Anarchism

« Anarchism Anarchism is the view that a society without the state, or government, is both possible and desirable. Although there have been intimations of the anarchist outlook throughout history, anarchist ideas emerged in theirmodern form in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the wake of the French and IndustrialRevolutions.

All anarchists support some version of each of the following broad claims: (1) people have no generalobligation to obey the commands of the state; (2) the state ought to be abolished; (3) some kind of statelesssociety is possible and desirable; (4) the transition from state to anarchy is a realistic prospect Within this broadframework there is a rich variety of anarchist thought.

The main political division is between the ‘classical' orsocialist school, which tends to reject or restrict private property, and the ‘individualist' or libertarian tradition,which defends private acquisition and looks to free market exchange as a model for the desirable society.Philosophical differences follow this division to some extent, the classical school appealing principally to natural lawand perfectionist ethics, and the individualists to natural rights and egoism.

Another possible distinction is betweenthe ‘old' anarchism of the nineteenth century (including both the classical and individualist traditions) and the ‘new'anarchist thought that has developed since the Second World War, which applies the insights of such recent ethicalcurrents as feminism, ecology and postmodernism.

Anarchists have produced powerful arguments denying anygeneral obligation to obey the state and pointing out the ill effects of state power.

More open to question are theirclaims that states ought to be abolished, that social order is possible without the state and that a transition toanarchy is a realistic possibility.

1 Philosophical anarchism A common starting point for anarchists is ‘philosophical anarchism', the denial of any general duty in the individual to obey the laws of the state.

The best-knownformulation of this view is that of R.P.

Wolff ( 1970 ), who argues that any such claim of duty comes into conflict with the individual's moral autonomy (see Autonomy, ethical ).

People who accept a duty to act merely because the state has so commanded thereby surrender their capacity to judge the rightness of actions for themselves.Assuming that moral autonomy should never be surrendered, a general duty to obey the state (regardless of thecontent of its command) is inadmissible.

This argument is a strong one, but from a genuinely anarchist point of viewits implications are limited.

Even if one should not act merely because the action has been commanded by thestate, there may be good reason, acceptable to an autonomous agent, to comply with the state's command inparticular cases.

Philosophical anarchism is consistent with accepting the state's continued existence.

It is at besta necessary, not a sufficient, element of a full anarchist case.

2 Abolition of the state Full-blooded anarchism involves the claim that the state should be abolished.

Anarchists have advanced several lines of argument to thisend.

First, a utilitarian case might be made, in the manner of Godwin, the earliest systematic writer in the ‘classical'anarchist tradition (Crowder 1991 ) (see Godwin, W.

§3) .

For Godwin, the disutility of government results, first, from its support for ‘the established administration of property', which diminishes the sum of human happiness by dividingsociety into unequal and antagonistic classes; second, from its tendency to overreach the limits of its competence(Godwin 1798 ).

Utility requires that goods be distributed so as to bring about the greatest happiness, and that people's affairs be left to those most familiar with them, namely the individuals themselves (see Utilitarianism ).

A second line of argument is also found in Godwin: perfectionism (see Perfectionism ).

Anticipating J.S.

Mill, Godwin sees ‘the perfection of which human nature is capable' as involving the development of a robustly autonomouspersonality.

Government, however, by its very nature tends to crush or undermine this kind of autonomy, either bycoercion, or by encouraging an attitude of servile obedience or by upholding relations of economic inequality thatplace one class at the mercy of another.

Government must thus be abolished, as an obstacle to the realization oftrue humanity.

A similar element of perfectionism is present in all the classical Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy,Version 1.0, London and New York: Routledge (1998) Anarchism anarchists.

In Bakunin , Kropotkin and others, the influence of the romantic movement is apparent in their insistence that perfection requires the development ofindividual uniqueness.

This is an emphasis popular among contemporary anarchists, but in the classical texts thepromotion of personal idiosyncrasy is usually circumscribed by a prior commitment to some conception of a universalmoral law.

This latter insistence suggests a third ground of opposition to the state, the assumption, againcharacteristic of the classical anarchists, that there is an objective moral law somehow immanent in or deduciblefrom nature.

This group thus subscribes to the notion of natural law (see Natural law §3 ).

As to the precise form and content of natural law they offer different accounts, but all agree that it is violated by the state.

Closest tothe traditional Thomistic notion of natural law as the command of God is the view found put forward by Lev Tolstoi (Tolstoi 1936 ).

For Tolstoi, the content of the moral law is Christian, centring upon the idea of universal brotherhood and the command to love one's neighbour.

These imperatives, Tolstoi believes, are incompatible withthe existence of states, since states set up barriers of enmity between people by creating false national identitiesand shoring up class distinctions.

Tolstoi is the only major anarchist thinker to adopt an explicitly theistic andChristian foundation; the general self-image of the anarchists is militantly antireligious, an outlook exemplified byBakunin's ( 1882 ).

The most fully worked out account of natural law along these secular lines is found in the work of Kropotkin, who takes his cue from Darwinian evolution.

In opposition to ‘social Darwinists' like Herbert Spencer,Kropotkin ( 1902 ) argues that the dominant factor of evolutionary development is not competition but ‘mutual aid' within species (see Evolution and ethics ).

The state must be abolished because, divisive and hierarchical, it constitutes an obstacle to humanity's conforming with this law of nature.

Once government is removed, nature canbe expected to take its course, ushering in a new era of universal cooperation and brotherhood.

In the individualisttradition, the natural law style of argument against the state takes the form of claims to natural rights.

MurrayRothbard ( 1973 ), for example, argues that the kind of rights defended by John Locke - rights, rooted in human nature, to security of person and possessions - are incompatible with the state.

Government, by its very nature,violates people's rights by coercing them in various ways, including the taxation of their property.

Although it mightbe replied that government is also capable of protecting the individual's rights, the individualist anarchist response isthat such protection is provided only at the cost of invading rights in other respects.

This is impermissible, sincenatural rights are absolute.

(A similar argument is made by ‘minimal state' liberals like Robert Nozick (seeLibertarianism §3 ; Nozick, R. ).) Another line of individualist argument appeals to self-interest.

Ethical egoism, the. »