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Title: A Few Thoughts on Anarchism
Author: Anarcho
Date: November 14, 2015
Language: en
Topics: notes, anarchism
Source: Retrieved on 24th April 2021 from https://anarchism.pageabode.com/?p=926

Anarcho

A Few Thoughts on Anarchism

This year, 2015, marks the 175^(th) anniversary of the publication of

Proudhon’s seminal What is Property?. While opponents had hurled the

label “anarchist” at those more radical than themselves during both the

English and French revolutions, Proudhon was the first to embrace the

name and proclaim themselves an anarchist. Anarchism, like any

significant theory, has evolved as society has evolved and a great many

since Proudhon have proclaimed themselves – or been proclaimed by their

enemies – an anarchist. What, then, does anarchism mean at the start of

the 21^(st) century?

The first notion to dismiss is just because someone calls themselves an

anarchist it makes them so. Just because the rulers of a state proclaims

it socialist and a “People’s Democratic Republic” does not make it so.

So just because a self-contradictory charlatan like Murray Rothbard

proclaim their system of private hierarchies “anarcho-capitalism” does

not make it libertarian. Indeed, it is sad that so much nonsense has

been written about anarchism that anarchists have to even mention people

like Rothbard – even if it is to dismiss their claims of being

anarchists of any sort.

Equally, just because someone does not use – or rejects – that label

does not make them non-anarchists. Some Marxists have (eventually) come

to conclusions that echo those Bakunin had raised against Marx in the

First International. Does it really matter if – due to ignorance or

misplaced loyalty – they do not call themselves anarchists if their

politics are identical?

So we must reject trying to define anarchism in terms of the ideas of

those who appropriate – or misappropriate – the word. That is the way to

the lowest common denominator and, consequently, an “anarchism” which

becomes meaningless and ultimately self-contradictory – something which

proclaims rule by the wealthy as somehow consistent with an-archos

(without archy, rulers).

What is the alternative? We need to understand where anarchism came

from, its history and consequently the foundations upon which anarchism

today is built. That means starting in 1840 and reconstructing what

anarchy meant to those who were creating the first anarchist theories

and movements.

This does not mean that there were no anarchistic movements or thinkers

before 1840. Far from it – for as long as there were rulers and ruled,

owners and dispossessed, there were those who were against both and in

favour of liberty, equality and solidarity. In that sense Kropotkin was

right to state “that from all times there have been Anarchists and

Statists.” However, we can only recognise these thinkers and movements

as anarchist because of how the idea of anarchism developed after it was

first used in a positive sense. It makes sense, then, to call these

movements and thinkers “anarchistic” rather than anarchist.

Thus William Godwin can be considered as an anarchistic thinker because

he came to the same conclusions on the state and property as Proudhon

did. He is not an anarchist thinker as such because he had no direct

influence in the development of anarchism as a named theory and movement

for he was discovered by anarchist historians in the 1890s and

introduced to a movement which had become well-established without being

aware he even existed. That he had come to many of the same conclusions

as anarchists did long after he wrote means a certain kinship is obvious

but in no sense could he be considered as an ancestor of the movement.

So those, like George Woodcock, who seek to provide a chronological

account of anarchist thinkers before discussing the movement produced a

two-fold disservice. First, by producing a flawed chronology which

started with those – like Godwin – whose simply did not help define

anarchism and, second, by downplaying the movement the actual key

thinkers were part and parcel of. Anarchism cannot be understood as a

set of unchanging ideals isolated from the society they were shaped by

and which, in turn, wished to shape.

Anarchism, then, needs to be placed within the society in that its

pioneers lived and, more importantly, wished to change. It cannot be

understood, then, outside of the European labour and socialist movements

of the 1830s and subsequent decades nor can it be understood outside of

what provoked its adherents to proclaim “Je suis anarchiste”. Once this

context is understood and, consequently, what its founders were against

and for then we can define what anarchism is, what counts as anarchist

and who can be considered one.

To do this we need to draw upon the works of certain individuals. This

is unavoidable. Not everyone writes books and articles and so leaves a

legacy that can be accessed by future activists, thinkers, historians

and commentators. Equally, some people do have more influence than

others and so shape how an idea and movement develops. However, all

thinkers exist in a social context and so Kropotkin was unfortunately

exaggerating when he wrote:

“In the European labour movement Bakunin became of soul of the left wing

of the International Working-Men’s Association, and he was the founder

of modern Anarchism, or anti-State Socialism, of which he laid down the

foundations upon wide considerations of the philosophy of history.”

