Why surrender power?
Q: Lunarchy allegedly involves seizing power only to surrender it. Why do that?
A: So you can repeat the revolution again.
Q: But why go to such trouble? Why not fix everything for good?
A: Because revolution is fun. Anyway, nothing can ever be fixed for good. That way lies death. Seizing power and keeping it makes YOU the problem, not the solution. You’ll be leading the counterrevolution.
Q: But if you surrender to the state, won’t that be counterrevolution anyway?
A: Yes indeed. We’ll need a transient taste of that, sufficient to provoke us into resistance once again. Try breathing in; now you’ve got to breathe out. You don’t have a choice about breathing out. Like anything alive, the body has its rhythms. With that in mind, we’re going to take the power, then lose it on purpose, then win it again and again. That’s how lunarchy works.
Q: How do you know it works?
A: Because it worked last time we tried. Our species lived that way, winning and losing with the moon, for thousands of years. In fact, for some ninety per cent of human history. Only with the Neolithic transition, when states and class rule became established for the first time, did sovereignty involve just one side clinging fixedly to power. Popular sovereignty can’t operate that way. It presupposes laughter and play. It presupposes successful resistance culminating in joyful surrender. Nothing can be more empowering than the insurrection itself. So why enact it just once?
Q: Is there concrete evidence that such a system worked?
A: Moon-scheduled revolution, for Africa’s surviving hunting-and-gathering peoples, is not an event dimly remembered in ancient myths and traditions. Rather, it is a task still to be accomplished each month. As the new moon makes its appearance in the sky, people form a circle as brothers and sisters, singing and clapping hands as if a baby had been born.
This is their revolution, and it happens each month.
Each month, at new moon, synchronised insurrection overthrows the rule of men. Women declare themselves on strike, extending their action until the have got the message and understood. No individual can be exempt from the action: fertile sex is impermissible during this time. But why stay on strike forever? Why cling to power once victory has been achieved? At the approach of full moon, women begin anticipating an all-night celebration. A fortnight earlier, they had sent the men away. Now, utilising the moon’s light, these hunters should be closing in for the kill. On the night of the full moon, they should ideally be returning home – laden with freshly-killed game. According to a popular Kalahari saying, Women like meat! They like hunters’ bodies, symbolically identified with the fatty flesh which good hunters bring. Where there is meat in abundance, the matriarchs will be happy to yield. If this were a permanent surrender, they might have legitimate doubts. If the enemy could regain and entrench sexual dominance, it would be unwise to surrender at all. But the women know that this is not so. They won the revolution once – they know they can win it again. Men’s victory will be as transient as women’s, each camp yielding to the other in turn. As women choose honeymoon, they relax in certain knowledge of what the future will bring. Next dark moon, sure as our blood flows – we’ll be out on that picket line again!
A: So you can repeat the revolution again.
Q: But why go to such trouble? Why not fix everything for good?
A: Because revolution is fun. Anyway, nothing can ever be fixed for good. That way lies death. Seizing power and keeping it makes YOU the problem, not the solution. You’ll be leading the counterrevolution.
Q: But if you surrender to the state, won’t that be counterrevolution anyway?
A: Yes indeed. We’ll need a transient taste of that, sufficient to provoke us into resistance once again. Try breathing in; now you’ve got to breathe out. You don’t have a choice about breathing out. Like anything alive, the body has its rhythms. With that in mind, we’re going to take the power, then lose it on purpose, then win it again and again. That’s how lunarchy works.
Q: How do you know it works?
A: Because it worked last time we tried. Our species lived that way, winning and losing with the moon, for thousands of years. In fact, for some ninety per cent of human history. Only with the Neolithic transition, when states and class rule became established for the first time, did sovereignty involve just one side clinging fixedly to power. Popular sovereignty can’t operate that way. It presupposes laughter and play. It presupposes successful resistance culminating in joyful surrender. Nothing can be more empowering than the insurrection itself. So why enact it just once?
Q: Is there concrete evidence that such a system worked?
A: Moon-scheduled revolution, for Africa’s surviving hunting-and-gathering peoples, is not an event dimly remembered in ancient myths and traditions. Rather, it is a task still to be accomplished each month. As the new moon makes its appearance in the sky, people form a circle as brothers and sisters, singing and clapping hands as if a baby had been born.
This is their revolution, and it happens each month.
Each month, at new moon, synchronised insurrection overthrows the rule of men. Women declare themselves on strike, extending their action until the have got the message and understood. No individual can be exempt from the action: fertile sex is impermissible during this time. But why stay on strike forever? Why cling to power once victory has been achieved? At the approach of full moon, women begin anticipating an all-night celebration. A fortnight earlier, they had sent the men away. Now, utilising the moon’s light, these hunters should be closing in for the kill. On the night of the full moon, they should ideally be returning home – laden with freshly-killed game. According to a popular Kalahari saying, Women like meat! They like hunters’ bodies, symbolically identified with the fatty flesh which good hunters bring. Where there is meat in abundance, the matriarchs will be happy to yield. If this were a permanent surrender, they might have legitimate doubts. If the enemy could regain and entrench sexual dominance, it would be unwise to surrender at all. But the women know that this is not so. They won the revolution once – they know they can win it again. Men’s victory will be as transient as women’s, each camp yielding to the other in turn. As women choose honeymoon, they relax in certain knowledge of what the future will bring. Next dark moon, sure as our blood flows – we’ll be out on that picket line again!
