Anarchism An Overview

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AnarchismAn Overview

• D. Allen Dalton
• ECON 325 Radical Economics
• Boise State University
• Fall 2012

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What is Anarchism?

• anarkhia contrary to authority, without a ruler
• arkhia authority, ruler
• Anarchy or anarchism?
• Dictionary definitions
• presuming the result
• Response to gulf of power and riches

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What is Anarchism?

• the name given to a principle or theory of life
  under which society is conceived without
  government harmony in such a society being
  obtained, not by submission to law, or by
  obedience to any authority, but by free
  agreements, concluded between the various groups,
  territorial and professional, freely constituted
  for the sake of production and consumption, as
  also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety
  of needs and aspirations of a civilised being.
• - Kropotkin, Anarchism,
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1905.

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The Great Anarchists

• William Godwin (1756-1836)
• Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)
• Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865)
• What Is Property? An Inquiry into the Principle
  of Right and Government (1840)
• General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth
  Century (1851)

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The Great Anarchists

• Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876)
• Statism and Anarchy (1873)
• God and the State (1882)
• Pyotr Kropotkin (1842-1921)
• The Conquest of Bread (1892-4)
• Mutual Aid A Factor of Evolution (1890-6)
• Fields, Factories and Workshops (1912)

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Varieties of Anarchism

• Anarchist-communism
• Anarcho-syndicalism
• Individualist anarchism
• Mutualist anarchism
• Anarcho-capitalism
• Pacifist anarchism
• Christian anarchism

• the ideal of a self-organizing society based on
  voluntary cooperation rather than coercion is
  irrepressible.
• - Ward, Anarchism
• A Very Short
• Introduction, p. 10

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Anarchist Moments

• Antecedents
• Medieval Iceland
• English Revolution 1640s Levellers
• American Revolution
• French Revolution (Enragés)
• Revolutions of 1848
• Paris Commune of 1870
• Russian Revolution (Makhnovites)
• Anarcho-syndicalism Spanish Civil War 1930s

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State and Society

• Distinction between state and society
• Franz Oppenheimer, The State (1908)
• Distinction between the political and economic
  means
• I propose in the following discussion to call
  one's own labor and the equivalent exchange of
  one's own labor for the labor of others, the
  economic means for the satisfaction of needs,
  while the unrequited appropriation of the labor
  of others will be called the political means.
  
• -Oppenheimer, The State, p. 13

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State and Society

• The State, completely in its genesis,
  essentially and almost completely during the
  first stages of its existence, is a social
  institution, forced by a victorious group of men
  on a defeated group, with the sole purpose of
  regulating the dominion of the victorious group
  over the vanquished, and securing itself against
  revolt from within and attacks from abroad.
  Teleologically, this dominion had no other
  purpose than the economic exploitation of the
  vanquished by the victors.
• - Oppenheimer, The State, p. 8

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State and Society

• Antecedents of welfare state in friendly
  societies, mutual aid organizations, fraternal
  brotherhoods
• Alternative to the managerial state rise to
  prominence of professional technocrats
• Wards Four Principles of Anarchist Organization
• Voluntary
• Functional
• Temporary
• Small

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Nationalism and Religion

• Sources of division and conflict that increase
  the strength of the State in human relations
• Anarchist response
• Engagement or Abstention?
• Liberalism, socialism, communism all products of
  the Age of Reason
• National socialism (fascism) reaction
• The special case of Christian Anarchism
• organized religion v. Christianity

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Tolstoys Kingdom of God

• Matthew 5 38-39
• Jesus said, You have heard that it was said,
  'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. But I tell
  you, Do not resist an evil person.
• I needed only to take these words simply and
  downrightly, as they were spoken, and at once
  everything in Christs whole teachingwas
  comprehensible to meand the main gist appeared
  no longer useless but a necessity everything
  formed a whole - What I Believe, p. 15

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Tolstoys Kingdom of God

• Kingdom of God The following of Christs
  teaching, especially the five commandments of the
  Sermon on the Mount
• Keep the peace and restore it when broken
• Remain true to one another as man and wife
• Make no vows
• Forgive injury and do not resist evil
• Refrain from breaking the peace for the peoples
  sake.

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Tolstoys Kingdom of God

• A society based on Love requires a distribution
  based on its commandments. Two precepts that
  follow from Love are
• (1) Man lives not to be served, but to serve.
• (2) Share what you have with the poor gather no
  riches.