Yet Bakunin would never have gained his influence nor would his ideas

have been the same without being immersed within the labour movement. If

he became influential it was because his ideas reflected – while

influencing – the debates and ideas already occurring within the

International’s left-wing. As Kropotkin acknowledged elsewhere,

anarchism “originated in every-day struggles” and all anarchist writers

did was to “work out a general expression” of anarchism’s “principles,

and the theoretical and scientific basis of its teachings.” As such, the

notion of there being “the founder” of anarchism is very much at odds

with both our libertarian principles and our movement’s history. This

does not mean that specific individuals did not play a key role –

Proudhon helped shape the ideas he championed (and named them

Anarchism!) as Bakunin did – just that they are part of a wider movement

which cannot be ignored.

Anarchism, then, cannot be understood outside the context within it was

born – the European labour movement. Proudhon was not the isolated,

paradoxical thinker so many writers suggest. He was deeply involved in

the popular movements of his time, influenced by them and their critique

of capitalism while seeking to influence workers already questioning the

status quo away from Louis Blanc’s Jacobin socialism and the fantastical

visions of the utopian socialists towards a federal, decentralised

socialism rooted in workers’ associations.

Bakunin, like many others, took Proudhon’s core ideas of anti-state

socialism and applied them in the militant labour movement. This

involved rejecting Proudhon’s opposition to strikes and unions and

replacing his reformism with social revolution in the usual sense of the

word – strikes, revolts, general strikes, occupations, expropriation and

popular insurrection. He also replaced Proudhon’s pathetic defence of

patriarchy with a consistent anarchist position – if liberty and

equality was required in the workplace (and so wage-labour ended by

workers’ control) and in the community (and so government ended by

collective decision making) then why was the family excluded?

Anarchism is libertarian socialism, a decentralised, federal system

based on worker and community control. Private property is replaced by

possession, property rights by use rights. This means that the means of

production are socially owned and anyone who joins a workplace or

community automatically takes part in its management – no more bosses,

no more governors. It is based on the ideas of association which was

raised by those workers who first experienced wage-labour – the selling

your labour and so liberty to a capitalist who then, in return for

ordering you about, gets to keep the product of your labour.

It was these ideas which inspired Proudhon and which explains why the

first book whose author proclaimed themselves an anarchist is first and

foremost a critique of capitalism: it is What is Property? rather than

What is Government? for a reason. An “anarchism” which is not socialist

is not anarchism in any meaningful way.

This historical approach also suggests that the common attempt to define

anarchism as a fusion of liberalism and socialism is mistaken. Kropotkin

in the introductory text he wrote for the middle-class journal The

Nineteenth Century in the late 1880s (subsequently published as

Anarchist-Communism: Its Basis and Principles) suggested that anarchism

was “an outgrowth of two great movements of thought in the economic

fields and the political fields” of the time, namely socialism and

“political radicalism” (i.e., liberalism). This was later taken up and

transformed by Rudolf Rocker in his Anarcho-Syndicalism into a

“confluence” and “synthesis” of socialism and liberalism. This was taken

up by others (including Noam Chomsky and Nicholas Walter) and perhaps

needless to say by those seeking to discredit anarchism (particularly

Marxists such as Paul Thomas in Karl Marx and the Anarchists).

Kropotkin, however, also added that this was simply what they had “in

common” with the two tendencies and defined anarchism in the very first

sentence as “the no-government system of socialism.” Given that the

audience he was writing for was undoubtedly familiar (as now, sadly)

with socialism as an ideology aiming for state ownership and control,

his comparison with liberalism was unfortunate. While this may help

outsiders understand anarchism, it is misleading for anarchism is a

“system of socialism” even if it shared some (superficial) similarities

with liberalism.

