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Title: Anarchism as Moral Theory
Author: Randall Amster
Date: 1998
Language: en
Topics: Pëtr Kropotkin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, mutualist, mutualism, usufruct, mutual aid, individualism, individualist, post-structuralism, post-structuralist, moralism, morality, postmodernism, praxis, post-scarcity, Emma Goldman, right libertarianism, marxism, universalism
Source: Retrieved on 12/17/2020 from http://www.oocities.org/bororissa/ana.html
Notes: This essay by Randall Amster (Arizona State University) appeared (1998) in ‘Anarchist Studies’.

Randall Amster

Anarchism as Moral Theory

Abstract

This essay explores the prospect of attaining a non–coercive morality

that could enable the simultaneous realisation of maximal individual

freedom and stable community, through the exposition of an anarchist

theory premised on a subjective ‘conscience–ethic’, an inherent tendency

toward sociality and ‘mutual aid’, and normative ‘usufruct’ in property.

Part of the project entails the development of a reflexive synthesis

between the two seemingly contradictory ends of ‘individual’ and

‘community’, concluding that only an anarchist ‘social order’

integrating self, society, and nature can resolve this apparent tension.

In this regard, an argument is advanced here for a commonly–held

materiality (deriving from the ‘state of nature’) that sets the

framework for a normative view of property and possession. The essay

concludes with an assessment of the efficacy of an accord between

anarchist moral theory and poststructuralism.

Introduction: The Persistence of Moral Inquiry

Human history and moral reasoning are inextricably linked to such an

extent that it is nearly impossible to discuss the former — either in

assessing the past or speculating about the future — without reference

to the latter. Even prominent theories often characterized as a–moral,

such as Nietzsche’s forecast of the “advent of nihilism,” his

pronouncement that “God is dead,” and his claim that we have finally

witnessed the “end of the moral interpretation of the world” (Kaufmann,

ed., 1956), nonetheless require reference to a moral framework even if

only as a means of adducing a critique of religion, authoritarianism, or

formal ethics.[1] Try as he might, Nietzsche cannot escape the primacy

of morality since humans have been and always will be imbedded in a

network of moral processes; indeed, as Peter Kropotkin, the gentle

prince, has shown through his extensive biological and zoological

research on Ethics (1992), the moral impulse in nature precedes the

existence of human life. Early humans, according to Kropotkin, developed

the moral urge by observing the processes of nature, “and as soon as

they began to bring some order into their observations of nature, and to

transmit them to posterity, the animals and their life supplied them

with the chief materials for their unwritten encyclopedia of knowledge,

as well as for their wisdom, which they expressed in proverbs and

sayings” (1992:50). Human nature, then, as part of the great web of

natural life and its complex processes, has been and will always be

imbued with the moral impulse.

For Kropotkin, the moral lessons that humans have derived from nature

include: sociality; a prohibition against killing one’s own kind; the

clan, kinship, or tribal structure; the advantages of common endeavor;

play; and a notion of reciprocity in retributing wrongful acts

(1992:51–9). In this view, the overarching tendency in nature toward

“mutual aid” — and not competition, as the social Darwinists have argued

— has principally enabled the survival of species in the animal kingdom,

including of course the species Homo. Thus, while the precise character

of ethical queries changes over time, with each development in science,

technology, and social control bringing with it new and more difficult

moral challenges, the omnipresent nature of moral inquiry itself is

constant. In our postmodern world, changing by the minute as

nanotechnology and instantaneous global communications continually

re–make the social and material landscapes, we face an unprecedented

urgency in the sphere of moral reasoning, often manifested in a

pervasive sense of individual dislocation and collective anxiety.

Nietzsche’s exhortation to “Live Dangerously” captures some of the angst

of our own era, and in this notion we begin to grasp the essence of

praxis as both a means of coping with an ever–changing world and as the

very essence of the belief that “philosophy has to be lived” (Kaufmann,

ed., 1956:51). “Praxis,” then, is simply the conscious deployment of an

inherent moral impulse in nature that predates even our own human

existence.

