Worshiping Power: An Anarchist View of Early State Formation -- Peter Gelderloos

According to <i>Worshiping Power</i>, 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 inno-vative and partisan study of human social complexity cuts through in-adequate 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. <p/><b>Peter Gelderloos</b> is an anarchist writer originally from Virginia. He is the author of <i>How Nonviolence Protects the State</i>, <i>Consensus</i>, and <i>Anarchy Works</i>. <p/><br><b>Table of Contents</b><br>Introduction<br>I. Take Me to Your Leader:: The Politics of Alien Invasion<br>II. Ze Germans: A State-Making Technology<br>III. Save Me from Yourself: The Statist Spread of Salvation Religions<br>IV. Sleeper States and Imperial Imaginaries: Authority's Afterlife and Reincarnation<br>V. The Modern State: A Revolutionary Hybrid<br>VI. Zomia: A Topography of Positionality<br>VII. Chiefdoms and Megacommunities: On the Stability of Non-State Hierarchies<br>VIII. They Ain't Got No Class: Surpluses and the State<br>IX