This is because classical liberalism is not particularly liberal (in the

modern popular sense of the word). Its major theorists, such as John

Locke, were seeking to justify the social position of the bourgeoisie

and its privileges and so were primarily interesting in property and not

liberty. Thus Locke’s theory of property is not a defence of labours

right to its product but rather a defence of the appropriation of that

product by the owning class. The logic is simple: a worker’s labour is

his property and, like any property, can be sold and if it is sold then

he had no claim on his product, just his wages. The state is formed when

property owners join together into a civil society to better secure

their rights and property, creating a political power above themselves

which decrees the law and acts as a neutral umpire in disputes. This

would create a state like a joint-stock company in which those who own

are of civil society (and so, like employers, make the decisions) while

those without property are merely in civil society (and so, like

employees, do what they are told). As long as the latter do not leave

the state, they give their tacit to be governed by the wealthy few.

Thus there is no paradox in neo-liberalism centralising state power,

strengthening regulations on organised labour and increasing what is

termed the democratic deficit. It also explains why the modern

descendants of classical liberalism can happily embrace fascism (like

von Mises in the 1920s and von Hayek with Pinochet) while others produce

learned discourses on how voluntary slavery is not only compatible but

in fact the essence of “libertarianism”. They are called propertarians

by us genuine libertarians for a reason and so their rampant

authoritarianism – particularly when it comes to the workplace – is

completely understandable and not the paradox so many fooled by their

false label proclaim it to be.

Classical liberalism is not a theory of freedom, of finding social

associations that protect and nourish individuality, but rather attempts

to justify hierarchies by giving them a veneer of consent. It sees

freedom as isolation, not a product of social interaction as anarchists

do. It feigns to believe that freedom and equality are not interrelated

and interdependent. If it aims to reduce state intervention then it does

so for the property owner while denying that these have any power over

wage-slaves and tenants. The very obvious hierarchies associated with

wealth are not an issue for it, it is the natural order and we should

know our place (and hence the need for a state or private police force

if we do not).

Classical liberalism simply does not understand Proudhon’s argument that

property “violates equality by the rights of exclusion and increase, and

freedom by despotism”, that it has “perfect identity with robbery” and

the worker “has sold and surrendered his liberty” to the proprietor.

Anarchy was “the absence of a master, of a sovereign” while proprietor

was “synonymous” with “sovereign” for he “imposes his will as law, and

suffers neither contradiction nor control.” Thus “property is despotism”

as “each proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his

property”.

Liberalism did not shape anarchism for the main non-labour influences on

anarchism in its formative years were the French Revolution and the

ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It is Rousseau and his influence on the

French left that Proudhon was most engaged with and the classical

liberals appear only very indirectly in his polemics with bourgeois

economists. Bakunin, likewise, critiqued Rousseau and his social

contract theory. Both were seeking to explain why the French Revolution

had not achieved its goal of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity” and

based on their analysis sought to make the left re-evaluate their

Jacobin influences and ultimately the influence of Rousseau.

Rousseau recognised that while man “was born free”, he “is everywhere in

chains” and sought to “find a form of association which defends and

protects, with the whole power of the community, the person and goods of

each associate; and by which each one, uniting himself to all, obeys

only himself and remains as free as before.” Proudhon quotes this

passage from Rousseau’s The Social Contract approvingly and attacks

Rousseau because his solution to the real problem he raises is, at best,

inadequate or, at worst, contradicts it.

Proudhon argued that Rousseau’s answer did not ensure that everyone

remains as free as before. This was for many reasons, not least

Rousseau’s arguments that the General Will was indivisible which lead to

a pronounced support for centralisation in the French left. This

resulted in the empowerment of the few – the government and state

bureaucracy – at the expense of the many – the people.

Thus, for Proudhon, “the Government is not within a society, but outside

of it” and “the citizen has nothing left but the power of choosing his

rulers by a plurality vote”. The state was “the EXTERNAL constitution of

the social power” by which the people delegate “its power and

sovereignty” and so “does not govern itself”. Anarchists “deny

government and the State, because we affirm that which the founders of

States have never believed in, the personality and autonomy of the

masses.” Ultimately, “the only way to organise democratic government is

to abolish government.” This meant decentralisation was essential:

“Unless democracy is a fraud, and the sovereignty of the People a joke,

it must be admitted that each citizen in the sphere of his industry,

each municipal, district or provincial council within its own territory,

is the only natural and legitimate representative of the Sovereign, and

that therefore each locality should act directly and by itself in

administering the interests which it includes, and should exercise full

sovereignty in relation to them. The People is nothing but the organic

union of wills that are individually free, that can and should

voluntarily work together, but abdicate never. Such a union must be

sought in the harmony of their interests, not in an artificial

centralisation, which, far from expressing the collective will,

expresses only the antagonisms of individual wills.”