It must be noted, however, that for all of his insight into natural

morality and the processes of biological communities, Kropotkin never

formulated an ethic that would include the earth itself in its calculus,

but instead often expressed, as George Woodcock notes, “a kind of

uncritical optimism that the earth’s resources are unlimited” (in

Kropotkin 1993:125). Today we possess a deeper understanding of the

interdependence of all life processes on the planet and the tenuous

nature of our own survival as a function of flouting this natural

interconnection, and accordingly our current moral inquiries must

reflect this ecological knowledge (see Rogers 1994). Thus, amidst our

moral speculations on the nature of government, law, society, and

property, there exists a ubiquitous grounding that presupposes

humankind’s imbeddedness in the processes of “nature,” manifested in the

primacy of sociality and mutual aid among humans, as well as in the

recognition that these same priorities apply equally to our

relationships with non–human nature. And this, I think, is the chief

value of anarchism to moral reasoning: In challenging established

conceptions of authority and illuminating the persistence of inequality

in civil society, anarchism simultaneously enables a deeper inquiry into

how these same “human” hierarchical processes impact the balance of life

on the planet. In this light, human morality and natural morality are

taken to be coeval, deriving from the same beginning place — and with

that understanding we can undertake a meaningful analysis of the

contours of politics, praxis, and property in the postmodern era.

Means and Ends: Confidence, Violence, and the Minimal State

At the outset, I am often asked the “political” questions — ostensibly

for definitional purposes — whether “anarchist” and “libertarian” are

interchangeable terms, and whether anarchism is some form of communism.

We can even find references to anarchists as “libertarian communists” in

the literature (Guerin 1989:118), pointing out the difficulties inherent

in all attempts to categorize. Nonetheless, for purposes of analysis,

“libertarians” generally favor, in the words of Robert Nozick (1974),

“the minimal state,” and place great emphasis on maximum liberty as the

principal aim of civil society. The libertarian minimal state, however,

is troubling at the outset if we take the anarchist critique of statism

seriously. But the question persists: Why not a minimal

(“night–watchman”) state, charged only with protection and enforcement?

The answer is threefold. First, we need to inquire: protection from and

enforcement of what? When we understand the libertarian to be conceiving

of a state apparatus to protect private property interests and to

enforce the same, we immediately notice a divergence from the anarchist

tradition enunciated by many theorists, including Proudhon, Kropotkin,

and Emma Goldman.

The second response to Nozick centers on our view of human agency. The

presence of a minimal state that is to maintain a monopoly on force for

protection (of person and property) and enforcement (of contracts and

obligations) implies that its subjects are not equipped to so regulate

themselves; that is, that the subjects of the minimal state are not

taken to be morally self–directing. In a similar vein, the libertarian

is primarily concerned with negative liberty — freedom from coercion,

interference, and obstacles; whereas the anarchist is mainly interested

in positive liberty — freedom to be self–determining in accordance with

an individual “will.” The distinction is important, and again reflects a

fundamental difference in how we view agency. The libertarian begins

with the presumption of the need for a strong social state (hence a weak

view of the subject), works downward from there, and is satisfied when

reaching the minimal state; indeed, libertarians dare not go further, if

they take their Lockean (proto–liberal) roots seriously. The anarchist,

on the other hand, begins from a perspective of statelessness, the

weakest possible state (hence a strong view of the subject), and

inquires whether we need to build upward at all.

Is this a fair statement of the libertarian’s position? In Anarchy,

State, and Utopia, Nozick purports to build “upward” from the

(stateless) Lockean state of nature, through the ultraminimal state

(protection only for those who pay for it), and finally settles when he

reaches the minimal state (1974:3–25). Likewise, Hobbes, Locke himself,

and even Rousseau, begin from a theoretical state of nature construct

and seem to build upward to the social state. It will be asserted here,

however, that the social contract theorists were not attempting to show

how the state naturally would grow from a condition of primitive

statelessness, but were instead attempting a revisionist justification

of an already–existing social state. The state of nature metaphor, then,

seen in this light, is at best a neat expository device and at worst a

slick literary trick intended to divert attention away from the true

aims of its protagonists. The libertarian then, and in particular

Nozick, starts from a construct that appears at first blush to be from

the ground up but in reality works from the top down.

The third objection to even the minimal state centers on what we might

call “confidence.” The presence of the state apparatus in any form will

inculcate a tendency toward abdication in its subjects, something akin

to what Thoreau described as resigning one’s conscience to the

legislature (1965:252). For instance, the minimal state as conceived by

Nozick occupies the fields of protection and enforcement. The likely net

effect over time is that the subjects of such a state will grow

increasingly “confident” in the state’s provision of these basic

services, and that the subjects’ own abilities to protect and enforce

will either atrophy or never develop. As Michael Taylor (1987:168–69)

notes, “the more the state intervenes … the more ‘necessary’ it becomes,

because positive altruism and voluntary cooperative behavior atrophy in

the presence of the state and grow in its absence… Men who live for long

under government and its bureaucracy, courts and police, come to rely

upon them. They find it easier (and in some cases are legally bound) to

use the state for the settlement of their disputes and for the provision

of public goods, instead of arranging these things for themselves.”

Likewise Zygmunt Bauman (1993:31): “The bid to make individuals

universally moral through shifting their responsibilities to the

legislators failed, as did the promise to make everyone free in the

process.”

