Category: Anarchism

The topic of anarchism surfaced in an earlier thread. Dmitri and Hector introduced us to David Graeber.  But let's go back a century or so for a bit of historical perspective. Herewith, a brief examination of Emma Goldman's definition of anarchism. 

ANARCHISM: the philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary. ("Anarchism: What it Really Stands For" in Anarchism and Other Essays, Dover, 1969. p. 50. The Dover edition is a republication of the third revised edition originally published in 1917)

Goldman is advancing  five claims, either explicitly or tacitly.  By 'government' she means "the State." (p. 52) That's what I mean by it too. She does not mean a mutually beneficial form of social order that arises spontaneously and thus without coercion or authoritarian regulation.  One could mean that by 'government.' The word is ambiguous as between those two meanings. (See Richard Sylvan, "Anarchism" in A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, Blackwell 1993, pp. 216-217.)  

I will now state and comment on five assertions I extract from the passage quoted:

1) Anarchism aspires to promotes the liberty of the individual.

So far, so good. I'm all in! Liberty is a very high value. "Give me liberty, or give me death!" (Patrick Henry) 

2) Liberty is unrestricted by man-made law.

Our anarchist is telling us that liberty cannot exist under man-made law, that  liberty and law are mutually exclusive.   Here is where she begins to go off the rails.  What she is saying would  be true only in an ideal world, which is to say, a world that does not actually exist. In the world that actually exists, with human being as they actually are, (2) is false. It is blindingly evident that her ideal world does not exist, which is not to say that it cannot exist. But if her ideal world cannot exist, then her (2) is impossible. Now I cannot prove (demonstrate, conclusively establish) that her ideal world is impossible,  but there is nothing in our past experience to show that it is possible.  In fact, all of our past experience suggests the opposite. 

I say that liberty, to be liberty, must be (i) attainable, and (ii) attainable for all.  Attainable liberty is possible society-wide, or for all, only under man-made laws.  This is because people inevitably come into conflict, for all sorts of reasons (scarcity of resources, innate bellicosity, etc.) and there can be no conflict resolution without laws. Now laws are laws only if they are enforceable and enforced.  (The mere possibility of enforcement is insufficient.)  There is therefore need for agents of enforcement. The practical necessity of the state follows from the need for agents of enforcement who will equitably enforce the laws.  

3) All forms of government rest on violence. 

This is in the vicinity of a truth, but one better expressed as follows: there cannot be government without coercion. What this means is that to countenance government is to countenance situations in which some people will  be compelled to do things  they don't want to do, and  compelled to desist from doing things that they want to do.  This coercion, without which there cannot be government (a state), will involve either violence or the credible threat of violence, violence which in many if not most cases will  be physical, e.g., throwing a man to the ground and handcuffing him.  

In sum: No attainable liberty for the greatest number without man-made (positive) laws that are both enforceable and enforced. No enforcement without enforcers. No enforcers without a state apparatus. No state apparatus without allowance of the possibility of coercion. No possibility of coercion without the credible threat  of violence, which, given the stupidity, ignorance, selfishness, and bellicosity of human beings in the state of nature, will inevitable result in the actual use of violence against malefactors.

4) Governments, since they "rest on violence" are "wrong and harmful."

Goldman thinks they  are "wrong and harmful" presumably because governments cannot exist without coercion, and thus cannot exist without the threat if not the execution of violence, where all violence, whether threatened or actual, is deemed morally wrong.  

To my way of thinking, however, (4) is obviously false. While is is true that governments "rest on violence," the violence that they sometimes mete out is not "wrong and harmful," but right and helpful.  The state is a  'necessary evil.'  A necessary (needed) evil is not something evil, full stop, but something that it would be better not to need, but something we do need given the actual state of things. For example, a cancer treatment consisting of chemotherapy and radiation that partially destroys one's salivary glands and taste buds is a necessary evil. That partial destruction is evil, but it is necessary (needed) to prevent a worse evil, namely, death. A rational man,  such as your humble correspondent, will in such a predicament choose to undergo the nasty protocol despite its being nasty.  He is rational in the means-ends sense: he chooses means conducive to his end in view, namely, to live a few more years. This is all predicated upon the actual state of things which a rational man takes into account.

5) Government is unnecessary, which is to say, not needed for human flourishing.

This too is plainly false.  It would be true if men were angels. But men are not angels. They are not demons either. They are beings capable of great good and of great evil.  And some are better than others, both intellectually and morally (and in other ways too).   And the same goes for governments: some are better than others, both in their form and in their matter (the people who wield power). Formally, the U.S. system of government is the best the mind of man has yet devised, but materially, the current regime, headed by Biden and Harris and their appointees and hidden puppet-masters is arguably the worst in the history of our great republic.  But the times they are  a'changin.

