Parable upon the fewness of the anarchists

Piotr, lately I have come to think the reason for my loneliness is that I have not yet crossed the three thresholds of commitment for joining the anarchist community. My dear Josef, how can this cause you such problems? Piotr, my good friend, let me tell you, it is only since I heard your explication of the three thresholds that I found I have not crossed any of them. Josef, for a long time, I have known of your reluctance to enter the house of anarchism, even though you are also drawn to it. You prowl back and forth at the open door waiting for scraps of attention like a beaten yard dog. Piotr, I will never enter that house, I know of its interior only from the little I have glimpsed from the door. This glimpsing is enough to persuade me not to enter, I know I cannot belong in there, but there is also something about the place which provokes my dream of another house, where I could feel at home.  Josef, I do not understand why you wait at the door like that. You are not forced to stay. You may enter if you choose, or you are free to go away. But you are caught between going and staying, and so you remain outside. Piotr, it is true, I wait and I wait, and I cannot leave - the house of anarchism is not the place I wish to enter, but it evokes some other place of my belonging, which is otherwise unknown to me, and for that reason I stay. Then, Josef, we must investigate the substance of the three commitments and look for the source of your problem. The first threshold to be passed is a willing adherence to principle. Do you, Josef, find a difficulty with that? My dear Piotr, I do. I fear that we are always so terribly distorted by committing to sets of rules that we are never likely to live up to. I do not know if it is possible to uphold principles, or whether they are particularly designed to fail, and trap, those who seek to live by them. I have found, in my experience, that the principle of committing to principles is corrupting of the potential for honesty. In place of principle, my preference is for making those sovereign promises that I am able to keep. I understand Josef, the militant defence of rules impedes intelligence, but nobody is asking that of you. Piotr, in practice, the anarchist domain is governed by those who are seen as the most committed to a particular interpretation of the principles. The most dominant are those prepared to go furthest in defence of the principles. It is a small step from that to those who are simply prepared to go furthest. The logic of fanaticism rapidly progresses from defence of the named values to their suspension in pursuit of  a stated objective.  A small group takes possession of the group's values as if they were their property, and from this they begin to organise a hierarchy of relations by which a system of promotions and exclusions is operated. Josef, I think the potential danger posed by these emergent elites may be countered by the second threshold, which is passed by the realisation of principles in practice. Piotr, I do not agree. We are not in full possession of our capabilities, we are set in motion by the forces of which we are a product and which we cannot completely escape. We cannot know, as we attempt to put into practice our goals, whether they are really the object of our purpose, or whether, despite our best intentions, they have been supplied by forces to which we are purportedly opposed. I do not know if our project is differentiated from that of the state's at the level of mutually exclusive objectives,  or if the end is shared, and only the methods of achieving it are dissimilar. I do not know if we are deluded in our activities and principles, and whether we are merely achieving the most familiar of ends but by innovatory means. Josef, it is true that your self-confliction causes you to become a difficult character, but even you cannot refuse the third of the thresholds, the practical opposition to domination, and to the formal and informal institutions of power. Piotr, it is true that even I still seek to refuse, resist or at least evade my personal domination by the state. There is no existence without the assertion of self-differentiation,  and there is no self-differentiation without separating individual interests from that of powerful institutions. But as for, 'practical opposition', I do not know if I am capable of that. Is it really my responsibility to confront the state? That seems to propose an almost  canutian ritual of futility. The state must be opposed at a quite other level than from that inhabited by individuals... and where the impetus to act is strongly felt, but where the constraints upon different levels of agency are not recognised, scapegoating and the pathologies of exteriorisation result - my good and patient Piotr, I am fatally aware that I belong to this world, my life-experience and my reasoning inform me that I can find no position from which I might abolish it  without also wishing for my own extinction. Dear, troubled Josef, your janus-like prevarications have succeeded in annoying me, and you have detained me long enough. As it is getting cold and dark and I see that I am not going to persuade you,  I am going inside now  to be with the others. I will leave the porch light on and the door unlocked. Inside, there is wine, bread and company - you do not have to stay in the yard, but if you decide to come in I must ask you to leave your muddied boots at the door.