Category: Anarchism

Contrary to the willful  misrepresentations of contemporary liberals, conservatives are not anti-government.  To oppose big government is not to oppose government.  This passage from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century (1851),  conveys a genuine anti-government point of view:

To be governed is to be kept in sight, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, 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, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under the pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.

This post is the third in a series. The first discussed authority, the second autonomy. The topic at present is the alleged conflict between them.

There are three ways of responding to a contradiction: deny the first limb, deny the second limb, deny the contradiction. In the present case: deny the legitimacy of the state's claim to authority; deny that there is a moral obligation to be autonomous; deny that there is a genuine contradiction.

Wolff denies the first limb: he asserts that there is no obligation to obey the state's commands. On his view they lack legitimacy, binding moral force. (18) This is not to say that the anarchist will not comply with state commands. He may do so for prudential or even sentimental reasons: they are the commands of the government of his country and his feelings of attachment to his country may incline him to comply with its government's laws. The point, however, is that the laws have "no objective moral basis." (19) American laws have no more moral claim on Wolff than the laws of Sri Lanka. "All authority is equally illegitimate. . . ." (19)

Continue reading “Notes on Anarchism III: Wolff on the Conflict Between Authority and Autonomy”

This post has a prerequisite.  We now explore the concept of autonomy as discussed by Robert Paul Wolff on pp. 12-18 of In Defense of Anarchism.

1. "The fundamental assumption of moral philosophy is that men are responsible for their actions." (12) Wolff intends moral as opposed to mere causal responsibility. But if we are morally responsible, then we are "metaphysically free." W. doesn't explain what he means by "metaphysically free," but since he mentions Kant, we may impute to W the view that we are libertarianly free, that is, free in the 'could have done otherwise' sense. Thus we enjoy more than the compatibilist "freedom of the turnspit" (Kant).

So if we are going to do moral philosophy at all, we must assume both that we are morally responsible for some of our actions and omissions and libertarianly free with respect to those same actions and omissions. So far, so good.

Continue reading “Notes on Anarchism II: Wolff on Autonomy”

Robert Paul Wolff's In Defense of Anarchism (Harper 1970, 1976) is a good book by a clear thinker and master expositor. Here is a first batch of interpretive and critical notes. I use double quotation marks when I am quoting an actual person such as Wolff. Single quotation marks are employed for scaring, sneering, and mentioning. The MP is punctilious to the point of pedantry about the use/mention distinction. Numerals in parentheses denote pages in Wollf's text. 'W' abbreviates 'Wolff.'

Continue reading “Notes on Anarchism I: Wolff on Authority”