Anarchism

ANARCHISM : Anarchism is the doctrine that political authority, in any of its forms, is unnecessary and undesirable. The word anarchy comes from Greek and literally means ‘without rule’. The term anarchism has been in use since the French Revolution, and was initially employed in a critical or negative sense to imply a breakdown of civilized or predictable order. In every language anarchy implies chaos and disorder. It was not until Pierre - Joseph Proudhon proudly declared in What is Property? , I am an anarchist that the word was clearly associated with a positive and systematic set of political ideas.

Anarchists look to the creation of a stateless society through the abolition of law and government. In their view, the state is evil because as a repository of sovereign, compulsory and coercive authority, it is an offence against the principles of freedom and equality it is an offence against the principles of freedom and equality. Anarchists believe that the state is unnecessary because order and social harmony can arise naturally and spontaneously and do not have to be imposed “from above” through government. The core value of anarchism is thus unrestricted personal autonomy. Sebastian Faure, in ,Encyclopedia anarchiste, defined anarchism as the ‘negation of the principle of Authority’. The anarchist case against authority is simple and clear authority is an offence against the principles of absolute freedom and unrestrained political equality.

Anarchists draws from two quite different ideological traditions: liberalism and socialism. This has resulted in rival individualist and collectivist forms of anarchism. Although both accept the goal of statelessness, they advance very different models of the future anarchist society.

Origin and Development

Anarchist ideas have been traced back to Taoist or Buddhist ideas, to the, Stoics and Cynics of Ancient Greece or the Diggers of the English civil war. However, the first, and in a sense classic statement of anarchist principles was produced by William Godwin (1756-1836) in this Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, although Godwin never described himself as an anarchist. William Godwin, the son of the Calvinist minister, a minister himself for a brief period and an author of novels, plays children's stories and miscellaneous works in social theory has often been called first modern anarchist. Godwin was the husband of the celebrated feminist , Mary Wollstonecraft and the father- in law of Shelly. His most important political work, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, was first published in 1793.

He was the first to clearly to associate opposition to political authority with an attack on private property. He maintained that ordinary men act reasonably and justly when their normal desires for self- expression and fair dealing have not been perverted by unfair economic conditions, maintained by the coercive intervention of the state He admitted, however, that even if the most natural and equitable social relations were now restored, there would for a long period be some men whose conduct would require restraint. Godwin developed and extreme form of liberal rationalism that amounted to an argument for human perfectibility based on education and social conditioning. Though an individualist Godwin believed that human beings are capable of genuinely disinterested benevolence. The greater part of his theoretical work was devoted to an exposition of the social and moral ills created by public government and private property which he believed sanction and sustain one another.

A somewhat similar utopian anarchism appears in the works of Thomas Hodgkin(1787-1869) in post Waterloo England. He became a convinced and extreme individualist as a result of reading Adam Smith. The theory of an ultimate and underlying harmony which the classical economists tended to assume-Hodgkin made the central point of this teachings. He believed that the whole universe is regulated by permanent and invariable Iaws. Man is part of this vast system, so that his conduct is influenced, regulated, and controlled or punished in every minute particular by permanent and invariable laws, in the same manner as the growth of plants and the motion of heavenly bodies. Consequently there is no need whatever for legislation or for planning. The pre established harmony of self interest achieves itself when man is left unhindered . Therefore, “all law making, except gradually and quietly to repeal all existing laws, is arrant humbug”.

Along with this teaching, Hodgskin combined the individualistic doctrine of the right to the whole produce of labour. That principle, he believed, was guaranteed and underwritten by Nature himself. It is the natural property right in contradiction to the existing artificial right, When all present laws are repealed, Hodgskin believed and taught, this natural property right would be automatically achieved and all men would secure their deserts in proportion to the effects of their labour.

Hodgkin did not delineate the form of a community without government, and in most of his utterances he appeared willing to retain political authority, provided it should withdraw its sections from the unjust system of private industrial property and confine its tasks to maintaining peace and order. In promulgating the labour theory of value as a doctrine of revolt he appears to have had a considerable influence on that generation of London working men which later supported the Chartist movement.

Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865) was probably the first to call himself an anarchist. Proudhon was a largely self educated printer who was dawn into radical politics in lyons before settling in Paris in 1847. As a member of the 1848 Constituent Assembly, Proudhon famously voted against the constitution because it was constitution. He was later imprisoned for three years. In Paris he at once came into close associations with radical socialists. Prodhaon's best known work, What Is Property? (1840) attacked both traditional property rights and communism and argued instead of mutualism, a co-operative productive system geared towards need rather than profit and organized within sefl- governing communities.

His most important complaint against the state was that it had evolved out of the system of private property and had sustained the inequitable incidents of that institution. He condemned political authority also on the broader ground that it implied the dominance of passion over reason, justice, and understanding, In some of his writings he explained that in condemning property he had in mind chiefly that form of it made up of accumulations from profits interest and rent and his specific economic proposals seemed intended only to eliminate the monopolistic and exploitative features from private property rather than to destroy the institutions altogether. Proudhon's more elaborate fiscal proposals constitute a system of mutualism under which individuals and voluntary associations would be enabled to engage in productive enterprise through gratuitous credit supplied by co-operative banking associations. He described his mutualism as positive anarchy' He believed that his banking plan would eventually eliminate all private capital by rendering it incapable of earning interest and that the plan would so encourage and facilitate voluntary co-operation that any sort of coercive social organization would become unnecessary.

It is the fiscal part of Proudhon’s doctrine that became most widely known and most influential. In a sense, Proudhon's libertarian socialism stands between the individualist and collectivist traditions of anarchism. Proudhon mutualists were predominant in the French labour movements in the sixties and seventies. More systematic doctrines of anarchism were set forth by Josiah Warren (1799-1874) and his disciple Stephen Pearl Andrews (1812-1886) and later by Benjamin R Tucker and his disciples particularly Lysander, Spooner (1808-1887). These scholars like Greene and most of the leaders of the anti-slavery non- resistant’s were generally interested in radical economic and social reforms. Josiah Warren published the first anarchist journal in the United States. Basing his social doctrine on the universal natural law of self- preservation, he argued that man’s need for governmental protection to -day arises from evils originating not in his own nature but in the unfortunate errors committed by his forefathers in setting up the institutions of private property and coercive government. He advised working class men to renounce all interest in political affairs and confine their activities to voluntary cooperative efforts.

Benjamin Tucker accepted for the most part the economic proposals of Proudhon and Greene and acknowledged, Warren's influence in forming his general social doctrines. In 1881 he established a magazine, Liberty, acquired a considerable reputation as an exponent of philosophical anarchism. Tucker made intelligent self- interest the basis of his doctrine. He believed that Anarchists are egoists in the farthest and fullest sense. They totally discard the idea of moral obligation. He wrote that “all men have the right it they have the power to kill or coerce other men and make the entire world subservient to their ends”. With Tucker, man’s natural self-interest leads logically to a society in which all men are prevailingly free, for liberty is the most effective agency of order as well as the chief ingredient of happiness. Liberty means the enjoyment of “rights” which are simply the practical limits which self- interest places upon might; men form associations in order to secure a better definition and recognition of these limits. Stable society is necessary for the enjoyment of liberty but any infringement of liberty beyond the point where a limitation is necessary to prevent interference by one individual with the liberty of another, is an invasion. `The nature of invasion is not changed, whether it is made by one man upon another man, after the manner of the ordinary criminal, or by one man upon all other men, after the manner of an absolute monarch, or by all upon all men upon one man, after the manner of a modern democracy' Political authority therefore should be eliminated from society, for at all periods of history and whatever the form of government, the state has violated the principle of liberty. It has always put restraint upon non-invasive as well as invasive acts. This is the anarchist definition of government: the subjection of the non-invasive individual to an external will, The most important forms of the invasive action of the state, according to Tucker, are taxation, military protection and the administration of justice. Taxation is the compulsory exaction of a man's earnings for services which, in many cases, he does not want Military defense and judicial protection are services which should be supplied in the same way that all other social needs are supplied in a country whose government acts according to the traditional principles of lasser-faire. They should be sought and paid for by those who demand them. The state has moral right to monopolise and compel acceptance of such services than it has the right to monopolise and impose educational and benevolent services or a regulation of private property.

According to Tucker , in place of the state there would have associations formed by individuals freely contracting. Evening such association should have the right to enforce upon its members whatever regulations the members agree upon, including and obligations to pay taxes. But entrance into any association should be without compulsions and members should retain the right of secession. Among the most important of these association would be the societies for defense.