ANARCHISM

A doctrine that teaches the necessity to eliminate political authority in order to realize social justice and individual freedom. It is usually accompanied by opposition to private property and organized religion. Anarchism is rooted in these assumptions: (1) that man is good and essentially altruistic by nature; (2) that he is free only when he follows his powers and prescribes a rule to himself; (3) that he has been corrupted by the state and by law, which are always instruments of class or personal exploitation and oppression; and (4) that a natural, interpersonal harmony of interests exists in the economic and the moral order in the absence of the state. These assumptions lead to the following conclusions: (1) that social injustice and moral evil can neither be cured nor diminished by state action; (2) that the division of labor should always be on a voluntary basis; (3) that the state should be replaced by voluntary cooperation arising from below, that is, proceeding from individuals to groups, and, on the federal principle, to higher forms of human association; and (4) that voluntary association implies the right of secession.

History. Anarchist ideas extend back at least as far as Zeno (c. 320–c. 250 b.c.), the founder of stoicism. Building on the principle of self-sufficiency, Zeno prescribed an ideal society wherein men would live without family, property, or courts of law. In medieval Europe the pantheistic brothers and sisters of the free spirit rejected all authority and advocated communism of goods and women. During the Hussite wars, Petr Chelčický (c. 1390–c. 1460) taught that since all compulsion is from the devil, the state is evil and must disappear along with class distinctions. anabaptists of the 16th century believed themselves freed from all law by Christ's grace, refused to pay taxes or tithes, and held wives and property in common. The French writers Rabelais (c. 1495–1553) and fÉnelon (1651–1715) expressed anarchist ideas that were later shared by some 18th-century philosophes. A couplet of Diderot is typical: "La nature n'a fait ni serviteurs ni maitres/Je ne veux ni donner ni recevoir des lois."

Systematic Anarchism. Modern anarchist thought draws on the classical liberal belief in a natural economic order and on the philosophy of Ludwig feuerbach (1804–72), which emphasizes the need to eliminate man's alienation from his true self by a reduction of all barriers and a reclamation of the material world. William Godwin (1756–1836), in his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Political Justice (1793), considered government and property acquired by exploitation as basic evils, and he advocated a stateless society of self-governing communities with goods in common. He conceded that if the most natural and just associations were established, the conduct of some men would need to be restrained for a lengthy period until their corrupted instincts were corrected. The left-wing Hegelian Max Stirner (1806–56), in his Der Einziger und sein Eigentum (1844), argued that only the individual is real and that restraints such as the state, property, religion, and philosophical abstractions are detrimental to his self-realization. He advocated replacing the state with a voluntary association of egoists. The term anarchism was used for the first time by a systematic anarchist thinker, Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809–65), in his Qu’estce que la propriété? (1840). He defined property, in the sense of goods obtained by usurpation and monopoly, as theft. He urged its elimination not by expropriation but by the establishment of banks of exchange that would operate on a basis of mutuality of individual services calculated in units of labor. He thought that such banks would lead to further free associations of persons having the same interests, which would ultimately eliminate the exploitative economic order and the state. Proudhon recognized that a complete removal of the state could not be readily realized, and he argued that the practical aim should be a minimization of coercion and decentralization, and the encouragement of voluntary groups.

Collectivist Form. With Michael Bakunin (1814–76), anarchism assumed a decidedly collectivist form. He argued that political authority, private property, and religion are natural institutions in the lower stages of human evolution, and proclaimed: "L'Eglise et l'Etat sont mes deux bête noires." The state is harmful because it supports an exploitative economic order and acts by coercion. Bakunin held that society should be built on voluntary association and cooperation, with common ownership in land and the means of production—"there will be a free union of individuals into communes, of communes into provinces, of provinces into nations, and finally of nations into the United States of Europe, and later of the whole world." Bakunin introduced into the anarchist movement an emphasis on terroristic violence that was brought to Russia and merged with nihilism by his pupil Sergei Netschayev. Prince Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) wedded anarchism to a communism based on the commune, an autonomous unit owning all means of production and consumption. He believed coercive authority unnecessary because the new society would accord with the natural cooperative impulse in man and because free agreements need not be enforced. That modern anarchist thought is not uniformly antithetical to religion is evidenced in the thought of Count Leo tolstoi (1828–1910). Although he rejected the divinity of Christ and personal immortality, Tolstoi taught that the Gospels indicate that religion means altruistic love of neighbor and that this is negated by political authority, which proceeds from egoism and violence.

Contemporary Significance. Proponents of anarchism have differed over means of implementation. Godwin rejected violence and advocated education; Proudhon did not preach violence but believed outbreaks to be inevitable; the collectivists Bakunin and Kropotkin preached its necessity while Tolstoi repudiated it, emphasizing noncooperation with the state. With the spread of the ideas of Bakunin and Kropotkin, propaganda by the deed of terroristic violence was accepted by many and rationalized as a proper means to capture the imagination of the masses. Unquestionably the invidious connotation given the term anarchist in the popular mind is due principally to acts of terror, such as the assassination of Pres. William McKinley. Generally speaking, violence (and atheism) has been most associated with anarchism in the Latin countries. Allied with syndicalism as a mass movement, it reached a high point for a short period in the Spanish Civil War in Catalonia when anarchosyndicalists assumed authority. In the contemporary world, however, anarchism has little significance as a political movement. It survives principally in intellectual circles as an ideal to be approximated, if not realized, and as a means of protest against the mass society and centralized economic and political order.

Critique. Anarchism's fundamental assumption of man's natural goodness is contradicted not only by the theological doctrine of original sin but also by historical experience. Although the antagonistic tendencies in men may be less strong than the cooperative, it is unwarranted to attribute the former solely to the institutional environment while deeming the latter completely natural. Further, legal power subserving the common good is not an avoidable hindrance to, but a necessary precondition of, the full development of human freedom and the attainment of social justice. Finally, it is inconceivable that the state can be destroyed without violence; if violence is used, a new coercive state will necessarily succeed.

Bibliography: m. nettlau, Bibliographie de l'anarchie (Brussels 1897); Der Anarchism von Proudhon zu Kropotkin (Berlin 1927). e. v. zenker, Anarchism (New York 1897). e. h. carr, Michael Bakunin (London 1937). r. rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism (London 1938). h. read, The Philosophy of Anarchism (London 1940). g. d. h. cole, Socialist Thought: Marxism and Anarchism (London 1954). j. joll, The Anarchists (London 1964). i. l. horowitz, ed., The Anarchists (New York 1964). d. novak, "Place of Anarchism in the History of Political Thought," Review of Politics 20 (1958) 307–29.

[a. j. beitzinger]