Anarchism

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anarchism, like liberalism and democracy, carries more than a single connotation. This is because it has produced both a body of theoretical literature and a series of activist parties, the two only remotely related. The anarchism of Godwin, Proudhon, and Kropotkin, known to the scholarly community, stands at a far remove from the images of the Haymarket rioters, Sacco and Vanzetti, and the Spanish Civil War, familiar to the popular mind. Yet if relationships must be established, it may be said that both the literary and the activist traditions share a common view of man, society, and the state.

Any definition of anarchism must be derived more from its literature than from its record of political action. Leon Czolgosz, who assassinated President McKinley, and the Andalusian peasants who fought against Franco were probably stirred by the same impulses as were Godwin and Kropotkin. But the latter figures articulated their beliefs, and it is on the written work that we must rely. The major tenets of anarchist doctrine may be summarized under five major heads. Emphases may differ with different proponents, but most of the elements are at least implicit in all serious anarchist writings.

(1) Man is essentially a benign creature. He was born good, or with a potentiality for goodness, but has been corrupted by the habits and institutions of authority. Religion, education, politics, and economic life have all served to warp the natural goodness that inheres in mankind.

(2) Man is a social animal, and men reach their fulfillment when voluntarily and spontaneously cooperating with one another. Society is natural, the state is not; and the quest for the communal life is instinctive to all men.

(3) Prevailing institutions of society—particularly private property and the state—are artificial agencies through which men exploit and corrupt each other. Authority in any form, even democratic government or a socialist economy, stultifies the individual.

(4) Social change must be spontaneous, direct, and mass-based. Political parties, trade unions—indeed, all organized movements—are themselves creatures of authority. While pursuing reform or even revolution, they are so constituted as ultimately to replace one evil with another of a similar sort. Significant change, then, must express the natural sentiments of a mass of autonomous individuals acting without outside direction.

(5) Industrial civilization, no matter what the form of ownership of the means of production, warps the human spirit. Machines master men, narrowing their personalities and blocking creativity. Any society built on an industrial structure is bound to debase the motives and impulses of those who live in it.

The literature of anarchism. While elements of anarchist doctrine can be found as far back as the Stoics, the first meaningful exposition could not come until the advent of the industrial revolution. William Godwin’s Political Justice (1793), appearing in the first and grimmest generation of that revolution, attacked the exploitation of man by man resulting from tyrannical government and unequal ownership of property. It is interesting to note that Godwin did not exhort men to revolutionary action, but hoped rather that people would educate themselves to a realization that justice would be secured only if they replaced the state with a network of voluntary arrangements.

Far more widely read was Pierre Joseph Proudhon, whose What Is Property? (1840) gave the notorious reply that “property is theft.” Proudhon emphasized that society is a natural organism and the individual is a social creature. He, too, did not advocate revolutionary violence, but his call for the abolition of the state and the prevailing economic system implied that a forceful overturn was bound to come. Throughout his writings he elaborated many plans for setting up independent associations, decentralizing authority, and circumscribing the power of the state. The theoretical clash between anarchist and communist doctrine can be seen most vividly in Marx’s attack on Proudhon, one of those rare cases where Marx displayed respect for the arguments of an antagonist.

Perhaps the most attractive of anarchist authors was P’etr Kropotkin, whose Mutual Aid (1890–1896) sought to rebut social Darwinism. Nature does not live under laws that permit only the fittest to survive, Kropotkin argued; not only in primitive societies, but also in the animal world, the basis of organization is mutual cooperation and help. With this “scientific” underpinning he proceeded to call for a thoroughgoing communist society, based on communes and devoid of either a division of labor or a money economy. He was explicit in advocating removal of the state by revolutionary means, but he was a “pure” anarchist in that he rejected any organized movement or party as the vehicle of change.

Of the major anarchist writers, Georges Sorel seemed least concerned with the goodness of man or the question of individual freedom. His Reflections on Violence (1908) is closest to the popular image of an anarchist handbook, detailing the various methods by which the working class can undermine and overthrow the capitalist state. The chief weapon is the “general strike,” a rising of the proletariat that brings the wheels of the old order to a precipitous halt. Sorel was prepared to use existing trade unions as the vehicle for revolution, giving rise to the term “anarchosyndicalism.” In making such a concession, he was, unlike Kropotkin, willing to use at least one institutional mechanism of the old regime to bridge the gap to the new society.

Anarchism as utopianism. It is easy enough to see how anarchism has remained a sectarian doctrine. Its tenets, taken singly, have much in common with those of other ideologies. Anarchism shares with liberalism an exaltation of the individual, a rejection of authority, and assumes a natural harmony of interests in society. Like both socialism and communism, it abjures private property and a state that supports the capitalist system; its stress on the need for revolutionary change clearly parallels the communist prescription. Anarchism has a democratic strand in its emphasis on human equality, and it is also in the classical conservative tradition in its suspicion of industrial society. Yet anarchism is the sum of its several parts, and the whole recipe is too rich a mixture for most. Those who rebel against authority may be attracted by parts of the anarchist creed; however, all but a handful balk when they learn that the entire doctrine must be regarded as an interlocking edifice.

