Individualist Anarchism

12 Key excerpts on "Individualist Anarchism"

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  The Modern State

  Theories and Ideologies

  • Erika Cudworth, Timothy Hall, John McGovern(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • EUP

    (Publisher)

  Anarchists generally agree that forms of political authority restrict individual actions and beliefs and constitute a violation of their freedom (Goodwin 1982: 110–12). In light of this, they endorse egalitarianism, volun-tary co-operation, self-management, individualism and decentral-isation (Goodway 1989: 2). Like many feminists, anarchists tend to define politics very broadly and their analysis of political power is not restricted to the ‘state’ and ‘government’ (see Chapter 9). This said, an antipathy towards institutionalised authority has meant that historically a key feature of anarchism has been the contesta-tion of authority exercised by the state. While anarchism emerged in eighteenth-century Europe in the context of political authoritar-ianism, it has remained staunchly critical of liberal intimations of ‘democracy’. Liberal or ‘bourgeois’ democracy with the represen-tative institutions of parliamentarianism is seen as inherently incap-able of providing anything more than a justification for oligarchy. There are a variety of different kinds of anarchist theorising and, almost inevitably, individual thinkers may slip across the lines drawn by a typology. All anarchists have provided some broader critique of social and economic structures and processes than simply a denunciation of the state. In the nineteenth century, most anarchists were also involved in workers’ political organisations and most contemporary anarchists subscribe to some form of ‘anarcho-communism’ (Miller 1984) or more commonly, ‘social anarchism’, which is collectivist and in many ways, communitarian. In sharp contrast, ‘anarcho-capitalism’ (Miller 1984) or ‘individu-alist anarchism’, exemplified by the work of Murray Rothbard Anarchism: the Politics of Anti-Statism 139 (1978), is an extreme form of liberalism based on the absolute sov-ereignty of the individual (also Nozick 1974: Part 1).

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  Jean-Paul Sartre's Anarchist Philosophy

  • William L. Remley(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  12 While philosophical anarchism is a rather vague notion, amelioration usually occurs when its lack of a plan of action is combined with the two more conventional and concrete forms of anarchy – individualist and social. This is especially true of the ever-present moral qualities of anarchist thought that underlies philosophical anarchism (as well as other varieties of anarchism), and it is to this discussion of individualist and social anarchism that we must turn to now. Individualist Anarchism The second variety of anarchism is individualist. These anarchists generally place an overriding emphasis on the notion of sovereign individualism, directly at odds with 12 Jean-Paul Sartre’s Anarchist Philosophy the idea of the state. According to its tenets, everyone possesses an unchallengeable sphere of influence and action in which their reign is absolute. This generally consists of one’s body as well as one’s possessions or property, and within the privileged sphere one is free to do as one pleases. In effect, each is sovereign within one’s own territory, and the only legitimate relation between what Max Stirner calls two egos is through gift, exchange or contract. One’s sovereign right to one’s ‘space’ also includes the right to defend that space against invasion by whatever force necessary. The moral issue, then, turns on the distinction between the use of force by the aggressor and the use of similar or greater force by the victim of aggression. The individualist position is most closely associated with a philosophy of natural rights where each person’s private sphere of influence does not derive from divine will or Providence, but in terms of the principles of rights to life, liberty and property. Even though this position seems to be the dominate one among the individualists, there are derivations from this common theme, most notably Stirner’s radical egoism, which presumes a mutual recognition of everyone’s freedom.

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  The Individualist Anarchists

  Anthology of Liberty, 1881-1908

  • Frank H. Brooks(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  PART ONE The Political Theory of Individualist Anarchism Passage contains an image

  1 General Theories of Individualist Anarchism

  Liberty's editorial stance was based on two principles that constituted a "plumb-line" by which Individualist Anarchism would be measured, and by which all other reform schemes would be criticized. These two basic principles were individual sovereignty and equal liberty. The basis of anarchist society was to be the sovereign individual who would recognize that her own liberty could not be absolute, but had to be limited by an equal amount of liberty for other individuals. Only by making liberty equal for all could all individuals enjoy liberty and none be enslaved.

