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Title: Anarchism
Author: Alan Ritter
Date: 1980
Language: en
Topics: theory, anarchism
Source: http://www.ditext.com/ritter/anarchism/anarchism.html

Alan Ritter

Anarchism

Dedication

For Eileen and Jon

Acknowledgements

Preliminary versions of material in Chapters 5 and 6 appeared originally

in ‘Anarchism and Liberal Theory in the Nineteenth Century’, Bucknell

Review, 19 (Fall 1971); in ‘Godwin, Proudhon and the Anarchist

Justification of Punishment’, Political Theory, vol. 3, no. 1 (February

1975), pp. 69–87 (Sage Publications, Inc.); and in ‘The Anarchist

Justification of Authority’, Anarchism: Nomos XIX, edited by J. Roland

of New York University Press). Portions of these articles are here

reprinted by permission of their publishers.

A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities helped me to get

started on this book. Colleagues and students helped me to complete it.

I would like particularly to thank Alfred Diamant, Milton Fisk, Norman

Furniss, Richard Hiskes, Eileen Janzen, Jerome Mintz, Bernard Morris,

Timothy Tilton and George Wright for their suggestions and support.

Introduction

The main purpose of this book is to establish the right of anarchists to

a leading voice in the debate among political theorists over how a good

society should be created, organized and run. That anarchists deserve

such a voice would have seemed ludicrous as recently as ten years ago,

when they were still generally regarded as muddled preachers of chaos or

naive projectors of dreams. In the late sixties, however, commentators

began to find the anarchists more intellectually respectable. Their

arguments for a society free of law and government were then revealed as

credible enough to render political theory service, if only as a

challenge to its deeply ingrained habit of taking the need for

government for granted.[1] This book carries forward the work of

claiming a place in political theory for anarchists by showing that

their arguments, besides being plausible enough to serve as a foil or

corrective to uncritically statist views, are also inherently

convincing. If the analysis that follows is acceptable, anarchists must

be accorded no less a voice than partisans of theories such as democracy

or socialism in debate concerning the nature of a good society.

Although anarchists are no longer excluded from political theory

altogether, they have not received the place this book claims for them,

partly because their thought is still believed to suffer from a

seriously discrediting contradiction. Anarchists favor untrammelled

freedom. Yet to control behavior in their good society they use the

constraint of public censure, whose strictures interfere with the

freedom they endorse. The conflict between their espousal of freedom and

their resort to censure not only opens anarchists to being disparaged as

inconsistent, it exposes them to the more onerous charge of supporting

freedom as a pretence. The denigration of their support for freedom as

masking a deep antipathy to it began in 1798, in a pamphlet attacking

the first anarchist, William Godwin. The author of the pamphlet, William

Proby, decried Godwin’s commitment to freedom as deceptive on the ground

that his good society, though it eschewed physical coercion, used the

‘tyranny of public opinion’ as a fetter. ‘There is no tyranny more

forcible, for the mind, wearied by repeated systematic attacks, at last

becomes a convert, or quits the field in despair, feeling a slavery in

its utmost recesses, the more degrading because exercised by chains

emanating from its own substance.‘[2] Proby’s view of the anarchists as

not just confused, but downright devious in their espousal of freedom,

has never lacked defenders. Commentators are still busy unmasking

anarchists as ‘proselytising aristocrats’ with a yen for ‘puritanical

constraint’, determined to exercise ‘enlightened tutelage’ over the

people, if not against them.[3] Unless the anarchists’ praise of freedom

and resort to censure are proved logically compatible, their claim to a

full place in political theory must fail. For arguments which include

contentions that are patently inconsistent disqualify as theory, even if

they are not intended to deceive.

The view of anarchists as inconsistent for praising freedom while

imposing censure rests on two premises: that freedom is their chief

political value, and that it is curtailed severely by the censure they

impose. This book argues for the consistency of the anarchists in

praising freedom while imposing censure by refuting these premises.

Freedom is exhibited in the following analysis as having subordinate

worth for anarchists; their censure is shown to be a complex practice,

whose effects on freedom are ambivalent. Once the censure of the

anarchists is recognized as having ambivalent effects on a freedom that

lacks supreme value in their eyes, their consistency in espousing it

becomes obvious. Though their censure curtails freedom, they are

warranted logically to espouse it, since it also supports freedom, and

since they do not value freedom above all.

In establishing the right of anarchists to a leading voice in political

theory, clearing them of inconsistency is a preliminary step. The main

task is to show the power of their argument as social criticism and as a

guide to action. This book takes a novel thesis about the goal of

anarchism as the point of departure for accomplishing this task.

Anarchists are portrayed in the following analysis as seeking to combine

the greatest individual development with the greatest communal unity.

Their goal is a society of strongly separate persons who are strongly

bound together in a group. In a full-fledged anarchy, individual and

communal tendencies, now often contradictory, become mutually

reinforcing and coalesce. By serving the anarchists as a goal and

inspiration, this ideal of communal individuality, as it will here be

called, does much to control the structure of their argument. It helps

define the targets of their social criticism; it gives their strategy

limits and direction; and it guides their description of an anarchist

social order. It is by tracing out the implications for their theory of

their commitment to communal individuality that the following analysis

exhibits the strength of the anarchists’ thought. Once the leading role

played in their theory by communal individuality is appreciated, their

argument is reveale1d as having altogether unsuspected coherence,

originality and political appeal.

Anarchists are not the only theorists who take individuality and

community, seen as mutually dependent values, as their chief political

objective. Noteworthy others who have done so are their contemporaries

Hegel and Marx. Since the credentials of these thinkers are so much

stronger than the anarchists’, it is natural to presume that to learn

how the search for communal individuality affects and enlivens political

theory they and not the anarchists should be consulted. Yet, though

Hegel and Marx are on most points the more penetrating thinkers, as

theorists of communal individuality the anarchists can teach more.

In what Hegel calls a rational state, each subject achieves complete

development’ of ‘personal individuality’ and also recognizes the

community as his substantial groundwork and end’. These aspects of a

rational state are intimately connected for Hegel. There can be no

intense community unless individuality reaches ‘its culmination in the

extreme of self-subsistent personal particularity’, while individuality

needs the context of community for its development. People who live ‘as

private persons for their own ends alone’ cannot be individuals. It is

only as members of a community that they have ‘objectivity, genuine

individuality, and an ethical life’.[4] Marx has a quite different view

from Hegel of the path to individuality and community, but he agrees

that they are mutually reinforcing. Everyone at the final stage of

socialism engages in productive activities ‘which confirm and realize

his individuality’, while also being ‘an expression of social life’.

Community both ‘produces man as man’ and ‘is produced by him’, because

individuality and community are reciprocally dependent.[5] Thus for

Marx, as for Hegel and the anarchists, a nourishing interplay must draw

individuality and community together, if they are to be complete.

Marx and Hegel, being in the first rank of political theorists, might be

expected to explain more plausibly than the anarchists just how

individuality and community, which tend to clash, can be made so

mutually reinforcing that both are maximized. Yet what they say about

this matter is so deficient that the anarchists’ views are more

convincing.

Hegel makes legal government the seedbed in which communal individuality

grows. Now one point which will become clear in the course of this book,

and which has much immediate credibility, is that legal government,

being remote, punitive, and inflexible, is not very congenial to

communal individuality. It is true that Hegel tries to purge his

rational state of the attributes that normally encumber legal

government, but this attempt is futile, since these attributes mark

every state.[6] Marx, who ably criticizes Hegel for thinking that

communal individuality can reach completion under the aegis of legal

government, relies on it in his good society much less. Community and

individuality, in communist society, are therefore better able to

develop. Yet even Marx stops short of the anarchist exclusion of legal

government from the stage when individuality and community, now fully

reinforcing, completely merge. The elements of legal government which

communist society retains prevent it from being as hospitable as anarchy

to communal individuality’s full growth.

Though the comparative paucity of legal government in Marx’s good

society, and its correlatively greater reliance on non- legal

institutions, give it an advantage over Hegel’s as the setting in which

communal individuality develops, this advantage is offset by the

vagueness with which it is portrayed. Marx limits himself to sketchy

hints about the structure of the good society, while Hegel gives a

detailed description. Since it is anything but obvious how a society

must be organized so that individuality and community culminate in a

reinforcing merger, Marx, by failing to work out in concrete detail the

conditions for this outcome, marred his theory with a disconcerting gap.

The anarchists’ theory is free of the faults that blemish Marx’s and

Hegel’s. By banning legal government entirely from their good society,

they rid it altogether of the impediments which in the Hegelian state

hamper communal individuality severely and which continue to interfere

with it under Marx’s communism. And by describing their good society

concretely, they protect it from the indeterminacy which, for achieving

communal individuality, is communism’s special defect. Because the

anarchists work out in detail, and with no resort to legal government,

how to create, organize and maintain a regime in which communal

individuality flourishes, it is they who have the most to teach about

the value of this project for the debate in political theory over the

nature of the best regime.

The arguments treated in this book as representing the gist of anarchism

are drawn from the four authors — Godwin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon,

Michael Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin -whose contributions to anarchist

theory are universally regarded as most seminal. These writers, who

succeeded each other within the discretely bounded period between the

French and Russian Revolutions, worked out a coherent set of original

arguments, which, while continuing to be influential, have not developed

much since Kropotkin’s time. Hence, to comprehend anarchism as a

political theory, the writings of more recent anarchists need not be

considered. There is, however, one nineteenth-century writer besides the

four founders who, because his arguments have affinities with theirs,

and because of his influence on later anarchists, may be thought

unfairly excluded from the following analysis. This writer is Max

Stimer.

Some anarchists, most notably Kropotkin, have acknowledged Stirner as a

forebear. But this acknowledgment does not mean that he must be included

in this book, because it proves nothing about the standing of his

argument as systematic thought. Stirner’s argument is anarchist in its

political conclusions. He rejects law and government at least as

unconditionally as do the four anarchists being studied here, and his

projected ‘union of egoists’ is in its statelessness as much an

anarchist society as those envisaged by the founding four. But Stimer’s

argument differs from theirs in a way that debases it as a theory: its

backing for these anarchist conclusions is anything but cogent. Stirner

opposes government and supports an anarchist society on the moral basis

of ethical egoism, a principle which enjoins each agent to strive for

nothing but his selfish advantage or amusement, and hence for that of

others only so far as it conduces to his own. The Stirnerian egoist

cares not a jot whether others do what is in their interest: their

service to his interest is his sole concern. ‘No one is a person to be

respected...but solely...an object in which I take an interest or else

do not, an interesting or uninteresting object, a usable or unusable

person.‘[7] The state is denounced by Stirner for interfering with

ethical egoism; the union of egoists, his anarchist society, is

recommended for allowing it free reign. Yet both of these claims about

the political implications of ethical egoism, which must be true if

Stirner’s defense of anarchism is to be cogent, are surely false. A

state is admirably suited to a seeker of personal advantage, in

situations where he controls it, for it is then a means for making

others serve his ends. As for an anarchist society, since the voluntary

cooperation on which it rests requires each to strive for others’

advantage at least somewhat, it is hardly the arrangement that ethical

egoists should create. Nor could they create it. For a stateless society

of ethical egoists, each regarding the others as objects to be

manipulated and exploited, would be impossibly discordant. Since

Stirner’s anarchism is probably undermined and is certainly not

supported by the moral premise which is supposed to serve as its

foundation, his argument lacks the cogency it needs to be included in

this analytic study of anarchist thought.[8]

The plan of this book is suggested by its overall approach. The first

chapter tackles the problem of proving the anarchists consistent in

their espousal of both liberty and censure. Chapter 2 argues for

regarding communal individuality as their chief political objective.

Having made the case for anarchists as seeking communal individuality,

the book moves on, in Chapter 3, to trace out the implications of this

objective for their somewhat varied yet basically similar models of the

good society. Chapters 4 and 5 complete the project of analyzing the

import for anarchists of their search for communal individuality by

examining how it affects their social criticism and their strategy. The

plausible, coherent anarchist theory, established as authentic in the

first five chapters of the book, is subjected in the final chapters to

comparison and evaluation. Chapter 6 compares anarchism with liberalism

and socialism, the political positions with which it is most frequently

identified, and finds that, despite its similarities to these close

neighbors, it is nevertheless distinctive. In the seventh, concluding

chapter, anarchism is judged as a political ideal and as a guide to

action against standards of humane morality. No such evaluation can be

conclusive. The point of this one is. to acquit anarchists of unjust

charges and to highlight the appealing features of their argument so as

to vindicate it as more than intellectually respectable. If this chapter

is successful, the criticisms which anarchists level against the modern

state and their recommendations for how it should be replaced or altered

will be revealed as worthy of more wholehearted endorsement than has

generally been allowed.

Although the main purpose of this study is to vindicate anarchism as a

theory, success in this purpose will spur readers to follow anarchism as

a practice. Those who are convinced by the arguments in this book that

anarchist theory is coherent, plausible and appealing need not of course

join communes or found free schools, let alone attempt a revolution. But

they cannot abstain entirely from anarchist endeavors without defending

their inaction at least inwardly. To readers who find anarchist activity

congenial, this book, if it succeeds, will be more welcome. For !t will

help them act by giving them theoretically grounded arguments to justify

what might otherwise seem quixotic gestures. Anarchism, though studied

here as theory, is a theory that asks constantly what to do. Hence the

more fully it is accepted as theoretically convincing, the stronger will

be its pressure as a goad.

1. Liberty and public censure in Anarchist thought

Anarchists are commonly regarded as extreme libertarians on the ground

that they seek freedom above all else. It is natural to view them as

libertarians in this sense, because their high esteem for freedom makes

it more immediately plausible than any other value as their overriding

aim. Godwin praises freedom as ‘the most valuable of all human

possessions’. Proudhon acclaims it as his ‘banner and guide’. To

Bakunin, who once described himself as ‘a fanatic lover of liberty’, it

is ‘the absolute source and condition of all good’. And Kropotkin seeks

a form of society which ‘will leave to the individual man complete and

perfect freedom’.[9] It seems difficult to question the commitment to

liberty of theorists who admire it as much as these.

Yet the reliance of anarchists on public censure to control behavior in

their good society raises doubts whether their goal is liberty. In

Godwin’s anarchy ‘the inspection of every man over the conduct of his

neighbors...would constitute a censorship of the most irresistible

nature’, which ‘no individual would be hardy enough to defy’; for ‘there

is no terror that comes home to the heart of vice like the terror of

being exhibited to the public eye’. Proudhon depends on censure in a

state of anarchy to ‘act on the will like a force and make it choose the

right course’. Bakunin follows Proudhon in regarding ‘the collective and

public spirit’ of an anarchist society as ‘the only great and all

powerful authority...we can respect’. And Kropotkin is perfectly candid

in explaining what to do ‘when we see anti-social acts committed’ in a

state of anarchy. We must ‘have the courage to say aloud in anyone’s

presence what we think of such acts’.[10] How can the anarchists be

libertarians, determined to secure freedom above all else, when their

social scheme relies so much on coercive public censure? Although

interpreters of anarchism have long deemed this question crucial, no

acceptable answer has yet been found.

Several types of argument are or can be advanced by anarchists to

warrant viewing their search for liberty as compatible with their use of

censure. This chapter finds, after examining these arguments, that only

one of them is valid. But not even this one is strong enough to prove

the anarchists consistent libertarians. The chapter concludes by

proposing to look more deeply into the question of the anarchists’

libertarianism. What needs asking, instead of whether the anarchists are

consistent in espousing censure and liberty, is whether liberty really

is their goal. This is the question that the succeeding chapter takes

up.

The conceptual argument

Political theorists often reconcile freedom and coercion with a

conceptual argument, which claims, on the basis of what freedom means,

that it is uncurtailed by some restraint. The will of God, the forces of

the market and the commands of a revolutionary vanguard are famous

examples of restraints that theorists have thus reconciled with freedom.

In each case they have argued conceptually, if unconvincingly, that,

because freedom as properly defined is unaffected by the restraint in

question, the restraint, even though confining, leaves freedom

uncurtailed.

The anarchists could use a conceptual argument of this type to prove

that they are libertarians, if they defined freedom so that public

censure did not obstruct it. In that case, the censorial restraints

imposed in their good society, not counting as obstacles to liberty,

could not consistently be cited to impugn it as their chief goal.

Whether the anarchists can use this conceptual argument to vindicate

their libertarianism thus depends on how they define freedom.

Like all concepts of freedom that apply to agents, the anarchists’ is a

triadic relation of subjects who are free from restraints to reach

objectives.[11] No anarchist specifies all terms of this triad

completely, but together they give it a thorough description. Since what

they say about the triad is for the most part consistent, their concept

of liberty can be elucidated by treating their remarks about its various

terms as complementary parts of a single whole.

Godwin and Bakunin are the clearest of the anarchists in describing the

first term of the triad: the subject of freedom. For both of them it is

the choices and actions of individuals that must be free. As Godwin

says, a free man must not only act freely; in his prior deliberations he

must ‘consult his own reason, draw his own conclusions’, ‘exercise the

powers of his understanding’. Bakunin makes the same point about the

subject of liberty when he writes that no one is free ‘unless all his

actions are determined...by his own convictions’. And for Proudhon, ‘one

must think for oneself to be free’.[12] According to the anarchists,

then, it is not enough to act freely; one must also have freedom to

decide.

As the foregoing quotations indicate, what makes decisions free for

anarchists is their origin in rational deliberation. Free decisions, as

anarchists conceive of them, are based on arguments and evidence that

one has personally and systematically evaluated. Making the freedom of

decisions depend on their arising from rational deliberation has

implications for the second term of the triad, which identifies the

restraints which leave freedom uncurtailed.

Rational deliberation is as much of a restraint on action and choice as

more obvious forces, owing to its practical upshot. Anyone who

deliberates rationally about the future draws conclusions from his

reflections, and these conclusions restrict what he may choose or do. No

one can successfully deliberate without encountering these restrictions,

because they emerge unavoidably from deliberative activity. This fact

shows the anarchists which restraints to identify as compatible with

freedom. Recognizing that rational deliberation is restrictive, and

believing it indispensable for freedom, the anarchists must conclude

that the rational restraints that a deliberating agent imposes on

himself do not obstruct his liberty. They must also accept the converse

of this conclusion. Since rational deliberation is indispensable for

liberty, restraints that directly hinder action and choice are not the

only ones that curtail freedom; restraints that hinder rational

deliberation indirectly curtail it.

Proudhon is the most systematic of the anarchists in compiling a list of

the restraints which anarchists regard as hindrances to free

deliberation, choice and conduct. His list can therefore serve most

usefully to complete the description of their triad’s second term. Most

lists of obstacles to the freedom of agents refer only to those that

humans deliberately impose or leave in place.[13] Proudhon’s list is

more comprehensive. Not only ‘the priest’s voice’, ‘the prince’s order’,

and ‘the crowd’s cries’ obstruct free action, choice, and deliberation.

Liberty, as ‘the spirit of revolt’, recognizes ‘no law, no argument, no

authority, no end, no limit, no principle, no purpose beyond

itself’.[14] Proudhon is here extending a theme foreshadowed by Godwin

and repeated by the later anarchists: a free agent is liberated from

every hindrance that can be removed or lessened, except those arising

from his own deliberations.

The third term in the triad specifies the objectives of liberty: what

agents must be free to choose or do. The anarchists’ description of this

term is fixed by what they say about the others. Having stated that

freedom requires liberation from all but rational impediments, they

cannot put other limits on the goals free persons may reach. We count as

free for anarchists, whatever we choose or do, provided that our choice

and conduct are rationally based. The agreement of the anarchists about

the goal of freedom gives the third term of their concept the unity it

needs to make their entire view of liberty coherent.

The analysis of freedom provided by the anarchists would warrant viewing

them as seeking liberty above all else, only if it implied that the

public censure they prescribe does not coerce. Public censure, for the

anarchists, involves ‘a promptness to enquire into and to judge’ your

neighbors’ conduct.[15] Where this sort of censure is common practice,

behavior is controlled in three different ways. It is controlled by

penalties, in the form of threatened or actual rebuke, which compel

obedience from fear. It is controlled by internalization, a process

through which censured individuals absorb prevalent standards of

conduct. And it is controlled with reasoned arguments, through which a

censurer tries to convince his neighbors that they should mend their

ways. Now certainly the rebuke which this complex censure imposes

curtails the anarchists’ sort of freedom, because rebuke, even if it is

mild and private, still, as a penalty, hinders deliberation, choice and

conduct. No doubt the anarchists could have conceptually ruled out

censorial rebuke as an interference with liberty by explicitly

classifying it as non-coercive, but they sensibly avoided such an

arbitrary fiat. Their comprehensive list of obstacles to freedom

contains no exception in favor of rebuke. Since the meaning of freedom

which the anarchists derive from their analysis is too broad to

reconcile it with censure, they can only hope to achieve this

reconciliation non-conceptually.

The crude empirical arguments

The anarchists have two kinds of empirical arguments, crude and

sophisticated, that might reconcile their use of censure with the view

that freedom is their chief aim. Both kinds of arguments attempt to show

that though it is conceptually possible for public censure- to curtail

freedom, under anarchy this curtailment does not occur. The crude

empirical arguments claim that anarchist censure, in its effects on

freedom, is no hindrance at all. The sophisticated arguments, while

conceding that censure interferes with freedom somewhat, see it as

maximizing freedom on the whole.

Godwin advances the crude argument in its boldest form by claiming that

anarchist censure increases freedom. A person’s freedom is curtailed,

‘when he is restrained from acting upon the dictates of his

understanding’. Anarchist censure does not impose this kind of

restraint. It influences us in the same way as our reading, through

‘reasons...presented to the understanding’, which help us deliberate

more rationally by suggesting arguments and evidence we would overlook,

if we decided alone. The ‘rational restraint of public inspection’,

being an aid to deliberation, far from hindering freedom, lends it

support.[16]

This version of the crude argument is appealing in its boldness, but

though not entirely misguided, it fails to yield Godwin’s conclusion.

Anarchist censure may rationalize deliberation, but need not. Its effect

on the rationality of deliberation depends on how people respond to it.

If they use the arguments and evidence it presents to help them make

decisions, then censure enables them to deliberate more rationally than

they could alone. But, as noted earlier, anarchist censure does more

than offer arguments i and evidence: it also imposes sanctions, ranging

from mild stigma to complete ostracism. In so far as fear of these

sanctions inhibits ‘ the deliberative process, or deters adherence to

its conclusions, the public censure prescribed by anarchists can hardly

be called an ‘ aid to liberty. i

Godwin is especially vulnerable to this objection, because he relies

more obviously than most anarchists on censorial sanctions. A writer who

describes censure under anarchy as ‘a species of coercion’ which

‘carries despair to the mind’ is in no position to claim that it is

liberating.[17] But this claim holds up no better if ascribed to other

anarchists since they all rely somewhat on condemnation and rebuke.

Hence if the crude empirical argument is to serve the anarchists as

proof that freedom is their chief goal, they must give it a more modest

form than Godwin does, by showing that even though censure need not

increase freedom, at least it leaves it uncurtailed.

Proudhon and Bakunin try to show this by appealing to the process of

internalization, through which the directives issued by public opinion

are absorbed by the individual and become part of I his own frame of

mind. They both see that these directives ‘envelop us, penetrate us and

regulate all of our movements, thoughts and actions’.[18] Bakunin thinks

this process is so powerful that man is ‘nothing but the product of

society’.[19] Proudhon’s view is more nuanced, since he gives more place

in his social psychology to innate dispositions. But he agrees with

Bakunin that conduct is guided to a considerable extent by internalized

directives.

Proudhon and Bakunin go on to claim that because the directives issued

by anarchist censure are internalized, they leave participants in

anarchy free. Freedom can only be curtailed by ‘an external master, a

legislator, who is located outside of the person he commands’.[20] But

the directives issued by censure, being internalized from opinion, ‘are

not imposed by an external legislator;...they are immanent in us,

inherent, they constitute the very basis of our being;...hence instead

of finding limits in them, we should consider them as the real

conditions and the necessary foundation of our freedom’.[21] Censure

does not restrict the freedom of an individual, because when he complies

with it, his directive is a self-imposed ‘secret commandment from

himself to himself’.[22]

This argument fails, partly because, like Godwin’s claim that ! censure

rationalizes deliberation, it overlooks the reality of censorial

sanctions. Anarchist censure is not perfectly internalized, but also

controls externally by forcing individuals by means of rebuke to comply

against their will. This censorial rebuke is obviously a bar to freedom,

because it obstructs action, choice and deliberation just as decisively

as any other kind of sanction. The anarchists could ignore the

interference with liberty caused by rebuke, if in their good society it

was not imposed. But since it is imposed there, they are unconvincing

when they claim that because their censure is entirely internalized, it

is coercion-less.

But even if the anarchists eschewed rebuke entirely and relied on

nothing but internalized censure, it still would obstruct their freedom.

To count as free for anarchists, one must decide what to do on the basis

of one’s own rationally reached conclusions. Any other basis for choice

interferes with liberty by blocking or bypassing deliberation. Now

internalization, as described by anarchists, is not a rational process.

Persons who internalize censorial directives unwittingly absorb them and

then use them to decide without subjecting them to scrutiny.[23]

Internalization, thus being a substitute for rational deliberation, and

even a bar to it, is not a process that anarchists can deem

coercionless. The directives issued by internalized censure may be

self-imposed, but for anarchists this does not prevent them from

coercing. For it is not just the internal origin, but also the

rationality of the directives which determine choice that anarchists

must consider in deciding if they curtail liberty. Since internalized

censorial directives, though self-imposed, are not products of rational

deliberation, anarchists, to be consistent, must admit that they coerce.

There is one other crude empirical argument in anarchist theory for the

compatibility of freedom and public censure. This argument sees the

restraint imposed by censure in a state of anarchy as unavoidable and

hence as no more of a coercion than other restraints which cannot be

overcome, such as that of mortality. Bakunin views censure in this light

when he describes it as ‘one of the conditions of social life against

which revolt would be as useless as it would be impossible’.[24] The

other anarchists agree (though less emphatically) that, owing to its

inescapability, censure is coercionless.[25]

One might admit that, if censure under anarchy is really inescapable, it

does not interfere with freedom. But why should it be viewed as beyond

escape? Bakunin answers that it is needed for the survival of the self.

‘A man is only himself insofar as he is a product’ of society and ‘has

no existence except by virtue of its laws. Resistance to it would

therefore be a ridiculous endeavor, a revolt against himself, a

veritable suicide.’[26] Anarchist censure is inescapable for Bakunin

because he thinks that anyone who is not restrained by it will lose his

self.

It is true that humans, whose selves are formed through interaction,

need the restraint of social influence to achieve identity. But this

does not mean that they must be restrained by censure, a special kind of

social influence, distinguished by being imposed deliberately: the

censurer sets out with full awareness to correct his neighbor’s conduct.

Deliberate restraint of this sort is not needed to achieve identity,

because the spontaneous pressures that members of all societies

unintentionally exert on one another are sufficient to make each aware

that he and all the others are distinct. Since identity can emerge

without the help of censure, in an anarchist society as in any other,

Bakunin’s claim that it is inescapable is incorrect.

But even if censure was needed to achieve identity, it still would not

be inescapable, unless it was also needed to preserve the self. For if

the self could be preserved without the aid of censure, a developed

individual would not have to submit to it. Now a developed individual

who is unrestrained by censure need not lose his identity, because he

can maintain it without submitting at all to social influence. While

social influence is needed to form the self, the self once formed no

longer depends on it for its existence, as its survival in isolated

marooned sailors is enough to show. Since developed individuals can

maintain identity without submitting to any social influence, they can

certainly maintain it without submitting to censure.

These objections to Bakunin’s claim that censure is beyond escape show

that his version of the crude empirical argument for reconciling it with

liberty is no more effective than those the other anarchists advance.

But perhaps empirical arguments which are more sophisticated can show

that censure and liberty accord.

The sophisticated empirical arguments

The crude empirical arguments fail because they refuse to admit that

anarchist censure does interfere with freedom. Denying this, they face

the impossible task of explaining away its interference as rational,

internal, or inescapable. The sophisticated empirical arguments are

stronger than the crude ones because, by taking censure’s interference

with freedom into account, they can pose the problem of reconciliation

more manageably. They need not show that censure leaves liberty

uncurtailed, but only that it curtails liberty less than the

alternatives do. If the sophisticated arguments could show this, they

would not prove anarchists libertarian in the usual sense of seeking

freedom above all else. But they would prove them libertarian in the

sense of showing, whatever their objective, how the most freedom can be

attained. Reliance on public censure would stand revealed as the best

available aid to liberation.

The anarchists make no attempt to vindicate censure as more liberating

than all other methods of behavioral control. Their strategy is to show

only that it is more liberating than legal government, which they quite

sensibly regard as the most plausible alternative. They argue that

censure differs from legal government in ways which make it less

coercive on the whole.

Legal government is a method of control marked by the following

features: it is applied by a small number of officials, who issue

general, standing rules to all members of society and who enforce these

rules with fixed penalties for each type of offense.[27] All the

comparable features of censure, as anarchists conceive of it, are

different from those of legal government. Anarchist censure is applied

by all members of society, rather than by a few officials. It issues

changeable, particular imperatives, not permanent, general rules. It

does not rely on fixed penalties to enforce these imperatives, but uses

flexible sanctions, internalization and reasoned arguments.[28] Each of

the features of legal government that distinguishes it from the

anarchists’ censure is blamed by them for making it more coercive.

The first of these features is remoteness. Legal government relies on a

small group of officials to control conduct, whereas censorship relies

on society at large. Being few in number, government officials lack the

information about the attitudes and circumstances of their numerous

subjects that is needed to control them as individuals, and hence must

control them as an undifferentiated group. Censurers, on the other hand,

being socially intimate with one another, can adjust their directives

and sanctions to the situation of each individual so that, while still

being effective, they interfere less with conduct.[29]

Even if legal government could be intimate, as might be possible in a

small direct democracy, anarchists would still rate it as less

liberating, partly because it must still control its subjects with

general rules. However intimate a legal government may be, it works

through laws, which, being general, require a whole class of persons to

behave the same way in a wide range of cases. Censure, on the other

hand, using singular imperatives, which prescribe ‘not according to

certain maxims previously written, but according to the circumstances of

each particular cause’, can better protect each subject’s liberty.[30]

The generality of legal rules makes government less liberating than

censure by causing it to control behavior more indiscriminately.

The permanence of laws as well as their generality makes even the most

intimate legal government less liberating than censure. It is because

laws depend more than censorial directives on being publicly known that

they must be more permanent. No law can be effective, unless those whom

it controls know, before engaging in the activities it regulates, what

behavior it requires or forbids. Censorial directives, on the other

hand, being applied ad hoc, can effectively regulate behavior even if

they are not known in advance. Laws must persist longer than censorial

directives, because, if they change as often, the public cannot know

what they say. The greater permanence of laws makes legal government

less adjustable than censure to changing circumstances, just as their

greater generality makes it less adjustable to particular circumstances.

While the directives issued by censure can be easily modified so that

they do not become more restrictive as conditions change, those issued

by government have ‘a tendency to crystallize what should be modified

and developed day by day’.[31] The permanence of legal directives

inhibits them from changing in new situations so as to minimize

interference with free conduct at all times.

The same uniformity and permanence that make the directives issued by

government more coercive than those of censure also make its sanctions

more coercive. Governmental sanctions are uniform and fixed, because,

being legal, they impose similar penalties for similar offenses.[32]

Censorial sanctions can be more flexible, because they can impose

different penalties for similar offenses, whether committed by different

individuals, or by the same individual at different times. Now the same

penalty is not needed to enforce a directive in every case. The

attitudes and circumstances of some individuals are such that only mild

coercion is needed to secure their compliance with many directives,

while the same directives will be disobeyed by differently situated

individuals, unless enforced by severe coercion. Hence governmental

sanctions, being fixed and uniform, interfere substantially with conduct

whether they are mild or severe. If an official enforces a directive

with mild coercion, the widespread disobedience he allows impedes free

action, while he directly impedes free action if he enforces the

directive with severe coercion. A censurer, on the other hand, not

having to use uniform, fixed sanctions, can adjust his applications of

rebuke so that they coerce each individual just enough to secure

compliance. It is thus because censorial rebuke can coerce more

economically than legal penalties can that anarchists consider it more

liberating.

The anarchists are on firm ground in claiming that the remoteness of its

officials and the general, permanent character of its controls make

legal government harsher, and to that extent less liberating, than

censure. But the same features of legal government which detract from

its power to liberate by making its restraints on action harsh,

contribute to its power to liberate by making them predictable.

The remoteness of government officials prevents them from effectively

regulating behavior, except with predictable controls. Unpredictable

controls would not be effective, because officials are too distant from

their subjects to instruct them continually and individually about what

they must do. The generality and permanence of legal controls give them

just the sort of predictability that remote officials need.

Being general and permanent, legal directives set standing conditions

under which broad classes of action are forbidden or enjoined. Legal

sanctions, also being general and permanent, establish fixed penalties

for each type of offense. Hence anyone subject to a legal government can

know before he acts what conduct it requires of him and what penalty he

will receive from it for disobedience. He can be sure that his conduct

will not be hindered by his government, so long as he does what it

prescribes.

Censure is less predictable, because its lack of generality and

permanence makes it hard to know its requirements in advance. Censure

prescribes different conduct for numerous particular situations that law

treats as the same, and it prevents transgressions not with settled

penalties for each offense, but with varying applications of rebuke.

Hence persons subject to public censure, unsure what it will require and

uncertain what it will do if they disobey, are less safe from the

restraints it imposes on their action than from the restraints imposed

on it by law. Even though the particularity and flexibility of censure

make it a milder restraint than legal government, these characteristics

need not make it less coercive. For besides making it milder, they also

make it more unpredictable. Censorial restraint may be milder, but its

greater unpredictability offsets the advantage for securing liberty that

its mildness gives it as compared to law.

If remoteness, generality and permanence were all that distinguished

legal government from censure, the anarchist case for rating it as more

liberating would be inconclusive. But anarchist censure, unlike legal

government, does not rely on sanctions alone to secure compliance with

directives; it also uses internalization and reasoned argument. The

anarchists point to both of these distinctive methods of enforcement as

attributes that make censure less coercive.

So far as censure enforces its mandates with internalization, it impedes

conduct less than government does. Sanctioned directives interfere with

conduct, because their threats and penalties limit an individual’s range

of permissible acts. But internalized directives, not being enforced by

threats and penalties, leave individuals free to act just as they

please. The conduct of an individual is always restrained, so far as it

is controlled by sanctions, but it is not restrained at all so far as it

is controlled by internalization.

While this argument shows that internalization, by leaving action

unrestrained, is more liberating for conduct than sanctions are, it does

not show that internalization is more liberating on the whole. For the

advantage of internalization over sanctions as a liberator, arising from

its tolerance for conduct, is offset by its interference with thought.

Sanctions do not interfere with thought, because they control what

people do, not what they think. A person who follows a directive from

fear of sanctions can think what he pleases about the merit of the

action he carries out. But a person who follows an internalized

directive is made to view his action as correct, because internalization

controls its mental antecedents, the beliefs and intentions on which it

rests. The restraint imposed on thought by internalization makes it no

less of an impediment to the liberty of the anarchists than sanctions

are, even though it is no impediment to action. For liberty, as

conceived by anarchists, requires not only free action, but free

thought.

The other method for enforcing directives, besides internalization, that

distinguishes censure from government is reasoned argument. By claiming

that censure tends more than government to win compliance with reasons,

anarchists give themselves the hope, not offered by their other

arguments, of proving their society libertarian. For it is a sound

argument that, so far as censure differs from legal government by

securing obedience with reasons, it serves freedom better.

The argument rests on the conceptual thesis of the anarchists examined

earlier, which states that the conclusions an agent draws from his

deliberations about the merit of his contemplated acts do not obstruct

his liberty. This thesis allows the anarchists to argue that so far as

censure secures obedience by giving reasons, it exercises coercionless

control, by convincing its subjects to conclude from their own

deliberations that the conduct it demands of them is right.

So far as censure secures obedience with sanctions as severe as legal

government’s, it is no more liberating, because equally severe

sanctions, whether legal or censorial, whether they cause physical or

mental suffering, impede deliberation to the same extent.[33] Anyone who

complies with a directive from fear of sanctions is free to deliberate

about the merit of the conduct it prescribes. He may even conclude that

the act is wrong for him to do. But he does it anyway, because the

sanction that controls him prevents him from following his conclusion by

overpowering it with fear. Since sanctions, though they allow

deliberation, deprive it of effect, they fail to control an agent

through his own deliberations and so cannot be regarded by anarchists as

leaving him free.

Reasoned argument differs from sanctions as a means to secure obedience

by providing just the sort of restraint that a libertarian anarchy

needs. The only situation in which an agent who is made to follow a

directive bases his compliance on his own deliberations is where he is

convinced by those who issue the directive that what they bid him to do

is right. Since anarchist censure is distinguished from government by

its greater tendency to give reasons of this kind, and since anarchists

think a controlling agency must give such reasons in order to respect

freedom, they are warranted in arguing that, so far as censure provides

more of them than legal government does, it is the more liberating

method of control.

Bakunin presents a clear version of this argument when he distinguishes

government from censure on the ground that ‘its nature is not to

convince but to impose and to force’. The liberty of a man ‘consists

precisely in this: he does what is good not because he is commanded to,

but because he understands it, wants it and loves it’. Government, which

coerces its subjects with commands instead of convincing them with

reasons, he therefore denounces as ‘the legal violator of men’s wills,

the permanent negator of their liberty’.[34] No other anarchist makes

this argument as forthrightly as Bakunin; but they all do make it, as

they must, if their reconciliation of censure with freedom is possibly

to succeed.[35] For of the many arguments they can or do advance to

achieve this reconciliation, only this one hits the mark. Whether it is

strong enough to prove anarchy libertarian is an issue that still must

be assessed.

The libertarianism of Anarchist censure

Though only one of the sophisticated arguments supports the claim that

anarchist censure is more liberating than legal government, they all

bear on this claim’s validity. For together they identify all of the

features of anarchist censure that affect how well it protects freedom.

These arguments reveal that its unpredictability and its interference

with thought, through internalization, handicap anarchist censure as a

liberator as compared to legal government. Hence it can only qualify as

more liberating !i it has the means to overcome these handicaps. Its

greater ability to give reasons for obedience is its most powerful means

for overcoming them. But it has other resources. Its mildness tends to

offset its unpredictability. Its internality, which makes it tolerant

toward action, compensates to some extent for its control of thought.

Hence the task of making it more liberating than government does not

rest on its ability to give reasons alone. If anarchist censure, by

giving reasons, offsets that portion of its disadvantage for achieving

freedom that its mildness and internality do not overcome, the claim

that it is more liberating than legal government is confirmed. But if,

despite its greater tendency to give reasons, anarchist censure still

interferes with freedom more, the claim that it is more liberating must

be rejected.

These remarks show that a verdict on whether anarchy is more liberating

than legal government requires an assessment of the extent to which it

uses reasoned argument to control behavior. The next chapter makes this

assessment by tracing out the implications for the rationality of

anarchist censure of the communal individuality which, rather than

freedom, it will be argued, is the anarchists’ chief objective. Since

the analysis that follows of the scope of liberty in an anarchist

society proceeds from a fresh understanding of the goal which anarchists

seek, and from a more accurate view than has previously been available

of what they mean by censure, it promises finally to settle the dispute,

begun by William Proby, whether anarchists are secret enemies of

freedom, or loyal friends.

2. The goal of Anarchism: communal individuality

The perplexing conjunction in anarchist theory of praise for freedom and

use of an at least somewhat coercive censure has received varied

explanations. To embarrassed friends of anarchism, such as George

Woodcock, this conjunction is an oversight. ‘Anarchists accept much too

uncritically the idea of an active public opinion.’ They ‘have given

insufficient thought to the danger of... the frown of the man next door

becoming as much a thing to fear as the sentence of the judge’. Had they

looked more closely into censure, Woodcock here implies, they would

never have endorsed it, because they would then have found it too

appalling. Henri Arvon, more detached in his view of anarchists,

explains their espousal of both freedom and public censure as a quirk.

Anarchists are guilty of a ‘strange gageure’ in ‘wishing to maintain

individual autonomy while also imposing social discipline’. And the

acerbic Marxist George Plekhanov, as part of his campaign to discredit

anarchists, finds that in seeking liberty while using censure they are

‘running away from an insurmountable logical difficulty’.[36]

These explanations for why anarchists espouse both liberty and a censure

that is at least residually coercive, though plausible, are uninviting,

because they impugn the integrity of anarchism as systematic thought. If

any of them is valid, the conjunction by anarchists of praise for

liberty with use of censure lacks theoretical support, for it cannot be

warranted theoretically, as an oversight, a quirk, or a mistake. Before

resorting to these discrediting explanations for the espousal by the

anarchists of liberty and censure, the possibility of explaining it

within the terms of their theory deserves to be explored. It is the

thesis of this chapter that not freedom but community and individuality

are the anarchists’ chief goals and that these goals require censure. In

an anarchist society, where these goals are realized, liberty is

necessary, to be sure, but so is censure. Censure and liberty, rather

than being unreconcilable opposites, work as complements to merge the

goals of anarchism into a single complex value, which it is apt to call

communal individuality.

The normative status of individuality and community in Anarchist

thought

Individuality as conceived by anarchists consists of traits of character

that mark a well-developed self. Anarchists disagree about the marks of

individuality and on whether it is generic or unique. For Godwin and

Proudhon individuality is generically defined as traits of personality,

such as rationality and emotional sensitivity, which are characteristic

of all mankind.[37] Bakunin shares this generic view of individuality,

but he also sometimes sees it as personally defined, in a way more fully

articulated by Kropotkin, who describes it as ‘the full expansion... of

what is original’ in men, ‘an infinite variety of capacities,

temperaments and individual energies’.[38] The disagreement among

anarchists concerning the particular marks of individuality means they

do not all aim for the same specific kind. But since they all believe

that individuality, however specified, involves growth of personality,

there is no reason why, understood as self-development, it cannot be

their aim.

The conceptions of community advanced by anarchists are just as various

as their conceptions of individuality. For Godwin the model of a

community is a conversation. For Proudhon and Bakunin it is a productive

enterprise. Kropotkin’s model of a community embraces not only

productive enterprises, but every kind of cooperative association. The

differences among these varied models of community are telling and

cannot be ignored. They provide a basis for the scheme worked out in the

next chapter for classifying anarchism into types. But the differences

in the anarchists’ conceptions of community must not obscure the

similarities. Although the contexts in which anarchists see community as

occurring are rather different, the relations they envisage among its

members are much the same. Godwin describes the members of a community

as engaged in a ‘free and unrestrained opening of the soul’, a ‘reading

of each other’s minds’.[39] Each member of a Proudhonian community

‘recognizes his own self in that of others’.[40] I cannot participate in

the community Bakunin seeks without finding ‘my personality reflected as

if by numerous mirrors in the consciousness... of those who surround

me’.[41] And the member of Kropotkin’s community is immersed in ‘the

perception of his oneness with each human being’.[42] What these

descriptions show about relations in an anarchist community is that they

involve reciprocal awareness. Each member of such a community knows not

only what the others think, but also that they know what he is thinking.

Awareness in an anarchist community is reciprocal, because each

understands his fellows as he understands himself.[43] Just as the theme

of self-development unifies the anarchists’ various conceptions of

individuality, so does the theme of reciprocal awareness unify their

conceptions of community. It is just as impossible to claim that

anarchists all seek a particular form of community as that they all seek

a particular form of individuality. But since they share the belief that

community involves reciprocal awareness, community conceived as such

awareness can be their common goal.

Individuality and community, understood as self-development and

reciprocal awareness, are not merely possible goals of anarchism. They,

and not freedom, are the goals anarchists really seek. The easiest way

to show this is by tracing the normative relationship in anarchist

theory between individuality, community, and freedom. The warm praise

that anarchists give freedom makes it seem their chief aim. But

examination of their writings shows that they actually treat it as

subordinate. Freedom is prized by anarchists more as a means to

individuality and community than as a final end.

Godwin and Proudhon explicitly subordinate freedom to individuality. ‘To

be free is a circumstance of little value’ for Godwin, ‘without the

magnanimity, energy and firmness’, which he associates with

individuality; ‘liberty is chiefly valuable as a means to procure and

perpetuate this temper of mind’.[44] Freedom has the same subordinate

place for Proudhon, since he too views it as an aid to self-development,

rather than as an inherent good. ‘I have not made liberty my motto,

because liberty is an indefinite, absorbing force that may be crushed.’

‘The function of liberty is to carry the individual beyond all

influences, appetites and laws ... to give him what might be called a

supernatural character.’[45] Bakunin and Kropotkin are less explicit

about the normative relationship between freedom and individuality, but

they certainly suggest that freedom is subordinate. Thus Bakunin praises

liberty for enabling man to become ‘his own creator’, and Kropotkin

portrays it as an historical source of ‘individual originality’.[46]

Neither says explicitly that individuality has more value. But by

consigning freedom to the status of a means to individuality, they imply

that it has lesser worth.

Freedom is also subordinated by the anarchists to community. Thus,

although Proudhonian anarchy is to provide ‘all the liberty one could

want’, it must also furnish ‘something more important than liberty:

sincere and reciprocal enlightenment’.[47] Bakunin likewise warns

against giving freedom in an anarchy too high a place. It must not usurp

‘the superior claim of solidarity, which is and will always remain the

greatest source of social goods’.[48] And Kropotkin follows his

predecessors in requiring that ‘the liberty of the individual’ in a

state of anarchy ‘be limited by... the necessity, which everyone feels,

of finding cooperation, support and sympathy among his neighbors’.[49]

Since individuality and community take precedence over freedom as the

final destination of the anarchists, they cannot be called libertarians

in the usual sense of seeking freedom above all else. While freedom

might be maximized in their good society, this cannot be because such

maximization is their main intention. But before investigating whether

anarchists, despite their non-libertarian intention, maximize liberty

nonetheless, an issue of internal coherence in their thought must be

faced. By committing themselves equally to individuality and community,

anarchists raise doubts whether their chief aims are consistent. For,

lacking a principle to adjudicate between individuality and community,

how can they judge situations where the courses these norms prescribe

conflict?[50]

To meet this objection anarchists deny the possibility of conflict; they

view each of their aims as dependent on the other for its full

achievement. Bakunin, for example, thinks that ‘the infinite diversity

of individuals is the very cause, the principal basis, of their

solidarity’ and that solidarity serves in turn as ‘the mother of

individuality’.[51] The other anarchists all more or less explicitly

agree. For all of them communal awareness springs from developed

individuality, and developed individuality depends in turn on a

close-knit common life. For all of them, community and individuality, as

they develop, intensify each other and coalesce.[52]

Anarchists do not merely assert that individuality and community are

reinforcing; they give reasons for this claim. According to Godwin,

individuality, in the form of mental independence, supports community by

drawing people toward each other. It is ‘the grand fascination, by which

we lay hold of the hearts of our neighbors’.[53] An intellectually

independent person is more appealing than a person with conventional

ideas. The attraction others feel for him moves them to learn what he is

thinking and to reveal their own states of mind. In a society where

individuality of Godwin’s sort is well developed, awareness is thus

reciprocal, and community prevails. Bakunin, whose view of individuality

is less generic than Godwin’s, offers a different reason why it supports

community. Developed individuals, for Bakunin, are distinctive: each has

some characteristic(s) the others lack. This diversity draws them into

‘a collective whole, in which each completes the others and has need of

them’.[54] Being various in personality, developed individuals depend

more on one another to satisfy their needs than do individuals with

similar personalities. Their bonds of mutual dependence encourage

developed individuals to explore each other’s character and thus to

experience communal awareness. Proudhon and Kropotkin make the same case

for how individuality supports community, by appealing to the attraction

and dependence among developed individuals as reasons why their mutual

awareness is so intense.[55] But Kropotkin also has a different

argument. Among the marks of individuality that he mentions are ‘social

inclinations and instincts of solidarity’.[56] Hence well-developed

individuals, having sociable desires, are disposed toward communal

existence. In the words of Marc Guyeau, admired by Kropotkin as

‘unconsciously anarchist’, such individuals ‘live too much to live

alone’. They harbor ‘an expansive force, ever ready to break out of the

narrow casing of the self’.[57]

The other side of the thesis that individuality and community are

reinforcing is the claim that community supports individuality.

Anarchists offer arguments for this aspect of their thesis too. One such

argument, advanced by Kropotkin, is that reciprocal awareness is an

element of individuality. Even so strong a personality as Goethe would

have found that community enlarged his self. ‘He would have lost none of

his great personal poetry or philosophy’, but he would ‘have gained ...

a new aspect of the human genius. (Consider his joy in discovering

mutual reliance!) His whole being and individuality having developed in

this new direction ... another string would have been added to his

lyre.’[58] If community would have added to Goethe’s personality, it can

certainly add to selves of less developed persons.

In arguing for community as a support for individuality, anarchists

claim it not only as a constituent of the self, but also as a cause of

the self’s growth. Thus Godwin holds that the reciprocity of awareness

in a community elicits mutual trust, and that this trust encourages the

growth of intellect. Participants in a community are confident enough to

‘compare their ideas, suggest their doubts, examine their mutual

difficulties’ openly, all of which improve their understanding.[59] The

reciprocity of awareness among members of a community is also seen by

Godwin as causing emotional development. ‘Emotions are scarcely ever

thrilling and electrical, without something of social feeling.’[60]

Since such feeling is intense in a community, it encourages emotional

life to flourish.

The arguments of the anarchists for viewing individuality and community

as reinforcing may suffice to rebut the objection that these goals must

conflict. But it is one thing to show the consistency of the anarchists

in seeking communal individuality, and another to show that they design

their good society to achieve it. The main thesis of this chapter, which

now must be defended, is that the anarchists’ commitment to communal

individuality requires them to introduce into their good society the

strange amalgam of censure and liberty that is so usually thought a

scandal.

Liberty, censure and individuality

Though anarchists do not aim for liberty above all else, it is important

to them as a means for reaching the goals they do seek. Liberty plays an

especially important part for anarchists as a means to individuality.

Several of them comment generally on how liberty fosters individuality,

but Godwin best explains its utility for this purpose.[61] He points out

that the intellectual independence associated by all anarchists with

individuality requires freedom, being unachievable unless the thought

and action of individuals are substantially unrestrained. Freedom is

also needed to support the emotional element in individuality, which

includes the capacity for strong and subtle feelings, and the will to

express them. In an atmosphere of freedom ‘the more delicate affections

... have the time to expand themselves’.[62] Moreover, we then strongly

desire to express these feelings, not only because they are powerful,

but because our freedom makes their expression safe. ‘Our thoughts and

words’, not ‘beset on every side with penalty and menace’, can be openly

communicated.[63]

Freedom is not the only condition identified by anarchists as

encouraging individuality. They also stress the need for public censure:

to stimulate self-consciousness, to enrich personality, and to direct

emotions into channels that are strengthening to the self. Godwin offers

the clearest argument for the claim, upheld by several anarchists, that

public censure, by stimulating self-consciousness, encourages

individuality. ‘We have never a strong feeling’ for our traits of

character, ‘except so far as they are confirmed to us by the suffrage of

our neighbors’. If no one sets out deliberately to tell me what he

thinks of my conduct, I will have a weak self-image, because our sense

of self depends ‘upon the consent of other human understandings

sanctioning the judgment of our own’.[64] Since I cannot be fully aware

of myself as an individual without being subject to others’ deliberate

judgment, and since such judgment, if unfavorable, amounts to censure,

censure is indispensable for individuality. No one can know himself

completely as an individual unless he feels it.

The second way that censure supports individuality for the anarchists is

by providing a rich store of the thoughts and feelings that are the

materials from which the self develops. Persons subject to public

censure encounter ideas and emotions with a vividness that they would

miss in isolation, or even in a society where spontaneous social

influence, rather than censure, prevails. These ideas and emotions are a

mental treasure which they can draw on to enrich their

personalities.[65]

The final and most subtle of the anarchists’ arguments for the claim

that censure encourages individuality concerns its effects on the

emotions. Anarchists are anxious about the harm to self-development

caused by uncontrolled emotions and believe that public censure can

prevent it. A person unrestrained by social influence cannot be an

individual, says Bakunin, because without its help ‘he cannot

subordinate his instincts and die movements of his body to the direction

of his mind’.[66] But social influence, whether spontaneous or

deliberately applied as censure, is more than a restraint upon the

passions, keeping them out of reason’s way. Anyone affected by it,

according to Proudhon, ‘rids himself of his primitive savagery’, to be

sure. But he also develops his individuality. ‘Without losing his

animality, which he makes more delicate and beautiful, ... he raises

himself from a passion-ridden to a moral condition; ... he enlarges his

self, he augments and enlivens his faculties.’[67] Social influence and

public censure are thus viewed by anarchists as helping us to cultivate

our feelings. They help us grow as individuals by releasing us from the

grip of confining emotions which they redirect into channels nourishing

to an independent self.

By arguing that censure as well as liberty is needed for individuality,

the anarchists require their good society to make use of both. This

requirement would not restrict freedom in a state of anarchy if censure

could sufficiently encourage individuality by giving reasons. But

censure cannot support individuality in the ways envisioned by the

anarchists by means of reasoned argument alone. It cannot stimulate

self-consciousness in the persons it affects without sometimes rebuking,

and thus coercively hindering, their conduct. It cannot enrich their

personalities or cultivate their emotions without coercively permeating

their minds. Since censure must issue penalties and be internalized in

order to promote the anarchists’ kind of individuality, it is bound to

diminish their kind of freedom. Censure curtails freedom in a state of

anarchy in order to make individuality flourish.

Liberty, censure and community

Anarchists argue that censure must curtail liberty not only to maximize

individuality, but also to maximize community. One way that censure

supports community, in their view, is by opening the opportunity to

enter other minds. Reciprocal awareness cannot occur among people who

conceal their sentiments, because guarded minds are closed to public

view. But since censure involves the frank disclosure of opinions, those

who engage in it gain at least the chance for the access to one

another’s consciousness on which the possibility of reciprocal

consciousness depends.[68]

But even among people who express their sentiments, reciprocal awareness

may be lacking, because they express them partially, or imprecisely, or

because others misinterpret what they say. In none of these cases is

their awareness mutual, because others understand them differently from

the way they understand themselves. Accuracy in the disclosure and

interpretation of thoughts and feelings is thus crucial to the

anarchists for achieving their communitarian ideal. Public censure is

one means they rely on to secure these kinds of accuracy.

Since persons who censure one another express their opinions with

unusual candor, they are remarkably able to note discrepancies between

their own words and thoughts. Their awareness of these discrepancies not

only helps correct them: it also makes them difficult to maintain. For

the only way knowingly to maintain a difference between what one thinks

and what one says is by deliberate deception, which calls for ‘great

mastery in the arts of ambiguity and evasion, and such a perfect command

of countenance as shall prevent it from being an index to our real

sentiments’.[69] Such deception is always difficult. In a society which

practices censure it is virtually impossible, because each member of

such a society is under others’ constant scrutiny. Nor is it likely

that, in such a society, expressions of opinion will be misread. Since

each can rely on others to communicate accurately, there is small need

to interpret what they say. The confidence engendered among persons who

treat each other honestly encourages community by making generally

available an accurate expression of each individual’s sentiments.

As for how liberty contributes to community, anarchists see it as both

an indirect support, encouraging traits of character which in turn aid

mutual awareness, and as a direct support. Rationality is perhaps the

most salient of the character traits beneficial to community which

anarchists, using the usual liberal arguments for free expression, see

as nurtured by freedom. Their argument for how liberty directly supports

community is less familiar. No matter how forthright I may wish to be, I

cannot enter into relations of mutual awareness if my thought or

(communicative) action is too restrained. For, to the extent that they

are impeded, I am kept from knowing others’ sentiments or expressing my

own. Understanding this, anarchists value free expression not only as

aiding rationality, but also on the ground, too often overlooked, that

it opens the way to communal relations. Awareness tends to grow more

mutual when people enjoy liberty to think and speak.[70]

But while anarchists see that freedom helps attain community, they also

see that freedom, in order to help attain it, must be limited by

censure. For if censure is to support community by opening minds and

preventing deceit, it must interfere somewhat with freedom of

expression. Thus the anarchists’ perplexing espousal of both censure and

freedom is explained as much by their desire for community as by their

desire for individuality. Censure, for the anarchists, can foster

neither of these objectives unless conjoined with freedom; and freedom

can only foster them when censure is imposed on it as a restraint.

How free is Anarchy?

Once it is recognized that the anarchists’ chief aim is communal

individuality, the previously unsettled issue, whether anarchy or legal

government is more liberating, can be resolved. For the fact that

anarchists aim for communal individuality does more than explain why

their good society makes use of censure: it also suggests how to

measure, more accurately than before, how much this censure curtails

freedom. In a full-fledged anarchist society, where communal

individuality is complete, the censure needed to prevent misbehavior

allows more freedom than legal government does, because individuality

and community both reduce the need for censure that is coercive. It will

be remembered that of the three ways in which anarchist censure controls

behavior, only its sanctions and internalization coerce. Now the censure

imposed in an anarchist society, while working partially through

sanctions and internalization, can work for the most part through the

noncoercive giving of reasons, because the individuality and community

that characterize such a society make control by rational censure

unusually effective.

All the anarchists defend some version of the thesis that a developed

individual is more amenable to reasoned argument, and more cooperative,

than a person whose individuality is weak. Godwin, for whom

individuality consists mainly in ‘exercising the powers of ...

understanding’, must believe that it opens us to the sway of reason.[71]

What is less obvious is his belief that individuality fosters

cooperation. A developed individual has ‘a generous consciousness of

[his] independence’ which, far from isolating him, leads him to identify

with others.[72] The later anarchists accept Godwin’s point about

individuality being rational, but do not stress it, being more concerned

to elaborate his hint that individuality stimulates cooperation.

Proudhon, for instance, dwells on how a person’s concern for others

deepens as he grows more individual. Individuality is a ‘feeling that

overflows the self, and though intimate and immanent in our personality,

seems to envelop it along with the personalities of all men’.[73]

Kropotkin only elaborates on Proudhon when he describes the strong

individual as ‘overflowing with emotional and intellectual energy’. If

your self is well developed, ‘you will spread your intelligence, your

love, your energy of action broadcast among others’.[74] Thus anarchist

individuals, being unusually rational and cooperative, can be more

readily controlled without coercion than persons whose individuality is

weak.

The reciprocal awareness among the members of an anarchy, as well as

their individuality, explains why reasoned argument so effectively

controls their conduct. Where community is lacking, control must be more

coercive because it is then more difficult to concert action

voluntarily. Each person, unaware of others’ sentiments or of what they

think of him, regards his neighbors with a distrust that provokes

deception and kindles hatred.[75] But where awareness is reciprocal,

‘hatred would perish from a failure in its principal ingredient, the

duplicity and impenetrableness of human actions’.[76] Reciprocity of

consciousness elicits reciprocity of trust, which tends to develop into

reciprocal benevolence.[77] The confidence and kindliness among members

of an anarchist community encourage the same cooperative relations as

their individuality. Being psychologically in touch with one another,

participants in anarchy can regulate their conduct less with sanctions

or internalization and more with reasons, than persons unconnected by

communal ties.

Having examined the implications of the anarchists’ objectives for the

amount and type of censure in their regime, we can settle the issue left

open in the previous chapter of whether anarchy or legal government is

more liberating. The conclusion of that chapter was that anarchy is more

liberating, if its censure is rational enough to compensate for the main

sources of its greater coercion: the unpredictability of its sanctions

and the interference of its internalization with thought. Now the burden

of the analysis presented in this chapter is that the communal

individuality which pervades anarchy diminishes the need to control

behavior with unpredictable sanctions and internalized thought control.

By engendering mutual trust, cooperative attitudes and susceptibility to

arguments, it enables censure to achieve what little regulation of

behavior is required mainly by giving reasons. Thus the individualizing

communality of anarchist society makes it markedly freer than legal

government, whose remote officials coerce more harshly with general,

permanent laws.

This conclusion might be contested on the ground that legal government

is perfectly compatible with individuality and community. Since these

are the attributes that make anarchy more libertarian, a legal

government that has them must be just as free.

If communal individuality under legal government could be as great as

under anarchy, the claim that anarchy is more liberating might be false.

But legal government suffers from disabilities which arrest communal

individuality’s growth. For one thing, it uses physical sanctions which,

so far as they arouse more hostility and resentment than the

psychological sanctions used by anarchy, impede the development of

communal individuality more.[78] The characterizing traits of legal

government compound the difficulty of developing communal individuality

in its jurisdiction. The remoteness of its officials and the permanence

and generality of its controls cause it to treat its subjects as

abstract strangers. Such treatment is the very opposite of the personal

friendly treatment under which communal individuality best grows.

But it would be unfair to rest the case for the greater freedom of an

anarchy on a comparison between a fully developed anarchist society and

a deficient legal government. If the anarchist is allowed an ideal

setting in which to test the coerciveness of censure, then law must be

put to the test in an equally well-developed legal society, where strong

individuality, harmonious communality and great amenability to reason

also reign. It is because communal individuality is so complete in an

ideal anarchy that it can rely on reasoned argument to the near

exclusion of coercive internalization and rebuke. Why could not the law,

in a similarly ideal legal society, replace physical coercion with

reasoned argument to a similar extent?

If the control exercised by legal government was not incurably remote,

permanent and general, perhaps it could do this. Its remoteness can

certainly be appreciably diminished by increasing the proportion of

officials to subjects and by bringing both groups into close contact.

But since even officials who are intimate with their subjects must, in a

legal government, control with laws, they are simply unable to enter

very far into particularized face-to-face discussion with their subjects

concerning the merit of specific acts. Legal government, to the extent

that it gives reasons for obedience, addresses them to the merit of

following its fixed, general rules. It argues that its dissenting

subject, even if he deems a particular legally prescribed act harmful,

should do it nonetheless, because of the value derived from its general

performance. Since legal government is prevented by the inescapable

generality and permanence of its controls from taking as much advantage

as anarchy can of the potential offered by communal individuality for

diminishing coercion through the giving of specific reasons, we must

conclude that even when the two are compared on equally ideal grounds,

anarchist society must be deemed more free.

Though the standard interpretation of the anarchists as libertarians is

mistaken, it properly calls attention to the importance of freedom in

their model of a good society. Where this interpretation goes wrong is

in explaining freedom’s importance for the anarchists as arising from

its status as their chief value. The analysis of anarchist theory

presented in this chapter shows how to make viewing it as libertarian

acceptable. Though anarchists provide more freedom in their good society

than legal government (the most promising alternative) provides, they do

not set out to do so. They provide it, not as a pre-eminent good, but as

a concomitant of the communal individuality that is their first concern.

So long as freedom is recognized as being, for anarchists, a valued

by-product of their search for communal individuality, there is no harm

in describing them as libertarians. For their libertarianism then stands

forth in its true light, as a libertarianism not of direct intention,

but of oblique effect. Those who have followed William Proby in

denouncing anarchists as freedom’s secret enemies have been misguided,

but not because freedom is the anarchists’ most cherished good. Viewing

anarchists as single-minded devotees of freedom is also erroneous.

Anarchists are certainly not enemies of freedom, but their friendship is

mediated and indirect.

This chapter has provided a general analysis of how anarchists think

individuality and community are related. We have found their arguments

persuasive for the claim that in an anarchy the reinforcing merger of

these values maximizes freedom. But no general analysis can establish

concretely how community and individuality merge for anarchists, because

each anarchist would merge them somewhat differently. Hence the

concreteness of anarchist theory, which, it will be remembered, is where

it exceeds Marx’s in promise, can only be appreciated through

investigating the particular anarchists’ diverse conceptions of this

merger. Since each anarchist’s conception is a modulated application of

a general theory which all share, examining these conceptions will

further clarify the structure of their thought. Learning how anarchists

differ in their plans for communal individuality will give a more

accurate grasp of their entire project.

3. Varieties of Anarchy

The anarchists’ case for freedom would be flimsy if their way of

maximizing individuality and community was only abstract. But they do

more than show why abstract individuality and community are reinforcing.

Each seeks a concrete individuality and community with mutual relations

of a distinct type. Each traces the character of these relations,

rejoicing in those that unite individuality and community, worrying

about those that cause them to conflict. Finally, to relieve this worry,

each anarchist introduces a mediating agent, a cohesive social attitude,

to bind individuality and community firmly so that conflict between them

is decreased. The elements of anarchy that most affect how well it

nurtures freedom are thus the characters of its individuality, of its

community and of the attitude it uses to encourage their accord.

There is disagreement among anarchists about the kind of individuality

and community a well-ordered society creates. For the early anarchists,

above all Godwin, community involves mainly rational awareness, and

individuality has generic traits. For later anarchists, especially

Kropotkin, communal ties are more emotional, and individuality lies less

in what a person shares with others than in what makes him unique. Along

with these shifts in the anarchists’ conception of individuality and

community go changes in the attitude they use to make individuality and

community coalesce. Godwin relies on sincerity; Proudhon and Bakunin on

respect; Kropotkin uses mutual benevolence. These differences among

anarchists give their visions of a good society distinctive character.

Godwin’s anarchy, with its generic individuality, rational community and

mediating sincerity, is like a thoughtful, candid conversation. For

Proudhon and Bakunin, who favor somewhat more particular, emotional

forms of individuality and community, and who mediate their conflicts

with respect, anarchy resembles life among collaborators in a productive

enterprise. Kropotkin’s anarchy, which uses mutual benevolence to

mediate between a highly personal individuality and a community marked

by strong affective ties, is like an extended group of friendly

neighbors.

Though characterizing anarchy as conversation, enterprise or

neighborhood gives only a rough classification of types, it captures

enough of the diversity within anarchism to make its expository use

worthwhile. Seeing the types of anarchy as like one or another of these

social patterns brings out salient differences, while confirming that

all take the same ideal of communal individuality as their lodestar.

Godwin: Anarchy as conversation

An individual, for Godwin, must be mentally independent, in the sense

that he grounds his beliefs and actions on his own assessment of their

merits. If others determine his acts or opinions for him, he is not an

individual, because then his mind and theirs are indistinguishable.

‘Following the train of his disquisitions and exercising the power of

his understanding’ makes a man an individual by differentiating him

mentally from other people.[79] The mark of the Godwinian individual is

thus generic reason. One finds individuality by sharing with others the

capacity of the human species for independent thought.

Two misconceptions about Godwinian individuality must be set aside

before its relation to community can be accurately assessed. For one

thing, Godwin’s emphatically rational individuality seems to be opposed

to emotions. Not only does Godwin exclude emotions from the marks of

individuality, he also sees them as a threat. To maintain individuality

requires repressed feelings. We must resist the desire to ‘indulge in

the gratifications and cultivate the feelings of man’ lest, resigning

ourselves ‘wholly to sympathy and imitation’, we become intellectually

dependent.[80] But Godwin’s hostility to emotions is not absolute.

Without ‘the genuine emotions of the heart’ we are ‘the mere shadows of

men, ... destitute of substance and soul’.[81] An emotionless person,

though logically able to be an individual, will not become one. Feelings

which encourage independent thinking are thus valued aids to

individuality. Godwin wants to direct emotions, not expunge them.

There is also some apparent basis in Godwin’s individuality for seeing

it as endangered by community. The best evidence for this view is his

attack on cooperation ‘for imprisoning ... the operation of our own

mind’. How can Godwin think community aids individuals when he calls

even the cooperation among actors and musicians ‘absurd and

vicious’?[82] Once one grasps that he attacks cooperation so far as it

weakens individuals, and not as being bound to weaken them, his view of

its effect on individuality is revealed to be nuanced. Concerts and

dramas threaten individuals because they require ‘formal repetition of

other men’s ideas’.[83] But cooperation encouraging to mental

independence deserves praise. The opposition to community that Godwin’s

individuality provokes also leads to giving community qualified support.

The kind of community that Godwin sanctions occurs among participants in

conversation. He admits that conversation, as a species of cooperation,

involves ‘one or the other party always yielding to have his ideas

guided by the other’.[84] But conversers, unlike actors or musicians,

suffer no interference when they cooperate with the independence of

their minds. In fact, conversation serves individuality because the

remarks of other parties, rather than imprisoning one’s thoughts and

feelings, help them grow. ‘Conversation accustoms us to hear a variety

of sentiments, obliges us to exercise patience and attention, and gives

freedom and elasticity to our disquisitions.‘[85] Not only does

conversation encourage mental independence: by exposing us to new ideas,

it gives that independence wider scope.

To explain better how conversation serves individuals, Godwin likens it

to a mirror. Just as a mirror helps me know my physical identity, so

conversation helps me know my mental self. Through his reactions to my

statements, an interlocutor reflects them, so that I understand them

better than I could alone. My firmer grasp of my expressed opinions

helps me criticize them, so as to increase the independence of my

thought.[86]

By comparing conversation to a mirror, Godwin clarifies his thesis that

it creates individuals, but he also calls his thesis into doubt. For the

figure of a mirror is most used by analysts to account for social

emulation. When Rousseau explained conflict and conformity as arising

from our desire to shine in others’ eyes, he equipped social theory with

a helpful tool, perhaps used most aptly by C. H. Cooley, in his

discussion of the ‘looking-glass self’. Cooley sees even more clearly

than Rousseau that a man’s socially reflected image, far from helping

him become an independent thinker, makes him a copy of those with whom

he interacts. The character of social men is so ‘largely caught up from

the persons they are with’ that they always ‘share the judgements of the

other mind’.[87] How can Godwin think conversation favors individuality,

when, as a form of interaction, it creates a social self?

It is in answering this question that Godwin calls attention to the

individualizing aspects of sincerity, which for him consists in ‘telling

every man the truth, regardless of the dictates of worldly prudence and

custom’.[88] He readily admits the harm for mental independence of

conversation that is insincere. Since an insincere converser hides his

sentiments, he cannot serve others as a mirror in which to reflect and

clarify their ideas. He serves them as a mirror, to be sure, but one

which, like Cooley’s, is apt to reflect social expectations and so

discourages the development of independent thought. To make matters

worse, insincerity is contagious. When one converser hides his

sentiments, so do the rest. And when none are candid, all benefit of

conversation for individuality is lost. ‘Reserve, deceitfulness and an

artful exhibition of ourselves take from the human form its soul and

leave us the unanimated semblance of what man might have been, of what

he would have been, were not every impulse of the mind thus stunted and

destroyed.’[89]

By tracing the harm of conversation for self-development to insincerity,

rather than to the character of interaction, Godwin avoids concluding

with sociologists like Cooley that conversation must cramp the self. So

long as my interlocutor is deceptive, Godwin argues, he cannot help me

be an individual. For I will conceal my thoughts from someone who may

mock them secretly. But if he speaks sincerely, I have no need to hide

my sentiments from fear. I will express them fully, thereby achieving

mental independence, because his sincere response to my statements helps

me more than a dishonest response does to evaluate them for myself.[90]

The sincerity of Godwinian conversation not only helps it create

individuals, it also helps tie these individuals together. All

conversation is to some degree communal because participants, having

close, egalitarian relations, must be somewhat conscious of one

another’s minds. But where sincerity is lacking, notes Godwin, obstacles

to mutual awareness arise. Insincerity, by fostering deceit among

conversers, makes each eye the other ‘as if he expected to receive from

him a secret wound’.[91] By arousing uncertainty about how others view

their thoughts, it produces ‘zeal for proselytism and impatience of

contradiction’.[92] And by masking character it breeds permissiveness

and calumny. ‘The basest hypocrite passes through life with applause;

and the purest character is loaded with unmerited aspersions.’[93]

Sincere conversers, on the other hand, being free of the suspicion, fear

and hatred that insincerity excites, and hence less separated by

practices like proselytism or libel, are better able to unite as a

community. Furthermore, they seek communal contacts, for candor and

forthrightness elicit their attention and make them eager to know one

another’s minds.[94]

How sincerity unites conversers in community is neatly captured by the

figure of a mirror. One mark of a community is awareness that the other

members know my thoughts. Only if they reflect my thinking can I have

this awareness, for otherwise I lack the evidence on which it must be

based. Now sincerity, by making individuals transparent, might seem to

keep them from reflecting anything whatever, including other minds. For

how can a transparent surface be a mirror? But what sincerity does, says

Godwin, is strip off the social mask which obstructs communication so as

to expose rational identity, the only kind one can rely on to reflect

another self. It is thus precisely because sincerity makes us

transparent on the surface that it lays bare the inner mirror which

creates communal ties. Freed of the social pretenses that mask their

rational selves, sincere conversers reflect the thoughts of others

faithfully, so that mutual awareness grows intense.

The merit of Godwin’s reliance on sincere conversation, in which all

participants disclose their true beliefs, to mediate between community

and individuality turns on the answers to three questions: Is sincerity

achievable? Is it effective as a mediator? Is it a valuable social

trait?

The most radical argument for rejecting Godwin’s sincerity as

unachievable, made familiar by the French moralists, claims that the

self-watching it requires is self-defeating. Godwin’s sincerity is a

consciously willed condition, reached by watching and changing one’s

state of mind. Now this sort of deliberate self-observation interferes

with the candor it is intended to achieve. The sentiments of one who

tries to be sincere are disingenuous because they are transformed by

being watched into ‘a cerebral invention, a kind of posturing’.[95]

This objection to sincerity counts heavily against those versions which

emphasize ingenuous emotions. But Godwin’s version is more rational.

Sincerity for him requires full disclosure of opinions and beliefs, so

far as they result from rational deliberation; but emotions, being

significant above all as deliberative aids, may sometimes be

legitimately concealed.[96] The very self-watching which complicates the

search for emotional sincerity thus helps achieve the more rational

Godwinian kind. For while self-watching harms the spontaneity of

feelings, it helps give a reasoned grounding to beliefs.

Godwin cannot so easily escape other arguments for calling sincerity

unreachable which deny the possibility of candid thought. Perhaps the

most interesting of these arguments points to the effect of sincerity on

shadowy or tentative ideas. Instead of disclosing ideas which are

uncertain, sincerity distorts them by making them seem too firm and

definite. It is self-defeating because it exposes secret thoughts to too

much light.[97]

To this objection Godwin can respond in the same way as to the first

one: by pointing out how limited his sincerity is in scope.

Not all our thoughts need be revealed for us to share Godwinian

sincerity. What it requires is disclosure of rational beliefs. Since

sincerity for Godwin applies to rational beliefs, whose clarity permits

their accurate disclosure, rather than to tentative or secret thoughts,

which when disclosed become distorted, it is narrow enough in scope to

be achievable.

A final ground for calling sincerity unreachable, more modest than the

foregoing, claims not that it is self-defeating but that, owing to

discrepancies between thought and expression, it cannot be entirely

achieved. No method of communication transmits even rational beliefs

with perfect accuracy, since they are too numerous for all to be

expressed. Furthermore, our gestures, speech and writing use

standardized conventions, which schematize communicated thought.

Rational beliefs defy exposure, because our power to express them is too

weak.[98]

While admitting the force of this objection, Godwin regards it as

innocuous, so far as his reliance on sincerity to mediate between

individuals and their community is concerned. Such mediation is

accomplished best by that sincerity which supports reciprocal awareness

and independent thought the most. Perfect sincerity, which for Godwin

means disclosing all rational beliefs, is not well suited for such

mediating, since individuality and community are sometimes damaged by

too much disclosure of even reasoned thought. If I withhold or temper my

reasoned finding that an interlocutor is a fool, I diminish my sincerity

but help reach the end it is meant to serve. ‘Sincerity is only a

means.’ ‘The man who thinks only how to preserve his sincerity is a

glaringly imperfect character’.[99] Since Godwin does not seek complete

sincerity, he can easily accept the argument that it must be incomplete.

Even if sincerity is reachable to the extent that Godwin hopes, it still

would fail to serve him as a mediator unless it helps create communally

related individuals. Thoughtful examiners of sincerity have usually

denied that it can do this. Nietzsche was not the last to warn against

sincerity as intrusive to the self. He sees self-development as a secret

process, involving ‘delicate decisions’. An individual is ‘a concealed

one, who instinctively uses speech for silence and withholding... and

encourages a mask of himself to wander about in the hearts and minds of

his friends’.[100] For Santayana, as for Nietzsche, individuals need

masks, though less to guard the self than to define its character. In

assuming a visage, ‘we encourage ourselves eloquently to be what we

are...We wrap ourselves gracefully in the mantle of our inalienable

part.’[101] These themes are now standard among observers of sincerity,

who routinely note how masks protect and shape the self.[102]

If sincerity harms individuals, it indirectly harms Godwinian community

which has individuals for components. But writers on sincerity also find

it harms community by directly blocking mutual awareness. Andre Gide,

for instance, thinks sincerity ‘can only concern those who have nothing

to say’. Sincere ones, says Gide, are so absorbed by introspection that

they can’t communicate.[103] George Simmel sees sincerity as impeding

mutual awareness by making others less attractive. ‘Portions even of the

persons closest to us must be offered us in the form of indistinctness

and unclarity, in order for their attractiveness to keep on the same

high level.’[104]

To meet these objections to his reliance on sincerity as a mediator,

Godwin can appeal again to the rational character of the individuality

and community he uses sincerity to help reach. It is our ability to

develop and share delicate emotions, transient perceptions, elusive

intimations that is most threatened by stark frankness. Sincerity is

less harmful to the more solid and permanent — because rationally

grounded — sentiments that define and unite Godwinian individuals.

Nevertheless, sincerity might plausibly be charged with harming even

Godwin’s communal individuality, were it not for the conversational

context in which it occurs. The objections to sincerity just considered

all take as their context the existing social order with its opaque

impersonality. There indeed ‘complete openness would encounter

misunderstanding, inability to forgive, limited tolerance for

differences’. It might even be ‘the greatest threat to civilized social

life’.[105] But the close, egalitarian connections among participants in

conversation dispel the mistrust that makes achieving communal

individuality through frank disclosure difficult. The conversational

context of Godwin’s good society works in tandem with its rationality to

help sincerity join its members in community.

The final question which affects the merit of sincere conversation, as

Godwin uses it, is its value as a social trait. For sincerity, though

attainable and an effective mediator between individuality and

community, still might cause outweighing harm. The harm that sincerity

can be most plausibly charged with causing is to privacy. When sincerity

is practiced, privacy declines, because the barriers between myself and

others, which keep them from observing me, are breached. To the extent,

then, that privacy has value, sincerity is suspect.

Statements can be found in Godwin which suggest he answers this

objection by denying that privacy has worth. For he berates ‘the

solitary anchorite’ as parasitical, and his ideal society would be one

whose member ‘had no hopes in concealment [and] saw at every turn that

the eye of the world was upon him’.[106] But Godwin does not oppose all

forms of privacy, just those based on indifference or reserve. If I

escape observation because others are uncaring, or because I hide my

thoughts, Godwin does think privacy lacks value. But if my privacy

results from solitude or discretion, as when I withdraw from interaction

or count on others not to probe or spy, then for Godwin my privacy has

worth.[107]

By drawing this distinction, Godwin enables himself to assure candor,

while also protecting private life. As conversationalists, the members

of his anarchy are open and sincere because they care about each other

and disclose their beliefs. But they also have a private life, being

discreet in conversation and at home in solitude. The sincerity of frank

disclosure is thus limited in Godwin’s anarchy by barriers of discretion

and islands of seclusion to save privacy.

Godwinian sincerity emerges from this survey of objections as defensible

in the role assigned to it. Being limited in scope by its rational

character, in range of application by its conversational context, and in

operation by its respect for privacy, it is an appropriate mediator

between the commensurately limited self-development and reciprocal

awareness it is designed to help secure. For Godwin’s successors,

however, who seek a more extensive communal individuality, sincerity has

too many traps to be their mediator. They need a substitute that melds

the more particularized individuals they search for into the more

embracing community it is their purpose to achieve.

Proudhon and Bakunin: Anarchy as a productive enterprise

The close agreement between Proudhon and Bakunin concerning

individuality, community and how to mediate between them justifies

considering their plans for anarchy together. Certainly their plans have

differences, but Bakunin, an avowed disciple of Proudhon, agrees with

him on basic points of social structure.

Rationality marks developed individuals as much for Proudhon and Bakunin

as for Godwin.[108] Where they differ from their predecessor in their

view of individuality is in finding other signs of the developed self.

Emotional vitality, which merely aids self-development for Godwin, is

one such sign.[109] Another is the capacity for productive work, in

which Proudhon and Bakunin see such individualizing qualities as ‘bodily

strength, manual dexterity, mental quickness, intellectual energy, pride

in having overcome difficulties, mastered nature, acquired knowledge,

gained independence’.[110]

By identifying three aspects of individuality rather than one, as Godwin

had, Proudhon and Bakunin give their vision of self-development more

richness, but they also make it harder to achieve. For it is surely

harder to be rational, emotional and productive, than to be rational

alone. One way they meet this problem is by arguing that productive work

aids rationality, being its major source. Through making things, we test

beliefs and discover facts. Hence one whose individuality is productive

is more apt to engage in reasoned thought.[111]

To show that the emotional element of individuality can be achieved

together with its productive and rational elements, Proudhon and Bakunin

use a different argument. Rather than viewing emotionality as arising

from one of the other aspects of individuality, they claim that, though

its source is independent, it has to develop, for individuality as a

whole to be complete. ‘The mind is troubled’, writes Proudhon, ‘if any

one faculty tries to usurp power.’ ‘The opposition of faculties, their

mutual reaction, is the source of mental equilibrium.’[112] Unless

emotions have the strength to counter the mind’s rational and productive

tendencies, none will reach complete development. The individuality

sought by Proudhon and Bakunin thus differs from the kind that Godwin

seeks, not only in having several elements, but in requiring that these

elements be balanced.

Proudhon and Bakunin reject Godwin’s rational community for the same

reason as they reject his rational individuality. A sharing of

considered beliefs among intimate conversers is too narrow a form of

mutual awareness for these later anarchists who seek community, like

individuality, not only in the realm of intellect, but also in emotional

and productive life. To achieve a wider and more varied consciousness,

Proudhon and Bakunin envision anarchist society as composed of numerous

productive enterprises, equal in power but diverse in kind,

distinguished by their differentiated functions, related by negotiated

bargains, and united by reciprocal dependence.[113]

A society organized as Proudhon and Bakunin wish would do something to

create the multi-faceted individuality and community they use it to help

reach. Being composed of enterprises which supply goods and services, it

would foster awareness among its members of their concerns as producers,

while developing their capacities for productive work.[114] It also

would support rational individuality and community, to the extent that

the productive activity it required encouraged the expression of

independent thought. Only the emotional aspect of the individuality and

community Proudhon and Bakunin seek would be unlikely, in their society,

to be nourished much. Some shared emotional warmth could be expected

from the team-work and cooperation occurring there, but feelings develop

best in the intimate surroundings which Proudhon’s and Bakunin’s large,

functionally differentiated society lacks.

The largeness and complexity of their good society also arrest growth of

the rational and productive aspects of their envisioned community and

self. Godwin had secured rational individuality and community partly by

making society small and simple, so that its closely related members

achieved mutual trust. Such trust, and the rationality it engenders, is

harder to establish in Proud-hon’s or Bakunin’s anarchy because its

members, divided by their roles and ranks in complicated enterprises,

and separated from participation in other enterprises by the rivalry

that bargaining evokes, find it difficult to gain one another’s

confidence. Nor can productive consciousness and ability easily flourish

in such enterprises, even though they are devoted to productive work.

For the divided labor and managerial supervision they need for their

success make activity in them so routine and servile that it does not

foster productive power or awareness much.

Proudhon and Bakunin try to win support in their society for the

rational and productive elements of community and self partly by the way

they organize education. Both see education as an immunizer, which

protects aspiring producers from the dividing and debilitating effects

of work, through the methods of what Proudhon calls polytechnical

apprenticeship. These methods consist first in ‘having the neophyte

producer carry out the entire series of industrial operations, moving

from the simplest to the most difficult, however specialized’, and

second, in ‘having him derive from these operations the principles that

apply to each of them’.[115] Education thus organized serves

individuality by making work more comprehensible. Since each producer

who receives a polytechnical education learns the underlying theory of

his work and knows from practical experience how his job relates to the

rest, he sees the point of doing it, grasps its place in a larger whole

and finds that far from sapping his rational and productive powers, it

gives them added strength. His education also strengthens his

involvement in productive and rational community by solidifying contacts

with fellow workers. Producers who have taken turns performing others’

work, and who share an understanding of its basic principles, are so

closely attuned in attitude and outlook that they are not much separated

by function or rank. Under anarchy, despite divided labor and managerial

control, ‘social communion [and] human solidarity are not vain words’

because producers are held together ‘by the memory of early struggles

[and] the unity of their work’.[116]

The trouble with polytechnical education is its temporary benefits. Once

completed, it no longer directly helps producers to relate as

reciprocally conscious individuals. To extend its benefits to workers

who have completed this initiation Proudhon and Bakunin propose to

organize an anarchist economy so that producers in every industry, no

matter how experienced, continue to work in turn at all the jobs their

industry creates. Workers would also be encouraged to develop their

skills and increase their knowledge by taking jobs in different

industries. The only producers who would devote themselves to a single

kind of work would be those who, on the basis of long experience, found

that the positions they preferred to fill were fixed.[117]

The main difference between Proudhon’s and Bakunin’s way of developing

community and self is in how they would organize the family. Bakunin

seeks diverse and open families; Proudhon wants them to be uniform and

enclosed. To give diversity and openness to children’s family life

Bakunin would weaken the hold of parents by forbidding the inheritance

of wealth and would bring them under non-parental influence by charging

society with their education.[118] Domestic openness and diversity would

be provided for adults partly by leaving sexual unions untrammelled,

‘neither violence, nor passion, nor rights previously surrendered’

justifying regulation, and partly by making the care of children by

their parents optional.[119]

The family Proudhon favors is more enclosed than Bakunin’s, being

organized as a permanent, monogamous household, in which inheritance is

allowed. Its dominant figure is the father, who directs the lives of his

children and his wife. The mother, ‘fatally subordinate’ to her husband,

is charged with child-care and housework. Children, as the household’s

passive members, owe ‘familial piety’ and unqualified obedience to both

parents.[120]

Bakunin’s envisioned family is less of a remedy than Proudhon’s for the

inadequacies of their productive scheme as a support for community and

self. These inadequacies, already noted, include a grave inability to

nourish the emotional aspect of communal individuality and a substantial

weakness, only in part corrected by polytechnical education and variety

of work, as a source of the mutual trust needed to promote communal

individuality in the rational and productive realms of life. Bakunin’s

family is unsuited for removing these inadequacies because it offers

nothing more than do his economic and educational plans to overcome

them. Encouraging the same mobility, diversity and rivalry in the

domestic sphere as it encourages in productive life, his family,

resembling an industrial enterprise, is no richer in warmth or trust.

Proudhon’s family is better at providing warmth and confidence because

its members, holding fixed positions in a hierarchy, are less troubled

by the uncertainties that Bakunin’s varied, egalitarian domestic life

provokes. Emotional awareness and reciprocal trust are further

strengthened in Proudhon’s family by ties of devotion and love. The

father certainly controls his wife and children, but to sustain and

protect them, whether he profits thereby or not.[121] The mother shows

her familial devotion by caring-for the household and giving emotional

support. She, no more than the father, considers the merits or

achievements of needy relatives in deciding how to be of help. This

‘sister of charity’ gives her husband and children more than they

deserve. ‘Defeated or condemned, it is at her breast that [they] find

consolation and forgiveness.’[122] It is thus the ascriptive character

of domestic roles and the confidence and devotion it can be expected to

evoke that make Proudhon’s family more suitable than Bakunin’s for

developing the emotional and rational aspects of community and self.

Producers in both theorists’ anarchy are stymied to about the same

extent in their search for self-development and mutual awareness. But

while Bakunin’s producers have nowhere to turn for their missing

individuality and community, Proudhon’s can turn to their families.

There, in a stable, loving atmosphere, quite different from the volatile

complexity of productive life, they find some, at least, of their needed

trust and warmth.[123]

The educational and industrial organization that Proudhon and Bakunin

back, even fortified by Proudhon’s way of organizing families, gives

insufficient help to individuals and community, as both anarchists

admit. For producers remain at least somewhat estranged and stunted by

supervised, divided work and separated by the conflict that bargaining

among enterprises excites. To rid anarchy for good of these nagging

defects, Proudhon and Bakunin suggest connecting its members with bonds

of respect.

To respect another, for both writers, is to cherish him for what he, as

an individual, is — an emotional, productive creature, responsible for

his acts because able to choose them according to reasons. Thus

conceived, respect has attitudinal and practical requirements. As an

attitude, it enjoins care for the other person’s sentiments and choices,

empathizing with them, accepting them as one’s own. As a practice, it

calls for helping the other develop his thoughts and feelings, make his

decisions and perform his chosen acts.[124]

Respect so understood provides the mediation between self-development

and mutual awareness that Proudhon and Bakunin need, for by requiring

care and nurture for what others think, feel and make, it supports the

rational, emotional and productive elements in communal individuality.

Mention of some ways Proudhon and Bakunin think respect gives this

support will help clarify how it serves them as a mediator.

Two threats to communal individuality which respect easily defeats are

force and fraud. When I coerce another or tell him lies, I weaken his

identity and his consciousness of others as having rational, emotional

and creative capabilities by manipulating or ignoring his power to

think, feel or produce.[125] Since respect requires care for attributes

of individuality that force and fraud negate, these cannot occur among

its practitioners. The only way to affect another that accords him full

respect is, after considering his plans and sentiments from his point of

view, to offer arguments and evidence which convince him they are wrong.

Such treatment is unqualifiedly respectful, because, while recognizing

the capacities of those it affects to think, feel and make as they see

fit, it helps them, within the limits of this recognition, to give these

capacities added strength.

Proudhon and Bakunin can be criticized for proposing to mediate between

individuality and community with respect, for though respect is a more

effective mediator than Godwinian sincerity, and though its value as a

social trait is less open to doubt, it is no less difficult to achieve.

Even in Proudhon’s or Bakunin’s anarchy, producers would be baffled in

trying to respect each other, because respect’s requirements often are

ambivalent. To respect another, I must help him perform his chosen act.

But what if his act is one which, because it harms rational, emotional,

or creative capabilities, is disrespectful? Respect urges me to reason

with him, hoping to change his mind, but if my arguments are unavailing,

however I treat him involves disrespect. For whether I help or hinder

his attempt to carry out his action, I diminish the capabilities for

which respect enjoins support.

To the charge that the sincerity he sought could not be achieved in

full, Godwin had replied that since the individuality and community

between which it had to mediate were limited, it could- be incomplete.

Proudhon and Bakunin cannot give such a reply to the charge that

complete respect lies beyond reach, because their more complex

individuality and community need mediation by a widely disseminated and

fully applied respect. Since respect is both more needed and less

attainable in Proudhon’s or Bakunin’s anarchy than sincerity is in

Godwin’s, theirs is harder to establish. But the point at issue here is

unaffected by this drawback. Though Proudhon and Bakunin would have

difficulty establishing anarchy with respect, respect is an appropriate

mediator between the individuality and community they seek. Their

anarchy is more complicated than Godwin’s and harder to achieve, but

like his its crux is a cohesive attitude which communally unites

developed selves. Proudhon’s and Bakunin’s anarchy is thus fundamentally

like Godwin’s, because its organizing principle is the same.

Kropotkin: Anarchy as an extended neighborhood

More than his predecessors, Kropotkin consciously extends the anarchist

tradition, by scrutinizing and developing its earlier forms. One part of

his revisionary effort is criticism of respect, both in its own right

and as a mediator.

Respect had seemed a worthy attitude to Proudhon and Bakunin, because it

fostered mutual consideration without what Proudhon called ‘solidarite

genante’.[126] Respect puts an upper limit on the help that one must

give. For I may go so far in helping you to think, choose or act that

your dependence on me impairs your capabilities. Since respect is

breached by excessive intervention, I must be careful not to give you

too much help.[127]

While acknowledging the value of an attitude of respect, Kropotkin finds

it too niggardly to serve as a mediating attitude for anarchy.

‘Something grander, more lovely, more vigorous... must perpetually find

a place in life.’[128] The fear of harming capabilities which a

respectful person feels makes his intervention too inhibited. Anarchy

requires outgoing relationships. It needs ‘large natures, overflowing

with tenderness, with intelligence, with good will, and using their

feeling, their intellect, their active force in the service of the human

race without asking anything in return’. In short, it needs

benevolence.[129]

Since Proudhon used benevolence to unite members of the family, one

might suppose that Kropotkin, developing the anarchist tradition,

extends domestic devotion to society at large. This belief is incorrect,

because for Kropotkin and Proudhon benevolence is different. Benevolence

for Proudhon is owed only to persons who, as members of a family, are

social intimates. Kropotkin thinks it is owed to anyone in need, even

complete strangers.[130] Kropotkin’s benevolence is also more

egalitarian and mutual. Whereas benevolence in Proudhon’s family is owed

by parents to children, who are not expected to be benevolent in turn,

it is owed in Kropotkin’s society by each to all. No hint of the

‘charity which bears a character of inspiration from above’ is found in

the benevolence Kropotkin seeks.[131] His is marked by a generous

reciprocity that makes us one with each other, sharing and equal. That

is why he often calls it mutual aid.

Kropotkin chooses benevolence rather than respect as the mediating

attitude of anarchy not just because he finds it generous, but because

he thinks its generosity better fits it to nurture his kind of self.

There is more to Kropotkin’s individuality than reasoning, emotions and

productive force. It also includes ‘inventive spirit’, ‘the

full...expansion of what is original’ in man, ‘an infinite variety of

capacities, temperaments and individual energies’.[132] The search for

this sort of creative individuality is a dangerous adventure, which

respectful (or sincere) treatment gives me little help to face. But if

the treatment I receive from others is inspired by benevolence, my

chance to become a creative individual grows. I can then rely on others

to help me when in need, just because I am their fellow and regardless

of defeats. Knowing they will support me should I fail in my quest gives

me courage to seek uniqueness and creativity in the face even of great

risk. Guyeau, notes Kropotkin, had posed the ultimate problem of

creative originality by his reminder that ‘sometimes to flower is to

die’.[133] Anarchist benevolence solves even this grave problem by

making-the risk of the creative quest acceptable. A cruel end may await

the seeker of individuality, but he is prepared by Kropotkin’s anarchy

even for death. ‘ If he must die like the flower that blooms, never

mind. The sap rises, if sap there be.’[134]

Community, like individuality, has distinctive traits for Kropotkin,

which make achieving it through benevolence appropriate. Proudhon and

Bakunin gave anarchist community an emotional dimension and widened it

to include productive work. Kropotkin further enlarges the anarchist

conception of community by bringing more activities and a new feeling

within its scope.

Reciprocal awareness among members of Kropotkin’s anarchy occurs at

every phase of life, in consuming as well as producing economic goods,

in non-economic activities such as ‘study, enjoyment, amusements’, and

in ‘the narrow circle of home and friends’.[135] It is thus more

pervasive in his society than in his predecessors’. Reciprocal awareness

for Kropotkin is also richer than for them, because it includes, besides

the rational, emotional and productive consciousness they mention, the

feeling of solidarity they deem suspect. Since the awareness that I know

you have and that you know I experience often arises in Kropotkin’s

anarchy from a sense of ‘what any being feels when it is made to

suffer’,[136] it includes the sympathy for others’ plight that Proudhon

and Bakunin mistrust and that the fragmented production they make the

source of reciprocal emotion does little to promote.

It is easy to see why an attitude of benevolence is a source of

reciprocal solidarity. A benevolent person gives overt sympathy to

anyone he encounters who needs help. Hence each member of a society in

which benevolence is practiced cares for the others, knows they care for

him and knows they know he cares. Benevolence is also an appropriate

supporting attitude for the pervasive community Kropotkin seeks. Unlike

sincerity, which is limited in application to intimate contexts such as

conversation, or respect, which for Proudhon and Bakunin mainly affects

treatment in productive life, benevolence, with its bearing on all

activities, helps make all of social life communal.

It is partly because Kropotkin’s community is so rich and pervasive that

his anarchy can be likened to an extended neighborhood. Relations in

small neighborhoods are apt to be benevolent and solidaristic in just

the way Kropotkin envisages for anarchy. What he can therefore be

conceived as doing is extending the neighborly relations which arise in

contiguous small groups to the context of society at large. This

interpretation of Kropotkin’s enterprise is confirmed by his view of

anarchy’s social structure. For, like his predecessors, he thinks

communal individuality unreachable if based only on a mediating

attitude, and tries to organize society so that it gives communal

individuality structural support. The social arrangement, called an

agro-industrial commune, that he relies on for this purpose combines

elements of earlier schemes of anarchist organization with new features

designed to overcome their shortcomings and which make social relations

neighborly.

The agro-industrial commune provides the same comprehensive education

and the same occupational mobility as Proudhon’s and Bakunin’s anarchy,

for Kropotkin agrees that by giving an industrial society these

attributes self-development and mutual awareness can be markedly

increased. Proudhon and Bakunin had judged their educational and

occupational arrangements to be powerful, if insufficient, as a social

basis for their communal individuality. Kropotkin, striving for a

communal individuality more elusive, because at once more particular and

more solidaristic, cannot rely as much on occupational mobility and

education for its achievement.

To provide the greater warmth and trust that his neighborly communal

individuality demands, Kropotkin returns to Godwin’s use of intimacy.

But whereas Godwin had conceived of intimacy as occurring within the

‘small and friendly circles’ of a simple anarchy, Kropotkin extends it

to a society that is larger and more complex. The main way he does this

is by requiring that all activities, but especially production, be

carried out in small, internally unspecialized units. The more intimate

relations in such units and their less differentiated roles make them

superior as a basis for solidaristic trust to the large, impersonal and

internally specialized units of which Proudhon’s and Bakunin’s anarchy

is composed.

To encourage the individual uniqueness, which is the other distinctive

aspect of his ideal, Kropotkin puts even more stress than his immediate

predecessors had on social diversity. It is ‘the highest development of

voluntary association in all its aspects, in all possible degrees, for

all imaginable aims; ever changing, ever modified associations which...

constantly assume new forms’ that enables the members of Kropotkin’s

anarchy to become singular.[137] For among the varied units in

Kropotkin’s good society, each finds those that help him to develop a

unique self.

One must doubt that benevolence, even in the context of an extended

neighborhood, could mediate acceptably between the particularistic

individuals and the solidaristic community that are the crucial elements

of Kropotkin’s ideal. More than his predecessors’, the goal of

Kropotkin’s anarchy is discordant. Conflict between his unique

individuals and their embracing community is more intense, and less

controllable, than the conflict between the individuals and community

earlier anarchists conceive. How can Kropotkin’s social order, however

well contrived, keep his seekers of uniqueness, even though benevolent,

from rending communal ties? How can it prevent these ties from stymieing

the creative quest? So bold is Kropotkin in denning the anarchist

project that he seems seriously to diminish its prospects for success.

The truth of this charge and its bearing on the merit of Kropotkin’s

anarchism are crucial evaluative questions which the concluding chapter

of this book takes up. But whatever the verdict on Kropotkin’s boldness

in discordantly defining his ideal, it has clear significance for the

theoretical unity of anarchism. Though Kropotkin’s ideal is more

strife-ridden than his predecessors’ it is the same ideal of communal

individuality. Its elements may clash more markedly and be harder to

achieve together, but they cannot be achieved apart.

Kropotkin’s way of realizing his aspirations is further evidence of

anarchism’s deep unity. Committed like his predecessors to

self-development and mutual awareness, and believing in the

interdependence of these goals, he too tries to reconcile them with a

mediating attitude and encourages this attitude with structural support.

That Kropotkin should try to realize his discordant ideal in so

unpromising a way may seem surprising. But it testifies once again to

the unity of anarchist thought. For if even Kropotkin chooses

attitudinal mediation as the path to communal individuality, then not

only this path’s destination, but the path itself must be one of

anarchism’s distinctive traits.

4. The Anarchists as critics of established institutions

It is as critics of established institutions that anarchists receive the

most acclaim. Even commentators who condemn their vision of future

society find in their attack on the present one a certain appeal. For no

matter how misguided the anarchists may be as visionaries, they point to

defects in the existing order which tend to be overlooked.[138]

While the depth and penetration of the anarchists’ criticism have long

been acknowledged, its coherence has remained in doubt. For if liberty

is regarded as the goal they are seeking, their choice of what to

criticize is bound to seem confused. Anarchists whose chief goal was

liberty would subject everything that curtails it to unlimited attack.

Yet they refrain from utterly condemning features of the existing system

such as authority and punishment, which interfere with liberty, and even

incorporate versions of these coercive institutions into their model of

an ideal regime. The thesis which serves as the main theme of this

study, ascribing communal individuality to anarchists as their ultimate

goal, serves to dispel the impression of incoherence in their criticism

by giving all of their objections to existing institutions a justified

place. The nuances and qualifications in their attack on the established

order, which otherwise seem aberrant, are revealed as enjoined by their

chief value, once its true character is recognized. Seeing the

anarchists as seekers of communal individuality brings out their

theory’s coherence not only as a plan for social reconstruction, but

also as a work of criticism.

Although each of the anarchists whose thought we are examining

criticizes aspects of the existing social system that the others spare,

all four agree that institutions usually taken for granted as integral

parts of modern society deserve to be attacked. Legal government is, of

course, the institution they most categorically condemn. Their

opposition to authority, punishment and social inequality, while more

limited, is just as intense. They all also find fault with industrial

technology, though here their condemnation is remarkably nuanced. It is

by analyzing their objections to these five institutions that the

structure of their social criticism can most easily be revealed, for the

anarchists use similar arguments, similarly qualified, to denounce all

objects of their collective wrath.

Law, government and unanimous direct democracy

Since the anarchists’ view of legal government was examined in detail

when it was compared with their view of censure no more is needed here

as an account of their objections than a brief sketch. This section is

less concerned to describe these objections than to clarify how far they

extend. What it seeks to establish is whether anarchists call for the

abolition of legal government no matter what its type, or whether, as

some have thought, there is one type they accept.

It is of course as a hindrance to self-development and mutual awareness

that anarchists condemn legal government. The generality and permanence

of its controls, the remoteness of its officials and its use of physical

coercion as its method of enforcement combine, say anarchists, to

engender a distrust, resentment and impersonality that stifle

individuals and break communal ties. Yet Robert Paul Wolff has argued

that anarchists must accept one type of legal government as consistent

with their conception of a good society. This is unanimous direct

democracy.[139]

In a unanimous direct democracy everyone deliberates and votes on

legislative proposals, and only those approved by everyone have force of

law. One main reason Wolff thinks anarchists must support this form of

government is because it dispenses with physical coercion. Since the

subjects of other governments disapprove on occasion of following the

law, they must sometimes be forced physically to do what it directs. But

whenever the citizen of a unanimous direct democracy follows a law, he

carries out an action which he personally approves. The esteem of all

citizens for the laws they must obey makes sanctioning them with

physical force unnecessary.

Even if anarchists endorsed government, provided it did not physically

coerce, they still would reject unanimous direct democracy, because such

a government, despite what Wolff says, resorts on occasion to physical

force. A person who turns against enacted legislation is no less forced

to comply with it by a unanimous direct democracy than by other

governments. The fact that he once voted for a law he now opposes and

that he can repeal it when it comes up for review does not exempt him

from coercion for the period, however short, while it remains in effect.

Nor are persons unable to get their legislative proposals enacted exempt

from coercion, since they are forced by their government to do without

the laws they want.

But let us suppose that a unanimous direct democracy can dispense with

physical force. Even then it can have no place in a complete anarchy,

for it has other features besides physical coercion that anarchists

contest.

One is the deliberation through which the citizens of a unanimous direct

democracy decide what laws to enact. It may seem surprising that the

anarchists, who so prize personal deliberation, should oppose the

collective deliberations of a unanimous direct democracy. They reach

this conclusion by condemning the special kind of deliberation that

occurs under such a government as lacking in rationality and hence in

worth.

In a unanimous direct democracy all citizens deliberate as equals in the

legislative assembly. Anarchists argue that the great size of an

assembly in which everyone participates inhibits forthright

communication, invites rhetorical pandering, and relieves citizens of

personal responsibility for their decisions, all of which prevent the

independent scrutiny of arguments and evidence on which rational

deliberation rests. As Godwin complains, ‘A fallacious uniformity of

opinion is produced, which no man espouses from conviction, but which

carries all men along with a resistless tide.’[140]

Membership in a unanimous direct democracy could of course be limited so

that the rationality of deliberation in the legislative assembly was not

impaired by excessive size. But anarchists contend that deliberation,

even in a unanimous direct democracy that is very small, remains

pernicious. The fact that deliberation among legislators cannot always

continue until a consensus is reached, but must often terminate with a

vote, is enough to rob it of rationality. Where voting is used to end

deliberation, says Godwin, ‘the orator no longer enquires after

permanent conviction, but transitory effect. He seeks rather to take

advantage of our prejudices than to enlighten our judgment. That which

might otherwise have been a scene of patient and beneficent enquiry, is

changed into wrangling, tumult and precipitation.’[141]

Requiring the vote which enacts legislation to be unanimous further

diminishes deliberative rationality by discouraging dissent. Godwin

points out that where, to use Proudhon’s words, ‘the assembly

deliberates and votes like a single man’, ‘the happy varieties of

sentiment, which so eminently contribute to intellectual acuteness, are

lost’.[142] The deliberating citizens, sensing the need to legislate,

tend much more than in a majoritarian democracy to vote for whatever

proposal seems most apt to win.

Nor must it be forgotten that the point of deliberation in a unanimous

direct democracy is to legislate. Hence unanimous direct democracy

suffers from the same defects, except perhaps physical coercion, as

anarchists find in law. To anarchists, the equality of participation in

a unanimous direct democracy is only dangerous, for it cannot rid the

law which the assembly enacts of permanence, or generality. And it poses

a danger of its own. As legislators, the assembled citizens must view

proposals disinterestedly, from the impartial standpoint of the social

whole. They must, in Godwin’s words, ‘sink the personal existence of

individuals in the existence of the community [and] make little account

of the particular men of whom the society consists’.[143] An assembly

composed of citizens as anonymous as these is certainly not an

individualized community. Its members may be bound together, but not so

as to advance their self-development. And it easily degenerates into

what Bakunin calls ‘a sacrificer of living men,...where the real wills

of individuals are annulled in that abstraction called the public will’.

The diffusion in any democracy, but especially in a unanimous direct

one, of a homogenizing spirit ‘restrains, mutilates and kills the

humanity of its subjects so that in ceasing to be men they become

nothing more than citizens’.[144]

There is one main objection to the conclusion to which this analysis

points, that anarchists would abolish legal government of every type.

Some anarchists support the use of legal government where the conditions

are lacking for anarchism’s success. In such situations, they argue,

legal government may be a necessary safeguard for domestic peace.

Moreover, if it takes the form of a decentralized participative

democracy, it may even advance the cause of anarchy through its

educational effects. But the support of anarchists for legal government

in adverse situations does not impugn the conclusion being defended

here, which states only that in a mature anarchy legal government has no

place. Since even unanimous direct democracy, which is the one form of

government that anarchists might conceivably accept, receives their

harsh strictures as repugnant to their ultimate ideal, they must

certainly be regarded, despite the provisional support they give to

legal government, as denying it any place whatever in an anarchist

society that is complete.

Authority

Anarchists are often thought to hold that in their good society no one

ought to exercise authority.[145] On this view, their opposition to

authority is just as categorical as their opposition to the state. It is

not only legal authority that receives their condemnation: they would

abolish authority of every sort. There are statements by the anarchists

that make them sound like authority’s unrelenting foes, but the textual

evidence is ambiguous enough to justify giving their attitude a close

look. Do anarchists reject authority altogether, or are there some types

they support? If they do support some, on what ground does their backing

rest?

Authority can be exercised over belief as well as conduct, and in the

private realm of groups and families, as well as in the public, social

realm of life. Analysis of the anarchists as critics of authority must

focus on their view of its application to public conduct. Concentrating

on this narrow issue brings out what is distinctive in their attitude

toward authority, which is anything but original so far as it applies to

belief or private conduct.[146]

Authority, as applied to conduct, is a way to secure compliance with a

directive, distinguished by the ground on which the directive is obeyed.

You exercise authority over my conduct if you issue me a directive, and

I follow it because I believe that something about you, not the

directive, makes compliance the proper course. This something about you

that elicits my compliance is something I attribute either to your

position or to your person. I may submit to your authority because I

think your position (say as president) makes you an appropriate issuer

of directives, or because I think you are personally equipped (perhaps

by advanced training) to direct my acts with special competence.[147]

Although anarchists accept personal qualities as sometimes entitling an

issuer of directives to authority over private conduct, they deny that

it ever entitles him to authority over conduct in the public sphere. We

all lack the competence to do many private things and may be entitled in

such cases to follow the direction of experts.[148] But since public

conduct lies ‘equally within the province of every human understanding’,

the personal qualities of those who direct it give them no right to be

obeyed. In acting publicly, ‘I am a deserter from the requisitions of

duty, if I do not assiduously exert my faculties, or if I be found to

act contrary to the conclusions they dictate, from deference to the

opinions of another.’[149]

Though anarchists spurn personal qualities as a warrant for public

authority, this does not mean that they would abolish public authority

altogether. For they hold that under anarchy one still should sometimes

obey issuers of directives that apply to public life out of regard for

their position. The claim that they believe this faces several

objections, which need to be rebutted before it can be effectively

sustained.

What need to be considered first are statements by the anarchists which

mock claims to public authority conferred by position. The clearest such

statement is Godwin’s, where he asks why one should obey another

‘because he happens to be born to certain privileges; or because a

concurrence of circumstances... has procured for him a share in the

legislative or executive government of our country? Let him content

himself with the obedience that is the result of force.’[150] Though

this statement certainly condemns authority conferred by inherited or

governmental position, it gives no basis for condemning positional

authority altogether. That anarchists endorse authority in a state of

anarchy, where its position can have different attributes, remains

possible.

More troublesome as evidence against calling the anarchists supporters

of positional authority is their repeated denunciation of authority in

general. They must of course rule out authority conferred by position if

they rule out authority of every type. This objection can be best

allayed by noting that the anarchists’ use of the term, ‘authority’ is

ambiguous. They often use it in the way described above, to designate a

way to secure obedience based on an obeyer’s belief about the one he

obeys. But they also use ‘authority’ in a different sense to mean

obedience procured by the rightful threat or use of physical force. To

say that when they denounce authority they are always using it in the

latter sense might seem reckless, but this contention is well supported

by the texts.[151] Since what anarchists are denouncing when they attack

authority is legitimate physical coercion, that they give positional

authority a place in anarchy remains possible.

There is one more ground to doubt that anarchists embrace positional

authority — its incompatibility with action based on reasoned argument.

Action, to be commendable for anarchists, must rest on arguments and

evidence that the deliberating agent judges for himself. ‘The conviction

of a man’s individual understanding is the only legitimate principle

imposing on him the duty of adopting any species of conduct.’[152]

Though anarchists do not systematically ask how authority affects the

rational basis of action, this effect is easy to describe.

Whenever an authority issues a directive to a subject who concludes from

his own assessment of arguments and evidence that the act the authority

prescribes for him is wrong, the authority prevents him from following

his conclusion. For a subject cannot obey an authority and also follow

his own conclusion, when the courses prescribed by the authority and his

conclusion conflict. Since all authority sometimes keeps its subjects

from following their rationally based conclusions about the merit of the

action it prescribes, and since anarchists think the basis of one’s

action should be one’s own rational assessment of its merits, it would

seem that they must exclude positional authority, as much as personal,

from regulating public conduct under anarchy.

The weak point in this argument is its assumption that for anarchists

the value of reasoned argument is always overriding. If anarchists

believed this, then they would indeed lack any normative basis in their

theory to justify authority. But they do not believe it. As earlier

chapters of this study show, the value of reasoned argument, while great

for anarchists, is less than ultimate. It is a means to, and a part of,

communal individuality, but is not itself supreme. Hence the fact that

authority sometimes prevents action from resting on reasons leaves open

the issue whether it has a place in anarchy. To resolve that issue the

relations among authority, communal individuality and reasoned argument

must be explored.

In deciding on the scope of reasoned argument, the anarchists are guided

by their commitment to communal individuality. They support reasoned

argument so fat as they think it serves communal individuality, and they

reject it so far as they think it causes communal individuality harm.

The most obvious way reasoned argument harms communal individuality is

by endangering social peace, as when it proves unable to ward off

physical conflict. We have seen already that anarchists admit the

frailty of reason and in cases of danger endorse controlling misbehavior

with rebuke. What must now be added is that rebuke in a state of anarchy

is a last resort. Against the insufficiency of reason and

internalization to control misbehavior, authority is the anarchists’

first defense; rebuke plays the role of a back-up, only to be inflicted

when obedience to authority fails. Thus Proudhon and Bakunin call on

‘opinion’ and ‘public spirit’, not only to control misbehavior directly,

but as means to enforce authority’s decrees.[153] Godwin is more

specific about how authority forestalls rebuke. When reason fails in a

state of anarchy, most participants ‘readily yield to the expostulations

of authority’. But sometimes an authority’s title to obedience is

challenged. If the challengers disobey the authority, then and only then

are they rebuked.’ Uneasy under the unequivocal disapprobation and

observant eye of public judgment’, they are ‘inevitably obliged...

either to reform or to emigrate.’[154]

The anarchists use authority, rather than rebuke, as the first defense

against dangerous misconduct in order to protect communal individuality.

Since rebuke, as the most coercive of censure’s three aspects, can cause

communal individuality much damage, it is important to anarchists that

its use be minimized. If it was the first defense against misconduct, it

would have to be invoked whenever reasoned argument or internalization

proved ineffective. But as a back-up to authority, it need be invoked

only on the few occasions when authority fails. As for the harm caused

to communal individuality by authority, anarchists argue that if the

authority is positional and properly restrained, this harm is slight.

Requiring authority to be positional rather than personal diminishes the

harm it causes communal individuality by giving rational deliberation a

wider scope. When I obey a personal authority, I refrain from evaluating

the merit of the action he prescribes. Believing that some personal

quality, such as special knowledge or insight, gives him the competence

I lack to direct my conduct, I obey him without inquiring whether what

he bids me to do is right. This inquiry is allowed by positional

authority; for my obedience to such an authority does not depend on my

assuming the correctness of his prescribed act. Since I believe that I

ought to obey him because he occupies an entitling position, whatever

the merit of his directives, I am free to assess them fully, so long as

I follow them if my verdict is adverse. It is obvious, from this

comparison, that positional authority allows rational deliberation more

scope than personal authority does. And since rational deliberation is

an intimate part of the anarchist ideal of communal individuality, it is

also obvious that by requiring authority to be conferred by position the

anarchists give their ideal significant support.

Even though positional authority does less damage to communal

individuality than personal authority does, it still does damage. For

even it requires subjects to do what they judge wrong. To alleviate the

threat to their ideal that even positional authority presents,

anarchists place restraints on it, designed so that it interferes as

little with deliberation as is consistent with the need to maintain

domestic peace. The restraints anarchists suggest for doing this specify

who may fill positions of authority and how authority must be exercised.

It is usually by holding a specially designated office that one gains

title to positional authority. Anarchists oppose giving authority to

holders of special office. Thus Proudhon would ‘eliminate the last

shadow of authority from judges’, and Bakunin rejects ‘all privileged,

licensed, official authority’. Rather than being confined to holders of

designated offices, authority in an anarchy is, in Godwin’s words,

‘exercised by every individual over the actions of another’. All members

of society must have a right to wield authority before its directives

can deserve to be obeyed.[155]

To defend the legitimacy of authority exercised by all, anarchists rely

on the comparison with legal government which they also use to defend

censure. Wielders of authority who hold designated positions are like

government officials in being too few to know the details of their

subjects’ situations. Hence they must treat them as an undifferentiated

group. Such treatment must often seem mistaken to the subjects, who,

more familiar with their situations, are apt to conclude that

circumstances unknown to the authorities make it wrong to act as they

direct. But if everybody has authority, it can obstruct deliberation

less because then its wielders, being the same people as its subjects,

but in different roles, can have more intimate knowledge of particulars.

Equipped with this knowledge, they can bring their directives and the

deliberations of their subjects into closer accord.

Besides requiring that authority in a state of anarchy be shared by

everyone, anarchists also insist that its directives be concrete, not

bound by or embodied in general rules, but flexible and specific.[156]

Their argument for concrete authority borrows again from their

comparison between censure and legal government. Authority which issues

general directives, like government which issues general laws, impedes

deliberation, even if its wielders are very numerous, because general

directives, applying to broad classes of action, and hence unable to

adjust much to specific circumstances, are often opposed by subjects for

failing to take these circumstances into account. An authority whose

directives are particular, being more able to consider individual

situations, can better avoid contradicting the deliberations of its

subjects about the merit of its prescribed acts.

Two conclusions are unmistakable from the analysis in this section. It

is clear, for one thing, that, contrary to prevalent opinion and to what

may be their own denials, anarchists give public- authority a place in

their good society. The authority they favor is extraordinarily limited,

to be sure, but it is still authority, for it is a way to control

behavior based on the subject’s belief that something about the issuer

of a directive gives him a right to be obeyed. The other noteworthy

conclusion emerging from this analysis is that the anarchists’

commitment to communal individuality easily explains both why they

denounce most forms of authority and why they endorse their own

distinctive type. Aware that authority obstructs rational deliberation,

they fear it as a threat to their ideal. Unwilling to rely on reasoned

argument alone as a behavioral control, they refuse to dispense with

authority altogether. It is as an attempt to resolve the dilemma posed

by these considerations that anarchists endorse the limited authority

this section has described.

Punishment

If one uses nothing but the anarchists’ explicit judgments as evidence

of their attitude toward punishment, one must conclude that they condemn

it unequivocally, for they denounce it with extraordinary force. Godwin,

for instance, proclaims that ‘punishment can at no time... make part of

any political system that is built on the principles of reason’, and

Proudhon calls for the ‘complete abolition of the supposed right to

punish, which is nothing but the emphatic violation of an individual’s

dignity’.[157] This section argues for counting anarchists as

punishment’s supporters, despite statements like the foregoing in which

they sound like unrelenting foes. Anarchists harshly oppose most forms

of punishment, but they give a place in anarchy to one special kind.

Their attacks on punishment are misread if taken as signs of utter

condemnation.

There are three standard ways of justifying punishment: as retribution

for the offender, as a means of reform by weakening his desire to

misbehave, or, through the fear evoked by his suffering, to deter him

from repeating, and others from committing, crimes. Godwin, who may here

be taken as spokesman for all anarchists, opposes each of these

justifications of punishment for warranting too many bad effects.

Retribution is easily disposed of in this way since it fails to consider

effects at all. Punishment is justified by retributivists because it is

deserved, regardless of its consequences, which thus may cause

considerable harm. Arguments for deterrence and reform, being based on

consequences, need more elaborate rebuttal. Godwin weighs the likely

effects of punishing for these reasons and finds that on balance they

are bad.

It is the physical coercion imposed by punishment that Godwin sees as

the source of its worst effects. Being coercive, punishment arouses fear

in those it threatens. They are apt to do as they are told because they

dread the suffering that might result from disobedience, rather than

because they think what they are told to do is right. Obeying for this

reason seems disastrous to Godwin, as to all anarchists, for whom the

basis of self-development and communal solidarity lies in independent

thought. ‘Coercion first annihilates the understanding of the subject on

which it is exercised, and then of him who employs it. Dressed in the

supine prerogatives of a master, he is excused from cultivating the

faculties of a man.’[158]

No matter how severe the bad effects of punishment may be, they cannot

by themselves defeat the case for reform and deterrence, which claims

that the bad effects are outweighed by the good. Thus Godwin must show

not only that punishment is costly, but that its reformative and

deterrent benefits are less valuable or less certain than they seem. The

main benefit of reformative punishment is to weaken the desire to

misbehave by evoking contrition and remorse. Godwin argues that the

coercion punishment imposes prevents it from achieving this result. It

‘cannot convince, cannot conciliate, but on the contrary alienates the

mind of him against whom it is employed’.[159] Far from weakening

criminal inclinations, punishment strengthens them, by making its

victims resentful, not contrite. Reformative punishment thus fails to

achieve its intended benefit because those subject to it become more

anti-social than they were before. A similar argument is applied by

Godwin to deterrent punishment, which is intended to reduce misconduct

by overpowering criminal impulses with fear. Deterrent punishment can

certainly make its victim more fearful of committing crime, but since it

also arouses his hostility, it does not make him less likely to

misbehave. Nor does the example of his punishment frighten others into

eschewing crime. The spectacle of his suffering only makes them

indignant, and more inclined to misbehave.[160]

By vigorously denouncing retribution, deterrence and reform, the

anarchists certainly give the appearance of being utterly opposed to

punishment. How can they support it, when they oppose the three main

arguments deployed on its behalf? They do so by relying on a different

argument, which justifies rebuke as punishment to prevent offenders from

committing further crimes.[161] Even under anarchy there remains some

danger of misconduct, which authority sanctioned by rebuke prevents.

Though anarchists do not call this rebuke punishment, it is easy to show

that they should.

Following common usage, anarchists conceive of punishment as a special

type of suffering. For one thing, it must be imposed for a misdeed. The

putting to death of a man ‘infected with a pestilential disease’ does

not fall ‘within the import of the word punishment’ because the victim

of such treatment has done no wrong.[162] Furthermore, the suffering

called punishment must be imposed by an authority. That is why

anarchists refuse to count as punishment acts of vengeance or of force

applied in self-defense.[163] Though no anarchist gives punishment an

explicit definition, the evidence just presented shows how for them it

is implicitly defined. Anarchists, like most thoughtful writers on penal

matters, define punishment as suffering imposed by an authority on an

offender for his offense.

This definition gives the basis to establish that anarchists must

classify the rebuke which occurs in their good society as punishment.

Authorities in a state of anarchy are certainly the only persons who

impose rebuke; for since, as the previous section indicated, no one in

an anarchy lacks authority, any member who imposes rebuke must have it.

It is equally obvious that under anarchy rebuke falls only on offenders

for their offenses, because an anarchist authority may only rebuke a

disobedient subject for a wrong he has done. Since the rebuke anarchists

favor has the characteristics they quite sensibly identify as

punishment’s defining traits, calling it punishment seems a judgment

they are forced to make.

They give two main arguments for refusing to make this judgment. Godwin

refuses to make it by claiming that because rebuke controls without

resort to ‘whips and chains’, it lacks the defining characteristic of

punishment which consists in causing suffering.[164] The flaw in this

argument is its assumption that the only kind of suffering is physical.

Since the suffering rebuke causes, though purely mental, still is

suffering, the anarchists, by justifying it, are justifying punishment.

Proudhon argues for denying that rebuke is punishment by claiming that

under anarchy an obdurate offender, the only type who deserves rebuke,

is not a human, but an animal: ‘He has fallen to the level of a brute

with a human face.’[165] No punishment befalls such an offender, no

matter how severe his rebuke, because he is an animal, and animals,

unlike humans, cannot be punished. This argument would work if Proudhon

called obdurate offenders animals on the ground that their criminal

behavior was involuntary. For punishment applies only to persons who can

choose to stop committing crimes. But Proudhon believes that the

obdurate criminal acts voluntarily. This ‘ferocious soul’ has ‘placed

himself outside the law’ and can obey it if he tries.[166] His animality

arises not from irresponsibility but from viciousness. By tracing his

animality to this source, Proudhon removes the ground for denying he is

punished when rebuked. For while it is impossible to punish offenders

whose involuntary behavior makes them animals, there is no logical bar

to punishing offenders whose animality comes from being vicious. The

suffering rebuke causes such offenders, being imposed on them by an

authority for their voluntarily committed crimes, must be accounted

punishment by anarchists.

It becomes easy to understand how anarchists justify punishment once one

sees that they are backing it when they advocate rebuke. The punishment

anarchists favor is distinguished from all others by both its method and

its aim; and it is on proof that what distinguishes it from other sorts

makes it superior that their justification rests. Anarchist punishment

is distinctive in method because it works entirely through rebuke and

not at all through physical force. This gives it the advantages,

described in prior chapters, that anarchists find in rebuke, of which

the most crucial in the present context are its comparative mildness and

its lesser tendency to illicit resentment. Anarchist punishment is

distinctive in aim because it is imposed for none of the three standard

reasons, but only to prevent offenders from repeating their crimes.

Imposing it for this purpose avoids much cruelty justified by the

standard aims. Retribution calls for punishment, even if it will do

harm. Deterrence requires savagery, if it will frighten its victim or

other possible offenders into refraining from crime. Deterrence and

reform both warrant causing the innocent to suffer, either as an example

or as therapy. The freedom of prevention from these shortcomings makes

it markedly less offensive as the aim of punishment.

The anarchists resort to punishment of a limited kind, despite serious

misgivings, in an attempt to resolve a dilemma much like the one that

leads them to endorse a limited authority. Unwilling to rely on

authority as a last resort to prevent misconduct, even under anarchy,

where criminal inclinations would, in Godwin’s words, ‘be almost

unknown’, they insist on giving authority a penal sanction.[167] Fearful

of the threat posed by this sanction to the integrity of their ideal,

they hem it in with limitations designed to make its interference with

communal individuality minimal. Thus punishment, like authority, far

from being at odds with anarchy, is one of its integral parts.

Social inequality

Though anarchists are sometimes called radical egalitarians, against all

differences of treatment, this view of them is even less persuasive than

the view that they utterly reject authority and punishment.[168]

Anarchist responses to the scourge of inequality are various, ranging

from Godwin’s plea for little more than equal opportunity to Kropotkin’s

scheme to redistribute advantages according to basic need. But since

even Kropotkin’s egalitarianism allows differences in benefits, it, no

less than the others, is less than radical. This section makes sense of

anarchist views on inequality of wealth and prestige by showing how

their similarities and differences derive from a shared ideal. The

anarchists’ commitment to communal individuality confines their attacks

on inequality to a limited range; differences in this commitment, along

with special circumstances, explain why, within this range, each of

their attacks has a separate place.

Godwin’s objections to social and economic inequality are so emphatic,

that if one considered nothing else, one might think his egalitarianism

radical. He regards the evils of legal government as ‘imbecil and

impotent’ compared to the evils of unequally distributed prestige and

wealth.[169] The latter not only obstruct communal individuality, but

are a main cause of legal government. For they so disrupt men’s

character and mutual relations that legal government must be imposed as

a cohesive force. Social inequality for Godwin thus stands doubly

condemned: both for impairing communal individuality by making it

necessary to endure a state and for impairing communal individuality in

its own right. It is by examining his account of the latter, direct

impairment, that the main lines of his attack on inequality are easiest

to grasp.

Predictably, he finds the harm done to character by economic inequality

to lie in discouragement of rational independence. The poor, in an

economically stratified society, even if they live comfortably, are

burdened by a servility and by a compulsion to work, both of which

‘benumb their understandings’.[170] The rich fare no better. Their

rational capacities are sapped either by ‘vanity and ostentation’, by

‘dissipation and indolence’ or by ‘restless ambition’.[171] Unequal

prestige compounds the damage caused by unequal wealth. A society with

ranks engenders deference and arrogance against which reason’s counsel

is unable to compete.[172]

Godwin also shows how inequality shatters the conversational relations

which are for him the substance of community. ‘The spirit of oppression,

the spirit of servility, and the spirit of fraud’, which are ‘the

immediate growth’ of economic differences, are ample to disrupt men’s

unity as equals who honestly share their considered thoughts. The

members of a society with economic differences too often harm their

neighbors in order to get more wealth.[173] As for differences of rank,

these, by making esteem depend on the prestige of one’s position, create

the same disruptive struggle in social interaction as differences of

wealth create in economic life.

Besides opposing economic inequality for harming communal individuality,

Godwin also condemns it as unjust. To allow differences of income or

wealth, even without poverty, is to grant ‘a patent for taking away from

others the means of a happy and respectable existence’. It involves

saying to the advantaged, ‘you shall have the essence of a hundred times

more food than you can eat and a hundred times more clothes than you can

wear’.[174] Here we see a theme in Godwin that his successors stress

more: benefits must be allocated in proportion to need.

Yet though Godwin denounces inequality with remarkable vigor, he draws

back from urging an equal distribution of prestige and wealth. ‘The

treatment to which men are entitled is to be measured by their merits.’

‘The thing really to be desired is the removing as much as possible of

arbitrary distinctions, and leaving to talents and virtue the field of

exertion unimpaired.’[175] Far from backing radical equality, Godwin

here urges that benefits be distributed unequally, according to desert.

Hierarchy, he implies, is perfectly acceptable, so long as its

advantages are earned. The only equality he here seems to support is the

equal opportunity to excel.

The disparity between Godwin’s attack on unequal treatment and his

support for inequality proportionate to desert is explained by his

beliefs about private property and distributive justice. He sees each of

these as requiring an abatement of the radical egalitarianism that his

attack on inequality would otherwise suggest.

Godwin believes that the rational individuality which equality helps

produce is also much encouraged by private ownership. Rational

individuals need a wide area of action in which to carry out their own

decisions. The area of their discretionary action can be extended, and

its boundaries secured, by making them property owners, conceived as

allowed to use their holdings as they alone decide.[176] There is

nothing in Godwin’s commitment to private ownership that requires him to

reject complete economic equality. Equal wealth can coexist with private

property, if each individual has the same amount. But Godwin believes

that wealth is in fact always unequally distributed where private

property is held.[177] It is this empirical belief that prevents him

from pursuing the egalitarian possibility that private ownership allows.

His conception of distributive justice also prevents him from pursuing

it. Godwin’s conception of distributive justice is a mixed one, which

recognizes the claims of both productive contribution and basic need.

The claim of need, we noted earlier, favors (though it does not mandate)

radical egalitarianism by forbidding treatment that unequally meets the

needs of life. Resources in a society governed by the claim of need are

distributed unequally to be sure, but since the basic needs of

individuals are similar, benefits to persons, in the form of

need-satisfaction, are much the same.[178] The claim of contribution

cuts against radical egalitarian-ism more sharply. Since the

contributions of individuals vary more than their basic needs do, a

society which rewards contribution not only allocates resources less

equally than a society which rewards need, it also allocates personal

benefits less equally. Thus Godwin’s acceptance of productive

contribution as a legitimate claim of justice helps — along with his

beliefs about the effects on rational individuality of private ownership

— to explain why his opposition to inequality is less radical than his

denunciations make it seem.

The ambivalence of Godwin about the merit of equality is expressed in

his view of its place in anarchy. He provides the equality that he

thinks communal individuality and the claim of need demand by

establishing a floor of basic goods. Each member of his anarchy,

regardless of desert, receives a sufficient and equal supply of life’s

necessities.[179] The inequality that he thinks private ownership and

the claim of contribution require is provided by the unequal

distribution of luxuries and prestige. Once the claim of need is

satisfied, the members of his anarchy receive economic benefits

proportionate to ‘the produce of [their] own industry’, while esteem is

meted out to them for ‘the acquisition of talent, or the practice of

virtue, or the cultivation of some species of ingenuity, or the display

of some generous and expansive sentiment’.[180]

Godwin’s successors are torn by the same conflicting considerations in

their criticism of inequality. But, committed to more solidaristic

conceptions of communal individuality, ownership and distributive

justice, and having designed more egalitarian institutions, they come

closer to supporting radical equality.

The objections to unequal wealth and prestige as bars to communal

individuality, which Godwin was the first anarchist to raise, are

repeated by all three of his successors. Where they differ from him is

in gradually ridding anarchism of its anti-egalitarian, meritocratic

elements. Proudhon retains some considerable commitment to private

ownership and the claim of contribution, but these commitments are

effaced in Bakunin’s work and gone almost entirely from Kropotkin’s.

Thus, whereas Bakunin had still backed private ownership of goods used

for consumption, though not production, and had proposed as the

principle of economic distribution payment according to the number of

hours worked, Kropotkin would have both consumption and production goods

owned by the public and wants income to be distributed almost purely

according to the claim of need.

As one argument for rejecting the claim of contribution and accepting

that of need Kropotkin cites the technical difficulty of measuring how

much any specific individual contributes to the value of economic goods.

He takes the example of a coal mine and asks who among those involved in

its operation adds most to the value of the coal. The miner, the

engineer, the owner and many others, including those who built the

railroads and machines that serve the mine, all contribute something to

its final product, but it is impossible to say how much. ‘One thing

remains, to put the needs above the works.’[181]

He uses a similar technical argument to undermine the claim to private

ownership. The distinction between instruments of production and

articles of consumption is impossible to draw. ‘For the worker, a room,

properly heated and lighted, is as much an instrument of production as

the tool or the machine.’ His food ‘is just as much a part of production

as the fuel burnt by the steam engine’. His clothes ‘are as necessary to

him as the hammer and the anvil’.[182] Hence property arrangements,

which make ownership of the means of production public, while leaving

articles of consumption in private hands, cannot be established. Both

kinds of property must be either publicly or privately owned. Faced with

these alternatives, Kropotkin has no doubt which anarchists will select.

Exclusively private ownership is too divisive; hence completely public

ownership must be their choice.

Behind his technical objections to private ownership and to paying

producers according to their contribution lies Kropotkin’s more

fundamental argument that these practices harm communal individuality.

Even if particular contributions could be measured, even if private

ownership of consumption but not production goods could be arranged,

Kropotkin would still reject these practices as incompatible with the

unique individuality and the solidaristic community it is his purpose to

achieve. Both payment for contribution and private ownership encourage

personal acquisition, the first by rewarding it, the second by assuring

the acquirer exclusive use of whatever he obtains. These practices also

encourage a book-keeping mentality, according to which one gives in

order to get. Society becomes ‘a commercial company based on debit and

credit’.[183] Acquirers who insist on equivalent exchange are unlikely

to develop into benevolent, emotionally sensitive individuals, united by

empathetic ties. Only by ‘producing and consuming without counting each

individual’s contribution’ and by ‘proclaiming the right of all to

wealth — whatever share they may have taken in producing it’, can the

communal individuality Kropotkin seeks be reached.[184]

Why do his predecessors, most notably Godwin, disagree? Mainly because

their conceptions of individuality and community are different. Their

conceptions of individuality, being more rationalistic than Kropotkin’s,

are more congenial to the separateness engendered by private property

and by contribution as the criterion for pay. An independent thinker

needs more protection from others than does a singular, emotionally

developed self, for whom others’ acts are more apt to be encouragements

than incursions. The concept of community shared by Kropotkin’s

predecessors, being less solidaristic than his, helps further to explain

why they disagree with him on the merit of the contribution standard and

private property. The earlier anarchists are suspicious of solidarity as

a danger to self-development. For Kropotkin, however, solidarity is one

of the self’s parts. Hence the sympathetic ties that so frighten his

predecessors, and which they use the contribution standard and private

property to combat, are for him essential to community. Viewing

solidarity in this light, Kropotkin can not only do without the

contribution standard and private property but must consider them

abhorrent.

Besides having a basis in theory for his more radical egalitarianism,

Kropotkin also has one in projected practice. His plan for anarchy — the

agro-industrial commune — differs from earlier plans by building all the

activities that normally occur in a large, industrial society into

numerous, diverse, but small and internally unspecialized units. In a

society so organized, benefits can be more equally distributed than in

one composed of the more internally specialized, larger and more uniform

units envisaged by Proudhon or Bakunin.

Yet, though Kropotkin’s criticism of inequality is more sweeping than

that of other anarchists, not even his is radically egalitarian. Radical

egalitarianism, it will be recalled, is the thesis that everyone should

be treated alike. There are at least two reasons why Kropotkin must

reject it. His commitment to need as the criterion of distribution,

while favoring movement toward radical egalitarianism, prevents him from

accepting it completely, because needs cannot be satisfied without

treating people differently. To satisfy the need for health, for

instance, one must give more medical attention to the sick than to the

well. The other reason why Kropotkin must reject radical egalitarianism

stems from his conception of communal individuality. His conception,

even more than that of the other anarchists, emphasizes a particularity

which cannot possibly be achieved by treating everyone alike. Rather, it

calls for individualized treatment, aimed at bringing out what in each

person is singular.

Since even Kropotkin is kept by the fundamental principle of anarchism

from radically condemning inequality, there must be a more accurate way

to characterize his opposition. Calling Kropotkin, or any anarchist, a

radical egalitarian is profoundly misleading, because it obscures a

distinction in anarchist theory that is of great importance. Treating

everyone alike ends two kinds of inequality which anarchists appraise

differently. It not only eliminates the inequalities of rank, which all

of them deplore, but wipes out the diversity that they regard as

indispensable. What gives anarchist criticism of social inequality its

special interest is that it focuses on hierarchy, not difference.[185]

Each anarchist attempts, within limits set by his preconceptions, to

diminish inequalities of rank while increasing those of kind. The

hazards of this project explain why anarchist criticism of inequality is

somewhat tentative. Since a richly differentiated society cannot be

entirely free of ranks, it is no wonder that anarchists, though among

the harshest critics of hierarchy, are still forced to put up with some.

Technology

Technology, for the anarchists, consists of the organization and

machinery that transformed the productive process in their time. As

modern industry developed, they grew more aware of how it undermined the

social and psychological prerequisites for communal individuality. But

even Godwin, who wrote when the industrial revolution was just starting,

saw the main ways it threatens the advent of anarchy.

He, no less than his successors, believed that the division of labor,

which was adopted by modern industry at an early stage, disrupts the

intimate, fluid relations on which communal individuality so largely

rests. He was also alarmed by mechanization, which, following on the

heels of divided labor, separated skilled from unskilled workers, made

unskilled labor even more routine, and put further barriers between ever

more fragmented kinds of skilled work. Industrial technology is also

feared by anarchists as a cause.of social hierarchy. Besides dividing

producers by their occupations, it widens disparities of prestige and

wealth. Proudhon’s image of industrial society, which well captures its

inequality, is accepted by all anarchists. Such a society is like ‘a

column of soldiers, who begin marching at the same time, to the regular

beat of a drum, but who gradually lose the equal spacing between their

ranks. They all advance, but the distance between the head and the foot

of their column continuously grows; and it is a necessary effect of this

movement that there are laggards and strays.’[186]

But what most concern anarchists about technology are its psychological

effects. Both the occupational fragmentation and the inequality that

industrial technology promotes are blamed by anarchists for causing

insincerity, disrespect and malevolence, the exact opposites to

anarchy’s mediating attitudes. The exhausting monotony of so much

industrial labor is also feared by anarchists as psychologically

dangerous. Armies of unskilled workers, who spend long days at

repetitious, enervating tasks, have a stunted sensibility that makes the

growth of empathic attitudes difficult.

Besides fearing technology’s social and psychological virulence, the

later anarchists also dread its political effects. Proudhon’s

apprehension was that the managerial authorities the new technology was

creating would use their expertise to dominate their subordinates in the

workplace. Bakunin anticipated something more ominous: that as

technology became more complicated and more difficult to understand, and

as each industry grew more dependent for its efficiency on its relations

with the rest, technical managers would gain such political ascendency

that everyone would fall under their control. What threatened was

nothing less than ‘the reign of scientific intelligence, which is the

most aristocratic, despotic, arrogant and contemptuous of all regimes. A

new class, a new hierarchy of real and fraudulent experts will arise;

and the world will be divided into a minority, dominating in the name of

science, and a vast majority, reduced to ignorance.’[187]

One might expect that since industrial technology so frightens

anarchists, they would condemn it absolutely and in their good society

would give it the smallest possible place. But they are far from being

Luddites. Rather than campaigning to destroy technology, they seek to

harness it, so that as it develops, it gives to communal individuality

increasing support. Their verdict on technology as compared to the other

institutions they qualifiedly condemn is thus more positive. Whereas

they resign themselves to some authority, punishment and hierarchy as

necessary evils, they welcome industrial technology as an unruly but

promising servant. It is only untrammelled technology that they deem

virulent; appropriately controlled technology is for them a growing

source of hope.

Each anarchist has a somewhat different plan for exploiting technology.

The most instructive is Kropotkin’s, because it uses his predecessors’

main devices as well as new ones of his own design to harness the more

complex technology of the late nineteenth century.

His starting point is Godwin’s proposal to divide production between a

subsistence sector, to which everyone devotes the same short period of

time, and a luxury sector, to which they devote what time they

like.[188] Godwin had claimed that this way of dividing production

allows work to be completely mechanized without causing individuality or

community harm. They cannot be harmed by work in the luxury sector,

because it is satisfying and voluntary. Nor can they be harmed by work

in the subsistence sector, which Godwin thought would take only a half

hour to complete and which all would share equally. Kropotkin buttresses

these claims of Godwin’s by saying more about how the divided economy

they both favor should be arranged.

Luxuries, for Kropotkin, are not only produced voluntarily, they are

also for the most part produced by their consumers. A person wanting a

luxury is not to be supplied with it by someone else, but is to join

with others who desire it so that together they can produce it for

themselves. This cooperative method of producing luxuries is seen by

Kropotkin as fostering individuality by enabling each producer to

acquire diverse tastes and skills, and as fostering community by

enabling those who share these tastes and skills to cultivate them in

concert.[189]

Since Kropotkin, with much actual experience of industrial production

behind him, believes that subsistence work must take about five hours

per day, rather than the half hour Godwin had expected, he cannot depend

as much on its insignificance to prevent it from harming communal

individuality. To overcome the threat to the anarchist ideal that five

hours of daily routine labor pose, he relies partly on the comprehensive

education and occupational mobility introduced into the anarchist

tradition by Proudhon. He repeats Proudhon’s reasons why these practices

alleviate not only the psychological and social damage caused by

industrial technology, but also its political damage. Managerial

technicians in an anarchist economy, aware, because of comprehensive

education, that everyone can do their job, and because of occupational

mobility, that their job is temporary, have neither the ability nor the

desire to use their positions as means of technological domination.

Besides citing his predecessors’ arguments for comprehensive education

and varied work, Kropotkin adds a new one, drawn from his assessment of

productive trends. As technology develops, he says, the efficiency of

monotonous, specialized labor declines. ‘Humanity perceives that there

is no advantage for the community in riveting a human being for all his

life to a given spot, in a workshop or mine; no gain in depriving him of

such work as would bring him into free intercourse with nature, make of

him a conscious part of the grand whole, a partner in the highest

enjoyments of science and art, of free work and creation.’[190]

Educating producers comprehensively and giving them varied work have

always served efficiency by encouraging technical innovation. Not even

learned scientists can innovate more fruitfully than knowledgeable

workers. Until recently, Kropotkin admits, the advantage for innovation

of a broad education and unspecialized work was outweighed by the

efficiency of specialized training and divided, routine work. But

technical trends have finally tipped the balance in favor of more

integrated production. Electric power, hand-held machine tools and

mechanical farm implements are the most telling of the innovations he

cites as enabling an advanced industrial economy to operate efficiently,

though run by comprehensively educated producers, doing varied,

unspecialized work.[191]

Kropotkin does more than show the growing practicality of the anarchist

plan for harnessing technology: he adds provisions to make technology a

still better servant. One is the organization of industry into small

productive units, for the more intimate relations in small workplaces

and the less specialized nature of their jobs make them superior as

supports for self-development and mutual awareness to impersonal,

monotonous production in large factories. Another new provision of

Kropotkin’s plan is the uniting of industry with agriculture. Bringing

farm and factory together, so that producers can spend time in each,

gives them a more varied choice of jobs than they would enjoy without

mobility of occupations between the industrial and agricultural

sectors.[192] The last of Kropotkin’s new provisions is economic

self-sufficiency. The members of his anarchy themselves produce the

goods that they consume. He devotes great ingenuity to showing how

contemporary technical developments make self-sufficiency easy to

achieve. Yet its main advantage for him is not its practicality, but its

wider choice of occupations. A self-sufficient economy, provided that,

like anarchy’s, it is a large one, offers more varied work than does a

specialized economy, because its complement of industries is fuller.

It is tempting to conclude from the foregoing analysis that anarchists

rely so much on technology as to warrant including them among its

venerators. This conclusion overlooks the qualifications in their

support. Nineteenth-century venerators of technology, whether Marxists

or free-enterprisers, trusted in its untrammelled growth.[193]

Anarchists, in contrast, counted on technology only if it was controlled

stringently. By repudiating most organizational aspects of industrial

technology, while exploiting its mechanical aspects, anarchists offered

a vision of its future that in the nineteenth century was already

engaging. In light of the disappointment with free technical development

that is so widely felt today, the anarchist course between Luddite

contempt and scientistic celebration has even more appeal. For how,

except by limiting technology, while also working for its selective

growth, can communal individuality in an industrial society possibly be

increased?

The coherence of Anarchist criticism

This chapter has confirmed the longstanding appreciation of the

anarchists as unusually severe critics of modern society. Their utter

condemnation of government and law is endorsed by no one else. Nor have

theorists gone further than the anarchists in subjecting authority,

punishment and inequality to attack. But something else emerges from the

analysis in this chapter besides reaffirmation of a well-known truth. By

tracing the anarchists’ social criticism to its source in their

commitment to communal individuality, this analysis has put to rest the

doubts about its coherence which are prompted by its failure to condemn

categorically all restrictive institutions. The qualifications in favor

of authority, punishment and inequality which anarchists introduce into

their social criticism stand forth not as symptoms of confusion, but as

faithful expressions of their thought. Had the anarchists failed to make

these qualifications they would have been inconsistent, for had they

given full vent to their critical impulses, by categorically denouncing

everything they abhor, they would have disregarded the imperatives of

their chief value. Their commitment to communal individuality thus not

only explains why, to be consistent, anarchists qualify their social

criticisms, but also accounts for why their criticism, while severe, is

not extravagant. The goal of anarchism, being composed of norms whose

merger is precarious, enjoins a social criticism that has nuance and

balance.

5. Anarchist strategy: the dilemma of means and ends

Efforts to ascribe a distinctive strategy to anarchists, though often

made, cannot succeed, because their strategies are too diverse to have a

common character. Claims that all anarchists are reckless terrorists, or

saintly pacifists, or messianic ‘primitive rebels’ widely miss the

mark.[194] These descriptions do fit some anarchists, at some stages of

their careers, but as applied to anarchist strategy in general they are

inaccurate. Even the most cautious and plausible description of

anarchist strategy — as eschewing ‘political action’ — does not fit all

cases, not even all of those under study here.[195] Proudhon put his

trust in the thoroughly political Louis Napoleon. Bakunin, who relied,

as a means to anarchy, on the elimination of inheritance, thought it

might be legally abolished through ‘a series of gradual changes,

amicably agreed to by the workers and the bourgeoisie’.[196]

Impressed by the differences in anarchist strategy, some commentators,

instead of ignoring them, make them the basis for classifying anarchism

into types. ‘In examining the basic forms of anarchism’, writes Irving

Horowitz, ‘what is at stake is not so much alternative models of the

good society as distinctive strategies for getting there.’[197] He goes

on to distinguish eight types of anarchism, each supposedly marked off

by strategic differences. The inadequacy of his classification is easy

to see. Most of its types, such as utilitarian, peasant and collectivist

anarchism, are marked off from the others not by their strategy but by

their method, aspiration, or source of support. Only two of the types

mentioned — conspiratorial and pacifist anarchism — are strategically

distinct. It is possible to come closer than Horowitz to classifying

anarchists by their strategies, but this project is no more likely to

succeed than that of proving that their strategies are all basically the

same. Anarchist strategy is too diverse to be called unified, but its

diversities cannot be used to classify it because they are too

unsystematic.

The thesis guiding this study of the anarchists, that communal

individuality is their chief goal, provides a point of vantage from

which the character of their strategy can be more accurately perceived.

Seen from this vantage, the anarchists’ strategy has no importance for

the unity and classification of their thought. These are determined by

the similarities and differences in their ideals of communal

individuality. Strategy, as the means to these ideals, is subordinate to

them and to empirical judgments about how, in the face of great

adversity, they may most efficiently be reached. For the anarchists,

therefore, strategy, being an attempt to achieve communal individuality

in a hostile world, poses this grave dilemma: to find a path to communal

individuality that eschews the fraud and physical coercion which, though

effective means of social action, communal individuality forbids. The

anarchists we are studying do not give this dilemma the same response.

This chapter follows them in their unavailing search for a solution.

Godwin: ‘trusting to reason alone’Godwin, Enquiry Concerning

Political Justice (Toronto, 1946), I, 279.

No anarchist is more resolved than Godwin to use reasoned argument among

independent thinkers as the means to reach communal individuality. His

commitment to intelligent, sincere conversation as the essence of a good

society enjoins him to rely on argument, for unless the aspirants for

his kind of anarchy become forthright and rational as they build it, the

society they create, having unreasonable, dishonest members, will not be

anarchic. Yet though Godwin sees that reasoned argument must be his

strategy, he doubts whether, to reach his radical and fiercely resisted

goal, it has sufficient strength. His work on strategy attempts to meet

this doubt by showing the ineffectiveness as means to anarchy of

non-rational tactics, and the power of rationality to direct history’s

course. But misgivings remain, which prompt him to endorse methods for

reaching anarchy that are less than rational. Faced by the dilemma that

all anarchists confront, even the scrupulous Godwin compromises his

moral commitment for some hope of success.

The strategy Godwin most despises is the one most inimical to reason:

the strategy of using physical force. Force inspires attitudes as

detrimental to the process of attaining anarchy as to its maintenance.

The imposers of force ‘become obdurate, unrelenting and inhuman’. Its

victims ‘are filled with indignation and revenge’. ‘Distrust is

propagated from man to man, and the dearest ties of human society are

dissolved.’[198] Using force as a means to anarchy only puts it further

beyond reach.

Godwin also opposes strategies more compatible with reason than force of

which the most significant is organization. Organization, he thinks,

‘has a more powerful tendency than perhaps any other circumstance in

human affairs, to render the mind quiescent’.[199] The members of an

organization are strongly disposed to follow the opinions of their

group. By doing so, they may serve their group’s purpose, but they also

lose their mental independence. This loss, while irrelevant for many

purposes, is disastrous for that of reaching anarchy, since anarchy is a

condition of utmost mental independence. Anarchists cannot organize,

because organizing takes from their objective one of its essential

traits.

In order to vindicate a strategy of reason, Godwin must do more than

prove that as means to anarchy non-rational measures fail. He must show,

against serious objections, that reasoned arguments are effective.

Godwin believes that reasoned arguments are a sure means to anarchy,

because of their great power to convince. So firmly can they convince

people of anarchy’s supreme worth that all will work unstintingly for

its assured achievement. This belief faces metaethical, psychological

and socio-political objections, to all of which Godwin has responses.

The weak point in Godwin’s belief, so far as concerns meta-ethics, is

its contention that evidence and reasons are logically sufficient to

establish anarchy’s supreme worth. Ascriptions of supreme worth, being

ultimate evaluations, depend for their validity not only on undeniable

evidence and reasons, but on contestable choices. Thus even if I accept

the case for anarchy as being in agreement with facts and logic, I need

not regard anarchy as of highest worth, for I may still consistently

choose to set supreme value on something else.

To Godwin this objection has no weight, because in metaethics he is a

cognitivist. Ultimate evaluations for him, far from involving choices,

depend on nothing but facts. To establish values we examine the

structure of the world and ‘declare that which the nature of things has

already decreed’.[200] There is no room from this metaethical

perspective to doubt the possibility of rationally assured agreement on

ultimate worth. Everyone can be convinced to accept the same value as

supreme, because its identity depends solely on facts that everyone can

know. As an account of how ultimate value is identified, Godwin’s

metaethic is too unqualifiedly cognitivist to be acceptable. But even if

it were acceptable, this would do little to vindicate his strategy,

whose heavy reliance on reason also faces non-metaethical objections.

Godwin’s strategy is suspect psychologically for giving the motive of

rational conviction decisive weight. Knowledge is not compelling: one

need not do what one knows is right. To answer this objection, Godwin

shows the weakness of non-rational motives. The fact that people

successfully resist their sensual or short-sighted impulses shows how

‘slight and inadequate’ they are. That these impulses can be ‘conquered

or restrained... by the due exercise of understanding’, is proved daily

by experience.[201] Yet after doing his best to show the psychological

force of reason, Godwin still doubts it can always prevail. An adverse

piece of evidence that must be faced is that of people who fail to

follow their convictions. To save his psychology from being dismissed as

empirically unfounded, Godwin makes this claim: If I fail to do an

action which I believe is right, my failure proves that my belief lacks

a rational foundation. ‘When the understanding clearly perceives

rectitude, propriety and eligibility to belong to a certain

conduct,...that conduct will infallibly be adopted.’[202] Hence what is

shown by my failure to do something I believe right is not that my

inclinations overpower my convictions, but either that my convictions do

not enjoin the act, or else that they counsel against doing it.

This claim has the untenable implication that anyone who says he fails

to follow his convictions mistakes their meaning or their source.

Certainly, we sometimes make mistakes on these matters, but to say we

always do is implausible. Some people have settled, systematically

backed convictions, on which they usually act. It is more credible to

believe such persons when they report failing to follow their

convictions than to charge them with misunderstanding what their

convictions say. And since belief in failure to follow rationally held

convictions often is well founded, Godwin’s claim that such convictions

always determine conduct fails.

The final objection to Godwin’s strategic use of reason points to his

own analysis of how corrupt and hampering institutions ‘poison our

minds, before we can resist, or so much as suspect their malignity’. The

‘disparity of ranks’ in all existing societies inspires ‘coldness,

irresoluteness, timidity and caution’.[203] The impersonality and

coerciveness of existing legal governments make subjects devious,

servile and unthinking. How can Godwin choose reason as his strategy,

when he sees it as obstructed by the very institutions it is supposed to

overthrow?

He answers with an account of the growth of natural science. ‘Hitherto

it seems as if every instrument of menace or influence has been employed

to counteract [science].’ But it has made progress nonetheless. For the

mind of man cannot ‘choose falsehood and reject truth, when evidence is

fairly presented’.[204] Since adversities have not kept reasoned

argument from causing scientific progress, they cannot keep it from

causing social progress either. ‘Shall we become clear-sighted and

penetrating in all other subjects, without increasing our penetration on

the subject of man?’[205]

The analogy with natural science gives hope that for reaching anarchy

reasoned argument will soon be effective, despite its past and

continuing impotence. ‘How imperfect were the lispings of ... science,

before it attained the precision of the present century ?’ ‘Political

knowledge is [now] in its infancy.’ Hence its advances are bound to be

slow. But since progress in natural science accelerated, as its growing

number of findings became better established and more widely known, we

can expect progress toward anarchy to be faster, as stronger reasons in

its favor are adduced.[206] No matter that anarchy now has few

partisans, whose arguments are usually dismissed; the early partisans of

science met a similar fate. ‘If the system of independence and equality

be the truth, it may be expected hourly to gain converts. The more it is

discussed, the more will it be understood, and its value cherished and

felt.’[207]

So doubtful is Godwin of reaching anarchy through argument that he draws

on his shaky analogy with science for evidence of more than reason’s

persuasive force. This analogy, he thinks, shows the obstacles to the

growth of reason as being not impediments to anarchy, but preconditions,

and even helps. Progress in natural science meets obstacles in the form

of ‘extravagant sallies of mind’ which ‘an uninformed and timid

spectator’ might think would lead to ‘nothing but destruction’. ‘But he

would be disappointed.’ These extravagances ‘are the prelude of the

highest wisdom...The dreams of Ptolemy were destined to precede the

discoveries of Newton.’[208] Social progress meets analogous obstacles,

the most serious being legal government and unequal wealth. The former,

though utterly expunged from a mature anarchy, prepares for it by

assuring the peaceful setting in which a still nascent reason can

grow.[209] As for unequal wealth, it too, while no part of future

anarchist society, is a needed preparation. ‘It was the spectacle of

inequality that first excited the grossness of barbarians to [the]

persevering exertion’ on which an advanced economy like that of anarchy

rests.[210] The obstacles to anarchy thus need cause no dismay, for even

the most serious are objective pre-conditions, which must develop before

the arguments for anarchy can take effect.

To clinch his case for reason, which he properly sees cannot be

vindicated by reference to the analogy with science alone, Godwin

describes the process through which he expects arguments for anarchy to

prevail. The thesis informing his account of this process is that the

main determinant of practice is belief. ‘Wherever the political opinions

of a community, or any portion of a community, are changed, the

institutions are affected also.’[211] Guided by this thesis, Godwin aims

to show that everyone can be convinced to work for anarchy through the

force of arguments known at first only to very few.

What he envisages is that the few individuals who happen to be convinced

anarchists will serve as ‘guides and instructors’ to everyone else.[212]

Through the same ‘candid and unreserved conversation’ that is the

organizing principle of an established anarchy, they will ‘extensively

communicate the truths with which they are acquainted’. These truths,

being forthrightly transmitted in an intimate setting, will be so cogent

to their hearers that they ‘will be instigated to impart their

acquisitions to still other hearers’. Thus the ‘circle of instruction

will perpetually increase’.[213]

Though Godwin relies on reasoned argument as the impetus for the first

steps toward anarchy, he does not contend that everyone, or even a

majority, must embrace anarchism before social reconstruction begins.

Rational beliefs are certainly the main shapers of practice for Godwin,

but he is not blind to the effects of practice on these beliefs. He

would therefore accompany the later diffusion of anarchist convictions

with a gradual, voluntary decentralization of power and equalization of

ranks, designed to inspire belief in anarchy to spread further. National

governments would first give way to a loose confederation of small

‘parishes’ governed by democratically elected ‘juries’. At later stages

these juries would lose first their right to punish physically and then

their right to legislate. Finally, they would be ‘laid aside as

unnecessary’. Thus would convictions and practices advance reciprocally

and by degrees to their final culmination: ‘one of the most memorable

stages of human improvement,...the dissolution of political government,

of that brute engine, which has been the only perennial cause of the

vices of mankind’.[214]

Because he gives such great responsibility for reaching anarchy to a few

enlightened individuals, Godwin has been accused of ‘elitist disdain’.

‘Convinced of his superiority of intellect’, he and his few partisans

allegedly place themselves ‘above the mediocre, the petty, the base, the

dull and the deceived’.[215] This charge, which makes Godwin sound like

a contemptuous manipulator of the masses, misrepresents his view of

their intellectual capacities and of how their allegiance should be won.

While Godwin does think most people lack rational, independent judgment,

he also thinks that they will someday have it.[216] Ignorance and

irrationality are temporary conditions, which reasoned argument, aided

by the gradual reform of institutions, can overcome. Elitist

manipulation is therefore no part of Godwin’s strategy. His partisans

are not to create an anarchist society behind the masses’ backs, but are

to start the process through which rational individuals choose anarchy

as the regime they create. Godwin’s anarchy, as he carefully points out,

does not result from ‘the over-earnest persuasion of a few enlightened

thinkers, but is produced by the serious and deliberate conviction of

the public at large’.[217]

Though Godwin does not compromise the rationality of his strategy with

manipulative fraud, he does compromise it with force and organization.

While believing fervently in the effectiveness of argument, he still

acknowledges situations where it might fail. What of a crisis, such as a

war or revolution, which turns the anarchists and their critics into

hostile foes? To argue independently ‘in the moment of convulsion’ might

be suicidal; the anarchists may have to organize ‘something in the

nature of association’ in order to survive.[218] And what of a situation

where the anarchists, now a vast majority, face a few incorrigible

opponents? In this circumstance, says Godwin, they may use physical

coercion, partly because a complete anarchy might otherwise never be

established, but mainly because coercion will not actually have to be

imposed. Since their ‘adversaries will be too few and too feeble to be

able to entertain a serious thought of resistance’, they will be

compelled to accept anarchy by the mere threat of force.[219]

By endorsing force and organization as strategies, albeit in unlikely

situations, Godwin shows his failure to solve the dilemma of anarchist

strategy by trusting to reason alone. It would be presumptuous, however,

to conclude from his failure that the dilemma is insoluble. Perhaps

anarchy could be reached without fraud or coercion through a different

path than Godwinian reason. The attempts of his successors to solve the

dilemma need to be examined as preparation for deciding if a solution

can be found.

Proudhon: waiting for the revolution

Because Proudhon’s conception of communal individuality gives more

stress to cooperative work and less to rational independence than

Godwin’s, it admits a wider range of strategies. Proudhon is able,

without inconsistency, to endorse organization, and can in good

conscience advocate forms of persuasion not purely rational. But though

his conception of communal individuality gives him more strategic leeway

than Godwin, he succeeds no better in solving their shared dilemma. His

untainted strategies are no more effective than Godwin’s reason; his

effective ones are no purer than the physical coercion Godwin chose.

Proudhon does not think, any more than Godwin, that anarchy can be

established at any time. Rather, he too believes, though for somewhat

different reasons than Godwin, that government and inequality must first

prepare the way for anarchy through their effects. Inequality serves to

stimulate exertion. ‘If the property owner had tired of appropriating,

the proletarian would have tired of producing.’[220] Government

engenders self-restraint. It was ‘by means of its tribunals and armies’,

that government ‘gave to the sense of right, so weak among the first

men, the only sanctions intelligible to fierce characters’.[221] Only

when government and inequality complete their preparatory work (a time

which Proudhon thought had occurred just recently) can the search for a

strategy to achieve anarchy profitably begin.

At the start of his career Proudhon was as committed as Godwin to a

strategy of reasoned argument. He explicitly rejected not only coercive

tactics, but imperfectly rational ones. ‘Stimulate, warn, inform,

instruct, but do not inculcate’, he prescribed.[222] Inculcation had to

be avoided not only because anarchist ideals forbade it, but because

reasoned argument was certain to succeed. Once his principles had been

disseminated, Proudhon then believed, they would surely be applied.

‘Wherever this discourse is read or made known’, he wrote in his first

important book, ‘there privilege and servitude will sooner or later

disappear.’[223] But whereas Godwin espoused a strategy of reason for

his entire life, Proudhon quickly saw its inadequacies. Readier to admit

the strength of anarchy’s opponents, less sanguine about the compelling

force of rational conviction, and more doubtful, owing to intervening

failures, of history’s progressive course, he soon despaired of reasoned

argument and began to seek an equally pure but more effective

substitute.

His search led first to a scheme for free credit, a ‘People’s Bank’,

lending without interest to anyone who could put money to a productive

use. Such a bank, Proudhon believed, would pave the way for anarchy by

enabling producers who lacked capital to start their own enterprises.

These enterprises, being independent of the established social order,

would form an ever growing network of alternative institutions for the

nascent anarchist society.

As a strategy for anarchists, the People’s Bank has no advantage over

reasoned argument. To be sure, it is as morally legitimate, because it

makes no use of force or fraud. Only ‘holders of government bonds,

usurers, ... and big property owners’ would find the Bank unprofitable,

and they would be too weak to stop its growth. As it developed, they

would be convinced, ‘by a sense of the inevitable and concern for their

interests to voluntarily change the employment of their capital, unless

they preferred to run the risk of consuming it unproductively and

enduring swift and total ruin’.[224] It would thus be through their

uncoerced and unmanipulated decisions that their resistance would be

overcome.

Though free credit and reasoned argument are equally pure, they are also

equally ineffective. The opposition to anarchy is much too strong to

quell by the enticements of free credit. But even if Proudhon was right

to think his Bank could sway all opponents, he would still have been

wrong to expect it to achieve anarchy. The Bank, even with everyone’s

support, would still be a mere monetary device, no ‘solvent of all

authority’ destined to ‘shift the axis of civilization’.[225] It is

because he expected such remarkable results from a rather trivial

institution that Proudhon has rightly acquired the reputation of a money

crank.

He did not remain committed to free credit for long. The failure, during

the revolution of 1848, of his effort to operate a People’s Bank

prompted him to reassess his strategy. Impressed by the militance of his

opponents, and appalled by the futility of the tactics he had just

espoused, Proudhon turned to Louis Napoleon, the emerging dictator who,

on 2 December 1851, had overthrown the Second Republic in a coup d’etat.

‘The Second of December is the signal for a forward march on the road to

revolution’, proclaimed Proudhon, and ‘Louis Napoleon is its

general.’[226] Though Bonaparte was no anarchist, anarchists must work

with him, because his plans for social renovation, whatever their

intended purpose, would have the effect of bringing anarchy closer.

It is hard to imagine a strategy more repugnant to anarchist principles

than collaboration with Bonaparte. Even if Bonaparte had been a

scrupulous official, Proudhon should have abhorred him. But he was

corrupt and arbitrary, a wielder of naked force. Nor can Proudhon’s

collaborationism be pardoned as effective, since Bonaparte, whose

leftist sympathies were nominal, did not and could not have been

expected to advance the cause of anarchy. Collaboration with Bonaparte,

being both forbidden by anarchist ideals and useless for realizing them,

was for Proudhon the worst possible tactic.

Having found the paths of reason, free credit and collaboration to be

dead ends, Proudhon for a while gave up the search for a legitimate,

effective strategy. Consoling himself with confidence that history in

the long run was on his side, he took up a stance of what he aptly

called ‘attente revolutionnaire’.[227] There was no way for anarchists

to make the ‘ignorant, impulsive majority... recognize the truth, sense

its depth, its necessity, its supremacy, and freely accept it’. Yet

anarchy would still some day be achieved. ‘The conversion of societies

is never sudden... It is assured, but one must know how to wait for

it.’[228] Waiting did not mean complete passivity; Proudhon worked hard

on ‘serious long-term studies addressed to the future and another

generation’.[229] But for about ten years he set the dilemma of

anarchist strategy aside.

At the end of his life, in 1863, he returned to this dilemma and tried a

new solution. He now proposed that his partisans withdraw from the

established social order and found new embryonic anarchist institutions.

‘Since the old world rejects us’, there is nothing to do but ‘separate

ourselves from it radically’.[230] United in their own organizations,

the anarchists would demonstrate the merits of their theory and

gradually win the vast majority to their cause.

Just why Proudhon thought withdrawal an appropriate strategy we will

never know, because he died without working out its details. Certainly,

it is morally legitimate, but that it is effective is less clear. Even

if a majority were moved by a tactic of withdrawal to become anarchists,

the problem would remain of dealing with the unconvinced minority.

Proudhon suggests two methods. Occasionally he reverts to the bankrupt

reliance on reasoned argument.[231] More often he urges the use of

force. First anarchists must ‘instill their ideas in the majority;

having done this, they must capture political power by demanding control

of its sovereign authority’.[232]

Proudhon’s tactic of withdrawal may well come closer than any other he

recommended to solving the anarchists’ strategic dilemma, since it

probably can go furthest toward reaching anarchy without coercion or

fraud. But it is incapable, by itself, of achieving anarchy, as

Proudhon, by recognizing that it could not sway everyone, admits. Hence

an anarchist strategy both pure and effective had still not been

discovered, even after Proudhon’s extensive search.

Bakunin: the perils of force and fraud

Though Bakunin and Proudhon agree so much in their concepts of communal

individuality that their visions of anarchy have here been considered to

be essentially the same, on matters of strategy they are far apart.

Bakunin, in fact, is more like Kropotkin than like Proudhon in his

strategy, and Proudhon is more like Godwin than like Bakunin. For

whereas Proudhon started out trusting to reason and only during

temporary lapses or with agonized reluctance backed force or deception,

Bakunin never relied exclusively on reason and in his strategy gave

force and deception a substantial, permanent place.[233]

The paradoxical differences between the strategies of Bakunin and

Proudhon can be partially explained as a response to disillusion and

despair. As inventive and determined attempts to progress towards

anarchy met repeated failure, even in revolutionary situations when

prospects were best, anarchists became doubtful of ever achieving

success. It is thus hardly surprising that Bakunin, who did not begin

writing on anarchism until 1864, should have been less repelled than his

more innocent predecessors by moral compromise. But there is a deeper

reason, in his strategic premises, for Bakunin’s greater reliance on

coercion and deceit. Godwin and Proudhon had supposed that for the most

part coercion and deceit were illegitimate and ineffective. Anarchists,

they thought, must eschew these practices not only because they were

impermissible, but also because they could not reach the end being

sought. Bakunin’s strategy is based on a contrary supposition. He

believes that force and fraud, though illegitimate when viewed apart

from their results, are still required in the many cases where they are

needed to win victory. Bakunin’s strategic thinking is largely an

attempt to show how and when intrinsically immoral tactics are the ones

anarchists must choose.

Most of the impure tactics Bakunin recommended were for revolutionary

action, but one, the abolition of the right to inherit income-producing

property, could be enacted by the state. There is, of course, no

conflict between anarchist morality and the abolition of inheritance,

provided the abolition is voluntary. But since Bakunin envisaged it as

compelled by legal government, it is a tactic that anarchist ideals

forbid.

What Bakunin recommended was that the state gradually limit and

eventually repeal laws protecting inheritance, transfer the property

accumulated by deceased owners to anarchist productive enterprises, and

take the financial responsibility which had rested on parents for the

education and upbringing of children. Contrary to the conventional

wisdom, the right to inherit property was not needed as an incentive to

work. Aversion to work arose from its being ‘excessive, brutalizing and

compulsory’; in an anarchist society it would be a basic need. Besides

being a safe strategy, the legal abolition of inheritance was sure.

Inherited wealth ‘perpetuated inequality, the privileges of the few and

the slavery of the many’. It therefore ‘sufficed to abolish the right of

inheritance in order to abolish the juridical family and the

state’.[234]

This project for leading the state to suicide through its own legal

enactments has a certain dramatic appeal, but its success is not to be

expected. Marx put his finger on its foolishness. ‘The whole thing rests

on a superannuated idealism, which considers the actual jurisprudence as

the basis of our economical state, instead of seeing that our economical

state is the basis and source of our jurisprudence!’[235] Fortunately,

though Bakunin never stopped riding his jurisprudential hobby horse, he

worked out more serious strategies for revolutionary action. Following

Godwin and Proudhon, he deemed most people irrational and ignorant. He

followed them further in finding the source of this ignorance and

irrationality in the inequality, legality and coercion of the

established regime. And he also agreed that anarchy must be founded on

nothing less than the majority’s enlightened choice.[236] Yet though he

agreed with his predecessors on all these points, he went much further

than Proudhon toward recommending force and deceit as methods for

enlightening the masses.

The premise on which his support for force and deceit rests is a belief

in enlightenment through action. Proudhon, and especially Godwin, had

sought enlightenment mainly through reasoned argument. For Bakunin, who

believed that ‘doctrine kills life’, enlightenment could be found only

through practical experience.[237] A majority would never be convinced

by reasons to become anarchists, but their allegiance could be won by

immersing them in a concerted, and perhaps violent, struggle against the

state. Bakunin’s schemes for this immersion were tied closely to the

fluctuating political situation; they included the incitement by

convinced anarchists of industrial strikes, peasant jacqueries and even

full scale civil wars. But underlying his varied projects was the same

strategic claim. Struggle against the state ‘is always favorable to the

awakening of the people’s initiative and to their mental, moral and even

their material development. The reason is simple: It shakes their

sheepish disposition, so valuable to governments... It disrupts the

brutalizing monotony of their daily life... and, by forcing them to

consider the various pretensions of the princes or parties which compete

for the right to oppress and exploit them, leads them to awareness, if

not reflective, at least instinctive, of this profound truth: the rights

of any government are as void as those of all the others, and their

intentions are equally bad.’[238]

It is obvious that the strategy Bakunin here espouses often involves

what is for anarchists the illegitimate use of force. Not all of the

anarchists’ struggles would require physical coercion, and Bakunin was

anxious to limit its scope. He flatly rejected systematic terror and,

perhaps wistfully, promised that ‘there will be no need to destroy

men’.[239] But his avowal of the need ‘to be ruthless with positions and

things’ and the unavoidable coercion of his called-for civil war leave

no doubt that anarchists, in their Bakuninist struggles, would sometimes

combat opponents with physical force.[240]

Whether Bakunin’s strategy also involves fraud is a more vexed question,

whose answer depends on what he envisages as happening when anarchists

immerse the masses in struggle. If the anarchists disclosed the full aim

of this immersion, they could not be at all guilty of fraud. If they

lied to the masses about the aim they were seeking, they would be

blatant practitioners of deceit. But Bakunin avoids both of these clear

alternatives by recommending a veiled, limited disclosure. The

anarchists, though united in an active organization, are to conceal

their membership from those they are trying to immerse. While explaining

the short-range purpose of their effort, which is to satisfy particular,

immediate grievances, their long-range purpose, to change society

radically, is not to be revealed.[241] Since the masses, though not

entirely fooled about the intended purpose of their struggle, would be

deliberately misled about its chief aim, one must conclude that despite

Bakunin’s attempts at honesty he is still an espouser of fraud.

Though Bakunin’s strategy is quite markedly imperfect, it might still

more adequately solve the anarchists’ dilemma than the purer strategies

of his predecessors. A sacrifice of perfection is not the same as a

betrayal of anarchist ideals. If imperfect means could beget anarchy

without causing too much suffering or loss of life, they would be a more

faithful expression of its principles than pure but ineffective

measures. The central issue in evaluating Bakunin’s strategy is thus

whether, by giving up perfection, his strategy gains enough

effectiveness to justify its impurity.

In making this evaluation it is important to recognize that Bakunin

gives up moral purity with caution. He is especially careful to protect

relations within anarchist organizations from corruption. These

organizations, being the nuclei for the good society, must be free of

existing society’s coercion, deceit and associated depravities.

‘Otherwise, one would wind up with a political dictatorship, that is to

say, with a reconstituted state, together with its privileges, its

inequalities and all of its oppressions.’[242] To escape this fate,

Bakunin insists on organizing an open anarchist movement, in small,

autonomous units, without central leadership. He thus incorporates in

his theory what is perhaps Godwin’s crucial strategic insight: the

members of an anarchy must grow apt for their new life, not after it is

instituted, but while they build it.

It is in defining the relations between anarchists and the unswayed

masses that Bakunin’s resistance to moral compromise deserts him, as we

have seen, and it is the value of the limited though significant

impurities he admits to these relations that now must be assessed. If

Godwin was right that force and fraud invariably ‘confound the process

of reason’,[243] Bakunin’s reliance on them could be dismissed

summarily. But Godwin goes too far in his objection to force and fraud

by claiming that they always damage reason. Occasionally they support

it, as when used by careful educators to stimulate the minds of the

unthinking. If force or deception has a modest scope, aims at the

immediate growth of rationality, and has secured it in the past, it may

be an appropriate strategy for anarchists. But Bakunin’s coercive,

deceptively incited struggle lacks all of these attributes. Its scope is

a whole society; it aims to increase rationality indirectly, through a

precarious chain of causes; it is untested by experience. There is thus

no reason to expect that it would lead to anarchy. Since the success of

the struggle Bakunin envisaged is not to be expected, he sacrificed

perfection to no avail.

Kropotkin: in search of strategic balance

With the lessons of decades of failure to instruct him, and a synthetic

ideal of communal individuality for guidance, Kropotkin is better

situated to solve the dilemma of anarchist strategy than his

predecessors. He does indeed avoid several of their most damaging

pitfalls and bring a fresh perspective to his search. He even comes

closer than the other anarchists to finding tactics both legitimate and

sure. His failure to find them calls less for explanation than for

answering the question to which the analysis in this chapter points of

why a solution to the anarchists’ dilemma is so difficult.

Kropotkin’s strategy, like Bakunin’s, calls for enlightenment through

action, but owing mainly to a different supposition about the extent of

rationality, it is less morally impure. He is at one with Bakunin in

rejecting anarchism’s early confidence in the potential capacity of the

masses to reason. It is naive, he agrees, to expect the enormous growth

of mental powers that Godwin, especially, had foreseen. But he differs

from Bakunin on a point crucial for strategy by his greater confidence

in popular reason’s actuality. Progress in science has not, as Godwin

thought, depended solely on the glorious discoveries of a few geniuses

like Newton. It rests as well on the modest innovations of numerous

obscure workers. History thus shows that ordinary people, far from being

ignorant, are as great a source of progress as the intellectual

elite.[244]

Believing in the present capacity of most people for clear thinking,

Kropotkin proposes to treat them more forthrightly than had Bakunin. ‘It

offends the human spirit to immerse it in a destructive struggle unless

it has a conception — if only rudimentary — of what will replace the

world it is trying to destroy.’

Hence, instead of hiding the purpose of their effort, the anarchists

must ‘immediately lay out and discuss all aspects of [their] goal’. To

do less would be to manipulate, and history shows that ‘manipulators

invariably betray the people’.[245] Unity of action comes not through

guile, ‘but through the unity of aims and the mutual confidence which

never fail to develop when a great number of persons have consciously

embraced a common ideal’.[246]

Kropotkin is also more wary than Bakunin of force. No anarchist, not

even Godwin, entirely rejected physical coercion, and in his early years

Kropotkin sometimes even advanced a limited defense of terror.[247] But

his mature strategy has no place for the Bakuninist hope of achieving

anarchy through coercion applied by persons blind to its point. Once

again confidence in the present existence of rationality leads Kropotkin

to strategic circumspection. Since most people are already tolerably apt

thinkers, disclosing the real reasons why they should use force only

makes its exercise more effective. Violent struggle is acceptable, but

the stragglers must never be ‘cast into the unknown without the support

of a definite, clearly formulated idea to serve them as a

springboard’.[248]

Kropotkin agrees with his predecessors in considering the historical

development of government and inequality as a necessary preparation for

achieving anarchy. Representative government, for example, ‘has rendered

service in the struggle against autocracy’. ‘By its debates it has

awakened public interest in public questions.’ But now it is at best ‘an

anachronism, a nuisance’.[249] Since government and inequality have now

completed their preparative service, the time has come for anarchists to

replace them.

Since Kropotkin sees enlightenment as arising from both practice and

theory, he proposes to reach anarchy through both action and thought.

Following the early anarchists, he opts for reasoned argument, but he

also takes from the later anarchists a preference for active struggle.

Once the requisite historical conditions have been reached, there must

be ‘implacable criticism’ of ‘the accepted ideas of the constitution of

the state’. This criticism must go on everywhere — not just among the

learned — ‘in drawing room as in cabaret, in the writing of philosophers

as in daily conversation’.[250] But discussion among intimates, which

for Godwin was a sufficient tactic, Kropotkin finds inadequate. And he

adds significantly to anarchist strategy by showing a new way to

stimulate subversive acts.

‘Courage, devotion, the spirit of sacrifice, are as contagious as

cowardice, submission and panic.’ Armed with this conviction, which the

emphasis on emotion in his ideal of communal individuality suggests,

Kropotkin urges anarchists on to acts ‘of illegal protest, of revolt, of

vengeance’. What matter that these heroic deeds will not succeed at

once. The anarchists are ‘lonely sentinels, who enter the battle long

before the masses are sufficiently roused’. ‘The people secretly applaud

their courage’; ‘the revolutionary whirlwind... revives sluggish

hearts’. Emotional contagion, though it passes through periods of

incubation, is unstoppable; soon many will be seized by ‘the spirit of

revolt’.[251]

Will they form a majority? Kropotkin thought so at first. Later, he

thought they would be ‘a respectably numerous minority of cities and

villages scattered over the country’.[252] But neither the morality nor

the effectiveness of his strategy is much affected by whether, as a

proportion of the population, the anarchists number fifty-one percent.

When they predominate significantly, Kropotkin would have them carry out

a thorough expropriation. By describing it in detail, he works out an

aspect of anarchist strategy previously neglected: the steps to take

after struggles have begun.

Kropotkin is not precise about how far anarchists should go toward

abolishing legal government during the period of preliminary

expropriation. Collective rule-making, perhaps resting on the

preferences of majorities, would apparently be allowed, provided it was

carried out in local workplaces and districts. But any rules enacted by

these agencies, rather than being enforced physically, would from the

start be enforced by means of censure. Kropotkin thus carries forward a

theme introduced into the anarchist tradition by Godwin: though in a

mature anarchy legal government must be totally abolished, it may

continue to exist, in an attenuated form, during anarchy’s preparatory

phases.

Though Kropotkin is somewhat vague about the process for carrying out

anarchist expropriation, he is specific about the changes it involves.

He warns against confusing expropriation with confiscation, with

impoverishing the rich by dividing up their wealth. No one would be

deprived of articles of personal consumption, nor would capital be

affected — except so far as it enabled ‘any man... to appropriate the

product of another’s toil’.[253] The seizure of property would

nevertheless be extensive. The insurgent anarchists must, through a

rapid and complete takeover making no use of the nation state, assure

everyone a reliable supply of life’s necessities. Warehouses, factories,

dwellings and farms all must be seized, inventoried and redistributed so

as to satisfy needs and eliminate exploiters.[254] Expropriation would

thus be eminently constructive. In seizing property the anarchists would

at the same time reorganize the social infrastructure. Here the abstract

call of Proudhon and Bakunin to build the new society by demolishing the

state receives a plausible, concrete meaning.[255] In Kropotkin’s

expropriation destruction and creation appear reconciled.

Yet the possibility of conflict remains. How can one be sure that even

Kropotkin’s anarchists, though hard to tempt, would have the discipline,

while expropriating, to resist taking personal possession of their

seized wealth? Or, even if they resisted greed, would they be wise

enough immediately to create a working anarchy? These are among the more

embarrassing of the evaluative questions Kropotkin’s strategy must face.

The truth is that despite his intrepid efforts to avoid both

unnecessarily immoral tactics of Bakunin’s sort and insufficiently

vigorous tactics such as Godwin’s, Kropotkin still fails to find a

strategy both sure and legitimate. His strategy, stripped to essentials,

rejects deception altogether and accepts coercion for just two purposes:

to inspire the contagion of insurrectionary feeling and to carry out the

seizure of accumulated productive wealth. The defects in this strategy

are by now almost too familiar. Its avoidance of deception makes it

ineffective; its acceptance of coercion makes it illegitimate, without

giving it the means of success.

The spectacle of Godwin stumbling on the path to anarchy through reason

is sufficient to discredit Kropotkin’s utter rejection of fraud. Surely

anarchists, to be successful, must follow Bakunin part way in sometimes,

like ordinary politicians, being less than fully candid. By utterly

rejecting deceptive tactics, Kropotkin greatly burdens his coercive

ones. Feelings of daring would have to be farfetchedly contagious to

spread as much in response to displays of force as Kropotkin needs them

to. (And what of the destructive feelings that displays of force might

spread?) The mass of expropriators would have to be improbably skilled

and selfless to reorder society without leaders, without a unitary legal

system and with no preconceived plan. Kropotkin, to be sure, tries to

answer these objections, and not always by invoking popular, rationality

and good sense. Sometimes he uses an argument borrowed from radical

democrats about the educative effects of direct local

participation.[256] Sometimes he defends the ‘discomfort and confusion’

that would follow expropriation as being, ‘for the mass of the people’,

still ‘an improvement on their former condition. Besides, in times of

Revolution one can dine contentedly enough on a bit of bread and cheese

while eagerly discussing events.’[257] Is it unfair to see in this

recourse to asceticism an admission by Kropotkin of strategic failure?

Appearing as it does in the most confident of his mature works, it

surely betrays uncertainty about the chance of his strategy’s success.

Kropotkin did come closer than any of his predecessors to finding an

effective, legitimate strategy. But the soundness of the doubts he

harbored about whether he had found one would be foolish to contest.

The futility of Anarchist strategy

Daniel Guerin ends his sympathetic account of the anarchists’ ‘main

constructive themes’ with a confession. ‘Relations between the masses

and the conscious minority constitute a problem to which no full

solution has been found by the Marxists or even by the anarchists, and

one on which it seems that the last word has not yet been said.’[258]

Guerin’s partial acknowledgment of the anarchists’ strategic failure is

well supported by the evidence presented in this chapter. But this

evidence indicates the need for a considerably more drastic portrayal of

the anarchists’ strategic plight. It is not only the problem of their

relations to unconvinced outsiders that they fail to solve: the problems

of how to organize internally and how, united with the masses, to

proceed from old to new also baffle them. Nor are these problems whose

solutions will, as Guerin implies, be found in the future. If the last

word about them has not been said yet, this must be because there is

none.

Part of the reason why anarchist strategy fails lies in the radicalism

of its objective. Any theorist whose objective is as sweeping,

abstractly defined and strongly opposed as the anarchists’ will find his

choice of means treacherous and unreliable. To reach a vast, vague end

in the teeth of opposition calls for energetic, wide-ranging measures.

Such measures are sure to have numerous unexpected consequences and may

have none of the intended ones. Hence the goal sought will not be

reached, or, if it is, it will be undermined by destructive side

effects.[259] Rapid, wholesale change can certainly be warranted in

situations where it is the alternative to great misery. But as a means

of achieving radical aspirations it is very nearly doomed to fail.

If the vastness of the change needed to reach anarchy makes its

achievement difficult, the special character of the needed change makes

achieving it virtually impossible. The communal individuality that must

flourish under anarchy involves personal traits, such as honesty and

sympathy, and social traits, such as trust and cooperation, which,

needing a stable peaceful climate, are put in special jeopardy by

energetic measures. Yet anarchists must use such measures, unless they

are willing to abandon hope. The genial humaneness of their aspirations

thus burdens anarchists with an especially intractable version of the

dilemma in which all radicals are caught.

That anarchist strategy is a failure cannot be proved beyond all doubt.

Though no anarchist has yet found an auspicious strategy, and though the

obstacles to finding one are immense, the bare possibility of success —

for even the least promising — still must be acknowledged to exist. But

judgments about the success of tactics, being dependent on

contingencies, can never be fully certain. Anarchist strategy must be

judged a failure, according to the appropriate measure of its probable

success.

6. The place of anarchism in the spectrum of political ideas

The ideas of anarchists, when compared with those of socialists or

liberals, are often found to be essentially the same. Oscar Jaszi, for

instance, sees ‘the fundamental element of anarchism’ as ‘the extension

of classical liberalism from the economic to all other fields’, while

Daniel Guerin, followed by Noam Chomsky, finds that ‘the anarchist is

primarily a socialist’.[260] This chapter shows, by subjecting these

claims about the ideological place of anarchism to scrutiny, that

neither can be effectively sustained. Anarchism is revealed as occupying

its own distinct position in the spectrum of political ideas.

The elements of anarchist theory which will be found to set it apart

from its close neighbors are its fundamental value and its view of the

workings of the state. What separates anarchism from liberalism is its

commitment to the value of community. What separates it from socialism

is its ascription to the state’s inherent attributes, such as its

impersonality, of the most significant effects. Now socialists share the

anarchists’ commitment to community, while liberals share their

ascription of the state’s effects to its inherent attributes. Hence it

is these two elements of anarchism in combination that mark it as

unique. Were it not for the anarchists’ commitment to community, they

would have to be placed in the liberal camp. Were it not for their

belief in the causal efficacy of the state’s inherent attributes, they

would have to be accounted socialists. But since anarchists are both

communitarian in values and emphasizers of what is inherent in the

workings of the state, their theory differs fundamentally from both of

those with which it is most frequently confused.

The main purpose in comparing anarchism to socialism and liberalism is

to clarify its structure as systematic thought. Its arguments stand out

more boldly, when distinguished from those of kindred theories. But

there is also a practical value to this comparison. So long as anarchism

is thought equivalent at root to socialism or liberalism, different at

most in being purer, what is at stake in choosing to be an anarchist is

misperceived. Since a variant of familiar socialist or liberal beliefs

seems all one must accept, the choice of anarchism appears quite

trivial. But when anarchism is recognized as a separate theory, making

bold, distinctive claims, the decision to be an anarchist stands

revealed as daring.

Anarchism, liberalism and community

Of writers who think anarchists should be viewed as liberals, William E.

Hocking is more elaborate than most in backing his claims with reasons.

The main point of agreement between anarchists and liberals for Hocking

is on the overriding value of freedom understood as the absence of

coercion by the state. For anarchists as for liberals ‘liberty...is the

chief of all political goods’. As for their dispute about whether the

state should be abolished, Hocking sees it as stemming from differences

in psychology and thus of minor importance when compared to their

agreement on first values. Liberals ‘think that the self-seeking and

deceitful elements in human nature will remain statistically about as

they are’, while anarchists ‘believe in a moral progress such that the

social casing of coercion may eventually be discarded’.[261] Both take

the same position on the most basic issue in political theory — the

nature of intrinsic value — and it is only differences on secondary,

psychological matters that lead to their dramatic, yet superficial

disagreement on the wisdom of abolishing the state.

The main trouble with this argument for seeing anarchists as liberals is

that it misconstrues the position of both groups on which values are

ultimate. Hocking shares the misconception of anarchists as committed

above all to freedom from the state, which was dispelled in Chapter 3

and replaced by the view that their chief goal is communal

individuality. What must be added here is that freedom is not even the

chief goal for all liberals.

Many liberals do, of course, embrace it. Kant, for instance, called

freedom ‘the one sole and original right that belongs to every human

being by virtue of his humanity’. And he means nothing complicated or

paradoxical by freedom, in this context, at any rate: it is

‘independence from the constraint of another’s will’.[262] Equally frank

expressions of commitment to freedom thus defined can be found in the

writings of other leading liberals, such as Benjamin Constant.[263]

But these statements do not prove that for all liberals such freedom has

supreme intrinsic worth. For utilitarian liberals, including Bentham,

and perhaps Mill, its value is instrumental.[264] These theorists set

value on freedom only as a means to happiness and not as an end in

itself. Should freedom conflict with happiness, utilitarian liberals are

bound logically to oppose it, and if happiness is increased by state

coercion they must give such coercion their support.

The claim that anarchists are liberals is thus easily refuted, so far as

it presumes that freedom from state coercion is the chief good for both

groups. But this refutation is not invincible. Liberals and anarchists

do agreed in opposing coercive government. Though the normative basis

for this agreement is not the shared commitment to freedom alleged by

writers such as Hocking, this does not mean that liberals and anarchists

base their opposition on different norms. While not sharing the supreme

value usually ascribed to them, they still might share one, which serves

for both as the basis for their opposition to the state.

One value used by liberals as a basis for objecting to state coercion is

autonomy, understood as acting from no empirical motive, but for the

sake of duty. Kant objected to state coercion on this ground when he

noted that the incentive to comply with ‘juridical legislation,...being

different from the idea of duty itself, must derive from pathological

ground determining the will, that is, from inclinations’.[265] Since an

action, to be autonomous in the Kantian sense, must be done for duty’s

sake, and since fear is the motive for acceding to state coercion, such

coercion is reprehensible.

It is easy to show that none of the anarchists we are considering use

Kantian autonomy as the normative basis for their opposition to state

coercion. Godwin, Bakunin and Kropotkin do not, because they are

determinists who deny the possibility of choice uncaused by

inclinations.[266] Though Proudhon seems to admit this possibility, he

does not elevate it to the status of supreme good. It need not have even

instrumental worth, since he prizes right but empirically determined

choices more highly than choices that are wrong but empirically

undetermined.

Another value to which liberals appeal in their objections to state

coercion is utility. It is on this basis that Bentham writes: ‘All

punishment is itself an evil’, because ‘it tends to subtract

from...happiness’.[267] Punishment, the most typical form of state

coercion, definitionally causes its victims to suffer pain. Utility

mandates the maximization of satisfaction. Hence, if utility is the

supreme value, then punishment, and the state that inflicts it, stand at

least presumptively condemned.

There is enough ambiguity in the attitude of some anarchists toward the

principle of utility to make calling them utilitarians seem plausible.

Godwin is especially easy to treat in this way, since he repeatedly

praises satisfaction as the supreme good. As for his seemingly contrary

words of praise for other goods, particularly community and

individuality, these need not be read as ascriptions of supreme value,

but may be construed as empirical statements about how the most

satisfaction can be achieved. Godwin can then be said to approve of

these other goods as means to utility rather than as equal to it in

worth.[268]

It is possible to give a similar interpretation of Kropotkin, whose

agreement with the utilitarians is shown clearly by his way of framing

the question to be solved by anarchism: ‘ What forms of social life

assure to a given society, and then to mankind generally, the greatest

amount of happiness?’[269] No doubt, he, like Godwin, approves of goods

other than satisfaction. But his approval for these goods may be seen as

instrumental, arising from their richness as utility’s source.

Calling Kropotkin a subscriber to utilitarianism is indefensible because

he goes out of his way to condemn that doctrine as framed by its

founders. He faults Bentham for ‘the incompleteness of his ethics’ and

Mill for the absence from his theory of ‘the principle of justice’.[270]

What Kropotkin is here alluding to is the commonplace among critics of

utilitarianism that an action which maximizes satisfaction may still be

wrong. Since we condemn actions which utility tells us to approve,

utility cannot always be of overriding worth.

It is harder to show the error in calling Godwin a utilitarian. His

praise for the principle of utility is nowhere counterweighed by

criticism, and he takes pains to reconcile this praise empirically with

his avowals of support for rival goods. Yet one cannot avoid suspecting

that his attempt at reconciliation fails. His claims about the

effectiveness of community and individuality as a means to happiness are

much exaggerated. Would he ever stop approving them in cases where it

seemed likely that their opposites, such as deceit or servile deference,

would advance utility more? Though Godwin’s utilitarianism is formally

consistent, its empirical contestability casts its plausibility into

doubt.

But Godwin’s utilitarianism, even if authentic, is insufficient evidence

that anarchists agree with liberals in using the greatest happiness

principle to criticize the state. Though Bakunin is silent on the merit

of utilitarianism, Proudhon denounces it even more emphatically than

Kropotkin does. ‘It cannot be said that everything...useful...is just;

in case of conflict the choice is indisputable, justice is entitled to

command.’[271] Proudhon is here making Kropotkin’s familiar point:

utility may sanction wrongful acts. But he goes beyond this commonplace,

with his characteristic rigor, when he proclaims: ‘Right and interest

are two things as radically distinct as debauchery and marriage.’[272] A

more thoroughgoing renunciation of utilitarian morality is difficult to

conceive.

There is one other value to which liberals appeal in their objections to

state coercion which seems more promising than autonomy or utility as a

mark of normative agreement with anarchism. This value is individuality

of the kind prized by J. S. Mill. It is a main part of Mill’s case

against coercive government that it debilitates the character of rulers

and ruled alike, when it silences opinion, prevents self-regarding

action, or benevolently interferes by giving too much help. State

coercion is for Mill a menace to the individuality, understood as

energetic personality, that he prizes as the supreme element in human

worth.

Individuality, of course, as we have seen in Chapter 3, also has

intrinsic value for the anarchists. When Godwin calls it ‘the very

essence of human excellence’, he sounds like Mill’s anticipator.[273]

When Kropotkin demands its ‘most complete development’ he sounds like

Mill’s disciple.[274] Texts of Proudhon and Bakunin also could be cited

to show that in setting inherent value on individuality and in appealing

to it in their arguments against the state, all four anarchists agree

with Mill — the quintessential liberal. This agreement would seem to

give the basis, which Hocking failed to find, for claiming anarchists as

liberals. Though freedom cannot be cited as the value used by both

groups to condemn coercive government, individuality can be. And since

anarchists and liberals share this basic value, their theories, one

might argue, must be regarded as at root the same.

The main trouble with this attempt to save Hocking’s thesis is that it

overlooks the difference in normative status assigned by the two groups

to community. Anarchists do not prize individuality simpliciter:

communal individuality is their goal. Their project, we have learned, is

to organize society so as to maximize individuality and community seen

as equal, interdependent values. Liberals give community a lower status.

For some it is an interference with the satisfaction, freedom or

individuality they most prize. For others it is normatively irrelevant.

Thinking of society as a device to protect intrinsic values, they regard

it as an instrument and are indifferent to the reciprocity of awareness

among its members called community.[275] The value of community, which

for anarchists is inherent, is thus for liberals instrumental at most.

This disagreement between the two groups in normative starting point is

decisive evidence for the conclusion defended here. Anarchists, far from

being an especially hardy breed of liberals, are an entirely different

race.

The commitment of anarchists to community is significant as more than a

mark setting them apart from liberals. It also provides an explanation,

more convincing than is usual, for their disagreement with liberals on

the wisdom of abolishing the state. The standard explanation for this

disagreement, mentioned above, relies on alleged differences between the

two groups on the possibilities of human nature. The weakness of this

explanation is that they actually agree closely on these possibilities.

Thus, their difference in first values is extremely fortunate for

explaining why they disagree about whether the state should be

abolished. If both groups proceeded from the same first values, their

disagreement on this issue would be much harder to explain.

Liberal psychologies all lack two antithetical assumptions about human

nature that are often found in political theory. On the one hand, they

do not consider any vicious motive such as the desire to oppress or

cause suffering to be irremediably and universally dominant. Nor do they

concede the possibility that a benevolent motive might achieve this

status. Within the limits set by these omissions, liberals adopt a

variety of psychologies ranging from Locke’s relatively benign one to

Bentham’s hedonism, and including intermediate positions such as Kant’s

‘asocial sociability’.[276] But here the subject is not differences

among liberal psychologies, but similarities. Anarchists agree with

liberals in upholding what is common to the liberal outlook, since they

too deny both that malevolence is always dominant everywhere and that

the universally dominant motive can be benevolence.

Human nature as described by Proudhon lies clearly within the boundaries

of liberal psychology. He explicitly rejects the same two hypotheses

about motivation as the liberals, while in his own psychology, man,

suspended between these extremes, ‘may be defined with equal justice as

either a pugnacious animal or a sociable one’.[277] Bakunin holds a

similarly liberal view concerning the motivational weight of kindness as

compared with malice. Man, for Bakunin, has ‘two opposed instincts,

egoism and sociability’, neither of which predominates, for ‘he is both

more ferocious in his egoism than the most ferocious beasts and more

sociable than bees and ants’.[278]

Godwin and Kropotkin are less easily characterized in their psychologies

as liberal. The problem, of course, lies not in the pessimism of these

theorists about the future of malevolence, but in their optimism about

the possibilities of human kindness. It is not hard to show, however,

that the reputations of Godwin and Kropotkin as naive believers in

benevolence are caricatures.[279]

As part of his campaign against psychological egoism Godwin does insist

on the force of kindly motives. Nor can it be denied that he expects

them to become stronger, more impartial and more widespread in the

future, as social conditions are improved. But these claims do not

amount to the thesis, frequently ascribed to him, that benevolence can

become universally predominant. Often, he says the opposite. A late

work, Thoughts on Man, calls ‘the love of power’ a motive which ‘never

entirely quits us’. It portrays man as ‘a creature of mingled

substance’. And it warns solemnly against the ‘few men in every

community that are sons of riot and plunder’.[280] Lest these

professions of doubt on the prospects of benevolence be thought symptoms

of Godwin’s old age, it should be noted that they also appear in the

earlier and more optimistic Political Justice. Godwin there advances the

doctrine of perfectibility, which for him includes progress in

benevolence. But he is careful to delineate the limits to

perfectibility, of which the most important is intractable human nature.

So ‘shut in on all sides’ is man by the ‘limited nature of the human

faculties’ that it would be pretence for him to ‘lay claim to absolute

perfection’.[281] Since we will never be perfect, benevolence will not

always be our strongest motive. Thus, not even in his most optimistic

work did Godwin’s faith in human kindness surpass the liberals’.

Kropotkin’s position on the future of benevolence is much the same. He

too stresses the actual force of motives such as love and devotion. He

too claims that under anarchy these motives will be stronger and more

widespread. But no more than Godwin does he regard them as potentially

predominant. In his description of anarchy not everyone is kindly.

‘Certain among us’ will still be governed by ‘anti-social

instincts’.[282] Kropotkin, like Godwin, sees more potentialities for

benevolence than Proudhon or Bakunin. But his confidence in it is slight

enough to serve along with Godwin’s as conclusive evidence that in their

estimates of human nature anarchists and liberals agree.

The agreement between anarchists and liberals in psychology makes the

main problem of their politics the same. By denying that malevolence is

ineradicable, both rule out autocracy as a mode of organization. For

only if viciousness must be widespread and rampant is autocracy needed

to safeguard peace. By denying the possibility of universal benevolence,

they also rule out as unworkable modes of organization which exert no

cohesive force. For only if kindliness is the overriding motive, can an

utterly spontaneous society exist. Thus the problem of politics for

anarchists and liberals alike is to describe a pattern of social

relations that, without being autocratic, provides the required cohesive

force.

There are two ways to solve this problem.[283] The first, the choice of

liberals, is to accept, and limit, the coercive state. Anarchists choose

the second solution, familiar from earlier chapters of this book: they

reject the state entirely and rely instead on public censure. It is the

disagreement between the two groups in normative starting point that

explains the difference in how they solve their common problem. Both

groups regard the legal form and coercive sanctions, which are inherent

in the state, as causing its most important effects. But whereas the

anarchists’ commitment to community leads them to evaluate these effects

so negatively that they reject all states, even the most limited, and

turn instead to public censure, liberals are led by their indifference

to community to a more positive evaluation, which encourages them to

reject censure and to admit the need for a limited state.

Liberals, in their denunciation of the state, often seem as adamant as

anarchists. But some of their more vivid criticism is deceptive bluster.

Paine, for instance, sounds anarchistically outraged as he berates ‘the

greedy hand of government, thrusting itself into every corner and

crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude’.[284] But

his objection here, like many raised by liberals, is to a remediable

excess, and thus no sign of categorical hostility. Being directed at

avoidable shortcomings, rather than inherent defects, such objections

serve not to destroy but to improve the state, by showing how to limit

it so that it rules more gently. But besides their numerous contingent

criticisms, liberals have at least two which, being aimed at the state’s

inherent attributes, are basic. The first of these criticisms is

Bentham’s, already mentioned, that punishment causes pain. This is an

objection to an unavoidable defect inherent in all governments, since

none can refrain from punishing altogether. The other liberal objection

to an inherent attribute of the state is Kant’s, also encountered

before, that, owing to its unavoidable coercion, the incentive to obey a

government may be fear of punishment. Since an autonomous action is done

for the sake of duty, obedience to a government often lacks moral worth.

But though liberals object to some consequences of the state’s coercion,

they are prevented by their indifference to the value of community from

assailing it with the anarchists’ sort of all-out criticism. State

coercion, for the anarchist, is more than painful, more than immoral. It

is a poison which, by contaminating social relations with distrust,

resentment and remote impersonality, causes community’s dissolution.

Here then is one way the difference between anarchists and liberals in

fundamental values explains their disagreement about abolishing the

state. The anarchists’ commitment to the value of community gives them

an emplacement, unavailable to liberals, from which to attack the

effects of state coercion more forcefully.

It is not only because their criticism of state coercion is milder that

liberals disagree with anarchists about its abolition. They also

disagree because they outweigh their criticism with reverence for

another of the state’s inherent attributes, the rule of law. So prized

by liberals are the consequences of law’s familiar traits -its

generality, stability and externality — that the bad effects of state

coercion are overshadowed in their eyes, when it has these legal merits.

The generality of law guards against practices liberals loathe, such as

discrimination against eccentrics and exploitation by officials. Law’s

stability gives it a predictability esteemed by liberals as a source

both of independence and satisfaction. And they prize law’s externality

for the protection it affords against governmental interference with

private states of mind.

This outline of the liberal defense of law and thus the state, though

sketchy, is sufficient for explaining why anarchists do not use it. For

this purpose, the crucial point about this defense is its logical

dependence on liberal values. It is the liberals’ commitment to freedom,

autonomy, individuality and utility that makes them find the effects of

law desirable enough to outweigh the harm caused by state coercion. To

anarchists, on the other hand, with their commitment to community,

veneration of legality seems outrageous. As the comparison worked out

early in this book between the anarchists’ views of law and censure

showed, from their communitarian perspective law, far from redeeming

coercion, only makes it more repulsive. Being general, law ignores the

individual diversities from which anarchist community draws its

strength. Being permanent, it is too rigid as a regulator of communal

ties. And being external, it is blind to community’s very substance: the

knowledge shared by all its members of the others’ minds. Their

commitment to community thus accounts for the anarchists’ disagreement

with liberals over the state’s abolition by explaining not only why they

attack the state more harshly, but also why they reject liberal

arguments for state coercion redeemed by legal probity.

There is one other reason why liberals disagree with anarchists about

abolishing the state: they oppose using public censure as the state’s

replacement. The degree to which the liberals oppose censure varies,

depending on their attitude toward utilitarianism. Bentham, as a

consistent utilitarian, finds no inherent fault in censure, but he finds

no inherent merit in it either. Its value lies largely in its

effectiveness as a behavioral control, concerning which he has grave

doubts. That is why he includes it in his list of sanctions — calling it

the moral or popular sanction — but relies on it very little in his

proposals for reform.[285] Non-utilitarian liberals oppose censure

forthrightly, as an unavoidable threat to their first values. Mill,

interpreted as assigning individuality intrinsic worth, is the best

known example of a liberal who rejects censure categorically. But

Constant does so too, when he proclaims: ‘we are modern men who want to

develop our faculties as we please...and who have no use for authority

except to obtain from it the general means of instruction it can

provide’.[286] Since censure unavoidably obstructs self-development, it

is as impermissible for Constant as for Mill.

