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 ContentsIntroductionI. Take Me to Your Leader:: The Politics of Alien InvasionII. Ze Germans: A State-Making TechnologyIII. Save Me from Yourself: The Statist Spread of Salvation ReligionsIV. Sleeper States and Imperial Imaginaries: Authority’s Afterlife and ReincarnationV. The Modern State: A Revolutionary HybridVI. Zomia: A Topography of PositionalityVII. Chiefdoms and Megacommunities: On the Stability of Non-State HierarchiesVIII. They Ain’t Got No Class: Surpluses and the StateIX. All in the Family: Kinship and StatehoodX. Building the Walls Higher: From Raiding to WarfareXI. Staff and Sun: A New Symbolic OrderXII. A Forager’s Mecca: Dreams of PowerXIII. From Clastres to Cairo to Kobane: Learning from StatesBibliographyIndex