A chief aim of anarchist praxis, then, must be the abolition of

codified, formal laws: “Anarchism … has from the time of Godwin rejected

all written laws” (Kropotkin 1968:176). Instead, the community would be

“regulated by customs, habits and usages” (1968:201), as well as the

urges of conscience experienced by each of its members. The anarchist

view, again, is that reference to external, written laws represents an

abdication of the subject’s capacity for moral self–direction — an

essential element of a social order without institutional coercion. As

Kropotkin opines (1968:197): “We are so perverted by an education which

from infancy seeks to kill in us the spirit of revolt, and to develop

that of submission to authority; we are so perverted by this existence

under the ferrule of a law, which regulates every event in life — our

birth, our education, our development, our love, our friendship — that,

if this state of things continues, we shall lose all initiative, all

habit of thinking for ourselves.” Moreover, codified laws require some

institutional body for administration and enforcement, whereas

internalized social norms can serve to cultivate deeper instincts for

determining “right” and “wrong” by promoting broader access to the

community’s moral pulse.[2]

In this light, it becomes apparent that even the “minimal state” — with

its laws and property rights and enforecement mechanisms — will engender

a momentum that must be regarded with deep suspicion by the anarchist.

This point further provides a suitable transition for developing an

important distinction between Marxism and anarchism. In the well–known

view of the former, a series of historical “revolutions” will bring

about an eventual dictatorship of the proletariat, and then this

socialist state will “wither away,” leaving an apparently stateless

communist utopia. There is much that the anarchist likes in the end as

foretold by Marx; the problem, however, lies in the means. If the

anarchist is merely suspicious of the libertarian minimal state, then

the Marxian socialist state (which is an even stronger state than the

one it supplants) should be profoundly disconcerting. By what magic will

the state wither away? The specter of confidence leading to entrenchment

and atrophy haunts this vision of the socialist state (cf. May

1989:170). Moreover, the Marxist is “fully prepared to allow for the

necessity of harsh means to achieve noble ends” (Lukes 1985:105). Not so

the anarchist, to take Emma Goldman’s purist view, who maintains that

“no revolution can ever succeed as a factor of liberation unless the

means used to further it be identical in spirit and tendency with the

purposes to be achieved” (id., quoting Goldman 1925:261) (see also

Tolstoy 1990:16). Thus, if coercion, domination, hierarchy, and violence

are eschewed as ends, we must not abide them as means, no matter how

noble the aim.[3]

Conscience, Community, and Karma

Related to this question of means and ends, we next consider the uneasy

tension in anarchist thought between the priority of the individual and

the necessity of community (as for example in Robert Paul Wolff’s essay

In Defense of Anarchism (1970), in which he grapples with the task of

reconciling the conflict between authority and autonomy). Some writers

have even constructed camps within anarchist theory, giving us

categories like “individualist anarchist” or “anarchistic egoism” and

“collective anarchism” or “communitarian anarchism.” This labeling

conundrum points out a fundamental difficulty that anarchist thinkers

have struggled with: How to reconcile maximally–free individualism with

the practical necessity of social community. This is the “genuine

dilemma of anarchism,” in which it often appears that “Community negates

itself, or at least is either unstable or compelled to resort to

unanarchist methods of social control” (Condit 1987:56).

Is community, then, the enemy of freedom? Ritter gives us a good account

of the anarchist notion of “public censure,” intended as a

non–authoritarian means of securing compliance with community norms and

inculcating the same (1980:25–39). But even censure can be coercive, and

can have a chilling effect on freedom that is perhaps more tyrannical

than the state apparatus it replaces — decidedly unanarchistic

qualities. It would seem that we are back to the dilemma. The problem,

however, lies in the direction of the coercion: censure, like

state–sanctioned coercion, operates from the community onto the

individual. Were we able to conceive an outward–directed mechanism,

something originating with the individual and only secondarily reflected

in the community, perhaps the difficulty is resolved.

In this regard, among some contemporary anarchist writers we observe

formulations resembling a Kantian moral framework. Stephen Condit, for

example, avers that “Autonomy entails at a minimum a person’s

intentional actions based on a rational deliberation of her principles

and goals, her commitment to the means necessary to them and her moral

justification of the means in themselves” (1987:55). Taylor tells us

that autonomy comprises rationality and authenticity, with authentic

actions defined as those that “cohere” with a person’s “core self;” that

is, when such actions are expressive of a character that has been

critically adopted or affirmed (1982:148–50). Crowder also suggests an

“authentic” self as “that part of the personality that wills morally

right action,” made up of (a) rationality and (b) virtue (1991:10–11).

