Individualist
anarchism
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
Individualist anarchism refers to
several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual
and his/her will
over any kinds of external determinants such as groups, society,
traditions, and ideological systems.[1][2]
Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but refers to a
group of individualistic philosophies that sometimes are in conflict.
Early influences in individualist anarchism were the thought of William Godwin[3],
Henry David Thoreau (transcendentalism)[4],
Josiah Warren ("sovereignty
of the individual"), Lysander Spooner ("natural
law"), Pierre Joseph
Proudhon (mutualism), Herbert Spencer ("law of equal liberty")[5]
and Max Stirner (egoism).[6]
From there it expanded through Europe
and the United States.
Benjamin R. Tucker,
a famous 19th century individualist anarchist, held that "if the
individual has the right to govern himself, all external government is
tyranny."[7]
Overview
Early individualist anarchists include William Godwin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Max
Stirner.[3][6]
Individualist anarchism of different
kinds have a few things in common. These are:
1. The concentration and elevation on
the individual and his/her
over any kind of social or exterior reality or construction such as
morality, ideology, social custom, religion, metaphysics, ideas or the
will of others.[8][9]
2. The rejection or reservations on the
idea of revolution seeing it as a time of mass uprising
which could bring about new hierarchies. Instead they favor more evolutionary methods of bringing about anarchy
through alternative experiences and experiments and education which
could be brought about today[10][11].
This
also because it is not seen desirable for individuals the fact of
having to wait for revolution to start experiencing alternative
experiences outside what is offered in the current social system[12].
3. The view that relationships with
other persons or things can only
be of one's own interest and can be as transitory and without
compromises as desired since in individualist anarchism sacrifice is
usually rejected. In this way Max Stirner recommended associations of
egoists[13][14].
Individual experience and exploration therefore is emphazised.
As such differences exist. In regards to
economic questions there are adherents to mutualism (Proudhon, Emile Armand, early Benjamin Tucker), egoistic disrespect for "ghosts" such as
private property and markets (Stirner, John Henry Mackay, Lev
Chernyi, later Tucker), and adherents to anarcho-communism (Albert Libertad, illegalism).
The egoist form of individualist anarchism,
derived from the philosophy of Max Stirner,
supports the individual doing exactly what he pleases – taking no
notice of God, state, or moral rules.[15]
To Stirner, rights were spooks
in the mind, and he held that society does not exist but "the
individuals are its reality"– he supported property by force of might
rather than moral right.[16]
Stirner advocated self-assertion and foresaw "associations of egoists"
drawn together by respect for each other's ruthlessness.[17]
An important tendency within
individualist anarchist currents
emphasizes individual subjective exploration and defiance of social
conventions. As such Murray Bookchin
describes a lot of individualist anarchism as people who "expressed
their opposition in uniquely personal forms, especially in fiery
tracts, outrageous behavior, and aberrant lifestyles in the cultural
ghettos of fin de sicle New York, Paris, and London. As a credo,
individualist anarchism remained largely a bohemian
lifestyle, most conspicuous in its demands for sexual freedom ('free
love') and enamored of innovations in art, behavior, and clothing."[18].
In this way free love[19][20]
currents and other radical lifestyles such as naturism[20][21]
had popularity among individualist anarchists.
People
William Godwin
Main
article:
William GodwinWilliam Godwin can be considered an
individualist anarchist[22]
and philosophical
anarchist who was influenced by the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment,[23]
and developed what many consider the first expression of modern anarchist thought.[3]
Godwin was, according to Peter Kropotkin,
"the first to formulate the political and economical conceptions of
anarchism, even though he did not give that name to the ideas developed
in his work."[24][25]
Godwin advocated extreme individualism, proposing that all cooperation
in labor be eliminated.[26]
Godwin was a utilitarian who believed that all individuals are not of
equal value, with some of us "of more worth and importance' than others
depending on our utility in bringing about social good. Therefore he
does not believe in equal rights, but the person's life that should be
favored that is most conducive to the general good.[27]
Godwin opposed government because it infringes on the individual's
right to "private judgement" to determine which actions most maximize
utility, but also makes a critique of all authority over the
individual's judgement. This aspect of Godwin's philosophy, minus the
utilitarianism, was developed into a more extreme form later by Stirner.[28]
Godwin's individualism was to such a
radical degree that he even
opposed individuals performing together in orchestras, writing in Political Justice that "everything
understood by the term co-operation is in some sense an evil."[26]
The only apparent exception to this opposition to cooperation is the
spontaneous association that may arise when a society is threatened by
violent force. One reason he opposed cooperation is he believed it to
interfere with an individual's ability to be benevolent for the greater
good. Godwin opposes the idea of government, but wrote that a minimal state as a present "necessary
evil"[29]
that would become increasingly irrelevant and powerless by the gradual
spread of knowledge.[3]
He expressly opposed democracy, fearing oppression of the individual
by the majority (though he believed it to be preferable to dictatorship).
