this 250 page book and even though I finished it less than a half an hour ago, I'd be hard pressed to find words if someone were to ask me for a summary or what I just put down. This density is one of my biggest complaints about anarchism--we want people to understand our belief systems instead of just believing what they see on TV, but most of the books are written in a way that only uber-educated people can grasp them.
Hopefully Gelderloos gets back to writing for the people instead of is fellow intellectuals.
It took me almost a month to read this 250 page book and even though I finished it less than a half an hour ago, I'd be hard pressed to find words if someone were to ask me for a summary or what I just put down. This density is one of my biggest complaints about anarchism--we want people to understand our belief systems instead of just believing what they see on TV, but most of the books are written in a way that only uber-educated people can grasp them.
Hopefully Gelderloos gets back to writing for the people instead of is fellow intellectuals.
January 9, 2021
The basic thesis: that "states are odious structures that their populations destroy whenever they get the opportunity, and sometimes even when they face impossible odds."
Worshipping Power is a bit of a romp through state formation, deformation, attempts at reformation, and finally unformation.
Worshipping Power is a bit of a romp through state formation, deformation, attempts at reformation, and finally unformation.
October 17, 2024
i am a big fan of peter gelderloos. i’ve read a lot of his work, both books & newsletters/essays. typically i find his writing to be much more engaging & readable. this felt less tangible & i had trouble keeping focus.
September 14, 2020
I really like Gelderloos, but this book was very confusing.
June 16, 2024
Pretty nice read that questions the necessity of states and how legit the power they have over us actually is.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews