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Title: Anarchism and Education
Author: Judith Suissa
Date: 2006
Language: en
Topics: education, Libertarian Education, philosophy
Source: Retrieved on 9th January 2020 from http://libgen.rs/book/index.php?md5=BDB518ACF8664BCAD38D8D36F811883B

Judith Suissa

Anarchism and Education

Preface

It is nearly five years since the first publication of this book.

Reflecting on the work that went into it, and on the discussions that it

has prompted with friends and colleagues over the years, there are two

points that I would like to make in this preface to the new edition.

These concern both the past and the future: the things I said in the

book and why I still feel they are important; and the things that were

left unsaid that need to be written and, more importantly, acted on.

Firstly, the past: For much of the time I spent researching the book, I

was buried in, and entranced by, the world of nineteenth-century social

anarchists. Sitting in silent archives, rummaging around second-hand

bookshops, retracing the steps of Kropotkin in the East End of London

and of Francesco Ferrer in the streets of Barcelona, it was easy to get

lost in this world, where so much seemed possible. So it comes as no

surprise to have been accused, by some readers of the book, of being

“romantic” or “utopian”. Yet, annoying though these accusations are, I

am not entirely uncomfortable with the label. As I tried to show in the

book, engaging with anarchist theory and, particularly with anarchist

educational ideas and practice, can help to rescue the word “utopian”

from its pejorative connotations and reclaim it as an urgent and

committed form of social hope. This project seems particularly timely in

our current political climate. Ideas matter, and at a time when we are

surrounded by pronouncements about “the death of ideology” and

politicians talking about “what works”, they matter more, not less, than

ever. If, as Susan Neiman has argued (Neiman 2009: 26), one goal of

philosophy is to enlarge our ideas of what is possible, then a

philosophical exploration of anarchism is surely a valuable exercise.

Indeed, as Neiman shows, one of the effects of contemporary political

discourse has been to blur the very distinctions between our core

metaphysical concepts: ideals and ideology; realism and pragmatism; what

is actual and what is possible. Part of the battle to resist neo-liberal

ideology and its effects on our lives is a battle to reclaim our ethical

vocabulary. I hope that in showing how, for example, the notions of

freedom and equality were conceptually intertwined in the thought and

political activism of nineteenth-century social anarchists, I can play a

small part in this battle.

When it comes to education, articulating and engaging with anarchist

positions takes on a particular significance. I am still compelled to

draw people’s attention to anarchist educational ideas and practice both

because the role of education in anarchist theories of social change and

human nature is still seriously overlooked in theoretical work on

anarchism, and because the unique intellectual roots and political

underpinnings of anarchist educational practice are largely left out of

philosophical and historical work on education. Yet my urge to tell the

story of anarchist education stems from more than a desire to correct

theoretical misrepresentations or to fill gaps in the academic

literature. We live in a time when educational policy makers in the USA

and the UK often talk as if state education had no history. Terms like

“parental choice”, “child-centred” and “educational opportunity” are

scattered across policy documents as if their meaning is straightforward

and unproblematic, and the political assumptions underpinning them are

rarely made explicit. But as Michael Apple has argued (Apple 2000,

2006), the forces of “conservative modernization”, while reconstructing

the means and ends of education and other social institutions, are also

creating a shift in our ideas about democracy, freedom, equality and

justice, turning “thick” collective forms of these (always contested)

concepts into “thin” consumer driven and overly individualistic forms.

This tendency needs to be resisted if we are to create and sustain the

kinds of learning environments and the kinds of just societies where

children and adults can truly flourish. Confident statements are made,

in the media, in policy documents and in academic literature, about the

aims and benefits of state schooling and liberal education as if there

was no need to even ask ourselves what these things mean, what values

underpin them, and why they have taken on the institutional forms and

structures that they have, or to remind ourselves that things were not

always thus. Revisiting the educational ideas of anarchist theorists and

practitioners forces us to step back and ask these questions; to remind

ourselves that there were times where not just the link between the

state and education, but the state itself, was contested. But thinking

about how our political structures and the educational processes and

relationships that inform and are informed by them could look radically

different is not just a historical exercise: it is an important reminder

that there are other ways of doing things; that even now, within and

alongside the structures of the state, it is possible, as Buber says, to

“create the space now possible” for different human relationships;

different ways of organizing our social and political lives.

And this brings me to the final point: the book I didn’t write and the

things I didn’t say. For, when all is said and done, the writing of this

book and the research that went into it was an intellectual endeavour. I

make no apologies for being an academic, for I do believe that thinking

about the world, particularly thinking critically about it, is an

essential part of changing it. However, the real story of anarchist

education is still going on, outside the pages of this book. It is

unfolding in the nondescript classrooms of under-resourced inner-city

schools; in the leafy grounds of independent schools; in grimy

youth-clubs; on the streets; in theatre-halls and in seminar rooms.

Since the first publication of the book, I have been contacted by

countless activists and teachers who, in one way or another, are

practising, experimenting with and developing various forms of anarchist

education: through street theatre; through anti-racist, feminist and

critical pedagogy; through the founding and running of experiments in

collective living; through innovative approaches to art education, sex

education, political action against oppression, community projects, and

numerous other initiatives that challenge dominant mind-sets and

political structures and form part of the ongoing chorus of what Colin

Ward called “voices of creative dissent”. If there is a hope expressed

in this book, it is these activists and educators who give it substance

and who are, at this very moment, writing its sequel.

I dedicated the original edition of this book to the memory of my

mother, Ruth. I would like to dedicate this new edition to the memory of

Colin Ward. They both, in their different ways, have inspired me and

will continue to do so.

Judith Suissa

London, 2010

References

Apple, M. (2000) Official Knowledge: Democratic Knowledge in a

Conservative Age, New York: Routledge. (2006) Educating the “Right” Way:

Markets, Standards, God and Inequality, New

York: Routledge Buber, M. (1958) Paths in Utopia, Boston: Beacon Press.

Neiman, S. (2009) Moral Clarity; A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists, New

Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Ward, Colin (1991) Influences: Voices of Creative Dissent, Guildford:

Green Books.

Acknowledgements

I have been living with this project for several years and cannot

possibly thank all the people who have supported me along the way.

Certain individuals, however, deserve special mention.

The staff and students in the School of Educational Foundations and

Policy Studies at the London Institute of Education have provided a

consistently supportive and stimulating environment in which to work. I

am grateful to all my colleagues in the Philosophy Section but

particularly to Patricia White for her invaluable supervision,

unfailingly thoughtful feedback and support during my PhD research, on

which this book is based, and for her ongoing friendship and enthusiasm

for the project.

The research for this book was made possible in part by generous awards

from the ORS Awards Scheme, the University of London Central Research

Fund and the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain.

Aside from offering financial assistance, the Philosophy of Education

Society of Great Britain has provided a wonderful forum for the exchange

of ideas, collegiality and stimulating discussion, and I am grateful to

be part of such a community.

I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to the following individuals

both within the PESGB and from the broader community of philosophers,

educators, utopian dreamers and anarchists, who have, over the years,

offered encouragement, friendship, inspiration and valuable insights

into and criticisms of various versions of the ideas and arguments

developed here: Harry Brighouse, Ruth Cigman, Jau-Wei Dan, Mike

Degenhardt, Ayal Donenfeld, Michael Fielding, Jane Green, David Halpin,

Graham Haydon, Hemdat Lerman, Terry McLaughlin, Brenda McQuillan, Yishay

Mor, Janet Orchard, Shirley Rowan, Michael Smith, Richard Smith, Paul

Standish, Tirza Waisel, Colin Ward, John White and Christopher Winch.

An earlier and much-abridged version of the central themes of this book

appeared in ‘Anarchism, Utopias and Philosophy of Education’, Journal of

Philosophy of Education, 35 (4), 2001. A version of the arguments in

Chapter 7 appeared in ‘Vocational Education: A Social Anarchist

Perspective’, Policy Futures in Education, 2 (1), 2004.

My father, Stan Cohen, has not only provided me with the unconditional

support which only a parent can, but has, at several points, offered the

sharp and thoughtful criticism of an experienced – but not cynical –

academic writer. He has my gratitude for both these roles. Although my

mother, Ruth, sadly did not live to see this work completed, she has

been with me every step of the way.

My husband, Elhanan, has, perhaps more than anyone, followed at close

quarters the ups and downs that have been a part of the process of

writing this book. Throughout, he has been unfailingly supportive and

understanding, and has helped to keep things in perspective.

Finally, I am immensely grateful to my children, Lia and Yonatan –

mainly for simply being there and also for being somewhere else at

crucial moments so that I could get on with the writing.

Introduction

‘To declare for a doctrine so remote as anarchism at this stage of

history’, wrote Herbert Read in 1938, ‘will be regarded by some critics

as a sign of intellectual bankruptcy; by others as a sort of treason, a

desertion of the democratic front at the most acute moment of its

crisis; by still others as merely poetic nonsense …’ (Read 1974: 56).

After several years of working on this project, I think I have some idea

of how Read felt. Anarchism is rarely taken seriously by academics, and

its advocates in the political arena are generally regarded as a

well-meaning but, at worst, violent and at best a naïve bunch. Why, then

do I think anarchist ideas merit a study of this scope? And why,

particularly, do I think they have something to say to philosophers of

education?

Part of my motivation is the need to address what appears to be a gap in

the literature. Although the anarchist position on education is, as I

hope to establish, distinct and philosophically interesting, and

although it has been expressed powerfully at various times throughout

recent history, it is consistently absent from texts on the philosophy

and history of educational ideas – even amongst those authors who

discuss ‘radical’ or ‘progressive’ education. Indeed, one issue which I

address in this book is the failure of many theorists to distinguish

between libertarian education (or ‘free schools’) and anarchist

education. I hope to establish that the principles underlying the

anarchist position make the associated educational practices and

perspective significantly distinct from other approaches in radical

education.

Similarly, both academic texts and public perceptions often involve

simplifications, distortions or misunderstandings of anarchism. The

typical response of contemporary scholars to the anarchist idea – that

it is ‘utopian’, ‘impractical’ or ‘over-optimistic regarding human

nature’ (see, for example, Scruton 1982; Wolff 1996) – needs to be

scrutinized if one is to give anarchism serious consideration. To what

extent are these charges justified? And what are the philosophical and

political assumptions behind them? Indeed such charges themselves have,

for me, raised fascinating questions about the nature and role of the

philosophy of education. In what sense are we bound by the political and

social context within which we operate? To what extent should we be

bound by it, and what is our responsibility in this regard as

philosophers? If philosophy is to reach beyond the conceptual reality of

our present existence, how far can it go before it becomes ‘utopian’,

and what does this mean? And if we do want to promote an alternative

vision of human life, to what extent are we accountable for the

practicality of this vision? So while the focus of this work is an

exploration of the philosophical issues involved in anarchist ideas of

education, these broader questions form the backdrop to the discussion.

The bulk of this work consists of an attempt to piece together a

systematic account of what could be described as an anarchist

perspective on education. This project involves examining the central

philosophical assumptions and principles of anarchist theory, with

particular reference to those ideas which have an obvious bearing on

issues about the role and nature of education. Specifically, I devote

considerable space to a discussion of the anarchist view on human

nature, which is both at the crux of many misconceptions of anarchism

and also plays a crucial role in the anarchist position on education. I

also discuss several attempts to translate anarchist ideas into

educational practice and policy. This discussion, I hope, serves to

highlight the distinct aspects of the anarchist perspective, as compared

to other educational positions, and furthers critical discussion of the

way in which anarchism can be seen to embody a philosophically

interesting perspective on education.

The thrust of my account of anarchist educational ideas and practice is

to show how such ideas are intertwined with the political and moral

commitments of anarchism as an ideological stance. One cannot, I argue,

appreciate the complexity of the anarchist position on education without

understanding the political and philosophical context from which it

stems. Yet equally importantly, one cannot appreciate or assess

anarchism’s viability as a political position without an adequate

understanding of the role played by education within anarchist thought.

In the course of this discussion, I refer extensively to other

traditions which inform major trends in the philosophy of education,

namely, the liberal and the Marxist traditions. While I do not claim to

offer a comprehensive account of either of these traditions, nor of

their educational implications, this approach does, I hope, serve the

purpose of situating anarchist ideas within a comparative framework. I

believe it establishes that, while anarchism overlaps in important ways

with both liberal and Marxist ideas, it can offer us interesting new

ways to conceptualize educational issues. The insights drawn from such

an analysis can thus shed new light both on the work of philosophers of

education, and on the educational questions, dilemmas and issues

confronted by teachers, parents and policy makers.

It is important to stress, at the outset, that this work is not intended

as a defence of anarchism as a political position. I believe that

philosophers of education and educational practitioners can benefit from

a serious examination of anarchist ideas, and that many of these ideas

have value whether or not one ultimately endorses anarchism as a

political ideology, and even if one remains sceptical regarding the

possibility of resolving the theoretical tensions within anarchist

theory.

More specifically, I believe that the very challenge posed by what I

refer to as the anarchist perspective, irrespective of our ultimate

ideological commitments, can prompt us to ask broad questions about the

nature and role of philosophy, of education, and of the philosophy of

education.

Most contemporary philosophers of education acknowledge that philosophy

of education has, at the very least, political implications. As John

White puts it (White 1982: 1), ‘the question: What should our society be

like? overlaps so much with the question [of what the aims of education

should be] that the two cannot sensibly be kept apart’. Likewise,

Patricia White laments the fact that philosophers tend to avoid ‘tracing

the policy implications of their work’ (White 1983: 2), and her essay

Beyond Domination is a good example of an attempt to spell out in

political terms what a particular educational aim (in this case,

education for democracy) would look like. A compelling account of the

historical and philosophical context of the relationship between

educational theory and political ideas has been notably developed by

Carr and Hartnett, who lament the ‘depoliticization of educational

debate’ (Carr and Hartnett 1996: 5) and argue for a clearer articulation

of the political and cultural role of educational theory, grounded in

democratic values. But even work such as this tends to take the present

basic social framework and institutional setup as given. Even

philosophers of education such as John and Patricia White, Carr and

Hartnett, Henry Giroux, Nel Noddings and others who take a critical

stance towards the political values reflected in the education system,

tend to phrase their critique in terms of making existing society ‘more

democratic’, ‘more participatory’, ‘more caring’ and so on. The basic

structural relations between the kind of society we live in and the kind

of education we have are, more often than not, taken for granted.

Indeed, it is this which makes such theories so appealing as, often,

they offer a way forward for those committed to principles of democracy,

for example, without demanding an entire revolution in the way our

society is organized.

In political terms, the acknowledgement by philosophers of the

essentially political character of education seems to mean that, as

succinctly put by Bowen and Hobson

It is now clear to most in the liberal-analytic tradition that no

philosopher of education can be fully neutral, but must make certain

normative assumptions, and in the case of the liberal analysts, these

will reflect the values of democracy. (Bowen and Hobson 1987: 445)

In philosophical terms, what this acknowledgement means is that

discussion of ‘aims’ and ‘values’ in education often assumes that the

kind of social and political values we cherish most highly can be

promoted by particular conceptualizations of the curriculum. Richard

Pring captures this idea in stating that debates on the aim of education

‘take the word aim to mean not something extrinsic to the process of

education itself, but the values which are picked out by evaluating any

activity as educational’ (Pring 1994: 21). Thus much work by

philosophers within the liberal tradition focuses on questions as to how

values such as autonomy – argued to be crucial for creating a democratic

citizenry – can best be fostered by the education system. Many theorists

in this tradition make no acknowledgement of the fact that ‘education’

is not synonymous with ‘schooling’. Even those who do explicitly

acknowledge this fact, like John White who opens his book The Aims of

Education Restated (White 1982) with the comment that ‘not teachers but

parents form the largest category of educators in this country’, tend to

treat this issue simply as a factor to be dealt with in the debate

conducted within the framework of the existing democratic (albeit often,

it is implied, not democratic enough) state. The normative questions

regarding the desirability of this very framework are not themselves the

focus of philosophical debate.

In short, the sense in which many philosophers of education regard their

work as political is that captured by Kleinig, when he states:

Philosophy of education is a social practice, and in evaluating it

account needs to be taken not only of what might be thought to follow

‘strictly’ from the arguments used by its practitioners, but also the

causal effects of those arguments within the social contexts of which

they are a part. (Kleinig 1982: 9)

Critical discussion about the desirability of this social context in

itself, it is implied, is beyond the scope of philosophy of education.

The anarchist perspective seems at the outset to present a challenge to

such mainstream views in that it does not take any existing social or

political framework for granted. Instead, it has as its focal point a

vision of what an ideal framework could be like – a vision which has

often been described as utopian. The question of why the anarchists were

given the label ‘utopian’, what it signifies, and whether or not they

justly deserved it, is one which is hotly debated in the literature, and

which I shall take up later. But what anarchism seems to be suggesting

is that before we even engage in the enterprise of philosophy of

education, we must question the very political framework within which we

are operating, ask ourselves what kind of society would embody, for us,

the optimal vision of ‘the good life’, and then ask ourselves what kind

(if any) of education system would exist in this society.

Of course, any vision of the ideal society is formulated in terms of

particular values, and many of the values involved in the anarchist

vision may overlap with those promoted by philosophers writing in the

liberal-democratic tradition (e.g. autonomy, equality, individual

freedom). But it is not just a question of how these values are

understood and translated into political practice; nor is it a question

of which of them are regarded as of primary importance; the distinction

is not, then, between emphasizing different sets of values in

philosophical debates on education, but, rather, of changing the very

parameters of the debate. Thus the question of ‘what should our society

be like’ is, for the anarchist, not merely ‘overlapping’, but logically

prior to any questions about what kind of education we want.

An anarchist perspective suggests that it is not enough to say, with

Mary Warnock, that philosophy of education should be centrally concerned

with ‘questions about what should be taught, to whom, and with what in

mind’ (Warnock 1977: 9); one has to also ask the crucial question ‘by

whom?’ And how one answers this question, in turn, has important

political implications which themselves inform the framework of the

debate. For example, if one assumes that the nation state is to be the

major educating body in society, one has to get clear about just what

this means for our political, social and educational institutions, and,

ideally, to be able to offer some philosophical defence of this

arrangement. The view of society which informs the anarchists’ ideas on

education is not one of ‘our society’ or ‘a democratic society’, but a

normative vision of what society could be like. The optimality of this

vision is justified with reference to complex ideas on human nature and

values, which I explore later.

The question for the philosopher of education, then, becomes threefold:

One, what kind of society do we want? Two, what would education look

like in this ideal society? And three, what kind of educational

activities can best help to further the realization of this society? Of

course, the arguments of anarchist thinkers do not always acknowledge

the distinction between such questions, nor do they always progress

along the logical route implied here, and untangling them and

reconstructing this perspective is one task of this book.

Why, then, to go back to the opening quote from Herbert Read, is

anarchism regarded as so eccentric – laughable, even – by mainstream

philosophers? Is it the very idea of offering an alternative social

ideal that seems hard to swallow, or is it that this particular ideal is

regarded as so ‘utopian’ that it is not worth seriously considering? And

wherein does its ‘utopianism’ lie? Is it just a question of

impracticality? Are we, as philosophers, bound to consider only those

political programmes which are clearly practically feasible? Yet if we

are concerned primarily with feasibility, then we have to address the

claim, made by anarchist thinkers and activists, that their programme is

feasible in that it does not demand a sudden, total revolution, but can

be initiated and carried out ‘here and now’. For the anarchist utopia,

as we shall see, is built on the assumption of propensities, values and

tendencies which, it is argued, are already present in human social

activity. Is it, then, that philosophers believe that this utopian

vision of the stateless society goes against too much of what we know

about human nature? Yet there is little agreement amongst philosophers

as to the meaning, let alone the content, of human nature. Many

anarchists, however, have an elaborate theory of human nature which

arguably supports their claims for the possibility of a society based on

mutual aid and self-government. Is it, then, simply that we (perhaps

unlike many radical thinkers of the mid-nineteenth century) are so

firmly entrenched in the idea of the state that we cannot conceptualize

any kind of social reality without it? Does the modern capitalist state,

in other words, look as if it is here to stay? Have we, similarly,

fallen victim to the post-modern skepticism towards ‘grand narratives’,

suspicious of any political ideal which offers a vision of progress

towards an unequivocally better world? These are all valid and

interesting points against taking anarchism seriously, but they, in

their turn, deserve to be scrutinized as they reflect, I believe,

important assumptions about the nature and scope of the philosophical

enterprise.

Perhaps the very perspective implied by taking a (possibly utopian)

vision of the ideal society as the starting point for philosophical

debates on education is one which deserves to be taken seriously. It is

certainly one which challenges our common perceptions about the role of

the philosophy of education. We are already well acquainted with talk of

‘the good life’ and ‘human flourishing’ as legitimate notions within the

field of philosophy of education. But how broadly are we to extend our

critical thought and our imagination in using these notions? If we admit

(with John Dewey, Paul Hirst, Richard Peters and others) that such

notions cannot be understood without a social context, then is it not

incumbent on us – or at the very least a worthwhile exercise – to

consider what we would ideally like that social context to be? We are

accustomed to the occasional philosophical argument for states without

schools. Yet how often do we pause to consider the possibility of

schools without states?

An analysis of anarchist thought seems unlikely, due to the very nature

of the subject, to yield a coherent, comprehensive and unique

philosophical account of education. Indeed, part of anarchism’s

complexity is a result of its being intellectually, politically and

philosophically intertwined with many other traditions. Thus any

questions about anarchism’s uniqueness must remain, to a certain extent,

open. Nevertheless, in the course of exploring the educational ideas

associated with the anarchist tradition, and their philosophical and

historical connections with other traditions, many – often surprising –

insights emerge. Some of these challenge common perceptions about

anarchism; some of them suggest important links between anarchist ideas

and liberal aspirations; some of them prompt a rethinking of the

distinctions between various educational traditions; and some of them

prompt questions about how we see our role both as educators and as

philosophers of education. All of them deserve exploration.

1 Anarchism — definitions and questions

Before moving on to a discussion of the educational ideas associated

with anarchism, we need a broad understanding of what the anarchist

position involves – and, perhaps equally importantly, what it does not

involve.

As a political ideology, anarchism is notoriously difficult to define,

leading many commentators to complain of its being ‘amorphous and full

of paradoxes and contradictions’ (Miller 1984: 2).

One reason for the confusion surrounding the use of the word ‘anarchism’

is the derogatory meanings associated with the connected terms ‘anarchy’

and ‘anarchic’. The Oxford English Dictionary defines anarchy as (1)

absence of government or control, resulting in lawlessness (2) disorder,

confusion; and an anarchist as ‘a person who believes that government is

undesirable and should be abolished’. In fact, the title ‘anarchist’ was

first employed as a description of adherence to a particular ideology by

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1840 and, as shall transpire, the substantial

part of this ideology consisted in far more than a simple rejection of

government. Indeed, as many anarchists have stressed, it is not

government as such that they find objectionable, but the hierarchical

forms of government associated with the nation state.

A second reason for the difficulty in reaching a conclusive definition

is the fact that anarchism – by its very nature – is anti-canonical, and

therefore one cannot refer to any single body of written work (unlike in

the case of Marxism) in the search for definitive answers to questions

on the nature and principles of the anarchist position. Furthermore,

those anarchists who have written extensively on the subject have seldom

formulated their views in the form of systematic works – largely out of

a conscious commitment to the popular propaganda of their ideas.

Yet in spite of these difficulties, and in spite of the great variance

amongst different anarchist thinkers at different times in history, it

is possible to approach a working definition of anarchism by asking what

it is that distinguishes it from other ideological positions. From this

point of view, Reichert is undoubtedly right in pointing out that

anarchism is ‘the only modern social doctrine that unequivocally rejects

the concept of the state’ (Reichert 1969: 139).

As the discussion in the following chapters will reveal, as a theory

anarchism also addresses basic philosophical issues concerning such

notions as human nature, authority, freedom and community. All of these

issues have an important bearing on philosophical questions about

education, and can be usefully understood in contrast with the views

articulated from other ideological perspectives. It is, though, perhaps

in light of its rejection of statehood that the theoretical cluster of

anarchist ideas is best understood.

Historically speaking, it has been argued (e.g. by Miller, Chomsky and

Guerin) that the origins of anarchism as a comprehensive political

theory can be traced to the outbreak of the French Revolution. Miller

claims that the Revolution, by radically challenging the old regime,

opened the way for other such challenges to states and social

institutions. Specifically, institutions were now regarded as vulnerable

to the demand that they be justified in terms of an appeal to first

principles, whether of natural right, social utility, or other universal

abstract principles (see Miller 1984: 2–4). Yet anarchism as a political

movement did not develop until the second half of the nineteenth

century, especially in conjunction with the growing workers’ movement.

Indeed Joll argues that although philosophical arguments for anarchism

can be found in texts of earlier historical periods, as a political

movement, anarchism is ‘a product of the nineteenth century’ (Joll 1979:

ix). As Joll points out, ‘the values the anarchists attempted to

demolish were those of the increasingly powerful centralized, industrial

state which, in the nineteenth and twentieth century, has seemed the

model to which all societies are approaching’ (ibid.).

However, the philosophical ideas embodied in anarchist theory did have

historical precedents. Some writers have made the distinction between

anarchism as a political movement and ‘philosophical anarchism’ which

consists of a critique of the idea of authority itself. Miller, for

example, notes that, as opposed to the political objection to the state,

philosophical anarchism could entail a very passive kind of attitude,

politically speaking, in which the proponent of this view evades

‘inconvenient or immoral state dictates whenever possible’, but takes no

positive action to get rid of the state or to propose an alternative

form of social organization. On this view, one can be an anarchist

without subscribing to philosophical anarchism – that is, without

rejecting the idea of legitimate authority, and vice versa. However,

other theorists, such as Walter, argue that, irrespective of the

existence of a philosophical position against authority, all those who

identify themselves as anarchists share the positive idea that a

stateless society is, however remotely, possible and would be preferable

to current society.

Most theorists, in short, seem to agree that, as a political movement,

albeit not a continuous one, anarchism developed from the time of the

French Revolution onwards, and that it can thus be seen as historically

connected with the other major modern political doctrines which were

crystallized at around this time, namely, liberalism and socialism. It

is indeed around the question of the relationship between these two

intellectual traditions that many of the criticisms of anarchism and the

tensions within the movement can be understood. In a certain sense, the

tensions between liberal and socialist principles are reflected in the

contradictions often to be found within the anarchist tradition. While

many commentators (see for example Joll 1979; Miller 1984; Morland 1997)

describe these apparently irreconcilable tensions as obstacles towards

construing anarchism as a coherent ideology, anarchist thinkers writing

within the tradition often refuse to see them as contradictions, drawing

on particular concepts of freedom to support their arguments. Thus

Walter, for example, notes that anarchism

may be seen as a development from either liberalism or socialism, or

from both liberalism and socialism. Like liberals, anarchists want

freedom; like socialists, anarchists want equality. But we are not

satisfied by liberalism alone or by socialism alone. Freedom without

equality means that the poor and the weak are less free than the rich

and strong, and equality without freedom means that we are all slaves

together. Freedom and equality are not contradictory, but complementary

[…] Freedom is not genuine if some people are too poor or too weak to

enjoy it, and equality is not genuine if some people are ruled by

others. The crucial contribution to political theory made by anarchists

is this realization that freedom and equality are in the end the same

thing. (Walter 1969: 163)

Walter, like many anarchist theorists, often fails to make the careful

philosophical distinctions necessary to fully appreciate these complex

conceptual issues. Presumably, he does not wish to argue that freedom

and equality are actually conceptually identical. Rather, the point he

seems to be making is that they are mutually dependent, in the sense

that the model of a good society which the anarchists are defending

cannot have one without the other. I shall examine these conceptual

issues in greater depth in the following discussion.

In spite of Walter’s observation, it is undoubtedly true that,

throughout history, different people calling themselves anarchists have

often chosen to place more weight on one rather than the other side of

the ‘old polarization of freedom versus equality’. Specifically, it is

common to find a distinction between anarchists of more ‘individualist’

leanings, and ‘social anarchists’, who see individual freedom as

conceptually connected with social equality and emphasize the importance

of community and mutual aid. Thus writers like Max Stirner (1806–1856),

who represents an early and extreme form of individualism (which Walter

suggests is arguably not a type of anarchism at all) view society as a

collection of existentially unique and autonomous individuals. Both

Stirner and William Godwin (1756–1836), commonly acknowledged as the

first anarchist thinkers, portrayed the ideal of the rational individual

as morally and intellectually sovereign, and the need to constantly

question authority and received opinion – to engage in a process which

Stirner called ‘desanctification’. However while Stirner seemed to argue

for a kind of rational egoism, Godwin claimed that a truly rational

person would necessarily be benevolent. Although sharply critical of the

modern centralist state, and presenting an elaborate doctrine of social

and political freedom, Godwin, writing in the aftermath of the French

Revolution, placed great emphasis on the development of individual

rationality and independent thinking, believing that the road forward

lay not through social revolution but through gradual reform by means of

the rational dissemination of ideas at the level of individual

consciousness.

As Walter comments (Walter 1969: 174), such individualism, which over

the years has held an intellectual attraction for figures such as

Shelley, Emerson and Thoreau, often tends towards nihilism and even

solipsism. Walter ultimately questions whether individualism of this

type is indeed a form of anarchism, arguing rather that libertarianism –

construed as a more moderate form of individualism which holds that

individual liberty is an important political goal – is simply one aspect

of anarchist thought, or ‘the first stage on the way to complete

anarchism’ (ibid.). The key difference between this kind of

individualist libertarianism and social anarchism is that while such

libertarians oppose the state, they also, as Walter notes (ibid.),

oppose society, regarding any type of social organization ‘beyond a

temporary “union of egoists” ‘ as a form of oppression.

Many commentators have acknowledged that leading anarchist theorists did

not see individual freedom as a political end in itself (see, for

example, Ryth Kinna, in Crowder 1991). Furthermore, central anarchist

theorists, such as Kropotkin and Bakunin, were often highly disparaging

about earlier individualist thinkers such as William Godwin and Max

Stirner, for whom individual freedom was a supreme value. ‘The final

conclusion of that sort of Individualist Anarchism’, wrote Kropotkin in

his 1910 article on ‘Anarchism’ for the Encyclopaedia Britannica,

maintains that the aim of all superior civilization is, not to permit

all members of the community to develop in a normal way, but to permit

certain better- endowed individuals ‘fully to develop’, even at the cost

of the happiness and the very existence of the mass of mankind….

Bakunin, another leading anarchist theorist, was even more outspoken in

his critique of ‘the individualistic, egoistic, shabby and fictitious

liberty extolled by the school of J.J. [Rousseau] and other schools of

bourgeois liberalism’ (Dolgoff 1973). Accordingly, several theorists

have proposed that it is in fact equality, or even fraternity (see

Fidler 1989), which constitutes the ultimate social value according to

the anarchist position. Others, like Chomsky, have taken the position

that anarchism is simply ‘the libertarian wing of socialism’ (Chomsky,

in Guerin 1970: xii) or that ‘anarchism is really a synonym for

socialism’ (Guerin 1970: 12). Indeed, Adolph Fischer, one of the

‘Haymarket martyrs’ sentenced to death for their part in the libertarian

socialist uprising over the struggle for the eight-hour work day in

Chicago, in 1886, claimed that ‘every anarchist is a socialist but not

every socialist is an anarchist’. (quoted in Guerin 1970: 12).

The arguments of anarchist theorists such as Chomsky and Guerin, to the

effect that the best way to understand anarchism is to view it as

‘libertarian socialism’, are also supported by the work of political

scientists such as David Miller, Barbara Goodwin and George Crowder.

Goodwin, for example, states that ‘socialism is in fact the theoretical

genus of which Marxism is a species and anarchism another’ (Goodwin

1987: 91), whereas Crowder goes so far as to say that ‘from a historical

point of view classical anarchism belongs more properly within the

socialist tradition’ (Crowder 1991: 11).

It is certainly true that the most influential anarchist theorists in

recent history, in terms of developing and disseminating anarchist

ideas, belonged on the socialist end of the anarchist spectrum. Many of

the central ideas of this tradition were anticipated by Pierre-Joseph

Proudhon (1809–1865), commonly regarded as the father of social

anarchism. Yet the bulk of social-anarchist thought was crystalized in

the second half of the nineteenth century, most notably by Michael

Bakunin (1814–1876) and Peter Kropotkin (1842–1912). Other significant

anarchist activists and theorists in this tradition include Errico

Malatesta (1853–1932), Alexander Berkman (1870–1936), Emma Goldman

(1869–1940), and, more recently, Murray Bookchin (1921–2006), Daniel

Guerin (1904–1988) and Noam Chomsky (1928—).

Apart from the differences in emphasis in terms of the individualist–

socialist continuum, one can draw other distinctions within the broadly

socialist approach amongst different variants of social anarchism which

have been expressed in different political and historical contexts.

Briefly, these five main variants are: mutualism, federalism,

collectivism, communism and syndicalism. Although this taxonomy is

conceptually useful, it is important to remember that the views of many

leading anarchist theorists often involved a combination of strands from

several of these different traditions.

Mutualism represents the basic anarchist insight that society should be

organized not on the basis of a hierarchical, centralist, top-down

structure such as the state, but on the basis of reciprocal voluntary

agreements between individuals. Perhaps the best-known, and certainly

the earliest, proponent of this type of anarchism was Pierre-Joseph

Proudhon, who, writing in the mid-nineteenth century, envisaged a

society composed of cooperative groups of individuals exchanging goods

on the basis of labour value, and enjoying the credit of a ‘people’s

bank’. Proudhon was criticized by later anarchists for appealing

primarily to the petit bourgeoisie, and for failing to deal with the

basic issues of social structure as regards the class system, industry

and capital. Indeed, he often wrote with horror of the increasing threat

of massive industrialization, expressing a romantic wish to preserve

small-scale trade, artisans’ workshops and cottage industry.

Nevertheless, his views on private property and his argument that social

harmony could only exist in a stateless society, were highly influential

and were later developed by leading anarchist thinkers, notably Bakunin.

Federalism is basically a logical development from mutualism, referring

as it does to social and economic organization between communities, as

opposed to within communities. The idea is that the society of

voluntarily organized communities should be coordinated by a network of

councils. The key difference between this anarchist idea and the

principle of democratic representation is that the councils would be

established spontaneously to meet specific economic or organizational

needs of the communities; they would have no central authority, no

permanent bureaucratic structure, and their delegates would have no

executive authority and would be subject to instant recall. This

principle was also elaborated by Proudhon and his followers, who were

fond of pointing to international systems for coordinating railways,

postal services, telegraphs and disaster operations as essentially

federalist in structure. What is notable about the elaborate attempts by

Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin and other anarchists to show how federalist

arrangements could take care of a wide variety of economic functions, is

that they illustrate the point that anarchism is not synonymous with

disorganization. As the twentieth-century anarchist Voline clarifies:

it is not a matter of ‘organization’ or ‘nonorganization’, but of two

different principles of organization. … Of course, say the anarchists,

society must be organized. However, the new organization must be

established freely, socially, and, above all, from below. The principle

of organization must not issue from a center created in advance to

capture the whole and impose itself upon it, but, on the contrary, it

must come from all sides to create nodes of coordination, natural

centers to serve all these points… (quoted in Guerin 1970: 43)

It thus seems appropriate to view federalism not so much as a type of

anarchism but, as Walter suggests, ‘as an inevitable part of anarchism’

(Walter 1969: 175).

Collectivism takes the aforementioned points one step further and argues

that the free and just society can only be established by a workers’

revolution which will reorganize production on a communal basis. Many

central figures of the twentieth-century anarchist movement – notably

Bakunin and his followers in the First International – were in fact

collectivists. They opposed both the more reformist position of the

mutualists and federalists, on the one hand, and what they saw as the

authoritarian revolutionary position of the Marxists on the other.

Anarchism and Marxism

Many of the central ideas and principles of social anarchism overlap

with those of Marxism, perhaps nowhere more explicitly than in

collectivism, the form of anarchism most closely associated with Marxist

socialism in that it focuses on the class struggle and on the need for

social revolution. However, there are crucial differences between the

anarchists and the Marxists, and indeed much of Bakunin’s political

theory took the form of an attack on Marx. Specifically, the anarchists

opposed common, central ownership of the economy and, of course, state

control of production, and believed that a transition to a free and

classless society was possible without any intermediate period of

dictatorship (see Walter 1969: 176).

Fundamentally, the anarchists consider the Marxist view of the state as

a mere tool in the hands of the ruling economic class as too narrow, as

it obscures the basic truth that states ‘have certain properties just

because they are states’ (Miller 1984: 82). By using the structure of a

state to realize their goals, revolutionaries will, according to

anarchism, inevitably reproduce all its negative features (the

corrupting power of the minority over the majority, hierarchical,

centralized authority and legislation, and so on.) Thus the anarchists

in the First International were highly sceptical (with, it has to be

said, uncanny foresight) about the Marxist idea of the ‘withering away

of the state’.

The anarchists also argued that the Marxist claim to create a scientific

theory of social change leads to a form of elitism in which the

scientific ‘truth’ is known only to an elect few, which would justify

attempts to impose this truth on the ‘masses’ without any critical

process. Bakunin, in a speech to the First International, attacked Marx

as follows:

As soon as an official truth is pronounced – having been scientifically

discovered by this great brainy head labouring all alone – a truth

proclaimed and imposed on the whole world from the summit of the Marxist

Sinai – why discuss anything? (quoted in Miller 1984: 80)

In contrast, a fundamental aspect of the anarchist position is the

belief that the exact form which the future society will take can never

be determined in advance; the creation of the harmonious, free society

is a constant, dynamic process of self-improvement, spontaneous

organization and free experimentation. In keeping with this view,

anarchist revolutionary theorists insisted that the revolution itself

was not subject to scientific understanding, and its course could not be

determined in advance, favouring instead an organic image of social

change. As Bakunin wrote:

Revolution is a natural fact, and not the act of a few persons; it does

not take place according to a preconceived plan but is produced by

uncontrollable circumstances which no individual can command. We do not,

therefore, intend to draw up a blueprint for the future revolutionary

campaign; we leave this childish task to those who believe in the

possibility and the efficacy of achieving the emancipation of humanity

through personal dictatorship. (Dolgoff 1972: 357)

It is in the context of this position that anarchists have consistently

refuted the charges of utopianism – charges made both by right-wing

critics and by orthodox Marxists. This point shall be discussed in

greater detail in the following chapters.

Anarcho-Communism is the view that the products of labour should be

collectively owned and distributed according to the principle of ‘from

each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’. Those

anarchists – notably Kropotkin, Malatesta, Berkman and Rocker – who

proclaimed themselves to be communist-anarchists shared the

collectivists’ critique of Marxist socialism, but rejected the title

‘collectivist’, saw themselves as presenting a broader and more radical

vision, involving the complete abolition of the wage and price system.

Most revolutionary anarchist movements have in fact been communist in

terms of their principles of economic organization – the most notable

example being the anarchist communes established during the Spanish

Civil War.

Anarcho-Syndicalism is that strand of anarchist thought which emphasizes

the issue of labour and argues that the trade unions, as the ultimate

expression of the working class, should form the basic unity of social

reorganization. There is naturally considerable overlap between the

syndicalist view and the collectivist or communist form of anarchism,

but historically, anarcho-syndicalism as a movement is closely tied with

the development of the French syndicalist (i.e. trade unionist) movement

at the end of the nineteenth century. As the anarcho-syndicalist

position emphasizes workers’ control of the economy and means of

production, its proponents have tended to be less libertarian in their

sympathies.

In summary, it is abundantly clear that people of fairly diverse

political views have, at one time or another, called themselves

anarchists. Indeed, as Walter remarks, it is hardly surprising that

‘people whose fundamental principle is the rejection of authority should

tend to perpetual dissent’ (Walter 1969: 172). Nevertheless, a few

general points emerge, based on the aforementioned passage:

All anarchists share a principled rejection of the state and its

institutions; and in doing so they:

Do not reject the notion of social organization or order per se;

Do not necessarily regard freedom – specifically, individual freedom –

as the primary value and the major goal of social change, and;

Do not propose any ‘blueprint’ for the future society.

As discussed earlier, it is the work of the social anarchists which

constitutes the bulk of the theoretical development of the anarchist

position. Likewise it is, I believe, these theorists who offer the most

interesting insights into the relationship between education and social

change. Thus, in what follows, I shall refer primarily to the tradition

of social anarchism and the philosophical and educational ideas

associated with it.

However, in adopting this perspective, I by no means wish to gloss over

the tensions and apparent contradictions within anarchist theory. These

tensions are perhaps an inevitable historical consequence of the fact

that, as Joll puts it:

On the one hand, they are the heirs of all the Utopian, millenarian

religious movements which have believed that the end of the world is at

hand and have confidently expected that ‘the trumpets shall sound and we

shall be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. […] On the

other hand, they are also the children of the Age of Reason […] They are

the people who carry their belief in reason and progress and peaceful

persuasion through to its logical limits. Anarchism is both a religious

faith and a rational philosophy… (Joll 1979: x)

In fact, as I shall argue, it is these tensions which make the anarchist

tradition so fascinating and rich in philosophical insights.

Furthermore, the process of trying to resolve and understand these

tensions is part of the process of making sense of anarchist ideas on

education.

Anarchism, philosophy of education and liberal suspicions

At first glance, trying to construct an anarchist philosophy of

education may seem to the reader an unpromising line of enquiry, or at

least one which, while perhaps being of some scholarly interest, has

little to offer in the way of practical or philosophical value.

There are several reasons why this may be so. Some of these concern

anarchism’s viability as a political ideology, and some refer more

explicitly to what are assumed to be the educational implications of

such an ideology.

As far as the first group of concerns go, most of these involve, whether

implicitly or explicitly, assumptions about the alleged utopianism of

the anarchist position. This common line of critique, which encompasses

both the charges of utopianism from classical Marxists and the

scepticism of contemporary liberal theorists, can be broken down into

several distinct questions. Most critics have tended to focus (often

implicitly) on one or the other of these points.

1 Are the different values promoted by anarchist theory mutually

compatible? Many contemporary liberal theorists, for example, working

with the notion of personal autonomy, have argued that freedom, in this

sense, is incompatible with the ideal of the anarchist community.

Similarly, it is almost a built-in assumption of the neo-liberal

position that individual freedom and social equality are mutually

exclusive. It is from this perspective that some critics have argued

that anarchism, as a political theory, lacks internal cohesion (see

Taylor 1982).

2 Is the anarchist vision of the ideal human society feasible given the

structure of human nature? This question can be broken down into two

further questions: (a) The question of inner consistency – that is, is

the anarchist social ideal consistent with human nature as the

anarchists understand it? and (b) The question of external validity – is

the anarchist social ideal feasible given what we know about human

nature? This second line of criticism inevitably takes the form of a

challenge to the anarchist view of human nature – a view which, as shall

be discussed later, is regarded as unrealistically optimistic, as

opposed to the rather more pessimistic view, according to which the

inherently egotistical, competitive elements of human nature could not

sustain a society organized along anarchist lines.

3 Can anarchism be implemented on a large scale in the modern

industrialized world? This line of criticism focuses on the problems of

translating anarchist ideas about self-governing, freely established

communities based on mutual aid and non-hierarchical forms of social

organization, into the world of industrial capitalism, global economy

and multi-national corporations. In other words, while the previous two

points concern primarily the feasibility of establishing and maintaining

an anarchist community, this point is more concerned with the problem of

relations between communities.

As this brief summary suggests, the anarchist conception of human nature

is the key to understanding much of anarchist thought and thus to

addressing the criticisms of anarchism as a political theory.

Furthermore, this notion is an important element in the anarchist

position on education.

It is harder to articulate the criticisms of anarchism from an

educational perspective due to the simple fact that very little has been

written, from a systematic philosophical point of view, about the

educational ideas arising from anarchist theory. On the face of it,

there are many ways in which anarchist theory could have implications

for our ideas about education. These concern both the policy level (i.e.

questions about educational provision and control), the content level

(i.e. questions about the curriculum and the underlying values and aims

of the educational process) and what could be understood as the meta

level (i.e. questions about the moral justification of education per

se). In spite of the dearth of philosophical literature on this subject,

the remarks made informally by philosophers of education on encountering

work such as my own suggest that their suspicions, apart from reflecting

the above broad scepticism with regard to anarchism’s feasibility as a

political programme, reflect problems such as the following:

First, the anarchist challenge to the idea of authority may seem in

itself to undermine our basic assumptions regarding the very legitimacy

and value of education as an intentional human endeavour. If anarchists

reject authority and hierarchies, one wonders whether it is possible to

develop a coherent theory of education within the context of a

commitment to anarchist ideals. Thus the concept of authority and its

interpretation within the anarchist tradition needs to be examined

further, with this question in mind.

Second, the central anarchist argument against the state in itself

goes against the ideal of universal educational provision, which has

become an implicit assumption in nearly all contemporary philosophical

debates on education. This challenge to the liberal ideal of universal,

compulsory, state-controlled education is both implicit in the anarchist

critique of the centralist state as a mode of social organization, and

explicitly argued in anarchist work, from the time of William Godwin’s

classic argument against state control of education in An Enquiry

Concerning the Principles of Political Justice, in 1793. Of course, the

anarchist argument for abolishment of the centralist state is based on

an understanding of and commitment to specific human values and,

connectedly, to a specific view of human nature. If one accepts these

values, the rejection of the liberal democratic state as the optimal

framework for social organization then prompts the question of what

framework is to replace it and whether these same values would indeed be

better promoted and preserved under alternative arrangements.

Although anarchists – as shall be discussed later – advocate a broadly

libertarian approach to education, their normative commitments imply a

vision – some would argue a utopian vision – of social change. If

anarchist education is to be consistent with anarchist principles, then

this suggests the following dilemma: either the education in question is

to be completely non-coercive and avoid the transmission of any

substantive set of values, in which case it is hard to see how such an

education could be regarded as furthering the desired social change; or

it is to involve the explicit transmission of a substantive curriculum

regarding the desired social order – in which case it would appear to

undermine the libertarian ideal. In effect, if the anarchist position is

actually a libertarian one, is not all educational intervention morally

problematic from an anarchist point of view? This issue poses both

internal and external problems: the internal problem has to do with the

consistency between a substantive educational agenda and a broadly

libertarian outlook, whereas the external problem has to do with the

difficulty of accommodating a normative – perhaps utopian – vision with

the liberal commitment to autonomy.

In order to address these often interconnected issues, it is important

to untangle the conceptual web of educationally relevant concepts in

anarchist thought, and to understand more fully the basis for the

anarchist rejection of the state. One can then pose the question of

whether any qualitatively different educational perspective, or indeed

any philosophically defensible advantage, is gained by simply replacing

the state with, for example, the community.

Furthermore, it is important to clarify the way in which anarchist ideas

on education are connected to anarchist values and ideals and thus to

articulate an anarchist conceptualization of the role of education in

achieving social change. One important aspect of this project is the

distinction, to be discussed later, between anarchist educational

practice and other broadly libertarian approaches.

The aim of the following chapters, then, will be to explore the

philosophical underpinnings of central concepts in anarchist thought and

to articulate the picture of education which emerges from this thought.

Specifically, I will address the question of whether anarchists regard

education as primarily a means to achieving the political end of

establishing an anarchist society.

In the course of this analysis, I will try to establish whether the

anarchist position on education is significantly different from other

positions, and whether it can shed any new light on common philosophical

debates on the nature and role of education.

As mentioned earlier, one cannot begin to answer any of these questions

without a detailed understanding of the anarchist conception of human

nature – a notion which is central both to the charges of utopianism

raised against anarchism, and to the role assigned to education in the

process of social change. Indeed, it could be argued that any

philosophical position on the nature and role of education in society

involves, at least implicitly, assumptions about human nature. A key

step, then, will be to unpack the anarchist notion of human nature, and

to provide an account of the values associated with it. This task is

relatively straightforward as several leading social-anarchist

theorists, notably Kropotkin, and several anarchist commentators, have

addressed the issue of human nature explicitly and at some length in

their writings.

Unpacking the other educational questions is a somewhat more complicated

task. The anarchist theorists who wrote about education did so in a

rather unsystematic and often sketchy way, so this book is largely a

project of reconstructing their position.

It is possible to formulate a further, broad question which links both

the aforementioned sets of questions: Does the question of whether or

not anarchism is viable as a political ideology have any direct bearing

on its educational value? In other words, if it can be convincingly

argued that the anarchist vision of a free, equal and harmonious society

is hopelessly unrealistic, does this fact detract from its ability to

function as an animating force in educational thought and practice? I

hope to suggest some answers to this meta-question in the course of

discussing the philosophical perspective on education embodied in

anarchist theory.

Liberalism and liberal education

In order to create a coherent framework for this discussion, the

position broadly referred to as the liberal theory of education shall

form my main point of reference for much of the following comparative

analysis. Apart from methodological considerations, there are several

connected reasons why this approach makes sense. First, as Anthony

O’Hear (1981) puts it, many of the central ideas of liberal education

have become so common as to be almost axiomatic within the field of

educational theory and practice. Indeed, liberalism as a political

theory has, as many theorists note, achieved such ascendancy, at least

in the West, that in a certain sense, ‘from New Right conservatives to

democratic socialists, it seems we are all liberals now’ (Bellamy 1992:

1). This is hardly surprising when one considers that ‘liberal ideals

and politics fashioned the states and social and economic systems of the

nineteenth century, creating the institutional framework and the values

within which most of us in the West continue to live and think’ (ibid.).

In as much as this is true, it is certainly the case that the central

values of liberal theory underlie much contemporary philosophical

discourse on the role, aims and nature of education, and most

participants in this discourse take it for granted that the education

under consideration is education in – and controlled by – a liberal

state. In addition, anarchist theory itself, as a nineteenth-century

tradition, is often most interestingly and constructively understood

when compared and contrasted with the other nineteenth-century tradition

of liberalism, with which it is closely connected. Indeed, some

commentators (notably Chomsky) argue that anarchism is best understood

as a logical development out of classical liberalism. I shall examine

this argument in the course of the following discussion for, if

anarchist ideas can be construed as a variant of liberalism, then it may

be possible to construct an anarchist view of education that can be

accommodated within, and perhaps shed new light on, the paradigm of

liberal education.

In order to identify some useful points of reference for further

discussion, I shall now turn to a brief outline of some of the central

ideas of liberalism and the liberal view of education.

Before attempting to outline what is meant by the term ‘liberal

education’, it may be useful to present a brief discussion of some of

what are generally accepted as the basic assumptions of liberalism as a

political theory and to indicate how these assumptions have come to be

associated with certain educational ideas.

Liberal theory

Some theorists claim that liberalism is not, in fact, a single, coherent

doctrine, but a ‘diverse, changing, and often fractious array of

doctrines that form a “family” …’ (Flathman 1998: 3). Indeed, one can

draw distinctions, within this ‘family’, between fairly different

perspectives – for example, the central distinction between

philosophical, or neutralist liberalism (most notably represented in

recent years by the work of Rawls, Dworkin, Hayek and Nozick), versus

what Bellamy dubs ‘communitarian liberalism’ (as exemplified in the work

of Walzer and Raz). Yet it is possible to identify a few basic ideas –

or, as Andrew C. Gould puts it ‘aspirations’ common to all variants of

liberalism:

The commitment to constitutional parliamentary government as the

preferred form of political rule. This idea developed out of the

rejection of monarchism, reflecting the view that the arbitrary

authority of monarchs and their officials should be replaced by

predictable, rational decision-making processes established in written

laws.

The commitment to individual freedoms laid down and protected by

constitutions.

The pursuit of enlightened self-interest and the idea that such

self-interest, if pursued in the framework of free markets, can lead to

public benefit. Connectedly, the expansion of markets is usually one aim

of liberal theory, although nearly all contemporary liberal theorists

acknowledge the need for some regulation of the market. (Gould 1999)

Meira Levinson, in her overview of contemporary liberal theory, offers

an account similar to Gould’s, but adds as a further liberal commitment:

‘An acceptance – and more rarely, an embracing – of the fact of deep and

irremediable pluralism in modern society’ (Levinson 1999: 9). John

Kekes, writing from a more conservative position, has expressed these

liberal ideas in negative terms, arguing that ‘essential to liberalism

is the moral criticism of dictatorship, arbitrary power, intolerance,

repression, persecution, lawlessness and the suppression of individuals

by entrenched orthodoxies’ (Kekes 1997: 3).

Kekes, citing the classic Lockean position that the only reasonable

justification of government is an appeal to the argument that individual

rights are better protected than they would be under a different

arrangement, supports the view that the individual and individual

freedoms and rights are the basic units of liberal theory. While certain

theorists, notably Kymlicka, have defended an interpretation of

liberalism which, while championing individual liberty and property, at

the same time stresses the cultural and communal context which ‘provides

the context for individual development, and which shapes our goals and

our capacities to pursue them’ (Kymlicka 1989: 253), it nevertheless

seems reasonable to accept that, in some basic sense, liberalism is a

doctrine in which, as Gould puts it, ‘individuals count’.

It is thus no coincidence that liberal views are often associated with

the promotion of the value of individual autonomy. Indeed, it has been

argued by several theorists that autonomy is the central value in

liberal theories – even, as John White argues, within the neutralist

liberal position (i.e. the position which holds, with Dworkin, that the

state should be neutral with regard to different conceptions of the good

life) – which ‘collapses in to a hidden perfectionism in favour of

autonomy’ (White 1990: 24). Kekes too notes that ‘the central importance

that liberalism attributes to individuals is greatly enhanced by the

idea of autonomy as formulated by Kant’ (Kekes 1997), while Meira

Levinson goes so far as to argue that ‘liberal principles depend for

their justification on an appeal to the value of individual autonomy’.

(Levinson 1999: 6). Thus the ideal of the autonomous individual – the

person who reflects upon and freely chooses from amongst a plurality of

conceptions of the good – both justifies the establishment of liberal

freedoms and rights and the institutions intended to guarantee these

rights, and, so the argument goes, is fostered within the framework of

the liberal state. To this view is often added the insight that in

exercising autonomy one is in some sense fulfilling one’s essential

potential as a human being, as expressed by J.S. Mill in his classic

statement of liberalism:

He who lets the world, or his own position in it, choose his plan of

life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of

imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his

faculties. (Mill 1991: 65)

It is therefore not surprising that many educational philosophers,

writing within the liberal tradition, have chosen to emphasize autonomy

as a central educational goal or value, relying on the argument that

each person has the right to determine and pursue her own vision of the

good life. This argument yields, at the policy level, the view that, in

the context of a liberal state, the national system of education must

refrain from laying down prescriptive programmes aimed at a particular

vision of the good life. On the content level, such views often assume

(whether explicitly or not) a view of human nature which puts great

emphasis on the rational capacities deemed necessary for the exercise of

autonomy and construct curricula designed to foster these capacities.

However, even if one accepts the position, as argued by Levinson and

others, that autonomy is a necessary component of contemporary liberal

theory, this does not, of course, lead to the conclusion that liberalism

is the only political theory consistent with the value of autonomy.

Indeed, autonomy can – and perhaps, as John White argues, should – be

justified as a human value on independent grounds (e.g. from a

utilitarian perspective, within a Kantian view of morality, or by

reference to a notion of personal well-being). Thus one could

acknowledge, with the liberals, the value of autonomy, but question the

framework of the liberal democratic state and its institutions. One

could, in fact, with the anarchists, argue that alternative social and

political arrangements are more suited to the promotion and maintenance

of autonomy. In order to examine this position, I shall, in what

follows, discuss the anarchist understanding of autonomy, compare this

with the liberal notion, and ascertain whether the anarchist idea of the

community as the basic unit of social organization is consistent with

the value of personal autonomy. Does a rejection of the framework of the

liberal, democratic state yield new insights into the philosophical

issues which are generally associated with the role and nature of

education within a liberal framework?

Liberal education

The idea of ‘liberal education’, as suggested earlier, is logically

connected to the idea of liberalism per se by virtue of the fact that

the underlying values of education assumed in this context overlap with

central liberal aspirations. Furthermore, the connection has obvious

historical and political dimensions, for the idea of a liberal,

universal education developed in conjunction with the ascendancy of

liberalism as a political theory. However, it is important to refer also

to the systematic work of leading philosophers of education who,

particularly during the 1960s and 1970s, developed a coherent analytical

account of the notion of ‘liberal education’. In addition to the

aforementioned points, an examination of this account yields the

following insights.

Philosophers within the liberal tradition, from Richard Peters on, have

focused on the idea of non-instrumentality as central to the philosophy

of liberal education. As Peters puts it, ‘traditionally, the demand for

liberal education has been put forward as a protest against confining

what has been taught to the service of some extrinsic end such as the

production of material goods, obtaining a job, or making a profession’

(Peters 1966: 43). Similarly, Paul Hirst, in his classic account (Hirst

1972), notes that the liberal educational ideal is essentially

non-utilitarian and non-vocational. Hirst also emphasizes the idea of

the mind and mental development as essential features of liberal

education, involving a conception of human nature that regards human

potential as consisting primarily in the development of the mind.

To talk of intrinsic aims of education is to imply that a particular aim

‘would be intrinsic to what we would consider education to be. For we

would not call a person “educated” who had not developed along such

lines’ (Peters 1966: 27). Thus, for example, an aim such as ‘developing

the intellect’, would be intrinsic in the sense that this is arguably

one aspect of what we understand education, as a normative concept, to

be. In contrast, to say that it is an aim of education to contribute to

the productivity of the economy is to say something that goes beyond the

concept of education itself and is, therefore, ‘extrinsic’ to it. This

classic view of liberal education has been the subject of much criticism

in recent years (see, for example, Kleinig 1982). Indeed Levinson, in

her recent book The Demands of a Liberal Education, is rather

disparaging of Peters and his defence of the idea that the concept of

education is logically connected with the idea of intrinsically

worth-while activities. In claiming that this assertion is simply wrong

(Levinson 1999: 3), however, Levinson misses the point, which is a

purely analytical one: namely, that one’s idea of which educational aims

are worthwhile is inherently built into one’s concept of education – or,

more explicitly, to one’s concept of what it means to be educated. It

may of course be true, as John White and others have argued, that the

conception of education as having intrinsic aims – a conception

underlying much of the liberal educational tradition – is in conflict

with the conception of education as having extrinsic – for example,

economic – aims. For example, one can argue, albeit with a certain

degree of simplification, that specific aims typical of the liberal

educational tradition, such as autonomy, reflectiveness, a broad and

critical understanding of human experience, etc. can very well conflict

with typical extrinsic aims of education – specifically those construed

as ‘economic’ aims – for example, obedience to authority, specialized

training and knowledge of specific skills, and an uncritical attitude to

existing socio-economic reality.

The liberal-analytical tradition in philosophy of education, as opposed

to the rather more cynical Marxist view, rests, of course, as John White

(White 1982) points out, on the assumption that it is possible to

provide a ‘neutral’, logical analysis of what is involved in the concept

of ‘education’. Yet although this analytic enterprise has been the

subject of much criticism in recent years, the analytical distinction

between extrinsic and intrinsic aims of education seems to have

practically achieved the status of orthodoxy in contemporary philosophy

of education and is undoubtedly useful as a conceptual tool to highlight

certain differences in emphasis between varying positions on the nature

and role of education.

I turn now to a discussion of some key anarchist ideas, before going on

to examine the implications of these ideas for education, especially in

the context of the liberal tradition. My aim in this discussion, in

keeping with the earlier analysis, is to establish whether the anarchist

position yields a different philosophical perspective on education from

that embodied in liberal thought. This will necessitate addressing the

question of whether or not anarchism can arguably be construed as an

extension of liberalism, or whether it is qualitatively distinct from

liberalism. Consequently, we will be able to determine whether or not

the anarchist position implies a challenge to the basic values

underlying liberal educational ideas and whether a consideration of this

tradition can yield philosophical insights which contribute to our

thinking about educational issues.

2 Anarchism and human nature

As we saw in Chapter 1, many of the criticisms of anarchism as a viable

political ideology and thus as a sound philosophical base for

constructing ideas on education, hinge on the concept of human nature.

This chapter, therefore, offers an exploration of the anarchist position

on human nature, with a view to both addressing these criticisms and

beginning to grasp the role of education in anarchist thought.

Many critics have dismissed anarchism as a coherent or serious political

theory precisely on the basis that its view of human nature is, they

argue, unrealistic or naive. Thus for example, Max Beloff (1975) states

that the case for anarchism is based on a fundamental misunderstanding

of human nature, on the unproven supposition that given total absence of

constraints, or alternatively material abundance secured by communism,

human societies could exist with no coercive element at all, the freedom

of each being recognized as compatible with the freedom of all.

Similarly, Jonathan Wolff, in his account of anarchism in his

Introduction to Political Philosophy, states that ‘to rely on the

natural goodness of human beings to such an extent seems utopian in the

extreme’ (Wolff 1996: 34).

As we shall see, statements such as these are based on a misconception

of the anarchist view of human nature and its consequences for the

anarchist social ideal. In order to proceed with this analysis, then, it

is important to establish exactly what the anarchist account of human

nature consists of, what its role is within anarchist theory, how it

compares with connected ideas within the liberal tradition and the

educational implications of this account.

In general, the focus here will be on the way the construct of human

nature is put forth in order to support a particular idea. Bikhu Parekh

has remarked that, although the concept of human nature ‘is one of the

oldest and most influential concepts in Western philosophy’ (Parekh

1997: 16), there has been little agreement, throughout the history of

philosophy, on what the term actually means. Parekh ultimately offers a

defence of a minimalist definition of human nature, emphasizing not only

the universal constants of human existence but the ‘ways in which they

are creatively interpreted and incorporated into the process of human

self-articulation and self-understanding’ (ibid.: 26). As such, his

definition challenges the underlying assumption, common to all classic

accounts of human nature, that there is a fairly clear distinction

between nature and culture – between ‘what is inherent in humans and

what is created by them’ (ibid.: 17). I tend to agree with Parekh that

the concept of human nature is inherently problematic and that relying

on it in philosophical discussions can have undesirable implications due

to its tendency to assume an ahistorical position and to deny the

cultural imbeddedness of human experience and character. However, what

is important in the present context is the methodological role which the

concept of human nature has played within philosophical positions. As

Parekh notes, philosophers have used it to serve three purposes: ‘to

identify or demarcate human beings; to explain human behaviour; and to

prescribe how human beings should live and conduct themselves.’ It is

the second and third purposes which are of central concern to us here.

In the context of philosophy of education, Anthony O’Hear has

articulated a view similar to that of Parekh in stating that ‘human

nature is not something that is just given. It is something we can make

something of, in the light of how we conceive ourselves and others’.

Given O’ Hear’s understanding of philosophy of education as essentially

involving a reflection on ‘one’s values and concept of what men [sic]

ought to be’ (O’Hear 1981: 1) and one’s ‘ideals for society as whole’,

it is thus clear that the notion of a common human nature can be a

useful conceptual tool in that emphasizing particular traits, virtues or

potentialities as uniquely and essentially human often plays an

important methodological role in philosophically evaluating particular

normative positions on education.

In anarchist theory, where the central animating ideal is that of the

free society, based on mutual cooperation, decentralization and

self-government, the concept of a common human nature is employed in

order to demonstrate the feasibility of this social ideal. However,

contrary to the opinion of many critics (see, for example, May 1994) the

anarchists, in the same way as they did not believe that the future

anarchist society would be free from all social conflict, did not in

fact subscribe to a simplistic, naively optimistic view of human

tendencies and characteristics. Nor, so I shall argue, were they unaware

of the philosophical complexities involved in the idea of a common human

nature.

Human nature in social-anarchist theory

In his detailed study of anarchist views on human nature, Morland (1997)

notes that both Proudhon and Bakunin, two of the leading

social-anarchist theorists, acknowledged human nature to be innately

twofold, involving both an essentially egotistical potential and a

sociable, or altruistic potential. As Bakunin picturesquely expressed

this idea: ‘Man has two opposed instincts, egoism and sociability. He is

both more ferocious in his egoism than the most ferocious beasts and

more sociable than the bees and ants’ (Bakunin, in Maximoff 1953: 147).

A similar perspective arises from the work of Kropotkin, the

social-anarchist theorist, who, more than any other theorist within the

tradition, devoted considerable energy to developing a systematic theory

of human nature. Much of Kropotkin’s work – primarily his monumental

treatise, Mutual Aid, which he wrote before becoming identified with the

anarchist movement – can be interpreted as an attempt to counter the

extreme version of social Darwinism often put forward by theorists such

as Huxley as a justification of the capitalist system, elevating free

competition amongst individuals to a positive virtue (see Hewetson

1965). Kropotkin was anxious to show that the simplistic notion of

‘survival of the fittest’ was a misleading interpretation of

evolutionary theory, and that Darwin himself had noted man’s social

qualities as an essential factor in his evolutionary survival. As

contemporary theorists have noted, ‘for most of us, Darwinism suggests

anything but communality and cooperativeness in nature’ (Nisbet 1976:

364). Yet The Origin of Species is full of references to man’s ‘social

nature’, which, Darwin argues, has ‘from the beginning prompted him to

live in tightly knit communities, with the individual’s communal impulse

often higher indeed than his purely self-preservative instinct’ and

without which it is highly probable that ‘the evolution of man, as we

know it, would never have taken place’ (ibid.: 368). By ignoring this

clear emphasis in Darwin’s work, the position referred to as ‘social

Darwinism’ amounts to, as Nisbet notes, ‘scarcely more than a

celebration of the necessity of competition and conflict in the social

sphere’ (ibid.: 364). Accordingly, one can see the logic of trying to

establish cooperation as a fundamental principle of nature in order to

celebrate and promote the anarchist ideal of a society based on

cooperation and communalism.[1]

However, it is on Darwin’s earlier work, The Descent of Man, from which

Kropotkin draws most heavily in his own work, adopting Darwin’s basic

account of how

in numberless animal societies, the struggle between separate

individuals for the means of existence disappears, how struggle is

replaced by cooperation, and how that substitution results in the

development of intellectual and moral faculties which secure to the

species the best conditions for survival. (Kropotkin 1972: 28)

Kropotkin’s position was based not only on his reading of Darwin but on

his own extensive research into animal behaviour which he conducted with

a zoologist colleague and which culminated in the publication of Mutual

Aid in 1902. Although some critics have questioned aspects of

Kropotkin’s methodology, contemporary anthropological research seems to

support his basic thesis that the principle of social cooperation has

been a characteristic of human and other species since earliest times –

predating, apparently, the primacy of the family unit. The paradigm case

of the prominence of ‘mutual aid’ (a term derived from the biologist

Karl Kessler – see Morland 1997: 132) as a factor in the evolution of

animal species is that of ants. The important conclusion here is that

while there may be aggressive fighting for survival between species,

within the ant community, mutual aid and cooperation prevail. As

Kropotkin puts it, ‘The ants and termites have renounced the “Hobbesian

war”, and they are the better for it’ (Kropotkin 1972: 36).

Kropotkin does not deny the Darwinian idea of the principle of struggle

as the main impetus for evolution. But he emphasized that there are two

forms which this struggle can take: the struggle of organism against

organism for limited resources (the aspect of evolution emphasized by

Huxley) and the kind of struggle that Darwin referred to as

metaphorical: the struggle of the organism for survival in an often

hostile environment. As Gould puts it,

Organisms must struggle to keep warm, to survive the sudden and

unpredictable dangers of fire and storm, to persevere through harsh

periods of drought, snow, or pestilence. These forms of struggle between

organism and environment are best waged by cooperation among members of

the same species-by mutual aid. (Gould 1988: 4)

In terms of these two aspects of the struggle for existence, Kropotkin

ultimately regards the principle of mutual aid as more important from an

evolutionary point of view, as it is this principle which ‘favours the

development of such habits and characters as insure the maintenance and

further development of the species, together with the greatest amount of

welfare and enjoyment of life for the individual, with the least waste

of energy’ (Kropotkin 1972: 30–31). As Morland sums up Kropotkin’s

conclusions from the wealth of evidence collected from observations of

the animal world: ‘Put quite simply, life in societies ensures survival’

(Morland 1997: 135).

Of course it is highly problematic to attempt to draw conclusions for

human behaviour from evidence from the animal kingdom. However Darwin

himself, whose methods Kropotkin obviously sought to emulate, argued

that ‘what is so often to be found among animals is […] utterly

universal among human beings’ (Nisbet 1976: 368). Furthermore, Kropotkin

assembled a wealth of evidence, which he often cited later in his

various anarchist writings, of the presence of a propensity for

spontaneous cooperation and mutual aid within human society. Indeed,

anarchist writers today are fond of referring to cases such as that of

the life-guard association, the European railway system, or the

international postal service, as instances of mutual aid and voluntary

cooperation in action. Even given the limitations of such examples, it

seems that the point Kropotkin is making is a purely methodological one:

if one wants to argue for the feasibility of an anarchist society, it is

sufficient to indicate that the propensity for voluntary cooperation has

some historical and evolutionary evidence in order to render such a

society not completely unfeasible. Furthermore, as Barclay points out,

‘Some criticise anarchism because its only cement is something of the

order of moral obligation or voluntary co-operation. But democracy, too,

ultimately works in part because of the same cement’ (Barclay 1990:

130). I shall discuss, later, the question of the extent to which

Kropotkin and other anarchist theorists relied on this ‘cement’ as the

principal force in shaping and maintaining anarchist society, and to

what extent they acknowledged the need for institutional frameworks and

social reform.

The question remains as to whether Kropotkin saw the principle of mutual

aid as simply an essential aspect of the human psyche. Morland suggests

that, through the evolutionary process, mutual aid has indeed become a

kind of ‘psychological drive’, basic to our consciousness of ourselves

as social beings. Indeed, Kropotkin makes use of the notion of an

instinct in his insistence that he is referring to something far more

basic than feelings of love and sympathy in his discussion of

sociability as a general principle of evolution. ‘It is’, he writes,

not love to my neighbour – whom I often do not know at all – which

induces me to seize a pail of water and rush towards his house when I

see it on fire; it is a far wider, even though more vague feeling or

instinct of human solidarity and sociability which moves me. (Kropotkin

1972: 21)

But DeHaan (1965) has argued that while Kropotkin’s theory can be

described as an ‘instinct theory’, the ‘tendencies’ he mentions do not

have ontological status but rather should be regarded as a hypothesis.

‘Natural laws’, he argues, ‘are not imbedded in reality; they are human

constructs to help us understand nature’ (DeHaan 1965: 276). It is

important to bear this in mind when discussing the next step in

Kropotkin’s thesis, which is the argument that mutual aid is the basis

for morality, and that without it, ‘human society itself could not be

maintained’. As Morland notes, it is only through the medium of

consciousness that the propensity for mutual aid can surface and

flourish – a view which clearly contradicts the Rousseauian notion of a

pre-social human nature, to which Kropotkin was vehemently opposed.

Indeed, in acknowledging human nature to be essentially contextualist,

in the sense that they regarded it as determined not by any human

essence but by social and cultural context, Kropotkin and other

anarchist theorists seemed to be aware of the pitfalls of assuming what

Parekh refers to as the dichotomy between culture and nature. In this

sense, they were indeed far from Rousseau’s romanticization of the

‘state of nature’ and indictment of modern civilization. Bakunin’s view

of human nature was also, as both Morland and Ritter note, a

contextualist one, in that it rejected essentialistic notions of human

nature and assumed humans to be at the same time individuals and social

beings. Which of these two strands of human nature comes to the fore at

any given time is, the social anarchists believed, dependent on the

social and cultural environment. Bakunin puts forth this view as part of

his famous critique of the state, implying at the same time an outright

rejection of the religious notion of original sin, the Rousseauian view

of pre-social human nature, and the idea of the social contract:

Failing to understand the sociability of human nature, metaphysics

regarded society as a mechanical and purely artificial aggregate of

individuals, abruptly brought together under the blessing of some formal

and secret treaty, concluded either freely or under the influence of

some superior power. Before entering into society, these individuals,

endowed with some sort of immortal soul, enjoyed total freedom…

(Bakunin, in Woodcock 1977: 83)

Accepting the theoretical assumption that man is born free implies an

antithesis between the free individual and society – a position which,

Bakunin argues, ‘utterly ignores human society, the real starting point

of all human civilization and the only medium in which the personality

and liberty of man can really be born and grow’ (Bakunin, in Morris

1993: 87–88).

Even Godwin, an earlier anarchist thinker generally regarded as being

more on the individualist than the social side of the continuum, shared

this rejection of a pre-social or innate concept of human nature. ‘The

actions and dispositions of men’, he wrote in Enquiry Concerning

Political Justice,

are not the off-spring of any original bias that they bring into the

world in favour of one sentiment or character rather than another, but

flow entirely from the operation of circumstances and events acting upon

a faculty of receiving sensible impressions. (Godwin 1946: 26–27)

In the light of this discussion, it is clear that theorists who argue,

with Tony Kemp-Welch, that the origins of anarchist thought ‘can be

traced to Rousseau’s idea of man being born free and that political

institutions have corrupted an otherwise innocent and pure human nature’

(Kemp-Welch 1996: 26) are fundamentally mistaken, and are thereby

contributing to the misconceptions surrounding anarchism.

Human nature and the capitalist state

The anarchist position, then, does not involve a simple, naive view of

human nature as essentially altruistic. Kropotkin especially

acknowledged, with Darwin, the presence of a drive for domination, and

the theme constantly running through his thought is a dialectic

conception of the tension between the principle of the struggle for

existence and that of mutual aid. Unlike Proudhon and Fourier, whose

economic theories clearly influenced him, Kropotkin attempts to place

his anarchist ideas in a broader historical context. He writes: ‘All

through the history of our civilization two contrary traditions, two

trends have faced one another; the Roman tradition and the national

tradition; the imperial and the federal; the authoritarian and the

libertarian… ‘ (quoted in Ward 1991: 85).

He goes on to identify the state with the coercive, authoritarian

tradition, the antithesis of which is the kind of voluntary forms of

social organization such as guilds, workers’ cooperatives and parishes.

Martin Buber, who had considerable sympathy for the social philosophy of

anarchist thinkers such as Kropotkin and Proudhon, developed this

implicit distinction between the social and political order, believing

that the way forward lay in a gradual restructuring of the relationship

between them. Of course, as Buber acknowledged, Kropotkin’s conception

of the state is too narrow, for ‘in history there is not merely the

State as a clamp that strangles the individuality of small associations;

there is also the State as a framework within which they may

consolidate’ (Buber 1958: 39). Given modern conceptions such as Nozick’s

of the minimal, liberal democratic state, the narrowness of Kropotkin’s

definition is even more glaring. Yet, as Buber goes on to argue,

Kropotkin was right to draw attention to the fact that the historical

rise of the centralist state signalled a fundamental change in our

conception of the nature of social relations – the idea of the sovereign

state displacing the primacy of the idea of the free city or various

forms of free contract and confederacy. Buber himself remained

optimistic as to the possibility of ‘a socialist rebuilding of the state

as a community of communities’ (ibid.: 40), but Kropotkin saw the

principle of decentralization and voluntary association as fundamental

to revolutionary change and any state structure as necessarily

antithetical to this principle.

Kropotkin’s talk of these two contrary historical ‘tendencies’ is

intertwined with his talk of the two aspects of human nature, reflecting

what Morland describes as a ‘symbiotic relationship’ between historical

progress and human nature. Yet although, as mentioned, the position of

Bakunin and Kropotkin on this issue is a contextualist one, this does

not mean to say that such theorists took a neutral stance towards the

two opposed aspects of human nature and the way in which they are

manifested in a social context. As an examination of his arguments

shows, Kropotkin assigned normative status to the altruistic strand of

human nature, and seemed to regard it as in some sense dominant. In a

particularly powerful piece written for Freedom in 1888, entitled ‘Are

We Good Enough?’ Kropotkin sets out to counter the argument often made

that ‘men are not good enough to live under a communist state of things’

or, rather, ‘they would submit to a compulsory Communism, but they are

not yet ripe for free, Anarchistic Communism’ (Kropotkin, in Becker and

Walter 1988). To this he answers with the question ‘but are they good

enough for Capitalism?’. His argument is that if people were naturally

and predominantly kind, altruistic and just, there would be no danger of

exploitation and oppression. It is precisely because we are not so

compassionate, just and provident that the present system is intolerable

and must be changed, for the present institutions allow ‘slavishness’

and oppression to flourish. Obviously, the point is not that people do

not have a natural, instinctive propensity for justice, altruism and

social cooperation but rather that they do not have only such

propensities. If not for the opposing, egotistical streak of human

nature,

the private ownership of capital would be no danger. The capitalist

would hasten to share his profits with the workers, and the

best-remunerated workers with those suffering from occasional causes. If

men were provident they would not produce velvet and articles of luxury

while food is wanted in cottages; they would not build palaces as long

as there are slums […] (Ibid.)

The only way to suppress, or at least diminish, the ‘slavish’ and

competitive instincts we are unfortunately endowed with is to change

society by means of what Kropotkin refers to as ‘higher instruction and

equality of conditions’, thereby eliminating those conditions which

‘favour the growth of egotism and rapacity, of slavishness and ambition’

(a state of affairs which, Kropotkin emphasizes, is damaging both to the

rulers and the ruled). The principal difference, Kropotkin argues in

this text, between the anarchists and those who dismiss them as

unpractical, utopian dreamers, is that ‘we admit the imperfections of

human nature, but we make no exception for the rulers. They make it,

although sometimes unconsciously…’ (ibid.). It is this view, according

to Kropotkin, which is behind the paternalistic justification of the

inbuilt inequalities of the capitalist state system – that is, that, if

not for a few wise rulers keeping them in check, the masses would allow

their base, egotistical instincts to get out of control, leading to

social and moral depravity. It is in this context that one can begin to

understand the crucial and complex role of education in Kropotkin’s

thought.

Nurturing the propensity for mutual aid

So we see that Kropotkin believes ultimately in the power of the

altruistic aspects of human nature to prevail. He contends, unlike

Rousseau, that even a corrupt society cannot crush individual human

goodness – that is, even the capitalist state cannot ‘weed out the

feeling of human solidarity, deeply lodged in men’s understanding and

heart’ (Becker and Walter 1988: 38). Nevertheless, he acknowledges that

people ‘will not turn into anarchists by sudden transformation’. Thus

the contextualist account of human nature can go a long way towards

answering the question of why education, and schools, are necessary both

to help bring about and to sustain an anarchist society.

An analysis of Bakunin’s work on the subject supports this view, for

Bakunin too subscribed to a contextualist view of human nature, claiming

that morality derived from society – and specifically, from education.

‘Every child, youth, adult, and even the most mature man’, argued

Bakunin, ‘is wholly the product of the environment that nourished and

raised him’ (Maximoff 1953: 153). Thus, although there are two innate

sides to human nature, the way in which different propensities develop

is a function of environmental conditions. This is a key point in

grasping the role assigned to education by the social anarchists, in

both bringing about and sustaining a just society organized on anarchist

principles. For even if the social revolution is successful, given the

contextualist notion of human nature and the acknowledgement of its

inherent duality, presumably an ongoing process of moral education will

be necessary in order to preserve the values on which the anarchist

society is constituted.

This point, albeit alongside an undeniable optimism with respect to the

educative power of the revolutionary society itself in terms of

suppressing the selfish aspects of human nature, is evident in the

following passage from Bakunin:

There will probably be very little brigandage and robbery in a society

where each lives in full freedom to enjoy the fruits of his labour and

where almost all his needs will be abundantly fulfilled. Material

well-being, as well as the intellectual and moral progress which are the

products of a truly humane education, available to all, will almost

eliminate crimes due to perversion, brutality, and other infirmities.

(Bakunin, in Dolgoff 1973: 371)

The phrase ‘humane education’ presumably refers both to procedural

aspects of education, such as school climate and teacher–student

relationships, which anarchists insisted should be non-authoritarian and

based on mutual respect, as well as to the content of education,

specifically its moral basis. Both of these aspects will be taken up in

later chapters. It is interesting, too, to note Bakunin’s demand for

equal, universal educational access – a demand which must have sounded

far more radical in the nineteenth-century context in which these words

were written than it does to contemporary liberal theorists.

The social anarchists, then, clearly believed that an education which

systematically promoted and emphasized cooperation, solidarity and

mutual aid, thus undermining the values underlying the capitalist state,

would both encourage the flourishing of these innate human propensities

and inspire people to form social alliances and movements aimed at

furthering the social revolution. Indeed, Kropotkin often anticipates

the ideas expressed by Berkman and other twentieth-century anarchists

concerning the ‘here and now’ aspect of anarchist philosophy; in other

words, that it is by establishing new human values and social

relationships (such as educational relationships) that the true social

revolution can be achieved. At the same time, Kropotkin’s underlying

view of human nature also helps to emphasize the essentially educative

function of the anarchist society, even once the state has been

dismantled. For given the inevitable presence of slavish and selfish

instincts, the opposing instincts need constant reinforcement. Kropotkin

sometimes seems to suggest that it is social institutions themselves

which will do this job – creating conditions of social equality and

justice under which mutual aid would flourish. But, as Morland notes, he

did acknowledge that ‘egoism and self-assertion survive in anarchy as

sociability and mutual aid endures in capitalism’ (Morland 1997: 170).

Morland and other critics seem ultimately to regard this point as the

downfall of Kropotkin’s whole philosophical system, arguing that it

leads to the inevitable use of coercion to maintain the future

anarcho-communist society. However, I believe that the fact that this

question arises, and the disagreements concerning it, do not detract

from the force of the basic anarchist argument. I shall discuss later

the ways in which various anarchist thinkers have attempted to come to

terms with the problem of the inevitable presence of competition,

dominance, struggles for power and conflicts of interest in the future

anarchist society. In this context, meanwhile, there seems to be a

fairly good case for arguing, on the basis of Kropotkin’s work, that it

is education, and not social and moral sanctions and rules as such,

which would ‘provide the glue’ to hold the future anarchist society

together – reinforcing the moral arguments for anarchism, and

simultaneously nurturing altruistic and cooperative qualities amongst

individuals. Of course one could counter to this that education,

conceived in this way, is merely another form of coercion, and that we

are left with something very similar to the classic view of education as

cultural transmission. I will deal with this point later, in the context

of the discussion of education as a means to social change.

In the light of the earlier discussion, it is important not to attach

too much importance to the validity of the evolutionary aspects of the

anarchist account of human nature. What is relevant, in the present

context, is the methodological role which this account plays in

emphasizing certain human traits deemed desirable and feasible for the

transition to and maintenance of a non-hierarchical, decentralized form

of social organization. In fact, many anarchist theorists, writing from

an anthropological perspective have tried to defend the feasibility of

such a society without recourse to a specific view of human nature.

Harold Barclay, for example, in People Without Government, discusses a

wealth of historical anthropological and ethnographic data, which, he

argues, demonstrates that anarchies – defined as governmentless,

stateless societies – are possible, albeit on a small scale, and,

indeed, that from a historical point of view,

anarchy is by no means unusual […] it is a perfectly common form of

polity or political organization. Not only is it common, but it is

probably the oldest type of polity and one which has characterized most

of human history. (Barclay 1990: 12)

Colin Ward, the contemporary British anarchist, draws similar

conclusions from his analysis of contemporary experiments in

non-hierarchical social organizations. The most famous example of such

anarchist practice in action is that of the Paris Commune of 1871. But

Ward also discusses small-scale social experiments – notably in the

areas of education and health care – which support the idea of

spontaneous organization based on voluntary cooperation. He quotes John

Comerford, one of the initiators of the Pioneer Health Centre project in

Peckam, South London, in the 1940s, as concluding that: ‘A society,

therefore, if left to itself in suitable circumstances to express

itself, spontaneously works out its own salvation and achieves a harmony

of actions which superimposed leadership cannot emulate’ (Ward 1996:

33).

Thus the emphasis on the benevolent potential of human nature goes

hand-in-hand with a faith in what Kropotkin called the theory of

‘spontaneous order’ – which holds that

Given a common need, a collection of people will, by trial and error, by

improvisation and experiment, evolve order out of the situation – this

order being more durable and more closely related to their needs than

any kind of externally imposed authority could provide. (Ward 1996: 32)

The ideal of rationality

Of course, such theoretical positions and principles have to be

understood against the historical background of the time in which the

social anarchists were developing their ideas. As is apparent from this

overview, this era was, as noted by DeHaan, ‘one of boundless optimism,

the exaltation of science, atheism and rationalism’ (DeHaan 1965: 272).

Accordingly, the anarchist view of human nature, alongside its emphasis

on the human capacity for benevolence, cooperation and mutual aid,

places great weight on the idea of rationality. Indeed this idea is one

of the central features of the work of William Godwin, commonly regarded

as the first anarchist theorist. Godwin, perhaps more than any other

anarchist thinker, seems to have placed great faith in the human

potential for rational thinking, believing that it was due to this

potential that humans could be convinced, by means of rational argument

alone, of the ultimate worth of anarchism as a superior form of social

organization. Ritter has criticized Godwin’s position as an extreme

version of cognitivism (Ritter 1980: 92) and in fact later anarchists,

especially of the socialist school, who were not, like Godwin,

utilitarian thinkers, were far less dogmatic in their position on human

reason, often acknowledging the role of emotion in human choice and

action. Bakunin, for example, would probably have questioned Godwin’s

argument that ‘the mind of men cannot choose falsehood and reject the

truth when evidence is fairly presented’ (in Ritter 1980: 95).

Nevertheless, as a nineteenth-century movement, social-anarchist thought

shared the Enlightenment enthusiasm for scientific method and the belief

in ‘the possibilities for moral and political progress through the

growth of knowledge’ (Crowder 1991: 29). Thus Bakunin, like most

anarchists, whether of the individualist or communist school, believed

that it was through the powers of reason that humans could advance to

higher, more advanced states of morality and social organization.

Although Morland argues that Bakunin ultimately rejected philosophical

idealism in favour of a materialist position, other scholars question

this view. Miller, for example, argues on the basis of Bakunin’s

writings that, in the final reckoning, he remained a Hegelian idealist

in the sense that his view of historical progress involved a notion of

human consciousness progressing through successive stages, each

resolving the tensions and contradictions of the previous stages. Human

history, on this view, is seen as a process of gradual humanization,

‘whereby men emerge from their brutish condition and become, through the

influence of social relations, moral beings’ (Miller 1984: 71). Freedom,

according to this conception, is a positive concept, involving acting in

accordance with laws which one has internalized by means of the power of

reason.

Accordingly, many early anarchist experiments in education assigned the

concept of reason or rationality a central place in their programmes and

curricula, and the international organization set up by Francisco

Ferrer, an early twentieth-century anarchist educator (see Chapter 6) to

coordinate such projects was called ‘The Society for Rational

Education’.

In their use of the term ‘rational’, early anarchist thinkers clearly

had in mind something akin to ‘scientific’, in the sense of accordance

with the laws of logic, empirical observation and deduction.

It is important to note that Bakunin, with his emphasis on human reason

and rationality as central to moral progress, makes frequent mention of

the ‘ignorance of the masses’. Yet, as Ritter points out, the anarchist

view is nevertheless not an elitist one. Anarchists, wary of any

political programme which attempted to manipulate the masses so as to

achieve social change, stressed the essential aspect of spontaneous free

choice and experimentation in achieving social progress. Like Godwin,

later anarchists saw this process of rational education as one ‘through

which rational individuals choose anarchism as the regime they create’

(Godwin, quoted in Ritter 1980: 96).

From an educational point of view, this position has obvious

associations with the humanistic, liberal concept of education,

according to which the key to a freer society is an overall increase in

education based on the principles of reason and rationality. This,

perhaps, reflects a connection between the educational perspective of

anarchism as a political ideology, and the liberal, Enlightenment

tradition which underpins the idea of liberal education.

As mentioned earlier, most philosophers writing within the liberal

education tradition place great emphasis on rationality and on the

development of the mind as an essential component of the good life (see

Hirst 1972). Likewise, most theorists of liberal education assume a form

of epistemological realism – a view that, as Hirst puts it, ‘education

is based on what is true’. These points have obvious connections with

the Enlightenment belief in progress and human betterment through

expanding knowledge and rationality – a belief which, as we have just

seen, was shared by nineteenth-century anarchist thinkers.

Human nature in liberalism

To what extent can the anarchist view of human nature be seen as

overlapping with the liberal position? Although few contemporary

theorists employ the term ‘human nature’, it is nevertheless obvious

that liberal theory, and particularly liberal educational theory, makes

certain assumptions about human capabilities or propensities. The

question ‘what characteristics of the individual does the liberal state

see as important and worthy of encouragement?’ (Levinson 1999: 9) is, in

an important sense, a question about human nature. Anarchist theorists,

as discussed earlier, choose to emphasize the human potential for

benevolence, sociability and voluntary cooperation, arguing that these

virtues are important and worthy of encouragement and that they are most

appropriately fostered in a stateless, non-hierarchical society. Can

liberalism be seen to rely on a similar methodological emphasis of

particular human traits?

It is certainly true that in assigning a central position to autonomy,

liberals must be assuming at the very least a human potential for

benevolence, for if such a potential did not exist at all, institutions

far more coercive than those of the liberal state would be needed to

guarantee individual freedoms. Although it is difficult to find any

systematic treatment of this idea, it seems to be supported by the

literature. Leroy S. Rouner, for example, in his book on human nature,

has noted that the ‘positive view of human nature’ – that is, the idea

that humans have an inherent capacity for goodness – ‘is deep-seated

within the liberal tradition with which most of us identify ourselves’

(Rouner 1997). Ritter, too, has noted this convergence between the

liberal and the anarchist view, but he goes further, claiming that the

liberal outlook is, like that of the anarchists, essentially dualistic,

involving a rejection of the idea that ‘malevolence is always dominant

everywhere’ and at the same time denying that benevolence is the

universally dominant motive (Ritter 1980: 118). The contextualist view

of human nature to which Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin subscribed is,

as Ritter puts it, ‘clearly within the boundaries of liberal psychology’

(ibid.).

This discussion of human nature addresses one of the main objections to

anarchism which I raised in Chapter 1. It thus establishes that to

characterize the anarchist view on human nature as holding simply that

‘people are benign by nature and corrupted by government’ (Scruton 1982:

16) is misleadingly simplistic. Accordingly, it shows that while many

liberals may be sceptical about anarchism’s viability, this scepticism

cannot be justified on the basis of the claim that the anarchist view of

human nature is ‘utopian’ or ‘naïve’.

Nevertheless, one may still feel some cause for scepticism with regard

to anarchism’s feasibility. For, it could be argued, while life without

the state may be theoretically possible, if we accept something like the

aforementioned account of human nature, it is still dubious whether we

could actually achieve and sustain it. What, in short, is to replace the

state, and what, in the absence of state institutions, is to provide the

‘glue’ to hold such a society together? Addressing these questions means

unpacking the anarchist objection to the state to see just what it

consists in, and trying to ascertain what substantive values lie at the

heart of anarchist theory, and what role they play in the anarchist

position on social change and organization. In the course of this

discussion we will also be able to develop a further understanding of

the relationship between anarchism and liberalism, and of the nature and

role of education in anarchist thought.

3 Anarchist values?

The preceding analysis of the anarchist view of human nature has

established that the anarchist understanding of human nature is not, as

often perceived, one-dimensional or naïve, an impression responsible for

much liberal scepticism regarding anarchism’s viability.

The fact that the anarchist account of human nature is actually a

complex, anti-essentialist one, rescues anarchism, in my view, from

charges of utopianism, at least as far as this point is concerned. It

also goes some way towards an understanding of the role assigned to

education in anarchist thought. For the fact that anarchists

acknowledged human nature to be essentially twofold and subject to

contextual influence, explains why they saw a crucial role for education

– and specifically moral education – to foster the benevolent aspects of

human nature and so create and sustain stateless societies.

Anarchists, then, are under no illusions about the continual,

potentially harmful, presence of selfish and competitive aspects of

human behaviour and attitudes. This both explains the need for an

ongoing educational process of some kind, and indicates that simply

doing away with the state will not suffice to create a new social order.

Indeed, as Ritter notes,

Anarchists show an appreciation, with which they are too seldom

credited, for the insufficiency of 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. (Ritter 1980: 138)

Education, it seems, is acknowledged by most of the social anarchists to

be at least one of the major facilitators of such ‘conditions’.

Yet discussion of these issues also leads to more general conclusions

regarding education. In general, the anarchist view can be seen to be in

contrast with the Marxist view, according to which humans attain their

true essence in the post-revolutionary stage. For if one combines the

above insights of anarchism regarding human nature with the anarchist

insistence, discussed in Chapter 1, that the final form of human society

cannot be determined in advance, it seems as if this very perspective

yields a far more open-ended, creative image of education and its role

in social change. On the Marxist view, education is seen as primarily

the means by which the proletarian vanguard is to be educated to true

(class) consciousness. Once the revolution is over, it seems, there will

be no role for education, for as Lukacs writes, scientific socialism

will then be established ‘in a complete and definite form, then we shall

see a fundamental transformation of the nature of man’ (in Read 1974:

150). Anarchism, as discussed, differs from this view in maintaining,

first, that the seeds of the stateless society are already present in

human action, made possible by existing human moral qualities; and,

second, that due to the contextualist view of human nature and the

insistence that there is no one scientifically correct form of social

organization, education is, and must be, constantly ongoing. Education,

on this understanding, is aimed not at bringing about a fixed end-point,

but at maintaining an ongoing process of creative experimentation, in

keeping with moral values and principles, and in which, as Read says,

‘the onus is on man to create the conditions of freedom’ (ibid.: 146).

This point will be taken up again in later chapters.

These points, in turn, lead one to question the exact nature of the

anarchists’ objection to the state. As discussed earlier, anarchism

cannot be reduced to a simple rejection of the state. Furthermore, if,

as this discussion suggests, the anarchist objection to the state is an

instrumental one, which cannot be understood without reference to a set

of substantive values, the question must then be asked: what exactly are

these values and to what extent are they conceived differently from, for

example, those of the liberal tradition?

As the preceding chapter suggests, the anarchist position on human

nature, both in its emphasis on human rationality and in its

contextualist perspective, is remarkably close to the underlying

assumptions of liberalism, reflecting the common Enlightenment spirit of

both these ideological movements. This sheds an interesting light on the

apparent disparity between anarchists and liberals as to the ideal mode

of social organization and prompts the question as to what, then,

accounts for this disparity, if their assumptions about human potential

are so similar. Alan Ritter brings out these political distinctions very

well:

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 kindness 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. (Ritter 1980: 120)

The liberal solution to this problem is, of course, to accept the

framework of the coercive state but to limit its power so as to

guarantee maximum protection of individual liberty. The anarchists

reject the state outright as a framework inconsistent with their

conception of human flourishing, part of which involves a notion of

individual freedom; nevertheless, they have to rely on a certain amount

of public censure to ensure the cohesive force and survival of society.

As Ritter points out (ibid.), it is because anarchists ‘affirm the worth

of communal understanding’ that they can, unlike liberals, regard such

censure as having a relatively benign effect on individuality.

However, this point is not as simple as Ritter suggests. For it is true

that for a person engaged in the communal project of building a

social-anarchist society, out of a commitment to the values of equality,

solidarity and freedom from state control of social institutions,

accepting a certain degree of restriction on individual freedom – for

example, a demand to share one’s income with the community or to take on

responsibilities connected with public services such as

rubbish-collecting or child-minding – may not be perceived as a great

sacrifice. But if life in anarchist communities without the state

becomes a reality, it is quite possible that individuals born into such

communities may come to perceive such apparent external restraints,

which they have not in any way chosen or instituted themselves, as an

unacceptable imposition.

This problem, it seems, is at the crux of the mainstream liberal

scepticism regarding the feasibility of maintaining an anarchist

society. One response to it, of course, is to argue that it is precisely

because of their awareness of this tension that anarchists assigned such

a central place to education. In order for a social-anarchist society to

work, in other words, education – both formal and informal – would have

to continue to promote and support the values on which the society was

founded. Furthermore, because of the anarchist view of human nature,

according to which stateless, social anarchist communities would not

need to change human nature but merely to draw out moral qualities and

tendencies already present, this view escapes charges of ‘character

moulding’ or coercion by means of education – processes which are

inimical to the anarchist position.

Another response, however, is to argue that once stateless,

decentralized anarchist communities have been established on a

federalized basis and social practices and institutions have been set up

to meet the needs of such communities, such institutions, and the

communities themselves, being qualitatively different from those of the

state, will have an important educative function. Some contemporary

anarchists, such as Illich,[2] have indeed taken this position, yet most

of the early social anarchists, as discussed earlier, and as will be

explored in the following chapters, explicitly acknowledged the need for

a formal education system of some kind after the revolutionary period.

There is considerable confusion in the anarchist literature surrounding

this point – confusion which I believe is largely a result of the

failure of anarchist theorists to distinguish between life within the

state and life beyond the state. This issue is explored further in the

course of the following discussion.

Autonomy in anarchism and liberalism

A great deal of criticism of the anarchist position hinges on the claim

that there is an internal inconsistency in the belief that one can

sustain a stateless society characterized by solidarity, social equality

and mutual aid and at the same time preserve individual autonomy. In

order to understand more fully the anarchist response to this criticism,

it is important to examine the role assigned to autonomy and individual

freedom within anarchist thought. Furthermore, a discussion of these

notions is an essential aspect of the analysis of the anarchist position

on education, particularly in the context of liberal education, where

autonomy plays a central role.

As mentioned earlier, most liberal theorists on education cite autonomy

as a, if not the, central value in education. Indeed, as Carr and

Hartnett put it (1996: 47), ‘in many ways, the mobilizing principle

behind most theoretical justifications for liberal education has been a

commitment to the aims and values of “rational autonomy” ‘. Some writers

in this tradition, like Meira Levinson, specifically link the value of

autonomy to the goal of sustaining the liberal state. Patricia White,

while not specifically focusing on the educational implications of

liberalism as a political doctrine, makes a similar point when she

argues that the rationale for our current political arrangements (i.e.

those of the democratic, liberal state) is ‘to provide a context in

which morally autonomous people can live’ (White 1983: 140) and that

therefore ‘educational arrangements must provide the conditions for the

development and flourishing of autonomous persons’ (ibid.). Other

theorists – most notably R.S. Peters and Paul Hirst – refer to a

supposedly neutral, analytical account of education defined as

initiation into worthwhile activities, or development of the mind. Yet

even in this second case, it is liberal values which underlie the

account. Furthermore, in both cases, these theorists usually assume

something like a Kantian account of autonomy.

R.S. Peters, in summing up the notion of autonomy in the context of his

discussion on education, notes two main factors as central to the

Kantian conception of autonomy:

The idea of adopting a ‘code or way of life that is one’s own as

distinct from one dictated by others’ – this can be understood as the

condition of authenticity;

Rational reflection on rules in light of universal principles. (Peters

1998: 16)

Another way of grasping this view of autonomy is by means of the idea of

the self-legislating person. This notion, which is central to the

Kantian view, is, likewise, connected to the idea of the human capacity

for reason. Wolff (1998) links this account with the similarly Kantian

idea of moral responsibility, arguing that ‘every man who possesses free

will and reason has an obligation to take responsibility for his

actions’ (Wolff 1998: 13) and that it is only the person acting in this

way who can be described as an autonomous person (ibid.).

Peters comments that the idea of autonomy as involving acting in

accordance with a code which one has adopted as a result of rational

reflection on intrinsic considerations (as opposed to rewards,

punishments, etc.) implies that the individual be ‘sensitive to

considerations which are to act as principles to back rules’ (Peters

1998: 23) and to regard these considerations as reasons for doing

things. Peters leaves the question as to how children acquire such

sensitivity open, but it is worth noting that the original Kantian

formulation is even stronger in its emphasis on this idea, insisting

that for an action to be fully autonomous it must be done for duty’s

sake and not from inclination or from any empirical motive such as fear

(see Ritter 1980: 114).

Yet even if one accepts the arguments of Levinson and others who

identify autonomy as a necessary condition for maintaining the liberal

state and, therefore, the development of autonomy as a central component

of liberal education, it does not of course follow that the liberal

state is the only, or even the best, framework in which to realize and

promote the value of personal autonomy.

As suggested here, autonomy can be defended as a value in and of itself,

for example within a Kantian framework of morality. From an educational

perspective, then, the question becomes whether, given the value of

autonomy (along with other liberal ideas), one can in fact support a

radically different idea of education and schooling – one more

compatible, for example, with the anarchist idea. From a political point

of view, the anarchist commentator Paul Wolff has argued that, if one

takes the value of autonomy seriously, ‘there can be no resolution of

the conflict between the autonomy of the individual and the putative

authority of the state’ and that therefore ‘anarchism is the only

political doctrine consistent with the virtue of autonomy’ (Wolff 1998:

12–13). I shall look at Wolff’s argument in greater detail later, but in

the present context, it is worth noting that if one accepts it, one can

then go on to challenge the analogous assumption that liberal education,

conceived as universal, compulsory education by and in a liberal state,

is the best educational framework in which to pursue and promote the

central liberal value of autonomy.

The question that concerns us in this context is whether the

understanding of autonomy, and the role assigned to it, within anarchist

thought, is similar to that within the liberal tradition and what

bearing this has on the anarchist position on education.

There is no doubt that anarchist theorists in the tradition which we

have been considering here, while not perhaps providing a systematic

account of the notion of autonomy, nevertheless subscribed to something

very like the notion described earlier. Indeed, one commentator has

argued that for many anarchists, freedom is conceived of as moral

autonomy (De George 1978: 92).

Of all the anarchist theorists to write on the subject, it is Godwin

whose account of freedom and autonomy most obviously resembles the

liberal, Kantian account outlined earlier. For Godwin, the free person

is not simply one whose actions are not constrained by external forces,

but one who, prior to acting, ‘consults his own reason, draws his own

conclusions and exercises the powers of his understanding’ (Godwin, in

Ritter 1980: 11). Furthermore, this formulation presupposes a faith in

the human capacity for rationality, which was basic to Godwin’s

position. As Ritter points out, it follows, from this and similar

accounts by other anarchist thinkers, that the only acceptable

restraints on individual liberty are those which are the result of

rational deliberation.

Other, later anarchist thinkers also seem often to be subscribing to

something like the liberal notion of autonomy in their discussions of

freedom. Stanley Benn’s account of the autonomous person as someone who

does not simply accept ‘the roles society thrusts on him, uncritically

internalizing the received mores, but is committed to a critical and

creative search for coherence’ (Benn 1975: 109) seems to be in keeping

with views expressed by anarchist thinkers such as Bakunin, who states:

Freedom is the absolute right of every human being to seek no other

sanction for his actions but his own conscience, to determine these

actions solely by his own will, and consequently to owe his first

responsibility to himself alone. (Guerin 1970: 31)

Yet, as Guerin notes, Bakunin held that this individual freedom could be

fully realized ‘only by complementing it through all the individuals

around him, and only through work and the collective force of society’

(ibid.). Although insisting that membership in society or any of its

associations is voluntary, Bakunin was convinced that people would

choose freely to belong to a society that was organized on the basis of

equality and social justice.

So although autonomy is clearly a value within anarchist thought, it

would be misleading to imply, as De George does (De George 1978) that

the anarchist understanding of freedom – especially for the social

anarchists – can be reduced to something like the liberal notion of

individual autonomy. Crucially, most of these thinkers tried to develop

an account of freedom as bound with a notion of social justice, in the

sense that the notion of individual freedom which they defended only

made sense in the context of an account of political and social freedom.

This position is particularly evident in the work of Bakunin, who

argued:

I can feel free only in the presence of and in relationship with other

men. In the presence of an inferior species of animal I am neither free

nor a man, because this animal is incapable of conceiving and

consequently of recognizing my humanity. I am not myself free or human

until or unless I recognize the freedom and humanity of all my fellow

men. (Bakunin, in Dolgoff 1973: 76)

As suggested in the earlier discussion on human nature, Bakunin is

making an anti-metaphysical point about freedom, focusing on the

subjective experience of individual freedom rather than suggesting any

essentialist notion. Thus, in a passage clearly intended to contrast

with Rousseau’s famous statement that ‘man is born free …’, he writes:

The primitive, natural man becomes a free man, becomes humanized, and

rises to the status of a moral being […] only to the degree that he

becomes aware of this form and these rights in all his fellow-beings.

(Bakunin, in Dolgoff 1973: 156)

For most anarchists, then, autonomy, although an important value within

their ideology, did not enjoy any privileged status. Furthermore, this

notion is, as shall be discussed later (see Chapter 4), conceptually

linked with the equally important social values of solidarity and

fraternity. This conceptual connection allows anarchist theorists to go

on to draw further, important connections between freedom and equality.

Reciprocal awareness

Some theorists in fact, amongst them Walter and Ritter, have argued that

individual freedom, or autonomy, is of instrumental value in anarchist

theory, the chief goal of which is what Ritter (1980) calls ‘communal

individuality’. Ritter bases his account of this notion primarily on

Godwin’s idea of ‘reciprocal awareness’, which, it is argued, provides

the moral underpinnings of the social-anarchist society. The idea of

‘reciprocal awareness’ implies a normative view of social relationships

based on cooperation and trust, in which each individual perceives her

freedom as necessarily bound up with the good of the community. Such an

awareness, which seems to be referring primarily to psychological and

emotional processes, is obviously one of the qualities to be fostered

and encouraged by means of education. This psychological, or emotional

attitude, in turn, forms the basis for the moral ideal which Ritter

refers to as ‘communal individuality’.

This view that it is community, or what Ritter calls ‘communal

individuality’, and not freedom, which is the main goal of social

anarchism, finds further support in Bakunin’s writings. Bakunin, like

other social anarchists, was keen to refute what he regarded as the

guiding premise of Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke, Montesquieu and

Rousseau; namely that individuality and the common good represent

opposing interests. Bakunin writes, ‘freedom is not the negation of

solidarity. Social solidarity is the first human law; freedom is the

second law. Both laws interpenetrate each other, and, being inseparable,

constitute the essence of humanity’ (Bakunin, in Maximoff 1953: 156).

This passage is a typically confusing piece of writing on Bakunin’s

part, and he seems to offer no explanation as to what he means by ‘the

first human law’. However, it does seem to be clear that Bakunin, like

most social-anarchist thinkers, regards individual freedom as

constituted by and in social interaction. Bakunin insisted that it is

society which creates individual freedom: ‘Society is the root, the tree

of freedom, and liberty is its fruit.’ (Maximoff 1953: 165).

Significantly, it is this position which enables thinkers like Bakunin

to go on to draw conceptual connections between freedom, solidarity – or

what Ritter calls ‘communal individuality’ – and equality, as follows:

‘Since freedom is the result and the clearest expression of solidarity,

that is of mutuality of interests, it can be realized only under

conditions of equality [by which Bakunin means, as discussed later,

economic and social equality] ‘ (ibid.).

Yet it is still not entirely clear what status Bakunin is assigning to

the connections between freedom and equality. Morland suggests that

Bakunin was in fact a Hegelian in this respect, and that his argument

that the individual is only truly free when all around him are free

implies a notion of liberty as omnipresent in a Hegelian sense, in which

‘all duality between the individual and society, between society and

nature, is dialectically overcome’ (Marshall, quoted in Morland 1997:

81).

Yet I am inclined to think that the justification for Bakunin’s

arguments for the important connections between social equality and

liberty stems more from a psychological account than from a Hegelian

dialectic. This seems apparent in the aforementioned passage from

Bakunin, in which he argues that

The liberty of every human individual is only the reflection of his own

humanity, or his human right through the conscience of all free men, his

brothers and his equals. I can feel free only in the presence of and in

relationship with other men. (Bakunin, in Dolgoff 1973: 237)

Godwin, too, seems to be making a psychological observation in

describing individual autonomy as a form of mental and moral

independence and noting that this kind of freedom ‘supports community by

drawing people toward each other leading to a kind of reciprocal

awareness which promotes mutual trust, solidarity, and emotional and

intellectual growth’ (Ritter 1980: 29).

It sounds as if what Godwin has in mind here is something like the point

commonly made by individualist anarchists, that ‘only he who is strong

enough to stand alone is capable of forming a genuinely free association

with others’ (Parker 1965: 3).

The social anarchists, although explicitly anti-individualistic in their

views, seemed to subscribe to a similar psychological view of the

connections between individual freedom and the kinds of social values

necessary to ensure life in communities. Alongside this position, they

invariably tied their discussion of freedom into their insistence on the

immediate improvement of the material conditions of society. As Goodwin

and Taylor put it: ‘While liberals traditionally see the progress

towards greater freedom and rationality in terms of “the progress of the

human mind”, the early socialists conceived of progress as situated in

the context of real material circumstances’ (Goodwin and Taylor 1982:

147). Of course, in the same way as autonomy is clearly not conceptually

prior to other values within anarchist thought, it is important here to

note that neither are all liberals committed to assigning autonomy a

position of primary importance. Hocking, for example (1926), has argued

that anarchist and liberal aims overlap because both regard liberty

(understood as the absence of coercion by the state) as the chief

political good. Yet as Ritter (1980) points out, this position is

misleading not only because it ignores the view that, for many

anarchists, individual freedom in this sense is actually only a means to

the conceptually prior value of communal individuality, but because it

overlooks strands of liberal thought in which freedom is instrumental

(e.g. utilitarian liberalism).

Liberal paternalism and libertarianism

The social anarchists’ rejection of the abstract, Rousseauian idea of

pre-social freedom, and their insistence that autonomy is not a natural,

essential aspect of human nature, but something to be developed and

nurtured within the context of social relationships, not only

distinguishes them from early Enlightenment liberal thinkers, but also

partly explains why, from an educational perspective, they do not adopt

an extreme libertarian position – that is, a philosophical objection to

all educational intervention in children’s lives. Acknowledging, along

with later liberal thinkers such as J.S. Mill, that individual freedom

is restrained by deliberative rationality, and ever-conscious of the

social context of developing human freedom, most anarchist thinkers have

no problem in endorsing rational restraints on individual freedom even

in the context of a post-state, anarchist society. From an educational

point of view, the implication of this position is that anarchists agree

with liberals in accepting something like the paternalistic exception to

Mill’s harm principle in the case of children. In other words, they do

not take the extreme libertarian position that educational intervention

constitutes a violation of children’s autonomy.

This position can be seen most clearly in the work of Bakunin who,

dealing with the question of children’s rights and the provision of

education, expresses views that are strikingly similar to the liberal,

humanist tradition. The following passage in particular reflects the

development of Bakunin’s thought from the Enlightenment tradition:

It is the right of every man and woman, from birth to childhood, to

complete upkeep, clothes, food, shelter, care, guidance, education

(public schools, primary, secondary, higher education, artistic,

industrial, and scientific), all at the expense of society [….] Parents

shall have the right to care for and guide the education of their

children, under the ultimate control of the commune which retains the

right and the obligation to take children away from parents who, by

example or by cruel and inhuman treatment, demoralize or otherwise

hinder the physical and mental development of their children.[3]

(Bakunin, in Dolgoff 1973: 112)

Even when he acknowledges that children themselves have rights and can

in some sense be regarded as moral agents, it is nevertheless quite

clear from these writings that Bakunin is far from adopting an extreme

libertarian view of children as autonomous beings responsible for

determining their own educational aims and processes:

We do not claim that the child should be treated as an adult, that all

his caprices should be respected, that when his childish will stubbornly

flouts the elementary rules of science and common sense we should avoid

making him feel that he is wrong. We say, on the contrary, that the

child must be trained and guided, but that the direction of his first

years must not be exclusively exercised by his parents, who are all too

often incompetent and who generally abuse their authority. The aim of

education is to develop the latent capacities of the child to the

fullest possible extent and enable him to take care of himself as

quickly as possible. […]

Today, parents not only support their children [i.e. providing food,

clothes, etc.] but also supervise their education. This is a custom

based on a false principle, a principle that regards the child as the

personal property of the parents. The child belongs to no one, he

belongs only to himself; and during the period when he is unable to

protect himself and is thereby exposed to exploitation, it is society

that must protect him and guarantee his free development. It is society

that must support him and supervise his education. In supporting him and

paying for his education society is only making an advance ‘loan’ which

the child will repay when he becomes an adult proper. (Ibid.)

So although one can find some echoes of the liberal ideal of autonomy

within the anarchist tradition, this notion does not play such a central

role within social-anarchist thought as it does within liberal theory

and, connectedly, liberal ideas on education.

Autonomy and community – tensions and questions

Nevertheless, even if autonomy is only one of several connected goals

within anarchist thought, it is still important to try and answer the

question of its role within the anarchist position on education.

Specifically, if education for personal autonomy is a common educational

goal for both liberal and anarchist theorists, would the same liberal

restrictions and principles that apply to the state as an educating body

apply to the community within the framework of a stateless, anarchist

society? For although anarchists reject the state and the associated

centralist control of social institutions, they do nevertheless

acknowledge, as we have seen, the need for some kind of educational

process which, in the absence of a centralist state, would presumably be

run on a community level. Thus, given the anarchist acceptance of the

value of individual autonomy, understood as the ability to make and

implement choices on the basis of rational deliberation, without

external constraints, one could still argue, based on the classic

liberal argument for neutrality (see Dworkin 1978), that the community

has no right to impose particular versions of the good life on any of

its members.

For the social anarchists, the basic unit of social organization is the

commune, association within and amongst communes being conducted on an

essentially federalist basis. One important element of this federalism

is the right to secession – a point which Bakunin made on several

occasions:

Every individual, every association, every commune, every region, every

nation has the absolute right to self-determination, to associate or not

to associate, to ally themselves with whomever they wish and repudiate

their alliances without regard to so-called historic rights…The right of

free reunion, as well as the right of secession, is the first and most

important of all political rights. (in Morland 1997: 102)

However, even if secession is a real option, it is quite conceivable

that various communities would be organized around particular ideologies

and would therefore choose to educate their members according to a

substantive vision of the good life as reflected in the organization and

ethos of that community. In the absence of any other restriction, it is

quite possible that certain such communities would undermine the value

of autonomy.

Michael Taylor, in his book Anarchy, Liberty and Community (Taylor

1982), has examined this potential tension within anarchist theory in

considerable detail. Taylor restates the classic liberal argument that

in order for an individual to be autonomous, she must be able to

critically choose from amongst genuinely available values, norms and

ways of life, and that such possibility for choice only exists within a

pluralistic society. Thus, in ‘primitive and peasant communities’, with

strong traditions and considerable homogeneity in terms of lifestyles

and values, individual autonomy cannot be said to exist. But Taylor goes

on to make the point that, in fact, for members of such communities,

autonomy is simply not an issue (and, indeed, not the problem it often

becomes in pluralistic societies) for such people ‘feel at home in a

coherent world’ (Taylor 1982: 161). This view seems to support Joseph

Raz’s argument (Raz 1986) that individual well-being does not depend on

the presence of autonomy. Nevertheless, given that for anarchist

theorists, autonomy, in the sense of individual freedom of choice, does

seem to have been a central value, one must ask whether the types of

communities they sought to create were supportive of this value.

Taylor argues that as utopian communities are always islands within the

greater society, and as their members are recruited from that society,

the values of the ‘outside’ world will always, in a sense, be present as

real options, as will the possibility of leaving the community – thus

ensuring the autonomy of the individuals within it. But if the

anarchist–socialist revolution is successful and the state is completely

dismantled, the picture one gets is of a future society composed of

several federated communities which will not be radically different in

terms of their values. The particular social practices and lifestyles

may differ from commune to commune, but as all practices are expected to

conform to principles of equality and justice, as conceived by theorists

such as Bakunin, it is hard to see how any commune could present a

radically challenging alternative to an individual in another commune.

As an example, one may cite the kibbutzim in Israel which, although

superficially different from one another (e.g. in terms of the cultural

origins and customs of their members, their physical characteristics,

their main source of livelihood, etc.), are nevertheless all instantly

recognizable as kibbutzim in that they clearly exhibit common basic

features of social organization and underlying values which distinguish

them from the surrounding society.

Can one, then, argue that a child growing up in an anarchist commune

after the demise of the nation state, would be less autonomous than a

child growing up in a liberal-democratic state? I think there are two

possible responses to this. One is to take the line that children

growing up in a pluralistic, democratic society are not genuinely

autonomous as their choices are restricted by their environment and

upbringing. Thus, for example, a child growing up in a thoroughly

secular environment could never really have the option of autonomously

choosing a religious way of life. Yet this argument does not seem very

serious to me. The fact is, it does sometimes happen that such children

break away from their backgrounds and choose radically different

lifestyles, adopting values which are completely at odds with those of

their upbringing. And there seems to be some grounds for the claim that

it is the very presence of the alternative, ‘somewhere out there’ that

creates this possibility of choice.

A more promising line of argument is that which connects the discussion

to the idea of the conditions of freedom. It makes no sense to talk of

someone being able to exercise freedom, either in the sense of negative

liberty, or in the sense of autonomy, without the satisfaction of basic

material conditions. It seems to me that this is the key to

understanding the apparent problem of autonomy within anarchist

communes. For, as argued earlier, the autonomy of individual members of

a commune may seem to be severely restricted by the absence of genuine

alternative versions of the good life from which to choose, either

within the commune or amongst other communes. Yet the very values which

create a high degree of similarity between communes and amongst members

of the same commune – that is, values of economic and social equality –

are those values that constitute prerequisites for the exercise of any

form of freedom. Thus although one could argue that the autonomy of a

particular individual may be limited in a commune, as opposed to a

pluralist, democratic state, there would be fewer members of society

lacking in effective freedom than there would, in this view, in less

equitable societies. This seems to support the essentially

anti-individualistic tendencies of the social anarchists, as well as

their insistence on immediate improvement of the material conditions of

society. As Goodwin and Taylor emphasize, for the anarchists,

[…] the values of harmony, association, community, and co-operation were

not vague ethical ideals to be realized at some indeterminate point in

the future through the loosening of legal restraints, the establishing

of declarations of the rights of man, and the winning of

constitutional-institutional reforms. Rather the future utopia required

quite specific – objective rather than subjective – changes in the

material basis of society, changes which could only be brought about

through the implementation of an overall, collective plan – a fairly

detailed blueprint – of some description. It was in this respect that

the very term ‘socialism’ emerged in the 1830’s as the antithesis of

liberal ‘individualism’. (Goodwin and Taylor 1982: 147)

All the same, I am inclined to agree with those critics of anarchism who

argue that this tension between personal autonomy and the possible

coercive effects of public censure is the most worrying aspect of

anarchist ideology, and one to which most anarchists have not provided a

very satisfactory answer, other than the faith that such conflicts can

and simply will be resolved justly in the moral climate and free

experimentation that will prevail in the stateless society.

Robert Wolff and the argument from autonomy

It is important to understand that, in advocating autonomy as a central

value – albeit with different emphases than those of the liberal

tradition – anarchists are not simply going one step further than

liberals in objecting to all forms of coercion. It is not a variant of

this position which constitutes the philosophical explanation for their

principled objection to the state. It is, in fact, this mistaken

interpretation of anarchism that, I would argue, lies behind Robert

Wolff’s attempt to offer a philosophical defence of the anarchist

position (Wolff 1998).

It is worth looking into Wolff’s argument here, for I believe its very

construction helps to highlight some of the points I want to make in

this discussion about the difference in perspective between anarchism

and liberalism.

Wolff sets out to establish that there is a philosophical contradiction

between individual autonomy and the de jure state – defined as an entity

instantiating de jure authority – and that anarchism is thus the only

political position compatible with the value of personal autonomy. The

anarchist understanding of authority also has bearings on Wolff’s

argument, as will be discussed later. But the essential point here is

that, as Miller notes, Wolff’s argument rests on the premise that

‘autonomy is the primary moral desideratum’ (Miller 1984: 27). Yet, as

the foregoing discussion suggests, this premise is questionable, not

only within liberalism, but also within anarchist theory itself.

However, most commentators on Wolff have not questioned this premise,

but have tried, instead, to find fault in his argument (see, for

example, the discussions in American Philosophical Quarterly, IX, (4),

1972). Without going into the philosophical details of Wolff’s argument,

the point I wish to make here is that whether or not it is valid, it

suggests a misleading interpretation of anarchism and, in fact, obscures

the difference of perspective which distinguishes anarchists from

liberals.

In a sense, Wolff’s argument, if valid, proves too much. Anarchists are

not concerned with refuting the validity of the de jure state from a

philosophical point of view; their objection to the state, as will be

discussed below, is based on a more complex and concrete analysis than

the conceptual argument that it conflicts with individual autonomy.

Similarly, many anarchists – particularly the social anarchists – would

not agree with Wolff that ‘the defining mark of the state is authority,

the right to rule’ (Wolff 1998: 18). I shall discuss the anarchist

objection to the state in greater detail later. However, at this point,

it is important to understand how Wolff’s apparent attempt to reduce

anarchism to a defensible philosophical argument is connected to the

above discussion of the multiplicity of values within anarchist thought.

While attempting to reduce any ideology to a single, logically prior

value is, of course, problematic, in the case of anarchism this would

seem especially so, for anarchism is in principle opposed to

hierarchical thinking. As Todd May points out, anarchist thought

involves a ‘rejection of strategic political philosophy’, and the

social-anarchist struggle is conceived ‘in terms of getting rid of

hierarchic thinking and action altogether’ (May 1994: 51). Thus, the

anarchist vision of the future ideal society as a decentralized network,

in which ‘certain points and certain lines may be bolder than others,

but none of them functions as a centre from which the others emerge or

to which they return’ (ibid.: 53) is, I would suggest, reflected in the

philosophical position that no one value or goal can be regarded as

logically prior or ultimate. This is not to claim that there is no

conflict between values within anarchist thought; indeed, as we have

seen earlier, the two interrelated anarchist goals of individual freedom

and communality may well be in tension under certain circumstances.

These conflicts are not conceptual dilemmas to be resolved by

philosophical arguments but concrete social problems to be creatively

solved as the situation demands. It seems to me that Bakunin’s attempts

to paint a picture of such a network of interconnected values as one

coherent whole could be read not just as a philosophically confused

argument but as a reflection of this anti-hierarchical stance.

Interestingly, after claiming that personal autonomy is logically

incompatible with the de jure state, Wolff then goes on to suggest that

unanimous direct democracy ‘is a genuine solution to the problem of

autonomy and authority’ (Wolff 1998: 27). As Grenville Wall points out

(Wall 1978: 276); this move in itself is puzzling as it seems to

contradict the premise that this conflict is logically irreconcilable.

Yet, aside from this methodological problem, this aspect of Wolff’s

argument also reveals a similar misconception of anarchism. Wolff

describes the ideal of unanimous direct democracy as one in which ‘every

member of the society wills freely every law which is actually passed’

(Wolff 1998: 23). As the autonomous person, on both the liberal and the

anarchist account, is one whose actions are restrained only by the

dictates of his own will and reason, it follows that in a direct

democracy, there need be no conflict between ‘the duty of autonomy’ and

the ‘commands of authority’ (ibid.). Wolff’s use of the phrase ‘the duty

of autonomy’ reveals his strong Kantian orientation and, again, is an

inaccurate representation of the anarchist view, according to which

autonomy is less a ‘duty’ than a quality of life to be created, aspired

to and dynamically forged in a social context along with other social

values.

Wolff’s picture of a unanimous direct democracy, although described in

purely procedural terms, may be quite in keeping with the

social-anarchist ideal. Yet interestingly, when discussing the

possibility of this theoretical solution to his proposed dilemma (a

solution which, as Wall remarks, Wolff seems to regard as unworkable for

empirical, rather than philosophical reasons), the basic unit under

consideration, for Wolff, is still that of the state. He acknowledges,

apparently, the assumption that unanimous democracy ‘creates a de jure

state’. But the point is that anarchists object to the state for other

reasons than that it embodies de jure authority, so even a state founded

on unanimous direct democracy, in which personal autonomy, if we accept

Wolff’s argument, could flourish, would still be a state and would be

objectionable for other important reasons. In addition to their positive

commitment to specific values, to be discussed later, crucially, the

anarchists’ objection to the state stems, in large part, from their

anti-hierarchical stance. Basic to this stance is the view that, as

Woodcock puts it,

What characterizes the State, apart from its foundation on authority and

coercion, is the way in which it cumulatively centralizes all social and

political functions, and in doing so puts them out of the reach of the

citizens whose lives they shape. (Woodcock 1977: 21)

Accordingly, all anarchists refer in their discussion of social

organization to a basic unit of direct cooperation. This unit, whether a

commune, a workshop or a school, is, crucially, something qualitatively

distinct from, and inevitably far smaller than, the state.

It is for this same reason that Wolff’s creative suggestions towards

overcoming the practical obstacles in the way of direct democracy in

contemporary societies undermine the very anarchist idea that his

argument is ostensibly intended to support. Wolff’s picture of a

society, the size of the United States equipped with ‘in-the-home voting

machines’ transmitting ‘to a computer in Washington’, ‘committees of

experts’ gathering data, and the establishment of a position of ‘Public

Dissenter in order to guarantee that dissident and unusual points of

view were heard’ (Wolff 1998: 34–35) could not be further removed from

the social-anarchist ideal in which social functions are organized from

the bottom-up, in cooperative networks based at the level of the

smallest possible scale, and where ‘face-to-face contacts can take the

place of remote commands’ (Woodcock 1977: 21).

To sum up the discussion so far, it seems that anarchism overlaps

liberalism in its emphasis on personal autonomy – although it does not

assign the value of personal autonomy any priority – and in its

acknowledgement of the benevolent potential of human beings;

furthermore, it shares the essentially rationalistic stance of liberal

education and the faith in human reason as the key to progress. Although

several commentators (e.g., Bellamy, Ritter and Walter) have argued that

anarchism cannot be regarded as an extension of liberalism due to its

emphasis on community, this point could be countered with the argument

that an emphasis on the value of community is perfectly consistent with

the brand of liberalism defended by theorists such as Kymlicka and Raz.

The essential points on which anarchist and liberal aims diverge seem to

be firstly in anarchism’s rejection of the framework of the state and,

connectedly, in its perspective on the possibility of achieving the

desired social change. The essence of this distinct perspective is, it

seems to me, captured in Ritter’s remark that: ‘To redeem society on the

strength of rational, spontaneous relations, while slaying the leviathan

who offers minimal protection – this is the anarchists’ daring choice’

(Ritter 1980: 133).

4 Authority, the state and education

Anarchism and liberalism, as we have seen, share certain important

underlying values. We now have to ask whether this means that the

philosophical and moral underpinnings of the anarchist conception of

education are not essentially different from those that form the basis

of the idea of liberal education.

Once again, the difference would seem to turn not on the question of the

adherence to certain values and virtues, such as autonomy, rationality

or equality, but on the different scope and perspective on social change

within which such values are understood, and the role of education in

achieving this change.

Crucially, in spite of their emphasis on the inherent human propensity

for benevolence and voluntary cooperation, and in spite of their

rationalist convictions, it would appear that the social anarchists,

with their critical analysis of capitalist society and its social

institutions, alongside their pragmatic view of the innate lust for

power potentially present in everyone, could not, like Mill, or indeed

Godwin, put all their faith in the Enlightenment ideal of the ultimate

triumph of human reason over oppressive forms of social organization.

Thus Bakunin, a thinker typical of this tradition, did not stop at the

liberal idea of achieving social change – or even the overthrow of

oppressive regimes – by means of rational education. As a revolutionary

thinker, he insisted on the ultimate abolishment of all structural forms

of authority which he saw as hostile to individual freedom. ‘The

revolution, instead of modifying institutions, will do away with them

altogether. Therefore, the government will be uprooted, along with the

church, the army, the courts, the schools, the banks and all their

subservient institutions’ (Bakunin, in Dolgoff 1973: 358).

Yet as we shall see, experiments in implementing social-anarchist

principles on a community level did not involve abolishing schools

altogether, but, on the contrary, often centred around the establishment

of schools – albeit schools that were radically different from the

typical public schools of the time. Crucially, these schools were seen

not just as a means for promoting rational education and thus

encouraging children to develop a critical attitude to the capitalist

state, and, hopefully, to eventually undermine it; rather, the schools

themselves were regarded as experimental instances of the

social-anarchist society in action. They were, then, not merely a means

to social revolution but a crucial part of the revolutionary process

itself.

So Bakunin and other nineteenth-century social-anarchist thinkers shared

certain liberal assumptions about human nature and a liberal faith in

the educative power of social institutions, as reflected in Bakunin’s

claim that: ‘it is certain that in a society based on reason, justice,

and freedom, on respect for humanity and on complete equality, the good

will prevail and the evil will be a morbid exception’ (Bakunin, in

Dolgoff 1973: 95).

Yet such thinkers did not believe that such a society was possible

within the framework of the state – however liberal. The focus of their

educational thought and experimentation, therefore, was on developing

active forms of social interaction which would constitute an alternative

to the state. In so doing, however, the conceptualization of education

which informed their views, as I shall argue further later, was not one

of education as a means to an end but a more complex one of education as

one of the many aspects of social interaction which, if engaged in in a

certain spirit, could itself be part of the revolutionary process of

undermining the state and reforming society on a communal basis.

This reflects the crucial aspect of social anarchism expressed by Paul

Goodman as follows: ‘A free society cannot be the substitution of a “new

order” for the old order; it is the extension of spheres of free action

until they make up most of social life’ (quoted in Ward 1996: 18).

The anarchist objection to the state

The earlier discussion notwithstanding, the anarchists’ rejection of the

state as a mode of social organization which they regarded as inimical

to human freedom and flourishing raises two important questions: first,

is the anarchist rejection of the state a principled rejection of states

qua states or is it a contingent rejection, based on the fact that the

modern nation state typically has properties which the anarchists regard

as objectionable? Second, even if Wolff and other commentators are

mistaken in implying that it is the notion of authority which

constitutes the core of the anarchist objection to the state as a form

of social organization, suspicion of authority is nevertheless a central

aspect of all anarchist thought. It is important, then, particularly in

the context of education, to ascertain what anarchists understand by the

notion of authority and connected notions, and whether their objection

to it is philosophically coherent and defensible.

Although certain commentators, such as Miller and Reichert, talk of

anarchism’s ‘hostility to the state’ (Miller 1984: 5) as its defining

characteristic, often implying that this hostility is a principled one

towards the state as such, many theorists have acknowledged the nuances

involved in this hostility. Thus, Richard Sylvan notes (Sylvan 1993:

216) that, although it may be true that anarchists oppose all existing

systems of government, this is ‘crucially contingent upon the character

of prevailing state systems.’ One can in fact find support for this

interpretation in the writings of the social anarchists themselves.

Kropotkin, for example, made the claim, late in his life (quoted in

Buber 1958), that what the anarchists were calling for was ‘less

representation and more self-government’ – suggesting a willingness to

compromise with certain elements of the democratic state.

Bakunin, too, devoted much of his writings against the state to a

detailed account of what he regarded as the characteristics of the

modern state. In ‘The Modern State Surveyed’ (Dolgoff 1973: 210–217),

which very title lends itself to the interpretation suggested by Sylvan,

Bakunin outlines a list of what he regards as the principal faults of

the state. Chief amongst these are capitalism, militarism and

bureaucratic centralization. This analysis, along with the considerable

space Bakunin and other nineteenth-century anarchists devoted to

attacking the association between the state and the Church, suggests

that their objection to the state was, indeed, an objection to

particular features which they regarded as inherent properties of the

state. Yet most of these features are, arguably, contingent on

particular historical forms of the state – and were particularly salient

in the evolving nineteenth-century model of the powerful nation state in

the context of which the social anarchists were developing their

position.

It is therefore apparently not logically inconceivable that a political

system calling itself a state could be compatible with anarchist

principles. Some contemporary anarchists, in fact, have suggested that

the Swiss cantons are a close approximation of anarchist political

principles, although the social anarchists would probably have

criticized them for their inequitable economic policies. The point that

Sylvan is making is that the modern state as we know it has come to

constitute ‘the paradigmatic archist form’ (Sylvan 1993: 217) and as

such, it is incompatible with anarchist principles.

I would therefore disagree with the argument made by Miller and others

that perhaps the central defining feature of anarchism is its ‘hostility

to the state’. This hostility, in fact, as discussed earlier, and as I

shall argue further in what follows, is an instrumental one; the crucial

core of anarchism is, rather, the positive values which it espouses, and

it is the state as inimical to these values, not the state as such, to

which anarchists object. Miller argues that anarchists ‘make two charges

against the state – they claim that it has no right to exist, and they

also claim that it brings a whole series of social evils in its train’

(Miller 1984: 5). But I would argue that this formulation is misleading:

the claim that the state has no right to exist is not an independent, a

priori claim. It is because of its ‘social evils’ that the state, under

a particular definition, has no right to exist. These are, then, not two

charges, but one and the same charge.

Nevertheless, even if anarchism’s hostility to the state is ‘contingent

and consequential […], derived from the conjunction of anarchism’s

defining features together with a particular standard theoretical

characterization of “the state” ‘ (Sylvan 1993: 218), one must ask what

exactly this characterization consists of.

Most political theorists writing on this topic accept something like

Weber’s classic definition of the state as an association that

‘successfully claims the monopoly of legitimate use of physical force

within a given territory’ (see Taylor 1982: 4–5).

Many social anarchists seem to have had something like this notion in

mind in formulating their rejection of the state. However, as suggested

here, this rejection derived more from what Sylvan refers to as

‘anarchism’s defining features’ than from any coherent theoretical

characterization. This point is perhaps most apparent in the writings of

Bakunin, who devoted considerable space (see Dolgoff 1973: 206–208) to a

rejection of what he calls the ‘theology of the state’ – namely, the

defence of the idea of the state by social contract theorists such as

Rousseau. Yet in fact, most of Bakunin’s objection centres on specific

features which he claims to be logically associated with the state.

First, he argues, the state ‘could not exist without a privileged body’

(ibid.). Here, Bakunin’s objection stems from his socialist-egalitarian

commitments, his conviction being that the state ‘has always been the

patrimony of some privileged class’ (ibid.). Yet this, of course, is an

empirical point. Furthermore, he argues, the modern state is

‘necessarily a military state’, and thus ‘if it does not conquer it will

be conquered by others’ (ibid.). Yet this, again, seems to be an

empirical point and, as cases like Switzerland suggest, it is highly

contentious.

In short, it seems to be modern capitalism and its resulting

inequalities which constitute the basis for Bakunin’s objection to the

state. Although there are obvious connections between capitalist

production and the structure of the nation state, it is arguable whether

the former is a necessary feature of the latter. Thus, once again, it

would seem that the anarchist objection to the state, on this point, is

an instrumental one.

Authority

Of course, as Taylor (1982) notes, even if anarchists implicitly

accepted something like Weber’s (albeit problematic) definition of the

state, there is no logical reason why rejecting the state should entail

a complete rejection of authority or censure. Yet the idea of authority

is clearly conceptually linked to this idea of the state. Wolff, for

example, suggests a revision of Weber’s definition as follows: ‘The

state is a group of persons who have and exercise supreme authority

within a given territory or over a certain population’, arguing that

‘the defining mark of the state is authority, the right to rule’ (Wolff

1998: 18).

Indeed, the impression that what the anarchists object to in the state

is the idea of authority itself is reinforced by some early anarchist

writers. Sebastien Faure, for example, writing in the nineteenth-century

Encyclopedie Anarchist (quoted in Woodcock 1977: 62) claimed that what

unites anarchists of all varieties is ‘the negation of the principle of

authority in social organizations and the hatred of all constraints that

originate in institutions founded on this principle’.

Yet although individualist anarchists such as Stirner do at times seem

to be defending a philosophical objection to authority per se, a reading

of the social anarchists, along with other anarchist theorists who

developed a more careful account of authority, suggests that it is not

authority per se but certain kinds of authority to which the anarchists

object, and which they regard as instantiated in the modern state and

its institutions.

One of the most comprehensive philosophical accounts of the anarchist

position on authority is that provided by De George (1978), who argues

that most anarchist theorists were well aware of the fact that some kind

of authority is necessary for social organization to function. But in

rejecting the type of authority characteristic of the state and its

institutions, what the anarchists were asserting, according to De

George, was that

The only justifiable form of authority comes ultimately from below, not

from above. The autonomy of each individual and lower group should be

respected by each higher group. The higher groups are formed to achieve

the will of the lower groups and remain responsible to them and

responsive to their will. (De George 1978: 97)

De George’s choice of imagery here may look odd in the light of the

anarchist opposition to hierarchies. But I think that the use of the

terms ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ in the aforementioned passage serves to

illustrate the purely functional nature of authority in a

social-anarchist society. A more appropriate image, in fact, may be that

of concentric circles; the ‘lower’ group, in other words, would be the

most basic, inner circle – that of the self-governing, face-to-face

community, where social arrangements would be established to meet the

needs of this community. In the event of needs arising which could not

be met by the community itself, an outer circle would come into being,

representing the federated coordination with another community – for

purposes of trade, for example, or common interests such as transport.

This outer circle would then have functional authority, purely for the

purposes of the function it was set up to fulfil, towards those in the

inner circle. There could, in theory, be an infinite, elaborate network

of such circles, the crucial point being that none of them would have

absolute authority; all could be dismantled or rearranged if they failed

to perform their functions, and all would be ultimately justifiable in

terms of the needs of the basic unit of community.

The point De George is leading up to in his analysis is that, in fact,

what the anarchists were rejecting was not authority but

authoritarianism which, as De George points out, ‘starts at the top and

directs those below for the benefit of those above’ (De George 1978:

98).

In short, the anarchist, De George argues, ‘is a sceptic in the

political arena. He insists on the complete justification for any

political or legal system prior to accepting it’ (ibid.: 91). This

demand for ‘justification’ is in fact a demand for accountability to the

smallest possible unit of social organization, to whom any such system

of moral or legal rules must be responsive.

This analysis is supported by Richard Sennet’s discussion of

nineteenth-century anarchist thinkers who, he says, ‘recognized the

positive value of authority’ (Sennet 1980: 187). In fact, Sennet argues,

what thinkers like Kropotkin and Bakunin were aiming at was to create

‘the conditions of power in which it was possible for a person in

authority to be made fallible’ (Sennet 1980: 188).

The above points also illustrate how the anarchist understanding of what

constitutes legitimate authority is linked to the anarchist faith in

human rationality – a faith which, in turn, is reflected in the call for

‘rational education’; in other words, an education which was not only

anti-authoritarian, but which encouraged children to accept the kind of

authority which was rational in nature (see Chapter 6). Perhaps the

philosophical account of authority which comes closest to what the

social anarchists had in mind in this context is that suggested by

Gerald Dworkin in his notion of ‘epistemological authority’ (Dworkin

1988: 45), namely, the practice of accepting or consulting the authority

of others in non-moral matters. This practice, Dworkin explains, is

essentially rational, for a variety of practical and social reasons.

In the light of the earlier discussion, one can begin to understand the

role of authority within anarchist thought, and to appreciate the claim

that anarchists are not, in fact, opposed to authority per se, but to

‘any exercise of authority which carries with it the right to require

individuals to do what they do not choose to do’ (Wasserstrom 1978:

113). In fact, even this formulation is unnecessarily strong. As we have

seen, what the anarchists objected to was the idea of an absolute right

to command authority. They have no problem in acknowledging that

individuals or organizations may have a right to command others, but

such a right must always be temporary, and always justifiable in terms

of the needs of the community in question.

So as anarchists recognize that some form of social organization will

always be necessary, they also recognize that some form of authority

must be accepted in order for social arrangements to function. The types

of authority which would be acceptable – and perhaps necessary – in an

anarchist society are what De George calls ‘the authority of

competence’, ‘epistemic authority’, or ‘operative authority’. Miller

(1984) makes a similar distinction in discussing the anarchist

acknowledgement of what he calls ‘authority in matters of belief’, and

indeed this point is reflected in the analytic literature on the

subject, namely in the distinction, noted by Richard Peters, between

authority de jure and authority de facto (Peters 1967: 84–85). The point

of this distinction is that a person can possess authority by virtue of

‘personal history, personal credentials and personal achievements’,

including, in certain cases, the kind of charisma associated with

authoritative figures. However this is different from having or claiming

authority by virtue of one’s position within a recognized normative

structure. The anarchists, of course, reject the kind of authority that

is derived solely from one’s position in a preordained social system –

this is the kind of authority which they refer to as ‘irrational’.

However, if De George is right in emphasizing that the anarchists’ chief

objection was to authority imposed from above, presumably anarchists

would have to acknowledge that certain forms of authority which are

determined by defined roles within social or political systems would be

legitimate, provided the system in question was one which had developed

organically, in other words, from below, in response to and in

accordance with the needs of people and communities. Indeed, most

anarchists recognize that there can be people who are authorities in

various realms and are accepted as such. To connect this point back to

the previous discussion of rationality as a key aspect of moral

autonomy, it seems that rationality is the overriding criterion for the

anarchists in judging which types and instances of authority are

legitimate. Bakunin expressed this idea when he stated: ‘We recognize,

then, the absolute authority of science. Outside of this only legitimate

authority, legitimate because it is rational and is in harmony with

human liberty, we declare all other authorities false, arbitrary and

fatal’ (in Maximoff 1953: 254).

One might well question this idea, however, as it is all too obvious

that it could lead one to the dangerous position of blindly revering

everything ‘scientific’, thereby elevating science, qua science, to the

position of an unquestionable authority. However Bakunin himself seems

to have been well aware of this danger, and explicitly warned against

the idea of what he referred to as ‘dictatorship by scientists’

(Bakunin, in Maximoff 1953: 250), in which all legislation would be

entrusted to a learned academy of scientists. Such systems would,

Bakunin argues, be ‘monstrosities’ (ibid.), first due to the fact that

‘human science is always and necessarily imperfect’, and second because

a society obeying legislation emanating from a scientific academy, not

because it understood the reasonableness of this legislation (in which

case the existence of that academy would become useless) but because the

legislation emanated from the academy and was imposed in the name of

science, which was venerated without being understood – that society

would be a society of brutes and not of men. (Ibid.)

Furthermore, a scientific academy, like any similar body invested with

‘absolute, sovereign power’, would inevitably become ‘morally and

intellectually corrupted’ (ibid.).

These remarks of Bakunin’s are indicative of the essence of the

anarchist objection to certain kinds of authority, which has echoes in

Erich Fromm’s distinction between ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’ authority.

The key feature of rational authority is that, while it is based on

competence, it must be subjected to constant scrutiny and criticism and,

above all, is always temporary.

This notion is particularly salient in Bakunin’s critique of Marx, and

has important connections with the anarchist insistence on the

commensurability of the means and the ends of the revolution. For if the

ultimate objective is a society free from authoritarian, hierarchical

structures, then, as Bakunin argued, the revolutionary movement itself

has to avoid such structures and processes. Indeed, it was this point

that led to the bitter dispute between the anarchists and the Marxists

after the First International. Bakunin argued, with depressing accuracy,

that the Marxist idea of the working class seizing political power would

lead to a dictatorship of the proletariat which would be only

superficially different from that of the state, and was sceptical

regarding the Marxist claim that such an arrangement would be only

transitional. In Bakunin’s view, the International as an ‘embryo of

future society’ must, according to the anarchist position, reject all

principles associated with authoritarianism and dictatorship. Bakunin,

as Morland notes, was not so naive as to overlook the natural tendency

of people in revolutionary movements to take on different roles

according to different propensities and talents, some inevitably

commanding, initiating and leading, while others follow. But the crucial

point in anarchist thought is that

no function must be allowed to petrify and become fixed, and it will not

remain irrevocably attached to any one person. Hierarchical order and

promotion do not exist, so that the commander of yesterday can become a

subordinate tomorrow. No-one rises above the others, or if he does rise,

it is only to fall back a moment later, like the waves of the sea

forever returning to the salutary level of equality. (Bakunin, in Joll

1979: 91–92)

It is, then, this notion of what Miller refers to as ‘functionally

specific authority’ (Miller 1984: 57), that underlies most anarchist

thinking on social structures.

This acceptance, by anarchist thinkers, of certain kinds of rational

authority explains how they can, while rejecting the state, nevertheless

coherently acknowledge the legitimacy of certain rules of social

organization. The members of an anarchist community may well, in this

view, come to accept the need for social rules of some kind, but such

rules or sanctions would not constitute an infringement of one’s

personal freedom, for this freedom, as Bakunin puts it, ‘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’ (Ritter 1980: 23).

The distinction which Bakunin makes between social sanctions – which may

have a legitimate role in the stateless society – and government, which

‘coerces its subjects with commands instead of persuading them with

reasons’ (ibid.) is arguably, as Ritter suggests, the only plausible

defence of the reconciliation between freedom and censure.

There are obviously several ways in which the anarchist position on

authority, and the connected ideas discussed here, can have bearings on

educational issues. In the present context, the important point to note

is that the anarchist acceptance of certain kinds of authority as

legitimate is sufficient to reject the extreme libertarian claim that

education per se, as conceived as a form of human interaction

necessarily involving some kind of authority, is morally illegitimate.

5 The positive core of anarchism

The preceding discussion suggests the following conclusions:

First, what the social anarchists object to is not the state as such but

the state as instantiating a number of features which they regard as

objectionable because of their infringement on human development and

flourishing, understood as involving freedom, solidarity and reciprocal

awareness – values that are inherently interconnected and

interdependent.

Second, and connectedly, the anarchist stance is, above all, not

anti-state or anti-authority, but anti-hierarchy, in the sense that all

centralized, top-down structures are to be regarded with suspicion, and

small communities favoured as basic units of social organization. As

Woodcock remarks:

Instead of attempting to concentrate social functions on the largest

possible scale, which progressively increases the distance between the

individual and the source of responsibility even in modern democracies,

we should begin again from the smallest possible unit of organization,

so that face-to-face contacts can take the place of remote commands, and

everyone involved in an operation can not only know how and why it is

going on, but can also share directly in decisions regarding anything

that affects him directly, either as a worker or as a citizen. (Woodcock

1977: 21)

This perspective is supported by J.P. Clark who, in his analysis (Clark

1978: 6) argues that ‘anarchism might also be defined as a theory of

decentralization’. One of the implications of these points is that the

normative core of anarchism is not a negative one but a positive one. I

have already discussed the anarchist conception of mutual aid, which is

essential for the flourishing of the kind of communities envisaged by

social anarchists. This notion is, perhaps, the most important element

of this positive core. As Ritter points out, for the social anarchists,

notably Kropotkin, who developed the theory of mutual aid from a

historical and anthropological perspective, benevolence, understood as

‘a generous reciprocity that makes us one with each other, sharing and

equal’ (Ritter 1980: 57) is the ‘mediating attitude of anarchy’ (ibid.).

Ritter notes that the notion of mutual aid – a notion to some extent

anticipated by Godwin’s ideal of ‘reciprocal awareness’, discussed

earlier – supports not only the ideal of the equitable, cooperative

society so central to the social anarchists but also the notion of

creative individualism which is a common theme in anarchist literature,

most notably – although not exclusively – amongst the more individualist

anarchist thinkers. The attempt to combine, in an educational setting,

attitudes of mutual respect and cooperation, with the pursuit of

individual creativity and freedom of expression, is apparent in the

American anarchist educational experiments discussed in Chapter 6. The

theoretical basis for this connection between the notion of mutual aid

and that of creative individualism is summed up by Ritter in his

argument that ‘the knowledge that one can rely on this reciprocal

support from others gives one courage to pursue unique and creative

paths in self-becoming’ (Ritter, ibid.) – suggesting a primarily

psychological basis for this connection.

But, as Bakunin’s instrumental rejection of the state suggests, there

are other connected, substantive values which form the positive core of

the anarchist position, and which have not been discussed in detail in

the preceding analysis. The central such values are: equality and

fraternity.

Equality

In general, most anarchist thinkers seem to have understood the notion

of equality in terms of distributive social justice, emphasizing the

social and economic implications of this notion, rather than the

legalistic aspects. Indeed, the nineteenth-century social anarchists –

like all early socialists – were highly critical of the theorists of the

French Revolution who, they argued, promised equal rights in terms of

equality before the law but neglected to deal with the material aspects

of social inequality.

Even Godwin, who, as discussed earlier, was an anarchist thinker closer

to the individualist than the socialist end of the spectrum, was adamant

on the evils of social and economic inequality. As Ritter explains,

Godwin saw unequal distribution of wealth, and its negative effects on

human character and communal relations, as the principal reason for the

imposition of legal government and the establishment of the state

(Ritter 1980: 76). Alongside the fundamental argument that economic

inequality is unjust because it denies some people the means of a happy

and respectable life (ibid.: 77) and gives the advantaged ‘a hundred

times more food than you can eat and a hundred times more clothes than

you can wear’ (ibid.), Godwin also argues that inequality damages human

character, particularly from the point of view of the rational

independence which he regarded as a supreme value. Both the poor and the

rich, in a stratified society, have their rational capacities sapped by

servility on the one hand and arrogance on the other (ibid.).

Godwin talks in terms of a floor of basic goods to which all members of

society are entitled on the basis of a conception of the basic needs of

individuals. Beyond this, he is prepared to accept a certain amount of

inequality, based on merit. ‘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’ (Ritter 1980: 78).

Thus Godwin, while aware of the damaging effects of inequality for the

ideal of communal individuality, was far from endorsing the social

anarchists’ ideal of ‘to each according to his need’ – which, according

to Guerin (Guerin 1970: 50) ‘should be the motto of libertarian

communism’.

As Ritter notes, the social anarchists who succeeded Godwin gradually

tried to rid anarchism of its ‘anti-egalitarian, meritocratic elements’

(Ritter 1980: 79). Kropotkin went furthest in this respect, advocating a

redistribution of wealth based entirely on the conception of needs and

not contribution or merit. Indeed, in arguing for a floor of basic needs

as the basis for social-economic policy, the social anarchists were

clearly closer to Marxism than to classical liberalism. Kropotkin’s form

of communal anarchism demanded ‘the right of all to wealth – whatever

share they may have taken in producing it’ (Ritter 1980: 81). Similarly,

twentieth-century social anarchists were highly critical of the

Bolshevik revolution precisely concerning this issue. One of the

greatest mistakes of the Bolsheviks, argued Alexander Berkman in An ABC

of Anarchism in 1929, was to introduce a differential scale of rationing

in the immediate post-revolutionary period. ‘At one time’, Berkman

claims, ‘they had as many as fourteen different food rations’ (Berkman

1995: 89), the best rations being for Party members and officials. The

inevitable material inequality and political tensions that this

situation created were, according to anarchist critics, just one symptom

of the Bolshevik failure to base their political programme on an

understanding of ‘the needs of the situation’ (ibid.). Berkman, like

Guerin, argues that the principle of ‘to each according to his needs’

must be the guiding principle behind socio-economic organization in the

anarchist society.

In this context, it is important to keep in mind, as Ritter points out,

that none of the anarchists can be seen to hold the radical egalitarian

thesis – that is, the thesis that everybody should be treated alike.

Ritter cites Kropotkin’s commitment to need as the criterion of

distribution as an example of this: ‘needs’, the argument goes, ‘cannot

be satisfied without treating people differently’ (Ritter 1980: 82).

Thus, as Ritter argues, while the social anarchists seek to eliminate

inequalities of rank and hierarchy, they seek to increase those of kind,

which support the kind of social diversity which they regard as highly

valuable and desirable.

It seems, then, that the anarchist understanding of equality is fairly

close to that developed within egalitarian liberalism. Specifically,

Bakunin and other social anarchists seem to have adopted a view akin to

Rawls’ notion of ‘primary social goods’. Bakunin talks of the need ‘to

organize society in such a manner that every individual, man or woman,

should, at birth, find almost equal means for the development of his or

her various faculties and the full utilization of his or her work’

(Bakunin, in Maximoff 1953: 156). Although the emphasis in this

conception may be different from that of Rawls, the basic perspective on

social justice makes the anarchists far closer, here, to egalitarian

liberals than, say, to utilitarians – given, of course, that the social

anarchists may interpret Rawls’ notion of ‘primary social goods’

somewhat differently.

Some theorists have criticized Rawlsian liberalism for failing to offer

guidelines for moral and just action on an interpersonal level. Thus

G.A. Cohen, for example, argues that Rawls’ contention that he has

provided, in A Theory of Justice, a comprehensive conception of justice,

is questionable, for ‘a society that is just within the terms of the

difference principle […] requires not simply just coercive rules, but

also an ethos of justice that informs individual choices’ (Cohen 2001:

128). It is thus questionable, Cohen argues, whether ‘the ideals of

dignity, fraternity, and full realization of people’s moral natures’ are

actually delivered by the Rawlsian account of justice (ibid.: 136). This

point has important connections with the anarchist perspective, as will

be discussed later. However, it seems an unfair criticism of Rawls who,

in Justice as Fairness, a Restatement, clearly states that his theory of

justice is intended ‘not as a comprehensive moral doctrine but as a

political conception to apply to that structure of political and social

institutions’ (Rawls 2001: 12). Crucial, indeed, to Rawls’ argument, is

the distinction between the political and the moral. He insists on

preserving the narrow focus of his conception of justice which, although

it will hopefully gain the support of a broad overlapping consensus,

cannot, on this understanding, have anything to say about the

‘transcendent values – religious, philosophical or moral’ with which it

may conflict. It cannot, in other words, ‘go beyond the political’

(ibid.: 37).

The anarchists, however, would, I believe, reject this distinction

between the political and the moral, partly because they do not start

from an acceptance of an institutional framework – that of

constitutional democracy – as Rawls and many other liberal theorists do.

Furthermore, most anarchists, as May notes (May 1994: 85), ‘regard the

political as investing the entire field of social relationships’ – in

other words, they would not accept Rawls’ focus on the ‘basic structure’

of society as the sole subject for political deliberation.

The anarchist account, which can by no means be regarded as a

comprehensive account of distributive justice, does seem to place less

emphasis on procedural rules and principles for the just management of

social affairs and more on the moral qualities needed, as Cohen

suggests, to sustain human relationships conducive to social justice. It

is indeed partly for this reason that education plays such an important

role in anarchist thought.

The anarchist conception of the value of equality has obvious conceptual

connections both with the idea of community and with the view of human

nature. Michael Taylor (Taylor 1982) argues that equality is perceived

as an important value for the anarchists but is secondary to the basic

good of community. Following on from his central argument that it is

only in community that social order without the state can be maintained,

Taylor points out that community requires a considerable degree of basic

material equality in order to flourish. For ‘as the gap increases

between rich and poor, so their values diverge, relations between them

are likely to become less direct and many-sided, and the sense of

interdependence which supports a system of reciprocity is weakened’

(ibid.: 95). Yet, as he points out – and this seems to be supported by

the writings of the social anarchists – it is only gross inequality

which undermines community.

As Taylor notes, this argument runs counter to the prevailing liberal

argument that the state is necessary to ensure even approximate equality

– specifically, that as ‘the voluntary actions of individuals’

inevitably disrupt material equality, even approximate equality can only

be maintained by ‘continuous interference by the state in people’s

lives’ (ibid.: 96). The neo-liberal development of this argument is the

claim that, as such interference is clearly in violation of individual

rights (primarily property rights), then any pursuit of economic

equality must be secondary to the defence of the basic value of

individual liberty. But as Taylor argues, this argument rests on certain

assumptions about human nature, or at the very least, about what people

will voluntarily do in a given kind of society. The anarchist position

on human nature, combined with their faith in the potential of rational

education in a climate of solidarity and mutual aid, leads to far less

pessimistic conclusions regarding the possibility of maintaining

relatively equitable socio-economic arrangements in a stateless,

self-governing community, than those, for example, of Nozick, in his

famous ‘Wilt Chamberlain’ thought experiment[4](Nozick 1974: 161–164).

Furthermore, as Taylor points out, in a society unlike the modern,

industrialized one which Nozick assumes, ‘where wealth and power are

already unevenly distributed’, people may voluntarily choose to act in

ways which maintain equal distribution of wealth (ibid.: 100). Taylor

acknowledges that even in equality-valuing communities, no actions

undertaken to maintain equality can be described as absolutely

‘voluntary’, for, in the absence of interference by the state, there are

always some kind of sanctions in place to ensure the survival of

relative equality and, therefore, of the community. In short, although

Taylor concedes that approximate economic equality is unlikely to last

without some form of counteractive influence, that does not necessarily

have to be provided by the state.

The social anarchists, in conclusion, seem to have genuinely believed

that the natural human propensity for mutual aid and benevolence, if

encouraged and promoted by social relationships and institutions, would

go a long way towards ensuring the survival of a relative degree of

material equality. Both this argument and Taylor’s moderate version of

it reveal, once again, the important role of education in anarchist

society. For education must systematically promote the values which

support the flourishing of community, and, as Taylor argues, community

both needs equality and provides the conditions for it to survive.

It is important to keep in mind here the point which I made earlier in

discussing the multiplicity of values within anarchist thought. It is in

keeping with anarchism’s anti-hierarchical stance that no single value

can be regarded as conceptually prior within this system of thought – in

spite of attempts by theorists, both within and outside the anarchist

tradition, to defend such accounts. Thus while equality plays an

important role in the social critique of the social anarchists, its full

significance cannot be grasped without an understanding of its

conceptual links with other, equally important values, notably that of

fraternity. Thus while many social anarchists talk of needs as a basis

for distributive justice, it would be misleading to conclude that their

conception of the just society or human flourishing is basically a

needs-based one. In this, perhaps, they would have agreed with Michael

Ignatieff’s comment that:

To define what it means to be human in terms of needs is to begin,

neither with the best, nor with the worst, but only with the body and

what it lacks. It is to define what we have in common, not by what we

have, but by what we are missing. A language of human needs understands

human beings as being naturally insufficient, incomplete, at the mercy

of nature and of each other. It is an account that begins with what is

absent. (Ignatieff 1994: 57)

Far from assuming that something was absent, the social anarchists, as

is apparent from the earlier discussion of human nature, worked on the

assumption that human beings have a great capacity for fraternal,

benevolent sensibilities and action, and that the just society must be –

and can be – underpinned by such values.

Fraternity

The relatively under-theorized concept of fraternity – a concept which

Adam Swift describes as ‘quaint and politically incorrect’ (Swift 2001:

133) has, of course, conceptual links with that of equality. In fact

Swift himself acknowledges that ‘economic inequality may be inimical to

fraternal relations in a society’ due to the fragmentation and

stratification associated with high levels of socio-economic inequality

(ibid.: 113–114). As Patricia White defines it in Beyond Domination,

fraternity consists in ‘feeling a bond between oneself and others as

equals, as moral beings with the same basic needs and an interest in

leading a life of one’s own’ (White 1983: 72). White argues that this

attitude is necessary amongst citizens of a participatory democracy

(contrasted with servility and patronage), but she also goes further

than this and makes the educationally important point that the attitude

of fraternity can be a motivating force.

If one adopts the view that fraternity is an ‘attitude’, then

presumably, like other moral dispositions such as gratitude, it is

something which can be learned. White indeed seems to take this view. In

other words, people develop fraternal feelings by coming to hold certain

beliefs and attitudes about others. Developing such beliefs and

attitudes, then, is clearly a task for education. Furthermore, as White

notes,

in a fully-fledged participatory democracy, fraternal attitudes will

both underpin the institutions of the society and also be themselves

under-girded by the social structure which does not permit gross

discrepancies in the share of primary goods between citizens. (Ibid.)

This suggests that the conceptual connection between fraternity and

equality can work both ways: not only does a relatively high degree of

socio-economic equality foster and support fraternal attitudes, but the

institutional maintenance of such equality may depend on a degree of

fraternal feeling. Some social-anarchist theorists may well have

endorsed this view, although they would obviously understand the notion

of ‘participatory democracy’ in a narrower sense than that in which

White seems to be using it. For the anarchists, any form of

participatory democracy which was institutionally dependent on a

centralized, hierarchical state, was to be viewed with suspicion. A

‘fully fledged’ participatory democracy could only, so the

social-anarchist view seems to imply, exist at the level of the

workshop, the community, or the school. It is at these levels, in fact,

as the foregoing discussion suggests, that we should focus our analysis

of desirable educational qualities. And indeed, the anarchist insistence

that the schools they founded be run as communities (see Chapter 6), in

which solidarity and mutual respect prevailed, supports the view that

fraternal attitudes were both ‘taught’, in such educational settings, by

means of the prevailing climate, and helped to sustain and foster the

kinds of experimental communities that were being created as an

alternative to the state.

But White’s comments also draw attention to another important aspect of

fraternity in an educational context. Part of the anarchist objection to

the state is precisely that, as Kropotkin argues in his discussion of

mutual aid (see Chapter 2), the capitalist state system undermines

precisely those fraternal attitudes which should ideally underpin social

institutions. Thus, in disagreeing with White that the state itself

could underpin the kinds of fraternal attitudes essential to a genuine

democracy, the anarchists are tacitly admitting that social processes at

the community level – primarily education – must take on even more of a

responsibility for promoting these attitudes.

White also notes, in reply to critiques from the individualistic liberal

tradition, that this notion of fraternity is in no way a threat to

individuality and freedom, as it goes hand-in-hand with a tolerance for

diversity (something much championed by anarchists), and ‘carries no

demands that people should engage in communal projects or should enjoy

spending the major part of their time in the company of their fellows’

(White 1983: 74).

Another interesting theoretical perspective on the notion of fraternity

comes from the work of Eric Hobsbawm. In his article ‘Fraternity’

(Hobsbawm 1975), Hobsbawm argues that the reason fraternity has been the

most neglected by theorists of the revolutionary triad is largely due to

the fact that ‘While parts of what may be defined as liberty […] and

parts of equality may be achieved by means of laws or other specific

measures of political reform, fraternity cannot be so conveniently

translated into even partial practice’ (ibid.: 471), being rather ‘a

function of certain types of society or movement’ (ibid.).

Hobsbawm argues that the notion of fraternity implies both ‘an ideal of

society as a whole, and an ideal relationship between people for

particular purposes: a programme and a technique’ (ibid.: 472). Yet this

distinction between the ‘programme’ and the ‘technique’ reflects

precisely the kind of crude distinction between ‘means’ and ‘ends’ which

the anarchists were so opposed to, as is evident in their critique of

Marxism (see Chapter 4). For the social anarchists, in conceptualizing

revolutionary social change, the ‘programme’ and the ‘technique’ were

one and the same thing. The social-anarchist vision of the good society

is, then, arguably precisely the conjunction of both aspects of

fraternity which Hobsbawm mentions – the social ideal and the ideal form

of relationships – and, perhaps, the insistence that they are one and

the same; the fraternal relationships which are so essential to building

functional communities for a common purpose, are exactly those which

should underpin the ideal of the good society, on the social-anarchist

view. It is in this respect, indeed, that fraternity can be regarded as

a core educational value – implying both the ideal and the practice

necessary to promote and underpin it.

Hobsbawm offers a historical account of the development of the notion of

fraternity, suggesting that ‘middle–class liberal political thought has

always been essentially individualist’ (ibid.), regarding fraternity

therefore as only ‘a by-product of individual impulses’ or the result of

functionalist systems.

Furthermore, he argues, ‘The people who have used and needed fraternity

most in modern societies, are least likely to write books about it; or

if they do, they tend to be esoteric, like most Masonic literature’

(ibid.). Illustrative of this point is the fact that fraternity has

always been regarded as a basic value of the labour movement, but is

not, as such, an articulated aspect of political theory.

Hobsbawm in fact makes the claim that the revolutionary triad –

‘Equality, Liberty, Fraternity’ – was almost certainly historically

derived from the Freemasons. The Masonic notion of fraternity embodied,

according to Hobsbawm, the idea of ‘a relation of voluntary mutual aid

and dependence, which implies that each member can expect the unlimited

help of every other when in need’ (Hobsbawm 1975: 472), and thus implied

a ‘certain type of social cooperation’ (ibid.). This notion is

remarkably close to Kropotkin’s notion of mutual aid, although without

Kropotkin’s historical and evolutionary perspective on its political

manifestations and its conceptual connections to different types of

social organization. As Hobsbawm points out, it is essential to this

idea of mutual help that it is ‘not measured in terms of money or

mechanical equality or reciprocal exchange’ (ibid.) and thus has the

notion of kinship built into it. More pertinently, he argues that this

notion invariably has ‘overtones of communism’, as ‘the obligations of

artificial brotherhood frequently implied the sharing, or at least the

free use, of all property between “brothers” ‘ (ibid.).

Both White’s and Hobsbawm’s analyses draw attention to the strong

ethical aspect of fraternity, and also to its emotional aspect – an

aspect which seems somewhat neglected in the anarchist treatment of the

notion.

Hobsbawm notes that, although theoretically neglected, the fraternal

code has survived to some extent in revolutionary organizations, unions,

and some political parties, where it has an essential function. As part

of a political programme, however, it is, as he remarks, ‘less clear and

codified’, and has played a generally minor role in political

programmes, where it is most often used to propagate the idea of the

‘brotherhood of man’ as opposed to the narrower bonds of nationalism and

patriotism. Interestingly, Hobsbawm barely mentions social-anarchist

progammes in his historical account. This omission is particularly

surprising given Hobsbawm’s general remarks on the role played by the

notion of fraternity after the French Revolution, when it expressed, as

he puts it, ‘part of what men expected to find in a new society’

(Hobsbawm 1975: 472). A fraternal society, Hobsbawm writes, in a

description which sounds like a paraphrase of Kropotkin,

was not merely one in which men treated each other as friends, but one

which excluded exploitation and rivalry; which did not organize human

relations through the mechanism of a market – or perhaps of superior

authorities. Just as slavery is the opposite of liberty, and inequality

of equality, so the competitive system of capitalism was the opposite of

fraternity. (Ibid.)

So for the social anarchists, fraternity and the connected notions of

mutual aid, benevolence and solidarity were not only argued to be real

and salient features of human life in society but were assigned

normative status as the basis for the ideal, stateless society. In this

context one can also see the further significance of the anarchist

insistence on small, face-to-face communities as the basic units of

social organization. Keeping social units and institutions as small as

possible not only has the function of facilitating non-hierarchical,

decentralized forms of social organization and avoiding oppressive

bureaucratic structures but is also clearly essential to ensure the

flourishing of fraternity. For only in small communities can the basic

sense of solidarity with and fraternity towards others be maintained. It

is anonymity and lack of interpersonal understanding which not only

exacerbates socio-economic injustice but also facilitates the phenomenon

of free-riders which many theorists cite as an inevitable problem of

stateless societies.

Interestingly, in this connection, many liberal theorists – most notably

Rawls – seem to start from the assumption of a community of rational

individuals not characterized by fraternal feelings. Rawls’

‘circumstances of justice’, in fact, are necessarily defined in this

way, leading some critics of Rawlsian liberalism, like Michael Sandel

(1982), to point out that justice only becomes relevant in the absence

of feelings such as fraternity and benevolence. Sandel quotes Hume, who

remarked: ‘Increase to a sufficient degree the benevolence of men, or

the bounty of nature, and you render justice useless, by supplying in

its place much nobler virtues, and more favourable blessings’ (ibid.:

32). Perhaps the most outspoken exponent of the view that such ‘nobler

virtues’ have a basis in human nature, and accordingly can underpin a

well-functioning, equitable stateless society, was Joseph Proudhon, who

anticipated Kropotkin in arguing for a ‘social instinct’ which is prior

to any formal account of social justice:

To practice justice is to obey the social instinct; to do an act of

justice is to do a social act…man is moved by an internal attraction

towards his fellow, by a secret sympathy which causes him to love,

congratulate, condole; so that, to resist this attraction, his will must

struggle against his nature. (Proudhon, in Edwards 1969: 226–227)

This sense of the social virtues as constituting the foundation for

social organization and, if not undermining the priority of justice

altogether, at least giving rise to a different understanding of what

justice may mean, is captured by Kropotkin in the following passage:

It is not love and not even sympathy upon which society is based in

mankind; it is the conscience – be it only at the stage of an instinct

of human solidarity. It is the unconscious recognition of the force that

is borrowed by each man from the practice of mutual aid; of the close

dependency of everyone’s happiness upon the happiness of all; and of the

sense of justice, or equity, which brings the individual to consider the

rights of every other individual as equal to his own. Upon this broad

and necessary foundation the still higher moral feelings are developed.

(Kropotkin 1972: 22)

This passage also reflects the anarchist view that life in cooperative

communities is not only underpinned by the social virtues, but itself

constitutes an important educative force in fostering and maintaining

these virtues.

Sandel, in his critique of Rawls, provides further support for the

argument that the anarchist insistence on small communities implies

normative moral, as well as functional considerations pertaining to the

priority of social values. As he notes, we can easily imagine

large-scale organizations like the modern state meeting the requirements

of the circumstances of justice, but ‘we can readily imagine a range of

more intimate or solidaristic associations in which the values and aims

of the participants coincide closely enough that the circumstances of

justice prevail to a relatively small degree’ (Sandel 1982: 30–31).

Although Rawls, of course, acknowledges the social significance of

interpersonal ties and sentiments of affection, solidarity and so on, he

does not include such sentiments as part of the motivations of the

people in the original position, who are, as Sandel remarks,

‘theoretically defined individuals’ (Sandel 1982: 147). One would expect

to find people with a sense of justice acting in accordance with such

sentiments ‘once the veil of ignorance is lifted’, as Sandel comments,

but they cannot form part of the theoretical foundations on which the

just society is constructed. Yet as Hume pointed out, the ‘nobler

virtues’ of benevolence and fraternity, if increased, would render

justice, if not totally irrelevant, at least theoretically less central.

On the anarchist view, fraternity and the connected social virtues are

not just fostered by life in small, face-to-face communities, but are at

the same time necessary for the stability of such communities, as

Michael Taylor has discussed. Obviously, as McKenna points out, ‘one is

less likely to fight within a community, or to wage war with another

community, if they view people of that community as connected to

themselves’ (McKenna 2001: 61). Similarly, it makes no sense, as the

member of such a community, to undermine other people’s projects, or to

produce something of inferior quality, because ‘at some point the

inferior product will come back to you’ (ibid.).

Liberal values? Anarchist values?

Both the discussion of human nature and the earlier discussion of the

core values of social anarchism seem to suggest that anarchism, as an

ideology, is not as far removed from liberalism as may have first

appeared, and in fact overlaps with liberal values in important

respects. The difference seems to lie primarily in what Ritter refers to

as the anarchists’ ‘daring leap’ of supposing that a society which

embodies, as fully as possible, the virtues of individual autonomy,

social equality and mutual aid, can be sustained without the

institutional mediation of the state.

Yet another, important, conclusion is also emerging from this

discussion, namely, if the stability of a social-anarchist society rests

so clearly on the presence of these social virtues, and if there is to

be no state structure to maintain it, it seems as if education, and

particularly moral education, has an important role to play. What form,

then, is such an education to take in an anarchist society? There are

two ways of approaching this question. One is to construct, on the basis

of anarchist theory, a philosophical argument for an educational process

designed to foster and maintain the types of ideal communities envisaged

by the social anarchists. Another approach is to look at actual accounts

of educational experiments conducted by anarchists over the years and to

ascertain whether such practice is consistent with anarchist principles

and in what way – if at all – it was conceived as playing a role in

achieving the desired social change. In the following chapters, I shall

employ both these approaches in an attempt both to illustrate instances

of educational practice by anarchists and to discuss the philosophical

perspective on education behind such practice.

Education for the social virtues

Given the central importance assigned to the social virtues in

sustaining an anarchist society, it follows that a moral education which

fosters this attitude must surely form the basis of all anarchist

education. I suspect, too, that most anarchist thinkers were aware of

the fact, mentioned in the preceding chapter, that the problem of how to

maintain a stateless, decentralized community without resorting to a

certain degree of public censure, remains one of anarchism’s chief

theoretical stumbling blocks. The central role played by educational

programmes in so much of the anarchist literature seems to be, amongst

other things, an implicit acknowledgement of the need to surmount this

problem, although it also, of course, results from the anarchists’

contextualist perspective on human nature, as discussed in Chapter 2.

And of course, as Goodwin and Taylor note, ideals such as the social

anarchists’ ideal of a society based on the principles of

self-government and participatory democracy, in which there were very

few rules for adults, often rested on the assumption of there being

‘massive moral education of children’ (Goodwin and Taylor 1982: 45).

The clearest expression of this idea in the anarchist literature is in

Kropotkin’s essay, ‘Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal’ (Kropotkin

1897), in which he states: ‘When we ask ourselves by what means a

certain moral level can be maintained in a human or animal society, we

find only such means: the repression of anti-social acts; moral

teaching, and the practice of mutual help itself’ (ibid.: 23).

Following a similar line of thought, Kropotkin goes on to write of the

importance of ‘moral teaching’:

especially that which is unconsciously transmitted in society and

results from the whole of the ideas and comments emitted by each of us

on facts and events of everyday life. But this force can only act on

society under one condition: that of not being crossed by a mass of

contradictory immoral teachings resulting from the practice of

institutions. (Ibid.)

These passages reveal both the central role assigned to moral education

in anarchist thought and the anarchist view that if social institutions

are to fulfil their educational role both before and after the

dismantling of the state, they must themselves embody anarchist

principles. On a more sinister note, the aforementioned passage also

hints, in its reference to ‘the repression of anti-social acts’ at an

acknowledgement of the need for some form of what Ritter refers to as

‘public censure’. Of course, one can imagine certain relatively benign

versions of ‘public censure’, such as the practice of ‘shaming’ – which

has recently aroused renewed theoretical interest through the

development of theories of reintegrative justice. Nevertheless, one

cannot help feeling that, given this choice of phrase, Ritter and others

may be justified in fearing that the value of individual autonomy may be

under serious threat in a social-anarchist community.

I have argued here that not only does an attempt to take the anarchist

perspective on social change seriously prod us to think about education

in a different way, but also that there is a substantive, primarily

moral core to educational programmes conceived from a specifically

anarchist position. Of course, education is only one of the channels

through which anarchists sought to create an alternative social reality

to that which, they believed, was characteristic of social relations

constituted by the state. As Bookchin notes:

Sensibility, ethics, ways of building reality, and selfhood have to be

changed by educational means, by a politics of reasoned discourse,

experimentation and the expectation of repeated failures from which we

have to learn, if humanity is to achieve the self-consciousness it needs

to finally engage in self-management. (Bookchin 1990: 189)

The questions to be addressed now are how this perspective might be

translated into educational policy and practice, and how might the

normative core of anarchist values discussed here be reflected in the

content of specific educational programmes. This is the task of the next

two chapters.

6 Anarchism goes to school

In the light of the outline of anarchism discussed, the role of

education in anarchist thought may seem more confusing than ever. On the

one hand, given the anarchist aversion to blueprints and the demand for

constant experimentation in the endeavour to improve society, it may

seem quite reasonable to argue that doing away with schools and formal

education altogether would be a crucial step towards the creation of an

anarchist society. Indeed, the anarchists’ insistence that individuals

be ‘active agents creating the possibilities of their own future’

(McKenna 2001: 52) seems to demand that any education be broadly

libertarian – allowing, as far as possible, freedom for creative

experimentation, critical thought and active problem-solving. This view

is also, of course, a consequence of the anarchist insistence that the

means for achieving social revolution be consistent with its ends.

Yet on the other hand, the earlier discussion of the substantive core of

anarchism suggests that any educational practice consistent with these

values cannot coherently adopt a libertarian position, in the sense of a

laissez-faire attitude to children’s upbringing. Although the terms

‘anarchist education’ and ‘libertarian education’ are often conflated

(not least by writers themselves sympathetic to the anarchist tradition,

such as John Shotton, or Michael Smith, whose book on the subject is

titled The Libertarians and Education), it is important to distinguish

between the libertarian position and the anarchist position. One of the

points I wish to argue in favour of here is that although many

anarchists can be described as libertarian, the anarchist educational

tradition is distinct from the tradition commonly described as

‘libertarian education’.

The term ‘libertarian’ is used to refer, broadly, to all educational

approaches which reject traditional models of teacher authority and

hierarchical school structure, and which advocate maximum freedom for

the individual child within the educational process – including, in its

extreme version, the option to opt out of this process altogether. In

the following discussion, I shall use the term ‘anarchist education’ to

refer specifically to a tradition of educational practice and theory

which, I shall argue, although it appears to overlap with libertarian

ideas in certain respects, is significantly different from the

mainstream libertarian tradition. Accordingly, I shall focus on

descriptions of schools which were established and run out of an

explicitly anarchist commitment, mentioning non-anarchist libertarian

educational approaches merely in order to bring out the contrast which I

want to make between these two terms.

For example, many accounts of libertarian education, which, as

mentioned, include both anarchist and non-anarchist educators in their

descriptions, cite Tolstoy’s educational experiments in the 1870s as one

of the first attempts at libertarian education. Tolstoy is often

described as an anarcho-pacifist, or a Christian anarchist, and although

his emphasis on individual responsibility and freedom places him at some

distance from the social anarchists, he shared their objections to the

state, the church, and the institution of private property. However, he

was not part of the anarchist movement and, as Michael Smith points out

(Smith 1983: 64) his commitment to non-coercive pedagogy stemmed from an

educational and moral principle rather than a political one. Tolstoy’s

chief argument – expressed eloquently in his essay ‘Education and

Culture’ (in Weiner 1967) – was that ‘for education to be effective it

had to be free’ (Smith 1983: 64). In formulating his educational ideas,

Tolstoy seemed to be driven more by moral concerns about interference in

children’s development than by a vision of the kind of society he would

like to help create.

It has of course been argued by certain theorists within the libertarian

tradition, for example, Stephen Cullen (Cullen 1991), and to a certain

extent A.S. Neill (see below) – certainly with regard to moral education

– that any form of education is a kind of coercion and as such has no

place in a truly free society. The alternative could be something like

Ivan Illich’s ‘learning webs’ (see Illich 1971), educational

relationships entered into on a contractual basis, or a reconception

along the lines suggested by Carl Bereiter’s vision, where, although

society may not undergo any radical structural changes, all pretence at

‘educating’ people has been abandoned as morally unacceptable (Bereiter

1974). In such cases, what effectively happens is that society itself

becomes the educating force. In Bereiter’s case, it is not clear how

this is going to happen, as he makes no explicit commitment to

particular political principles, whereas in Illich’s case, there is more

of a clue as to the kind of society he would like to see – one in which

‘convivial’ institutions replace the coercive institutions of the state

– a vision similar to the original social anarchist one but without the

egalitarian commitment or the working out of economic principles.

However, as evidenced by the sheer volume of anarchist literature

devoted to educational issues, and the efforts invested by anarchist

activists in educational projects, the social anarchists, unlike the

earlier theorists, seemed to agree that schools, and education in

general, are a valuable aspect of the project for social change, rather

than proposing to do away with them altogether along with the other

machinery of state bureaucracy.

Of course, to a certain extent, this point is a logical conclusion from

the anarchist conception of human nature. If, as has been often

contended, the anarchists believed that human nature is naturally

benevolent, that children have in some sense an innate capacity for

altruism and mutual aid – the virtues deemed necessary to sustain a

social anarchist society – then, one could argue, it would be enough to

do away with the repressive institutions of the state; in the absence of

such coercive and hierarchical structures, these positive human

qualities would flourish, without any need for further intervention. Any

learning necessary for practical purposes could be accomplished by some

sort of informal network like that proposed by Illich. Yet given the

anarchist belief, discussed in Chapter 2, that human nature involves

both an altruistic and a selfish aspect, and that it is environmental

factors that determine which of these aspects will dominate at any given

time, anarchists could clearly not leave processes of education and

socialization to pure chance.

This is not to say that a libertarian approach to education is not often

suggested by certain anarchist writers – for example, Emma Goldman who,

upon visiting Sebastian Faure’s libertarian anarchist school in France

at the beginning of the last century, commented,

If education should really mean anything at all, it must insist upon the

free growth and development of the innate forces and tendencies of the

child. In this way alone can we hope for the free individual and

eventually also for a free community which shall make interference and

coercion of human growth impossible. (Goldman 1906)

Without an understanding of the ideological context of anarchism, and

particularly the contextualist anarchist view of human nature, these

remarks by Emma Goldman could be construed as calling for a

reconceptualization of education; a perspective which would replace the

narrow understanding of education as a formal system that goes on in

institutions, with a broader view of how society should educate its

members. Yet, as discussed earlier, the contextualist view of human

nature goes a long way towards explaining the need for a substantive

programme of education. And indeed, what Goldman and the many other

anarchists involved with educational theories and experiments over the

years had in mind was a consciously planned process of education which

was to occur in places which, although perhaps very different from the

traditional schools of the time, were nevertheless undoubtedly kinds of

schools.

Just what, though, did such schools look like? What, in other words, is

‘anarchist education’, in its practical manifestation? In posing this

question, I cannot help recalling a conversation I had some time ago

with Colin Ward, the contemporary British anarchist, who commented,

perhaps with a touch of irony, ‘There is no such thing as “anarchist

education.” There are just different kinds of educational experiments

which anarchists have supported and been involved in’. This comment is

important in that it reminds us of one of the essential principles of

anarchism, namely, that there is no single theory or doctrine as to the

correct form of social organization, including education. It also

indicates the need to answer the question of why it is that anarchists

have always been sympathetic to particular kinds of educational

practice.

Nevertheless, there is, I believe, a particular anarchist perspective on

education and the educational experiments which have been conducted over

the years by people aligning themselves with this perspective share, in

spite of their differences, important and fundamental features. These

features, in turn, need to be understood in the context of anarchism as

a political ideology. Thus to answer the question ‘what is anarchist

education?’, while keeping in mind the aforementioned reservation, it is

necessary to examine both the educational experiments undertaken over

the years by individuals committed to anarchist principles, and the

theoretical ideas behind these experiments. The aim of this chapter is

to describe some typical educational projects, initiated in various

different historical, cultural and political contexts, and with varying

degrees of success, which share key features that, as I shall argue

later, are unique in the sense that they are logically connected to a

set of specifically anarchist beliefs. The question of the logic of this

connection, and the possible tensions between the theory and the

practice, will be discussed later on.

This chapter is not intended to provide a comprehensive historical

account of the development of the movement for anarchist education. This

has already been done, in admirable detail, by Paul Avrich in his

fascinating study of the Modern School Movement in the United States

(Avrich 1980), and by Michael Smith in his study of libertarian

educational ideas (Smith 1983), to name two central works in the field.

I rely heavily on these works in what follows, with the aim of painting

a picture of what a typical anarchist school would look like, as a basis

for the ensuing philosophical discussion. In addition, I draw on

firsthand accounts by pupils and teachers of life in anarchist schools

and communities. As, apart from the aforementioned books, the available

documentation on such projects is often sketchy, the educational

experiments described here have been selected largely on the basis of

the wealth and quality of such first- and second-hand accounts that are

readily available to the English reader.

The Escuela Moderna, Barcelona, 1904–1907

One of the first systematic attempts to translate anarchist ideas into

educational practice took place in Spain at the beginning of the

twentieth century, amidst a climate of severe social unrest, high

illiteracy levels, and a public school system completely in the grip of

the Catholic Church. The anarchist movement was relatively strong in

Spain at the time, and Francisco Ferrer, a long-time political radical,

was active in anarchist circles both in France, where he lived in exile

for several years, and on his return, in his native Barcelona. While in

France, Ferrer had become interested in experiments in libertarian

education, particularly those of Paul Robin and Jean Grave, both

influential theorists of libertarian education and was familiar with the

educational ideas of the utopian socialist Fourier. He became convinced

that ‘a new society can be the product only of men and women whose whole

mental and social training has made them embodiments of new social

ideals and conceptions’ (Kelly 1916). On 8 September 1901, Ferrer, with

the generous financial support of a sympathetic patron, opened The

Escuela Moderna in Barcelona. By the end of the first year, the number

of pupils had grown from 30 to 70, and by 1905, 126 pupils were

enrolled.

In his prospectus, Ferrer declared: ‘I will teach them only the simple

truth. I will not ram a dogma into their heads. I will not conceal from

them one iota of fact. I will teach them not what to think but how to

think.’ (Avrich 1980: 20).

This attitude was typical of early anarchist educators, who emphasized

the ‘rational’ nature of the education they were proposing – which they

contrasted to the dogmatic teaching of the Church, on the one hand, and

the nationalistic ‘political’ education of the capitalist state, on the

other. Indeed, Ferrer later established the League for the Rational

Education of Children, which became an important forum for the exchange

of anarchist and libertarian ideas on education.

The Escuela Moderna was co-educational – a fact which seems to have been

perceived by the authorities as more of a threat than any of its other

features – and was also quite heterogeneous in terms of the

socio-economic backgrounds of its pupils.

Another important aspect of the school was the absence of grades, prizes

and punishments. ‘Having admitted and practiced’, wrote Ferrer,

the coeducation of boys and girls, of rich and poor – having, that is to

say, started from the principle of solidarity and equality – we are not

prepared to create a new inequality. Hence in the Modern School there

will be no rewards and no punishments; there will be no examinations to

puff up some children with the flattering title of ‘excellent’, to give

others the vulgar title of ‘good’, and make others unhappy with a

consciousness of incapacity and failure. (Ferrer 1913: 55)

Although Ferrer acknowledged that in the case of teaching a trade or

specific skills requiring special conditions it may be useful to the

teacher to employ tests or exams in order to monitor a pupil’s progress,

he made it clear that, if not conducive to the pupils’ personal

development, such devices had no part to play in the kind of education

he was advocating. In one of the first bulletins issued by the school,

Ferrer noted that, in spite of some initial hesitation, the parents of

children at the school gradually came to accept and value this approach,

and he went on to point out that ‘the rituals and accompanying

solemnities of conventional examinations in schools’ seemed indeed to

serve the sole purpose ‘of satisfying the vanity of parents and the

selfish interests of many teachers, and in order to put the children to

torture before the exam and make them ill afterwards’ (ibid.).

There was no rigid timetable at the school, and pupils were allowed to

come and go as they wished and to organize their own work schedules.

Although sympathetic to the anti-intellectualism of Rousseau, Ferrer did

not scorn ‘book-learning’ altogether, but a great emphasis was placed on

‘learning by doing’, and accordingly, much of the curriculum of the

school consisted in practical training, visits to museums, factories and

laboratories, or field-trips to study physical geography, geology and

botanics.

‘Let us suppose ourselves’, Ferrer writes,

in a village. A few yards from the threshold of the school, the grass is

springing, the flowers are blooming; insects hum against the classroom

window-panes; but the pupils are studying natural history out of books!

(Ferrer 1909: 2)

This insistence on the role of practical training and experience in the

curriculum also reflected a central anarchist educational idea which

Ferrer was keen to put into practice, namely the idea of ‘integral

education’. This concept essentially involved an understanding of the

class structure of capitalist society as being reflected in the

distinction between manual labour and intellectual work. It received

considerable theoretical treatment at the hands of several

social-anarchist theorists, notably Kropotkin and was a crucial element

of the anarchist perspective on education. I shall offer a more detailed

discussion of this notion and its theoretical underpinnings in Chapter

Ferrer was also adamant about the need for teachers to have complete

‘professional independence’. Criticizing the system by which the

educator is regarded as a public official, an ‘official servant,

narrowly enslaved to minute regulations, inexorable programmes’ (ibid.)

he proclaimed that the principle of free, spontaneous learning should

apply not only to the pupil, but to the teacher. ‘He who has charge of a

group of children, and is responsible for them, should alone be

qualified to decide what to do and what not to do’ (ibid.).

The avowedly anti-dogmatic principles behind Ferrer’s curriculum, and

his apparent faith in his ability to create a curriculum which reflected

nothing but rational, scientific truth, is revealed in the story of the

school library. On the eve of the school’s opening, Ferrer scoured the

libraries of France and Spain in search of suitable textbooks for his

school. To his horror, he reports, he found not a single one. The

religious dogma of the Church on the one hand was matched by the

‘political’ (i.e. patriotic) dogma of the state on the other. He thus

opened the school without a single book in the library and sent out a

call to leading intellectuals across Europe, commissioning textbooks

which would reflect the latest scientific discoveries. To this end, he

installed a printing press on the school premises and enlisted a team of

translators. The works eventually approved for inclusion in the school

library included, to quote Avrich, texts on ‘the injustices connected

with patriotism, the horrors of war, and the iniquity of conquest’

(Avrich 1980: 23). Alongside titles such as The Compendium of Universal

History, The Origins of Christianity and Poverty: Its Cause and Cure,

the children regularly read a utopian fairy tale by Jean Grave, The

Adventures of Nono, in which, as Ferrer puts it, ‘the happier future is

ingeniously and dramatically contrasted with the sordid realities of the

present order’ (ibid.).

Thus, it would be wrong to assume that Ferrer naively believed that he

could provide an education which, as opposed to that of the Church and

the state, was politically neutral. As he said in his prospectus, ‘It

must be the aim of the rationalist school to show the children that

there will be tyranny and slavery as long as one man depends on another’

(Avrich 1980: 24). Accordingly, the children were encouraged to value

brotherhood and cooperation, and to develop a keen sense of social

justice, and the curriculum carried a clear anti-capitalist,

anti-statist and anti-militarist message. Another example of this

commitment is the teaching of Esperanto, which was seen as a way to

promote international solidarity.

In short, Ferrer saw his school as an embryo of the future, anarchist

society; as proof that, even within the authoritarian society

surrounding it, an alternative was possible. He hoped that the school

would be nothing less than the vanguard of the social-anarchist

revolution. His emphasis on ‘rational’ and ‘scientific’ education

reflected the Enlightenment ideal of progress which, as discussed

earlier, underpinned much of anarchist thought. Yet at the same time,

his insistence that the school itself be a microcosm of anarchist

society, in the sense of constituting a community based on solidarity

and equality, seems to go one step further than the liberal humanist

ideal that the way to moral progress lies in gradual intellectual

enlightenment. While obviously allowing both children and teachers a

great deal more freedom than was common in schools at the time, Ferrer

was clearly no libertarian – as the substantive agenda of the school

illustrates. This reflects the theoretical point made earlier that the

anarchist stance involves more than just doing away with the state by

establishing alternative means of social organization; it involves a

normative, substantive and ongoing commitment to a set of values and

principles. One educational implication of this point is that an

implicit or explicit form of moral education underpins all aspects of

the anarchist educational process and curriculum.

Under these circumstances, it is no wonder that the Spanish authorities

saw the Escuela Moderna, and Ferrer himself, as a threat. Although

Ferrer was not directly involved in anarchist activity during the years

of the school, and indeed saw himself first and foremost as an educator,

his anarchist sympathies were obvious, and the school was constantly

under surveillance and was frequently denounced by the clerical

authorities as a nest of subversion. In 1906, after years of official

harassment, it was closed down. Ferrer himself was arrested in August

1909 on false charges of instigating the mass uprising, anti-war riots

and general strike which had plunged Barcelona into violence following

Spain’s colonial war in Morocco. In spite of attempts by the

international liberal community to intervene, Ferrer was found guilty at

a mock trial, and condemned to death by firing squad.

Ferrer’s death, on 13 October 1909, predictably sparked off a wave of

international protest, and is probably, as Avrich notes, the reason why

he rather than anyone else became the most famous representative of

anarchist education. In the wake of his execution, anarchist activists

and enthusiasts for libertarian education around the world were moved to

establish educational projects designed to continue and promote Ferrer’s

ideas. The most extensive and long-lived Ferrer movement arose in the

United States, and it is to a study of a typical school of this movement

that I now turn.

The Ferrer School, New York and Stelton, 1911–1953

The Ferrer School in New York (or, as it later came to be known, the

Modern School) obviously took Ferrer’s educational creed as its

inspiration, its founding members being convinced that rational,

libertarian educational practice was the most likely to advance

anarchist ideas. Thus the 1914–1915 prospectus for the school states:

The Modern School has been established by men and women who believe that

a child educated in a natural way, unspoiled by the dogmas and

conventionalities of the adult, may be trusted in later life to set his

face against injustice and oppression. (Kelly 1916)

Accordingly, the basic organizational principles of the school were very

similar to those of the Barcelona school, namely, coeducation, an

emphasis on ‘learning by doing’, an anti-authoritarian pedagogy, and a

heavily anti-capitalistic, anti-statist and anti-religious tone

throughout the curriculum. However, the New York group seems to have

taken the idea of the school as a vanguard of the socialist–anarchist

revolution, and as a microcosm of an alternative society organized on

non-hierarchical, cooperative grounds, further than Ferrer did. They

believed that in order for the children to develop an adequate

understanding of ideas such as justice, equality and cooperation, they

must experience them first-hand in the fullest possible way. Thus:

We hold that children do not and cannot learn the meaning of duties or

rights in an economic system composed of masters and slaves. That is why

the children of the public schools and the vast majority of children who

are pampered and petted by their ignorant or blinded parents know

nothing clearly of either rights or duties. Where alone can children, or

any others, learn the meaning of rights and duties? In a mode of life

which is genuinely cooperative. A life whose products all justly share

and whose labour all justly share. This points inevitably to a school

which is based upon complete and inclusive cooperation. (Kelly 1916:

4–5)

Accordingly, a key feature of the New York school was the communal

garden, where children learned to plan, plant, care for and gather

plants communally. In addition, all maintenance and domestic work on the

school premises was shared cooperatively by the children and staff. In

fact, the New York school also served as a kind of community centre,

offering a wide range of adult education courses, public lectures and

social gatherings, and as a centre for political activity. In 1915,

pursuing their ideal of communal life even further, the New York

anarchist group purchased a tract of farming land at Stelton, New

Jersey, where they set about founding an anarchist colony. The school,

which moved there, became a focal point of the colony. Here the

community attempted to put their social anarchist ideals into practice,

working the land and sharing administration of community matters. A key

element of their ideology, which was reflected in the school, was the

idea of breaking down the distinction between ‘brain work’ and ‘manual

work’ – a theme which, as mentioned earlier, was repeatedly taken up by

anarchist theorists (see Chapter 7) and which can be seen in Ferrer’s

insistence on integral education. The justification for this approach

was, first and foremost, a political one: as Harry Kelly writes

The curse of existing capitalist society is its parasitism. It permits

idle and useless people to live on the products of its useful members.

No society is tolerable in which all are not workers. In the Modern

School, all are workers. (Kelly 1916: 5)

The anarchist ideal of a socialist, communal society also stressed the

need for a natural continuity between the world of the school and that

of the community. This ideal was more practically feasible once the

school moved to Stelton, where many of the teachers and parents involved

in the school were also active members of the colony, and the children

naturally combined schoolwork with work in the community.

The educators involved in the experiment saw their creation of the

community around the school as naturally connected to the libertarian

call for a more spontaneous, child-centred pedagogy. Thus, in an

argument which anticipates the critique of the institutionalization of

education by the capitalist state voiced by the de-schoolers some 50

years on, Elizabeth Ferm, an influential teacher at Stelton, states:

Herding children in child centers has made it necessary to control and

regulate their activities. As the child does not understand the reason

for his being gathered in with so many strange children and strange

adults, one of the first problems of the teacher is how to adjust him as

quickly and as pleasantly as possible into a grade or group where he

seems to fit. There is no time to let the child adjust himself slowly

and to find his own place. (Ferm 1949: 11)

However, it would appear that the enthusiasm of anarchist educators like

Ferm for child-centred pedagogy stemmed more out of a general sympathy

for any calls for radically challenging mainstream educational practice

and therefore constituting an alternative to state-controlled schools

than out of any carefully worked-out theoretical arguments. Furthermore,

at the beginning of the twentieth century, the child-centred, or

progressive education movement was heralded as the most ‘scientific’

approach to education, which partly explains its appeal for anarchist

educators. Like the European anarchists, the American anarchists

associated with the founding of the Ferrer school (amongst them leading

activists such as Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman and Harry Kelly) saw

themselves and the education they were promoting as essentially

‘rational’ and ‘scientific’ – in contrast with what they saw as the

dogmatic, superstitious beliefs which prevailed in the state system.

Thus Kelly stated, in an editorial entitled ‘The Meaning of Libertarian

Education’,

Our aim in the Ferrer School is to free both the child and the adult

from the false conventionalities and superstitions which now hinder the

progress of the race. We believe that these superstitions operate

chiefly in the fields of industry, religion and sex, so that we

especially direct attention to those three subjects. […] We are not

dogmatics in the sense that we teach any one ism or point of view to the

exclusion of others. We believe that every human being has the right to

make his or her choice of life philosophy. (Kelly 1913)

Indeed, the anarchists’ suspicion of anything clearly systemized and

prescriptive, along with their revolutionary social outlook, led the New

York group to be highly critical even of some progressive educational

theorists, such as Montessori and Pestalozzi. Emphasizing the difference

between the anarchist–libertarian approach and that of the Montessori

system, a further editorial in the Modern School journal states:

Ferrer, a freethinker and social revolutionist, treats of the school as

an essential factor in the struggle for a new society; Montessori, a

Roman Catholic and social reformer, regards the school as a means to

prepare the child for the present society – admittedly an imperfect

society, but one gradually improving […] Montessori’s work indicates

that she desires not much more for society than remedial measures for

its ills. Several times in her book she writes of the yoke of slavery

growing easier from century to century. It is the voice of the

conservative shrinking at the thought of the larger scheme, and

regarding the prolonged existence of things as they are with complete

equanimity. Not so Ferrer. It is not enough for him to lighten the yoke

from century to century. He demands its utter removal. (Kerr 1913)

The author goes on to conclude that in order to develop in children such

an objective, enlightened view of society and a commitment to the

desired social change, it is essential to remove all ‘political’ (a term

seen as equivalent to ‘patriotic’) or religious education from the

curriculum. The ideal was that ‘every pupil shall go forth from it into

social life with the ability to be his own master, and guide his life in

all things’ (Avrich 1980: 75). In theory, then, the curriculum of the

Modern School in New York and Stelton was to be less prescriptive than

that offered by Ferrer, which, as discussed, contained explicitly

anti-statist and anti-capitalist messages. In practice, however, the

American Modern School was far from apolitical, both in terms of the

formal study programme and in terms of the inter-connectedness between

the school and the community, which led to participation by pupils and

teachers in workers’ rallies, political meetings and so on.

In short, there seems to have been some confusion amongst anarchist

educators as to the extent to which a libertarian pedagogy could be

combined with a substantive curriculum and school ethos. In spite of

their general sympathy for the idea of child-centred education, their

reservations about this approach clearly reflect their belief in the

necessity of radical social change, and their conviction that such

change could only be achieved by people ‘whose education has trained

them […] to cherish and practice the ideas of liberty, equality, and

fraternity’ (Kelly 1916: 51). It is a serious failing of the work of

anarchist educators that they made little systematic attempt to provide

a theoretical account of the relationship between child-centred

pedagogical practice and their own anarchist goals and values.

Nevertheless, I would suggest that the emphasis, in their writing and

practice, on expressions of the basic idea formulated in the

aforementioned quote, reinforces the impression that what gave these

projects their distinct identity was not their espousal of particular

educational practices but their underlying moral and political vision.

So although the educational philosophy of the Ferrer schools in New York

and Stelton was, in some sense, child-centred, this was understood in a

far looser sense than that developed in the work of Dewey and

Montessori. Indeed, the founders of the school claimed (Kelly 1914) that

the idea of highly trained teachers implementing the Montessori method

with the appropriate apparatus was nothing less than ‘a contradiction of

the rational idea of education’, which they saw as essentially concerned

with the spontaneous development of the child:

A normal child is capricious, whimsical and spasmodic in activity.

Unless he is under control he will not persist in the use of didactic

toys or any set apparatus for play […] The Montessori method presupposes

that children are interested in building correct staircases, in

discriminating among shades of a colour. It takes for granted that

little folks should learn to be economical in movements; that they

should be quiet and orderly; that they should persist, that they should

learn to endure. (Kelly 1914)

Although acknowledging that this inhibition of the child’s instincts may

often not be conscious on the part of Montessori educators, the author

cites the physical and psychological dangers of such practice – which,

he argues, hinder emotional growth and independent thought.

In comparison, the Modern School had no rigid structure, curriculum or

schedules, but maintained ‘what order we feel necessary’ (ibid.),

relying on the anarchist principle of natural order – that is, an order

evolved from below, as opposed to imposed from above. In this, anarchist

educators were taking a stand against what they regarded as the

essentially authoritarian order of the conventional school – an

authoritarianism which is reflected and reinforced throughout the social

practices of the capitalist state. This stance also reflects the basic

anarchist insight that the ideal mode of social organization is a

non-hierachical, decentralized one, in which any system of authority and

rules is functional and temporary.

It is worth noting that other anarchist schools established following

the execution of Ferrer took a somewhat more systematic approach to

issues of pedagogy. Thus Mathew Thomas has shown, in his historical

study of anarchist schools in Britain in 1890–1916 (Thomas 2004), that

the organizers of the International Modern School established in London

in 1906, adopted a Froebelian method of teaching. Believing that

Froebel’s developmental theory was in keeping with the anarchist view of

the spontaneous development of the child, the educators involved in this

project thus had no problem in ‘teaching according to age and stage’, as

suggested by Froebel.

The conviction of the educators involved in the Ferrer School, and later

at Stelton, that what they were doing was providing an education that

was above all rational and scientific, is witnessed by several amusing

anecdotes about interaction with the children. On one occasion, for

example (described in Ferm 1949), a teacher reports a small child

running up to her from the kitchen to say that ‘The potatoes are ready!’

At which, the child is confronted with a series of interrogations – ‘How

do you know?’, ‘Did you test them?’, ‘What makes you think so?’ – all

designed to encourage children to appreciate the difference between

facts and judgements, to develop their abilities to think in a rational

fashion, to rely on observation and empirical verification – in short,

to make them ‘scientific’.

Although there was no formal timetable at the Modern School, lessons

were offered along the lines of fairly traditional academic subjects,

and children were free to attend them if and when they wished. The

classes on offer are listed in the prospectus as follows:

English, History, Geography, Physiology, Biology, Astronomy…. Big words,

these, but we have no others to use and to employ them here means that

normal young people want to know what the stars are, how the earth and

the soil and the sea and themselves were made. (Kelly 1916)

For most of these classes, the children did group work, with very little

frontal teaching by the teacher. Yet one teacher described how, in the

case of arithmetic, ‘the individual system of research’ seemed to

prevail, as opposed to the other classes, where group work was the norm.

Apparently, the pupils, by mutual consent, had hit on an arrangement

whereby they began ‘doing sums’ individually on coming into class in the

mornings. ‘In an extreme emergency’, writes the author,

or if his faculty of perseverance is not working as well as usual, one

calls on the teacher or some other pupil to help him out of a tight

place. But the general feeling is that it is much better to ‘get stuck’,

to turn back and see where the difficulty is. Whatever may be said

against this lonely struggle in the arithmetic field, it certainly

develops powers of initiative and perseverance. (Ibid.)

In short, the founders and, to a large extent the teachers, of the

Ferrer School in New York and later at Stelton, like Ferrer himself,

made no pretense at political neutrality in education. They saw what

they were doing as an important attempt to challenge what they regarded

as the conservative forces at work in all aspects of the state system,

and to further the development of a radically different kind of society.

Like the Escuela Moderna in Barcelona, the New York school appealed

primarily to working-class parents, many of whom were already involved

in radical social movements, and who objected to the values being

promoted in the public schools. Defending the need for the Modern School

in a country like the United States, where there is free public

schooling, Stewart Kerr (1913) puts forth the classic anarchist argument

against state schooling: ‘The ruling classes everywhere […] use the

school, often unconsciously, as a means to keep themselves in power, to

maintain things as they are’. The Modern School, in contrast,

is consciously dynamic, aims to cultivate the critical attitude of mind,

the indispensable factor in every step forward the world has ever made

[…]. The avowed purpose of the public school is to equip the child for

his environment. The order of the environment is not questioned […]. It

is the function of the Modern School to strip the social system of its

economic fallacies and expose its sordid selfishness. (Ibid.)

Thomas’s study suggests that anarchist educators elsewhere may have been

somewhat more uncomfortable than Kelly and his American colleagues with

the idea that the education promoted in their schools could be construed

as another form of indoctrination. Thomas suggests that there was some

controversy, in the British schools, ‘about the politicized nature of

the subject matter’ (Thomas 2004: 428). Yet Thomas’s account merely

serves to underline the important differences between the social

anarchists, who formed the bulk of those involved in the schools

discussed here, and individualist anarchists who, following Stirner,

‘rejected the entire concept of the school as an affront to the child’s

autonomy’ (ibid.). What characterized those involved in the anarchist

school movement was their ‘belief in the transformative potential of

alternative schools’ (ibid.).

Although longer lived than most experiments in communal living, the

Stelton colony, and with it the school, was in decline from the late

1920s onwards and finally disintegrated in 1953. Avrich cites both the

impact of the Depression and the rift created in the community between

the anarchists and communists during the First World War as the main

reasons for its demise.

Before the war, radicals of different stripes could still argue about

their differences, could still have their different groups and theories

and yet agree about a common enemy, capitalism, and be friends – could

even start colonies together. But after the war and the Russian

Revolution, this became more and more difficult. (Ben Liberman, in

Avrich 1980: 327)

Ben Lieberman, a former colonist, pinpoints the final rift at a somewhat

later date, citing Stalinism as the decisive reason for the break-up of

the community (see Avrich, ibid.).

The Waiden Center and School, Berkeley, 1956–

Although the Walden Center and School is still in existence, it does not

appear to be explicitly associated with the anarchist movement, and

indeed makes no reference to anarchism (or indeed libertarian education)

in its prospectus or mission statement. The school’s website (

www.walden-school.net

) describes it as ‘an arts-based progressive, teacher-run elementary

school’. The term ‘progressive’ here is understood as referring to the

fact that classes are mixed-age, there are no grades or standardized

testing, and there is an emphasis on the arts and on experiential

learning. However, I am including this school in the present discussion

as its original founding group all shared anarchist views (see Walden

Foundation 1996: 21), and the documentation describing the early years

of the school provides a valuable example of an attempt to translate

anarchist ideas into educational practice.

The idea of setting up the Walden Center and School grew out of the long

association and friendship of a group of committed anarchists,

communists and pacifists, most of whom had been active in

anti-conscription movements, workers’ union struggles and various other

social causes. On becoming parents, several of the group, unwilling to

send their children to the available state schools, which they regarded

as reflecting a cultural conflict ‘between human needs and social

structures’, and attracted by the idea of community life (many of them

had already been part of experiments in communal living) developed the

idea of founding and running their own school, which was to be not only

‘a means of educating children in a freer environment, but also a centre

for education and action in the adult community we were a part of’

(ibid.: 25). Although not all founding members belonged to the anarchist

movement, they all, according to the testimony of several members of the

group, ‘shared the anarchist–pacifist philosophy that shaped the school’

(ibid.: 65).

As political activists throughout the 1940s and 1950s many of the

founding group had experienced marked changes in their political

thinking, which evolved, according to one testimony, ‘from the

nineteenth century belief that revolutionary change was possible in our

lifetime, to our taking a long view of the role of anarchism in society’

(ibid.: 21). Thus their agenda, and their political activities, were

somewhat less revolutionary than those of the anarchists involved in the

Modern School at the beginning of the twentieth century. Of course, this

had to do largely with the changed political context within which they

were operating – both at the macro level, and at the level of what was

actually going on in state schools at the time. Nevertheless, most of

the group still regarded themselves as continuing a line of anarchist

thought, and felt, in keeping with this tradition, that ‘if

revolutionary change wasn’t imminent, there must be action we could take

that would point to the possibilities inherent in anarchistic

relationships’ (ibid.). Some of the founding members had in fact, before

moving to California, had some contact with teachers and colonists at

Stelton.

The process of agreeing, jointly, on the school’s programme and

structure, was regarded as an experimental, philosophical exercise

through which the group tested their educational ideas in the light of

their philosophy, and ‘strove to build a form, both functional and

educational, that most reflected our anarchist/pacifist views’ (ibid.:

24).

The form which this initial process took is in itself an example of

anarchist principles put into practice: wary of the tendency of ideas to

turn into ideology, principles into dogma, and ‘carefully wrought

attitudes’ into slogans, the founders were reluctant to document the

countless discussions and debates which preceded and accompanied the

initial years of the school, and avoided creating a written programme or

prospectus. This suspicion of constitutions, dogmas and blueprints for

institutions and practices is, of course, a basic thread common to all

anarchists, who believe that to lay down such blueprints would undermine

the commitment to human freedom, progress and perfectibility.

Another political principle of anarchism put into practice in these

founding sessions, as well as in regular parent–teacher meetings

throughout the years, was the rejection of the democratic belief in

majority rule – the adherence to which had, according to David Koven,

one of the school’s founders, destroyed parent–teacher coalitions in

other independent schools where the founders of the cooperatives had

used it to ‘push their Marxist bias’ (Walden Foundation 1996: 28). What

Koven and his colleagues sought, in contrast, was a form of day-to-day

management practice that would ‘prevent the creation of a bureaucracy

that could dictate life at the school’ (Walden Foundation 1996: 27). All

decision-making, therefore, took place only after the group had reached

consensus. Furthermore, in order to prevent the founding group from

becoming ‘stodgy and self-satisfied’, it was agreed that every new

teacher or family was entitled to join in the decision-making process

after having been at the school for an initial period of 1 to 2 years.

The commitment to consensus meant that no proposed new action or policy

to which any member of the school community objected could be carried

out until the principled objection had been heard and discussed and a

workable compromise had been reached. Of course, the insistence on

consensus by no means rules out the possibility of power-struggles and,

furthermore, as testified by the founders, running the school this way

meant that the process of decision-making was slow and painstaking.

However, they felt it was an essential element of their anarchist

commitments and seemed convinced that it insured the community, to a

considerable degree, against power-struggles over the control of the

school and the development of an ambitious, power-seeking minority.

What is of particular interest in this context is that all the founders

were adamant that the school was not to be a ‘parent–teacher

cooperative’. Although the founding parents outlined the basic

philosophy of the school, they felt very strongly that on a day-to-day

basis, the teachers needed to be in charge, as the ongoing continuity

essential to good education could not occur if the teachers were

constantly functioning at the whim of the parents. Ultimately, the

founders believed, education was the concern of teachers and children,

and thus, ‘parents could raise hell, but in the end, decisions were made

at the teacher–child level’ (ibid.: 79), with many decisions made by the

children themselves.

As the Fourth Draft of the Philosophy Statement (the only surviving

document from the early years of the school) states:

‘We do not visualize the teacher as a technician, mass-producing

according to someone else’s plan, but as a sensitive, creative force at

innumerable moments in the learning experience’ (ibid.: 10).

Another basic anarchist tenet which was translated into educational

practice at Walden is the belief in small communities as the optimal

units of social organization. This belief is reflected not only in the

organization of the community around the school – which relied heavily

on personal contacts, mutual support and friendship as a basis for

commitment to this and other projects – but in the pedagogical principle

that class size should be limited (15 was eventually agreed upon as the

maximum number of children per class) in order to promote an ideal

learning environment for children – one in which the teacher could be

responsive and sensitive to individual needs and could relate to the

children on a personal basis.

In keeping with these anarchist principles of social organization, the

school in effect had no central authority, and thus each teacher was

autonomous and was responsible for determining procedures, developing

curricula and planning programmes – aided in this process, of course, by

the ongoing discussions with other members of the staff and the board.

What is surprising, however, in the context of this emphasis on freedom,

is that, in contrast to many accounts of experiments in anarchist

education (notably those discussed earlier), there is very little

mention in the accounts of Walden of the notion of the freedom of the

individual child. Of course, there is frequent mention of general

principles designed to promote the child’s freedom – for example, ‘We do

not believe in simple indoctrination, even for the sake of the good’

(ibid.), and of the vision of a school that would help children to

‘think independently, would give them all the tools for creative

existence, […] would be secular, would have no heroes, no presidents, no

icons’ (ibid.: 40). Likewise, several of the founders point to an

explicit connection between anarchist principles and pedagogic practice

in the notion that ‘the needs of children rather than the needs of the

state’ should be the driving motives behind educational practice.

However, there is very little mention of the way these ideas were

reflected in the day-to-day life of the school. It is not at all clear,

for example, what Walden’s position was on the issue of compulsory

attendance – abolishment of which is commonly a central principle of

anarchist educational initiatives. Denny Wilcher, one of the original

founders, testifies that ‘no teacher ever forced a child to attend

structured classes’ (Walden Foundation 1996: 79), but the emphasis in

the school’s philosophy seems to be more on a commitment to the

individual development and emotional and intellectual needs of the

child, rather than to the principle of non-coercion per se. In fact, the

school’s apparent reluctance to make non-attendance a central and viable

option for children is suggested by the fact that, from the beginning,

they attempted to deal with this issue by carving out spaces in the

curriculum in which such practice was legitimated. ‘On Wednesdays’, as

Wilcher describes, ‘there was no school at all and groups and

individuals did whatever interested them’ (Walden Foundation 1996: 78),

and another founding parent and teacher, Alan MacRae, is credited with

having invented ‘Hookey Day’, held on the first day of Spring, when the

entire school, parents included, went to the park and played.

Another point on which Walden seems to differ from the anarchist

educational initiatives of the late nineteenth and early twentieth

century is in its emphasis on the arts and creativity in general. In

contrast to schools such as the Ferrer School in New York or the Modern

School at Stelton, where great emphasis was placed on rationality and

‘scientific’ approaches, the first few years at Walden were

characterized by an emphasis on dance, music and plastic arts, and the

high points of the school year were always lavish productions of various

musical dramas on which the parents, teachers and children collaborated.

This emphasis could have been due in part to the fact that many of the

founders were themselves professional dancers, musicians or skilled

craftspeople, and brought their skills in these fields to the school

when they became involved as teachers. But there does also seem to have

been an explicit commitment to the role of artistic creativity in

creating the kind of educational environment and, indeed, the kind of

society envisioned by the founders. The classes at the school took the

form of a confederation of groups, each new child being admitted not to

the school but to a particular group, and each group made a commitment

to engage in a significant amount of music, dance and arts and craft,

which, according to Wilcher, ‘were seen as basics, not luxuries’ (Walden

Foundation 1996: 79).

Many of the aforementioned features, particularly the emphasis on the

arts, have endured over the years and are clearly an essential element

of the school’s identity. However, several founding members, reflecting,

in the mid 1980s, on the development of the school over the years,

expressed the view that the political ethos of the school community had

changed considerably. The current parent body seemed, in the words of

one of the founding members, to be ‘more interested in success’ and less

open to radical ideas on education and society. This sense can be

confirmed by a glance at the comments recently posted about the school

on the local web-based parents’ network, where enthusiastic testimonies

about the school’s unique environment typically contain comments such

as: ‘current studies are showing that this type of environment is

excellent for developing upper reasoning math skills’

[http://parents.berkeley.edu/recommend/schools/walden.html]. A cynical

reader may conclude that, while Walden Center and School still clearly

and admirably demonstrates an emphasis on creativity, a commitment to

collective decision-making, and an atmosphere of mutual respect between

teachers and children, the radical dissenting philosophy on which it was

founded has all but been replaced by an acquiescence in the mainstream

race for academic achievement and accreditation. Nevertheless, Koven

concluded, in 1987 (Walden Foundation 1996: 33), ‘When I think of Walden

functioning for almost thirty years without a director or central

authority, I’m filled with both awe and joy. Here is real affirmation of

our anarchist insight.’

In short, Walden, in its early days, seems to have differed from earlier

anarchist educational experiments primarily in that it saw itself not so

much as a vanguard of the anarchist revolution, or a step towards

developing the kind of people capable of bringing about and sustaining

the free society of the future, but, above all, as an experiment in

human living. The underlying idea seems to be a commitment to anarchism

as ‘a way of life’. As such, the Walden School would seem to be less

clearly a reflection of the political ideology of the social anarchists

discussed in the preceding chapters, although it echoes many central

anarchist ideas. One way of bringing out these differences between

Walden and the experiments set up by the nineteenth-century and early

twentieth-century anarchists is in terms of how the school community

perceived the relationship between the school and the wider society. In

the case of the early social anarchists, it is quite clear that the

school was intended to be not only a microcosm of a social alternative

to the state but also a vanguard of the social anarchist revolution. The

school, in other words, had two revolutionary functions: creating a

generation of people capable of laying the basis for the future

anarchist society, through a process of moral education and engagement

in critical social and political activism and serving as an example to

the surrounding society of how such an alternative future was possible.

In the case of Walden, in contrast, one gets the impression that the

school founders saw their school less as a revolutionary vanguard, and

more simply as a social experiment, serving primarily to remind the

outside world that alternatives are possible.

Other anarchist schools

As documented in several excellent accounts, there have been explicitly

anarchist schools in existence since probably the middle of the

nineteenth century. Notably, Paul Robin, Sebastien Faure and Madeline

Vernet, all of whom founded innovative libertarian schools in France in

the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, were associated, to

some extent, with the anarchist movement. (See Shotton 1993 and Smith

1983.) During the same period in Britain, there were several experiments

in anarchist education, along more socialist or social-anarchist lines

(for an account of these see Shotton 1993 and Thomas 2004). However,

anarchist schools are more often than not excluded from historical

accounts of radical schooling. In their account of Owenist education,

for example, Stewart and McCann make the astonishing claim that the

Owenist schools established in Britain in the mid-nineteenth century

were the only popular educational institutions in the nineteenth century

that were specifically designed to produce a change in society by

changing the character of the knowledge given to the individuals

composing it, and through their influencing the society itself. (Stewart

and McCann 1967: 91)

Summerhill – a non-anarchist experiment

The aforementioned description may suggest that the famous Summerhill

School, the longest-lived libertarian educational project, founded in

Leiston, Suffolk in 1921 by the late A.S. Neill, is a natural candidate

for inclusion in this account. Indeed, from a structural point of view,

there are many similarities between day-to-day practice at Summerhill

and that at the anarchist schools described here. Summerhill, like

anarchist schools, has no rigid timetable or curriculum, teaching is

informal, children are free to come and go as they like (provided they

remain within the school grounds – a compromise Neill was forced to make

in order to comply with the Compulsory Education Law), and Neill always

rejected traditional roles of teacher authority. Similarly, Neill’s

writings, which continue to inform the school’s policies and practice,

are full of references to the freedom of the individual child and

damning descriptions of authoritarian child-rearing practice.

One of the few differences which are immediately apparent on the

structural level has to do with the avowedly democratic principles

involved in the administration of Summerhill. In contrast to the

anarchist suspicion of majority rule as a political system (as evidenced

earlier by the example of Walden School), Summerhill has always stressed

its democratic character, both at the level of policy and day-to-day

running of the school. In the context of Summerhill and similar schools

(such as the Israeli Democratic School in Hadera, which is modelled on

Summerhill), the notion of democracy seems to have been given a very

narrow interpretation, emphasizing above all the principle of majority

rule. The school meeting, for example, one of the key features of life

at Summerhill, is an assembly where every member of the school community

– staff and children alike – have equal voice, and where all decisions

are reached by democratic voting.

Apart from this obvious example, however, the differences between

Summerhill and similar libertarian or ‘free’ schools, on the one hand,

and anarchist schools on the other, may not be immediately apparent. Yet

they are, I believe, crucial. In order to understand their significance,

one has to examine the philosophical and ideological commitments which

informed the educational principles and practice of these two different

approaches. A consideration of the philosophical background of anarchist

educational ideas, as discussed in the preceding chapters, shows that

these two superficially similar types of school in fact reflect very

different positions.

First, and perhaps crucially, Neill conceived of freedom in a primarily

individual, psychological sense. His chief intellectual influences were

those of the psychoanalytical tradition – especially the work of Wilhelm

Reich and, later, Homer Lane. Thus, although critical of existing

society, he believed that the way forward to a better world lay in

gradual reform at the individual level – a sort of mass therapy, in a

sense, by which we would gradually achieve a society of self-aware,

uninhibited, emotionally stable and happy individuals. In contrast, the

notion of freedom behind the anarchist position is, along with other

concepts such as those of freedom and cooperation, not, as Smith puts

it, ‘an abstract, context-free concept’, but one which carries ‘concrete

political connotations’ (Smith 1983: 17). The anarchist understanding of

freedom in the context of education involves, as discussed in Chapter 4,

not only a clear sense of, as Smith notes, ‘what pupils are to be freed

from’ (ibid.: 87), but also a carefully thought-out positive ideal.

In contrast, in A Dominie Dismissed, one of Neill’s early books, which

is a semi-autobiographical story based on his years as a young teacher

in rural Scotland, he describes his dissatisfaction with the current

state of society: ‘Obviously present day civilization is all wrong.

“But”, a dominie might cry, “can you definitely blame elementary

education for that?” I answer “Yes, yes, Yes!” ‘ (Neill, quoted in

Hemmings 1972: 24). Thus Neill, unlike the anarchists, did not seem to

believe that broad, structural social change was the main goal of social

reform. Rather, he envisaged a process of social transformation whereby

educational practice, reformed along the lines he suggested, could

remedy the ills of society. Interestingly, Neill echoed many anarchist

ideas in his emphasis on the need to remove authority as a basis for

relations in the family, the school and the workplace. He was greatly

impressed by the work of Homer Lane at the Little Commonwealth, the

experimental self-governing community for young delinquents.

Self-government, Neill argued, not only serves to remove the negative

effects of authority, but also ‘breeds altruism’, as witnessed by the

experiments of Homer Lane and others (Hemmings 1972: 30).

Yet Neill was adamant on his non-political – one may even argue,

value-relative – position as an educator. ‘Life is so difficult to

understand’, he remarked in an interview for the The New Era (quoted in

Hemmings 1972: 35), ‘that I personally cannot claim to settle the

relative educational values of anyone.’ As Hemmings comments, Neill

seemed genuinely to believe that ‘children must determine their own

values, in culture as in morality’ (ibid.). This is a far cry from the

committed political stance of anarchist educators who, though they may

have believed in the educational value of allowing free, critical

dialogue and encouraging creative independent thinking on the part of

pupils, had no qualms about stating their own ideological convictions,

and indeed designed a curriculum and a school climate which would

reflect the values implicit in these convictions. For ‘neutrality in the

school’, the anarchist founders of the Modern School declared, ‘can be

nothing but hypocrisy’, and they went on to state:

We should not, in the school, hide the fact that we would awaken in the

children a desire for a society of men truly free and truly equal […], a

society without violence, without hierarchies, and without privilege of

any sort. (Ferrer 1909: 6)

Neill, although he began his professional life as a teacher, developed a

growing fascination with Freudian psychology early on in his career, and

in fact described himself on several occasions as a psychologist rather

than an educationalist – his preface to The Problem Child (Neill 1926)

begins with the words: ‘Since I left education and took up child

psychology …’ and, as early as 1922, in A Dominie Abroad, he states ‘It

has come to me as something of a sudden shock that I am no longer

interested in teaching. Teaching English bores me stiff. All my interest

is in psychology’ (Hemmings 1972: 48).

As Hemmings notes, Neill’s agreement with Homer Lane’s idea of ‘original

virtue’ – reflected in his insistence that all moral instruction

perverts the innate goodness of the child – entails certain

philosophical difficulties when placed alongside his apparent moral

relativism. Neill’s position on this issue is also strikingly at odds

with the anarchists’ rejection of the romantic, Rousseauian view of a

pre-social, naturally benign human nature, and with their insistence

that human nature is actually twofold and contextualist.

A more explicit statement of Neill’s views on society and the individual

can be found in his comment, in The Problem Child, that ‘When the

individual and the social interests clash, the individual interests

should be allowed to take precedence’ (Neill 1926: 216). This suggests

that Neill did not share the anarchist view of humans as essentially

social by nature and of the impossibility of talking about individual

self-fulfilment in isolation from the social context.

Hemmings goes as far as to suggest, based on Neill’s comments about the

primacy of individual interests and the need for the child to create his

own culture and values, that

Such insistence on individual freedom led Neill to avoid serious

consideration of the social consequences of his education: he was

prepared to let these evolve their own way. On the individual level, he

was saying that if the emotions were right the intellect would look

after itself, and as regards social structure he seemed to be assuming

that, given emotionally healthy individuals, their culture could safely

be left to develop. (Hemmings 1972: 109)

Smith, too, notes that at Summerhill, there is ‘no systematic attempt to

introduce the discussion of political values […] and no real attempt to

promote cooperative values’ (Smith 1983: 100).

This view is in fact backed up by my own impressions of visits to

Summerhill today. One has the impression of a lively group of

self-confident, happy children, who may, as one imagines, very well grow

up to be happy, but completely self-centred individuals. As witnessed by

the account by a new teacher of the opposition he encountered from the

school staff to his proposal to develop a P.S.E. project involving

children from the local town, there is little attempt to engage with

broader social issues or to confront present socio-political reality.

Indeed, there is very much a sense (again, this is supported by comments

of parents at the school) of the school having created a little island,

in which Summerhill, and the superior kind of education which it

represents, is regarded as being against the rest of the world, with its

misguided ideas. Whereas the anarchists associated with the schools

described earlier were always deeply involved in the social and

political environment in which they lived, and seemed to feel themselves

to be in some sense a part of something greater, in contrast, as

Hemmings notes (Hemmings 1972: 174), for the children and teachers at

Summerhill, the school itself represents the ‘real, present society –

the conflicts and demands of the “outside” society being somewhat

removed from experience’.

This contrast is reflected, too, in the way in which Summerhill recently

conducted its battle against the threat of closure from the current

government, following a damning OFSTED inspection. Instead of addressing

the broader social implications of the threat by a centralist government

to an alternative school and broadening support for their campaign by

engaging with other groups (such as struggling comprehensive schools in

deprived areas, frustrated teachers and parents) who felt their autonomy

and rights to make educational choices similarly threatened – the school

community chose to focus their campaign on the particular validity of

Neill’s educational philosophy and their right to defend this philosophy

against that of the mainstream educational establishment. Anarchist

educators, although they did indeed aim to create a community that

represented a particular way of social organization and a way of life

different from that typical of the surrounding society, nevertheless saw

themselves as constantly engaging in the outside world – as, indeed,

involved in an ongoing process of interaction with it in their efforts

to bring about the social change they saw as so essential. As Hemmings

suggests, what Neill was really after was an appreciation of freedom for

its own sake (Hemmings 1972: 73) – a far cry from the social anarchists,

who viewed freedom, in the sense described here, as an inherent aspect

of creating a society based on mutual aid, socio-economic equality and

cooperation.

Anarchist schools versus libertarian education

In short, although many writers, Smith (1983), Shotton (1993) and Spring

(1975) among them, include Summerhill and similar schools under the

broad heading of ‘libertarian education’, I believe there is a

significant difference between the philosophical and political outlook

behind these experiments in alternative education and that of the

anarchist schools discussed earlier. It would appear that the anarchist

educational experiments are unique in the world of ‘progressive’,

‘libertarian’ or ‘free’ education not in terms of their pedagogical

practice but in terms of the substantive ideas and motivations behind

them. These ideas can only be grasped in the context of the anarchist

commitment to undermining the state by creating alternative forms of

social organization and relationships.

As discussed earlier, the anarchist view of human nature as not

predominantly or innately ‘good’ or ‘evil’, but as determined largely by

social context, goes a long way towards explaining the central role that

anarchist thinkers over the ages have assigned to educational

experiments, and particularly to the moral content and form of these

experiments. In contrast, it is in fact the libertarian position

associated with educational experiments such as Summerhill which makes

the type of optimistic or naïve assumptions about human nature often

wrongly attributed to anarchism. John Darling notes this point in his

discussion of ‘growth theorists’ (Darling 1982), where he quotes Neill

as assuming that children are ‘naturally good’ and will turn out to be

‘good human beings if [they are] not crippled and thwarted in [their]

natural development by interference’ (Neill, quoted in Darling 1982:

68).

The picture of typical anarchist schools outlined earlier, then, serves

two purposes: first, it makes it abundantly clear that anarchists did

not subscribe to the view that one can do away with education, or even

with schools, altogether, but seemed to agree that schools, and

education in general, are a valuable aspect of the project for social

change, rather than simply another objectionable aspect of the machinery

of state bureaucracy.

Second, it distinguishes the anarchist view from the pure libertarian

view, that there is something morally objectionable in the very attempt

by educators to pass on any substantial beliefs or moral principles to

children. Although anarchist educators have often been sympathetic to

libertarian educational experiments such as Summerhill, this is, I

suggest, not because of an underlying commitment to the same set of

values and principles, but rather because, as Colin Ward points out,

The handful of people who have sought to put their ideas of ‘free’

education into practice have always been so beleagured by the amused

hostility of the institutionalised education system on the one hand and

by the popular press in the other […] that they have tended to close

ranks and minimise their differences. (Ward 1990: 15)

Although, as Ehrlich puts it, ‘In an anarchist society, the social

function of schools and the potential of education would be quite

different’ (Ehrlich 1996: 15), I think the point made by Morland about

Bakunin’s thought, namely, that ‘some form of schooling will exist after

the abolition of state mechanisms’ (Morland 1997: 113), generally holds

true for the social anarchists.

How such schools would be run, and by whom, is, in keeping with the

anarchists’ commitment to free experimentation and their aversion to

blueprints, to be left to the discretion of individual communes. The

following passage from Bakunin provides further illustration of this

idea, along with support for the aforementioned point, that the social

anarchists, unlike many libertarian educators or individualist

anarchists, regarded education as an important social good and were

reluctant to leave it in the hands of parents.

It is society not the parents who will be responsible for the upkeep of

the child. This principle once established we believe that we should

abstain from specifying the exact manner in which this principle should

be applied; to do otherwise would risk trying to achieve a Utopia.

Therefore the application must be left to free experimentation and we

must await the lessons of practical experience. We say only that vis à

vis the child, society is represented by the commune, and that each

commune will have to determine what would be best for the upbringing of

the child; here they would have life in common; there they would leave

children in care of the mother, at least up to a certain age, etc.

(Bakunin, in Dolgoff 1973: 372)

However, this passage by Bakunin clearly refers to education in the

post-state reality, that is, once the social-anarchist society has been

established. Although, as discussed earlier, the anarchist view of human

nature explains the need for an ongoing process of moral education

alongside the educative function of social institutions run on anarchist

principles, many anarchists were theoretically vague on the question of

the role of education in bringing about the transition to the anarchist

society.

Most anarchist writers on education in fact completely fail to

distinguish between the stage of life within the state and the

theoretical stage of life beyond the state. Such a failure is

responsible for a great deal of confusion and, indeed, largely explains

the enthusiasm of many anarchist sympathizers for educational

experiments such as Summerhill which, while arguably in keeping with

Bakunin’s vague remarks about the forms of education acceptable in the

future anarchist society, do not, as discussed, provide the substantive

moral core necessary to further and sustain such a society. However, in

another sense, this very failure to distinguish between these two

theoretical stages in itself reflects an important aspect of the

anarchist perspective on education and one in which, I suggest, it

differs from the mainstream liberal, as well as the Marxist, view. This

point will be taken up again in the following chapters.

Means and ends in education

The picture of education that emerges from this discussion then is a

complex, dialectical one, in which education for social virtues is both

necessary to sustain stateless, cooperative communities, and is itself

reinforced by the day-to-day experience of life in such communities. Yet

how, one may still insist, are we to get from a to b? Given that we are

faced, today, with the all-pervasive and, to all intents and purposes,

permanent reality of the liberal state and its institutions, how are

educators with anarchist sympathies expected to use education as one

amongst the many means to further their goals?

This question has both a theoretical and a practical aspect. On the

theoretical level, it has to do with how we conceptualize the

relationship between means and ends.

The means–ends distinction has received considerable attention in the

tradition of liberal-analytic philosophy of education. Richard Peters

famously argued, in ‘Must an Educator Have an Aim?’ (Peters 1959), that

the inherently normative aspect of the concept ‘education’ should not

mislead us into thinking of education in terms of a model ‘like building

a bridge or going on a journey’ (Peters 1959: 123), where all

experiences and processes leading up to the stated end are regarded as

means to achieving it. So although talk of education inevitably involves

judgements of value, the simple means–ends model, according to Peters,

can give us ‘the wrong picture of the way in which values must enter

education’ (ibid.).

Yet what Peters is anxious to avoid here is a notion of aims which

implies a simple means–ends model and thus an apparent willingness to

employ any means necessary in order to achieve the stated end. He gives

as an example of what he calls a ‘very general aim’, the political aim

of equality, arguing that the type of people who regard this as an

important aim, lured by the picture of a society without inequalities,

often advocate all sorts of drastic structural measures in order to

achieve it. The notion of equality, when employed as a ‘principle of

procedure’, on the other hand, would, according to Peters, yield far

more moderate, liberal measures – for example, the insistence that

‘whatever schemes were put forward must not be introduced in a way which

would infringe his procedural principle’ (Peters 1959: 127). The second

type of reformer would, as Peters notes, not have any ‘concrete picture

to lure him on his journey’ (ibid.).

However, I would criticize Peters on this point, for ‘aims’ of the kind

he has in mind are often important in providing what Noam Chomsky has

called an ‘animating vision’ (Chomsky 1996: 70) for human activity,

particularly education. It is the way one thinks of such an aim, and the

imaginative use one makes of it, rather than its general nature, that

determines whether or not it can become a constructive factor in one’s

educational endeavours, or a restrictive, potentially dangerous one.

Positive, substantive ‘pictures’ – of a world without poverty, of a

society without distinctions of class and wealth – are often valuable in

inspiring people to act positively to improve their lives and those of

others. The fact that there is always a risk of aims being interpreted

rigidly is not an argument against having ‘concrete aims’ as such but

against trying to impose them without any critical evaluation or

sensitivity to existing conditions. As John Dewey notes, it is when aims

are ‘regarded as literally ends to action rather than as directive

stimuli to present choice’ that they become ‘frozen and isolated’ (Dewey

1965: 73).

Crucially, for Dewey, the means cannot be determined in advance, and

they are in constant interplay with the aim which, far from being a

fixed point in the distance, is constantly a part of present activity;

not ‘an end or terminus of action’ but something which directs one’s

thoughts and deliberations, and stimulates action; ‘Ends are foreseen

consequences which arise in the course of activity and which are

employed to give activity added meaning and to direct its further

course.’ (Dewey 1964: 72) Furthermore, the original ‘aim’ is constantly

being revised and new aims are ‘forever coming into existence as new

activities occasion new consequences’ (Dewey 1964: 76).

This Deweyan idea goes some way towards capturing what I believe is the

anarchist perspective on the relationship between education and social

change. Crucial to this perspective is the insight that while aims and

goals play an important role in the educational process, they do so not

in the sense of ends and means. Thus criticisms such as Erin McKenna’s,

that ‘the anarchist vision lacks a developed method of change’ (McKenna

2001: 65) seem to me to fall into the trap of assuming a simplistic

ends–means model. This model, whereby educational processes are regarded

merely as a means to achieving social or political ends, is an

inadequate tool for understanding the anarchist position.

I said, earlier, that the question of how to get from a to b has both a

theoretical and a practical aspect. I hope these remarks on the

conceptualization of ends and means go some way towards addressing the

theoretical aspect. I shall take up these themes again in the ensuing

discussion. As far as the practical aspect goes, it may be helpful to

examine this question by looking, in the next chapter, at a specific

issue of educational policy. Contrasting the liberal treatment of a

particular policy issue with the anarchist treatment of it will, I hope,

illustrate these theoretical points about the way in which anarchist

goals and visions can be reflected in educational processes and about

the general differences in perspective between anarchism and liberalism.

7 Education for an anarchist society: Vocational training and

political visions

As the preceding discussion suggests, many anarchist ideas and

experiments in education stemmed from the belief, informed by the

anarchist view of human nature, that a key aspect of the revolutionary

process involved nurturing and developing those moral qualities deemed

necessary to create and sustain a social-anarchist society. In other

words, the emphasis in anarchist educational programmes was not so much

on attempting to bring about a pre-conceived alternative model of social

organization but on laying the ground for the natural evolution of such

a model by means of fostering the attitudes that underpin it, alongside

the experiment of creating a microcosm of anarchist society. This

perspective underpins the experiments in anarchist education described

in Chapter 6, but it is often unarticulated, so it is only by unpacking

the philosophical and ideological insights of anarchism as a theory that

one can appreciate the uniqueness of such experiments in the world of

libertarian education.

As suggested earlier, the means–ends model is insufficient to capture

the relationship between education and social change within anarchist

thought. Nevertheless, the picture painted in the preceding chapter of

some typical anarchist schools, alongside the suggestion for a more

fully developed account of moral education, answers, to some extent, the

practical question of ‘What should an anarchist educator do in order to

bring the possibility of an anarchist society a little closer?’ The

present chapter attempts to answer this question from a different, but

related, angle, namely: ‘What should the anarchist policy-maker or

educational theorist do – in keeping with anarchist theory – in order to

bring the possibility of an anarchist society a little closer?’

By focusing on a particular educational question with important policy

implications, I hope to draw out what I have described as the anarchist

perspective a little more clearly, and to contrast it with other

perspectives – notably, the Marxist and the liberal ones. With this aim

in mind, I shall discuss the issue of vocational education, which is

especially pertinent due to the important anarchist idea of integral

education. As the following discussion will reveal, the question of the

role of vocational training within the school curriculum, like other

educational questions, can, from an anarchist point of view, only be

understood within a broad political context. Therefore, this discussion

will lead into a further development of the idea of the moral and

political content of anarchist education, and will tie this in with the

general theme of the anarchist perspective on the relationship between

education and social change. Accordingly, this chapter consists of two

interrelated sections. In the section on Vocational Education: Theory

and Practice, I discuss the way the notion of vocational education is

understood both within the anarchist tradition and in the work of two

contemporary philosophers of education, Christopher Winch and Richard

Pring, who have developed rigorous philosophical accounts of this notion

in the context of the liberal educational tradition. In the section on

The Moral and Political Content of Education, I examine the moral and

political content which, I argue, plays a crucial role in anarchist

education and which, accordingly, underlines the distinct perspective

offered by the anarchist position.

Vocational education: theory and practice

Integral education

The anarchist notion of integral education – that is, an education which

combined intellectual and manual training – was an important feature of

all anarchist schools, notably the Escuela Moderna in Barcelona (see

Chapter 6), and Paul Robin’s educational experiments in France (see

Smith 1983: 18–61). But the chief theoretical exponent of this idea was

Kropotkin who, in ‘Brain Work and Manual Work’ (Kropotkin 1890) and in

Fields, Factories and Workshops Tomorrow (Kropotkin 1974), set forth the

ideal of a society in which, instead of the current ‘pernicious

distinction’ between ‘brain work’ and ‘ manual work’, reflecting

divisions between a ‘labouring’ and an ‘ educated’ class, all girls and

boys, ‘without distinction of birth’, should receive a ‘complete

education’. Kropotkin’s theory was informed by the assumption, shared by

Marxist theory, that labour – as a central aspect of human life and an

element in personal well-being – is to be distinguished from work –

which, in capitalist society, becomes merely a commodity, to be sold for

a wage. Yet, perhaps more importantly, Kropotkin’s views were guided by

the belief in social equality as a valuable and attainable goal and the

ideal of a society based on mutual cooperation and fraternity.

From this perspective, Kropotkin’s analysis of capitalist industrialized

states and their inherent inequalities convinced him that it is the

capitalist system itself which divorces manual work from mental work and

thus creates the false dichotomy between the two and the associated

inequalities in social status. The only way to break down these

divisions was to provide an education in which, in the words of

Proudhon, ‘the industrial worker, the man of action and the intellectual

will all be rolled into one’ (Edwards 1969: 80). In fact, by the late

nineteenth century, this idea had become an established tenet of

revolutionary socialist educational thinking. This is reflected in the

fact that one of the first acts of the Paris Commune was to establish an

Educational Commission committed to providing all the children of the

community with integral education. The idea, as described by Edwards in

his account of the Commune, ‘expressed the desire both to learn a useful

trade and at the same time escape from the specialization caused by

division of labour and the consequent separation into educated and

uneducated classes’ (Edwards 1971, quoted in Smith 1983: 273).

Thus the notion of integral education involves more than just a breaking

down, at the practical level, of the traditional liberal-vocational

distinctions; it does not propose, that is, merely to ensure that all

children leave school with a useful trade and appropriate theoretical

knowledge so that they may become fully participating members in the

productive economy. The theoretical assumptions behind this notion are,

first and foremost, political. Integral education programmes along these

lines were seen as an essential element of educational experiments such

as those of Paul Robin, in France, where the school was intended to

create an environment embodying a commitment to social equality and the

belief that communities run on the principles of co-education, freedom

from coercion, respect for the individual child and self-government

could form the vanguard for the socialist revolution. Thus, at Paul

Robin’s school for orphans, Cempuis, intellectual education was seen

as essentially complementary to manual and physical training. Questions,

problems, needs, arose out of the day-to-day practice of the workshops,

but not in a mechanical, over-programmed way […] If manual training was

carried out in the right way, the child would want to know more of the

principles behind it. (Smith 1983: 34)

The political motivation behind this approach, then, was explicit and

was an intrinsic part of the project of laying the foundations for the

social-anarchist revolution. Similar to the theoretical defence of

polytechnical education systems established in the Soviet Union

immediately after the revolution, and in Communist China, one of the

main reasons for believing in the value of an education which involved

real encounters with the world of work was that distancing children from

this world in an academic environment would cut them off from the

experience which lay at the basis of social and political consciousness.

Both Marx and Mao explicitly defended the view that ‘combining work with

study would keep the young in touch with those moral and political

truths which were part of the consciousness of the working class’ (Smith

1983: 52). Although Kropotkin was less focused on the struggle of the

working class, and emphasized instead the needs of a complex industrial

society and the value of cooperative social organization, this theme can

nevertheless be found in much anarchist writing on the content of the

school curriculum, as illustrated, for example, in the educational

writings of Francisco Ferrer (see Chapter 6).

The early social anarchist thinkers were only too aware of the realities

of the growing industrialization they were witnessing and of the fact

that they were educating workers. They held, with Proudhon, that ‘the

work a man did was something to be proud of, it was what gave interest,

value and dignity to his life’ (Smith 1983: 25). Thus,

An education that was divorced from the world of work, that is, an

education that was entirely bookish or grammar-schoolish in conception,

was valueless from the point of view of ordinary working-class children.

Of course, an education that went too far in the other direction, which

brought up children merely to be fodder for factories, was equally

unacceptable. What was required was an education which would equip a

child for the work-place but would also give him a degree of

independence in the labour market. (Ibid.)

Furthermore, the anarchist concept of integral education, apart from

reflecting the anarchist social ideal, also involved an important notion

of personal well-being. The social-anarchist challenge to the typical

division of labour in society would, it was hoped, help to avoid the

sense of monotony involved in working in one occupation throughout life.

This was regarded as reflecting what the anarchists called the

‘fundamental organizational principle of diversification’ (ibid.: 19),

which itself was seen as a consequence of the essential human need for

diversity.

But, crucially, anarchist educational programmes also involved a

commitment to political and moral education, in the sense of challenging

the dominant values of the capitalist system – for example, the wage

system, the competitive market-place, the control of the means of

production, and so on – as well as fostering the social virtues. Thus,

while challenging the existing system and trying to minimize its

damaging effects on future workers, social anarchist educators never

lost sight of the radical new reality that they wanted to create – and

which, they believed, was fully within the scope of human capabilities

and aspirations. It is in this sense that they represent a shift in

perspective from mainstream thinking on these issues.

The social anarchist perspective on vocational education can be

interestingly contrasted with both the Marxist and the liberal one. It

is of course because Marxists focus on the class dimension as basic to

all notions of social struggle and resistance that they see the

necessity of educating a proletarian revolutionary vanguard. They are

traditionally, then, concerned with the education of workers.

Specifically, the role of education from a Marxist perspective is, above

all, to bring class political consciousness to the worker (a role which,

according to Lenin, could only be done from the outside, by an

enlightened educator) (see Bantock 1984: 242).

Bantock suggests that the Marxist enthusiasm for comprehensive education

(i.e. an education which combined academic and vocational training) was

a result first and foremost of the Marxists’ environmentalist position –

that is, the fact that it is environmental influences – amongst them

education – and not natural capacities which influence human potential.

They therefore rejected as bourgeois ideas such as intelligence-testing

and streaming. The Marxist attitude to vocational education is also

informed by the critique of labour as a commodity in the capitalist

system and the conviction that the labour process should be ‘a purposive

activity carried on for the production of use-values, for the fitting of

natural substances to human wants’ (ibid.: 229).

While anarchists share with Marxists many assumptions regarding the

nature of labour in capitalist society, the anarchist perspective on

social change and the role of the state leads to a very different

conception of vocational education, as the following discussion will

show. Similarly, this distinct anarchist perspective can be illustrated

by a contrast with common perceptions of vocational education within the

liberal tradition.

Fraternity as a component of integral education

As mentioned earlier, certain commentators have suggested that it is in

fact fraternity, rather than freedom or equality, which should be

regarded as the chief goal of social anarchism. However, as the

preceding discussion suggests, I believe that such philosophical

exercises in establishing the theoretical priority of any one goal or

value within anarchist thought are misconceived. Of course, one could

make a general point about the incommensurability of values within

political theories, as Isaiah Berlin has discussed with reference to

liberalism. However, in the case of anarchism, this general

philosophical point is particularly salient as it is, I believe, partly

a reflection of the anti-hierarchical stance of anarchist thinkers. Thus

the anarchist antipathy to structural and permanent hierarchies in

social and political organization could be read as analogous to a

general suspicion of hierarchical thinking when it comes to concepts and

values.

The aforementioned remarks notwithstanding, it is certainly true that,

as discussed in Chapter 6, fraternity can be regarded as an important

educational goal for anarchists.

The educational experiments described in Chapter 6 illustrate how the

moral qualities involved in the attitude of fraternity, which are an

essential requisite for the creation and maintenance of social anarchist

communities, were promoted largely through what we would refer to as

‘school climate’ – in other words, through the fact that the school

itself was run as a microcosm of a social-anarchist community in the

making. Geoffrey Fidler, on the basis of research into the work of the

late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French

anarchist-libertarian educators, has argued for a conceptual connection

between fraternity and the anarchist idea of integral education.

The notion of integral education, as described earlier, developed

primarily out of the anarchist aim of breaking down the class divisions

of capitalist society by doing away with the distinction between

intellectual and manual labour. But, Fidler argues, in his analysis of

early nineteenth-century French experiments in anarchist education,

At the heart of libertarian as ‘complete’ education lay the urge to

realize an equal, voluntary and ‘right’ espousal of the mutual

arrangements of the fraternal community. This was construed as ‘natural’

and ‘spontaneous’ in the particular sense of self-realization succinctly

expressed by Les Temps Nouveaux [the journal of Libertarian education,

edited by Sebastian Faure]. (Fidler 1989: 46)

What Fidler seems to be suggesting here is that the anarchists’ critique

of capitalist society hinged primarily on their objection to the

socio-economic inequalities created by the division of labour in such a

society. In positing an ideal society, therefore, they regarded it as

crucial that no such division should obtain, out of both a commitment to

social equality, and a notion of individual well-being as conceptually

and psychologically connected to the well-being of the community (see

the discussion on Bakunin and freedom, in Chapter 4). Yet such a society

could not be created or maintained without promoting and nurturing the

human propensity (already present, but often suppressed by capitalist

institutions and values) for benevolence, mutual aid and fraternity.

Fidler, in fact, in a passage reminiscent of Ritter’s discussion of

‘reciprocal awareness’ as the moral underpinning of social anarchist

society, talks of anarchist education as being, at heart, an endeavour

to ‘awaken the social instinct’. This was to be achieved, as illustrated

by the educational projects discussed in Chapter 6, largely through the

climate of the school and the moral example of teachers who were

expected to exhibit what Kropotkin regarded as the ultimate moral

principle of anarchism, namely, ‘treating others as one wishes to be

treated oneself’ (Fidler 1989: 37).

Fidler argues that this anarchist perspective, best reflected in the

work of Kropotkin and Reclus, makes a distinctive addition to the world

of libertarian education, in that the notion of integral education was

regarded, above all, in an essentially moral light, as ‘a means of

achieving the conscious or ethical form of fraternity’ (Fidler 1989:

35). The social anarchists involved in such educational experiments,

according to Fidler, ‘enunciate a practical utopianism by affirming

their commitment to apparently unrealistic moral principles as a vehicle

for the realistic purposes of persuasion, education and guidance in

present conduct’ (ibid.).

The anarchist emphasis on the moral qualities necessary to sustain a

society characterized by a breakdown of the manual-intellectual

distinctions and their resulting inequalities, then, is part of their

radical vision of the possibility of a stateless society. As such, it

seems more linked to a specific political vision than the general idea

of polytechnic education. However, many theorists within the liberal

tradition have also dealt with the conceptual problems involved in the

traditional liberal/vocational distinction, and it is important to

understand how the anarchist treatment of this distinction differs from

the liberal one.

Reconceptualizing the liberal-vocational distinction

In recent years, some philosophers of education have raised

philosophical challenges to the apparent dichotomy between liberal and

vocational education. Notably, Richard Pring has argued for a broadening

and reformulating of the liberal ideal so as to embrace the idea of

vocational relevance, along with ‘practical intelligence, personal

development [and] social and community relevance’ (Pring 1995: 195).

Similarly, Christopher Winch has developed a detailed and rich

conception of vocational education, embracing concerns about ‘moral and

spiritual well-being’ alongside notions of economic and political goods

(Winch 2000).[5] Pring’s motivation for this reconceptualization seems

to be primarily the recent attacks that the traditional liberal view has

come under – notably the claim that it excludes many people from the

‘liberal conversation’ – and the threat to liberal educational values

from those who, in response to such attacks, reduce educational goals to

the language of ‘efficiency’ or to narrow economic ends. In contrast,

Winch’s chief motivation seems to be a sense that the issue of

vocational education has not been given the serious philosophical

treatment it deserves – presumably partly because of the dominance of

the traditional liberal conception.

Richard Pring is rightly critical of the tendency to talk of liberal

education as if it were, conceptually, diametrically opposed to

vocational education. Yet his chief criticism is the point that this

implies that

the vocational, properly taught, cannot itself be liberating – a way

into those forms of knowledge through which a person is freed from

ignorance, and opened to new imaginings, new possibilities: the

craftsman who finds aesthetic delight in the object of his craft, the

technician who sees the science behind the artefact, the reflective

teacher making theoretical sense of practice. (Pring 1995: 189)

Pring’s criticism, in other words, is not an external critique from a

socio-political perspective (a perspective which, as the foregoing

discussion shows, characterizes all anarchist thought on education) but

comes from within the educational sphere itself. He argues that

vocational education, just like the traditional conception of liberal

education, can be intrinsically valuable and connected to a sense of

personal well-being and therefore should not be so rigidly conceptually

separated.

The conception of freedom which Pring appeals to here is the very

conception which lies at the core of the classic liberal account of

education from Plato onwards, namely the idea of education as liberating

in the sense of freeing the mind. This impression is strengthened by the

role Pring assigns to the work of Oakeshott in his discussion of the

model of education which forms the background of his analysis. In

Oakeshott’s idea of education as conversation, freedom is conceived as a

freeing of the mind from everyday, concrete concerns; liberal education,

on this account, involves an ‘invitation to disentangle oneself from the

here and now of current happenings and engagements, to detach oneself

from the urgencies of the local and the contemporary…’ (Oakeshott,

quoted in Pring 1995: 186). As Pring notes, this particular conception

of liberal education, in focusing upon the world of ideas, ‘ignores the

world of practice – the world of industry, of commerce, of earning a

living …’ (ibid.). Yet in arguing that, in our reconceptualizing of the

liberal ideal, it is this ‘art of reflection’ that we must preserve,

Pring, it seems, is still subscribing to a basically liberal notion of

what it means to be free.

In anarchist thought, in contrast, the concern with the concrete aspects

of social justice, distribution of goods, and the material well-being of

the community, is always at the forefront of educational thought and

practice. Freedom is understood as, first and foremost, effective

freedom from all forms of oppression. Thus the emphasis, for the

anarchists, in breaking down the liberal-vocational distinction, is not

on encouraging critical, detached reflection in the sphere of vocational

training in order to create more reflective, more intellectually

developed craftsmen, but on paving the way for the concrete freedom of

the worker from the restrictions of the capitalist state by, amongst

other things, abolishing the division into manual and non-manual

labourers.

Of course, at the time at which Kropotkin was writing, the social

divisions into ‘brain workers’ and ‘manual workers’ of which he speaks

were far more apparent and clear-cut than they are today. Early

socialist thinkers could not have predicted the socio-economic

developments of late capitalism, in which the traditional category of

‘workers’ is no longer such a clearly demarcated social class. Yet the

important point to understand in this context concerns precisely this

relationship between educational goals and existing economic and social

reality. For Pring, Winch, and many other writers in this field, the

structure of the economy, the labour market, and the social and

political institutions in which such educational debates take place are

obviously acknowledged to be subject to critical appraisal on the part

of active citizenship, but it is not the aspiration to radically reform

them which forms the basis for educational philosophy and theory. This

may appear to be a subtle difference, and, indeed, it is important not

to understate the presence, within liberal theory, of a tradition of

critical enquiry and reform, and of the idea of citizens as actively

shaping society. But, especially within the context of liberal

philosophy of education which, over the years, has increasingly become

concerned with education in the liberal state, this assumption of the

liberal state’s inevitability as a basic framework sets thinkers in this

tradition apart from the radical social anarchists, in spite of their

agreement on certain underlying values. Even theorists like Winch and

Pring, whose analyses present a radical challenge to the traditional

conceptual parameters of liberal education, still operate within these

basic assumptions regarding the inevitability of the liberal state.

As argued earlier, although the aspiration to radically restructure

social and political organization lies at the heart of anarchist

thought, the chief concern of anarchist educators is not to directly

promote a specific model of the good society but to create an

environment which will foster and encourage the development of the human

propensities and virtues necessary to create and sustain new forms of

social organization without the state. Thus the school, for anarchist

educators, is seen primarily as a microcosm of one of the many possible

forms of anarchist society; an experiment in non-hierarchical, communal

forms of human interaction where, crucially, alongside a rigorous

critique of existing capitalist society, the interpersonal relationships

which constitute educational interaction are based on the normative role

assigned to the human qualities of benevolence, mutual aid and social

cooperation.

Pring and other writers in the liberal tradition note the importance of

fostering critical attitudes in pupils, but because of the liberal state

perspective which informs their work, their discussion seems to lack the

normative vision which guides anarchist educators. Indeed, whether out

of an explicit commitment to autonomy or an endorsement of some version

of liberal neutrality, liberal educators are often reluctant to speak in

anything other than general terms of providing pupils with the tools

needed to make critical judgements and life-choices. In arguing, for

example, for a breakdown of the distinction between education and

training, Pring makes the point that one and the same activity could be

both ‘educational’ and ‘training’ (ibid.). But, again, the political,

moral aspect is entirely absent from this discussion. One can, as Pring

says, change vocational approaches to education so as to aim to educate

‘broadly liberal, critical’ people through the activity of training

them; but this in itself does not challenge the way we conceptualise

society; the basic socio-economic distinctions would still hold, even if

one aspires to have educated workers.

All this is not to suggest that theorists like Pring and Winch overlook

the political and economic context of educational policy. Indeed one

important contribution of such critiques of the traditional ideal of

liberal education is the claim that it does not fully take into account

the importance of addressing, at the level of educational goals, the

needs of society and the economy. As Pring puts it, ‘there is a

political and economic context to education that we need to take

seriously’ (Pring 1995: 22).

Much of Winch’s work has been devoted to developing a detailed account

of this point, drawing on the notion of social capital. Starting from

the assumption that all education aims at personal development and

fulfilment, Winch develops the idea of ‘liberal vocationalism’, which

embraces civic and vocational education, entailing a concept of

vocational education which is at once far richer and broader than the

instrumentalist conception and also, in drawing on social capital

theory, implies a far wider definition of productive labour than the

influential one developed by Adam Smith and later by Marx.

In thereby insisting that vocational education should by no means be

conceptually confined to ‘preparation for producing commodities, or even

necessarily for paid employment’, but that it involves such aspects as

civic responsibility, cognitive skills, social practices and spiritual

development, Winch’s analysis may, at first glance, seem to be

completely in tune with the anarchist aspiration to breakdown the narrow

delineation of vocational, as opposed to academic, education.

However, in social anarchist theory, the political and economic context

is defined by a normative set of values, the concrete implications of

which demand a radical restructuring of our social arrangements and

institutions.

Writers within the liberal tradition commonly refer to the ‘liberal

traditions of education’ (Pring 1995: 9) as opposed to the ‘utilitarian

ones of training’ (ibid.). The point of both Winch’s and Pring’s

analyses is to break down these distinctions so as to provide a broader

conception of what it means, within a liberal conception of the good

society, to be educated. Yet the conflict to be resolved, for the

anarchist, is not that between ‘Those who see the aim of education to be

intellectual excellence (accessible to the few) and those who see its

aim to be social utility (and thus accessible to the many)’ (Pring 1995:

114) – a conflict which Pring regards as ‘the most important and most

difficult to resolve’ (ibid.) – but that between our vision of what kind

of society we want, and what kind of society we have. Education, on this

view, is an inherently normative process, and, crucially, a form of

human interaction and relationship. Yet as such, it is not merely a

means for achieving our political ideals, but part of the process for

discovering, articulating and constantly experimenting with these

ideals, in the course of which those particular human qualities assigned

a normative role in our concept of the good society, need to be

continually reinforced, articulated and translated into educational

practice.

Thus, while most social anarchists would probably agree with Winch that

‘it is important to maintain a very broad vision of “preparation for

work” ‘ (Winch 2000: 163), they would go further than his conceptual

point that ‘a society that sees the development of individuals, of

economic strength and of civil institutions as closely connected, would

find it natural to attempt to achieve a balance in combining liberal,

vocational and civic education’ (ibid.: 191). For social anarchists are

not concerned merely with insisting that any discussion of education in

society must take these issues into account, but are motivated by the

belief that there is something radically wrong with current society, and

that reconceptualizing education and engaging in specific, normative

educational practices, is one way to go about changing it.

It would be misleading to characterize either the traditional liberal

view or the kind of liberal vocationalism promoted by Winch as views

lacking in aspirations for improvement or for social reform. It does

however seem true to say that both these views – as evident in the work

of the authors cited here – assume that the way forward lies in a

broadening and deepening of the democratic aspects of our social

institutions, out of a belief that this will both contribute to personal

well-being and strengthen the moral fabric of society. The unwritten

assumption behind much of this work is that the basic structure of the

liberal state is not itself subject to debate. Thus Winch, while clearly

committed to democracy and to further democratization of social

institutions, carefully avoids making any normative pronouncements as to

the preferred mode of social organization. Indeed he attests to this

position early on in the book, defining the brand of liberalism to which

he subscribes as ‘the contingent and non-foundational kind described by

Gray as “agnostic” or “contested” ‘ (Winch 2000: 2).

Likewise, liberal theorists of vocational education cannot be accused of

insensitivity to the moral and political aspects of the kind of

educational values being promoted. Pring, for example, mentions the

moral aspect of the social utility conception. However he discusses this

in the narrow sense of the promotion of virtues (such as enterprise)

seen to be essential for helping learners function more positively (i.e.

morally) in the world of work and business.

Similarly, in arguing for a broadening and elaboration of the often

vague concepts of personal development and flourishing employed in

educational policy documents, Pring outlines a philosophical concept of

what it means to be a person. In discussing the moral aspects of this

concept, he refers to two senses in which it is a moral one: ‘It implies

the capacity to take responsibility for one’s own actions and one’s own

life. On the other hand, it indicates the desirability of being so

treated – of being given the opportunity for taking on that

responsibility and of respecting it in others’ (Pring 1995: 126–127).

This seems, in contrast to the anarchist perspective, to imply a rather

passive idea of what being moral is; it leaves out completely the idea

of the subject as creator of social reality, or as engaged in the

ongoing project of making the world a better place. It is true that

Pring, in the course of his discussion, does emphasize the notion of the

person as a ‘social animal’ (ibid.: 132) and refers to the Greek

tradition that true human life requires participation in the political

life of the state (ibid.: 133). However, one cannot get away from the

sense that ‘social and political life’ in this perspective, is not

viewed primarily, as it is for the anarchists, as something essentially

malleable and subject to constant, and often radical, experimentation.

Winch, too, notes the importance of moral education. But this, again, is

in terms of virtues required by workers as people interacting with

others – the workplace, in other words, is seen as

an essential location for the validation of life-choices, for the

acquisition of technical skills in conditions where they are to be

applied seriously, in forming young people into the values, disciplines

and virtues that are prized in a particular occupational context and in

making them aware of the social ramifications of their chosen

occupation. (Winch 2000: 79)

It is in this context that Winch argues for the role of schools in

preparing people for such choice-making, and for the continuation of

this moral aspect of education in the world of the workplace. Again,

this world, it is implied, is simply ‘out there’. In other words, it is

not at the meta-level that moral and political questions seem to enter

such debates on educational aims but at the level of implementation of

educational programmes within an already accepted social structure.

So both Winch and Pring, although rejecting the narrow conception of

vocational education as ‘preparation for the world of work’, still seem

to remain pretty much within the tradition that regards ‘the world’ –

however richly theorized – as something which is simply out there, to be

prepared for and adapted to by the education system and its graduates,

rather than to be created or changed.[6]

Education and the socio-economic structure: cause or effect?

In general, although most philosophers in the liberal tradition now

acknowledge the relationship between educational ideas and political and

economic issues, this relationship is often implied to be one-way:

education should fit in with economic and political trends, rather than,

as has been traditionally argued by radical dissenters, opposing them

and standing for something different.

The danger, for Pring, is that education may, by clinging to the

traditional liberal ideals, become ‘disconnected from the social and

economic world which it should enlighten’ (Pring 1995: 123). This is,

indeed, a welcome criticism and an important reassessment of the

traditional liberal ideal. However, it reveals the central contrast

between this and the far more radical anarchist vision which, rather

than merely ‘enlightening’ the social and economic world, seeks to

radically change it. So while Winch’s general conclusion seems to be in

favour of the idea that ‘educational, moral and economic ideals are

linked, both conceptually and causally’ (Winch 2000: 134), the

interesting question here is which way the causality goes. For the

social anarchists, ‘politics, and for that matter economics, is

subservient to morality’ (Adan 1992: 175). Although one suspects that

both Winch and Pring would sympathize with this remark, it is hard to

find explicit support for it within their writings on vocational

education.

Another interesting illustration of this difference in perspective comes

from John White’s recent book, Education and the End of Work (White

1997). In criticizing dominant theoretical analyses of the role and

nature of work in society, White, while questioning Marxist-influenced

views on the centrality of labour to human life, nevertheless

acknowledges, in a way which may seem in tune with the anarchist account

discussed earlier, that ‘any reasonable account of education should make

work-related aims central’ (ibid.: 16). He goes on to address the

question of how parents, teachers and policy makers should conceive the

relationship between education and work. This question, he says, cannot

be answered in the abstract. ‘If we could see into the future how things

will be in 2050 or 2100, we would be better placed. But the future of

work is radically uncertain’ (ibid.: 69). White then goes on to discuss

two possible scenarios: one involving the ‘continuance of the status

quo’ with regard to the dominance of what he refers to as heteronomous

work in societies like Britain; the other involving a ‘transformation

into a society in which heteronomous work is less dominant’.

Interestingly, White himself acknowledges the implications of this

approach whereby education may be seen to have a primarily reactive

function, and makes the important point – a point in keeping with the

anarchist perspective – that ‘education can help to create social

futures as well as reflect them’ (ibid.: 78). However, in spite of these

important broad points, the focus of White’s analysis is a far narrower

one, namely, the role of work in individuals’ lives. Thus, to the extent

to which social questions such as equality play a part in his work, they

do so in the context of notions like ‘universal equality of respect’,

intended to further the aim of helping everyone to attain the means for

a life of autonomous well-being. Although White acknowledges that this

liberal ideal will in all likelihood entail a policy of educational

investment in the less well-off, any social restructuring involved is

secondary to the educational goal of fostering children’s ability to

become autonomous adults. White’s preference for a society in which

industriousness is no longer regarded as a central moral value, and in

which there is a reduction in heteronomous work and a more pluralistic

social and cultural perception of work, is ultimately a result of this

ideal rather than, as in the anarchist case, the reflection of a vision

of a particular kind of society.

The social-anarchist revolution: within the state and beyond the

state

These issues may be further clarified with reference to the distinction

(a distinction that, as mentioned, anarchist theorists commonly fail to

make) between the pre-revolutionary and the post-revolutionary stage,

or, more accurately, between life within the state and life beyond the

state. This is not a purely temporal distinction for, in the anarchist

view, the social revolution is an ongoing endeavour. Therefore one

cannot talk of a clear distinction between pre-revolutionary and

post-revolutionary reality. I suggest, however, that it is helpful to

distinguish between life in a stateless, social-anarchist society and

life within the state.

Thus for example it is, of course, quite possible that once the

social-anarchist revolution is successful and society is organized in

such a way that basic needs are met and communal arrangements, ideally,

have secured relatively stable economic relations, it may make sense to

talk of the kind of ‘liberal-vocationalism’ that Winch is sympathetic to

– in other words, an education which, in addition to providing a sound

intellectual and moral basis, ‘encourage[s] young people to make

occupational choices from amongst those that society considers

worthwhile’ (Winch 2000: 31). However, within the nation state, where,

according to the anarchist critique, inequalities are entrenched and

reflected in, amongst other things, the division of labour and the

market economy, such ‘choices’ cannot be made freely for they are

dictated by the economic needs of the state which, by definition, is

inimical to human freedom and flourishing.

Furthermore, even if the state is successfully dismantled, given the

anarchist commitment to perfectibility and to constant experimentation,

and bearing in mind the contextualist conception of human nature, it is

important for the community to continue to provide an education which

maintains a critical attitude towards existing practices and

institutions and fosters attitudes of fraternity and mutual aid.

The aforementioned points about the anarchist perspective on education

may suggest that the anarchists were unduly concerned with questions

about the social good, overlooking the question of personal fulfilment

and well-being. Indeed, Richard Pring makes the point that the apparent

conflict between liberal education and social utility ‘reflects a deeper

divide between the pursuit of individual good and the pursuit of social

welfare’ (Pring 1995: 121). But this again presupposes a particular way

of looking at the individual. In anarchist ethics, as discussed earlier,

individual freedom and well-being are created and sustained in the

context of social interaction; one cannot consistently talk of the

individual good without taking the social context into account. In the

anarchist view of morality, indeed, the individual and the moral good

are conceptually and logically bound (see Adan 1992: 49–60). Many

anarchist theorists, most notably Bakunin, were concerned to develop a

conceptual defence of ‘the intrinsic identity between the individual and

the common good’ (Adan 1992: 56). Their conception of the community as

the basic social unit was of

a whole of wholes, whose function is making possible the fullest

realization of common good; i.e. the creation of conditions for personal

actualization to an unlimited degree […]. The individual is a whole in

itself and the good it attains is also an objective good, not merely

subjective and thus, in a way, the actualization of society at large.

(Ibid.)

On the policy level of devising specific educational programmes which

would help children enter the world of work, Winch’s analysis makes

several important points, some of which have interesting connections to

the anarchist view. But again, from an anarchist point of view, these

points are mostly relevant to education beyond the state. For example,

in his discussion of the issue of transparency of markets, Winch points

out that all vocational education depends to some extent, for it to have

been considered a success, on speculation as to the availability of

certain jobs in the labour market. But, as he explains,

at the level of skills acquisition, the labour market is often a futures

market, trading in commodities whose value will only become clear at

some point in the future […] One is, in effect, betting that a current

investment will be worthwhile in two or three years’ time. (Winch 2000:

128)

The implicit picture of economic life behind these remarks is of the

economic sphere as something which is, as John White puts it (White

1997: 78), ‘reflected by’ rather than ‘created by’ education. Anarchist

educators like those discussed in Chapter 6, fuelled by the desire to

replace the capitalist state system with what they regarded as a morally

superior social model, assume a very different picture. An outspoken

and, perhaps, rather extreme expression of this view comes from Harry

Kelly, in his outline of the purpose of the Modern School in New York at

the beginning of the twentieth century (see Chapter 6). The anarchist

educational movement involves, Kelly argues, ‘the idea of making all

industry cooperative,’ from which it follows that ‘it is inconceivable

that education in its future evolution will not sometime take complete

control and possession of the world’s industry’ (Kelly 1916: 53).

Sinister as this may sound, I believe the main point of Kelly’s remarks

is not the proposal of any revolutionary tactics for seizing control of

the capitalist state infrastructure, but rather the insight that

socio-economic structures, moral values and educational ideals are all

bound up in the normative project of constructing educational policy and

processes. In this, Kelly was echoing Kropotkin’s belief that the social

anarchist socio-economic model is

of absolute necessity for society, not only to solve economic

difficulties, but also to maintain and develop social customs that bring

men in contact with one another; [it] must be looked to for establishing

such relations between men that the interest of each should be the

interest of all; and this alone can unite men instead of dividing them.

(Kropotkin 1897: 16)

Accordingly, while anarchist educational projects run within the reality

of the (capitalist) state sought to embody, in their structure and

day-to-day management, the principles and practice of communal living,

their long-term programmes for vocational education also embodied the

hope that the ‘outside world’ for which they were preparing their

children would be – largely as a result of this moral groundwork – a

very different one from that of the present.

Education and the market

Winch notes that in neo-classical economic theory, the assumption is

that markets are ‘transparent’, in the sense that all participants in

the market place have access to information about price, quality, supply

and demand. But, as he remarks (Winch 2000: 128), ‘this is patently

false’, and

it is now much more widely admitted, particularly through the influence

of the ‘Austrian’ school of economics, that markets are not completely

transparent, that they filter information and depend on local and tacit

knowledge of buyers and sellers for their successful operation.

In the case of labour markets, even though professionals may be

available to advise novices – for example, pupils undergoing vocational

education programmes – ‘it is still highly likely that there will be

insufficient information to make an informed decision when the

availability of jobs depends on larger macro-economic factors that most

people will not be in a good position to understand’ (ibid.: 129).

In an anarchist society, the market would be run along cooperative lines

– a point which, anarchist theorists were keen to stress, was not

hostile to competition. Indeed, as the anarchist economist Stephen P.

Andrews has argued, ‘competition itself is not socially negative. […]

Correctly employed, economical competition leads to the growth of a

perfectly balanced system of social cooperation’ (in Adan 1992: 190).

The term ‘correctly employed’ here presumably refers to a climate of

individuals cooperating in freedom on the basis of a sound moral

education. But aside from this point, Winch’s point about market

transparency may be relevant in the reality of anarchist society beyond

the state, and in fact suggests that small-scale economies, such as that

of the anarchist commune, would be more conducive to such transparency

than the markets of the capitalist state, due not only to the simple

question of size but also to the anarchist commitment to participatory

self-government and bottom-up forms of social organization.

So although Winch is in agreement with elements of the anarchist

critique in stating that young people are

potentially at the mercy of a market which may not have a particular

call for their skills and knowledge at a stage in life when, by

definition, and according to a well-established account of how markets

work, they are in a poor position to make rational decisions on the

labour and training market. (Winch 2000: 130)

His solution to this problem is to find ways of linking demand and

supply of labour so that vocational education can successfully provide

students with jobs in the market. He does not see these problems as

inherent features of market capitalism which can only be remedied by

radical political and social change. Similarly, Winch argues

convincingly that

for vocational education, it is important to maintain a very broad

vision of ‘preparation for work’ which not only encompasses the

different forms of paid employment, but also domestic and voluntary

labour. It also follows, from the reluctance that I have argued one

should have towards unduly elevating the value of some occupations and

denigrating others according to personal taste and preference, that a

society that wishes to continue to develop various currents not just of

skill, but of value and outlook on life, needs to take a generous

attitude to the provision of vocational education, so as to allow for

the proper development of a wide variety of occupations. (Ibid.: 163)

But the denigration and preferences which Winch refers to may in fact

be, as the anarchists would argue, largely a result of the inherent

structural features of our society. If this is the case then, again,

only a radical reconceptualization of our social institutions could

adequately address these issues.

We have seen, then, how the anarchist conception of integral education

breaks down the traditional distinctions between the liberal and the

vocational ideal not just from a conceptual point of view, nor from the

point of view of creating a broader educational goal for modern liberal

states, but as part of the radical challenge to the existing political

order.

When working within the constraints of life within the state, the task

for the anarchist educator is to lay the grounds for the transition to

an anarchist, self-governing, equitable community. One can begin this

process, as argued by Kropotkin, Ward and others, on the smallest

possible scale, by challenging dominant values and encouraging the human

propensity for mutual aid, cooperation and self-governance. Indeed, as

discussed in previous chapters, the anarchist revolution is

conceptualized by most of the social anarchists not as a violent

dismantling of the present system in order to replace it with a

radically new one, nor, as in the case of Marxism, as a remoulding of

human tendencies and attitudes, but as a process of creating a new

society from the seeds of aspirations, tendencies and trends already

present in human action. As Kropotkin emphasizes, the foundations of

anarchist society are, above all, moral, and thus one cannot escape the

conclusion that the emphasis of the educational process must be on

fostering those moral attitudes which can further and sustain a viable

anarchist society. Of course, part of this process involves adopting a

critical attitude towards current institutional and political practices

and arrangements, with an emphasis on the manifestations of oppression

and social injustice. But this critical stance has to be encouraged in a

climate which itself reflects the values of solidarity and equality.

Another essential ingredient in this educational process is the absence

of fixed blueprints for future organization; in other words, although

pupils should be encouraged to reflect on broad social and political

issues, and to question current institutional arrangements, they must

not, in the anarchist view, be manipulated into advocating a specific

form of social organization, but should be encouraged to see themselves,

first and foremost, as potential social innovators and creators. Of

course, the question of whether the anarchist educational projects

discussed here in fact succeeded in avoiding such manipulation is open

to debate. The crucial point of such educational endeavours,

nevertheless, is to encourage pupils to grasp the central anarchist idea

that society and political life are malleable and potentially subject to

constant improvement, rather than a fixed backdrop to passive consumers

or bystanders. It is in this context that the idea of integral education

plays such an important role. Thus, although for the social anarchists,

the aim of creating a different form of social organization remains at

the level of an aspiration, with no fixed delineations, the moral

qualities necessary to sustain such a society are clearly determinate –

based on solidarity and mutual aid.

Scarcity and the circumstances of justice

The aforementioned discussion has interesting conceptual connections

with the discussion of the Rawlsian notion of the circumstances of

justice. For the circumstances of justice which form the starting point

for Rawlsian liberalism not only assume the absence of fraternal

interpersonal ties as a basis for human action (see Chapter 5) and thus

for decisions taken under the veil of ignorance but also make

assumptions regarding the level of scarcity of resources. Kropotkin, in

contrast – the principle theorist of anarchist economics – developed a

notion of a global economy based on the assumption that sufficient

resources are available, on a global scale, to satisfy all basic needs,

thus rejecting the basic assumption of fundamental scarcity that

underpins both classical political economy and the type of neoclassical

economic theories which Winch cites. Kropotkin, as Knowles (2000)

discusses, was scathing in his criticism of the way in which Malthusian

ideas had permeated economic theory. ‘Few books’, he remarked, ‘have

exercised so pernicious an influence upon the general development of

economic thought’ (ibid.: 30), describing this influence as follows:

This postulate stands, undiscussed, in the background of whatever

political economy, classical or socialist, has to say about

exchange-value, wages, sale of labour force, rent, exchange, and

consumption. Political economy never rises above the hypothesis of a

limited and insufficient supply of the necessaries of life; it takes it

for granted. And all theories connected with political economy retain

the same erroneous principle. Nearly all socialists, too, admit the

postulate. (Ibid.: 30)

In contrast, Knowles argues, ‘The driving force of Kropotkin’s political

economy arose from his perceived need to satisfy the needs of all; to

achieve the “greatest good for all,” to provide a measure of “wealth and

ease” for all’ (ibid.).

Similarly, in arguing that well-being could be guaranteed partly by

ensuring that all members of society worked no more than 5 hours a day,

Kropotkin claimed to be presenting an important challenge to mainstream

economic thought (which he referred to as ‘the metaphysics called

political economy’), and which had ignored such aspects of economy in

the life of the worker: ‘few economists, as yet, have recognized that

this is the proper domain of economics’ (ibid.).

In short, the earlier discussion supports the insight that, for the

social anarchists, economic principles and the world of labour were, in

an important sense, subservient to moral principles, and that it is the

moral picture of an ideal social structure which underlies the anarchist

view of education as crucially intertwined with socio-economic reality.

The moral and political content of education

Removing state control of schools

The actual policy steps required to translate this radical political

reconceptualization into educational practice bring us back, naturally,

to the central anarchist objection to the state. Part of the necessary

process of emancipating the workers, for the social anarchists, involved

removing education from the control of the state. Proudhon, Godwin and

other early anarchist theorists regarded education as a key factor in

creating intellectual and moral emancipation, much along the lines of

the traditional liberal ideal. Yet in schools controlled by the state,

this was virtually impossible, in their view. The first step, then, had

to be to remove state control from education. This move, in and of

itself, of course would not be enough unless the education offered was

substantively different, in moral terms, from the traditional one; that

is, unless, as discussed earlier, it challenged competitive,

authoritarian instincts and encouraged instead values of mutual aid,

cooperativeness and self-management.

Proudhon, one of the first anarchist theorists to develop the concept of

integral education, envisaged the school becoming something like a

workshop. Crucially, he insisted that the education system must, like

other aspects of society, become decentralized, so that the

responsibility for the setting up and managing of schools would rest

with parents and communities and would be closely tied to local workers’

associations (see Smith 1983: 26). In this, Proudhon articulated,

perhaps more than any other anarchist theorist, the idea of the

necessary intimacy between school and work. He held something similar to

the Marxist conception of labour as central to human well-being, and

insisted that education should be polytechnical – enabling the students

to master a range of skills, including the theoretical knowledge they

involved, and only later to specialize. But Proudhon’s ideal seems to

stem largely from a romantic picture of pre-industrial society. To

translate this conception of the school as workshop into our own society

would be highly problematic. The ‘ties with the world of work’ which

Proudhon envisaged would be more likely to be ties with huge

corporations and financial companies, involving market-capitalist

values, than the associations with small artisans’ and workers’ guilds

which formed part of Proudhon’s rather naïve romantic vision.

This problem simply illustrates, once again, the point that although

decentralization and the consequent undermining of state power are key

goals of anarchist programmes, they cannot be achieved without laying

the moral and political groundwork – without, that is, fostering values

capable of sustaining a truly stateless, decentralized society. For a

more detailed discussion of this point, with reference to current

proposals for removing education from state control, see Chapter 8.

To sum up the argument so far, and to connect these points back to the

discussion of perspective with which I began this chapter; approaching

educational (as well as economic) thought from a vision of what the

ideal society would look like, and making questions about how feasible

this vision is, why it is desirable, how different it is from our

present one, and what the transition would involve part of the

educational-philosophical debate itself, puts this debate in a very

different light. From the point of view of a commitment to anarchist

principles, it may well be that the main conclusions of this discussion

are that far more emphasis needs to be placed on fostering particular

values, aiming to create an educational environment which reflects these

values – solidarity, mutual aid, sensitivity to injustice and so on. But

even if one disagrees with these specific normative conclusions, one can

still appreciate the general point that reconceptualizing the

relationship between philosophy of education and political thought so

that the two interact in a way which assumes questions about the future

form of society to be very much still open to debate, and which

approaches children, teachers and parents as people engaged in its

creation, can add a valuable perspective to such debates. At the very

least, they may help us to rearticulate, re-examine and imbue with

greater relevance, some of the very values – such as freedom, critical

thinking and justice – which we so often assume lie at the core of

liberal thought.

Education for social change

The aforementioned discussion of vocational education has, I hope,

helped to draw out the way in which anarchist educational programmes and

policy reflect the conviction that there is a substantive, positive core

of moral values which is the crucial ingredient in any educational

process aimed at transforming society in keeping with the vision of a

stateless society. Particularly, anarchist educators were concerned in

identifying and nurturing the social virtues which, so they believed,

reinforced both the feasibility and the desirability of their ideal.

This analysis illustrates how the political dimension of anarchist

thought is reflected at all levels of the educational process – not in

terms of imposing a blueprint or training a revolutionary vanguard, but

in terms of raising awareness of the radical possibilities for political

change and the vision of a society radically different from our own – in

which we are concerned not merely to educate workers, but to believe

that the distinctions between workers and non-workers will disappear.

The utopian aspect of anarchism is already implied by these comments,

and I wish to elaborate on how it is reflected in the curriculum by

means of a discussion of political education. This discussion is

connected to the idea of vocational education in several important

respects.

Roy Edgley (1980) presents the tension between liberal aspirations to

break down class-based social inequalities and social-political reality

rather depressingly, suggesting that students are ‘prepared for manual

work, at least in part, by being failed in the predominantly mentalistic

process of the schools’ (ibid.: 9). Edgley draws on D.H. Lawrence’s

description of the ‘malcontent collier’ who, due to the ‘myth of equal

opportunity’ which permeates the liberal education system, cannot be but

a failure in his own eyes. If, Edgley argues, education is to take

seriously the goal of preparing students for the world of work,

it must ensure that there is at least a rough and at least a relative

match in skills between its student output and the skill levels of the

job positions of the occupational structure. That means that education

must reproduce, at the skill levels of its students, the gross

inequalities, in particular the class inequalities, of that occupational

structure. Given such a task, education’s commitment to social justice

and equality, an essential part of its liberal idealism, is then

understood in terms of equality of opportunity. Higher and middle-class

job positions and their associated educational qualifications are seen

as scarce goods to be distributed as prizes in the time-honoured

bourgeois way, by competition, and although the competitors must finish

unequal, education meets its moral ideal by ensuring that they start

equal and compete fairly. (Ibid.: 8)

It is, Edgley argues, extremely unlikely that education can eliminate

inequalities to such a degree, and thus equality of opportunity

represents, in the liberal educational tradition, ‘an unhappy compromise

between education’s liberal ideals and the reality of a class-structured

division of labour’ (ibid.: 9).

The anarchist response to this depressing scenario is to postulate an

ideal reality in which the class-structured division of labour – which,

anarchists argue, is a result of the modern capitalist state – simply

does not exist, to argue that such an alternative social reality could

exist and to construct an account of the types of human propensities

needed to support such a reality. Education then needs to focus on

fostering such propensities and on providing both liberal and vocational

training so as to prepare children to be the creators of such a social

reality. Yet this approach on its own may seem naïve and, clearly, has

to be supplemented by some form of political education, so that students

understand the critique of existing society, and have the analytic tools

necessary to forge new forms of social organization. A similar

realization characterizes some more critical liberal positions and,

indeed, one possible way out of Edgley’s depressing conclusion is the

type of radical political education formulated by Patricia White.

Edgley argues, drawing largely on Patricia White’s work, for a radical

role for political education. As White theorizes this idea, political

education should have as its goal education for action and not ‘simply

the production of spectatorial armchair politicians’ (quoted in Edgley

1980: 13). Specifically, political education should emphasize

democractic processes, whereby through experience pupils would be

encouraged to democratically transform social institutions into less

authoritarian and more democratic structures.

Although Edgley, largely due to his acceptance of some version of

Marxist reproduction theory, believes White is overly optimistic with

regard to the power of political education to democratize social

institutions and practices, he acknowledges the potential of this type

of educational approach. And while White’s analysis is focused on the

democratization of society, the anarchist conception goes further in

arguing for a complete transformation of social organization, in which,

alongside the role played by school climate, school structure and other

informal ways in which social-anarchist values are reflected in

educational practice, there is clearly an important role to be played by

systematic political education. Such an education, in addition to

fostering a critical attitude and an appreciation of democratic

principles (both aspects which White would endorse), would take the

further step of encouraging students to reflect on the possible

construction of radically different social futures.

The descriptions of anarchist schools in Chapter 6 suggest that

anarchist educators often indeed assigned something like political

education a key role in their curricula. For example, in Ferrer’s

school, the vocational training which students underwent was accompanied

by analyses of the class system and an attempt to critically understand

the workings of the capitalist market place. But if political education

as a distinct curricular subject is to have any uniquely anarchist

significance, it must reflect the utopian element of anarchist thought.

The liberal perspective focuses on the notion of autonomy, and from here

in calling for greater democratization of the workplace, the school and

other social institutions. The anarchist perspective, in contrast,

involves not only the ‘leap of faith’ that a stateless society is

possible, and can be sustained along communal, non-hierarchical

principles, on the basis of already present human capabilities and

propensities but also, crucially for education, the utopian hope that

the very imaginative exercise of encouraging people to conceptualize the

exact form of this society, and to constantly engage with and experiment

with its principles and manifestations, is itself a central part of the

revolutionary process. It is here – in this practice of imagining a

world radically different from our own, and in daring to believe in its

possibility – that the role of political education takes a central

place.

Although there is no systematic treatment of such a programme for

political education in the historical accounts of anarchist educational

projects discussed here, nor in the theoretical works on education by

leading anarchist theorists, political education, in some form or

another, clearly permeates all aspects of anarchist educational

endeavour. Whether in the course of visiting factories at Ferrer’s

school, or of planting their own vegetable garden and managing the

produce at the Stelton school, pupils were encouraged to develop a

critical awareness of the problems and complexities of the existing

state system and to speculate on alternative modes of socio-economic

organization. It is interesting, though, to consider a more specific

attempt to translate the utopian, imaginative element of anarchist

thought into concrete pedagogical practice. An example of such an

attempt is offered by a small pamphlet published by an independent

anarchist publishing house, entitled Design Your Own Utopia (Bufe and

Neotopia 2002). Although there is little if any reference in the

writings of anarchist theorists as to how specific educational methods

and programmes could be employed to implement anarchist ideas in an

educational context, I believe this proposal could serve as a model for

political education both within and beyond the nation state.

The programme suggested in this pamphlet offers a model for a classroom

discussion in the context of political education, based around a

question-posing pattern, whereby each question answered (by the group,

or individually) leads, by way of a consideration of various options and

implications, to further questions. Posing and answering the questions

along the way demands a rigorous and honest treatment of normative

commitments and values and a thought experiment whereby one is forced to

confront the possible practical implications of one’s values.

The pattern is to start not from the current institutions of the liberal

state, but from an open-ended discussion, in the course of which values

are articulated and principles considered, along with a critical

examination of the implications of and justification for the principles

under discussion. Of course, such an educational approach requires a

certain degree of sophistication and would probably be more suited to

older children who have already got some grasp of basic social and

political concepts. It could, however, be creatively incorporated into a

political education programme involving familiarization with political

concepts alongside imaginative utopian thought.

The programme starts with the question of scope: students are asked, as

a first step, to consider whether their utopia would be a global utopia,

a nation state, a village, a city, a bio-region or some other type of

international community (ibid.: 3) before going on to ask questions

about the goals of their utopia. This question in itself already opens

up the discussion to accommodate theoretical ideas far broader than

those usually covered in political education or citizenship courses. The

recent QCA recommendations on teaching citizenship in schools, for

example, the nearest thing in the British curriculum to political

education, centre around the idea of fostering the knowledge,

understanding and skills needed for ‘the development of pupils into

active citizens’ (QCA 1998: 2). Although it is hard to find fault with

this idea as a general educational aim, the perspective from which it is

formulated is clearly one of understanding and reinforcing the current

political system rather than radically questioning it. This is not to

suggest that the programme is narrowly focused on the state – for it

specifically recommends ‘an awareness of world affairs and global

issues’ (ibid.: 22) alongside an ‘understanding of democratic practices

and institutions’ (ibid.). However, the playful element of utopian

thought experiments suggested by the anarchist perspective could, I

believe, enrich this process of ‘understanding’ and ‘developing skills

and knowledge’.

In the anarchist utopian experiment, students are asked to speculate on

the feasibility of political structures other than the state and their

relationship to each other, not as an informative exercise but as an

imaginative one. Of course, the QCA document, as well as several writers

on citizenship education (see, e.g. Fogelman 1991) emphasize the need

for an active, participatory role on the part of future citizens and

attach considerable importance to ‘student empowerment’ (Lynch and

Smalley 1991: 171). However, utopian thought experiments add a valuable

dimension to the idea of empowering students through ‘experiments in

active democracy’ (ibid.), in that simply considering the types of

questions proposed here can ‘help us to understand that the present

social, political and economic systems are human inventions, and that

we, collectively, have the power to change them’ (Bufe and Neotopia

2002: 1).

The anarchist programme outlined in the pamphlet goes on to ask ‘What

would be the fundamental values of your utopia?’ and, interestingly,

‘Would individuals choose their own goals and values or would their

goals and values be those of your utopian ideology?’ – a question which

paves the way for a discussion of the liberal ideal, the ideas of

community and individual freedom, and other connected issues.

Further on in the course of the exercise, students are presented with

questions about the specific content of their utopia, and encouraged to

think through their implications. For example, ‘What would the rights

and duties of members of the utopia be?’; ‘Would the number of children

per parent be limited?’, ‘What would your decision-making process be?’,

‘How would production and distribution be organized?’ and ‘ Would the

roles of men and women vary?’

I believe that such an educational approach could constitute an

attractive, stimulating alternative – or at least a supplement – to

conventional teaching of political and moral issues that, as many

writers on utopia have noted (see Chapter 8), encourages creative and

critical thinking about our social and political reality. A political

education programme along these lines would clearly have to be thought

out in further detail and with a great deal of caution. As mentioned,

social anarchist theorists themselves failed to provide any such

systematic account. However, I believe this kind of approach

encapsulates an important aspect of the anarchist educational stance and

is valuable in its own right even within a state education system.

Moral education – the missing link

In conclusion, the anarchist idea of integral education may, on the

surface, seem very much like notions such as Winch’s ‘liberal

vocationalism’, which both challenges the common liberal/vocational

distinction and broadens our understanding of productive work and its

connection to individual well-being. However, I have argued that what

makes the anarchist perspective distinct from the liberal one is first

its radical political vision – a vision which hinges on a faith in the

possibility of a society organized in stateless, self-governing,

equitable communities – and, connectedly, the understanding that while

the precise form of such communities is indeterminate, the moral values

which underpin them have both descriptive and normative validity and

need to be reinforced by the educational process.

It has to be said, at this stage, that this argument for the centrality

of some kind of moral education is largely a reconstruction of often

indirect and unsystematic writings from a variety of anarchist sources.

Although the salience of notions like solidarity, fraternity and mutual

aid pervades all social-anarchist work on education, it is hard to find

any systematic account of how these notions are to be built into a

coherent programme for moral education. Indeed, references to pedagogy

and to concrete educational programmes are few and far between in

anarchist literature, largely due to the belief that such programmes

would and should be determined by individual teachers and students

according to the specific needs of the community. The following account

by Bakunin (in Dolgoff 1973: 373–375) is one of the few attempts to lay

down such a programme, based on what Bakunin regarded as three essential

stages in education:[7]

Stage 1 (5–12 years): At this stage, the emphasis should be on the

development of the physical faculties, in the course of which ‘the

culture of the mind’ will be developed ‘spontaneously’. There will be no

formal instruction as such, only ‘personal observation, practical

experience, conversations between children, or with persons charged with

teaching’.

Stage 2 (age 12–16): Here the child will be introduced to ‘the various

divisions of human knowledge’, and will also undergo practical training

in a craft or trade. This stage involves more methodological and

systematic teaching, along with communal reading and discussion, one

effect of which would be to reduce the weight attached to the individual

teacher. This stage in essence is the beginning of the child’s

apprenticeship in a profession, and Bakunin specifies that, from the

early stages, visits to factories and so on must form a part of the

curriculum, leading to the child’s eventual choice of a trade for

specialization, alongside theoretical studies.

Bakunin’s second stage is remarkably similar to Winch’s idea of liberal

vocationalism, with his talk of the ‘branches of knowledge’ clearly

referring to something very like the liberal idea of initiation into the

disciplines.

However, as stated, this educational programme has to be understood in

the context of a political vision far more radical in its scope than the

liberal one, and a faith – perhaps, as Ritter suggests, a ‘leap of

faith’ – that this vision can be brought a little closer by the very

organization and day-to-day running of the educational process in such a

manner as to embody the moral values underpinning this vision. Precisely

how these values are to be built into the educational process, beyond

the informal means of pupil–teacher relationships, decentralized school

management, non-coercive classroom practices and constant

experimentation (all of which are evident in the anarchist schools

discussed in Chapter 6) is, as mentioned, unclear from the literature.

Given the anarchist understanding of human nature and the consequent

acknowledgement that some form of moral education will be necessary,

even in the post-revolutionary society, to ensure the flourishing of the

social virtues, I believe that the lack of clarity on this subject is,

perhaps, the central weakness of the anarchist position on education.

Constructing a systematic account of moral education is, thus, a key

task for the anarchist educator. The anarchist idea of the school as a

microcosm of the ideal society, and the emphasis on direct encounters

and on ‘learning by doing’, alongside the clear acknowledgement of the

educational role of social institutions and practices, suggest that such

an account could be broadly Aristotelian in its conception.

Unfortunately, however, the task of constructing such an account is

beyond the scope of this book.

8 What’s so funny about anarchism?

The task of the anarchist philosopher is not to prove the imminence of a

Golden Age, but to justify the value of believing in its possibility.

(Read 1974: 14)

The social-anarchist perspective on education, as I have argued, is

underpinned by a specific, substantive vision of the good. While the

anarchist belief in the possibility of society without the state implies

a radical challenge to the dominant liberal view, the vision of what

this society may look like is based on values that, as discussed in the

earlier chapters, are not at odds with liberal values. In fact, one

could argue, as Noam Chomsky has done, that the social-anarchist

tradition is the ‘true inheritor of the classic liberal tradition of the

Enlightenment’ (in Guerin 1970: xii). Furthermore, this tradition

perhaps rearticulates the utopian element of classical liberal thought.

Zygmunt Bauman, for example, describes the liberal project as ‘one of

the most potent modern utopias’ in its promotion of a model of the good

society, and argues that, at the time of its inception, it may have

signified a ‘great leap forward’ (Bauman 1999: 4).

The aforementioned remarks notwithstanding, there does nevertheless seem

to be a tension between the agenda of anarchist education, as reflected

in the programmes and curricula developed by educators working within

the anarchist tradition (see Chapter 6) and that of what is generally

referred to as liberal education. Specifically, and peculiarly,

anarchism as an educational stance seems almost both too normative and

too open-ended to be palatable to the liberal educator. The explicitly

anti-statist, anti-capitalist and egalitarian views espoused by

anarchist educators, and built into their curricula (see Chapter 6),

smack too much of dogma, perhaps, to those with liberal sensibilities.

Yet at the same time, the insistence on the indeterminacy of the future

society, the demand for constant, free experimentation and the faith in

the power of communities to establish their own educational practices

are risky ideas to many liberals who, like Eamonn Callan (1997) and

Meira Levinson (1999), see a formal state education system not just as

an important social good but also as an essential guarantor of liberal

freedoms, social justice and political stability.

Yet, as the preceding discussion shows, the underlying values of the

anarchist position are not at odds with those of the liberal one.

Although they may assign them different normative and methodological

status, few liberals would be inclined to reject such values as freedom,

equality, fraternity or solidarity.

Liberal neutrality, education and the liberal state

Why, then, does the notion of ‘anarchist education’ seem, at best,

laughable and, at worst, threatening, from a liberal point of view? I

would argue that the reason this is so is because ‘liberal education’

has, in recent years, become synonymous with education in a liberal

state. Many writers conflate the two unthinkingly, and the question of

the relationship between them is rarely itself the focus of debate.

Thus, for example, Eamonn Callan, Meira Levinson and Alan Ryan have

recently written important works on education and liberalism in which,

while ostensibly discussing the implications of liberal theory for

educational ideas, they are actually concerned to outline the role of

education in the liberal state. Alan Ryan, for example, in Liberal

Anxieties and Liberal Education refers, at the beginning of his

discussion, to liberal education as ‘the kind of education that sustains

a liberal society’ (Ryan 1998: 27). However, in the course of the book,

he slips into a discussion of ‘educating citizens’ (ibid.: 123), clearly

assuming the framework of the liberal state. A similar process occurs in

the writings of several other theorists.

The relationship between liberalism as a system of values and the

liberal state as a system of political organization is one which is

rarely, if ever, scrutinized, whether by philosophers of education or by

liberal theorists in general.

Most theorists, indeed, seem to assume, along with Patricia White, not

only that the liberal state is, to all intents and purposes, the only

practical framework available, but that theoretically, it has been

pretty much established, primarily by Nozick’s influential argument (see

Nozick 1974) that the state is a necessary evil, and that if it didn’t

exist, ‘we would have to invent [it] – or back into [it] by degrees at

least’ (White 1983: 8).

‘Most political philosophers in the past few generations’, Miltrany

comments (in Sylvan 1993: 215) ‘have what the psychoanalysts might call

a “state fixation” ‘. This is no less true of philosophers of education.

But the theoretical implications of conflating ‘liberalism’ with ‘the

liberal state’ are particularly far-reaching in the case of education,

and they hinge above all on the notion of neutrality.

As developed most famously and influentially by Rawls, the liberal

notion of neutrality dictates that the state must be neutral regarding

conceptions of the good. However, it is important to understand that

liberalism, as an ideological position, is not in itself ‘neutral’ – as

indeed it would be logically impossible for any such position to be

neutral. So there is nothing neutral about the liberal stance itself.

But once ‘liberalism’ is taken to mean ‘the liberal state’, the demand

for neutrality is logically translated into a demand that individuals

and communities be free to pursue their own conceptions of the good

within a political framework and institutions which allow them to

flourish and interact as fairly and equitably as possible, refraining

from any discrimination on the basis of possibly competing conceptions

of the good. This, in essence, is the basis of Rawls’ defence of

‘political liberalism’ (see Rawls 1996). If education is then assumed to

be one of the central institutions of the liberal state, this position

is translated into the demand that education in the liberal state should

be, at most, a facilitator for the pursuit of individual autonomy and

the development of civic virtues; these are regarded as, ideally,

happily coexisting with various different – even conflicting –

comprehensive visions of the good.

Of course, the neutrality thesis has been importantly criticized by

liberal theorists, and notably by educational philosophers, in recent

years. Thus both Eamonn Callan and Meira Levinson argue for a far more

substantive vision of the role of education in the liberal state than

that traditionally derived from Rawls’ political liberalism. Similarly,

Robert Reich points out, in his critique of the idea of liberal

neutrality, that the very establishment of a state-funded school system

is not neutral:

In the modern age, there exists no social institution, save perhaps

taxation, that intervenes more directly and deeply into the lives of

citizens than schools…it is a fantasy that twelve years of education of

any sort could possibly leave, as Rawls suggests, all reasonable

comprehensive doctrines ‘untouched’. (Reich 2002: 40)

Reich in fact argues that neutrality is theoretically and practically

impossible, and that the demands of liberal theory for civic education –

primarily as regards fostering autonomy – lead inevitably to the demand

for a non-neutral process of education, which in turn has effects on

diversity and other aspects of society. Reich makes the point that

‘these effects are not unfortunate consequences but the purposeful aim

of the liberal state’ (ibid.: 42). Yet this argument merely reinforces

my earlier claim about the conflation between liberalism and the state:

in Reich’s analysis, similar to those of Callan and others, it is the

state as such that has ‘aims’ – not liberalism, or even ‘liberals’ – a

point which seems to support the anarchist argument that once a state is

established it takes on a life – and aims – of its own, which may, so

the argument goes, have little to do with the true needs and aspirations

of people and communities.

Reich and other theorists in the liberal tradition seem little aware of

the conflation they make between liberalism and the liberal state; one

minute they are talking of the demands of liberal theory, and in the

next they slip into a discussion of the demands of the state – which,

when one pauses to think about it is quite a different thing. There is,

as stated, nothing inherently neutral about liberalism; but this issue

is often glossed over. Perhaps inevitably, having become the dominant

political doctrine in the modern industrialized world, and one which in

fact reflects actual social and political organization in much of this

world, liberalism seems to have lost its motivating force. Its normative

elements more often than not take the form of guidelines for improving

or restricting current regulations or practices, or for making choices

within the existing framework, not for building radically new practices.

Given this dominance of liberalism as a theory and a system, the main

narrative associated with this tradition has, as Bauman (1999) notes,

become one of ‘no alternative’. The idea that the liberal state is, if

not the best of all imaginary worlds, at least in effect the best one

realistically available, and one which is here to stay, encourages, as

Bauman points out, a degree of political apathy.

Richard Flathman has suggested a further reason for the conflation of

liberal education with education in the (neutral) liberal state, arguing

that the conception of liberal education as non-specific in the sense of

being not vocational, not professional or pre-professional – is

‘reminiscent of those versions of political and moral liberalism that

promote its neutrality toward or among alternative conceptions of the

good’ (Flathman 1998: 139). Thus, analogously to the liberal state which

is agnostic regarding particular conceptions of the good life, the

liberal educational curriculum ‘seeks to nurture abilities and

understandings regarded as valuable to a generous – albeit, again not

limitless – array of careers or callings’ (ibid.).

But what happens if one pulls apart this conflation? What happens, that

is, if, while holding on to what can be broadly described as liberal

values, one removes the state from the equation altogether?

Several writers in recent years have theoretically experimented with the

idea of removing education from state control. Indeed, we do not need

anarchism to prod us into pondering what education would look like

without the state. Theorists working broadly within the liberal

tradition have questioned the role of the state in controlling and

determining educational ends, policies and processes. And,

characteristically, those people who, in such debates, come down

squarely on the side of state control of schooling, do so out of a

carefully argued conviction that social ills such as socio-economic

inequality and deprivation can better be minimized by a centrally

controlled system than by leaving things to chance or to local

initiative, and not out of any political enthusiasm for powerful central

government. Thus Patricia White, for example, in Beyond Domination

(White 1983: 82), claims, on the basis of such convictions, that against

the arguments for total devolution of educational control ‘there are no

moral arguments, but there are practical and political ones’.

The minimal state and social values

Conversely, but starting from the same questioning attitude, James

Tooley, in Reclaiming Education (Tooley 2000), presents a thought

experiment which supposedly leads to the conclusion that educational

objectives could be better achieved by private enterprise without the

control of the state. The point here is that resolving the question of

whether or not state controlled education systems can best achieve what

could be construed as liberal goals, including the goal of social

equality, is largely an empirical question. Although Tooley argues,

rather convincingly, that the state has not so far done a great job in

eliminating socio-economic inequalities by means of the education

system, it remains to be established (and on the face of it seems quite

doubtful) whether a free-market system of education such as that which

he advocates could do the job any better. Although Tooley does document

evidence suggesting that in areas where private corporations have taken

over educational functions, such corporations ‘can deliver equity or

equality of opportunity’ (ibid.: 64, my emphasis), he offers no argument

to convince the reader that the private alternative will further

socio-economic equality in the absence of state control. Indeed,

Tooley’s own discussion of the way in which there are often happy

coincidences between the profit motives of private educational providers

and the improvement of opportunities for disadvantaged members of

society (see Tooley 2000: 109–110) simply reinforces the impression that

in a free-market system, any such improvements would be largely a matter

of chance – a situation unlikely to satisfy anyone genuinely committed

to socio-economic equality.

Crucially, in the context of anarchist ideas, even in the work of

advocates of removing state control from education, notably that of

Tooley, the state is still assumed to be somewhere in the background,

albeit in a role perhaps approaching Nozick’s notion of the minimal

state (see Nozick 1974).

Yet the Nozickian notion of the state that is assumed by so many

neo-liberal writers is in itself far closer to the individualist,

libertarian picture of individuals in society than to the picture which

underlies both the social-anarchist and indeed the egalitarian liberal

position. For Nozick, it is important to note, formulates his arguments

in the context of the anti-statist critiques not of the social

anarchists, but of contemporary libertarians such as Murray Rothbard and

Ayn Rand – keen supporters of free-market economy and critics of the

collectivist ethos.

The argument of minarchists such as Nozick against such libertarians and

individualist anarchists assumes the same picture of human nature which

forms the background for the individualist, libertarian position. It is

the supposedly inevitable selfish aspects of this human nature which, it

is argued, will lead to conflict, thus necessitating some kind of

minimal state to prevent disorder and maintain harmony.

The normative value of the social virtues, along with the contextualist

view of human nature so central to social-anarchist thought, are

entirely absent from both the libertarian and the neo-liberal positions,

and thus fail to play a role in Tooley’s analysis, which draws heavily

on the work of neo-liberal theorists.

Similarly, the view of education which Tooley draws from this

perspective, namely that those services usually performed by the state

could be supplied far more efficiently and far more morally by private

and cooperative enterprise, ignores the charge, shared by social

anarchists and Marxists alike, of a systematic bias, in terms of unequal

concentration of wealth, inherent in the structure of market relations.

The social anarchists, in contrast, viewed market activity as a social

relation and thus subject to control by moral obligations.

However radical Tooley’s position may seem to be, then, the question he

poses is not that of: what kind of society do we want? but the rather

less radical one of: given the kind of society we have, what kind of

education should we have? The assumption behind such intellectual

exercises seems to be very much the basic liberal assumption which

constitutes the conclusion of Rawls’ work: the ideal of the liberal

state as a generally fair framework for negotiating between conflicting

conceptions of the good life, managing public affairs with minimum

coercion and maximizing individual liberty. As mentioned earlier, the

social virtues so central to anarchist – and to much of liberal –

thought are not assigned any normative role in Tooley’s

conceptualization of the education process. The fact that Tooley

conflates the term ‘education’ with that of ‘learning’ throughout his

discussion in Reclaiming Education[8] is indicative of his unwillingness

to engage with the inherently normative aspects of education, as is the

fact that the term ‘moral’ or ‘moral education’ does not appear even

once in his discussion. If Tooley wants to imply that one can remain

‘neutral’ regarding the moral and ideological underpinnings of the

market-driven society he envisages, this project is arguably undermined

both by the point that, as Ruth Jonathan has argued, the ‘free markets

in education’ idea is far from neutral, and indeed ‘education is the one

social practice where the blind forces of the market are not the

expression of liberal freedom, but its nemesis’ (Jonathan 1997: 8–9) –

as well as by Tooley’s self-confessed enthusiasm for Conservative and

New-Right political agendas.

In short, although Tooley and similar critics of state control of

education may on the face of it seem to be stating a position akin to

that of the social anarchists, this is far from the truth. They may

indeed be undermining the institutional power of the state, yet they are

not doing so out of a commitment to a positive vision of an alternative

social arrangement based on justice, equality and mutual aid, but rather

out of the rather vague – and potentially dangerous – notion that people

should be allowed to run their own affairs as far as possible.

This criticism of Tooley’s work touches on a more general problem that I

raised in the Introduction, regarding philosophical work on educational

issues, namely, that of disassociating discussion of educational

concepts and issues from their political and social context. Tooley

acknowledges, in his Disestablishing the School, that his arguments are

largely aimed at ‘those who would like to do something to ameliorate

educational disadvantage and injustice’ (Tooley 1995: 149). Yet while

Tooley’s arguments suggest that voluntary activity can address such

disadvantages, this is a very different thing, as mentioned earlier,

from trying to design an educational and political programme that will

address them. However, I would make the further point – and indeed this

is one of the central insights of the anarchist perspective on education

– that there is no such thing as ‘educational disadvantages’ per se; one

cannot address issues of disadvantage, social justice and distribution

without considering the broader political context in which they occur.

Of course, the confusion surrounding the possibly anarchist-sounding

tone of proposals such as Tooley’s also indicates a need for more

careful articulation of the positive core of social anarchism – a

project to which, I hope, this work has contributed. For in historical

periods and places where the state represented a monolithic, oppressive

entity, associated with the repression of liberal freedoms – such as,

for example, Spain at the beginning of the last century, when Francisco

Ferrer set up the Escuela Moderna – social-anarchist aspirations and

visions of alternative models were reflected in the very opposition to

the state. In many ways, the act of removing social processes, such as

education, from the control of the state, seemed in itself to be a

radical statement of belief in an alternative. However, when the state

in question is a liberal state, the mere act of removing spheres of

action from state control is, in itself, not enough to pose an

alternative set of values; contemporary social anarchists have, perhaps,

to be far more careful and far more explicit than their

nineteenth-century counterparts in stating what exactly it is that they

object to in current political arrangements, and how their model of the

good society and their means for achieving it are different from and

superior to those of the dominant (liberal) discourse. Thus, for

example, many contemporary anarchist activists take it for granted, due

to the traditional anarchist opposition to state monopolies, that

community-based or independently run educational initiatives should be

supported. However, as the discussion of Summerhill in Chapter 6

suggests, the values and aims implicit in such initiatives may not

always be in keeping with those of the social anarchist project.

