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If there is one conviction that anarchist thinkers and nondemagogic populists share, it is a faith in the capacity of a democratic citizenry to learn and grow through engagement in the public sphere. Just as we might ask what kind of person a particular office or factory routine produces, so might we want to ask how a political process might expand citizen knowledge and capacities. In this respect, the anarchist belief in mutuality without hierarchy and the capacity of ordinary citizens to learn through participation would deplore this short-circuiting of democratic debate. We can see the antipolitics machine at work in the uses of the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), and in the now ubiquitous cost-benefit analysis.

— Two Cheers for Anarchism by James C. Scott (67%)

beneath the apparently objective metric of citations lies a long series of "accounting conventions" smuggled into measurements that are deeply political and deeply conse- quential. My fun at the expense of the Social Science Citation Index may seem a cheap shot. The argument I'm making, however, applies to any quantitative standard rigidly applied.

— Two Cheers for Anarchism by James C. Scott (63%)

What precisely did the Science Citation Index measure? The first thing to notice is the computer-like mindlessness and abstraction of the data gathering. Self-citations counted, adding auto-eroticism to the normal narcissism that prevails in the academy.

— Two Cheers for Anarchism by James C. Scott (62%)

Almost any human institution can be evaluated in these terms. How open is it to the purposes and talents of those who inhabit it?

— Two Cheers for Anarchism by James C. Scott (38%)

Beyond the nation-state itself, the forces of standardization are today represented by international organiza-tions. It is the principal aim of institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, UNESCO, and even UNICEF and the World Court to propagate normative ("best practice") standards, once again deriving from the North Atlantic na-tions, throughout the globe. The financial muscle of these agencies is such that failure to conform to their recommendations carries substantial penalties in loans and aid forgone. The process of institutional alignment now goes by the charming euphemism of "harmonization." Global corporations are instrumental as well in this project of standardization.

— Two Cheers for Anarchism by James C. Scott (35% - 36%)

The more highly planned, regulated, and formal a social or economic order is, the more likely it is to be parasitic on informal processes that the formal scheme does not recognize and without which it could not continue to exist, informal processes that the formal order cannot alone create and maintain.

— Two Cheers for Anarchism by James C. Scott (32%)

It is no exaggeration, I think, to view the past three centuries as the triumph of standardized, official landscapes of control and appropriation over vernacular order. That this triumph has come in tandem with the rise of large-scale hierarchical organizations, of which the state itself is only the most striking example, is entirely logical. The list of lost vernacular orders is potentially staggering.

— Two Cheers for Anarchism by James C. Scott (26% - 27%)

One day you will be called on to break a big law in the name of justice and rationality. Everything will depend on it. You have to be ready. How are you going to prepare for that day when it really matters? You have to stay 'in shape' so that when the big day comes you will be ready. What you need is 'anarchist calisthenics' Every day or so break some trivial law that makes no sense, even if it's only jaywalking. Use your own head to judge whether a law is just or reasonable. That way, you'll keep trim; and when the big day comes, you'll be ready.

— Two Cheers for Anarchism by James C. Scott (12%)

I am suggesting that two centuries of a strong state and liberal economies may have socialized us so that we have largely lost the habits of mutuality and are in danger now of becoming precisely the dangerous predators that Hobbes thought populated the state of nature. Leviathan may have given birth to its own justification.

— Two Cheers for Anarchism by James C. Scott (8% - 9%)