Jeremy Bell, Lecturer in History, Philosophy, and Literature at Campion College, has a fascinating piece on J. J. R. Tolkien and philosophical anarchism, the view that, not that beared men should throw bombs, but that the state is largely in part or whole unjustified, and many state institutions tend to tyranny. In a letter of 29 November 1943 to his 18-year-old son Christopher, he said: “My political opinions lean more and more towards Anarchy (philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs) — or to ‘unconstitutional’ Monarchy.” The latter position seems to be very much a “return of the king,” idea, which seems dangerous in these centralisation times, but as argued by Bell, Tolkien has large sympathies for the idea that people are best off working out relationships and institutions beyond the nation state. Bell goes into great detail discussing and rebutting some of the obvious objections to this position of moving beyond the state. Most importantly since Covid, especially in the United states, we have seen how a state can declare war upon a significant segment of the population which is opposed to the Biden regime.
Probably the longer-term future of humanity will involve states breaking down and collapsing, so the anarchist position may come to be adopted by default. Tolkien may well be proven to be correct after all.