Anarchism

Unit 5b: Other ideological traditions
Howard Williams
The Professor in International Politics at the Department of International Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth writes for BBC Parliament

Anarchy in the UK: rock 'n' roll style

Anarchism is the belief in a society without government. Anarchists are optimists about the human individual and society.

They think that a totally decentralized society with the minimum of institutional constraints will work best as power and initiative derives from individuals within their local communities.

ALSO IN THIS SECTION: Unit 5B - Other Ideological Traditions Nationalism Fascism Feminism

They accept no national or international institutions that might threaten to take power away from the individual.

One way of summing up the outlook of the anarchists is that they are opposed to the principle of political sovereignty and all that flows from it. Anarchism is very clearly a modern invention.

It represents a critique of the modern state and the political ideologies, such as conservatism, nationalism and socialism which arise through the disputes connected with the use of the power of the state.

Anarchists defend what represents a predominantly minority position amongst adherents of modern political ideologies. Most of these ideologies take for granted the principle of political sovereignty.

A firm, settled, central authority is so much part of the current order of things that to question such authority seems to question society itself.

But this is the central claim of anarchists: human society, in their view, can in the long term function perfectly well without the state.

Government as force of oppression

Although one of the earliest anarchist thinkers, William Godwin (1756-1836), acknowledges government comes into existence to save people from their vices, he counters that, through, "concentrating the force of the community, it gives occasion to wild projects of calamity, to oppression, despotism, war and conquest."

Thus anarchists deny that a state can ever devise and implement laws fairly.

They reject the right of the state to punish individuals for their crimes, most often arguing that crime arises from the unfair centralization of power and wealth in the society.

Anarchists do not suggest that individuals cannot live without law but like Godwin they think society will flourish best if we follow only the laws of nature or reason that are self-evident to any thinking human being. Social rules do not need to be enforced from the outside.

Each individual's private judgement will tell them what to do in respect of their neighbours and fellow members of society.

If any regulation is required then anarchists may accept loose voluntary associations at the local level similar to the system of parishes that Godwin hoped to see flourish.

Here, each adult would play a part in this loose local association adjudicating disputes and administering punishment if necessary.

Minimize or eliminate the state?

Godwin, like another anarchist writer Perre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-65), thought the transition to anarchism might occur through the minimization rather than the complete elimination of the state.

Proudhon envisaged that, "forms of monarchy and intensive centralization" would, "disappear, to be replaced by federal institutions and a pattern of life based on the commune".

Bakunin, perhaps the most famous of all anarchists, was in contrast an implacable opponent of the state and recommended immediate social revolution.

He denied absolutely the liberal view that the state was initially erected for the good of all and rejected the Rousseauian view that sovereignty embodied the general will.

The state was far from being, "a living whole, giving everyone the chance to breathe freely".

It was rather, "the immolation of every individual as well as of local associations". The state was "an abstraction which is destructive of living society".

Democracy is not a solution

As with Godwin, democracy is for Bakunin no guarantee that the state ceases to function in a despotic role.

Anarchists regard democracy as a form of the state or a manner in which political sovereignty expresses itself, so it also has to be rejected.

Bakunin believed that there were grounds for thinking that a democratic state might be even more oppressive than a monarchy.

Here: "under the pretext of representing the will of everyone, it bears down upon the will and the free movement of every one of its members with the whole weight of its collective power."

Centralized government is no more acceptable to anarchists simply because it is popular government.

Anarchists share Bakunin's distrust of political power. For Bakunin, "anyone invested with authority must through the force of an immutable social law, become an oppressor and exploiter of society."

Bakunin would replace the authority of the state with the recognition of natural laws and he envisages that the state would be overthrown by a conspiratorial uprising.

Bakunin, who was no mere abstract theorist, several times sought to put such a conspiracy into practice, with disastrous consequences.

Anarchism and socialism

Bakunin sought, like Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921), to combine anarchism with socialism.

For Kropotkin, "the private ownership of land, capital and machinery" had had its day. He and Bakunin agreed with Marx that the means of production would eventually be, "managed in common by all producers of wealth".

But the anarchists fiercely disagreed with Marxists over the path that a society should take once the producers took over control.

Bakunin believed that the state should be uprooted immediately and his pursuit of this aim in the First International Working Men's Association established by Marx led eventually to its break up.

Libertarian anarchists who uphold the principle of private property have opposed Bakunin and Kropotikin's brand of socialist anarchism within anarchism itself.

Libertarian anarchists have argued for the minimization rather than the removal of state authority.

Libertarianism of this kind has been influential amongst contemporary radical liberals and, unlike collectivist anarchism, can still be seen to have an influence on government policies in the advanced western states.

Anarchism of Bakunin's all questioning variety plays a part in some Green political movements but exercises its greatest influence as a critical standpoint within political philosophy, performing a role similar to that played by skepticism within philosophy in general.

© Professor Howard Williams 2004
Department of International Politics
University of Wales, Aberystwyth