And Wolff bases his “philosophical anarchism” on an explicitly Kantian

version of “moral autonomy” that includes the burdens of “gaining

knowledge, reflecting on motives, predicting outcomes, [and] criticizing

principles” (1970:12–18). Their liberal–sounding foundations aside,[4]

these theories offer a potential solution to the “genuine dilemma of

anarchism” by conceiving morality as personal, subjective, and not

primarily the product of external coercion or inducement. Of course, we

need not limit ourselves solely to Kantian notions of “autonomy” that

assimilate conventional (or societal) rules, but instead might also

consider the efficacy of a Nietzschean “autonomous individual, the one

who creates and imposes self–made canons” (Palmer 1993:579).

Applied to our individual–community dilemma, the value of such a

“conscience–ethic” is apparent. We might now be able to apprehend the

possibility of a community of autonomous individuals who are morally

self–directing. Of course, public censure will still at times be

employed in any sub–utopian community, but by constructing our

“coercive” apparatus from the individual outward, however, and not

brought to bear from the community onto the individual, we can ensure

that means such as censure will be only secondarily employed, and even

then as the exception and not the rule. Only in this way, from the

bottom up, is it possible to envision a true community of free, morally

self–guided individuals. As Bauman (1993:61) notes:

If solitude marks the beginning of the moral act, togetherness and

communion emerge at its end — as the togetherness of the ‘moral party’,

the achievement of lonely moral persons reaching beyond their solitude

in the act of self–sacrifice which is both the hub and the expression of

‘being for’. We are not moral thanks to society; we live in society, we

are society, thanks to being moral. At the heart of sociality is the

loneliness of the moral person. Before society, its law–makers and its

philosophers come down to spelling out its ethical principles, there are

beings who have been moral without the constraint of codified goodness.

Thus, for example, consider how the concept of “authority” might be

viewed in an anarchist community. In Social Anarchism, Giovanni Baldelli

provides us with a ready guide:

“Coercive power must be reduced to a minimum and put in as many hands

as possible”;

“Claims to authority must be rejected if they are established by

force”;

“Each authority must be answerable to several others that are equally

responsible to several more”;

“No person in his relationship with another should be exempt from

judgment by a third”;

“Overwhelming power should always be with the third party”; and

“Access to a third party, available to everyone, should be to many

third parties, not to one only” (1971: 86–8).

In this formulation, the integrity and priority of the individual is

retained by conceiving authority and power as diffuse and accessible to

all members, while still enabling the community qua community to

function as it must.[5]

Moreover, absent central authority, cooperation in the community is

likely to develop and sustain since the autonomous conscience, in being

called upon to consider the impact of its actions, necessarily accounts

for the interests of others (indeed, of “nature” itself) before guiding

the actions of the moral self. In this sense, the conscience–ethic can

be said to incorporate a spirit of mutuality, a concern for what Bauman

calls “the Other”: “Being a moral person means that I am my brother’s

keeper” (1993:51). Kropotkin, in his well–known Mutual Aid (1972), went

to great lengths to show that mutuality is the overwhelming norm among

creatures of the earth, arguing in response to Darwinian biology that

mutual aid and not just competition has enabled most advanced species to

survive, and has likewise noted in an earlier work on “Anarchist

Morality” (1993:139) that “The feeling of solidarity is the leading

characteristic of all animals living in society.” And Todd May sees the

“a priori of traditional anarchism: trust in the individual” in the

sentiment that “Left to their own devices, individuals have a natural

ability — indeed a propensity — to devise social arrangements that aare

both just and efficient” (1989:171).

I have attempted here to show that the human agent in anarchist theory

is at once individualistic and community oriented, and that the society

composed of such agents is likewise reflexively constructed. The image

is one of layers, with “conscience” as the first wave of securing moral

conduct, and community secondarily involved. What of subjects

“uncoerced” by either the self or the collective? If freedom is to be

taken seriously, does that mean that one is free to commit genocide or

to become a dictator? The answer for the consistent anarchist is that

the interplay of the first two layers will succeed in cultivating

self–directing moral agents and community–minded subjects; those few who

remain unpersuaded by internal conscience or public encouragement

(whether in the form of “censure” or even just in the desire for

sociality) and instead persist in predatory, unanarchistic behavior, are

consigned to abide the karma that attaches to their conduct. Any other

response does greater harm than it seeks to prevent.