Godwin supported individual ownership of
property, defining it as
"the empire to which every man is entitled over the produce of his own
industry."[29]
However, he also advocated that individuals give to each other their
surplus property on the occasion that others have a need for it,
without involving trade (e.g. gift
economy). Thus, while people have the right to private
property, they should give it away as enlightened altruists. This was to be based on utilitarian
principles; he said: "Every man has a right to that, the exclusive
possession of which being awarded to him, a greater sum of benefit or
pleasure will result than could have arisen from its being otherwise
appropriated."[29]
However, benevolence was not to be enforced, being a matter of free
individual "private judgement." He did not advocate a community of
goods or assert collective ownership as is embraced in communism,
but his belief that individuals ought to share with those in need was
influential on the later development of anarchist communism.
Godwin's political views were diverse
and do not perfectly agree
with any of the ideologies that claim his influence; writers of the Socialist Standard, organ of the Socialist Party of Great
Britain, consider Godwin both an individualist and a communist;[30]
anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard did not regard Godwin as
being in the individualist camp at all, referring to him as the
"founder of communist anarchism";[31]
and historian Albert Weisbord considers him an
individualist anarchist without reservation.[32]
Some writers see a conflict between Godwin's advocacy of "private
judgement" and utilitarianism, as he says that ethics requires that
individuals give their surplus property to each other resulting in an
egalitarian society, but, at the same time, he insists that all things
be left to individual choice.[3]
Many of Godwin's views changed over time, as noted by Kropotkin.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865) was
the first philosopher to label himself an "anarchist."[33]
Some consider Proudhon to be an individualist anarchist,[34][35][36]
while others regard him to be a social anarchist.[37][38]
Some commentators do not identify Proudhon as an individualist
anarchist due to his preference for association in large industries,
rather than individual control.[39]
Nevertheless, he was influential among some of the American
individualists; in the 1840s and 1850s, Charles A. Dana,[40]
and William B. Greene
introduced Proudhon's works to the United
States. Greene adapted Proudhon's mutualism to American conditions
and introduced it to Benjamin R. Tucker.[41]
Proudhon opposed government privilege
that protects capitalist,
banking and land interests, and the accumulation or acquisition of
property (and any form of coercion
that led to it) which he believed hampers competition and keeps wealth
in the hands of the few. Proudhon favoured a right of individuals to
retain the product of their labor as their own property, but believed
that any property beyond that which an individual produced and could
possess was illegitimate. Thus, he saw private property as both
essential to liberty and a road to tyranny, the former when it resulted
from labor and was required for labor and the latter when it resulted
in exploitation (profit, interest, rent, tax). He generally called the
former "possession" and the latter "property." For large-scale
industry, he supported workers associations to replace wage labour and
opposed the ownership of land.
Proudhon maintained that those who labor
should retain the entirety of what they produce, and that monopolies
on credit and land are the forces that prohibit such. He advocated an
economic system that included private property as possession and
exchange market but without profit, which he called mutualism. It is Proudhon's
philosophy that was explicitly rejected by Joseph Dejacque in the
inception of anarchist-communism,
with
the latter asserting directly to Proudhon in a letter that "it is
not the product of his or her labor that the worker has a right to, but
to the satisfaction of his or her needs, whatever may be their nature."
An individualist rather than anarchist communist,[34][35][36]
Proudhon said that "communism...is the very denial of society in its
foundation..."[42]
and famously declared that "property is theft!"
in reference to his rejection of ownership rights to land being granted
to a person who is not using that land.
