AnarchismAn Overview

D. Allen DaltonECON 325 – Radical Economics

Boise State UniversityFall 2011

To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.

To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored.

That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.

- P.J. Proudhon, “What is Government?”, General Idea of the

Revolution in the Nineteenth Century

What is Anarchism?

• anarkhia – contrary to authority, without a ruler

• arkhia – authority, ruler• Anarchy or anarchism?• Dictionary definitions

– presuming the result

• Response to gulf of power and riches

What is Anarchism?

“the name given to a principle or theory of life under which society is conceived without government – harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements, concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilised being.”

- Kropotkin, “Anarchism,”

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1905.

The Great Anarchists

• William Godwin (1756-1836) – Enquiry Concerning Political

Justice (1793)

• Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865)– What Is Property? An Inquiry into

the Principle of Right and Government (1840)

– General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century (1851)

The Great Anarchists

• Max Stirner (1806-1856)– The Ego and His Own (1845)

• Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876)– Statism and Anarchy (1873)– God and the State (1882)

The Great Anarchists

• Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)– My Confession (1879)– What I Believe (1884)– The Kingdom of God is Within You

(1893)

• Pyotr Kropotkin (1842-1921)– The Conquest of Bread (1892-4)– Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution

(1890-6)– Fields, Factories and Workshops

(1912)

The Great Anarchists

• Lysander Spooner (1808-1887)– No Treason No. 6: The

Constitution of No Authority (1867-70)

– Natural Law, Or the Science of Justice (1882)

• Benjamin Tucker (1854-1939)– Instead of a Book (1893)

Varieties of Anarchism

• Anarcho-communism• Anarcho-syndicalism• Individualist

anarchism– Mutualist anarchism– Anarcho-capitalism

• Pacifist anarchism– Christian anarchism

“…the ideal of a self-organizing society based on voluntary cooperation rather than coercion is irrepressible.”

- Ward, Anarchism:

A Very Short Introduction, p. 10

Anarchist Moments

• Antecedents– Medieval Iceland– English Revolution 1640s– Levellers– American Revolution– French Revolution (Enragés)– Revolutions of 1848– Paris Commune of 1870– Russian Revolution (Makhnovites)– Spanish Anarcho-syndicalism (Civil War 1930s)

State and Society

• Distinction between state and society• Franz Oppenheimer, The State (1908)

– Distinction between the political and economic means

“I propose in the following discussion to call one's own labor and the equivalent exchange of one's own labor for the labor of others, the ‘economic means’ for the satisfaction of needs, while the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others will be called the ‘political means.’ “

-Oppenheimer, The State, p. 13

State and Society

“The State, completely in its genesis, essentially and almost completely during the first stages of its existence, is a social institution, forced by a victorious group of men on a defeated group, with the sole purpose of regulating the dominion of the victorious group over the vanquished, and securing itself against revolt from within and attacks from abroad. Teleologically, this dominion had no other purpose than the economic exploitation of the vanquished by the victors.”

- Oppenheimer, The State, p. 8

State and Society

• Antecedents of welfare state in friendly societies, mutual aid organizations, fraternal brotherhoods

• Alternative to the “managerial state” – rise to prominence of professional technocrats

• Ward’s 4 Principles of Anarchist Organization1. Voluntary2. Functional3. Temporary4. Small

Nationalism and Religion

• Sources of division and conflict that increase the strength of the State in human relations

• Anarchist response– Engagement or Abstention?– Liberalism, socialism, communism all products

of the Age of Reason– National socialism (fascism) – reaction

• The special case of Christian Anarchism

Anarchy and Prison Reform

• Nineteenth and early Twentieth century anarchists were first-hand acquaintances with the Prison system– Political, anti-war and “free love” activities– Kropotkin

• In Russian and French Prisons (1887)• “prisons are the universities of crime”

– Alexander Berkman• Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (1912)

• Decriminalization

Anarchy and Workplace

• Authority in the workplace– Many anarchist pioneers linked to early trade

and industrial unionism– Confédération Générale du Travial (CGT) –

France– Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) – Spain– Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) – US

• Small-scale economy– Kropotkin’s Fields, Factories andWorkshops– Economies of scale in industry– Small businessmen

Anarchy and Education

• Central to the anarchist program has been educational reform– Godwin’s attempt to open a school (1783)– Paul Goodman, Compulsory Miseducation (1964)– Murray Rothbard, Education: Free and

Compulsory (1972)

• Against the nationalist system of socialism and liberalism– Godwin: “The true object of education, like that

of every other moral process, is the generation of happiness.” The Enquirer (1797)

Individualist Anarchism

• Edmund Burke, A Vindication of Natural Society (1756)

• Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own (1845)• Henry David Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil

Government,” (1849)• American Individualist Anarchism

– Tension with socialist/collectivist immigrant tradition

– Josiah Warren, Lysander Spooner, Stephen Pearl Andrews, Benjamin Tucker

Individualist Anarchism

“I heartily accept the motto, — "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, — "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. “

- Thoreau, “Resistance to Civil Government”

Anarcho-capitalism?

• Gustav de Molinari, “The Production of Security, “ (1849)– First argument for the private production of

defense and police services– French laissez-faire tradition– Disciple of Bastiat and Say

• Proudhon’s debate with Bastait over the nature of interest

– Pointedly refused the appellation of “anarchist”

Anarcho-capitalism?• Modern Anarcho-capitalism• Murray Rothbard

– Power and Market (1970)– For A New Liberty (1973)– The Ethics of Liberty (1982)

• David Friedman– The Machinery of Freedom (1973)

• Long running dispute about whether Anarcho-capitalism is anarchist!– The problem of language and intent

Anarchy and Modern Society

• “Small” liberations of the 20th/21st century– Fashion– Women’s movement– “Free unions”– Sexual Revolution– Ending of Corporal Punishment– “Free schools”– Gay and Lesbian movement– Internet

• WTO and IMF protests

Federalism and Anarchy

• How can self-organizing communities extend to multi-regional issues?

• Federated communities– Local interests and commonalities are a barrier

to tyranny– Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin– Individuals, communes, provinces, “nations”– Importance of the right of secession – of

provinces, communes, and of individuals– “Voluntary Outlawry”

Federalism and Anarchy

“Solicit men’s views in the mass, and they will return stupid, fickle and violent answers; solicit their views as members of definite groups with real solidarity and a distinctive character, and their answers will be responsible and wise. Expose them to the political ‘language’ of mass democracy, which represents ‘the people’ as unitary and undivided, and minorities as traitors, and they will give birth to tyranny; expose them to the political language of federalism, in which the people figures as a diversified aggregate of real associations, and they will resist tyranny to the end.”- Proudhon, The Principle of Federation

Green Anarchism?

• Anarchists have always been distrustful of large-scale organizations

• In modern capitalism, anarchists see the support by government of artificial “bigness” as contributing to ecological problems

• Small self-organizing communities as a solution– E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: Economics

as if People Mattered (1973)– Murray Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1974)

Future of Anarchism

• Approach to political and economic organization that continues to draw adherents dissatisfied with hierarchy

• “Life-style” anarchism– Wave of the future or a dead-end?– Paul Goodman on autonomy (Ward, p. 68)– Peter Harper (Ward, p. 96)

• Education and politics• Is a federation of anarchists possible?