Thus we have constructed a tripartite anarchist formulation —

conscience, community, and karma — in making the case for moral

self–direction. But have we gone too far in so doing? I can already hear

grumblings about universalism, foundations, and representation mounting

from the wings of postmodernism. The autonomous moral agent envisioned

here, however, is foundational only in the sense of the mechanism

employed: the conscience. What is most definitely not universal is how

the individual conscience manifests itself. It is important that this

point be clearly understood. The argument is that there is a common

apparatus, something universally attendant to existence and

consciousness (as a function of the moral impulse in nature) that is

sufficient to hold together a community of individuals. But there is no

rigid ethical code in place, no privileging of one set of principles

over another. Indeed, from place to place and at different times

community standards and expectations will change; likewise from person

to person the urges of conscience will vary. In this sense, we are

conceiving a personal, subjective imperative of morality.[6] That most

will reach the same or similar moral conclusions does not mean that we

have taken to universalism; it only means that people are more alike

than different, and that sociality and reciprocity are fundamental moral

impulses manifested in “the consciousness of an overriding human

solidarity” (Read 1954:155). As Kropotkin observes (1993:144–45):

We are not afraid to forego judges and their sentences. We forego

sanctions of all kinds, even obligations to morality. We are not afraid

to say: ‘Do what you will; act as you will’; because we are persuaded

that the great majority of mankind, in proportion to their degree of

enlightenment and the completeness with which they free themselves from

existing fetters will behave and act always in a direction useful to

society … All we can do is give advice. And again while giving it we

add: ‘This advice will be valueless if your own experience and

observation do not lead you to recognize that it is worth following’.

Property and Materiality

A related question often raised in objection to anarchism is, How can a

society achieve the production, distribution, and maintenance of public

goods absent a central authority? In other words: How can free

individuals be encouraged to work and provide for the “public utility”

without coercion, either negative (punishment) or positive (personal

gain)? The problem with such queries is that they are inverted; the real

question is how a society premised on coercion and central authority can

ever produce, distribute, and maintain free individuals. A similar query

concerns the “free rider” problem: How can a stateless society prevent

those who do not share in the work from sharing the public goods

produced by such work? Again, the question is misplaced; instead, we

might inquire how a state society can justify barring certain

individuals from having access to the enjoyment of public goods. In the

anarchist society, all goods — material and intangible alike — are in a

sense public, as a consequence of abolishing the kind of private

property that has come to typify liberal–capitalist societies. The

question turns, then, on how we come to define property in anarchist

theory, and on how we view the individual’s rights and responsibilities

in the production and maintenance of public goods. This section

endeavors to provide some preliminary answers.

A fitting place to begin an analysis of public goods and property is

with the “state of nature,” a metaphorical construct employed most

prominently in the “social contract” theories of Hobbes, Locke, and

Rousseau, among others. As noted above, in Anarchy, State, and Utopia

Nozick ostensibly builds “upward” from the (stateless) Lockean state of

nature, through the “ultraminimal state” (protection only for those who

pay for it), and finally settles when he reaches the “minimal state”

(1974:3–25), paralleling the models of the early social contractarians

who began from a state of nature construct and seemed to build “upward”

in deriving the social state. It has often been argued, however, that

the social contract theorists were not attempting to show how the state

naturally would grow from a condition of primitive statelessness, but

were instead attempting a revisionist justification of an

already–existing social state. The starting points for the social

contractarians in reality were (I) a preconception of the subject as

atomistic and rationally self–interested, and (ii) the existence of a

burgeoning strong social state whose aim was to galvanize these

atomistic agents under the umbrella of a growing free market economy.

Nozick, then, mirroring the revisionism of the social contractarians,

professes to be working from the “bottom up” (i.e. primitive

statelessness) in constructing his “minimal state,” when in fact just

the opposite is true — with the net effect being that Nozick appears as

a mere apologist for the neo–conservative laissez–faire state. As

Stephen Condit (1987:159–63) asserts: “What he is specifically trying to

do is to provide reasons for the existing distribution of property and

economic capabilities… In the end, Nozick is speaking only for those

persons who already have effective domains of property, and dressing up

their ideological interest as philosophical reasoning.”

In contrast with Nozick, who begins with Locke’s framework, many

anarchist theorists take Rousseau’s formulation as their point of

departure (e.g., Condit 1987), but even this turn is problematic since

he too was ultimately guilty of such revisionist apologia. Thus, to the

extent that we invoke the state of nature construction at all, it is not

to justify preconceived notions of agency and society, but rather to

illustrate concretely the naturalistic roots of our conception of

materiality. The emphasis, then, is not on the “state” but on “nature,”

and from this perhaps we can derive a comprehensive theory of normative

property.