Regardless of Marxist myths, decentralisation does not mean isolation.

There would be federations of these associations run from the bottom-up

by means of councils of delegates who “are recallable at will” for “the

imperative mandate, and permanent revocability are the most immediate

and incontestable consequences of the electoral principle. It is the

inevitable program of all democracy.”

As well as his centralised vision, Rousseau was also attacked for the

narrow nature of his system. While Rousseau was not silent on property

and the evils of inequality, for Proudhon he did not go far enough and

so “there is not a word about labour, nor property, nor industrial

forces; all of which it is the very object of a Social Contract to

organise. Rousseau does not know what economics means. His programme

speaks of political rights only; it does not mention economic rights.”

This meant that, in practice, the social contract “is nothing but the

offensive and defensive alliance of those who possess, against those who

do not possess; and the only part played by the citizen is to pay the

police”.

The social contract for Rousseau, no less than Locke, inevitably becomes

the class state because it takes property as its base. Property itself

had to be abolished by democratic principles being applied within the

company by association.

So in stark contrast to the liberal tradition, Proudhon attacks the

state because it defends property, because it is an instrument of

(minority) class rule. His anti-statism has a socialist base, it is a

critique of the state and property based on the same principles. The

similarities between state and property were clear to Proudhon:

“Capital, whose mirror-image in the political sphere is Government […]

The economic notion of capital, the political notion of government or

authority, the theological notion of the Church, these three notions are

identical and completely interchangeable: an attack upon one is an

attack upon the others […] What capital does to labour and the State to

freedom, the Church in turn does to understanding. […] In order to

oppress the people effectively, they must be clapped in irons in their

bodies, their will and their reason.”

Proudhon argued that to achieve their goal of liberty, equality and

fraternity, socialists had to embrace federalism and decentralisation.

Rousseau’s goal of a centralised and unitary republic empowered a few at

the top at the expense of mass of the people. This would only become

worse if you replaced property with state ownership – it replaces bosses

with one big boss, the state bureaucracy, and so universalises

wage-labour. Sadly, many socialists then and since did think turning

workers into employees of the state was socialism – with the

unsurprising result of discrediting socialism for many.

So what is anarchism? Anarchism, to use Proudhon’s words of 1851, is

fundamentally “the denial of Government and of Property.” It has a

theory of organisation and to count as libertarian an organisation has

to be internally free and based on collective decision making –

self-management – from below – federalism in all spheres of life,

including the community and the workplace. It is anti-state socialism.

It is a socialist – egalitarian – critique of both capitalism and state.

It recognises that liberty is a social relationship between people and

so advocates federalist association for freedom and equality are

interdependent as freedom cannot meaningfully exist if inequality of

wealth results in the many selling their labour and liberty to the few.

Anarchism’s goal is to replace a centralised social system – the state –

with a decentralised, federalist, communal one and to replace the theft

and despotism of capitalism (wage-labour) with a free workers

co-operating together as equals (association).

These were Proudhon’s conclusions when he studied the France of his

time, its inequities and injustices and those movements that were

stirring amongst those experiencing it. Anarchism, then, is bound up by

the rise of industrialisation and capitalism – and resistance to it. It

is no coincidence that Proudhon followed the workers of Lyon in calling

his system “mutualism”. These ideas were what inspired the French

mutualists to help found the International Working-Men’s Association in

1864. It was these ideas which Bakunin embraced and championed after he

joined it and, as a consequence, grow in influence and helped shape them

in the direction of revolutionary anarchism rooted in the militant

labour movement. It was these ideas which subsequent anarchists have

built upon.

Today we continue that work, building on the firm foundations that were

started in 1840 and added to by many – known and unknown – others.

Knowing the past is as part of this process as understanding current

events and struggling to change what we can now. Anarchism is not, then,

a fusion (confusion!) of liberalism and socialism but rather a tradition

in itself which has a coherent analysis of what is wrong with society,

what can replace it and how we get from one to the other. It was born in

the labour movement and can only flourish when we take part in popular

movements – not only as a theory and movement but also as a possibility.