After Dejacque and others split from
Proudhon due to the latter's
support of individual property and an exchange economy, the
relationship between the individualists, who continued in relative
alignment with the philosophy of Proudhon, and the anarcho-communists
was characterised by various degrees of antagonism and harmony. For
example, individualists like Tucker on the one hand translated and
reprinted the works of collectivists like Mikhail Bakunin, while on the other hand
rejected the economic aspects of collectivism and communism as
incompatible with anarchist ideals.
Thought
Mutualism
Modern symbol of mutualism
Mutualism is an anarchist
school of thought which can be traced to the writings of
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who envisioned a society where each person
might possess a means of production, either
individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent
amounts of labor in the free
market.[43]
Integral to the scheme was the establishment of a mutual-credit bank
which would lend to producers at a minimal interest rate only high
enough to cover the costs of administration.[44]
Mutualism is based on a labor theory of value
which holds that when labor or its product is sold, in exchange, it
ought to receive goods or services embodying "the amount of labor
necessary to produce an article of exactly similar and equal utility".[45]
Some mutualists believe that if the state did not intervene, as a
result of increased competition in the marketplace, individuals would
receive no more income than that in proportion to the amount of labor
they exert.[46]
Mutualists oppose the idea of individuals receiving an income through
loans, investments, and rent, as they believe these individuals are not
laboring. Some of them argue that if state intervention ceased, these
types of incomes would disappear due to increased competition in
capital.[47]
Though Proudhon opposed this type of income, he expressed: "... I never
meant to ... forbid or suppress, by sovereign decree, ground rent and
interest on capital. I believe that all these forms of human activity
should remain free and optional for all."[48]
Insofar as they ensure the workers right
to the full product of their labor, mutualists support markets
and private property
in the product of labor. However, they argue for conditional titles to
land, whose private ownership is legitimate only so long as it remains
in use or occupation (which Proudhon called "possession.")[49]
Proudhon's Mutualism supports labor-owned cooperative firms and
associations[50]
for "we need not hesitate, for we have no choice. . . it is necessary
to form an ASSOCIATION among workers . . . because without that, they
would remain related as subordinates and superiors, and there would
ensue two . . . castes of masters and wage-workers, which is repugnant
to a free and democratic society" and so "it becomes necessary for the
workers to form themselves into democratic
societies, with equal conditions for all
members, on pain of a relapse into feudalism."[51]
As for capital goods (man-made, non-land, "means of production"), mutualist
opinions differs on whether these should be commonly managed public
assets or private property.
Mutualists, following Proudhon,
originally considered themselves to
be libertarian socialists. However, "some mutualists have abandoned the
labor theory of value, and prefer to avoid the term "socialist." But
they still retain some cultural attitudes, for the most part, that set
them off from the libertarian right."[52]
Mutualists have distinguished themselves from state socialism,
and don't advocate social control over the means of production.
Benjamin Tucker said of Proudhon, that "though opposed to socializing
the ownership of capital, [Proudhon] aimed nevertheless to socialize
its effects by making its use beneficial to all instead of a means of
impoverishing the many to enrich the few...by subjecting capital to the
natural law of competition, thus bringing the price of its own use down
to cost."[53]
Egoism
Max
Stirner's philosophy, sometimes called "egoism," is the most extreme[54]
form of individualist anarchism. Max
Stirner was a Hegelian
philosopher whose "name appears with familiar regularity in
historically-orientated surveys of anarchist thought as one of the
earliest and best-known exponents of individualist anarchism."[6]
In 1844, his The Ego and Its Own (Der
Einzige and sein Eigentum which may literally be translated as The
Unique Individual and His Property[55])
was published, which is considered to be "a founding text in the
tradition of individualist anarchism."[6]
Stirner does not recommend that the individual try to eliminate the
state but simply that they disregard the state when it conflicts with
one's autonomous choices and go along with it when doing so is
conducive to one's interests.[56]
He says that the egoist rejects pursuit of devotion to "a great idea, a
good cause, a doctirine, a system, a lofty calling," saying that the
egoist has no political calling but rather "lives themselves out"
without regard to "how well or ill humanity may fare thereby."[57]
Stirner held that the only limitation on the rights of the individual
is his power to obtain what he desires.[58]
He proposes that most commonly accepted social institutions—including
the notion of State, property as a right, natural rights in general,
and the very notion of society—were mere spooks in the mind.
