Binding Chaos
Anarchy
Society free of subordination to endogroups at any level. An exosocial society.
Expanded explanation
The everyday sense of anarchy is chaos, the absence of order. Marsh means something precise and nearly opposite: a society with no subordination to endogroups at any level, from the family up to the nation. It is not the absence of organization but the absence of the endogroup as the unit people are forced to submit to. The key word is exosocial. Where an endogroup binds people inward and defines itself against outsiders, an exosocial society is built on connection that reaches outward across boundaries. Anarchy, then, is what a fully exosocial society would be, one in which no one is subordinated to a group at any scale.
Examples
- Not the absence of order
- A society can be highly organized through stigmergy and epistemic communities while subordinating no one to a group, which is order without submission.
- The endogroup removed
- What anarchy removes is not coordination but the demand that people submit to a group, at every level from family to state.
How others use it
Anarchist political thought has long held that anarchy means the absence of rulers, not the absence of order, from Proudhon and Kropotkin onward, so Marsh's usage sits within that tradition rather than the popular equation of anarchy with chaos. Her particular move is to define it through the endogroup and the exosocial, as a society that subordinates no one to any group at any scale.
Sources
Defined in the Binding Chaos series glossary, and developed through the endogroup and exosocial material of the books.
Recommended reading path
Then read in full: Abstracting Divinity.
A suggested order for exploring this corner of the theory.