  On these two building blocks, the theory of Individualist Anarchism was developed over the course of Liberty's run. From them flowed definitions of government ("invasion," or the use of force against the non-invasive), visions of anarchist society (voluntary contracts between free individuals for all social needs, including defense against aggressors), and proposals for radical economic reforms that would attack state-maintained monopolies. They also served as the touchstone for individualist anarchists' responses to events and reform proposals that arose between 1881 and 1908. Strikes, assassinations, and elections, liberals, socialists, and communists were all measured by the "plumbline" of these two principles and most were found to be crooked in one way or another. Although the plumb-line was employed primarily as a critical weapon by Tucker, it nevertheless had substantive and positive aspects, which also emerged in a variety of articles. Before considering the theoretical relationship of Individualist Anarchism to liberalism and socialism (chapters two and three ), or the implications of this theory for economic reform (part two ), social reform (part three ), and strategy (part four

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  The Political Theory of Anarchism

  • April Carter(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  4 Anarchism and the Individual

  In the Introduction to this book a brief sketch of some better known anarchist thinkers and movements indicated the extreme diversity of the anarchist tradition. In the succeeding three chapters anarchist ideas have been contrasted with the individualist contract theory emanating from Hobbes; with the constitutional liberalism which finds an important interpreter in De Tocqueville; and with the Marxist movement in socialist thought. These traditions are in themselves complex, but anarchism is in many respects much less coherent. Godwin’s brand of anarchism can be seen as a logical extension of laissez-faire liberalism. But modem anarchists have frequently claimed to be the true heirs of the idealism and libertarianism of the utopian socialists and the early socialist movement; Bakunin and Malatesta, for example, are indisputably important figures in socialist history. And while at some levels anarchism seems further removed from constitutionalism, at others, as Proudhon in particular illustrates, there are common values and a common adherence to the republican heritage of political ideas.

  In all these guises anarchism is a political doctrine—if one that displays a tendency to logical extremes and utopian commitment alien to the usual concept of what ‘politics’ is all about. There are, however, within the spectrum of anarchism elements which appear to stand right outside the normal political sphere and assert the primacy of non-political values—individualism, artistic creativity, moral commitment, romanticism, or simply the common pleasures of everyday living. But on examination these approaches all have relevance to any attempt to define the sphere of politics and the nature of political activity. In this chapter they are explored in relation to Hannah Arendt’s attempt to set limits to the political realm; and their relevance for an anarchist theory of politics.

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  Anarchism and Education

  A Philosophical Perspective

  • Judith Suissa(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Taylor & Francis

    (Publisher)

  As Walter comments (Walter 1969: 174), such individualism, which over the years has held an intellectual attraction for figures such as Shelley, Emerson and Thoreau, often tends towards nihilism and even solipsism. Walter ultimately questions whether individualism of this type is indeed a form of anarchism, arguing rather that libertarianism – construed as a more moderate form of individualism which holds that individual liberty is an important political goal – is simply one aspect of anarchist thought, or ‘the first stage on the way to complete anarchism’ (ibid.). The key difference between this kind of individualist libertarianism and social anarchism is that while such libertarians oppose the state, they also, as Walter notes (ibid.), oppose society, regarding any type of social organization ‘beyond a temporary “union of egoists” ’ as a form of oppression.

  Many commentators have acknowledged that leading anarchist theorists did not see individual freedom as a political end in itself (see, for example, Ryth Kinna, in Crowder 1991). Furthermore, central anarchist theorists, such as Kropotkin and Bakunin, were often highly disparaging about earlier individualist thinkers such as William Godwin and Max Stirner, for whom individual freedom was a supreme value. ‘The final conclusion of that sort of Individualist Anarchism’, wrote Kropotkin in his 1910 article on ‘Anarchism’ for the Encyclopaedia Britannica,

  maintains that the aim of all superior civilization is, not to permit all members of the community to develop in a normal way, but to permit certain better- endowed individuals ‘fully to develop’, even at the cost of the happiness and the very existence of the mass of mankind . . . .