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Anarchy and Prison Reform

• Nineteenth and early Twentieth century anarchists
  were first-hand acquaintances with the Prison
  system
• Political, anti-war and free love activities
• Kropotkin
• In Russian and French Prisons (1887)
• prisons are the universities of crime
• Alexander Berkman
• Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (1912)
• Decriminalization

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Anarchy and Workplace

• Authority in the workplace
• Many anarchist pioneers linked to early trade and
  industrial unionism
• Confédération Générale du Travial (CGT) France
• Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) Spain
• Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) US
• Small-scale economy
• Kropotkins Fields, Factories andWorkshops
• Economies of scale in industry
• Small businessmen

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Anarchy and Education

• Central to the anarchist program has been
  educational reform
• Godwins attempt to open a school (1783)
• Paul Goodman, Compulsory Miseducation (1964)
• Murray Rothbard, Education Free and Compulsory
  (1972)
• Against the nationalist system of socialism and
  liberalism
• Godwin The true object of education, like that
  of every other moral process, is the generation
  of happiness. The Enquirer (1797)

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Individualist Anarchism

• Edmund Burke, A Vindication of Natural Society
  (1756)
• Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own (1845)
• Henry David Thoreau, Resistance to Civil
  Government, (1849)
• American Individualist Anarchism
• Tension with socialist/collectivist immigrant
  tradition
• Josiah Warren, Lysander Spooner, Stephen Pearl
  Andrews, Benjamin Tucker

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Individualist Anarchism

• I heartily accept the motto, "That government
  is best which governs least" and I should like
  to see it acted up to more rapidly and
  systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts
  to this, which also I believe, "That government
  is best which governs not at all" and when men
  are prepared for it, that will be the kind of
  government which they will have. Government is at
  best but an expedient but most governments are
  usually, and all governments are sometimes,
  inexpedient.
• - Thoreau, Resistance to Civil
  Government

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Tuckers Economics

• Property per se, is unobjectionable. What matters
  is the distribution of property. Under the
  current system, the distribution of property is
  built upon Four Monopolies
• Money Monopoly
• Land Monopoly
• Tariff Monopoly
• Patent Monopoly

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Tuckers Economics

• The Four Monopolies raise prices above costs and
  produce usury ( taking of surplus value).
• - Labor does not receive the full fruits of its
  production.
• - Free money and credit, Free land, Free trade,
  and Free intellectual property will increase
  supply and lower prices to equal costs.
• All forms of usury - profits, rent and interest-
  will disappear. Labor will be rewarded its full
  product.
• - Inequality will not disappear, but only the
  limited inequality between one laborers product
  and another will remain.

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Anarcho-capitalism?

• Gustav de Molinari, The Production of Security,
  (1849)
• First argument for the private production of
  defense and police services
• French laissez-faire tradition
• Disciple of Bastiat and Say
• Pointedly refused the appellation of anarchist
• Dispute with Proudhon over the nature of interest

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Anarcho-capitalism?

• Modern Anarcho-capitalism
• Murray Rothbard
• Power and Market (1970)
• For A New Liberty (1973)
• The Ethics of Liberty (1982)
• David Friedman
• The Machinery of Freedom (1973)
• Long running dispute about whether
  Anarcho-capitalism is anarchist!
• The problem of language and intent

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Anarchy and Modern Society

• Small liberations of the 20th/21st century
• Fashion
• Womens movement
• Free unions
• Sexual Revolution
• Ending of Corporal Punishment
• Free schools
• Gay and Lesbian movement
• Internet
• WTO and IMF protests

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Federalism and Anarchy

• How can self-organizing communities extend to
  multi-regional issues?
• Federated communities
• Local interests and commonalities are a barrier
  to tyranny
• Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin
• Individuals, communes, provinces, nations
• Importance of the right of secession of
  provinces, communes, and of individuals
• Voluntary Outlawry

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Federalism and Anarchy

• Solicit mens views in the mass, and they will
  return stupid, fickle and violent answers
  solicit their views as members of definite groups
  with real solidarity and a distinctive character,
  and their answers will be responsible and wise.
  Expose them to the political language of mass
  democracy, which represents the people as
  unitary and undivided, and minorities as
  traitors, and they will give birth to tyranny
  expose them to the political language of
  federalism, in which the people figures as a
  diversified aggregate of real associations, and
  they will resist tyranny to the end.
• - Proudhon, The Principle of Federation

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Green Anarchism?

• Anarchists have always been distrustful of
  large-scale organizations
• In modern capitalism, anarchists see the
  artificial support by government of bigness as
  contributing to ecological problems
• Small self-organizing communities as a solution
• E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful Economics as
  if People Mattered (1973)
• Murray Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1974)

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Future of Anarchism

• Approach to political and economic organization
  that continues to draw adherents dissatisfied
  with hierarchy
• Life-style anarchism
• Wave of the future or a dead-end?
• Paul Goodman on autonomy (Ward, p. 68)
• Peter Harper (Ward, p. 96)
• Education and politics
• Is a federation of anarchists possible?