Anarchists, of course, share the concern of liberals for the development

of individuality. Yet they take issue with them by espousing censure,

despite their recognition that for self-development it is a threat. Here

too the explanation for the disagreement between the two groups is the

difference in their fundamental values. Liberals reject censure, because

the dearth of reciprocal awareness in the legal state means that

admonishment by neighbors there can only cramp the self. But the bonds

of community in the stateless environment of the anarchists make

censure’s effect on individuality more benign. Censure under anarchy is

remarkable, we have learned, for the extent to which, owing largely to

the communal context in which it operates, it nurtures human faculties

by controlling behavior with reasons. It is because anarchists affirm

the worth of communal understanding that they are able, unlike liberals,

to give censure their support. For communal understanding provides them

with a safeguard, unavailable to liberals, with which to check censure’s

destructive tendencies. Thus their difference in normative starting

points is as sound as explanation for why anarchists disagree with

liberals by praising public censure as for why they disagree with them

by condemning coercion and law. The anarchists’ communitarian commitment

and its rejection by the liberals are the grounds to which all aspects

of their disagreement about whether the state should be abolished must

finally be traced.

The account advanced here of the deep difference between anarchism and

liberalism clarifies what is at stake in choosing between them. It is

not uncommon for liberals, who often see their relationship to

anarchists in Hocking’s terms, to claim an easy sympathy with anarchism

as morally appealing but empirically unsound. The allegiance to liberal

values they find in anarchism makes it seem congenial. But its

unfortunate naivety concerning human nature marks it with an

unacceptable extravagance. Thus liberals treat anarchism with both

reverence and disdain, as a flawed but noble version of the truth.[287]

There is a double mistake behind such treatment, we now can see, for the

basic values of anarchism and liberalism differ, while their views of

human nature are the same. Hence the choice between them turns not on

disavowing an outlandish psychology, but on embracing a distinctive

norm. This choice cannot be easy, since the norms of liberals and those

of anarchists have a powerful but opposite appeal.

Anarchism, socialism and the state as cause

The boundary between anarchism and socialism cannot lie on the terrain

of values, because communal individuality is the overriding goal for

both. Eccentric minor socialists such as Cabet can be cited, for whom

community eclipses individuality as a source of worth, but an

individualized community is the goal of the main socialist tradition, as

exemplified by its profound, influential members, above all Marx.[288]

Hence though an analysis of values has set anarchists apart from

liberals, they must be marked off from socialists on some other ground.

The point in their theories that sets anarchists and socialists apart

most fundamentally is one on which anarchists and liberals agree: the

importance as a source of consequences of the state’s inherent

attributes.

Having traced the anarchists’ abhorrence of law and government to their

distinctive normative commitment, we must be startled to find that

socialists, though sharing this commitment, nevertheless endorse the

state, not only as a means to build the good society, but as one of that

society’s integral parts. That socialists rely on the state tactically,

whether by seizing it with force or claiming it with votes, is a

longstanding commonplace.[289] That they also incorporate it into their

good society is more contestable, especially in light of what Marx and

Engels say about its ultimate disappearance. Yet it is easy to show that

the Marxist good society, even at its highest stage, includes elements

of legal government which are banned from a mature anarchy.

Marx and Engels, in their remarks about the state’s future, do not say

that it will disappear entirely; rather, they mention certain of its

particular attributes, qualified as political, which alone are destined

to die out.[290] Included among these are its use as a ‘government of

persons’ and as an instrument of ‘class rule’, or ‘special repressive

force’.[291] What Marx and Engels mean to designate by the last two of

these phrases is fairly clear: no force will be used by officials in the

ultimate phase of socialism to weaken or eliminate opponents. For in the

ultimate phase of socialism, since there will be no more classes, there

will be no opponents for officials to repress. As for the disappearance

of a ‘government of persons’, this must be seen in the light of its

replacement, ‘the administration of things’. Thus considered, it means

an end to the legal regulation of behavior, except when needed to

protect efficiency. The members of the classless society will be so

cooperative that legal government will not have to prevent crime.

Besides enumerating the attributes of the state that will become

outmoded, Marx and Engels also mention some that will remain. Elections,

for example, though they will ‘completely lose their political

character’, will still occur under socialism. And though the officials

chosen at these elections will perform no ‘governmental functions’,

‘general functions’ such as supervising the economy will continue to be

their task.[292] Thus Marx and Engels are at one with the mainstream of

the socialist tradition in giving the state permanence. For the

regulative institutions which they include in socialist society, despite

the withering or transcendence they undergo, retain enough traces of

legal authority to qualify as a state.[293]

The disagreement between anarchists and socialists concerning the

abolition of the state is both a ground for suspecting that their

theories differ and a source of puzzlement. Anarchists and socialists

are both committed to communal individuality. Yet only anarchists use

this shared commitment to justify the state’s elimination. What is it

about socialism that prevents its adherents from drawing out from the

normative starting point they share with anarchists the anarchists’

extreme anti-state conclusion? An answer to this question will clearly

delineate the line that separates their theories.

There is no widespread reverence for legality among socialists which

could serve, as it does for liberals, to explain their liking for the

state. Some socialists, especially those with revisionist or Fabian

sympathies, do show a liberal appreciation for the law’s blessings. But

neutrality or indifference toward the law as such is socialism’s usual

stance. For most socialists legal institutions draw their value not from

their intrinsic character, but from the society that shapes them and

from the interests that they serve. Nor can the liking of socialists for

the state be explained by their view of human nature, since their

pessimism about the future of benevolence is no greater than the

anarchists’. Marx, of course, thought history was ‘nothing but a

continuous transformation of human nature’.[294] The place to look for

an explanation of their differences concerning the abolition of the

state is their analysis of its significance compared to the economy as a

social cause.

All anarchists take note of a point much emphasized by socialists — how

economic relations affect our lives for ill or good. Kropotkin, writing

in a period that was obsessed by economics, goes further than his

predecessors in tracing personal degradation and social mistrust to the

baneful effects of a disordered economy, which he sees as causing damage

not only directly, but also indirectly, through being a source of legal

government. Kropotkin also works out more fully how the future economy

will cause communal individuality to grow. But even Godwin’s analysis of

the economy’s causal role includes the gist of Kropotkin’s points. ‘The

spirit of oppression, the spirit of servility, and the spirit of fraud,

these are the immediate growth of the established administration of

property.’ ‘The unequal distribution of property’ is also ‘one of the

original sources of government’. And an egalitarian economy would help

to create a situation in which ‘each man would be united to his

neighbor, in love and mutual kindness...but each man would think and

judge for himself’.[295] There is nothing in these affirmations with

which a socialist need disagree.

Where anarchists and socialists part company is on the causal role of

the state. Much of their disagreement on this subject is no more than a

matter of degree or emphasis. Thus, while both groups recognize the

effects of government on economic institutions, anarchists insist on

them more.[296] And while both see that government, despite being

affected by the economy, acts somewhat independently from it, anarchists

insist more strongly on this independence.[297] But there is one

question regarding the state as cause on which anarchists and socialists

completely disagree: whether the state’s inherent nature is a source of

its effects. All of the state’s effects are seen by socialists as

arising from its particular, changeable attributes, mainly, in the

Marxist case, its class character. Each government, for the Marxist,

gets its most causally significant attributes from the relations of

production which it reflects. Anarchists, on the other hand, while they

certainly appreciate how the particular effects of each state are shaped

by its changeable attributes, also emphasize, in contradistinction to

the socialists, how its legality and coerciveness, which are inherent in

its nature, constantly cause more serious effects. Thus Godwin implores

us never to ‘forget, that government is, abstractly taken, an evil, an

usurpation upon the private judgment and individual conscience of

mankind’. Bakunin maintains that ‘despotism lies less in the form of the

state or of power than in their very principle’. And Proudhon gives the

anarchist analysis of the state as cause practical application in

explaining his vote against one of France’s most democratic

constitutions: ‘I voted against the Constitution, because it is a

Constitution.’[298] For the anarchist, then, it makes no difference, so

far as concerns its more important effects, who runs the state, how it

is organized, or what it does. It debases and estranges its subjects

regardless of these contingencies, just because it is a state.

With this understanding of the basic difference between anarchists and

socialists to rely on, new meaning can be given to their well-known

tactical disputes. The dramatic clashes between anarchists and

socialists, which arose within the First International and have

continued wherever anarchists have been politically significant, are

conventionally seen as clashes over the bearing of circumstances on the

effectiveness of the state as a means for reaching a rnutually accepted

goal. This interpretation is inadequate on at least two scores.

For one thing, its claim that the goal of anarchists and socialists is

identical can only be accepted with stricter qualifications than are

normally imposed. It is often said that the goal shared by socialists

and anarchists is a self-regulating, classless society, bereft of

government and law. Socialists, to be sure, see this goal as an ultimate

end, while for anarchists it is an immediate objective, but its status

as their shared goal can hardly be impugned by the fact that they plan

to reach it on different schedules. This standard way of claiming that

anarchists and socialists share goals fails because it ignores the

disagreement between them just analyzed concerning the permanence of the

state. Socialists and anarchists cannot possibly have the same goal,

understood as a vision of the good society, because socialists give law

and government a permanent place even in their good society’s final

stage. But though the claim that anarchists and socialists share goals

is unacceptable in its standard version, properly qualified it holds up.

Provided they are regarded not as a vision of a good society, but as

values which a good society must express, the goals of anarchists and

socialists are certainly identical, since communal individuality is the

regulative value for both groups.

The other score on which the usual interpretation of the clash on

tactics between anarchists and socialists must be questioned is its

contention that the clash is over the issue of how the state’s

suitability as an instrument is affected by circumstances. When

socialists rely on the state tactically, they do so, in this view, out

of the belief that circumstances make it a helpful means for achieving

victory. Anarchists arrive at their tactical opposition to the state by

the same sort of reasoning. But their reading of the circumstances which

socialists see as making the state a handy conveyance leads them to see

it as a vehicle for reaching nothing but defeat. There is evidence in

the writings of both groups to support this way of understanding their

clash on tactics.

Socialists, with insignificant exceptions, agree that one way to win

control of the state, in the right circumstances, is by taking title to

it in an election. Marx, for instance, thinks that if there is universal

suffrage, if capitalism is well-developed, if agriculture is

industrialized, if there is no strong authoritarian tradition,

socialists should contest elections, because a majority of dedicated

voters, who will support the desired social transformation, can then be

won.[299] Anarchists reject this strategy by denying that the

circumstances which socialists find auspicious give elections even

scanty promise. The mass of voters in present society are so ignorant,

so deferential, and so resigned that there is no hope of attracting the

support of a majority.[300]

The other way suggested by socialists for winning control of the state

is some sort of forceful seizure. Their projects for this seizure (and

hence their views about its needed circumstances) vary, ranging from

Blanqui’s schemes for conspiracy by a small group to Marx’s hints at an

open, broadly based insurrection. Circumstances which socialists see as

affecting the success of a forceful seizure pertain to such matters as

the strength of the established government, the disposition of the

underlying population and the capacities of the insurrectionary

leadership. It is mainly concerning the last of these that anarchists

and socialists part company. Socialists believe that insurrectionary

leaders, whether because of their exemplary character, their dependence

on their followers, or their loyalty to their class, may have enough

resolve selflessly to build the good society once they have won power.

Anarchists deny this on the ground that the temptations of power are too

great. Not even the most dedicated revolutionary can be trusted to build

the good society, if he occupies a public office.[301]

It should be clear from this comparison that the usual account of the

clash between anarchists and socialists on tactics, which traces it to

their different assessments of attendant circumstances, provides a

workable explanation of their dispute. But this explanation is

superficial, because it makes no reference to the deeper difference

between them, brought out earlier in this section, concerning the causal

efficacy of the state’s inherent attributes. Even if they endorsed the

socialists’ favorable reading of circumstances, anarchists would not

accept their tactical reliance on the state, because, no matter how

favorable the circumstances in which it is used, the state for

anarchists remain a Moloch. It is only by recognizing the bearing on

their familiar tactical disputes of their disagreement concerning the

state as cause that the theoretical significance of these disputes can

be appreciated. They are then revealed as more than wrangles over the

empirical assessment of contingencies, for they are rooted in a

difference antecedent to such wrangles about whether contingencies can

ever be decisive, in judging the state’s effects.

The error of those who claim that anarchists are socialists at heart

stems from blindness toward their disagreement about the causal efficacy

of the state qua state. A typical version of this claim is advanced by

Noam Chomsky. Anarchism is not to be identified with socialism

simpliciter, since many socialists rely on legal government. But there

are also socialists (Chomsky cites Anton Pannekoek and William Paul) who

are at one with anarchists in finding the state antipathetic. It is as

part of this ‘libertarian wing of socialism’ that Chomsky thinks

anarchism should be classed.[302]

If the antipathy to legal government of council communists, syndicalists

and similar representatives of socialism’s libertarian wing came from

alarm about the effects of the state’s inherent attributes, Chomsky’s

claim that anarchism is a type of socialism would be correct. But even

the most libertarian of the socialists is alarmed mainly by effects of

the state’s changeable characteristics, such as its organization or

policies. This difference in the causal perspective from which they view

the state puts socialists, however libertarian, a great distance away

from anarchists. What libertarian socialists find fault with in their

criticism of the present state is not its impersonality or coercion, but

its use by minorities to subjugate the many. What they fear in the state

envisaged by a less libertarian socialism is not the perpetuation of an

unredeemable institution, but its continued use as an oppressive

instrument by a bureaucracy or a vanguard party. And what they project

as a successor to the existing state is not a society freed of legal

government, but a society organized, in Chomsky’s words, ‘on truly

democratic lines, with democratic control in the workplace and in the

community’.[303]

The same conclusion emerges from this comparison at every point.

Libertarian socialists, mainly because of their oblivion to the state’s

permanent effects, are not anarchists, but democrats. They want a system

built on a pattern like that described by Paul, with industry

‘democratically owned and controlled by the workers electing directly

from their own ranks industrial administrative committees’.[304]

Anarchists, to be sure, regard democracy as more progressive than other

forms of government; some go so far as to give it a significant place in

their strategy. But even a democracy purged of all bourgeois elements —

impeccably participatory, thoroughly decentralized, genuinely

industrial, proceeding entirely from the bottom up — produces the

effects for which the anarchists condemn the state. Hence any theory

such as libertarian socialism which, far from excluding democratic

institutions from its vision of the good society, regards them as

indispensable, cannot possibly be called anarchist.

We must thus conclude that even between anarchists and socialists whose

affinities are closest, there is a clear dividing line. For the

disagreement about the significance of the state as cause, which

underlies their dispute about the future of democracy, overshadows the

affinity arising from their shared antipathy to particular states. When

libertarian socialists denounce the present state as a tool of

capitalism, call for workers’ councils, or attack elitism and

bureaucracy, they may sound like anarchists, but in its relevant causal

presuppositions the theory they depend on for reaching these conclusions

is no form of anarchism at all.

If the usual view of the relationship between anarchism and socialism

were acceptable, choosing between them would be a matter of empirical

judgment. One need only decide which group, in assessing the state’s

effectiveness in varied circumstances, makes the more reliable

predictions. Matters such as the anarchists’ tendency to underestimate

the educative effects of democracy and the socialists’ tendency to

underestimate the corrupting effects of power would have to be examined.

When all the differences between the two groups which affect the

reliability of their predictions had been weighed together, the balance

on which the choice between them depended would be struck.

But the view presented here of where anarchism and socialism disagree

shows that the choice between them rests on another consideration. The

world of politics has a different structure for the two groups, at least

so far as it is composed of states. Socialists think that the state’s

significance as a source of political effects arises from its contingent

attributes and from the causal nexus in which these attributes exist.

For anarchists, the state’s political significance lies elsewhere — in

its independent, self-contained, unchangeable existence. Hence the

choice between anarchism and socialism depends not on an empirical

comparison, but on an ontological inquiry, not on the weighing of

probabilities, at which socialists may be shrewder, but on the

elucidation of conjectures, at which neither side is obviously better.

The singularity of Anarchism

The allegiance of the anarchists to both communal individuality and to

viewing the state as an inherent cause not only makes their theory

singular by distinguishing it from its close neighbors, but also

accounts for its most noticeable peculiarities. In studying the

anarchists we have continually found their commitment to communal

individuality revealing. Their reliance on public censure, their search

for mediation between individuals and groups, their radical social

criticism and their fruitless quest for an effective strategy have all

been illuminated when seen as shaped by the requirements of their

guiding value. Yet since socialists as well as anarchists affirm this

value, it cannot by itself account for what is distinctive about

anarchism. Communal individuality as affected by anarchism’s conception

of the state as an inherent cause is what lies at the root of its

peculiarities. Conceiving of the state as a malevolent god, drawing its

power from its inner resources, anarchists, at all phases of their

theorizing, must fight not only for their guiding value, but against

their mortal enemy. It is because they strive for a communal

individuality devoid of legal government that anarchists reach such

peculiar conclusions about tactics and social structure. Less novel

options are unavailable, being foreclosed by their conception of the

causal efficacy of the state. Hence the singularity of anarchist theory

lies not only in its defining attributes, but also in the contours which

these attributes shape. The characteristics of anarchism which set it

apart from its close neighbors are also poles which inflect the course

of its argument with attractive and repellent force. To redeem society

on the strength of rational, spontaneous relations, while slaying the

leviathan who offers minimal protection — this is the anarchist’s daring

choice.

7. Evaluating anarchism

Accurate understanding has been the main purpose of the previous

chapters of this book, which have sought to elucidate the arguments of

the anarchists faithfully and in detail. But accurate understanding is

not this study’s only purpose; another is evaluation. How consistent is

the case for anarchism? What is its plausibility, if not its truth? And

what is the moral value of its model of an ideal social order?

Fortunately, the foregoing analysis makes it unnecessary to answer these

questions from scratch. For though this analysis has been expository, it

has done more than describe. The process of establishing what anarchists

are saying has included evaluation of their arguments with regard to

both consistency and plausibility. We have found the anarchists to be

unexpectedly consistent, with the sovereign value of communal

individuality lending their arguments a marked unity. The plausibility

of their arguments has also been substantiated. The anarchists, we have

discovered, evince a certain realism about the obstacles posed by human

nature, social conditions and the power of their adversaries to the

success of their project. Since two of the evaluative questions which

need to be addressed have already received direct attention, the

assessment of the anarchists in this concluding chapter will be devoted

mainly to the question, which so far has been slighted, of the value of

their social model as a model of the best regime.

The gist of anarchy has been identified in this book as a society which,

by virtue of its statelessness and its internal structure, provides

utmost communal individuality and freedom. Anarchy may therefore be

considered as a possible alternative to the models of a good society

which more familiar political theories advance. The moral value of

anarchy, viewed as a candidate for choice as the ideal social order,

depends partly on its merit as a complete achievement, and partly on its

merit as a critical standard and practical guide. It thus must be

evaluated here from both of these perspectives.

Anarchy as a complete achievement

No ideal society attains perfection, because the merits of each incur a

moral price. Even the most attractive requires the sacrifice or

abridgment of some values, because they are incompatible or uneasy with

it. A society like Rousseau’s, for example, which achieves equal

political participation, can secure neither the material abundance of

Marx’s good society, nor the intellectuality of Plato’s. To designate a

model of the good society as the one which, if realized, would be

morally best thus requires a choice among competing values.

Appreciation of how choice among values enters into the endorsement of

social ideals leads easily to despair about whether agreement on the

nature of the good society can be reached. Since the choice of values on

which such agreement rests is ineluctably contestable, it may seem

hopeless to expect consensus concerning which model of the good society

is best. Why should any advocate change his choice, when it rests as

much as all the others on an incorrigible moral preference? And if the

basis for designating any model of the good society as morally best is

incorrigible, arguments for or against so designating anarchy are

pointless. Once beliefs about the nature of the good society are seen to

be contestable, it may seem that the task of evaluating an ideal anarchy

must be abandoned.

This conclusion should be resisted, since the value of a social ideal

depends significantly on considerations which have nothing to do with

moral preference. One of those considerations is attainability. A model

of a good society with patently unattainable characteristics, such as

costless methods of production or telepathic minds, is ineligible for

the status of morally best, because it gives bad practical advice. By

calling on us to work for advantages that cannot possibly be won, it

directs activity into a path that must be fruitless. Another way of

showing why unattainable models of the good society lack moral value is

to consider what would happen if they had it. The way would then be open

for the most inventive dreamer to claim, validly, that since he had

equipped his model with the greatest number of good though unattainable

features, it deserved designation as morally best.

If anarchy is, as some have claimed, a condition plainly beyond reach,

it is no more eligible for selection as the best regime than any other

unachievable social system. There are two main arguments for calling

anarchy unreachable. One denies the slightest possibility of success for

the strategy that must prepare the way for it. The other, focusing on

anarchy as a finished structure, views its achievement as precluded by

incompatibilities among its elements. Ample evidence has been assembled

in this book to meet these arguments.

The prospects for anarchist strategy have certainly been revealed in the

course of this analysis as slight. The dilemma in which anarchists are

caught by their need to produce sweeping changes without deceit or force

has thus far prevented all of their strategies from being effective. Yet

past failure to devise measures that can set the stage for anarchy is

not proof that such measures lie beyond reach forever. One or more of

the conditions that have for so long stymied anarchist endeavor might

some day relent. Nor can one entirely dismiss the promise of creative

innovation. Anarchy would be disqualified for consideration as the

ideally best social order only if the strategy needed to attain it faced

permanent defeat. But even after fullest weight has been given to its

historic failure, the possibility that anarchist strategy will be

successful remains. The argument that strategic unattainability excludes

anarchy from consideration as the ideally best regime must therefore be

rejected as unpersuasive.

Though a strategy that prepares for anarchy must be accounted possible,

anarchy would still not qualify as a model of the good society if the

main attributes of its completed structure could not coexist. Points of

friction among these attributes are numerous. The rich diversity that

marks anarchist society is supposed to be accompanied by equality of

status. Yet the normal tendency of people to evaluate each other means

that differences of kind encourage differences of rank. The censure

which is anarchy’s distinctive method of control is supposed to occur

among persons who are open and forthright. Yet the threat of rebuke,

which anarchist censure poses, prompts all but the bravest to hide from

surveillance by being secretive. But of the many points of friction

which trouble a complete anarchy, the most dangerous to its integrity is

the friction, previously analyzed in detail, between its members’

individuality and their communal ties. Anarchist individuality and

community are patently discordant. Individuality, especially if

conceived in Kropotkin’s way as creative uniqueness, but also if

conceived generically, as rational independence, is a trait that renders

the self separate. Developed individuals, in all their anarchist

delineations, tend to become detached by virtue of their self-assertion

from their fellow humans. Just as individuality fragments community, so

community makes it hard for individuality to grow. The reciprocal

awareness which constitutes the communal bond of anarchy is a

significantly repressive force, which, through pressures toward

conformity, saps personal independence. If anarchy is not to be

pre-emptorily disqualified as a possible model of the good society, it

must be shown to be attainable despite its internal frictions.

One of the arguments sometimes used to show the inner harmony of anarchy

is lame and facile. Anarchy, according to this argument, has remarkably

accordant attributes. They only appear at odds because they are

illegitimately viewed as having to exist under the state’s inhospitable

conditions. Diversity will of course undermine equality wherever the

state, through its impersonality, renders its subjects envious and

grasping. Censure will of course discourage openness and honesty

wherever subjects have to hide their selves from the state’s remote

presence. Individuality and community will of course be enemies where

there is a state to homogenize subjects and cut off the wellsprings of

reciprocal awareness at their individual source. But since the

state-imposed conditions which render the attributes of anarchy

incompatible are absent from the setting in which complete anarchy

occurs, the claim that anarchy’s internal incompatibilities make it

unattainable must be rejected as resting on a contextual mistake.

The weakness of this argument lies in its assumption that the sufficient

condition for rendering the attributes of anarchy compatible is

statelessness. Even though the state’s presence is an obvious source of

the conflicts among the attributes of anarchy, these conflicts may

plausibly be suspected of being overdeter-mined by a team of cooperating

causes. To vindicate their social ideal as harmonious enough to be

achievable, anarchists must therefore do more than trace its internal

incompatibilities to the state’s effects; they must also show that in a

stateless condition these incompatibilities would not arise from other

causes. Anarchist theory contains material to demonstrate this point.

Anarchists show an appreciation, with which they are too seldom

credited, for the insufficiency of mere statelessness as a setting for

their system. Statelessness must in their view be preceded and

accompanied by conditions which combat the numerous causes of anarchy’s

internal friction that statelessness cannot defeat alone. When legal

government and social hierarchy have completed their civilizing

missions, when economic advances have ended the need for abject poverty

and for the most servile industrial routines, when anarchist endeavor

has weakened the destructive tendencies of habit, fear and envy, and has

strengthened more cooperative, sympathetic, reasonable dispositions,

then and only then will statelessness, now operating in a context which

dampens anarchy’s internal frictions, be a source of harmony. If the

anarchists claimed that statelessness alone resolved such conflicts in

their social model as those between diversity and equality, censure and

honesty, or individuality and community, then anarchy would have to be

judged too discordant to qualify for consideration as the best regime.

But since statelessness is but one of the forces on which anarchists

rely to give harmony to their system, and since their various remedies

for discord, taken together, are not obviously ineffective, anarchy

remains eligible, despite its internal conflicts, for designation as the

ideal social order.

The case for acknowledging anarchy as attainable, despite its internal

discords, rests on more than the impossibility of altogether denying its

capacity to form a coherent structure. Besides offering this minimal

defense of their model’s inner unity, anarchists also deploy a bolder

argument. Since no complete anarchy has ever been established, the

compatibility of its attributes cannot be tested by direct experience.

But the question of their compatibility is not entirely beyond indirect

empirical assessment. Numerous social arrangements which resemble

anarchy harmoniously combine attributes whose compatibility in a state

of anarchy is suspect. We have already encountered-some of these

arrangements, when we examined the circles of conversers, producers and

neighbors used by the various anarchists to exemplify their society’s

structure. Kropotkin, in his descriptions of primitive societies,

village communes, medieval cities and contemporary organizations for

voluntary aid, such as the English Life-Boat Association, furnishes

additional examples of harmonious relations in settings that resemble

anarchy.[305] In all of these settings individuality and community, to

take only anarchy’s most troublingly discordant attributes, not only

coexist, but give each other varying degrees of mutual support. In the

Life-Boat Association, for example, which consists of volunteers who

save shipwrecked survivors, reciprocal awareness of pursuing a daring

purpose strengthens each member’s independent resolve, while the

adroitness and determination of the individual members strengthens the

ties of community which unite them. Anarchy is, of course, so much more

complex, encompassing and stateless than these quasi-anarchist

arrangements that their success in reconciling anarchy’s discordant

elements is no proof that anarchy can reconcile them. But their ability

to do so makes the coherence of anarchy plausible enough so that qualms

about its qualifications as an ideal social model which arise from

concern about its internal frictions must be cast off as unreasonable.

The merit of a completed anarchy, now eligible for consideration by

virtue of its having been proved attainable, turns on the balance

between its morally objectionable and its morally valuable features. No

definitive striking of this balance, which may well be impossible to

achieve, will be attempted here. What will be offered are remarks aimed

at highlighting the moral deficiencies and attractions of the anarchist

ideal. These remarks, though inconclusive, will dispel misconceptions

about anarchy’s worth and open the way to more clearly appreciating its

merit as a social model.

It must be recognized, to begin with, that anarchy suffers from neither

of two moral shortcomings which are frequently ascribed to it, Its

members exhibit none of that socially destructive selfishness which led

Edward Hyndman to denounce it as ‘individualism gone wild’. Nor are its

members smothered in oppressive peer group pressures, such as have

prompted a recent commentator to liken anarchy to ‘an adolescent

gang’.[306] Our understanding of how individuality and community are

reinforcing under anarchy compels us to acknowledge its freedom from

these defects. Neither a shattering individualism nor a stifling

communitarianism contaminates an ideal anarchy, because its

individualizing and communalizing tendencies fructify each other so as

to prevent destructive excess.

Anarchy does, of course, have genuine defects, but some are not

particularly objectionable or severe. These include its incomplete

provision for privacy, for emotional self-expression and for meeting

claims of distributive justice.

The opportunity to act and think without surveillance by unchosen others

which we call privacy is greater in some models of the good society

(such as J. S. Mill’s), and perhaps even in some actual societies, than

under anarchy. As was discovered when examining Godwin’s conversational

anarchy, its members are unable, except by retreating into solitude and

by counting on their interlocutors’ discretion, to escape being

observed. In the more complex societies of the later anarchists

opportunities for privacy are no doubt greater. But anarchy in all its

variants remains a system where privacy, since it involves social

indifference and personal concealment, is hardly salient.

To appreciate how far anarchy is morally deficient for limiting privacy,

one must bear in mind the conditions which, in a state of anarchy, cause

the need for privacy to diminish. Privacy fills two quite different

needs: it is both a refuge from incursions by the malevolent or

insensitive and a place of seclusion for inner growth or restoration.

Now the members of an anarchy, owing to their mutual awareness, their

honest sympathy and their commitment to controlling behavior with

reasons, are neither the sanctimonious Pecksniffs, nor the barefaced

prigs, and certainly not the domineering zealots against whom the refuge

of privacy is urgent. As for privacy as seclusion, there is no reason to

doubt that under anarchy it is available. Certainly Godwin, who devotes

much attention to this subject, praises solitude. And anarchist

individuals have a discrete sensitivity to their neighbors’ moods. Since

seclusion, which is the type of privacy needed in an anarchy, is the

type that anarchy provides, its lack of the privacy that serves as a

refuge is not a defect to regard as grave.

No less marked than anarchy’s deficiency as a provider of privacy is its

deficiency as a setting for emotional self-expression. Its shortcomings

as a facilitator of emotions must not be exaggerated. Even Godwin, for

whom feelings are no part of individuality, grants that they contribute

to its growth. Expressions of emotion are therefore by no means absent

from Godwinian anarchy, but being ancillary to its nature, they have an

insecure presence. The later anarchists, by endowing their conceptions

of individuality with emotional attributes, give feelings in their good

society a safer place. In Kropotkin’s anarchy, the display of emotions

remains limited, because reasoned argument — which Kropotkin, following

earlier anarchists, makes the first defense against misconduct — is

jeopardized not only by displays of destructive feelings such as

selfishness, fear or envy, which in an anarchy would diminish, but also

by the display of less harmful and more permanent emotions. Alarm,

triumph, despair, impatience, indeed almost the whole gamut of human

feelings, though surely they would continue to be experienced under

anarchy, would sometimes have to be repressed. Their frequent expression

would certainly be normal, but since not even the influence of a

full-fledged anarchy can entirely prevent emotional outbursts from

disrupting the practice of controlling behavior with reasoned arguments,

or the process of rational deliberation on which this practice rests,

the unlimited display of feelings in an anarchy is unallowable. What

thus emerges at the root of anarchy’s deficiency as a setting for

emotional self-expression is its remarkably tenacious devotion to

sovereign reason.

Whether the rationality that anarchy provides is worth the price of a

somewhat limited emotional self-expression is a question which will be

addressed later in this chapter. The point that now needs making is that

anarchy, in order to achieve utmost communal individuality and freedom,

must pay this price. It remained for those recent sympathizers with

anarchism who have been most touched by disillusionment with rationality

to give up the conviction of anarchy’s devisers that reliance on the

giving of reasons is the wellspring of its moral worth. Believing the

old anarchists to have been too optimistic in their estimates of human

reasonableness, finding emotional attributes of the self more at the

center of individuality than rational attributes, and having witnessed

too much use of reason for evil ends to trust the reasoner any longer, a

motley assortment of contemporary writers and activists claims to have

devised a new form of anarchy in which the avowedly non-rational display

of emotions, especially by evanescent leaders performing spectacular

gestures, replaces reason as the chief regulating force.[307] The

society envisaged by this group of authors, being stateless, and

directed toward attaining communal individuality, can certainly be

called a type of anarchy. But it is an anarchy with less of the freedom

that is one of classical anarchy’s chief attractions. The remarkable

amount of freedom in the anarchy studied in this book arises from a

marked absence of hindrances, including emotional hindrances, to

deliberation, choice and conduct. Proceeding from the scarcely deniable

premise according to which freedom is undiminished by the rationally

based conclusions which a deliberating agent reaches about the merit of

his contemplated acts, the founders of anarchism devised a model of the

good society which protects these conclusions, and hence freedom, from

every sort of threat. There must be less freedom in the model of the

good society devised by recent non-rational anarchists, because it

includes emotional displays which jeopardize the rationally based

conclusions on which freedom in an anarchy must rest. The extensive

freedom of classical anarchy is simply unobtainable without the limits

on emotional self-expression that non-rational anarchists reject.

The partial shortcoming of anarchy that remains to be considered is its

slighting in its pattern of economic distribution of some established

claims of justice. The anarchists, we have discovered, increasingly

choose need over productive contribution as the distributive claim the

good society must meet. This choice, despite its certain merit, has the

drawback of denying recognition to other worthy claims. Members of an

anarchy with extraordinary talents or abilities receive less material

advantage than other ideal societies provide them, and, under conditions

of scarcity, not enough to exploit their endowments fully. Nor are

benefits bestowed to the same extent as in some other ideal societies on

persons who show unusual diligence or daring. Because anarchy is so

devoted to satisfying the claim of need, it must neglect these rival

claims of justice.

The moral defect incurred by anarchy from this neglect is mitigated by

how it organizes production and by how its members view productive work.

One good reason for honoring claims of contribution, ability or effort

is to increase well-being (perhaps above all of the least favored)

through eliciting plentiful and efficient production. The prospect of

receiving economic benefit for adding to the supply of goods, for

exercising natural talents and for hard or dangerous work is normally a

stimulus to productivity. Viewed from this angle, the merit of claims to

remuneration that rival that of need lies not in their intrinsic

fittingness but in their utility as incentives. Now conditions in an

ideal anarchy are such that bounteous, efficient production occurs

without these incentives. The mutual understanding among participants in

anarchy, their desire to develop their native talents, the satisfaction

they find in their often voluntary, varied work, and their ability,

owiilg to polytechnical education and occupational mobility, to

understand the productive process as a whole, are some of the reasons

why it is unnecessary in an anarchy to distribute economic benefits

according to claims of contribution, ability or effort. One can

nevertheless argue plausibly that though conditions under anarchy assure

ample productivity, even if these claims are slighted, they should be

honored anyway, as claims to just desert. The claim that seems most to

deserve recognition on this basis is (conscientious) effort. That

producers who are especially brave or diligent should be rewarded

economically, whether or not rewarding them is generally advantageous,

is an intuitively appealing proposition, which serves as a defensible

ground for deeming anarchy’s neglect of effort in its pattern of

distribution to be a real, though far from overwhelming, moral defect.

If its incomplete recognition of privacy, emotional self-expression and

the claims of distributive justice were anarchy’s only shortcomings,

there would probably be wide agreement that it is the model of the good

society which, if realized, would be morally best. But anarchy also

suffers from a fourth deficiency, which is complete and more open to

objection. This is its repudiation of active citizenship. A vision of

the citizen as an equal participant in the process of self-government is

a recurrent theme in political theory, most eloquently articulated in

modern times by Rousseau. The citizens of Rousseau’s direct democracy,

who subordinate their personal interests to the good of the whole, who

eschew the distractions of activity in partial groups, and whose chief

business is to deliberate and vote on laws, are figures who, despite

their awesome virtues, have no place in a mature anarchy. We have

already discovered, in examining the anarchists’ criticism of unanimous

direct democracy, that a main reason they object to such a government is

for its homogenizing public spirit. Participants in a unanimous direct

democracy view legislative proposals with an aloof disinterest that

anarchists reject for being repugnant to developed individuality. Now

the homogenizing public spirit which anarchists reject in a unanimous

direct democracy, far from being peculiar to that bizarre form of

government, must be a part of any which includes an active citizenry.

For unless citizens who participate in the legislative process as equals

subordinate their particular concerns to the general good, the laws they

enact will be so shortsighted and divisive that social peace will be

endangered. According to the anarchists, then, active citizenship, in

all its forms, though not without attractions, still must be excluded

from their model of the good society as injurious to the independent,

particularized sort of individual that it is a main purpose of that

society to promote.

It might be thought that the exclusion by the anarchists of active

citizenship from any place in their good society rests on a mistaken

understanding of its relationship to individuality. If being an

individual and being a citizen were compatible, then anarchy, contrary

to the belief of its espousers, could enjoy the benefits of both.

One of the best reasons for accepting the anarchists’ view of

citizenship at odds with individuality is its acceptance by

citizenship’s proponents. Rousseau, for instance, acknowledges that in

his society of equal citizens individuality must be repressed. The

individual man ‘is the unit, the whole, dependent only on himself. Man

as citizen ‘is but the numerator of a fraction, whose value depends on

the denominator; ...he no longer regards himself as one, but as part of

the whole, and is only conscious of the common life’. Since

individuality subverts commitment to the public, ‘you must take your

choice between man and the citizen, you cannot train both’.[308] The

contradiction between man as individual and as citizen, which Rousseau

drew so starkly, has remained a chief preoccupation of political

theorists who admire active citizenship. Most have tried through some

means such as pluralism or functional representation to reduce the force

of the contradiction, but none have denied that it exists. Michael

Walzer, for instance, ends his anguished discussion of citizenship with

a plea for kibitzers, not so much because he finds them likeable as

because they narrow the inevitable gap between ‘the world of the

meeting’ and the world of ‘the tete-a-tete’.[309] Since proponents of

citizenship would surely embrace full individual development, if they

thought it was safe, their refusal to do so is strong evidence of its

incompatibility with citizenship and hence that the defect anarchy

suffers owing to its lack of citizens is beyond escape.

Anarchy’s repudiation of active citizenship is more serious than its

other shortcomings, not only because it is total, whereas they are

partial, but also because it is more morally offensive. The ideal of the

self-governing citizen has legitimate appeal. Man the citizen, who obeys

his own laws, is one version of man at his very best: self-directing,

public spirited, controlling his own destiny. That anarchy is seriously

deficient for excluding citizens is a conclusion that only those who

find citizenship worthless can reject.

Yet in an anarchist society the lack of citizens is less disturbing than

it is in other societies, because the communal individuality prevailing

in an anarchy affords one of the chief advantages of citizenship.

Rousseau condemned existing society as strongly as the anarchists, and

for similar reasons. Both saw it as composed of competitive,

self-centered role-players, utterly bereft of mutual understanding.

Citizenship was Rousseau’s hope for ending this estrangement and for

providing a more communal existence. Centering their lives around

deliberation in the public forum, where each gives his disinterested

opinion on proposed legislation and is respectfully attended to by all

the rest, Rousseauist citizens develop a strong mutual awareness. They

do lack individuality, but this is the price they pay for their

community. It is because they are so limited as particular individuals

that the communal bond among these deliberating citizens is intense.

Anarchists, of course, are as determined as Rousseau to create community

where now there is estrangement. But whereas Rousseau, because he

confined community to life in the forum, suppressed individuality as a

disruptive influence, the anarchists, because they suffuse community

through all of life, welcome individuality as a cohesive force. Personal

particularity and independence, instead of dividing the members of an

anarchy, make them more apt for their variegated communal existence. By

increasing their appeal for one another, and their dependence on one

another for the satisfaction of needs, individuality intensifies their

mutual awareness. It is thus because anarchy provides community even

though it lacks citizens that the offensiveness of this lack is

lessened. But it nevertheless remains a moral defect. For even though

the absence of citizens does not deprive anarchy of community, it does

deprive it of a source of noble eminence.

To reach a verdict on whether anarchy is the ideal social order its

assets as well as its shortcomings need assessment. One of its chief

assets, the conjoint provision of ample individuality and community,

certainly has great merit, though hardly enough to make anarchy’s status

as the best regime uncontroversial. What is most crucial to assessing

the moral worth of anarchy is its problematic exaltation of a freedom

that is rationally based.

No one in the history of political theory has advanced a more exigent

concept of freedom than the anarchists, because none has required that

agents, to count as free, be as unhindered by restraints. For

anarchists, it will be recalled, a completely free agent is liberated in

both action and choice from every removable hindrance, except for those

arising from his rational deliberation. If the anarchists said no more

about the restraints that count as non-coercive than that they are

rationally based, their concept of liberty would not be particularly

exigent. Many political theorists who are far from being libertarians

have conceived of freedom as a matter of rational control. What gives

the freedom of the anarchists its special exigence is their insistence

that the deliberative process whose conclusions are non-coercive must be

rational in a more than minimal sense. This process must be rational in

the sense of systematic and critical, to be sure. In weighing the

arguments and evidence which bear on whether to perform an act, the

deliberating agent must use standards which he has judged acceptable by

methodical examination and which he applies consistently to his

relevantly similar conduct. But deliberation, for anarchists, must be

rational in a stronger sense than this in order for its conclusions to

be coercionless. It must be thoroughly particular in having for its

focus the advantages and disadvantages attached to the performance of a

single act. If, after deliberating, I choose to do an act because it is

of a type whose general performance I believe to have good consequences,

or because it is enjoined by a rule I deem inviolable, or because some

person or organization’whose judgment I respect prescribes it,

anarchists regard my deliberation as non-rational. For I have failed to

consider the particular circumstances of the case. The only deliberation

that is rational enough to make me free involves attending to all the

concrete details that bear on my act’s merit, and especially to the

consequences for the particular individuals who would be touched by its

effects.[310] Even in an anarchy, where access to such details is easy,

such particularized deliberation is hard, relentless work. It is the

dependence of anarchist freedom on such a demanding rationality that

raises questions about the value of its contribution to anarchy’s moral

worth.