In A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Rousseau (1973) develops a

whimsical picture of the state of nature, a time and place where life

was simple, regular, and good. What was lacking, however, and what

ultimately forced mankind out of this Eden and into the chains of the

social state, was imagination, a searching mind, philosophy, and

recognition; the simple physicality of life in the state of nature was

not sufficient to sate the growing intellectual, emotional, and

linguistic urges of even its “savage” inhabitants. We thus departed this

state of nature, giving up our natural liberty and the right to anything

that tempted us, in favor of a social state that granted us “civil

liberty and the legal right of property” in what we possess. The picture

Rousseau has drawn portrays early man as distinct from his environment,

as atomistic and non–communal, and as intellectually deficient. Among

many “indigenous” or “primitive” cultures, however, we observe just the

opposite: Nature is sacred, community essential, and philosophy

integral. Much as Locke before him, Rousseau sees nature and its early

inhabitants through a colonialist’s eyes. The mistake lies in how he

conceives humanity vis–a–vis nature: An atomistic agent will be at odds

with his environment, since it threatens his singularity; a

self–interested subject will necessarily adopt an anthropocentric world

view.

The Lockean formulation adopted by Nozick is even more troubling since,

for Locke, “nature” is seen as something to be appropriated, enclosed,

and possessed (we might say that Locke transforms Hobbes’s “war of each

against all” into a “war of all against nature”). Nozick’s entitlement

theory rests on the supposition that if all possessions are justly held

(meaning that they were acquired in accordance with a modified Lockean

proviso, and transferred justly over the course of their history), then

an existing distribution of holdings is just (1974:150–82). A

substantial flaw in this argument, as Alasdair MacIntyre observes, is

that this means that “there are in fact very few, and in some large

areas of the world no legitimate entitlements. The property–owners of

the modern world are not the legitimate heirs of Lockean individuals who

performed quasi–Lockean … acts of original acquisition; they are the

inheritors of those who, for example, stole, and used violence to steal

the common lands of England from the common people, vast tracts of North

America from the American Indian, much of Ireland from the Irish, and

Prussia from the original non–German Prussians” (1981:234). In other

words, we have realized the logical consequences — theft, war, even

genocide — of viewing the earth as something to be acquired and

possessed, rather than revered and celebrated.

And so we arrive at Proudhon’s famous axiom that “property is theft.”

Proudhon apparently did not intend by this that all property is theft,

but only that which derives from unearned ownership (e.g., interest on

loans; income from rentals) (Crowder 1991:85). We can extend this

argument to form our own maxim: “All non–normative property is theft.”

One possible point of departure is the concept of “usufruct.” Originally

conceived as an alternative to private ownership of land in countries

like Switzerland and Germany, usufruct granted one in possession the

“right to build;” when usufruct rights were “sold,” it was not the land

itself but the structures erected and capital accumulated on the land

that were subject to transfer (Ushakov 1994:11). Godwin extended the

concept to all property, asserting that individuals are entitled only to

stewardship over goods, and are under strict obligations to use such

goods in furtherance of the general happiness (Crowder 1991:86).

Similarly, Proudhon envisioned a “usufructuary” as opposed to an owner,

who was to be “responsible for the thing entrusted to him; he must use

it in conformity with general utility, with a view to its preservation

and development” (in Crowder 1991:86–7).

We can see the seeds of normativity developing here, culminating in

Baldelli’s contention that “The main difference between ownership and

usufruct as rights, is that while the former is irresponsible and

unconditioned, the latter is subject to social and economic conditions

and carries moral obligations” (1971:110). The rights of ownership

include the right to abuse or even destroy one’s possessions; usufruct

prohibits such action unless it is somehow to the general benefit (e.g.,

removing a hazard). Usufruct casts one in possession as a steward,

holding the item in trust for all concerned, but still able to use and

enjoy it in any harmonious way; as Murray Bookchin (1991:50) notes,

“Such resources belong to the user as long as they are being used.”

Taken further, usufruct logically permuted means that nothing belongs to

me except everything; that is, I have moral obligations in all material

things. The things that I possess must be used so as to comport with the

well–being of the community; the things which no one possesses are to be

maintained for the use and enjoyment of all; the things possessed by

others are of concern to me as well. Again, Bookchin (1991:50): “[T]he

collective claim is implicit in the primacy of usufruct over

proprietorship. Hence, even the work performed in one’s own dwelling has

an underlying collective dimension in the potential availability of its

products to the entire community.” What other reasoned view can we have

of the good things of the earth? The earth doesn’t belong to us, but we

to it (Rousseau 1973:84); to misuse or destroy any part of it is to

injure ourselves; material existence is a gift of nature, and with that

gift comes an obligation to preserve the integrity of the whole.