  Bakunin, another leading anarchist theorist, was even more outspoken in his critique of ‘the individualistic, egoistic, shabby and fictitious liberty extolled by the school of J.J. [Rousseau] and other schools of bourgeois liberalism’ (Dolgoff 1973). Accordingly, several theorists have proposed that it is in fact equality, or even fraternity (see Fidler 1989), which constitutes the ultimate social value according to the anarchist position. Others, like Chomsky, have taken the position that anarchism is simply ‘the libertarian wing of socialism’ (Chomsky, in Guerin 1970: xii) or that ‘anarchism is really a synonym for socialism’ (Guerin 1970: 12). Indeed, Adolph Fischer, one of the ‘Haymarket martyrs’ sentenced to death for their part in the libertarian socialist uprising over the struggle for the eight-hour work day in Chicago, in 1886, claimed that ‘every anarchist is a socialist but not every socialist is an anarchist’. (quoted in Guerin 1970: 12).

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  Justification and Legitimacy

  Essays on Rights and Obligations

  • A. John Simmons(Author)
  • 2000(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  6 PHILOSOPHICAL ANARCHISM Anarchist political philosophers normally include in their theories (or implicitly rely on) a vision of a social life very different from the life expe- rienced by most persons today. Theirs is a vision of autonomous, nonco- ercive, productive interaction among equals, liberated from and without need for distinctively political institutions, such as formal legal systems or governments or the state. This positive part of anarchist theories, this vision of the good social life, is discussed only indirectly in this essay. Rather, I focus here on the negative side of anarchism, on its general critique of the state or its more limited critique of the specific kinds of political arrange- ments within which most residents of modern political societies live. Even more specifically, I center my discussion on one particular version of this anarchist critique - the version that is part of the theory now commonly referred to as philosophical anarchism. Philosophical anarchism has been much discussed by political philosophers in recent years, l but it has not, I I would like to thank Nancy Schauber for her insightful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. 1 See, for example, R. P. Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism (New York: Harper & Row, 1970); Chaim Gans, Philosophical Anarchism and Political Disobedience (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 1992), especially chaps. 1 and 2; and John Horton, Political Obligation (Atlantic Highlands, N.].: Humanities Press, 1992), chap. 5. I discuss the sort of philosophical anar- chism that I wish to defend in Moral Principles and Political Obligations (Princeton: Prince- ton University Press, 1979), especially chap.

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  Polite Anarchy in International Relations Theory

  • Z. Kazmi(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  The state could thus never be made legitimate. From this individualist standpoint of human moral autonomy as a primary obligation, Wolff argued for anarchism as the only logical, and philosophically defensible, political position. 64 As I mentioned earlier in regard to Individualist Anarchism in America, Ward has referred to Wolff as an ideological apologist for free-market lib- eralism, though this is, arguably, a rather misleading characterization of Wolff’s political philosophy. On this view, however, Wolff is placed within a wider body of “anarchocapitalist” tracts that include diverse thinkers such as Rothbard, Nozick, and Friedman. Ward’s criticism implies that anarchism is, and should be, inextricably tied to radical social activism rather than to academic apologies for rampant individualism and the capitalist status quo. This battle over the ownership of anarchist ideas reveals how the academic treatment of anarchism has largely been ideologically colonized by activist scholars of both the libertarian Left and the libertarian Right. Aside from the permeation into academic scholarship of this ideological conflict, anarchist ideas have also contributed more directly to the debate in political theory between liberals and communitarians. 65 In this regard, Michael Taylor’s Community, Anarchy and Liberty, another prominent work of contemporary anarchist political theory, can essentially be seen as a com- munitarian critique of liberal theory that draws on anarchism. 66 Taylor is less concerned with mobilizing a particular activist anarchist agenda than 38 ● Polite Anarchy in IR Theory with what he terms the problem of social order as a public good without the state and the compatibility of community with liberty. Taylor defends community “against the claim, made especially by liberal writers, that it is incompatible with or even inimical to individual liberty.

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  Modern Political Ideologies