Stirner wants to "abolish not only the state but also society as an
institution responsible for its members."[59]
He advocated self-assertion and foresaw "associations of egoists" where
respect for ruthlessness drew people together.[22]
Even murder is permissible "if it is right for me."[60]
For Stirner, property simply comes about
through might: "Whoever
knows how to take, to defend, the thing, to him belongs property." And,
"What I have in my power, that is my own. So long as I assert myself as
holder, I am the proprietor of the thing." He says, "I do not step
shyly back from your property, but look upon it always as my property,
in which I respect nothing. Pray do the like with what you call my
property!".[61]
His concept of "egoistic property" not only a lack of moral restraint
on how own obtains and uses things, but includes other people
as well.[62]
His embrace of egoism is in stark contrast to Godwin's altruism.
Stirner was opposed to communism, seeing it as a form of authority over
the individual.
This position on property is much
different from the native
American, natural law, form of individualist anarchism, which defends
the inviolability of the private property that has been earned through
labor[63]
and trade. However, in 1886 Benjamin Tucker rejected the natural rights
philosophy and adopted Stirner's egoism, with several others joining
with him. This split the American individualists into fierce debate,
"with the natural rights proponents accusing the egoists of destroying
libertarianism itself."[64]
Other egoists include James L. Walker, Sidney Parker, Dora
Marsden, John Beverly Robinson,
and Benjamin Tucker (later in life).
In Russia, individualist anarchism
inspired by Stirner combined with an appreciation for Friedrich Nietzsche attracted a small
following of bohemian artists and intellectuals such as Lev
Chernyi, as well as a few lone wolves who found self-expression in
crime and violence.[65]
They rejected organizing, believing that only unorganized individuals
were safe from coercion and domination, believing this kept them true
to the ideals of anarchism.[66]
This type of individualist anarchism inspired anarcho-feminist Emma
Goldman[65]
Though Stirner's philosophy is
individualist, it has influenced some
libertarian communists and anarcho-communists. "For Ourselves Council
for Generalized Self-Management" discusses Stirner and speaks of a
"communist egoism," which is said to be a "synthesis of individualism
and collectivism," and says that "greed in its fullest sense is the
only possible basis of communist society."[67]
Forms of libertarian communism such as Situationism
are influenced by Stirner.[68]
Anarcho-communist Emma Goldman was influenced by both Stirner
and Peter Kropotkin and blended their
philosophies together in her own, as shown in books of hers such as Anarchism
And Other Essays.[69]
Free Love
An important current within
individualist anarchism is Free
love[19].
Free love advocates sometimes traced their roots back to Josiah
Warren
and to experimental communities, viewed sexual freedom as a clear,
direct expression of an individual's self-ownership. Free love
particularly stressed women's rights since most sexual laws
discriminated against women: for example, marriage laws and anti-birth
control measures[19].
The most important American free love journal was Lucifer the Lightbearer
(1883-1907) edited by Moses
Harman and Lois Waisbrooker[70]
but also there existed Ezra
Heywood and Angela Heywood's The Word (1872-1890, 1892-1893)[19].
Also M. E. Lazarus was an important american
individualist anarchist who promoted free love[19].
In Europe the main propagandist of free love within individualist
anarchism was Emile Armand[71].
He proposed the concept of la camaraderie amoureuse
to speak of free love as the possibility of voluntary sexual encounter
between consenting adults. He was also a consistent proponent of polyamory[71].
The brazilian
individualist
anarchist Maria Lacerda de Moura lectured on
topics such as education, women's rights, free
love, and antimilitarism. Her writings and essays
landed her attention not only in Brazil, but also in Argentina
and Uruguay.
[72].
Anarcho-naturism
Another important current especially
within French and Spanish individualist anarchist groups was naturism[20].
Naturism promoted an ecological worldview, small ecovillages,
and most prominently nudism as a way to avoid the
artificiality of the industrial mass
society of modernity[21].
Naturist
individualist anarchists saw the individual in his biological,
physical and psychological aspects and avoided and tried to eliminate
social determinations [21].
An early influence in this vein was Henry David Thoreau and his famous
book Walden[20].