Usufruct, then, can be seen as a “norm of rules for the social

utilisation of material reality transcending a narrow, unspecified right

of power over things” (Condit 1987:103); and as Bookchin (1991:54)

further opines, “Even ‘things’ as such … stand at odds with organic

society’s practice of usufruct.” In this regard we come to understand

“property” as the original source of inequality, promoting power in the

form of dominion “over things” — namely the “things” of nature, with

nature including even ourselves. As the early Rousseau (1973:84) asserts

in the Discourse on Inequality:

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself

of saying ‘This is mine’, and found some people simple enough to believe

him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars,

and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one

have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch,

and crying to his fellows: ‘Beware of listening to this impostor; you

are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us

all, and the earth itself to nobody.’

In rejecting this original hierarchy, we open a space for a truly

egalitarian conception of self, society, and nature. To sustain this

vision requires no less than individual conscience, mutual aid, and a

notion of property that contemplates possession of nothing except

everything; only an anarchist social “order” enables this expansive

usufruct while preserving the integrity of the individual.

A Postmodern Anarchism?

The recurrent emphasis here on concepts such as individual conscience,

inclusive community, and normative property leads the argument back to

the persistent ‘moral inquiry’ noted at the top of this essay. In a nod

to the current edge of ethical thought, consider the ‘postmodern’

critique of the material realities and power relations that work to

inhibit the realization of the autonomous self. What are these sources

of constriction? David Harvey describes “the condition of postmodernity”

as one of fragmentation and contingency, in which aesthetics triumph

over ethics, and where neo–conservative laissez–faire capitalism

flourishes (1990:340–41). In this condition, explosive technological

growth leads to runaway time–space compression, causing profound

feelings of alienation and dislocation; these feelings in turn help

produce a frenzied populace that readily takes to mass–marketed

quick–fixes, which only serves further to exacerbate the problem. As

Baldelli (1971:28) notes: “As production becomes progressively

dehumanized and standardized … the man in the street becomes insensitive

to the spirituality of things around him as his sense of wonder is

blunted by increasingly complex and artificial conditions.” One need not

be a postmodern philosopher to appreciate that something is very wrong

with the world as it is presently configured; the parade of crime,

corruption, and destruction broadcast into our homes each night makes

this point evident to even the most detached observer.

The problem is that “postmodernism” offers us no way out, no “secure

moorings” on which to base a new moral vision. What we have attempted to

construct in this work is a subjective morality that escapes the

prejudices of universalism without degenerating into nihilism. Have we

been successful? Following Zygmunt Bauman, we have argued that it is

possible to reject totalizing ethical codes and still have morality, in

the belief that the “conscience of the moral self is humanity’s only

warrant and hope” (1993:249–50). It is important to believe that what we

do and how we live matters; to fail to do so can only invite cataclysm

and perhaps even extinction. This is where resistance has value, and

represents a point of convergence between anarchist and postmodern

thought. The anarchist is adverse to all forms of power wielded by one

group at the expense of another, whether by the state or some other

institution; as a corollary, the anarchist has great faith in the power

of the autonomous individual (May 1989:169–71). Similarly, Foucault’s

analysis of the linkages between knowledge and institutional power

identifies certain “technologies of the self” in the form of “various

objectification strategies that have been used to control bodies” (Koch

1993:347).

Of course, Foucault was notoriously circumspect about issuing specific

calls to action; and yet when he delineates for us in stark detail

concepts like discipline, documentation, surveillance, and panopticism

(see Rabinow, ed., 1984), we can’t help but feel that he is asking us to

conclude for ourselves that such practices are being explicated so that

they may be resisted. What else can be the end of such a critique,

except to foster a spirit of resistance with an eye toward freedom? “If

it is not in the name of humanism or some other foundation that the

critique occurs, in what or whose name is it a critique?” (May

1989:177). The poststructuralist owes us an answer to this question;[7]

the anarchist has already given us one: the actualization of the

autonomous moral self, as reflective of the moral impulse in nature, and

properly freed from its universalistic foundations.

If we are to locate a moral foundation in poststructuralist thought, it

lies in Foucault’s assertion that “ethics is a practice; ethos is a

manner of being” (Rabinow, ed., 1984:377). In this regard, Todd May has

divined certain ethical principles to which poststructuralism is

implicitly committed: (1) “practices in representing others to

themselves — either in who they are or in what they want — ought, as

much as possible, to be avoided;” and (2) “alternative practices, all

things being equal, ought to be allowed to flourish and even to be

promoted” (1994:130–33). (May also notes that “there is a generally

anticapitalist sentiment among poststructuralists that is ethically

based” (1994:136)). The implication of these ethical precepts is that we

ought to undertake practices that avoid representation and instead allow

individuals to define and express themselves in their own unique manner

— which sounds a lot like the anarchist aim of liberating the authentic

self, the one that acts in the spirit of self–affirmation and social

solidarity.[8] As a consequence of this aim, however, we must be

prepared to live with the proposition that “moral conduct cannot be

guaranteed” (Bauman 1993:10), while still maintaining the belief that

“humankind–wide moral unity is thinkable, if at all, not as the

end–product of globalizing the domain of political powers with ethical

pretensions, but as the utopian horizon of … the emancipation of the

autonomous moral self and vindication of its moral responsibility”

(1993:14–5). In this way, we arrive at a convergence that enables

morality without resorting to universalism, arguing instead for a

universal of “difference,” and a natural morality that knows no duties

or obligations but only the innate urges of sociality and mutual aid.