Doubts concerning the value of anarchist freedom are bound to grow more

urgent when one appreciates that the rationality on which it depends is

purely procedural. It specifies only the manner in which the members of

an anarchy must choose their acts and says nothing about the attributes

their acts must have. I act rationally, in an anarchy, no matter what I

do, just so long as systematic, critical, particularized deliberation is

the means I use to choose my conduct. The anarchist view of rationality

as a matter of nothing but procedure calls the worth of the freedom

which depends on it into question by making that freedom consistent with

performing abominable acts. The only restraints that do not curtail

anarchist freedom are imposed by the conclusions drawn by individuals

from their rational deliberations. Since the rationality of these

deliberations is procedural, they can warrant any act. Freedom in an

anarchy, owing to its dependence on a procedural rationality, thus

serves as a license for misconduct. How can anarchy possibly be the

ideal social model, when its freedom, besides demanding burdensome

particularized deliberation, allows wrong-doing? To make the case for

anarchy as the best regime in face of the stiff price in laborious

deliberation and in opportunities to misbehave that its rationally

demanding, behaviorally permissive freedom exacts, what must be shown is

that, despite these drawbacks, anarchy is imbued by its freedom with

sufficient value to tip the moral balance in its favor.

One benefit of anarchist freedom that must not be overlooked in an

overall assessment of its value is its service to communal

individuality. The anarchists, we have discovered, prize freedom mainly

as a support for the communal individuality that is their chief

objective. It is largely by stripping away the hindrances to choice and

conduct, except for those which are rationally based, that anarchists

encourage mutual awareness and self-development. Intellectual

independence and forthright communication are leading attributes of

their goal that anarchists expect an atmosphere of their kind of liberty

to nurture. The service anarchist freedom renders to communal

individuality surely helps offset its moral drawbacks.

The limit anarchists place on the scope of liberty adds to its moral

value by restricting how far it licenses wrongful acts. Freedom in an

anarchy, though remarkably extensive, nevertheless is incomplete,

because decisions and conduct governed by the agent’s rationally based

conclusions sometimes are impeded. The frailty of reasoned argument does

not escape the anarchists, who enlist internalization, positional

authority and censorial rebuke as supplementary means of regulation. If

an act, though rationally based, would cause serious harm, coercion from

one or more of these three sources deprives participants in anarchy of

the freedom to choose or do it. It is true that those who apply this

coercion do so on the basis of a deliberative rationality that is just

as procedural as that of the agent whose freedom they curtail. Being no

more equipped than he is with standards for judging the attributes of

conduct, they enjoy an equally generous license for misbehavior and

relieve the agent of his objectionably permissive freedom through using

an objectionably permissive freedom of their own. Hence the limit

anarchists place on the scope of liberty certainly does not rid it of

moral license, for while it somewhat diminishes opportunities for

misconduct, it leaves substantial freedom to misbehave.

Though the dependence of anarchist freedom on procedural rationality

renders it distressingly permissive, making it depend on substantive

rationality, so as to cure this defect, would bring another, which, from

the anarchist perspective, is worse. Anarchists prize their freedom

because its liberation of action and choice from every hindrance except

for those which the agent himself deems right helps communal

individuality to grow. Now substantive rationality differs from

procedural by identifying acts which one might deem right as having

attributes which make choosing or doing them non-rational. A freedom

dependent on substantive rationality thus allows more interference with

choice and action than a freedom dependent on procedural rationality

does. Being more restrictive, it is less conducive than a freedom

dependent on procedural rationality to the realization of the

anarchists’ final goal.

Remaining doubts about the merit of the anarchists’ choice, as a chief

attribute of the good society, of such a rationally demanding,

behaviorally permissive freedom can be allayed, though not eliminated,

by considering the conditions serving as a background where this freedom

is enjoyed. It is unlikely that the members of an anarchy, even though

they have freedom to cause harm, actually will cause it, because they

deliberate under conditions which discourage them from choosing harmful

acts. The equality of power, prestige and wealth among the members of an

anarchy, as well as their close interdependence, tend to put harming

others at odds with interest. The sincerity, respect, or benevolence

that is anarchy’s dominant social attitude tends to put such harm at

odds with inclination. Conditions in an anarchy thus provide a context

in which the exercise of freedom based on procedural rationality is

rather safe.[311]

More might be said about why anarchist freedom is less objectionable

than appears at first glance, but there is no denying that it suffers

from grave defects. Even some who accurately appreciate its virtues, and

who avoid exaggerating its faults, will legitimately deem the exigency

and permissiveness of the freedom sought by anarchists inordinate enough

to make their model of the good society unfit for the status of the best

regime. But those of us who, in our reflective moments, exalt the

personal particularity of the deliberation on which anarchist freedom

rests, and who find its dependence on a substantively unlimited

rationality inspiring, will hardly be considered outlandish if we

advance the thesis that of all the ideal social models anarchy is the

best. Every model of the good society has drawbacks, and anarchy,

especially owing to its denial of a place to citizens, certainly has its

share. But anarchy is also well endowed with assets. Its remarkable

merger of individuality and communality through a substantively

unlimited, particularized rationality makes it the setting for an

illustrious way of life.

Anarchy as a critical standard and practical guide

To vindicate the choice of anarchy as the ideal social order, more must

be considered than its merit once achieved. Though a state of perfect

anarchy cannot be deemed unreachable, the chance of reaching it must be

accounted slight. The unlikelihood of attaining anarchy would diminish

its value markedly, if its value resided only in its completed

structure, for the value of a good lessens as the probability of

achieving it declines. There is, however, hope of vindicating anarchy as

the ideal social order, despite its unlikelihood as a complete

achievement, because it also draws its value from another source.

Anarchy serves not only as a model for a completely new society, but

also as a standard for judging present society, and as a guide for

moving from old to new. Since the value of anarchy as standard and guide

is separate from its value as a finished model, even though this model

will probably never be realized, anarchy may still be the good society

with the greatest moral worth.

There is a well-known and persistent objection to the value as standard

and guide of an ideal like anarchy, which is exigent, improbable, and

morally appealing. Such an ideal is viewed by many as singularly

dangerous on the ground that its practical use causes grave,

uncompensated harm. Being dramatically different from the established

social order, an ideal like anarchy calls on those who rely on it for

guidance to take steps which, since they include substantial suffering,

coercion and deceit, are both inherently reprehensible and in moral

conflict with the ideal for whose sake they are carried out. The harm

caused by these measures might be justified, if they realized the ideal

toward which they point, because the moral excellence of that ideal

might be great enough to outweigh all harm caused by the steps needed to

achieve it. What makes the practical use of the ideal abhorrent,

according to this argument, is the improbability of its attainment.

Since the ideal, being unlikely to be realized, will almost certainly

not yield the benefits for whose sake it calls for harm, its practical

use is cruel and reckless. An exigent, improbable social ideal, even

though, like anarchy, it is morally appealing, must be rejected as a

critical standard and practical guide as a self-defeating source of

evil.[312]

This abstract argument against ideals which are exigent, improbable and

appealing is most tellingly applied to the ideal sought during the

Russian Revolution. The spectacle of Marx’s vision of the good society

being debased by terror and repression as its admirers struggled vainly

to achieve it leads understandably to the view that exigent, improbable,

appealing ideals should always be renounced. That this conclusion

follows even in the Russian case is doubtful, since devotion to their

ideal may not have been the reason why the Russian revolutionaries

caused such hardship. Adverse circumstances or a misreading by the

revolutionaries of their ideal’s practical significance are equally

plausible explanations. But however strong this argument may be against

other social ideals, that of the anarchists has attributes which greatly

blunt its force. The forthright rationality, personal independence and

communal solidarity that characterize a complete anarchy constrain

efforts to achieve it so as to make them benign. It is because the

anarchists appreciate how the development of these characteristics

depends on what happens during the preparatory period that they require

favorable attitudes and circumstances to prevail before struggle for

their good society begins, that they minimize the place of coercion and

fraud in the waging of this struggle, and that they insist on advancing

mainly through the force of argument and example. All of these

constraints on anarchist practice protect those who engage in it from

causing uncompensated harm, by helping to prevent them from inflicting

the inordinate suffering that so often accompanies untrammeled struggle.

Thus the ideal of anarchy, because it constrains efforts to rebuild

society so as to protect them from excess, though exigent, improbable

and morally appealing, promises to serve practice safely.

Those whom history has taught to fear bold ideals may still suspect that

the limits which anarchy places on efforts designed to reach it, and

which promise to make these efforts safe, are all too likely to be

abandoned in the heat of struggle. ‘The spirit of revolt’, which

energizes anarchist endeavor for Kropotkin, has an equivalent for his

predecessors. All of the anarchists envision workers for their ideal as

enthusiastic, bold and steadfast. The ideal they are seeking, while not

unquestionably beyond their grasp, is not likely to be reached. Would it

be surprising if these devoted workers, troubled by frustration,

impatience and despair, betrayed their ideal by renouncing the limits it

sets on practice as intolerable? No matter that this betrayal makes

their ideal permanently unreachable. In the heat of struggle, energy is

concentrated on immediate efforts, and fine perceptions about future

consequences are lost.

Examples which might be read as accrediting this scenario can be found

in the history of Spanish anarchism. Part of what incited the anarchist

pistoleros during the civil war to execute summarily so many innocents

may have been a response to the difficulty of realizing an exigent

ideal. Astounded by the difference between their own society and the one

they sought, disheartened, by setbacks, and overwhelmed by the obstacles

their project faced, the pistoleros may have succumbed to the desperate

hope, tempting to anyone in their plight, that in a sufficiently

convulsive upheaval their ideal would prevail miraculously. Here, as in

the case of the Russian Revolution, blaming the harm caused by attempts

to reconstruct society on the boldness of the ideal being sought is

speculative and conjectural. Numerous other plausible explanations,

ranging from fascination with the cult of death to the imperatives of

total war, have been offered for the Spanish anarchists’ excesses. To

hold the exigency and improbability of their ideal responsible for the

uncompensated damage caused by their attempts to rebuild society is thus

out of the question. Nevertheless, taken as a warning, the abstract

argument against using exigent ideals for guidance retains some point;

for it has to be admitted that pursuing such an ideal, even when, like

anarchy, it Carries limits, risks causing damage that would not occur if

the ideal had been renounced.

Before accepting the argument for renunciation, one needs to recognize

that acting without the guidance of exigent ideals also carries risks.

There are various conclusions concerning political activity that someone

who refuses to be guided by exigent ideals might reach. He might become

complacent, believing all reformative endeavor dangerous; he might use

his renunciation as an excuse for indolence, for refraining from efforts

to improve society while continuing to denounce it as reprehensible; or

he might opt for a cautious incrementalism. The first two conclusions

can be summarily dismissed for condoning blatant suffering.

Incrementalism, which can alleviate existing misery, needs closer

consideration as a guide to action free of the dangers that bedevil

exigence.

The incrementalist is like the complacent and indolent renouncers of

bold ideals in accepting the established social system as a whole. Where

he differs is in striving to improve the existing system through

cautious modification and reforms. Meliorative activity that proceeds

through small, predictable, reversible adjustments, and that has the

lessening of felt misery as its aim, he supports fervently. What the

incrementalist opposes are efforts, which the use of exigent ideals as

guides suggests, aimed at increasing future welfare through replacing

the established social system with an entirely new one. Such efforts are

denounced by the incrementalist, for reasons just examined, as dangerous

sources of uncompensated suffering; but he is moved by his appreciation

of how the established system causes misery to proceed gradually,

without the help of an ideal social model, toward ridding it of the

traits widely perceived as most harmful.[313]

While incrementalism must surely be preferred to complacency or

indolence as a guide to action, it is not obviously preferable to an

ideal like anarchy, which, though exigent, hedges action in its service

with constraints. For incrementalism, because it eschews reference to

exigent ideals, ignores or tolerates objectionable features of

established social systems which practice guided by such ideals

contests. Any exigent social model identifies underlying sources of

misery in the existing society which may not elicit much alarm, and

which, being inherent in its nature, cannot be eliminated unless the

whole society is replaced. The anarchist social model, to take the

exigent ideal with which we are now fully acquainted, identifies

inherent features of modern society, such as law and hierarchy, as the

taproots of its members’ stunted, estranged existence. The

incrementalist, because he accepts the existing social system and tries

to improve it only by diminishing its most immediate sources of felt

misery, leaves undisturbed the inherent, underlying evils to which an

exigent ideal like anarchy calls attention. Thus, though incrementalism

offers comforting protection against fanatical excess, its repudiation

of ideals as guides to action is a burdensome source of dread. For

incrementalists are condemned to live with the daily apprehension that

promising opportunities to augment human welfare are being missed.

Even though incrementahsm leaves possibilities for human welfare

unfulfilled, as a practical guide it is still preferable to social

ideals whose unlimited exigence makes using them for guidance likely to

wreak serious uncompensated harm. But anarchy, we have discovered, owing

to the constraints it puts on efforts to rebuild society, is an ideal

which can be pursued without much risk of havoc. That those who seek

anarchy will ignore the constraints it sets on action is of course a

remote danger, but one worth accepting, if its practical guidance leads

to appreciably greater benefits than can be secured through

incrementalism. The practical value of anarchy thus depends not only, or

even mainly, on the danger of using it for guidance, but also on how

much advantage its use as a guide can bring.

The first practical use to which an ideal like anarchy can be fruitfully

put is as a standard for judging an established social system. Anarchy,

when used to judge modern industrial society, raises deep objections to

many of its most generally accepted traits. Rather than rehearsing all

of these objections, it should suffice at this stage of analysis to

recall the most distinctive — those directed against legality. Judged

against the standard of an ideal anarchy, modern society appears

seriously defective for controlling behavior by means of law, whose

generality, permanence and physical coercion make it impossible for

community or individuality to develop fully, let alone to merge. The

practical effect of using anarchy as a critical standard is thus to make

law (along with several other essential attributes of existing society)

the target of relentless attack.

The animus which anarchy, used as a standard, directs against the rule

of law is expressed not just in hostile declarations, but also more

creatively in concrete criticism. The founders of anarchism, starting

with Godwin, all marshalled evidence, drawn from history and their own

experience, of how law serves those who are ascendent to keep their

inferiors in tow, of how its permanence and generality cause crude,

misguided behavioral regulation, and of how the predictability, which is

law’s redeeming asset, remains in fact a will-o’-the-wisp. Though law

promises to bring certainty, what it actually amounts to, says Godwin,

is ‘a labyrinth without end,... a mass of contradictions that cannot be

untangled’.[314] This genre of concrete criticism of legal institutions,

inaugurated by the founders, has been much elaborated in recent times by

empirically oriented observers who have studied law from the anarchists’

critical perspective. Lester Mazor, for example, ascribes the numerous

cases of legal oppression, ineptitude and caprice that he has collected

in his essay on ‘Disrespect for Law’ to ‘the limits of rules as means of

accomplishing change and as an expression of the character of social

relations’.[315] The concrete criticism of established institutions,

which arises from judging them against the anarchist ideal, gives more

impetus to efforts to rebuild society than criticism which, however

vigorous, remains abstract. For outrage against an abstraction like

legality gains strength and focus when the abstraction is seen as

causing specific evils. But if the anarchist ideal served practically as

no more than a critical standard, it could not easily be proved more

beneficial in its bearing on efforts to rebuild society than

incrementalism. Concrete criticism, by itself, has diagnostic value, but

it is more likely to yield advantage if accompanied by a plan of action.

Fortunately, anarchy, in its practical use, serves not only as a

standard for judging the ills of established society, but also as a

guide to their cure. It is the guidance anarchy gives to social

reconstruction that is most crucial for assessing its value as applied

to practice.

The safety which the founders imparted to anarchist struggles by hedging

them with constraints is somewhat unreliable, chiefly because these

struggles have as their strategic aim to substitute full-fledged anarchy

for the industrialized nation-state. The founding anarchists justified

the actions they recommended as the most likely, among those falling

within permissible limits, to achieve this substitution. So long as

anarchists decide what to do by reference to the effectiveness of their

efforts for replacing the modern state, they will be tempted to

disregard the constraints which limit their activity and promise to make

it safe. To replace the modern state with a full-fledged anarchy is so

difficult that anarchists for whom this is the chief practical concern

must find the conditions, scruples and timetables that constrain their

efforts hard to support. The obvious way to give action guided by the

anarchist ideal the safety it needs to be more beneficial than action

guided by incrementalism is to set the strategic aim of replacing the

nation-state by anarchy aside. For when this replacement ceases to be

the anarchist’s main concern, he will be less prone to view the

constraints his ideal sets on practice as fetters.

There are other reasons, besides safety, for giving up the strategic aim

of replacing the state with anarchy. For one thing, this move, while not

made explicitly by any founder, was certainly suggested by some of them.

Godwin, in his view of progress toward rationality as unending, and

Proudhon, in his plea for withdrawal by anarchists into their own

separate organizations, both implied that the main concerfSin deciding

on present action should not be whether the contemplated course will

best serve to replace the state with anarchy. Many of the most

thoughtful recent anarchists, more despondent than their forebears about

the prospects for destroying, dissolving or otherwise eliminating

industrialized nation-states, let alone replacing them with anarchy, and

more fearful of the unredeemed suffering to which attempts to do this

might lead, have pursued in their writings, as well as in their

activities, the founders’ intimations about efforts directed at

achieving something less than a fully anarchist society on the scale of

existing states. These recent extensions of the anarchist tradition,

designed to give it safe purchase on the present social world, have

produced marked benefits. A brief sketch of how anarchists of late have

been using their social model to guide partial anarchization within the

nation-state is thus required before the practical value of the

anarchist model can be assessed accurately.

A quotation from Karl Landauer, chosen by Colin Ward as the motto for

Anarchy, his journal which, in the 1960s, championed partial anarchist

endeavors, aptly captures their underlying inspiration. ‘The state is a

condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of

behavior; we destroy it by behaving differently.’[316] Anarchists who

have approached action from Landauer’s angle have carried out two types

of changes, both of which achieve some measure of immediate

anarchization. The first rearranges some particularly significant social

activity, while leaving the structure of other activities undisturbed.

The second rearranges all of the social activities occurring in a

particular place, but makes no direct attempt to rearrange them

elsewhere.

The first type of change is well illustrated by the accomplishments of

anarchists concerned with education, who have used their ideal social

model for guidance in establishing schools with as many features of a

complete anarchy as can feasibly be incorporated into an organization

like a school, which is not an independent social system. The Ferrer

Modern School of New York, which functioned with many changes from 1911

to 1953, exemplifies how anarchists have derived benefits from using

their model to guide the restructuring of education. ‘Very young

children’ in the Modern School, as described by one of its organizers,

learn ‘nearly all the major parts of anthropology... through the desire

that so many of them have to make things’. Education, as practiced in

the Modem School, thus ‘combines training of the senses and of the mind,

skill of hand and skill of brain’, just as they are combined in a

complete anarchy. The Modern School also follows the anarchist model in

its abhorrence of legality. ‘We do away with all coercive discipline and

all the rules and paraphernalia of such discipline: the raised desk of

the teacher, the rigid rows of seats for the children, and the ideal

that every class should be conducted according to...preconceived codes.’

Finally, the Modern School draws from the ideal of anarchy its emphasis

in the classroom on unrestrained discussion of ‘problems suggested by

the children,...which is of the very greatest aid in developing the

children as separate, thinking individuals and as members of the social

unit’.[317] The steps anarchists have been taking to restructure

education have yielded advantages, without wreaking uncompensated harm

of the sort that struggles to replace the state with anarchy threaten.

At the very least, anarchist education has saved some children from the

inflexible discipline common in our schools, which often teaches that

learning is something to resent. More positively, anarchist education

has surely, though to an unmeasurable extent, aided the growth of

independent rationality and voluntary cooperation.

Another social activity that has benefited from being partially

reorganized along lines indicated by the anarchist ideal is work.

Anarchists who have been more concerned with restructuring productive

activity within the state’s jurisdiction so that it resembles what would

occur under anarchy, than in using the workplace as a weapon in the

struggle to replace the state, favor a self-management which, within the

realm of the individual enterprise, is thoroughgoing. In the enterprises

planned or established by these anarchists, internal decisions are made

by neither owners, nor investors, nor managers, nor technicians, nor

union officials, but consensually by all producers. The practice of

self-management is ambiguous, because, depending on how far it goes, it

has contrary effects. If producers make decisions on no matters except

immediate conditions of work, the effect is often to increase

efficiency, job satisfaction and profits. When self-management is

extended upward to more significant matters — personnel, marketing,

investment and the like — and when it is extended outward to decisions

that affect the whole economy, the effect may be, though this is more

speculative, to encourage producers, both in self-managed enterprises

and in those with which they deal, to further restructure their

activities along anarchist lines. The anarchists’ recognition of this

ambiguity in the practice of self-management is part of the reason why

they require it to be thorough. But it is their determination to build

as many features of an ideal anarchy into productive enterprises as is

consistent with their remaining under the jurisdiction of the state that

best explains not only the thoroughness of the self-management they

advocate, but why it has distinctive features. In his essay on ‘A

Self-Employed Society’ Colin Ward, working from the evidence of

congenial, though non-anarchist examples, and of explicitly anarchist

plans, describes the shape that an anarchist, though state-bound,

self-management should take.[318] Voting and rule-making are

deemphasized in favor of open-ended discussion aiming toward consensus

and the continuous process of ‘one or two people thinking out and trying

new things’. Consensual decisions are not enforced by designated

supervisors, but by peers. There are no fixed roles; workers ‘deploy

themselves, depending on the requirements of the ongoing group task’.

Finally, income is distributed equally among all members of the

productive unit. Though enterprises organized like these are not

intended, and could not be expected, to anarchize society completely,

nevertheless, because they have so many anarchist features, they offer

much of the advantage of a complete anarchy.

Besides restructuring particular activities on lines indicated by their

social model, anarchists intent on immediate, though partial, progress

also use their model to guide the reorganization of all activity within

a circumscribed place, usually a farmland. Several rural settlements

organized on anarchist principles were established in France at the

beginning of this century, when the anarchist movement had been

partially discredited by an epidemic of bomb-throwing and was threatened

with being absorbed by syndicalism. Responding to this situation, a few

French anarchists turned away from efforts to replace the state and

founded an association whose purpose was to gather members, donations

and sympathy so as to enable a site to be acquired for establishing an

anarchist commune.

The story of the Colony of Vaux, founded by this association in 1903,

parallels that of many similar endeavors. Having rented a house and

about six acres of land on favorable terms from a friendly farmer, a

half dozen settlers began living and working together according to

certain arrangements. Before entering the commune, each agreed to do the

necessary work and to renounce physical force. Necessities were taken,

as needed, from communal stores, or, in case of shortage, distributed

equally. Any productive surplus was also equally distributed. Collective

decisions were made consensually, except for those concerning the

admission of new members, which were made by unanimous vote. In case of

strife that was ‘a real danger to the general peace’, offenders were

‘invited’ to leave. At first, the commune prospered, increasing in a few

months to twenty-one members and successfully producing food and

clothes. Despite the need to change their site, the colonists continued

to live and work together for three years, after which disputes over

alleged high-handedness by the leading founder caused them to

disband.[319]

There are also numerous cases in the United States of anarchist

settlements, starting in the mid-nineteenth century with Josiah Warren’s

experimental villages. One of the most ambitious and longest-lived of

these settlements was the Ferrer Colony of Stelton, New Jersey,

established in 1914 by the sponsors of the previously mentioned Modern

School of New York. The Stelton Colony in its heyday in the 1920s had

eighty or so families as permanent residents, as many as 100 boarding

students in its elementary school, and an additional summer population

of several hundred. It followed the usual anarchist pattern of

unenforced consensual decision-making, and there was a great deal of

shared cultural and educational activity, but in its economic

arrangements it differed from the French settlements in that members

owned their own houses and small plots of land, on which some farmed,

while most commuted to work in New York City. Though plagued by growing

controversy in the 1920s about whether to emphasize education or social

action, and in the 1930s between those who remained anarchists and those

who joined the Communist cause, the Stelton Colony, despite compromises

both in its school and in its way of life, continued for over thirty

years to offer many of the advantages of anarchy.[320]

Certain of the communes that were landmarks of the American

counter-culture in the 1960s have also been viewed, though less

convincingly, as at least implicitly guided by the anarchist social

model. The settlers of Cold Mountain Farm, which lasted barely through

the summer of 1967, followed the advice of the impeccably anarchist

Murray Bookchin. Yet many of them were moved more by yearnings for

rustic simplicity or by oriental mysticism than by the intention to go

as far as possible, on their small Vermont farm, toward building

anarchy.[321] The very few Western communes which have been called

anarchist by their founders or observers are even more remote in their

inspiration from the anarchist ideal; and since some lasted longer than

Cold Mountain, it can be shown that they diverge markedly from anarchy

in their practice. Consider the case of Lou Gottlieb’s Morningstar

Ranch. Though anarchist in its avoidance of hierarchy, legality and

physical coercion, Morningstar lacked the replacements for these

practices which the ideal of anarchy suggests. Gottlieb, believing that

‘the land selects the people’, disliked collective decision making, no

matter how consensual, resisted attempts to screen new settlers, and, in

various ways, worked less for community than separation. No wonder that

Morningstar was so beset by self-centered, destructive transients.

Because, like most counter-culture communes which professed to follow

the anarchist model, it tended to disregard that model’s rational and

solidaristic elements, it could achieve scarcely a semblance of the

communal individuality to which a correct application of the anarchist

model points.[322] Since the disappointing record of Morningstar cannot

be blamed on deficiencies in the anarchist social model, neither its

failure nor that of similar counter-cultural experiments impugns

anarchy’s value as a guide to action. The lesson of such failures is not

to give up attempts to partially anarchize society, but, in making these

attempts, to take as one’s guide an accurate conception of the anarchist

model. Since settlements and institutions rebuilt according to this

model provide marked benefits without destructive havoc, it seems that

between the alternatives of anarchy and incrementalism as guides to

action, anarchy should be the choice.

To those who reject incrementalism for precluding the replacement of an

entire social system, using anarchy to guide partial efforts to

reconstruct society may seem just as unacceptable. Since the partial

efforts that anarchy as a guide suggests are not appreciably bolder or

more sweeping than those suggested by incrementalism, both, it may be

argued, cut off the opportunities for augmenting human welfare that

arise when an entire social system is replaced. It is true that the

partial changes carried out under the guidance of the anarchist model

have a cautious quality reminiscent of those an incrementalist would

undertake. But whereas the incrementalist, being committed to the

established social system, rejects measures which might jeopardize its

continued existence, and confines himself to remedies for pressing,

immediate evils, the anarchist, though his efforts aim to partially

anarchize, not overthrow, the existing social order, finds effects of

his efforts that tend to undermine that order anything but adverse.

Believing that human welfare would be increased greatly if anarchy

replaced the state, he welcomes the help his partial efforts give to

this replacement, even though achieving it is not their point. Should

the changes carried out under the guidance of his model in schools,

workplaces, rural settlements and the like accumulate, as is possible,

so as to completely dissolve the state, the anarchist would be

delighted. Anarchy used as a guide to the partial reconstruction of

society, far from evoking fear, as does incrementalism, that

possibilities for wellbeing are going unfulfilled, offers the safety

which is incrementalism’s strong point while keeping prospects for

augmenting human welfare through systemic transformation alive.[323]

Thus the worth of anarchy as a model of the best regime must be deemed

outstanding, judged from a practical, as well as from a theoretical,

point of view. As a complete achievement anarchy is not just possible,

but offers benefits unavailable from its rivals. As a practical standard

and guide, anarchy points the way to action that combines safety,

immediate advantage and the promise of systemic change. Since the advice

of the incrementalist to disown exigent ideals has been and no doubt

always will be too severe to follow, the choice among such ideals is one

that simply must be faced. Though no arguments can show that anarchy —

or any ideal social model — is indisputably best, the arguments advanced

in this chapter show at least that in controversy about the nature of

the good society anarchy must receive a leading place.

The significance of Anarchism for political thought

Recent books on anarchism all conclude with observations on its

continuing vitality. Even before the Paris rebellion of May 1968, when

students put anarchist theory to work in their struggles against their

university and the state that lay behind it, commentators were

cautioning against inferring from the rout of the anarchists in the

Spanish Civil War that their theory was dead. Though none saw much hope

for anarchism as an organized movement, working to replace, or even

modify, the state, even the most gloomy believed that as ‘an austere

personal and social code’ it would continue to capture the attention of

receptive minds.[324] What this meant was that at least a few people

could always be expected to take bearings from the anarchist tradition

on how to lead their personal, aesthetic and immediate social lives.

After 1968, observers began announcing with dread, triumph or amazement

that the anarchist movement, transfigured by contact with the New Left,

had revived.[325] These announcements of revival, because they now seem

as exaggerated as the preceding reports of death, point up the hazard,

which it would be foolish to defy, of forecasting anarchism’s prospects.

But the continued vitality of anarchism as both idea and movement

prompts other less ensnaring questions, which can be answered clearly

with the aid of the analysis presented in this book. What is the

explanation for anarchism’s longevity? And what is its significance for

political thought?

The longevity of anarchism, despite its failure to win victories, or

even to secure a mass following, is all the more striking when one

remembers how little, as a doctrine, it has changed. The revisers of

liberalism, conservatism and socialism, who often quite drastically

modified the ideas they inherited in order to keep them relevant to the

changing socio-economic situation of their supporters, have no anarchist

counterparts. That the anarchism of the founders still intermittently

revives suggests that its strength lies less than is usual with

political doctrines in its appeal to interests. This suggestion is borne

out by the fact that anarchism has won backing from persons whose places

in society, being markedly divergent, could not all have been expected

to support it, if its suitability as a medium for satisfying interests

was the main source of its appeal. There have, of course, been attempts

to paint anarchism as an ideology in the service of a particular class.

But writers who make these attempts disagree whether it is peasants,

artisans, small businessmen or rural landless workers whose interests

anarchism represents. And no wonder they disagree, for anarchism has at

times drawn backing from all of these groups, as well as from industrial

workers.[326] The secret of anarchism’s endurance, these remarks

suggest, should be sought less in the support it gives to mutable class

interests than in its ability to satisfy aspirations that are more

universal and enduring. The black flag of anarchy, we cannot but

believe, now waves above at least a corner of every human heart.

In seeking to intensify and finally to merge the individual and communal

sides of life, the anarchists were following the course of much

nineteenth-century political theory, exemplified, as we noted in the

introduction, by Hegel and Marx. What must now be added is that these

seekers on the plane of theory of a fused communal individuality were

responding to concerns which, less perfectly articulated, were

widespread in their culture and are even more pervasive in ours. To

exhibit strong personality without losing touch with others, to unite

with the whole without sinking into it, to live in a society both warmly

receptive to self-expression and gratifyingly unitary — these for us are

pressing aspirations. Unless one rests content with denouncing these

aspirations as self-contradictory or worse, though they are central to

our culture, the way that anarchists propose to satisfy them must seem

filled with promise.[327] Of the various paths mapped by political

theorists toward combining the fullest individual development with the

greatest communal unity, that of the anarchists is distinctive in its

concreteness, its immediate practicality, and in the particularized

rationality and thoroughgoing liberty of its projected way of life. So

long as communal individuality remains an aspiration, the path to

anarchy, despite its hazards, will continue to be travelled.

[1] High points in this reassessment of anarchism as a theory are Robert

Paul Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism (New York, 1976) and April Carter,

The Political Theory of Anarchism (London, 1971).

[2] William Proby, Philosophy and Barbarism (London, 1798), p. 22.

[3] Benjamin Barber, Superman and Common Men (New York, 1972), pp. 25,

22; Isaac Kramnick, ‘On Anarchism and the Real World: William Godwin and

Radical England’, American Political Science Review, 66 (March 1972), p.

116.

[4]

G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right (Oxford, 1958), pp. 160–1,

164, 156.

[5] Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (Moscow,

1961), pp. 108, 105. Ellen Wood has convincingly worked out Marx’s views

on the reciprocal relations between individuality and community: Mind

and Politics (Berkeley, 1972), pp. 123, 141–52.

[6] Patrick Riley, ‘Hegel on Consent and Social-Contract Theory: Does he

“Cancel and Preserve” the Will?’, Western Political Quarterly, 26 (March

1973), especially pp. 156–61.

[7] Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own, trans. Steven T. Byington (New

York, 1963), p. 311.

[8] The most recent and convincing discussions of Stirner’s relationship

to anarchism are to be found in R. W. K. Paterson, The Nihilistic

Egoist: Max Stirner(Oxford, 1971), ch. VI, and John Clark, Max Stirner’s

Egoism (London, 1976), ch. VI. Both Paterson and Clark find a logical

gap between Stirner’s egoistic moral premise and his anarchist

conclusions. Their dispute is over the issue whether his egoism or his

anarchism is more characteristic of his thought and hence whether he

should be called an anarchist. It should be added that though as a

theorist of anarchism Stirner is a disaster, he may still deserve his

recognized place in the history of anarchist ideas.

[9] 1 William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, 3 vols.

(Toronto, 1946), II, 331; Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Correspondence, 14

vols. (Paris, 1874–5), IV, 375; Michael Bakunin, OEuvres, 6 vols.

(Paris, 1895–1913), IV, 248, 156, cf. I, 204; Peter Kropotkin,

Revolutionary Pamphlets (New York, 1968), p. 113. All translations from

French texts are my own, unless otherwise indicated. For contemporary

claims that anarchists are libertarians see, for instance, Gerald

Runkle, Anarchism, Old and New (New York, 1972), p. 165, or Derry Novak,

“The Place of Anarchism in the History of Political Thought’, The Review

of Politics, 20 (July 1958), p. 317.

[10] 2 Godwin, Political Justice, II, 221, 199, 274; Proudhon, De la

Justice dans la Revolution et dans l’Eglise, 4 vols. (Paris, 1930–5), I,

315; Bakunin, OEuvres, III, 69n; Kropotkin, Pamphlets, p. 143.

[11] 3 Gerald C. MacCallum, Jr, ‘Negative and Positive Freedom’, The

Philosophical Review, 76 (July 1967), pp. 312–34; cf. John Rawls, A

Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), p. 202.

[12] 4 Godwin, Political Justice, I, 168, II, 500; Bakunin, OEuvres, V,

318, cf. I, 105, 281; Proudhon, Justice, II, 77, cf. Proudhon, De la

capacite politique des classes ouvrieres (Paris, 1924), p. 190;

Kropotkin, Pamphlets, p. 124.

[13] 5 For typical analysis along these lines see K. J. Scott, ‘

Liberty, License and Not Being Free’, Political Studies, 4 (June 1956),

pp. 176–85, or D. M. White, ‘Negative Liberty’, Ethics, 80 (April 1970),

pp. 185–204.

[14] 6 Proudhon, Justice, III, 424.

[15] 7 Godwin, Political Justice, II, 496.

[16] 8 Ibid., II, 434, 366–7, 505.

[17] 9 Ibid., II, 340, 199.

[18] 10 Bakunin, OEuvres, III, 49.

[19] 11 Ibid., I, 284.

[20] 12 Ibid., Ill, 49.

[21] 13 Ibid., IV, 249.

[22] 14 Proudhon, Justice, I, 325.

[23] 15 Bakunin, OEuvres, I, 284, 295; Godwin, Political Justice, I,

64–5, II, 499.

[24] 16 Bakunin, OEuvres, V, 159.

[25] 17 Godwin, Political Justice, II, 500; Proudhon, Philosophie du

progres (Paris, 1946), p. 67; Kropotkin, La science moderne et

l’anarchie (Paris, 1913), p. 160.

[26] 18 Bakunin, OEuvres, III, 214, cf. I, 295, 298, V, 126, VI, 88.

[27] 19 These are the traits normally singled out as typical of a legal

system. Cf. H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law (London, 1961), pp. 22–5.

[28] 20 Bakunin, OEuvres, I, 288; Godwin, Political Justice, I, 221

inter alia.

[29] 21 Godwin, Political Justice, II, 352–3.

[30] 22 Ibid., II, 294; cf. 247, 399–400; Bakunin, OEuvres, IV, 261. The

anarchists’ esteem for particularity in the control of behavior must not

be exaggerated. Though general rules must not be followed blindly, they

have their place as presumptive guides, akin to the utilitarian’s rules

of thumb. It is ‘incumbent on us, when called into action, to estimate

the nature of the particular case, that we may ascertain where the

urgency of special circumstances is such as to supersede rules that are

generally obligatory’ (Political Justice, I, 347).

[31] 23 Kropotkin, Pamphlets, p. 200; cf. Godwin, Political Justice, II,

231, 403.

[32] 24 The penalties need not of course be identical, since some

discretion in sentencing is allowed in even the least flexible legal

system.

[33] 25 See ch. 4, p. 74, for a discussion of the insignificance of the

differences between legal and censorial sanctions, so far as concerns

their effects on satisfaction.

[34] 26 Bakunin, OEuvres, I, 288.

[35] 27 Godwin, Political Justice, II, 334, 375; Kropotkin, Pamphlets,

pp. 157, 167; Kropotkin, Science moderne, pp. 160–1.

[36] George Woodcock, Anarchism (New York, 1962), pp. 84–5; Henri Arvon,

L’anarchisme (Paris, 1968), p. 77; George Plekhanov, Anarchism and

Socialism(Minneapolis, n.d.), pp. 51–2.

[37] Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (Toronto, 1946), II,

500; Proudhon, De la Justice dans la Revolution et dans l’Eglise (Paris,

1930–5). HI, 253.

[38] Kropotkin, Revolutionary Pamphlets (New York, 1968), pp. 141, 123.

[39] Godwin, Thoughts on Man (New York, 1969), p. 310.

[40] Proudhon, Justice, I, 414.

[41] Bakunin, OEuvres (Paris, 1895–1913), V, 321–2.

[42] Kropotkin, Mutual Aid (New York, 1925), p. 222.

[43] Cf. Robert Paul Wolff, The Poverty of Liberalism (Boston, 1968),

pp. 180–5.

[44] Godwin, Political Justice, I, 258–9.

[45] Proudhon, Correspondance (Paris, 1874–5), XI, 301 (30 December

1861); Proudhon, Justice, III, 411.

[46] Bakunin, OEuvres, III, 353; Kropotkin, Pamphlets, pp. 139, 167.

[47] Proudhon, De la capacite politique des classes ouvrieres (Paris,

1924), p. 155.

[48] Bakunin, OEuvres, V, 149; cf. V, 187, where Bakunin says that

independence which endangers solidarity is undesirable.

[49] Kropodcin, Pamphlets, p. 63. Evidence that anarchists subordinate

freedom to individuality and community does not prove unmistakably that

the latter are their coequal overriding aims. They might rank others

still higher. But since they do not say they do, since freedom is so

often presumed to be their chief goal, and since they consider

individuality and community to have greater worth, it is reasonable to

say that they give them first place.

[50] The problem of resolving the conflict, so troubling to anarchists,

between “the claims of individuality and community is a version of the

general problem in moral philosophy of how to relate the claims of the

self to the claims of others. The anarchists’ position on how to

reconcile individuality and community might therefore be an alternative

to more familiar views such as utilitarianism or Kantianism of how the

conflict between self and others should be resolved. Examined from this

perspective, which is not that of this book, anarchism might have value

as a theory of ethics.

[51] Bakunin, OEuvres, V, 150, 159; cf. IV, 385.

[52] Godwin, Political Justice, II, 486; Proudhon, Justice, I, 304–5,

421, III, 253, IV, 302, Capacite, p. 222; Kropotkin, Pamphlets, pp. 5,

96, 141; Kropotkin, Selected Writings on Anarchism and Revolution, ed.

Martin Miller (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), p. 297.

[53] Godwin, Political Justice, I, 356.

[54] Bakunin, OEuvres, V, 150; cf. Proudhon, Justice, IV, 264.

[55] Proudhon, Justice, III, 253; Kropotkin, Selected Writings, p. 297.

[56] Kropotkin, La science moderne et l’anarchie (Paris, 1913), p. 332.

[57] Marc Guyeau, Esquisse d’une morale sans obligation ni sanction

(Paris, 1893), pp. 96, 98. See Kropotkin, Pamphlets, p. 108, for

Kropotkin’s judgment on Guyeau.

[58] Deny Novak, ‘Une lettre inedite de Pierre Kropotkine a Max

Nettlau’, International Review of Social History, 9 (1964), p. 274.