Important promoters of this were Henri
Zisly and Emile Gravelle who collaborated in La
Nouvelle Humanité followed by Le Naturien, Le
Sauvage, L'Ordre Naturel, & La Vie Naturelle [73]
Their ideas were important in individualist anarchist circles in France
but also in Spain where Federico Urales (pseudonym
of Joan Montseny), promotes the ideas of Gravelle and Zisly in La Revista Blanca (1898 – 1905)[20].
Anglo
American individualist anarchism
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) was an
important early influence in individualist anarchist thought in the
United States and Europe[11].
Thoreau was an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resiste, development critic , surveyor,
historian, philosopher, and leading transcendentalist.
He is best known for his book Walden,
a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings, and
his essay, Civil Disobedience,
an
argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral
opposition to an unjust state. His thought is an early influence on
green anarchism but with an emphasis on the individual experience of
the natural world influencing later naturist currents,[4]Simple
living as a rejection of a materialist lifestyle[4]
and self-sufficiency were Thoreau's goals,
and the whole project was inspired by transcendentalist philosophy.
The American version of individualist
anarchism has a strong emphasis on the non-aggression principle and individual sovereignty.[74]
Some individualist anarchists, such as Thoreau[75][76],
do
not speak of economics but simply the right of "disunion" from the
state, and foresee the gradual elimination of the state through social
evolution. His anarchism not only rejects the state but all organized
associations of any kind, advocating complete individual self reliance.[77]
An early individualist anarchist who was
very influential was Josiah
Warren, who had participated in a failed collective "utopian
socialist" experiment headed by Robert
Owen called "New Harmony" and came to the conclusion that
such a system is inferior to one that respects the "sovereignty[78]
of the individual" and his right to dispose of his property as his own
self-interest prescribes.
The "Boston
Anarchists"
Another form of individualist anarchism
was found in the United States, as advocated by the "Boston anarchists."[65]
By default American individualists didn't have any problem that "one
man employ another" or that "he direct him," in his labor but demanded
that "all natural opportunities requisite to the production of wealth
be accessible to all on equal terms and that monopolies arising from
special privileges created by law be abolished."[79]
They believed state monopoly capitalism
(defined as a state-sponsored monopoly)[80]
prevented labor from being fully rewarded. Voltairine de Cleyre,
summed up the philosophy by saying that the anarchist individualists
"are firm in the idea that the system of employer and employed, buying
and selling, banking, and all the other essential institutions of
Commercialism, centered upon private property, are in themselves good,
and are rendered vicious merely by the interference of the State."[81]
Even among the nineteenth century
American individualists, there was
not a monolithic doctrine, as they disagreed amongst each other on
various issues including intellectual property rights and possession versus property
in land.[82][83][84]
A major schism occurred later in the 19th century when Tucker and some
others abandoned their traditional support of natural rights -as espoused by Lysander Spooner- and converted to an
"egoism" modeled upon Stirner's philosophy.[83]
Some "Boston anarchists", including
Benjamin Tucker, identified themselves as "socialists"
which in the 19th century was often used in the broad sense of a
commitment to improving conditions of the working class (i.e. "the labor problem").[85]
By the turn of the 20th century, the heyday of individualist anarchism
had passed,[86]
although the individualist anarchist tradition was later revived with
modifications by Murray Rothbard and his anarcho-capitalism in the mid-twentieth
century, as a current of the broader libertarian movement.[65][87]
Anarcho-capitalism
19th century individualist anarchists
espoused the labor theory of value.
Some believe that the modern movement of anarcho-capitalism is the
result of simply removing the labor theory of value from ideas of the
19th century American individualist anarchists: "Their successors
today, such as Murray Rothbard, having abandoned the labor theory of
value, describe themselves as anarcho-capitalists."[88]
As economic theory changed, the popularity of the labor theory of classical economics was superseded by
the subjective theory of value of neo-classical
economics. According to Kevin
Carson (himself a mutualist), "most people who
call themselves "individualist anarchists" today are followers of
Murray Rothbard's Austrian economics."[89]
Murray Rothbard, a student of Ludwig von Mises, combined the Austrian school
economics of his teacher with the absolutist views of human rights and
rejection of the state he had absorbed from studying the individualist
American anarchists of the nineteenth century such as Lysander Spooner
and Benjamin Tucker.[90]
In the mid-1950s Rothbard wrote an
article under a pseudonym, saying
that "we are not anarchists...but not archists either...Perhaps, then,
we could call ourselves by a new name: nonarchist," concerned with
differentiating himself from communist and socialistic economic views
of other anarchists (including the individualist anarchists of the
nineteenth century).[91]
However, Rothbard later chose the term "anarcho-capitalism" for his
philosophy and referred to himself as an anarchist.
