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Multiple borders

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Spike flower wall, Seattle

There was an anarchist writer I read once, perhaps Murray Bookchin, who proposed that oppressive power should be frustrated by arranging that functional borders never coincided. Water management, sewers, language, electricity, schools, languages, political representation for this purpose, and representation for that other purpose, all would be tied to areas with different borders, so that there would be no single loyalty or single center of authority to create a Whole.

Such a proposal goes to the other extreme from the nation state. The anarchist seeks to forestall any place gathering more than divided power and allegiance. He is right that places resist coincident borders, but misses that they also assert unity across functions.