Quite plainly, anarchists wish to have it all ways at once. If foremost priority is apparently accorded to the free and uncoerced individual, equal value is assigned to the harmonious social organism. Revolutionary violence is advocated, or at least implied, but unlike the communist variety it is to come to pass without benefit of a hierarchical party or leaders who impose their will on an organized movement. And the society of the postrevolutionary epoch, unlike any the modern world has ever known, will exist without law, state, or authority and will witness the flowering of hitherto unknown human potentialities.

Anarchism must be understood as a variety of utopianism—although differing from other Utopian thought in that it considers not only ends but also means to the achievement of those ends. Like all utopianism, it is at least partly an attitude of mind rather than a rigorous theory. There is no difficulty in finding instances of ingenuousness in anarchist doctrine. It is easy enough to point out that coercion, real or threatened, is a necessary element in human relations; that revolutionary action can lead to dictatorial tyranny no less than to the promised land; that man has a propensity for evil as well as for good; that the anarchist Utopia will be a monotonous plateau. But none of these objections, all based on common sense, attack the basic impulse that gives rise to the anarchist protest.

Anarchism, like any Utopian doctrine, is first a critique of existing social arrangements, and second a blueprint for a problemless future. The principle that man is naturally good, for example, cannot be undermined by allusion to the evil behavior that has recurred throughout human history. For the reply is simply that man has never been given the chance to realize his potential, that his benign nature has heretofore been corrupted by institutional authority. Nor, by the same token, can the drabness of an equalitarian and conflictless society be used as a stick with which to beat Utopian projections. To say that we, the corrupted products of an immoral era, would be bored is a myopic judgment on the conditions of society best conducive to the highest development of the human spirit. If anarchism is Utopian, if its analysis and prescriptions seem unsophisticated, it nevertheless represents one of the fundamental expressions of dissatisfaction with the way men have chosen to order their lives up to the present.

Anarchism in the modern world. It is tempting to say that there is a little of the anarchist in everyone. Most individuals are sufficiently unquestioning to accept authority, at least as a necessary evil. But there is hardly a person who has not, perhaps in one moment of his life, stopped to wonder what he might have made of himself if agencies of coercion had not restricted his behavior at every turn. The businessman objecting to government intervention in his affairs, the factory worker resentful of the discipline imposed by management, the citizen who feels powerless in the face of party machines, even the adolescent chafing under regulations laid down by school authorities—all yearn for the freedom to be and to become themselves. To be sure, much of what sometimes passes as the spirit of anarchism is simply rationalization for a style of life an individual or group wishes to attain or preserve.

A good deal of the renewed interest in “alienation,” “anomie,” and personal “identity” stems from the assumption that men seek to be free of restrictions and are thwarted in their quest by the impersonal rules and personal relationships arising in the modern world. Critiques of corporations, trade unions, political parties, and even suburban life seem at first glance to reflect the anarchist temper. But in the final analysis it would be a grave error to confuse this social criticism with the anarchist tradition. For above all else the anarchist stands outside his society. He has no vested interests in it, and he is prepared to witness its destruction. The businessman, the politician, the intellectual, all of these may want the world shaped somewhat differently, but they still wish to preserve what are for them critical elements of that world. Few are so dedicated to freedom that they reject out of hand all organized forms of action and wait instead for the day when spontaneous and leaderless uprisings overthrow the social structure.

There may be concern with the kinds of problems that constitute anarchist doctrine, but there is a shortage of actual anarchists. This has been the case throughout history. Dedicated believers arise from time to time to assassinate princes and presidents, to encourage labor unrest, and to man a barricade in a civil war. But if states and economies have been overturned by revolutionary means, it has been by other movements acting under other inspirations.

Andrew Hacker

[See alsoSocialism; Syndicalism; Utopianism. Other relevant material may be found in the biographiesKropotkin; Proudhon; Sorel.]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fleisher, David 1951 William Godwin: A Study in Liberalism. London: Allen & Unwin.

Godwin, William (1793) 1946 Enquiry Concerning Political Justice and Its Influence on Morals and Happiness. 3 vols., 3d rev. ed. Univ. of Toronto Press.

Horowitz, Irving L. 1961 Radicalism and the Revolt Against Reason: The Social Theories of Georges Sorel. London: Routledge; New York: Humanities.

Kropotkin, P’etr (1890–1896) 1955 Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. Boston: Extending Horizons. ? Thomas Huxley’s “The Struggle for Existence” is included in this book.

Lubac, Henri de (1945) 1948 The Un-Marxian Socialist: A Study of Proudhon. New York: Sheed & Ward. ? First published in French.

Proudhon, Pierre Joseph (1840) 1876 What Is Property? An Inquiry Into the Principle of Right and of Government. Princeton, Mass.: Tucker. ? First published in French.

Sorel, Georges (1908) 1950 Reflections on Violence. Glencoe, III.: Free Press. ? First published in French as Réflexions sur la violence. A paperback edition was published in 1961 by Collier.

Woodcock, George 1962 Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements. New York: Meridian.

Woodcock, George; and Avakumovic, Ivan 1950 The Anarchist Prince: A Biographical Study of Peter Kropotkin. New York: Boardman.