So we need the state. We need government, limited government. For we of the Coalition of the Sane and the Reasonable, who love liberty and hate tyranny, want only as much government as is necessary to secure ordered liberty, domestic tranquillity, and international peace.  And note: we need government whether or not we can solve the problem of its moral justifiability.  The state is practically necessary whether or not anyone can show on the theoretical plane that it is morally justifiable.

To understand the justifiability question,  see my Substack articles on Robert Paul Wolff:

Notes on Anarchism I

Notes on Anarchism II

Notes on Anarchism III

Robert Paul Wolff on Anarchism and Marxism

 

. . . as skepticism is to epistemology.

Top o' the Stack.

Substack latest.

R. P. Wolff on the conflict between authority and autonomy.

Stack leader. Second in a series. Robert Paul Wolff on autonomy.

I see that R. P. Wolff has a blog, The Philosopher's Stone.  His post Anarchism and Marxism caught my eye.  In it he addresses the question of the logical consistency of his anarchism and his Marxism.   The answer of course depends on how Wolff employs these terms.

First of all, when I call myself an anarchist, I mean just exactly what I explained in my little book In Defense of Anarchism. I deny that there is or could be a de jure legitimate state. That is the sum and substance of what I call in that book my "philosophical anarchism." This is a limited claim, but not at all a trivial one. [. . .]

My Marxism, as I have many times explained, is not a form of secular religious faith, but a conviction that Marx was correct when he argued that capitalism rests essentially on the exploitation of the working class.

Clearly, *A de jure legitimate state is impossible* and *Capitalism rests essentially on the exploitation of the  working class* are logically consistent propositions.  So if these propositions capture what is meant by 'anarchism' and 'Marxism,' then one can be both an anarchist and a Marxist.

So far, so good.  But suppose one accepts the second proposition.  Wouldn't one naturally want to bring about political change and eliminate capitalism and with it the exploitation of the working class?  (As Marx wrote in his Theses on Feuerbach, "The philosophers have variously interpreted the world, but the point is to change it.")  Now the implementation of this change and the maintenance of a a socialist order requires the coercive power of the state and with it the violation of the autonomy of all those who resist. 

This fact brings us to a much more interesting consistency question:  How could an anarchist (in Wolff's sense), consistently with his anarchism, be a Marxist in any full-blooded sense of the term?  In a full-blooded sense, a Marxist is not one who merely maintains the thesis that capitalism by its very nature exploits workers, but one who works to seize control of the state apparatus for the purpose of implementing the elimination of capitalism.  The following  two propositions are plainly inconsistent: *The state as such lacks moral justification* and *The state possess moral justification when its coercive power is employed to eliminate capitalism and usher in socialism.*

Now that is the inconsistency that bothers me.  Wolff appears to address it at the end of his post:

I can see no conflict whatsoever between philosophical anarchism and Marxian socialism. The citizens of a socialist society, were one ever to come into existence [Gott sei dank!], would have no more obligation to obey the laws of that state, merely because it was socialist, than they have now to obey the laws of the United States, merely because America is (let us grant for the sake of argument) democratic. Both groups of citizens would stand under the universal duty of judging for themselves whether what the laws command is something that on independent grounds it is good to do. There is no duty, prima facie or otherwise, to obey the law simply because it is the law.

There is something unsatisfactory about this answer.  Wolff obviously wants a socialist society.  But good Kantian that he is, Wolff must appreciate that to will the end is to will the means.  The end is a socialist order; the means is the imposition of  socialism and the eradication of capitalism by means of the coercive power of the state.  (You would have to be quite the utopian off in Cloud Cuckoo Land to suppose that socialism could be brought about in any other way.  And of course once the socialist state has total control, it won't "wither away.")  So it seems Wolff must will and thus find morally acceptable the state apparatus that enforces and maintains socialism.  But then his Marxism contradicts his anarchism.  For these two propositions are logically inconsistent: *No state is morally justified* and *States that enforce and maintain socialism are morally justified.*

The bit about there being no duty to obey the law simply because it is the law seems not to the point.  The point is that if socialism is morally superior to capitalism, and the only route to socialism is via the state's exercise of its coercive power, then one who  wills and works for the implementation of socialism must will and work for and find morally acceptable the existence of a socialist state.

Or maybe Wolff's position just boils down to the triviality that whatever order comes about, whether capitalist, socialist, mixed, or anything else,  there would be no duty to obey the law simply because it is the law.  But then he hasn't shown the consistency of anarchism and Marxism in any full-blooded sense of these terms.

I summarize Wolff's In Defense of Anarchism here , here, and here.