  • Andrew Vincent(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  This is anarchistic individualism taken to its ultimate degree. Even pure altruism is seen to be profoundly egoistic. This doctrine has been called ‘psychological egoism’. Its roots lie in a very different intellectual debate within the peripheries of Hegelianism, more precisely in Stirner’s critique of some his fellow young Hegelians (see Leopold introduction to Stirner 2000 and Leopold 2007). Each individual ego is the only arbiter of reality. In this scenario nothing is important except the ontological supremacy of each ego. It can be seen from the above examples drawn from anarchy that there is no one clear reading of human nature. In fact, anarchy appears to be more subject than ANARCHISM 123 other ideologies to enormous diversity on this issue. This makes the discussion of anarchist politics that much more complicated. Critique of the State If there is one theme which recurs in discussions on anarchism it is the critique, and rejection, of the ‘state’, and also sometimes ‘government’ and ‘authority’. There are a number of problems with such a rejection. First, there is a lack of clarification in anarchist writings as to what these terms mean. Consequently it is difficult, on occa-sion, to ascertain what is being rejected. Second, anarchists often differ markedly as to whether concepts such as government, authority and the state should be consid-ered to be synonymous or separate. In other words, can authority be maintained under anarchy without a state or government? Third, the normative grounds on which anarchists attack the state and justify alternatives to it are premised on amaz-ingly diverse moral sources. Lockian natural rights theory, radical utilitarianism, psychological egoism, neo-Kantianism, Hegelianism, evolutionary theory and Christian principles are just the better-known among the normative resources. 24 This diversity of moral justification alone makes the arguments difficult to discuss coher-ently.

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  The SAGE Handbook of Environment and Society

  • Jules Pretty, Andy Ball, Ted Benton, Julia Guivant, David R Lee, David Orr, Max Pfeffer, Professor Hugh Ward, Jules Pretty, Andy Ball, Ted Benton, Julia Guivant, David R Lee, David Orr, Max Pfeffer, Professor Hugh Ward(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  It offers political philosophies which argue for the transcendence of such struc-tures and suggest alternative social, political, economic and technological forms that would maximize the realm of freedom, autonomy and self-management. There are, however, tensions and differences within the anti-authoritarian tradition. Tensions exist between communitarians and individualists; between those that view social solidarity as a precondition for the free society (social anar-chists) and those who argue that primacy should be given to individual sovereignty and private judgement (anarcho-individualists). The tradition is also marked by notable tensions between scien-tific rationalists and romantics; between those that see capitalism as antithetical to a free society and those who view markets as the most efficient coordinating mechanism for decentralized societies. Additional differences emerge from the fact that anti-authoritarians who self-identify as ‘anarchists’ tend to hold to the view that the free society must necessarily be stateless. In contrast, self-identified ‘libertarians’ are more likely to tolerate minimal state forms for the foreseeable future or pragmati-cally aspiring, like Buber, to ‘substitute society for the State to the greatest degree possible’ (Buber, 1947, p. 80). Nevertheless, despite these differences ANARCHISM, LIBERTARIANISM AND ENVIRONMENTALISM 51 it is a shared hostility towards the ‘specific form of government which emerged in post-renaissance Europe’ (Miller, 1984, p. 5), that is, the modern state, that brings together libertarians and anar-chists of assorted persuasions. ANARCHISM, SOCIAL ORDER AND FREEDOM The words ‘law’ and ‘order’ are often paired as if they were indissolubly united. According to the modern mind there is no ‘order’ without ‘law’, where ‘law’ is understood as a body of rules devised and imposed from without. This law is enforced by the authority of the courts, the police, the army and ultimately, the government.

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  Anarchism and Moral Philosophy

  • B. Franks, M. Wilson, B. Franks, M. Wilson(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Within the broad ethical boundaries established by prefiguration and the general anarchist commitment to freedom and equality, there is enormous room for diversity of opinion. There is also a great, pressing and omnipresent demand for action at the expense of talk. Taken together, these considerations begin to explain why anar- chists have not distinguished themselves as especially ‘sophisticated’ philosophers even though it is clear that anarchism has an extremely sophisticated philosophical core. They also gesture at why anarchists have always maintained a fundamental unity-in-diversity as concerns political theory. In all events, it is clear that anarchism is an independent political philosophy whose unique theoretical and ethical approach dis- tinguishes it from liberalism, Marxism and other political traditions. It is also clear that anarchist political philosophy has both a formal and a tactical dimension, combining a critique of existing conditions with concrete proposals for intervention. 4.3 Political philosophy as an anarchist practice In its self-mythologising, anarchism is occasionally said to have evolved piecemeal among the peasants and labouring classes of Europe – again, as compared to Marxism, which was allegedly cooked up all at once in Marx’s brain (!!). Errico Malatesta (1965: 198) is typical when he claims that anarchism ‘follows ideas, not men, and rebels against the habit of embodying a principle in any one individual [ ... and] it does not seek to create theories through abstract analysis but to express the aspirations and experiences of the oppressed’. As is often the case there are tiny grains of truth to be found in the mythology. Proudhon, Voltairine de Cleyre, Goldman and Rudolf Rocker, for example, all came from poor families (Rocker was orphaned) and were mostly self-educated.