[59] Godwin, Political Justice, II, 295; cf., II, 505.

[60] Ibid., I, 311; cf. Kropoddn, Pamphlets, p. 96.

[61] Bakunin, OEuvres, III, 235, 253, IV, 248; Proudhon, Justice, III,

253; Godwin, Political Justice, II, 409.

[62] Godwin, Political Justice, II, 486.

[63] Ibid., II, 216.

[64] Ibid., I, 329–30; cf. Proudhon, Justice, IV, 366; Bakunin, Oeuvres,

I, 181, 277, V, 321. I would still have some self-image since, as

indicated earlier (cf. ch. 1, p. 16), spontaneous social pressure, not

deliberate censure, suffices to create a self.

[65] Proudhon, ‘Cours d’economie politique’, 1–12(4) unpublished

manuscript. Reference to the page number is assigned to the manuscript

by Pierre Haubtmann in his unpublished thesis ‘La philosophic sociale de

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’ (Faculte des lettres et des sciences humaines de

Paris, 1961); Bakunin, OEuvres, I, 290.

[66] Bakunin, Oeuvres, I, 278.

[67] Proudhon, ‘Cours’, 1–7(6). It must be admitted that this part of

their argument fails to show that individuality is best supported by

deliberate censure as contrasted with spontaneous social pressure.

[68] Godwin, Political Justice, II, 273–4; Kropotkin, Pamphlets, p. 137.

[69] Godwin, Political Justice, I, 340.

[70] Ibid., II, 497.

[71] Ibid., II, 500.

[72] Ibid., I, 137.

[73] Proudhon, Justice, III, 175, cf. I, 316, 395, 423, IV, 264.

[74] Kropotkin, Pamphlets, p. 109.

[75] Godwin, Political Justice, I, 333; Kropotkin, Pamphlets, p. 140.

[76] Godwin, Political Justice, I, 335.

[77] Kropotkin, Pamphlets, pp. 53, 95.

[78] Godwin, Political Justice, I, 179–80, II, 340–1, 374; Proudhon,

Justice, IV, 371.

[79] Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (Toronto, 1946), II,

500; cf. I, 232, 236; II, 215, 497; Godwin, The Enquirer (New York,

1965), p. 77.

[80] Godwin, Political Justice, I, 500; cf. Godwin, The Enquirer, p.

344.

[81] Godwin, Political Justice, II, 280.

[82] Ibid., II, 504. For a restatement of the view that Godwin has no

place ‘within the philosophy of the anarchist community’ see R. A.

Nisbet, The Social Philosophers (New York, 1973), pp. 365–6.

[83] Godwin, Political Justice, II, 504.

[84] Ibid., II, 505.

[85] Ibid., I, 295; cf. Godwin, Thoughts on Man (New York, 1969), p. 310

and Godwin, The Enquirer, pp. vii-viii, where Godwin describes the

liberating effects of his own conversations.

[86] Godwin, The Enquirer, p. 343; cf. Yvon Belaval, Le souci de

sincirite (Paris, 1944), pp. 127–9.

[87] Charles Horton Cooley, Human Nature and the Social Order (New York,

1902), pp. 178, 153. Cooley admits that character need not depend

immediately on interaction, but he denies that it depends on reasoned

thought (pp. 205–7).

[88] Godwin, Political Justice, I, 328.

[89] Ibid.,1,335.

[90] Ibid., I, 327–8, 332. 336.

[91] Ibid., I, 333.

[92] Ibid., I, 330.

[93] Ibid., I, 330.

[94] Ibid., I, 296, 356.

[95] Stuart Hampshire, ‘Sincerity and Single-Mindedness’, in Freedom of

Mind and Other Essays (Princeton, 1971), p. 234; cf. Jean Starobinski,

J.-J. Rousseau, La transparence et l’obstacle (Paris, 1971), pp. 237–8,

Belaval, Sincerite, pp. 55, 63.

[96] Godwin, Political Justice, I, 280, 294, 333–4, 340, Godwin, The

Enquirer, p. 344.

[97] Belaval, Sincirite, pp. 134–5, z77-

[98] Ibid., p. 144, Starobinski, J.-J. Rousseau, p. 188, George

Santayana, ‘The Comic Mask’, in Soliloquies on England and Later

Soliloquies (New York, 1922), p. 135.

[99] Godwin, The Enquirer, pp. 341, 349; cf. Godwin, Thoughts on Man,

pp. 301–4; Godwin, Political Justice, I, 348–9.

[100] Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (Chicago, 1955), section 40.

[101] Santayana, Soliloquies, p. 133.

[102] Belaval, Sinchiti, p. 165; Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and

Authenticity (Cambridge, Mass., 1972), p. 119; Paul A. Freund, ‘Privacy:

One Concept or Many’, in J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman (eds.),

Privacy (New York, 1971), p. 195; John R. Silber, ‘Masks and Fig

Leaves’, ibid., p. 233.

[103] Quoted in Belaval, Sincerite, p. 120.

[104] Kurt H. Wolff (ed.), The Sociology of Georg Simmel (New York,

1964), p. 329.

[105] Freund, ‘Privacy’, p. 195; Alan E. Westin, Privacy and Freedom

(New York, 1967), p. 37.

[106] Godwin, Political Justice, I, 332, II, 275.

[107] Ibid., II, 505–6: To ‘the most perfect man... society is not a

necessary of life but a luxury... He will resort with scarcely inferior

eagerness to solitude; and will find in it the highest complacence and

the purest delight.’ For evidence that Godwin values discretion as

contrasted with reserve see Godwin, The Enquirer, p. 127.

[108] Proudhon, De la Justice dans la Revolution et dans l’Eglise

(Paris, 1930–5), III, 253; Bakunin, OEuvres (Paris, 1895–1913), I, 101,

105.

[109] Bakunin, OEuvres, I, 221.

[110] Proudhon, Justice, III, 88; cf. Bakunin, OEuvres, I, 109–10, V,

204.

[111] Proudhon, Justice, III, 69–70; Bakunin, OEuvres, I, 109.

[112] Proudhon, Justice, III, 256; cf. I, 436.

[113] For a detailed analysis of Proudhon’s anarchist society see Alan

Ritter, The Political Thought of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (Princeton,

1969), pp. 126–34; a good text describing Bakunin’s social vision is in

OEuvres, II, 297.

[114] Proudhon, Justice, III, 87–8; Bakunin, ‘Revolutionary Catechism’,

in Sam Dolgoff (ed.), Bakunin on Anarchy (New York, 1971), pp. 89- 93.

[115] Proudhon, Justice, III, 86; for Bakunin’s description of ‘integral

education’, which is very close to Proudhon’s polytechnical

apprenticeship, see OEuvres, V, 136, 145, 156–7.

[116] Proudhon, Justice, III, 87–8.

[117] Ibid., Ill, 92–3. Though this description of an anarchist economy

is based solely on what Proudhon writes, Bakunin agrees with it. He is

less specific in his economic plans, but what he says, such as that no

one may devote himself exclusively to manual or mental work {OEuvres, V,

126–8, I, 360), shows that he encourages communal individuality with the

same practice of occupational mobility used by Proudhon.

[118] Bakunin, ‘Revolutionary Catechism’, in Dolgoff, Bakunin on

Anarchy, p. 95.

[119] Ibid., p. 94, cf. OEuvres, I, 317.

[120] Proudhon, Justice, IV, 271, 283.

[121] Ibid., IV, 322.

[122] Ibid., IV, 274.

[123] That Proudhon finds much communal individuality in the family is

shown by where he puts the figure of a mirror. It is a mother or wife

who, ‘transparent and luminous, serves man as the mirror...in which to

contemplate his character’ (Justice, IV, 266, 268). Bakunin follows

Godwin in finding that members of society, not the family, best reflect

the self (OEuvres, V, 321).

[124] Proudhon, Justice, I, 301, 418; Bakunin, OEuvres, I, 117, V, 309;

cf. R. S. Downie and Elizabeth Telfer, Respect for Persons (New York,

1970), especially ch. 1, and Bernard Williams, ‘The Idea of Equality’,

reprinted in Hugo A. Bedau (ed.), Justice and Equality (New York, 1971),

especially pp. 123–4.

[125] Proudhon, Justice, I, 419.

[126] Proudhon, Idee generate de la revolution au dix-neuvieme siecle

(Paris, 1923), p. 189.

[127] Proudhon, Justice, I, 417; cf. Downie and Telfer, Respect, pp. 21,

25.

[128] Kropotkin, Revolutionary Pamphlets (New York, 1968), p. 107; cf.

p. 105 for Kropotkin’s acknowledgment of the value of respect.

[129] Ibid., p. 107; cf. Derry Novak, ‘Une lettre inedite de Pierre

Kropotkine a Max Nettlau’, International Review of Social History, 9

(1964), p. 272.

[130] Kropotkin, Mutual Aid (New York, 1925), p. 205.

[131] Ibid., p. 211.

[132] Kropotkin, Pamphlets, pp. 109, 141, 123.

[133] Ibid., P -109.

[134] Ibid., p. 109.

[135] Ibid., pp. 139, 140, 108. It is important to note that though

Kropotkin envisages community as occurring in both domestic and social

life, he does not want it to be the same in both. He warns not to ‘take

the family as a model’ for relations in larger, less intimate groups.

‘Communisme et anarchie’, in La science moderne et l’anarchie (Paris,

1913), p. 144, cf. p. 153.

[136] Kropotkin, Pamphlets, p. 95.

[137] Ibid., pp. 123–4.

[138] See, for instance, Gerald Runkle, Anarchism: Old and New (New

York, 1972), p. 168; James Joll, The Anarchists (London, 1964), p. 278;

George Woodcock, Anarchism (New York, 1962), p. 469.

[139] Robert Paul Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism (New York, 1976), pp.

22–7. The conflation of anarchism and radical democracy is common; for

an elaborate example see Richard T. DeGeorge, ‘Anarchism and Authority’,

in J. Roland Pennock and John Chapman (eds.), Anarchism: Nomos XIX (New

York, 1978), pp. 91–110. In his ‘Reply to Reiman’ Wolff takes back his

claim that anarchism and unanimous direct democracy are compatible (In

Defense of Anarchism, p. 88).

[140] Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (Toronto, 1946), I,

297.

[141] Ibid., II, 204.

[142] Proudhon, Du principe federatif (Paris, 1959), p. 344; Godwin,

Political Justice, I, 297.

[143] Godwin, Political Justice, II, 145.

[144] Bakunin, OEuvres (Paris, 1895–1913), IV, 476, cf. I, 156.

[145] See, for instance, W. D. Handcock, ‘The Function and Nature of

Authority in Society’, Philosophy, 28 (April 1953), p. 101.

[146] Proudhon, for instance, takes a patriarchal stand reminiscent of

Filmer on the issue of domestic authority, while Godwin and Bakunin

follow Plato in defending the authority of experts over private action

and belief. Godwin, Political Justice, I, 236; Proudhon, De la Justice

dans la Revolution et dans l’Eglise, IV, 322; Bakunin, OEuvres, III, 55.

[147] For evidence that anarchists accept this understanding of

authority see Godwin, Political Justice, I, 121; Proudhon, Justice, II,

312; Kropotkin, Revolutionary Pamphlets (New York, 1968), p. 217.

[148] Godwin, Political Justice, I, 227, 234; Bakunin, OEuvres, III, 55.

[149] Godwin, Political Justice, I, 235; cf. I, 215 and Kropotkin,

Pamphlets, pp. 58–9.

[150] Godwin, Political Justice, I, 234–5.

[151] Ibid., I, 121, 212; Proudhon, Justice, II, 226, 310; Bakunin,

OEuvres, III,49–54; Kropotkin, Pamphlets, 147, 217.

[152] Godwin, Political Justice, I, 181; cf. Bakunin, OEuvres, V, 313;

Proudhon, Justice, I, 326, IV, 350; Kropotkin, Pamphlets, pp. 167, 285.

[153] Proudhon, Justice, II, 218; Bakunin, OEuvres, III, 69n.

[154] Godwin, Political Justice, II, 211, 340.

[155] Proudhon, Justice, II, 218, 262; Bakunin, OEuvres, III, 60;

Godwin, Political Justice, II, 496. A situation where everybody has

public authority over everybody else is difficult to grasp. What

happens, for instance, if two members of an anarchy issue contradictory

directives? Which one has the right to be obeyed? The anarchists evade

answering this question. Perhaps all that can be said is that since

directives in an anarchy are only issued to correct serious misconduct,

which is infrequent, and obvious, to all, conflicts among directives are

unlikely.

[156] Godwin, Political Justice, II, 294, 399–400.

[157] Ibid., II, 363, Proudhon, Justice, IV, 373.

[158] Godwin, Political Justice, II, 334.

[159] Ibid., II, 340–1.

[160] Ibid., II, 345.

[161] Ibid., II, 379. For more detail on this point see Alan Potter,

‘Godwin, Proudhon and the Anarchist Justification of Punishment’,

Political Theory, 3 (February 1975), p. 83.

[162] Godwin, Political Justice, II, 322; cf. Proudhon, Idee generate de

la revolution au dix-neuvieme siecle (Paris, 1923), pp. 311—12, Justice,

IV, 371.

[163] Godwin, Political Justice, II, 349 on vengeance, II, 322, 334,

365–6 on self-defense; Proudhon, Idee generale, p. 311 on vengeance.

[164] Godwin, Political Justice, II, 199.

[165] Proudhon, Justice, IV, 377.

[166] Ibid.

[167] Godwin, Political Justice, II, 361, cf. II, 340.

[168] Writers who call anarchists radical egalitarians include Isaiah

Berlin, ‘Equality as an Ideal’, in Frederick A. Olafson (ed.), Justice

and Social Policy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1961), pp. 141–2, and Felix

Oppenheim, ‘Egalitarianism as a Descriptive Concept’, American

Philosophical Quarterly, 7 (April 1970), p. 144.

[169] Godwin, Political Justice, II, 453.

[170] Ibid., II, 430,454,461.

[171] Ibid., II, 460, 465.

[172] Ibid., I, 23.

[173] Ibid., II, 463.

[174] Ibid., II, 429.

[175] Ibid., I, 147.

[176] Ibid., II, 422, 450.

[177] Ibid., II, 93.

[178] For a developed argument that the criterion of need is egalitarian

see Gregory Vlastos, ‘Justice and Equality’, in Richard B. Brant (ed.),

Social Justice(Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1962), pp. 42–3.

[179] Godwin, Political Justice, II, 423–4; cf. I, 448.

[180] Ibid., II, 433, 428.

[181] Kropodcin, The Conquest of Bread (New York, 1969), pp. 230–1; cf.

p. 8.

[182] Ibid., pp. 63–4.

[183] Ibid., p. 233.

[184] Kropodcin, ‘Communisme et anarchie’, in Science moderne, p. 166;

Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, p. 227. For a more thorough analysis

of Kropotkin on justice see David Miller, Social Justice (Oxford, 1976),

pp. 209–52.

[185] ‘Equality does not imply the leveling of individual differences,

nor that individuals should be made physically, morally or mentally

identical. Diversity in capacities and powers,...far from being a social

evil, constitutes on die contrary, the abundance of humanity.’ Bakunin,

‘Revolutionary Catechism’, in Dolgoff (ed.), Bakunin on Anarchy, pp.

87–8.

[186] Proudhon, Systeme de contradictions economiques, 2 vols. (Paris,

1923), I, 191.

[187] Bakunin, OEuvres, IV, 477.

[188] Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, pp. 127, 136–9.

[189] Ibid., p. 153. Kropotkin would not confine consumption of all

luxuries to their producers; some, such as books, though cooperatively

produced by everyone, from author to pressman, who helped create them,

would be available to all. Kropotkin does not say how to distinguish

between luxuries which should be open to general consumption and

luxuries which should be consumed by their producers only.

[190] Kropotkin, Fields, Factories and Workshops (New York, 1909), pp.

3–4; cf. pp. v-vi.

[191] Ibid., pp. 161, 178, 180.

[192] Ibid, (enlarged edn, New York, 1968), pp. 358–60.

[193] Industria technology should only be controlled, according to

Marxists, when it becomes a fetter, after capitalism has ceased to be

progressive. To control it before then, as anarchists suggest, would

only delay the advent of the socialist revolution by arresting the

development of productive forces.

[194] Many writers have equated anarchist strategy with terrorism, e.g.

George Plekhanov, Anarchism and Socialism; a balanced discussion of this

matter is Derry Novak, ‘Anarchism and Individual Terrorism’, Canadian

Journal of Political Science, 20 (May 1954), pp. 176–84. For a ‘gallery

of outlandish stereotypes’ see Leonard Krimmerman and Lewis Perry

(eds.), Patterns of Anarchy (New York, 1966), pp. xvi-xvii. In a single

paragraph David Apter manages to ascribe all these strategies and more

to the anarchists: ‘The Old Anarchism and the New — Some Comments’,

Government and Opposition, 5 (Autumn 1970), p. 397. E. J. Hobsbawm calls

anarchists revolutionary voluntarists both in Primitive Rebels (New

York, 1959), p. 83, and in Revolutionaries (New York, 1973), p. 86.

[195] Good examples of the interpretation of anarchist strategy as

non-political may be found in George Woodcock, Anarchism (New York,

1962), p. 31, and Isaac Kramnick, ‘On Anarchism and the Real World:

William Godwin and Radical England’, American Political Science Review,

66 (March 1972), p. 128.

[196] Bakunin, OEuvres (Paris, 1895–1913), V, 208.

[197] Irving L. Horowitz (ed.), The Anarchists (New York, 1964), p. 29.

[198] Ibid., I, 272.

[199] Ibid., I, 289.

[200] Ibid., I, 221.

[201] Ibid., I, 78, 83.

[202] Ibid., I, 69.

[203] Ibid., I, 49.

[204] Ibid., II, 225.

[205] Ibid., II, 243–4.

[206] Ibid., I, 273.

[207] Ibid., I, 256.

[208] Ibid., II, 243.

[209] Ibid., II, 372.

[210] Ibid., II, 491–2.

[211] Ibid., I, 278, cf. II, 549.

[212] Ibid., I, 104.

[213] Ibid., I, 296.

[214] Ibid., II, 209–12; for more detail on these steps toward Godwinian

anarchy see John P. Clark, The Philosophical Anarchism of William Godwin

(Princeton, 1977), pp. 191–4.

[215] Kramnick, ‘Anarchism and the Real World’, pp.1126, 114.

[216] ‘The true reason why the mass of mankind has so often been the

dupe of knaves, has been the mysterious and complicated nature of the

social system. Once annihilate the quackery of government, and the most

homebred understanding might be strong enough to detect the artifices of

the state juggler that would mislead him.’ Godwin, Political Justice,

II, 208, cf. II, 136–7.

[217] Ibid., II, 477.

[218] Ibid., I, 298.

[219] Ibid., I, 274.

[220] Proudhon, Systeme de contradictions economiques (Paris, 1923), II,

403.

[221] Proudhon, Idee generate de la revolution au dix-neuvieme siecle

(Paris, 1923) p. 374,

[222] Proudhon, Les carnets, 4 vols. (Paris, 1960–74), III, 45. For the

more detailed analysis of Proudhon’s strategy on which this account is

based see Ritter, The Political Thought of Proudhon, ch. VI.

[223] Proudhon, Qu’est-ce que la propriete? (Paris, 1926), p. 345.

[224] Proudhon, Melanges, 3 vols. (Paris, 1868–70), III, 123; Proudhon,

La revolution sociale demontree par le coup d’etat du deux decembre

(Paris, 1936), p. 206.

[225] Proudhon, Carnets, III, 248; Proudhon, Melanges, II, 1.

[226] Proudhon, La revolution sociale, p. 177.

[227] Proudhon, De la Justice dans la Revolution et dans l’Eglise

(Paris, 1930–5), IV, 468.

[228] Ibid., IV, 489.

[229] Proudhon, Correspondance (Paris, 1874–5), IX, 71.

[230] Proudhon, De la capacite politique des classes ouvrieres (Paris,

1924), p. 236.

[231] Ibid., p. 74.

[232] Ibid., p. 240; cf. p. 101.

[233] ‘Has there ever been a single example, at any time in any place,

of a privileged, dominant class making concessions freely,

spontaneously, without being forced to by coercion and fear?’ Bakunin,

OEuvres, VI, 359-6o.

[234] ‘Rapport de la commission sur la question de l’heritage’, Bakunin,

OEuvres, V, 199–210.

[235] Marx, Engels and Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism (New

York, 1972), pp. 45–6.

[236] Bakunin, OEuvres, I, 173, 296, II, 46, 335.

[237] Ibid., Ill, 64 note.

[238] Ibid., II, 423.

[239] Ibid., II, 101; Arthur Lehning (ed.), Michael Bakunin, Selected

Writings (New York, 1973), p. 168. Cf. Daniel Guerin (ed.), Ni Dieu ni

maitre (Lausanne, n.d.), p. 202.

[240] Lehning, Selected Writings, p. 169.

[241] Bakunin, OEuvres, VI, 70–2.

[242] Ibid., IV, 260.

[243] Godwin, Political Justice, I, 274.

[244] Kropotkin, Fields, Factories and Workshops (New York, 1913), pp.

394–402.

[245] Kropotkin, Paroles d’un revoke (Paris, 1885), pp. 308–9, 310; cf.

Kropotkin, Revolutionary Pamphlets (New York, 1968), p. 156.

[246] Kropotkin, Pamphlets, p. 185. Cf. Martin A. Miller, Kropotkin

(Chicago, 1976), p. 191. Kropotkin rejected ‘a vanguard elite which

would operate either before or after the revolution’.

[247] For a good account of Kropotkin’s early anarchism, see Miller,

Kropotkin, pp. 146, 174–5.

[248] Kropotkin, Paroles, p. 122.

[249] Kropotkin, Pamphlets, pp. 51, 68.

[250] Ibid., p. 35.

[251] Ibid., pp. 35–43. Quotation from this essay fails to capture its

force. It should be read in its entirety.

[252] Ibid., p. 188.

[253] Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread (New York, 1969), p. 57.

[254] For a detailed scenario see Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, chs.

4–7.

[255] Proudhon’s epigraph for his Systeme de contradictions economiques

was ‘Destruam et Aedificabo’. Bakunin insisted throughout his life that

‘the passion for destruction is a creative passion, too’. Lehning,

Selected Writings, p. 58.

[256] Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, pp. 109–10.

[257] Ibid., p. 80.

[258] Daniel Guerin, Anarchism (New York, 1970), p. 38.

[259] For a fine elaboration of these points see George Kateb, Utopia

and its Enemies (Glencoe, III., 1963), pp. 44–6.

[260] Oscar Jaszi, ‘Anarchism’, in The Encyclopedia of the Social

Sciences, 2 (New York, 1937), p. 52; Daniel Guerin, Anarchism (New York,

1970), p. 12; cf. Noam Chomsky’s introduction, p. xv.

[261] William H. Hocking, Man and the State (New Haven, 1926), pp. 97,

91.

[262] Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysical Elements of Justice, ed. John Ladd

(Indianapolis, 1965), pp. 43–4.

[263] Benjamin Constant, OEuvres (Paris, 1957), p. 1232.

[264] Mill’s case is difficult. For discussion of the normative status

of freedom in his theory see Robert Paul Wolff, The Poverty of

Liberalism (Boston, 1968), pp. 19–20; Albert W. Levi, ‘The Value of

Freedom: Mill’s “Liberty” (1859–1959)’, reprinted in Peter Radcliff

(ed.), Limits of Liberty (Belmont, Calif., 1966), pp. 6–18; H. J.

McCloskey, ‘Mill’s Liberalism’, reprinted in Isaac Kramnick (ed.),

Essays in the History of Political Thought (New York, 1969), p. 373.

[265] Kant, Metaphysical Elements of Justice, p. 19.

[266] Godwin: ‘The man who is acquainted with all the circumstances

under which a living or intelligent being is placed upon any given

occasion is qualified to predict the conduct he will hold with as much

certainty as he can predict any of the phenomena of inanimate nature.’

Enquiry Concerning Political Justice(Torpnto, 1946), I, 363. Bakunin:

Man ‘is irrevocably chained to the natural and social world of which he

is a product and in which, like everything that exists, after having

been an effect, and continuing to be one, he becomes in turn a relative

cause of relatively new products’. OEuvres (Paris, 1895–1913), III, 253.

Kropotkin: ‘Anarchism is a world-concept based upon a mechanical

explanation of all phenomena, embracing die whole of nature — that is,

including in it the life of human societies.’ Revolutionary Pamphlets

(New York, 1968), p. 150.

[267] Jeremy Bentham, Introduction to the Principles of Morals and

Legislation (New York, 1948), p. 170.

[268] For the argument that Godwin is a utilitarian see D. H. Monro,

Godwin’s Moral Philosophy (London, 1953), pp. 14–20, and John P. Clark,

The Philosophical Anarchism of William Godwin (Princeton, N.J.i 1977),

pp. 93–126. J. B. Priestley’s case against calling Godwin a utilitarian

is unconvincing. See his edition of Political Justice (Toronto, 1946),

III, 15–16.

[269] Kropotkin, Pamphlets, p. 153.

[270] Kropotkin, Ethics (New York, 1924), pp. 239, 241.

[271] Proudhon, De la Justice dans la Revolution et dans l’Eglise

(Paris, 1930–5). III. 544; cf-1, 310.

[272] Ibid., Ill, 444.

[273] Godwin, Political Justice, II, 500.

[274] Kropotkin, Pamphlets, p. 123.

[275] See Wolff, The Poverty of Liberalism, pp. 183–5, and for a more

nuanced view, Gerald F. Gaus and John W. Chapman, ‘Anarchism and

Political Philosophy: An Introduction’, in J. Roland Pennock and John W.

Chapman (eds.), Anarchism (New York, 1978), p. xxxi. Wolff overstates a

good case. There are signs of devotion to community among some liberals,

but they are faint and leave little mark on the practices of liberal

society. Certainly, liberals do not seek communal individuality above

all else. For evidence of Mill’s concern for community see On Liberty

(Indianapolis, 1956), p. 76.

[276] Immanuel Kant, The Philosophy of Kant, ed. Carl J. Friedrich (New

York, 1949), p. 120. For some astute remarks on Locke’s psychology, see

Gordon J. Schochet, ‘The Family and the Origins of the State in Locke’s

Political Philosophy’, in John Yolton (ed.), John Locke: Problems and

Perspectives (Cambridge, England, 1968), pp. 95–6.

[277] Proudhon, Justice, I, 416; cf. La guerre et la paix (Paris, 1927),

pp. 118–21.

[278] Bakunin, OEuvres, I, 137.

[279] As John Clark aptly demonstrates. See ‘What is Anarchism?’, in

Pennock and Chapman (eds.), Anarchism, pp. 15–17.

[280] Godwin, Thoughts on Man (New York, 1969), pp. 97, 12, 112.

[281] Godwin, Political Justice, I, 94; cf. Political Justice, I, 184;

II, 533, and Monro, Godwin’s Moral Philosophy, pp. 167, 172–82. Charles

Frankel in The Case For Modern Man (Boston, 1959), pp. 102–6, shows the

sobriety of Condorcet’s doctrine of perfectibility. Much of what is

there said of Condorcet also applies to Godwin.

[282] Kropotkin, Pamphlets, p. 218; cf. p. 106 where Kropotkin says that

even in an anarchy it may be a man’s ‘bent of character’ to deceive his

friends.

[283] Bertrand de Jouvenel discusses them in Sovereignty (Chicago,

1957), pp. 130–5.

[284] Thomas Paine, The Selected Works of Tom Paine and Citizen Tom

Paine, ed. Howard Fast (New York, 1943), p. 90.

[285] It is true that he relied more heavily on the moral sanction in

his pages on indirect legislation, but he never published them and it is

unclear how seriously he took them. On this question see Mary P. Mack,

Jeremy Bentham: An Odyssey of Ideas (New York, 1963), pp. 170–3.

[286] Benjamin Constant, Cours de politique constitutionelle, ed.

Edouard Laboulaye (Paris, 1861), II, 554.

[287] Cf. James M. Buchanan, ‘A Contractarian Perspective on Anarchy’,

in Pennock and Chapman (eds.), Anarchism, p. 29. ‘I have often described

myself as a philosophical anarchist. In my conceptualized ideal society

individuals with well defined and mutually respected rights coexist and

cooperate as they desire without formal political structure. My

practical ideal, however, moves one stage down from this and is based on

the presumption that individuals could not attain the behavioral

standards required for such anarchy to function acceptably. In general

recognition of this frailty in human nature, persons would agree to

enact laws, and to provide means of enforcement, so as to achieve the

closest approximation that is possible to the ideally free society.’

This is the place to acknowledge the existence in America of anarchists,

beginning with Josiah Warren, culminating with Benjamin Tucker, and

exemplified at present by figures such as David Friedman or Murray

Rothbard, who, unlike the anarchists being studied in this book, must be

classified as liberals. These anarchists — often denominated

individualists — differ from the founders in seeing a conflict between

individuality and community and in resolving the conflict by giving

individuality precedence. The friendly criticism of anarchists advanced

by writers like Buchanan, though misguided if seen as aimed at the

founders, is on target as applied to these individualists. It is indeed

naive to claim that individuality can flourish without the bonds of

either community or the state.

[288] On Marx as a seeker of communal individuality see above,

Introduction.

[289] Which doesn’t apply to socialism before 1848. Cf. G. D. H. Cole, A

History of Socialist Thought, vol. I (London, 1959), pp. 131, 313.

[290] Avineri illuminatingly equates Marx’s use of ‘political’ here with

‘partial’. Shlomo Avineri, The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx

(Cambridge, England, 1968), p. 212.

[291] Marx, Engels and Lenin, Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism (New

York, 1972), pp. 168, 150.

[292] Ibid., p. 150.

[293] Other interpreters of Marxism who agree that a state remains in

the highest stage of socialism include Richard Adamiak, ‘The Withering

Away of the State: A Reconsideration’, Journal of Politics, 32 (February

1970), pp. 3–18; Thilo Ramm, ‘Die Kiinftige Gesellschaftsordnung nach

der Theorie von Marx und Engels’, in Iring Fetscher (ed.),

Marxismusstudien, vol. II (Tubingen, 1957), pp. 77–119, see especially

p. 102; John Plamenatz, Man and Society, 2 vols. (London, 1963), II,

373: ‘Marx and Engels... made a distinction between government and

administration, predicting the disappearance in the classless society of

only the first. Though they did not... make it clear just what this

distinction amounts to, they seem to have included in administration

some of the activities usually called governmental.’

[294] Misere de la philosophie, ed. Henri Mougin (Paris, 1961), p. 153.

[295] Godwin, Political Justice, II, 463, 443, 466.

[296] Proudhon, Justice, III, 174; Bakunin, OEuvres, II, 108, IV, 407,

V, 312; Kropotkin, Pamphlets, p. 166.

[297] Consider this criticism by Bakunin of Marx. Marx ‘says that

“hardship produces political slavery — the State”, but does not allow

for the converse: “Political slavery — the State — reproduces and

maintains hardship as a condition of its existence”’. Arthur Lehning

(ed.), Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings (New York, 1973), p. 256.

Though the state, for Marx, has more causal independence than Bakunin

allows, it is still far more dependent on the economy than it is for

Bakunin, or any anarchist.

[298] Godwin, Political Justice, II, 2; Bakunin, OEuvres, II, 327;

Proudhon, Confessions d’un revolutionnaire (Paris, 1929), p. 215.

[299] Avineri, Social and Political Thought of Marx, pp. 202–20.

[300] For instance, ‘Universal suffrage, so long as it is exercised in a

society where, the people, the working masses, are economically

dominated by a minority,... can never produce anything but illusory

elections, which are anti-democratic and absolutely opposed to the

needs, instincts and real will of the population.’ (Bakunin, OEuvres,

II, 311) Bakunin, being for once more careful than the other anarchists,

excepts the people of Britain and the United States from his strictures.

In these countries, ‘the freedom of the masses and their capacity for

political action have reached the highest level of development known to

history’. (IV, 449) Yet their enlightenment is for Bakunin no sign that

the support of the British or American masses should be sought in an

election. ‘Their political consciousness, having reached its zenith, and

having produced all of its fruits, is obviously tending to become

transformed into the anti-political consciousness of the anarchists.’

(IV, 451)

[301] The conflict between anarchists and socialists on this point is

nowhere better exemplified than in one of Marx’s marginal notes on

Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy. Bakunin had complained that the officials

of the state envisioned by the Marxists would not build socialism, for

they would be ‘ex-workers, who, once they become rulers or

...representatives of the people, cease to be workers’. To this Marx

replied, ‘No more than a manufacturer today ceases to be a capitalist

when he becomes a member of the municipal council’. Henry Mayer (ed.),

‘Karl Marx: Marginal Notes on Bakunin’s “Statism and Anarchy”’, Etudes

de Marxologie, x (October 1959), pp. 112–13. A slightly different

version is included in Marx, Engels, Lenin, Anarchism and

Anarcho-syndicalism, pp. 147–52.

[302] Noam Chomsky, ‘Introduction’ to Guerin, Anarchism, p. xii.

[303] Ibid., p. xvii. All aspects of this contrast are based on

Chomsky’s remarks.

[304] Ibid., p. xv.

[305] Kropotkin, “The State: Its Historical Role’, in Miller (ed.),

Selected Writings on Anarchism and Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1970),

Mutual Aid (New York, 1925), chs. 3–8, Revolutionary Pamphlets (New

York, 1968), pp. 65–6. For recent work by an anthropologist who reaches

conclusions similar to Kropotkin’s about the anarchistic quality of some

primitive societies see Pierre Clastres, Society Against the State (New

York, 1977); and for a recent report on the Royal National Life-Boat

Institution see The New York Times (23 April 1978). The coxswain of the

Dover lifeboat is quoted as saying, ‘This job is much too important to

let the Government get its hands on it.’

[306] Edward Hyndman, The Historical Basis of Socialism in England

(London, 1883), p. 425. Donald Mcintosh, ‘The Dimensions of Anarchy’, in

Pennock and Chapman (eds.), Anarchism (New York, 1978), p. 263.

[307] Roel Van Duyn, Message of a Wise Kabouter (London, 1969), pp.

48–9; Laurence Veysey, The Communal Experience (New York, 1973), pp.

427–9. Lyman Tower Sargent, ‘Social Decision Making in Anarchism and

Minimalism’ (unpublished paper presented at the Fifth Plenary Meeting,

of AMINTAPHIL, November 1976), pp. 17–18.

[308] J.-J. Rousseau, Emile, trans. Barbara Foxley (London, 1911), p. 7.

[309] Michael Walzer, Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War and

Citizenship (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), pp. 238, 231.

[310] It must not be forgotten that the anarchists, in laying out these

requirements for freedom, are concerned with action in the public

sphere. They acknowledge that in acting privately, as when I build my

own house, it is not irrational to follow rules or experts without

verifying the merit of the particular actions they prescribe. Nor must

it be forgotten that in the rational deliberation of the anarchists

general rules must be consulted as presumptive guides.

[311] In laying out the conditions which serve as a background to the

exercise of freedom, the anarchists can be viewed as doing for liberty

what is more often done for justice. Just as the theory of justice

identifies the background conditions which best assure that entirely

procedural adjudication will yield a just verdict, so anarchist theory

identifies the background conditions which make it most likely that an

entirely procedural liberty will yield good conduct.

[312] The locus classicus for the objection is Karl Popper, The Open

Society and Its Enemies (New York, 1962), vol. 1, ch. 9; see also his

essay, ‘Utopia and Violence’, in Conjectures and Refutations (New York,

1963), pp. 355–64.

[313] Incrementalism as a decision procedure is carefully laid out by

Robert Dahl and Charles Lindblom in Politics, Economics and Welfare (New

York, 1953), pp. 82–6.

[314] Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (Toronto, 1946), II,

402. The last part of Kropotkin’s ‘Law and Authority’, in Pamphlets, pp.

206–8, fills out this analysis.

[315] Lester Mazor, ‘Disrespect for Law’, in Pennock and Chapman (eds.),

Anarchism, pp. 143–59. See also the suggestive essay by Stanley Diamond,

‘The Rule of Law Versus the Order of Custom’, in Robert Paul Wolff

(ed.), The Rule of Law (New York, 1971), pp. 115–44. It is important not

to confuse these empirical studies of law, which criticize it from an

anarchist perspective, with empirical criticism from a socialist

viewpoint, a good example of which is Richard Quinney, Critique of Legal

Order (Boston, 1973). Quinney makes no attempt to blame the suffering he

documents as caused by the American legal system on law as such; the

culprit for him is the capitalist economy. He says only that ‘there is

no need for a legal order, as known under capitalism, in the social

relations of a socialist society’, p. 191 (my emphasis).

[316] Quoted in David Stafford, ‘Anarchists in Britain Today’,

Government and Opposition, 5 (Autumn 1970), p. 488.

[317] Bayard Boyeson, ‘The Modern School’, in Perry and Krimmerman,

Patterns of Anarchy (New York, 1966), pp. 417–20. For a description of

the school in a less anarchist phase, from 1920 to 1925, after it had

been transferred to Stelton, New Jersey, see Veysey, The Communal

Experience, pp. 141–8. For contemporary developments in anarchist

education, including details about specific schools, see George

Dennison, The Lives of Children (New York, 1969), Allen Graubard, Free

the Children (New York, 1972), and Joel Spring, A Primer of Libertarian

Education (New York, 1975).

[318] Colin Ward, Anarchy in Action (New York, 1973), pp. 95–109. For

analysis of the value and effects of self-management see Gerry Ffunnius,

G. David Garson and John Case (eds.), Workers’ Control (New York, 1973),

and Carole Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory (Cambridge,

England, 1970), ch. IV, ‘Participation and “Democracy” in Industry’.

[319] Charles Gide, Communist and Cooperative Colonies (London, 1930),

pp. 157–63. Another anarchist commune founded in France during this

period, and just touched upon in Gide’s survey, was more thoroughly

described in a contemporary newspaper account. The Aiglemont Colony,

established in 1903 by Fortune Henry, an anarchist who had spent

thirteen years in prison for his earlier, less circumspect activities,

followed a similar trajectory to the Colony of Vaux. According to Henry,

at Aiglemont ‘the only signal everyone obeys is the dinner gong’. No one

commands. ‘Each evening, we decide what work to do the next day; but the

next day each of us does his work just as he pleases.’ The newspaper

correspondent reported from Aiglemont that there were indeed no fixed

rules or routines governing work, yet the settlers were producing more

than enough to live on. The Aiglemont Colony fell apart, like the one at

Vaux, when its founder was called a dictator and invited to leave. Le

Temps, 11 and 13 June 1905.

[320] Laurence Veysey, on whose somewhat querulous account of Stelton

these remarks are based, though he concludes that the Colony’s record

was ‘mixed and inconclusive’, nevertheless is moved to add that ‘to have

fought the outside world for so long to a kind of draw is itself

impressive’. The Communal Experience, p. 177.

[321] Veysey, The Communal Experience, pp. 185–8; Richard Fairfield,

Communes USA. (Baltimore, 1972), pp. 39–52.

[322] Keith Melville, Communes in the Counter Culture (New York, 1972),

pp. 126-g; Fairfield, Communes, pp. 241–67.

[323] Using anarchy as a guide to partial reconstruction certainly does

not assure beneficial transformation, or even make it probable. The

withdrawal of anarchists into separate institutions might consolidate,

rather than undermine, the established social order.

[324] Joll, The Anarchists (London, 1964), p. 279, Woodcock, Anarchism

(New York, 1962), p. 475.

[325] Karl Wittfogel responded with dread in ‘Marxism, Anarchism, and

the New Left’ (unpublished paper presented at the annual meeting of the

American Political Science Association, September 1969). For a

triumphant response see Guerin, Anarchism (New York, 1970), ‘Postscript:

May, 1968’, pp. 155–9, and for responses which express varied degrees of

amazement see James Joll, ‘Anarchism — A Living Tradition’, Government

and Opposition, 5 (Autumn 1970), pp. 541–54, and Gerald Runkel,

Anarchism: Old and New (New York, 1972), pp. 175–220.

[326] Pre-eminently, the members of the Spanish CNT. For the view that

anarchism represents artisanal interests see Pierre Ansert, Naissance de

Vanarchisme(Paris, 1970); for an interpretation emphasizing its appeal

to landless rural workers see Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels (New York,

1959), pp. 74–92; Aime Berthod stresses the affinities between

Proudhon’s anarchism and peasant interests in Proudhon et la propriete

(Paris, 1910); the association of anarchism with ‘petty bourgeois’

interests is, of course, a Marxist hobbyhorse.

[327] John Chapman and Gerald Gaus decry this aspiration as

self-contradictory in their provocative essay, ‘Anarchism and Political

Philosophy: An Introduction’, in Pennock and Chapman (eds.), Anarchism,

p. xi. They also cite Eric Voegelin for denouncing it as ‘the pneumatic

disease’, p. xliii. In ch. 1 of his Hegel(Cambridge, England, 1975),

Charles Taylor gives a magisterial account of our preoccupation with

individuality and community in the context of the development of

pre-Hegelian German philosophy and culture.