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[1] Nietzsche’s Human, All Too Human (1996) — in which he develops an

a–moral historicism that anticipates his later genealogy of morals —

testifies to the fundamental character of moral inquiry. Even if we

ultimately conclude, as Nietzsche does, that “the history of moral

feelings is the history of an error” as to the knowability of the

essential nature of “things” (1996:43), we still must acknowledge the

primacy of moral inquiry in the evolution of human societies, as well as

the moral impulse — real or imagined, innate or constructed — that

exists in varying degrees within each of us.

[2] See also Pfohl (1994:446): “Under the domination of the state,

humans are said to progressively lose the ability to act directly in

mutual aid and support, resistance, and reconciliation. In a state

society, direct action is replaced by the mediation of bureaucratic

rules, personal responsibility by the actions of rulers.” Likewise

Bauman (1993:29,61): “[I]t is precisely the fact of the saturation of

common life with coercive institutions, endowed with the sole authority

of setting the standards of good conduct, that renders the individual

qua individual principally untrustworthy… [W]hen concepts, standards and

rules enter the stage, moral impulse makes an exit; ethical reasoning

takes its place, but ethics is made in the likeness of Law, not the

moral urge.”

[3] This is not a point of uniformity among anarchist theorists. As

Ritter observes, Godwin and Proudhon both believed that “government and

inequality must first prepare the way for anarchy through their effects”

(1980:97) — what we might call a “negative means” formulation. Bakunin

is more problematic, as Ritter notes, and “in his strategy gave force

and deception a substantial, permanent place” (1980:101). Kropotkin,

just to complete the quartet of predominant anarchist thinkers, seems to

place his faith mainly in the “capacity of most people for clear

thinking,” but does not entirely rule out the use of physical coercion

(1980:105). In my view, borrowing from Tolstoy (1990:19), if the force

of “persuasion and example” is not sufficient to carry the day, then

perhaps it is not yet the right day; any other view offends my utopian

sensibilities.

[4] Todd May (1990:533–37), however, notes that the “multiplicity and

heterogeneity” implicit in Kantian theories of justice indicate that

“Kant’s brethren are to be found more in the camp of anarchists than in

that of the liberals.”

[5] Compare Murray Bookchin’s discussion of authority in “organic

societies,” which he defines as “primitive or preliterate communities”

(1991:43,55): “What we flippantly call ‘leadership’ in organic societies

often turns out to be guidance, lacking the usual accouterments of

command. Its ‘power’ is functional rather than political. Chiefs, where

they authentically exist and are not the mere creations of the

colonizer’s mind, have no true authority in a coercive sense. They are

advisors, teachers, and consultants, esteemed for their experience and

wisdom. Whatever ‘power’ they do have is usually confined to highly

delimited tasks such as the coordination of hunts and war expeditions.

It ends with the tasks to be performed. Hence, it is episodic power, not

institutional; periodic, not traditional.”

[6] As Tifft and Sullivan (1980:146) note: “An anarchist social order …

is a moral order in accordance with which people, from their inner

convictions, act towards others as they desire that others should act

toward them. It is a social order in which each is able to live and act

according to his or her own judgment.”

[7] One writer, in attempting to construct a non–foundational

poststructuralist anarchism, asserts that “The problem of representation

is avoided by the denial of any notion of essence in the discussion of

the individual” (Koch 1993:346). The difficulty comes in the preceding

passage, where Koch tells us that “Discourse requires a sender and a

receiver,” which contemplates the existence of an essential or

foundational communicative apparatus (Koch terms this a “common

biological composition among each receiver–sender”) necessary if we are

to realize the “conditions for discourse” implicit in a

poststructuralist epistemology.

[8] See May (1989:179): “What both traditional anarchism and

contemporary post–structuralism seek is a society — or better, a set of

intersecting societies — in which people are not told who they are, what

they want, and how they shall live, but who will be able to determine

these things for themselves.” See also Koch (1993:344): “Anarchism

represents the condition in which the optimal state of external

plurality can exist.”