Anarchy

In Montenegro, unlike anywhere else, it is easy to get used to wrongly used, or even impossible, i.e. non-constructive words.

I've probably bored readers in the past twenty years, because I've reminded many times in this column that the word "respect", however much our people like it, simply doesn't exist as such. Or, that "protestants" in our language are not "those who demonstrate, rebel, participate in a protest, demonstrators", but that word is exclusively a designation of one version of Christianity, that is, one religious community. I remember the so-called a serious intellectual who explained in a TV appearance that we must not be "aggressive". It is a completely non-existent word (in dictionaries), that is, a colloquialism that was born in TV sketches in the XNUMXs, when the need of people to use words that they think mean something, or to leave the impression of "learning" in that way, was parodied in a Nušić fashion. .. Is there any more subtle irony than for such a word to end up in the so-called serious television program.

Today I am an advocate of a "notorious" word.

Several times these days we have heard from politicians that "anarchy" is happening in Montenegro, that this or that will react to "anarchy", that this or that move will lead to "anarchy".

You have heard this many times in your life - usually from authority figures, from parents, through teachers to bosses and other managers. Everyone is running away from "anarchy". And they do everything not to "allow" it. From the way they use it, it is clear that they believe that this word denotes only negatively defined concepts such as "lawlessness", "lawlessness", i.e. "social chaos".

Since its inception, this word has experienced constant caricaturization, motivated by ideological hostility, which over time made people lose awareness of the nuances of meaning that are crucial in this case.

It's hard to imagine a more incorrect use of a single word, but let's go in order. The term itself was coined by one of the "fathers of anarchism" Proudhon 1847, from the Greek an i arks, and with it he denoted a social order that does not rest on the fetish of power, that is, on coercion on which every (known) power rests. So the correct translation would be "without authority/coercion", but in Proudhon's projection it did not mean any chaos, but a harmonious society of fulfillment and an authentic community of freedom and solidarity. When they talked about the end of the state, anarchists talked about the bourgeois state of exploitation and the ideological concept of anarchy meant the abandonment of such political and social experience.

So it is deeply unfair when in today's Montenegro, which is currently the world capital of confusion and really sliding towards chaos, you hear this use of the word "anarchy". And from politicians who created or are creating current problems. And who, of course, are unable to imagine the "anarchy" that Proudhon talked about.

It is also unfair because of the unique intellectual experience and historical impact of anarchism. Some of the most significant modern discourses (from feminism to anti-colonialism to pacifism and ecology) were conceived, quite expectedly, within the framework of early anarchism. As well as the experience of mixed departments - it was also one of the anarchist innovations that has long been taken for granted in the modern world. It's the same with anarchism as it is with jazz - all the best things happened a long time ago, but that doesn't diminish the attractiveness and vitality of either anarchism or jazz.

Therefore, all that we see around us is not anarchy and has nothing to do with anarchism. This is dilettantism, ignorance, irresponsibility, incompetence, corruption, unscrupulousness, sad cynicism, and all this has nothing to do with anarchy or honorable anarchists...

The power of language rests on the right choice of words. You must always find the right word. It is the only way to really see and understand reality.

If this is even possible in today's Montenegro...