Stefan Paul Dolgert wrote:ANARCHISM
Anarchism is a theory and way of life rooted in the belief that the individual should
be free to pursue his or her own interests without coercion, especially by the State and
its laws and institutions. The term is derived from the ancient Greek word anarkhia,
meaning “no ruler,” and was originally used to denote a disruption of the normal civic
order that often implied a condition of civil war. As with “democracy” and “democrat,”
the words “anarchy” and “anarchist” were typically used as terms of abuse until the
nineteenth century, when with the rise of commercial society and the decline of feudalism
the idea of self-rule by “the people” became increasingly accepted.
The political theory of anarchism properly begins only with William Godwin (1756-
1836) and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865), though important elements of anarchist
thought can be found in the ancient Greeks, among them Aristippus of Cyrene (c. 435 –
c. 360 BCE) and the founder of Stoicism, Zeno of Citium (c. 334 – 262 BCE). Strains
of anarchist thought can also be found in the medieval era, in the Anabaptists of the
Reformation, and in the Diggers of the English Revolution of the mid-seventeenth
century. However, Godwin is the first exponent of the philosophic doctrine of anarchism,
though he does not use the term to describe himself, and it is Proudhon who first calls
himself an anarchist. In Proudhon’s What is Property (1840) he lays out a vision of
socialism in which the individual is liberated from the shackles of capitalist property
relations, and is instead free to reap the benefits of his labor under a form of communal
production. Anarchism became increasingly relevant to the political world of the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, first through the writings of the Mikhail
Bakunin (1814-1876), who opposed the overly-centralized socialism of Karl Marx (1818-
1883), and later through Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) and Emma Goldman (1869-1940).
Anarchist thought is extremely diverse, but is generally characterized by opposition to
the State, capitalism, and religion. Rather than seeing the legal apparatus of the State as
a means of protecting individual freedom, anarchists contend that the State and its laws
merely represent the self-serving interests of powerful groups in society. Under this
view law is a means of oppressing the vast majority of the people, and the best way to
eliminate this oppression is to do away with the institutions that create and reinforce it
– especially the State and private property. Private property is a particular concern for
anarchists, in that it corrupts the democratic process by controlling the inputs and outputs
to the political system, and also because it directs people to think merely about their own
self-interest rather than about how to cooperate with their fellow citizens. Since private
property uses the State to benefit the members of the ruling class/elite, anarchists are not
in favor of representative democracy as it is currently practiced.
Anarchists promote their goals by multiple means, including some who promote violent
revolution, but also through democratic evolution and the creation of independent
communal societies that function outside the domain of the State. In the Spanish Civil
War (1936-9), anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists (linked industrial worker-councils)
formed an important element in the opposition to Francisco Franco’s Fascist coup,
and shared governmental authority with a socialist coalition, particularly in Barcelona.
This experiment, while short-lived, provided an example of anarchist “government” in
practice, and was characterized by the liquidation of the landed estates and the parceling
of the land into agricultural cooperatives, the establishment of a federation of worker-
controlled factories, and the elimination of the social indications of class status that had
marked Bourbon Spain. While defeated in the war, Spanish anarchism continues to be a
model for other nations, since it is here that one of the largest worker-run cooperatives in
the world, the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, has been functioning for over fifty
years.
Among anarchists in the early part of the twenty-first century there are several prominent
trends, some of which are substantially in tension with one another. Libertarian
anarchists such as Murray Rothbard (1926 – 1995) defend capitalism, arguing that
the protection of private property under capitalism provides the surest foundation for
promoting individual liberty. Unlike most libertarians, Rothbard claims that even the
most minimal State is an unnecessary evil, but this is almost the only thing that unites
him with anarchist-socialists such as the protesters at the WTO and G-8 meetings in
Seattle in 1999 and Geneva in 2001. While not united by a systematic program, these
protesters represented groups that are dissatisfied with the current system of neo-liberal
trade promoted by the WTO, which to them represents an extension of the rule of private
property over the globe.
Anarchism is not highly visible in most developed western nations, but remains a
powerful underground current that both the Left and the Right continue to find useful
as a stimulant to political thought, as well as in the actual practice of politics. It will
continue to be relevant as long as the meaning of the terms “democracy,” “property,”
and “freedom” is not self-evident.
Bibliography:
Bakunin, Mikhail. 1990. Statism and Anarchy. Edited by Marshall Shatz. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Guerin, Daniel. 1970. Anarchism: From Theory to Practice. New York: Monthly
Review Press.
Kropotkin, Peter. 2002 (1970). Anarchism: A Collection of Revolutionary Writings.
Edited by Roger Baldwin. Mineola: Dover Publications.
Orwell, George. 1969 (1938). Homage to Catalonia. San Diego: Harvest Books.
Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. 1994 (1840). What is Property? Edited by Donald Kelley and
Bonnie Smith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wolff, Robert Paul. 1998 (1970). In Defense of Anarchism. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Quit while you're behind.