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  The Routledge Companion to Social and Political Philosophy

  • Gerald F. Gaus, Fred D'Agostino, Gerald F. Gaus, Fred D'Agostino, Gerald Gaus, Ryan Muldoon(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The Individualist Anarchists: An Anthology of Liberty (1881–1908), Transaction Publishers. An anthology of nineteenth-century American individualist anarchists associated with Benjamin Tucker’s circle.

  Chartier, Gary and Johnson, Charles W., eds. (2011) Markets Not Capitalism: Individualist Anarchism Against Bosses, Inequality, Corporate Power, and Structural Poverty, Minor Compositions. Available at: http://radgeek.com/gt/2011/10/Markets-Not-Capitalism-2011-Chartier-and-Johnson.pdf [accessed on 1 February 2012]. An anthology of individualist anarchist writings, mostly twentieth- or twenty-first-century and mostly anti-capitalist.

  Graham, Robert, ed. (2005, 2009, 2012) Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, three volumes, Black Rose Books. A three-volume anthology of mostly social anarchist writings, from the early modern period through the present.

  McKay, Iain, Elkin, Gary, Neal, Dave, and Boraas, Ed (2008) An Anarchist FAQ. Available at: http://www.infoshop.org/page/AnAnarchistFAQ [accessed on 1 February 2012]. Rather hostile to, and unreliable on, Individualist Anarchism generally and anarcho-capitalism specifically, but a wonderfully comprehensive compendium of information about social anarchism.

  Stringham, Edward P., ed. (2007) Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of Choice, Transaction Publishers. An anthology of mostly anarcho-capitalist, mostly twentieth-century writings, though excerpts from classic works by Burke, Molinari, Spooner, Tucker, Lipscomb, and de Cleyre are also included. Some critical commentary is included as well.

  Passage contains an image 21 LIBERALISM

  Michael Freeden

  Liberalism is a well-established theory and tradition, yet an inexact concept. While ideologists and philosophers of liberalism may each subscribe to what they regard to be clear and uncontentious accounts of their creed, the analysis of liberalism is often split between unpacking the diversity of its forms and advocating an ideal-type single version, whether “comprehensive” or minimal. It is thus instructive to explore liberalism as a label for a set of political and philosophical views and arguments that does not denote a single ideational phenomenon, but may be interpreted as an assembly of family resemblances, of Venn diagrams, or even as an umbrella term for different epistemologies and ideologies. Liberalism embraces ideological and philosophical positions possessing the heuristic and classificatory features that discharge the delivery of necessarily simplified understandings of the world, but it also conceals within it a considerably divergent set of beliefs and political understandings, attesting to the pluralist and polyvalent nature of political thought and to the potential problems of imposing precise categories on the messiness of ideological entities.

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  An Introduction to Political Philosophy

  • Alexander Moseley(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Continuum

    (Publisher)

  However, to call libertarianism atomistic or solipsistic constitutes an unwar-ranted attack, for the libertarian understands the relations that exist between people but maintains the claim that the acting individual always acts of his own volition – even when running with the crowd. Few libertarians espouse the kind of anchorite egoism of Max Stirner, but what the libertarian does claim is that the individual is the ultimate given beyond whom it is impossible to seek for further causes: when a person utters the word ‘I’, no further clarification is 87 LIBERTARIANISM required as to whom they are referring, but when a person says ‘we’, then clarification is needed as to whom is indicated. The first person perspective is an ineluctable fact of the universe which cannot be rejected, although it can be ignored or displaced in convoluted rea-soning, which is how libertarians perceive the other political philosophies. Historically, most of humanity has been enslaved to others who have wielded violence, intimidation and fear to sustain an abject dependence, and appropriately such political forms promote privil-eges for certain individuals but not all. By upholding the unique sen-tience of each individual, the libertarian rejects any feudal hierarchy of status as much as any division between master and slave – and not merely on consequentialist grounds that slavery and feudalism are not as productive as free markets, but because no man can own another – each person can only own himself. The libertarian’s view of man is thus proprietary, with some thinkers adding that self-ownership is also moral.

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