To use Rawlsian terminology, then, one could say that on the anarchist

view, a comprehensive conception of the good is not a given aspect of

individual flourishing, different versions of which are to be negotiated

amongst by a neutral political system, but rather something constantly

being pursued and created, and the quest for which, crucially, is a

collective and an open-ended project. Of course, as Will Kymlicka has

argued (Kymlicka 1989), a liberal society should be one in which people

are not only given the freedom and the capabilities to pursue existing

conceptions of the good but also one in which people are free to

constantly form and revise such conceptions. In social anarchism,

perhaps, the difference is that the conception of the good is, in an

important sense, although perhaps not exclusively, one which is arrived

at through a communal process of experimentation.

The anarchist educator cannot argue that the school must provide merely

basic skills or act to facilitate children’s autonomy and abstain from

inculcating substantive conceptions of the good. For, on the anarchist

view, the school is a part of the very community that is engaged in the

radical and ongoing project of social transformation, by means of an

active, creative pursuit of the good. This process, which can only be

conducted through an experimental and communal engagement, in dialogue

and out of a commitment to social values, is at one and the same time a

way of establishing the moral basis for a self-governing, decentralized

society, and an experiment in creating such a society. From this

social-anarchist perspective, there is no ‘elsewhere’ where children

will get whatever substantive values they need in order to flourish. If

the values they get from home conflict with those of the school, then

this is a part of the process of social creation, not a problem to be

negotiated by coming up with a formal, theoretical framework invoking

notions such as liberal neutrality. Thus, while Flathman, Callan,

Levinson and others are concerned to address the question of whether

‘civic, democratic, and other specifically political conceptions of

education are vocational rather than liberal and whether such

conceptions are appropriate to a liberal regime’ (Flathman 1998: 146),

they assume that we know and accept just what a liberal regime consists

of. From an anarchist perspective, however, it is precisely this

‘regime’ that we are in the process of exploring, creating and

re-creating.

So if one removes the assumption of the framework of the liberal state

from the equation entirely, the question ‘how should we educate?’ is

stripped of its demand for neutrality. In other words, one has to first

ask who it is who is doing the educating, rather than assuming that it

will be the (liberal) state, before one can go on to ask which values

will inform the educational process. This accounts for the normative

aspect of anarchist educational ideas – an aspect which, as argued,

seems to be at odds with the liberal project, but is only so if one

accepts the conflation between liberalism and the liberal state.

Of course, a possible objection to this argument would be that

anarchists, in effect, simply replace the notion of the state with that

of society so that the problems, for the liberal, remain the same. The

social anarchists, however, would respond to this criticism with a

defence of the qualitative distinction between the state and society.

This distinction is perhaps best articulated by Martin Buber, who had

considerable sympathy for the anarchist view that ‘social transformation

begins with the community and is therefore primarily a social rather

than a political objective’ (Buber, in Murphy 1988: 180). For the

anarchists, social relations governed by the state (including a

communist state) are essentially different from those constituted by

spontaneous forms of social cooperation, and this is so largely due to

their hierarchical nature. Thus although most liberals do not hold any

essentialist definition of the state, and could perhaps argue that a

federated anarchist commune shares the same functions as the liberal

state and is therefore subject to the same theoretical considerations,

anarchists would disagree. The anarchist position is that hierarchical,

centralized functions are inherent features of the modern capitalist

state which, once replaced with an organically established, self

governing, decentralized system of communities, would lead to

qualitatively different types of social relationships, permeating all

levels of social interaction.

This is the idea behind Gustav Landauer’s famous remark that

The state is not something which can be destroyed by a revolution, but

is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of

human behaviour; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by

behaving differently. (quoted in Ward 1991: 85)

Revolutionary tactics: social anarchism and Marxism

The anarchist anti-hierarchical stance also indicates an important

difference between the social-anarchist perspective and that of Marxism,

with obvious implications for educational theory and practice. As

mentioned earlier, anarchists do not regard the revolutionary struggle

to change society as a linear progression, in which there is a single

point of reference – the means of production – and a single struggle. As

Todd May puts it, in Marxism there is ‘a single enemy: capitalism’ (May

1994: 26), the focus of Marxist revolutionary thought thus being on

class as the chief unit of social struggle. Anarchist thinking, in

contrast, involves a far more tactical, multi-dimensional understanding

of what the social revolution consists in. Connectedly, an anarchist

thinker, unlike a traditional Marxist, cannot offer abstract, general

answers to political questions outside the reality of social experience

and experimentation. In anarchism then, as Colin Ward says, ‘there is no

final struggle, only a series of partisan struggles on a variety of

fronts’ (Ward 1996: 26).

The implications of this contrast for education are significant, and are

connected to Marx’s disparaging view of the anarchists and other

‘utopian’ socialists. For in the very idea that there may be something

constructive and valuable in positing an ideal of a different society

whose final form is determined not by predictable historical progress,

but by human experimentation, constantly open to revision, the

anarchists reject the basic Marxist materialist assumption that

consciousness is determined by the material conditions of life –

specifically, by the relations of production. The anarchist position

implies that, at least to some degree, life may be determined by

consciousness – a position which also explains the optimism inherent in

the anarchist enthusiasm for education as a crucial aspect of the

revolutionary programme.

On the Marxist view, until the relations of production themselves are

radically changed, ‘the possibility of an alternative reality is not

only impossible, but literally unthinkable’ (Block 1994: 65), for our

thought structures are determined by the reality of the

base/superstructure relationship. However, in anarchism, an alternative

reality is ‘thinkable’; indeed, it is in some sense already here. As the

discussion of the anarchist position on human nature makes clear, the

human capacity for mutual aid, benevolence and solidarity is reflected

in forms of social relations which exist even within the capitalist

state, and whose potential for social change is not rendered unfeasible

by the capitalist relations of production. It is these capacities which,

on the anarchist view, need to be strengthened and built on, a project

which can be embarked upon without a systematic programme for

revolutionary change or a blueprint for the future, but by forging

alternative modes of social organization in arenas such as the school

and the workplace.

Much work in radical educational theory in recent years is based on some

variant of Marxist reproduction theory, according to which ‘all

practices in the superstructure may be viewed as products of a

determining base, and we have only to examine the products for their

component parts, which ought to be easily discerned from the economic

base’ (Block 1994: 65). Reproduction theorists thus regard schools and

education as basically derived from the economic base, which they

inevitably reproduce. As Block notes, this idea leads to the generally

pessimistic Marxist view of education, according to which even

alternative schools are allowed to exist by the system itself, which

marginalizes them and thus continues to reproduce the dominant social

norms and economic structures.

The anarchist perspective, as mentioned, involves not merely subverting

the economic relations of the base, but conceptualizing a

social-economic framework that is not structured in a hierarchical way.

The pyramid of the Marxist analysis of capitalism is not simply

inverted, but abolished. Thus for example, in Marxism, the status of the

dominant definitions of knowledge – as reflected, for example, in the

school curriculum – is questionable because it is determined by the

unjust class system, reflecting the material power of the ruling class.

However, in anarchist theory, what renders a national curriculum or a

body of knowledge objectionable is the simple fact that it is determined

by any central, hierarchical top-down organization. For the anarchist,

incorporating ‘working-class knowledge’ or that of excluded cultural or

social groups into the school curriculum of a state education system

would be equally suspect – the problem is that there is a curriculum and

a national school system at all.

So although anarchists share the Marxist insistence that the structural

inequalities of society have to be abolished, they believe that this

project can be embarked upon on a micro level; in this they share,

perhaps, the faith in the emancipatory power of education common to many

liberal theorists.

Goals and visions

These remarks may lead one to believe that the anarchist approach to

social change is more of a piecemeal, tactical one, than a strategic

one. Todd May in fact argues that the opposite is the case, claiming

that the anarchists, faced with the need to adopt either a strategic or

a tactical position, have to opt for the former due to their

reductionist view of power and their humanist ethics (May 1994: 63–66).

Yet I believe that both these readings are too narrow. What the

anarchist perspective in fact suggests is that one can be, and in fact

has to be, both tactical and strategic; what May refers to as the

anarchists’ ‘ambivalence’ between a purely strategic and a purely

tactical stance is in fact a kind of pragmatic realism, summed up by

Chomsky in his argument that:

In today’s world, I think, the goals of a committed anarchist should be

to defend some state institutions from the attack against them, while

trying at the same time to pry them open to more meaningful public

participation – and ultimately, to dismantle them in a much more free

society, if the appropriate circumstances can be achieved. Right or

wrong – and that’s a matter of uncertain judgement – this stand is not

undermined by the apparent conflict between goals and visions. Such

conflict is a normal feature of everyday life, which we somehow try to

live with but cannot escape. (Chomsky 1996: 75)

So while certain elements of anarchism – notably its insistence on

social improvements ‘here and now’ – may be reminiscent of Popper’s

characterization of ‘piecemeal social engineering’ (Popper 1945:

157–163), the social-anarchist perspective in fact straddles Popper’s

contrast between utopian social engineering and piecemeal social

engineering. It is, as I hope to have shown, utopian in that it holds on

to a radical vision of society; however it is not narrowly utopian in

Popper’s sense as it has no fixed blueprint, and the commitment to

constant experimentation is built into its vision of the ideal society.

It is ‘piecemeal’ in the sense that it advocates a form of gradual

restructuring, as in the comment by Paul Goodman, quoted in Chapter 4:

‘A free society cannot be the substitution of a “new order” for the old

order; it is the extension of spheres of free action until they make up

most of social life’ (in Ward 1996: 18). And, as I think the projects of

anarchist educators and the anarchist criticism of Marxist revolutionary

theory make clear, it is also piecemeal in Popper’s sense that it is

concerned with ‘searching for, and fighting against, the greatest and

most urgent evils of society, rather than searching for, and fighting

for, its greatest ultimate good’ (Popper 1945: 158).

Chomsky indeed expresses something like this idea in summing up the

anarchist stance as follows:

At every stage of history our concern must be to dismantle those forms

of authority and oppression that survive from an era when they might

have been justified in terms of the need for security or survival or

economic development, but that now contribute to – rather than alleviate

– material and cultural deficit. If so, there will be no doctrine of

social change fixed for the present and future, nor even, necessarily, a

specific and unchanging concept of the goals towards which social change

should tend. (Chomsky, in Guerin 1970: viii)

This perspective, like Popper’s piecemeal approach, ‘permits repeated

experiments and continuous readjustments’ (Popper 1945: 163).

Yet at the same time, the anarchist approach is distinct from what

Popper characterizes as piecemeal social engineering in that it does not

simply concern ‘blueprints for single institutions’, but sees in the

very act of restructuring human relationships within such institutions

(the school, the workplace), a creative act of engaging with the

restructuring of society as a whole.

The anarchist utopia, then, although it does envisage ‘the

reconstruction of society as a whole’ (Popper 1945: 161), is not utopian

in Popper’s sense as it is not an ‘attempt to realize an ideal state,

using a blueprint of society as whole, […] which demands a strong

centralized rule of a few’ (ibid.: 159). And while the kind of social

restructuring envisaged by the social anarchists is not simply, as

Popper characterizes utopian engineering, ‘one step towards a distant

ideal’, (see the discussion on means and ends in Chapter 6), neither is

it ‘a realization of a piecemeal compromise’. Creating, for example, a

school community run on social-anarchist principles is both a step

towards the ideal and an embodiment of the ideal itself.

Anarchism, to continue this line of thought, is perhaps best conceived

not so much as a theory – in Popper’s rationalistic sense – about how

society can be organized without a state, but as an aspiration to create

such a society and, crucially, a belief that such a society can in fact

come about, not through violent revolution or drastic modification of

human nature, but as an organic, spontaneous process – the seeds of

which are already present in human propensities.

Given these points, one may argue that anarchism, in a sense, needs the

theoretical components of liberalism to carry it beyond the stage of

aspiration to that of political possibility. For example, the analytical

work carried out within the liberal tradition on such key notions as

autonomy, individual rights, consent and justice, provides valuable

theoretical tools for working out the details of the anarchist project.

However, it is not this theorizing which constitutes the core of

anarchism but the aspiration itself. In education, this is crucially

important. While anarchism perhaps makes little sense without the

theoretical framework of the liberal tradition (a tradition which,

following Chomsky, it may be a continuation of), it could also be argued

that liberalism needs anarchism, or something like the social-anarchist

vision, to remind itself of the aspirations behind the theory. Built

into these aspirations is, crucially, the belief that things could be

different, and radically so, if only we allow ourselves to have faith in

people’s ability to recreate social relationships and institutions; a

sort of perfectibility which, while cherishing traditional liberal

values, pushes us beyond the bounds of normal liberal theory. In this

context, MacIntyre’s comments (MacIntyre 1971) that liberalism is

essentially ‘negative and incomplete’, being a doctrine ‘about what

cannot be justified and what ought not to be permitted’, and that hence

‘no institution, no social practice, can be inspired solely or even

mainly by liberalism’ – seem to make sense.

Utopianism and philosophy of education

I have argued that part of the reason why anarchist education is, on the

face of it, objectionable to philosophers within the liberal tradition,

is because of the common conflation between liberalism as a body of

values, and the liberal state as a framework within which to pursue

these values. This conflation, I have argued, could explain why the

normative, substantive aspects of anarchist education seem problematic

for those wishing to preserve some form of political liberalism.

However, there are also those who object to anarchism’s political ideal

– that of the stateless society – simply on the grounds of its being

hopelessly utopian and who would thus argue that it is pointless to try

to construct a philosophy of education around this ideal. As mentioned

in the Introduction, the charge of utopianism is one of the commonest

criticisms of anarchism, and, in my view, raises several interesting

philosophical questions. In what follows, I shall attempt to address

this charge and to grapple with some of these questions.

Martin Buber was one of the first to note how the concept utopia had

been

victimized in the course of the political struggle of Marxism against

other forms of socialism and movements of social reform. In his struggle

to achieve dominance for his idiosyncratic system of socialism, Marx

employed ‘utopia’ as the ultimate term of perjoration to damn all

‘prehistoric’ (i.e. pre-Marxian) social systems as unscientific and

utilitarian in contrast to the allegedly scientific and inevitable

character of his system of historical materialism. (Fischoff, in Buber

1958: xiii)

In the mid-nineteenth century, indeed, the social-anarchist position

could be perceived as an argument over the contested intellectual ground

of the developing nation state; its utopianism, for Marx, lay in its

rejection of the materialist position. Yet now that the nation state is

such an established fact of our political life, and theoretical

arguments justifying its existence are so taken for granted that they

are rarely even articulated, it is the very distance between the

anarchist vision and that of the dominant liberal state tradition that

strikes some as utopian. As discussed above, although philosophers of

education devote a great deal of energy to the articulation, analysis

and critique of liberal values and their educational implications, the

framework within which these values are assumed to operate is rarely the

subject of debate. It is the anarchist questioning of this framework,

then, which constitutes its radical challenge.

Of course, the charge that anarchism is utopian has some truth if one

accepts Mannheim’s classic account, according to which ‘utopian’

describes: ‘all situationally transcendent ideas which in any way have a

transforming effect on the existing historical, social order’ (Mannheim

1991: 173).

But there is an important sense in which anarchism is definitely not

utopian or, at least, is utopian in a positive, rather than a

pejorative, sense. Isaiah Berlin has characterized utopias in a way

which, as David Halpin (Halpin 2003) points out, is highly restrictive

and problematic and fails to capture the constructive role of utopias as

‘facilitating fresh thinking for the future’ (ibid.) which Halpin and

other theorists are keen to preserve. Nevertheless, Berlin’s

characterization is useful here as it is indicative of a typical

critical perspective on utopian thought and thus serves to highlight the

contrast with anarchism. Berlin states:

The main characteristic of most (perhaps all) utopias is that they are

static. Nothing in them alters, for they have reached perfection: there

is no need for novelty or change; no one can wish to alter a condition

in which all natural human wishes are fulfilled. (Berlin 1991: 20)

This is clearly in contrast to the anarchist vision of the future

society, on two counts. First, due to the anarchist conception of human

nature, most anarchist theorists are under no illusion about the

possibility of a society without conflict; a society which, as in

Berlin’s description of utopia, ‘lives in a state of pure harmony’

(ibid.). Rather, they envisage a particular way of solving conflict. As

William Reichert states,

Anarchists do not suppose for a minute that men would ever live in

harmony […]. They do maintain, however, that the settlement of conflict

must arise spontaneously from the individuals involved themselves and

not be imposed upon them by an external force such as government.

(Reichert 1969: 143)

Second, it is intrinsic to the anarchist position that human society is

constantly in flux; there is no such thing as the one finite, fixed form

of social organization; the principle at the heart of anarchist thought

is that of constant striving, improvement and experimentation.

In an educational context, this contrast is echoed in Dewey’s critique

of Plato’s Republic. As Dewey notes, Plato’s utopia serves as a final

answer to all questions about the good life, and the state and education

are constructed so as to translate it immediately into reality. Although

Plato, says Dewey,

would radically change the existing state of society, his aim was to

construct a state in which change would subsequently have no place. The

final end of life is fixed; given a state framed with this end in view,

not even minor details are to be altered. […] Correct education could

not come into existence until an ideal state existed, and after that

education would be devoted simply to its conservation. (Dewey 1939:

105–106)

This, again, is in clear contrast to the anarchist vision.

Of course, the utopian nature of Plato’s account does not detract from

its philosophical value. All this suggests that the ‘feasibility’ of any

political vision should not, on its own, constitute a reason for

disregarding it as a basis for serious philosophical debate. Many

writers on utopias, indeed, have stressed the transformative element of

utopian thinking, arguing that the study of utopias can be valuable as

it releases creative thought, prodding us to examine our preconceptions

and encouraging speculation on alternative ways of conceptualizing and

doing things which we often take for granted. Politically speaking, it

has been argued that ‘utopianism thus offers a specific programme and

immediate hope for improvement and thereby discourages quiescence or

fatalism’ (Goodwin and Taylor 1982: 26).

Thus, as David Halpin says in his discussion of Fourier’s

nineteenth-century depiction of the Utopian Land of Plenty, where whole

roast chickens descended from the sky,

Fourier was not envisaging concretely a society whose members would be

fed magically. Rather, through the use of graphic imagery, he was

seeking to mobilize among his readers a commitment to a conception of

social life in which being properly fed was regarded as a basic human

right. (Halpin 2001: 302)

There are further aspects of utopianism, specifically in the anarchist

context, which are associated with the suspicion or derision of

anarchist positions by liberal theorists. For while many liberal and

neo-liberal theorists seem amenable to the idea of utopia as an

individual project, the social anarchists’ faith in the social virtues,

and their vision of a society underpinned by these virtues, imply a

utopia which is necessarily collective. Nozick’s vision of the

minimalist state, for example, is clearly utopian in the general sense

described earlier. Yet, as Barbara Goodwin points out, the utopian

nature of Nozick’s minimal state lies

not in the quality of the individual communities (all of which appeal to

some people and not to others) but in each individual having the power

to choose and to experiment with the Good Life. Utopia is having a

choice between Utopias. (Goodwin and Taylor 1982: 82)

The anarchist vision, both in its insistence on the centrality of the

social virtues, and in its normative commitment to these virtues, seems

to be demanding that we extend Nozick’s ‘utopia of Utopias’ to something

far more substantive. Indeed, many liberals would agree that it is the

lack of just such a substantive vision which is partly to blame for the

individualist and often alienating aspects of modern capitalist society.

Thus, for example, Zygmunt Bauman has spoken of our era as one

characterized by ‘the privatization of utopias’ (Bauman 1999: 7), in

which models of ‘the good life’ are increasingly cut off from models of

the good society. Perhaps the kind of utopianism inherent in

social-anarchist thinking can help us to amend this situation.

The anarchist utopian stance, at the same time, arguably avoids the

charges of totalitarianism which so worried Popper and Berlin due to two

important points: first, the fact that, built into its utopian vision,

is the demand for constant experimentation, and the insistence that the

final form of human society cannot be determined in advance. Second, the

insistence, based on the anarchist view of human nature and the

associated conceptualization of social change, that the future society

is to be constructed not by radically transforming human relations and

attitudes, but from the seeds of existing social tendencies. This is,

indeed, in contrast to the Marxist vision, where, as Bauman points out,

‘the attempt to build a socialist society is an effort to emancipate

human nature, mutilated and humiliated by class society’.

The anarchist rejection of blueprints, while arguably rescuing

anarchists from charges of totalitarianism, can at the same time be

perceived as philosophically, and perhaps psychologically, somewhat

threatening, as Herbert Read points out. The idea that, as Read puts it

(Read 1974: 148), ‘the future will make its own prints, and they won’t

necessarily be blue’, can give rise to a sense of insecurity. Yet such

insecurity, perhaps, is a necessary price to pay if one wants to embark

on the genuinely creative and challenging project of reconstructing

society, or even reconstructing political and social philosophy.

It has in fact been argued that much mainstream work in political

theory, notably in the liberal tradition, is conducted in the shadow of

what could be seen as another aspect of the ‘sense of insecurity’

provoked by the open-endedness of such utopian projects as social

anarchism. This view is eloquently argued by Bonnie Honig, in her

Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics:

Most political theorists are hostile to the disruptions of politics.

Those writing from diverse positions – republican, federal and

communitarian – converge in their assumption that success lies in the

elimination from a regime of dissonance, resistance, conflict, or

struggle. They confine politics (conceptually and territorially) to the

juridical, administrative, or regulative tasks of stabilizing moral and

political subjects, building consensus, maintaining agreement, or

consolidating communities and identities. They assume that the task of

political theory is to resolve institutional questions, to get politics

right, over and done with, to free modern subjects and their sets of

arrangements of political conflict and instability. (Honig 1993: 2)

In an academic culture dominated by this perspective, it is hardly

surprising that a position such as social anarchism, which both

challenges the dominant political system with a radically different

vision, and holds that this vision, while accessible, cannot be fully

instantiated either in theory or by revolutionary programmes, but must

be the result of spontaneous, free experimentation is rarely taken

seriously. Yet as both Noam Chomsky and Paul Goodman have commented,

this type of utopianism is not so far removed from the liberal

tradition. Paul Goodman (Goodman 1952: 18–19) argues that American

culture has lost the spirit of pragmatism embodied in the thought of

James and Dewey. In a climate where, he says, ‘experts plan in terms of

an unchangeable structure, a pragmatic expediency that still wants to

take the social structure as plastic and changeable comes to be thought

of as “utopian” ‘.

Richard Rorty, too, has noted the connections between the type of

utopianism embodied in the social anarchist view and the Pragmatism of

Dewey and other thinkers. His discussion of this idea captures, for me,

the value of this perspective for our educational thought. Rorty argues

that what is distinctive about Pragmatism is that it ‘substitutes the

notion of a better human future for the notions of “reality,” “reason”

and “nature”‘ (Rorty 1999: 27). While nineteenth-century social

anarchism, as an Enlightenment tradition, cannot be said by any means to

have rejected the notions of reason, reality and nature, I think there

is nevertheless an important insight here in terms of the role of

utopian hope in social anarchist thought.

The anarchist view that what Fidler refers to as ‘awakening the social

instinct’ is the key role for education, and Kropotkin’s insistence that

the ‘fundamental principle of anarchism’ (in Fidler 1989: 37) consists

in ‘treating others as one wishes to be treated oneself’, seems to me in

keeping with Rorty’s argument that moral progress, for the Pragmatists,

‘is a matter of increasing sensitivity’ (Rorty 1999: 81). Such

sensitivity, Rorty explains, means ‘being able to respond to the needs

of ever more inclusive groups of people’, and thus involves not ‘rising

above the sentimental to the rational’ but rather expanding outwards in

‘wider and wider sympathy’ (ibid.). This image, which Rorty describes as

a ‘switch from metaphors of vertical distance to metaphors of horizontal

extent’ (Rorty 1999: 83) also seems to me in tune with the anarchists’

rejection of hierarchical structures, and the image of the ideal

anarchist society as one of interconnected networks rather than

pyramidal structures. Furthermore, Rorty argues, this element of utopian

hope and ‘willingness to substitute imagination for certainty’ (ibid.:

88) emphasizes the need for active engagement on the part of social

agents, articulating a desire and a need ‘to create new ways of being

human, and a new heaven on earth for these new humans to inhabit, over

the desire for stability, security and order’ (ibid.).

Rorty’s notion of ‘replacing certainty with hope’ seems to me highly

pertinent to the aforementioned discussion of social anarchism and,

especially, to the implications of a consideration of the utopian

aspects of the social anarchist position for the way we think about

education. One aspect of this point is that the utopian – in the sense

of radically removed from reality as we know it – aspect of a theory

should not in itself be a reason to reject it. Even the evident failure

of those utopian projects which have been disastrously attempted should

not lead us to reject the utopian hopes which underlie them. As Rorty

says,

The inspirational value of the New Testament and the Communist Manifesto

is not diminished by the fact that many millions of people were

enslaved, tortured or starved to death by sincere, morally earnest

people who recited passages from one or the other text to justify their

deeds. (Rorty 1999: 204)

The anarchist project, arguably, is less liable to such dismal failure

for first, if one accepts its account of human nature, this account

suggests that the type of society which the social anarchists seek to

establish does not go completely against the grain of existing human

propensities. Furthermore, as discussed here, the idea of trying to

implement this project on a grand scale, by violent means if necessary,

is completely incompatible with anarchist principles. For the flip-side

of what Ritter refers to as the anarchists’ ‘daring leap’ is the point

that, as noted by Buber, the social anarchist

desires a means commensurate with his ends; he refuses to believe that

in our reliance on the future ‘leap’ we have to do now the direct

opposite of what we are striving for; he believes rather that we must

create here and now the space now possible for the thing for which we

are striving, so that it may come to fulfilment then; he does not

believe in the post-revolutionary leap, but he does believe in

revolutionary continuity. (Buber 1958: 13)

Whether or not one is convinced by these social anarchist arguments, it

seems to me that Rorty’s point that such hopes and aspirations as are

embodied in this position may constitute ‘the only basis for a

worthwhile life’ (Rorty 1999: 204) is a compelling one. As far as

philosophy of education is concerned, it may be true that attempting to

construct a position on the role and nature of education around the

notion of hope could lead to neglect of the need to work out clear

principles of procedure and conceptual distinctions. However, this

notion may perhaps insert a more optimistic and motivating element into

educational projects characterized by an often overriding concern to

formulate procedural principles.

Furthermore, the perspective of starting debates into educationally

relevant issues, like the social anarchists, from a position of hope –

in other words, taking the utopian position that a radically different

society is both desirable and attainable – can have clear policy

implications. For example, arguments for equality of opportunity in

(state) education, as put forward by liberal theorists, often involve a

veiled assumption that socio-economic inequality is an inevitable

feature of our life. Thus Harry Brighouse argues (1998) that educational

opportunities should be unaffected by matters of socio-economic status

or family background. In so doing, he assumes, as he himself readily

admits, ‘that material rewards in the labour markets will be

significantly unequal’ (Brighouse 1998: 8). Yet were he to take

seriously the aspiration of creating a society in which there were no

longer any class or socio-economic divisions, he may be led to placing a

very different emphasis on the kind of education we should be providing

(e.g. one which emphasized a critical attitude towards the political

status quo, and the promotion of certain moral values deemed crucial for

sustaining an egalitarian, cooperative society).

Patricia White has discussed the notion of social hope in her 1991

paper, ‘Hope, Confidence and Democracy’ (White 1991), where she notes

the powerful motivational role played by shared hopes ‘relating to the

future of communities’. Yet while acknowledging a need for such social

hope in our own democratic society, White admits that ‘liberal democracy

is not in the business of offering visions of a future to which all

citizens are marching if only they can keep their faith in it’ (White

1991: 205). Such a view would, obviously, undermine the liberal

commitment to an open future and to value pluralism. However it seems,

on the basis of the aforementioned analysis, that the type of utopian

hope associated with anarchism may fit White’s description of a possible

way out of this liberal problem, namely,

that it is possible to drop the idea that the object of hope must be

unitary and inevitable and to defend a notion of hope where, roughly

speaking, to hope is strongly to desire that some desirable state of

affairs, which need not be inevitable and is not impossible, but in the

path of which there are obstacles, will come to pass. (Ibid.)

In terms of how we conceptualize education, what the earlier discussion

suggests is that the interplay between our hopes – or our strategic

goals – and our tactical objectives is not a conflict to be decided in

advance, but an interesting tension that should itself be made part of

educational practice. In certain contexts, tactical decisions may make

sense, and thus the type of educational change and action promoted may

not appear very radical, but the hope, as a long-term goal, is always

there, and even if it is only, as Chomsky states, a ‘vision’, this

vision has tremendous motivating force for those involved in education.

Taking the social-anarchist perspective seriously, then, can help us to

think differently about the role of visions, dreams, goals and ideals in

educational thought. It suggests that perhaps we should think of

education not as a means to an end, nor as an end in itself, but as one

of many arenas of human relationships, in which the relation between the

vision and the ways it is translated into reality is constantly

experimented with. Philosophy of education, perhaps, could be seen as

part of this process.

Conclusion

Faith in the power of intelligence to imagine a future which is the

projection of the desirable in the present, and to invent the

instrumentalities of its realization, is our salvation. And it is a

faith which must be nurtured and made articulate: surely a sufficiently

large task for our philosophy. (Dewey 1917: 48)

I hope, in the preceding discussion, to have gone some way towards

constructing what an anarchist philosophy of education would look like.

There are certain important insights to be drawn from my analysis, both

regarding anarchism’s significance as a political ideology and regarding

educational philosophy and practice.

Situating anarchism: a reevaluation

First, in the course of the preceding chapters, I hope to have dispelled

some common misconceptions about anarchism as a political theory,

especially with regard to its position on the need for social order and

authority and its conception of human nature. Above all, I have argued

that the anarchist view of human nature is not naively optimistic but

rather embraces a realistic, contextual approach to human virtues and

capabilities. The implications of this idea form the core aspects of the

anarchist position on education; namely, that systematic educational

intervention in children’s lives, on the part of social institutions, is

necessary in order to sustain the moral fabric of society, and that this

education must be, first and foremost, a moral enterprise.

Second, I believe it is clear from my analysis that the values and

aspirations underpinning social-anarchist thought are – perhaps

surprisingly – fairly close to those which inform the liberal tradition.

Anarchism’s affinity with liberalism, as well as with certain strands of

socialism, suggests that we should perhaps extend our understanding of

liberalism beyond the constraints of the liberal state. One does not

have to reject liberal values in order to challenge dominant aspects of

the political framework which we so often take for granted. The question

of what remains of liberalism if one removes the state from the equation

is a philosophically puzzling one, but, I suggest, the challenge of

trying to answer it may itself be a valuable exercise in re-examining

and re-articulating our (liberal) values and prompting us to think

through the political implications and scope of these values.

Specifically, examining the implications of the underlying values of

social anarchism, in the comparative context of liberal values, may lead

us to re-articulate the utopian aspect of the liberal tradition. More

broadly speaking, I believe that philosophers, and especially

philosophers of education, need to constantly examine and articulate the

normative assumptions behind their educational ideas. If, like many

liberal theorists, we consciously make compromises in our philosophical

treatment of educational notions such as ‘equality’ – compromises which

imply an acquiescence with existing political structures – we should at

least articulate our reasons for such compromises, and the way they

reflect our substantive ideals. Challenging the political framework

within which we commonly formulate such ideas may be one way of prodding

us to engage in such a process of articulation.

Anarchism remains a confusing and often frustrating body of ideas, and I

do not purport to have resolved the theoretical and practical tensions

it involves. Specifically, the charge that social censure will undermine

individual freedom in an anarchist society remains a troubling one

(eloquently depicted in Ursula Le Guin’s science-fictional account of an

anarchist colony, The Dispossessed (1974)). Similarly, one has to ask

oneself whether anarchism, with its Enlightenment understanding of

progress and the inevitable triumph of secular, socialist values, is

theoretically equipped to deal with the contemporary issues of life in

pluralist societies – especially with the question of value pluralism. I

have to admit that I find the arguments by Noam Chomsky and others that

one cannot resolve such theoretical tensions in advance, but that they

have to be worked out through experimentation – an unsatisfactory

response to this problem.

These theoretical tensions notwithstanding, I have suggested that both

educational practice and philosophy of education may be more challenging

and motivating activities if they are guided by a utopian hope; a

normative vision, not just of the good life (a phrase commonly employed

by philosophers of education), but of the good society – however far

removed this may seem from where we are now.

Of course, there is nothing unique to anarchism about the idea of an

ideal society. Indeed political liberalism, as formulated by Rawls, is

in many ways an ideal theory and a model for the ideal society. It leads

to conclusions about the kinds of institutional practices and processes

which will enable individuals to live together in what is conceived as

the optimal political model, namely, the liberal state. Anarchism’s

model is similarly ideal but does away with the state. It, like

liberalism, begins from intuitions about the moral worth of certain

human attributes and values, but its model is strikingly different from

that which we have today. Many modern democracies, one could argue,

approach something like the Rawlsian model, but need the theoretical

framework and arguments of liberal theory to strengthen and underpin

their institutions and practices. For anarchism, however, the ideal

society is something that has to be created. And education is primarily

a part of this creation; it involves a radical challenge to current

practices and institutions, yet at the same time a faith in the idea

that human beings already possess most of the attributes and virtues

necessary to create and sustain such a different society, so do not need

to either undergo any radical transformation or to do away with an

‘inauthentic’ consciousness.

An anarchist philosophy of education?

In my Introduction, I posed the question of whether or not an

examination of anarchist ideas could yield a comprehensive, coherent and

unique philosophy of education. As indicated by the aforementioned

remarks, I believe that while my analysis suggests that anarchism does

not perhaps offer a systematic theory of education, it does have

significant implications for how we conceptualize education and

educational aims, for how we address educational questions in policy and

practice, and for how we do philosophy of education.

As far as educational practice is concerned, there are several

weaknesses in the anarchist account. Primarily, the sparse attention

paid by anarchist writers on education to the issue of pedagogy both

exposes this account to theoretical questions about the most appropriate

pedagogical approach, and opens the door to questionable pedagogical

practices, as witnessed by some graduates of the Stelton school, who

suggest (see Avrich 1980) that the actual teaching practices of certain

teachers at the anarchist schools were far from anti-coercive. Indeed,

the very status of the connection between anarchist ideology and

non-coercive pedagogy is one which still demands careful theoretical

treatment. Furthermore, the whole question of the teacher–pupil

relationship in both its psychological and political dimensions is

undertheorized in the literature on anarchist and libertarian education.

Although the anarchist account of authority goes some way towards

situating and justifying this relationship theoretically, there is

clearly a great deal more that could be said on the subject. Similarly,

and perhaps most importantly given its central role in creating and

sustaining the ideal society, the development of specific approaches to

and methods of moral education is sorely lacking from anarchist work on

education. Although I have hinted at the form such a programme of moral

education may take, and have emphasized its crucial role, I cannot

undertake the project of constructing it here.

In spite of these weaknesses in the theoretical framework of anarchist

educational practice, I think my analysis establishes that anarchist

education is a distinct tradition in the world of what is often loosely

referred to as ‘radical education’. As such, it differs in important

respects from both extreme libertarian positions and various aspects of

the free school movement, both in its content and in the

conceptualization of education which it embodies.

Above all, an anarchist perspective, I have argued, can help us see

questions about the relationship between education and social change in

a new light. Although the anarchist failure to distinguish in any

systematic way between social life within as opposed to beyond the state

is the cause of much confusion regarding the role of education in

promoting and sustaining social transformation, I hope I have gone some

way towards drawing this distinction, and clarifying its philosophical

significance.

At the same time, I believe that part of anarchism’s appeal, and indeed

its uniqueness as a perspective on education, lies in its ability to

transcend the means/ends model and to perceive every educational

encounter as both a moment of striving, through creative experimenting,

to create something better, and of celebrating and reinforcing what is

valuable in such an encounter.

I can find no better way of illustrating this idea than through an

analogy with a very particular instance of education, namely the

parent–child relationship. As parents, we are constantly aware of the

future-oriented aspect of our relationship with our children. The

question of who they will be and how they will turn out is a constant

factor in our interaction with them, our concerns, and our motivations

and goals for the decisions we make regarding them. Yet to construe this

relationship as reducible entirely to this intentional educational

aspect would be, surely, to miss the point. For our interaction with our

children is also a mutually challenging and stimulating relationship in

terms of who they – and we – are now. What makes this relationship so

complex is the fact that it involves constant interplay and tensions

between the present and the future; between our desires and hopes for

our children, our vision of an ideal future in which they will play a

part, and our attempt to understand who they are; between our efforts to

respect their desires and our inescapable wish to mould these desires;

between our own ideals for the future, and the challenges posed for them

by the complexities of the present. While the way in which we raise our

children is often informed by our commitments, values and aspirations,

it is equally true to say that these values and commitments are

constantly challenged and questioned by the experience of raising

children. In a sense, this inherently confusing, challenging and

creative mode of interaction sums up the essence of the anarchist

perspective on education. In thus rejecting simplistic distinctions

between ends and means, goals and visions, it suggests a certain

anti-hierarchical stance not only in its model for the ideal society but

also in our very patterns of thinking.

Furthermore, the anarchist stance on the relationship between education

and social change has important practical implications. For the

anarchist, utopia, as discussed, is not a blueprint for the future

society. Therefore the focus of education is not on implementing aspects

of this utopia, but on fostering the attitudes and virtues needed to

sustain it, alongside a critical attitude to current social principles

and practices, out of which the utopian vision grows and which, in turn,

are informed by this vision. Education is thus not seen as a means to

creating a different political order, but as a space – and perhaps,

following Buber, a relationship – in which we experiment with visions of

a new political order – a process which itself constitutes an educative

and motivating experience both for educators and pupils. I have

suggested that this perspective constitutes an alternative to certain

dominant views, according to which we tend to regard education as either

an end in itself or a means to an end.

Thus even if one remains sceptical as to the feasibility of the

social-anarchist model of social organization, the flexibility regarding

the exact form and process of this model is the essence of the anarchist

position, and it is this, I argue, together with the aspirations and

values behind the proposed model, which give meaning to the educational

experience.

Critiques of anarchism revisited

Interestingly, one conclusion suggested by my analysis is that the very

failure by many commentators to pay adequate attention to the central

role of education in anarchist thought has itself contributed to much of

the conceptual confusion and apparent tensions surrounding anarchist

theory. For the commonly made claim, to the effect that anarchists hold

a naïve and optimistic view about the possibility of maintaining a

benevolent, decentralized society without institutional control, does

not take into account the central and ongoing role of education in

promoting, fostering and maintaining the moral foundations deemed

necessary to support such a society. In many standard works on

anarchism, notably the studies by Miller, Morland and Ritter, education

gets barely a passing mention. This is especially striking in Morland’s

work, which is a detailed study of human nature in social anarchism

(Morland 1997). In the light of the complete absence of any discussion

of anarchist education in Morland’s book, his concluding remark that

‘something above and beyond a conception of human nature is required to

explain the optimism of the anarchists’ (Morland 1997: 198) is quite

astonishing. As the present work has suggested, the anarchists’

acknowledgement of the need for a substantive educational process,

designed along clear moral principles, goes hand-in-hand with their

contextualist account of human nature, thus turning what might otherwise

be regarded as a sort of naïve optimism, into a complex and inspiring

social hope.

A notable exception to this tendency to overlook the centrality of

education to the anarchist account is the work of Barbara Goodwin. In

her discussion of anarchism in Using Political Ideas (Goodwin and Taylor

1982), Goodwin refers to ‘the moral basis of anarchist society’, arguing

that ‘the real interest of anarchism lies not in the precise details of

communal organization, but in the universal principles on which such

communities would be based’ (ibid.: 118). In discussing anarchist

education in this context, Goodwin acknowledges its important function

in promoting and nurturing ‘the moral principles which formed the basis

of the anarchist order’ (ibid.: 128). The present book, I hope, goes

some way towards justifying this acknowledgement and exploring just what

it consists in. As such, it also shows that articulating the anarchist

view on education is an important contribution to the ongoing debate on

the viability of anarchism as a political ideology.

In conclusion, I suggest that even if one is ultimately sceptical about

the immediate feasibility of an anarchist society, the suggestion that

it is theoretically possible, together with the belief that it reflects

the true embodiment of some of our most cherished human values, make

exploring it an educationally valuable and constructive project.

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[1] In an interesting article based on work by Daniel P. Todes, Stephen

Jay Gould points out that Kropotkin was not, as is often assumed, an

idiosyncratic thinker, but was part of a well-developed Russian critique

of Darwin and contemporary interpreters of evolutionary theory. This

tradition of critique rejected the Malthusian claim that competition

‘must dominate in an ever more crowded world, where population, growing

geometrically, inevitably outstrips a food supply that can only increase

arithmetically’ (Gould 1988: 3). ‘Russia’, Gould points out,

is an immense country, under-populated by any nineteenth-century measure

of its agricultural potential. Russia is also, over most of its area, a

harsh land, where competition is more likely to pit organism against

environment (as in Darwin’s metaphorical struggle of a plant at the

desert’s edge) than organism against organism in direct and bloody

battle. How could any Russian, with a strong feel for his own

countryside, see Malthus’s principle of overpopulation as a foundation

for evolutionary theory? Todes writes: ‘It was foreign to their

experience because, quite simply, Russia’s huge land mass dwarfed its

sparse population. For a Russian to see an inexorably increasing

population inevitably straining potential supplies of food and space

required quite a leap of imagination’. (Ibid.)

[2] Illich, given his concern with poverty and social justice and his

arguments for the need to decrease the dependency of individuals on

corporate and state institutions, is in many ways a part of the

anarchist tradition. However, his focus, in addressing chiefly the

institutional effects of the modern state, is somewhat narrow and leads

to an emphasis on individual autonomy rather than on ideal of forms of

communality, suggesting possible theoretical tensions with the

social-anarchist position. Illich’s critique of schooling focuses on the

structure of the modern school and its relationship to control and

authority. He has specifically argued that schooling in modern

industrial states is geared primarily to the shaping of a type of

character which can be manipulated by consumer society and its

institutions of authority (see Spring 1975: 26). Schools, thus

conceived, encourage dependency which ‘creates a form of alienation

which destroys people’s ability to act’ (ibid.). Thus while Illich, with

his radical social critique, belongs to the same broad dissenting

tradition as many anarchist thinkers, his emphasis on the effects of

schooling on the individual arguably places him somewhat closer to the

libertarian tradition than to the tradition of (social) anarchist

education discussed here (see Chapter 6).

[3] Bakunin’s use of the term ‘right’ here is particularly interesting

given current debates into the distinction between ‘rights’ and ‘needs’,

and the general consensus as to the relative novelty of talk of

children’s rights.

[4] In this thought experiment, designed to illustrate Nozick’s central

argument that maintaining a pattern of distributive justice would entail

unacceptable restrictions on people’s liberty to do as they wish with

their own resources, members of an imaginary society pay a lot of money

to watch a highly talented basketball player play, resulting in his

accumulating a great deal of wealth. On Nozick’s account, although the

resulting distribution of resources is unequal, it cannot be regarded as

‘unjust’ as it emerged from a series of voluntary exchanges, from an

initially just situation.

[5] Although other contemporary philosophers of education have addressed

these issues (e.g. Williams 1994 and White 1997), these two works by

Pring and Winch represent the most substantial philosophical treatment

of the field of vocational education in recent years.

[6] A great deal of the literature on the issue of globalization in

educational contexts makes similar assumptions: the economy, we are

told, is moving in certain directions, creating certain changes in the

labour market, and education must follow suit by preparing children for

‘an uncertain future’, ‘flexible job-skills’, or ‘insecure employment’

(see for example Burbules and Torres 2000: 28).

[7] Interestingly, Bakunin seems to have made no acknowledgement of the

existence of any kind of educational process before the age of 5.

[8] Although the book is ostensibly about education, the private

initiatives which Tooley describes so enthusiastically in fact seem to

be more concerned with the acquisition of skills and training (see

Tooley 2000: 102–112) than about education in a broader sense.