Agorism
Agorism is a radical left-libertarian[δ]
form of anarchism, developed from anarcho-capitalism in the late
20th-century by Samuel Edward Konkin III (a.k.a.
SEK3). The goal of agorists is a society in which all "relations
between people are voluntary exchanges – a free
market."[92]
Agorists are propertarian market anarchists who
consider that property rights are natural rights
deriving from the primary right of self-ownership and are not opposed
in principle to collectively held property if individual owners of the
property consent to collective ownership by contract or other voluntary
mutual agreement. However, Agorists are divided on the question of intellectual property rights.[δ]
European
individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism was one of the
three categories of anarchism in Russia, along with the
more prominent anarchist communism and anarcho-syndicalism.[93]
The ranks of the Russian individualist anarchists were predominantly
drawn from the intelligentsia and the working
class.[93]
European individualist anarchists
include Max Stirner, Albert Libertad, Shmuel Alexandrov, Anselme Bellegarrigue, Émile Armand, Enrico Arrigoni, Lev
Chernyi, John Henry Mackay, Han
Ryner, Renzo Novatore, Miguel Giménez Igualada,
and currently Michel Onfray. Two influential authors in
European individualist anarchists are Friedrich Nietzche
(see Anarchism and Friedrich
Nietzsche) and Georges Palante.
European individualist anarchism
proceeded from the roots laid by William Godwin, Pierre Joseph
Proudhon and Max Stirner.
France
From the legacy of Proudhon and Stirner
there emerged a strong
tradition of French individualist anarchism. An early important
individualist anarchist was Anselme Bellegarrigue. He
participated in the French Revolution of 1848,
was author and editor of 'Anarchie, Journal de l'Ordre and Au
fait ! Au
fait ! Interprétation de l'idée démocratique'
and wrote the important
early Anarchist Manifesto in 1850.
Later this tradition continued with such
intellectuals as Albert Libertad, André
Lorulot, Emile Armand, Victor
Serge, Zo d'Axa and Rirette Maitrejean developed theory in
the main individualist anarchist journal in France, L’Anarchie in 1905. Outside this journal, Han
Ryner wrote Petit Manuel individualiste (1903). Later
appeared the journal L'EnDehors
created by Zo d'Axa in 1891.
French individualist anarchist exposed a
diversity of positions (per
example, about violence and non-violence). For example Emile Armand
rejected violence and embraced mutualism while becoming an
important propagandist for free
love, while Albert Libertad and Zo d’Axa was influential in violentists
circles and championed violent propaganda by the
deed while adhering to communitarianism or anarcho-communism [94]
and rejecting work. Han Ryner on the other
side conciled anarchism with stoicism.
Nevertheless French individualist circles had a strong sense of
personal libertarianism and experimentation. Naturism
and free
love
contents started to have a strong influence in individualist anarchist
circles and from there it expanded to the rest of anarchism also
appearing in Spanish individualist anarchist groups[20].
"In this sense, the theoretical
positions and the vital experiences
of french individualism are deeply iconoclastic and scandalous, even
within libertarian circles. The call of nudist naturism,
the
strong defence of bith control methods, the idea of "unions of
egoists" with the sole justification of sexual practices, that will try
to put in practice, not without difficulties, will establish a way of
thought and action, and will result in symphathy within some, and a
strong rejection within others."[20]
Illegalism
Illegalism[95]
is an anarchist philosophy that developed primarily in France, Italy,
Belgium, and Switzerland during the early 1900s as an outgrowth of
Stirner's individualist anarchism[96].
Illegalists
usually did not seek moral basis for their actions,
recognizing only the reality of "might" rather than "right"; for the
most part, illegal acts were done simply to satisfy personal desires,
not for some greater ideal[97],
although some committed crimes as a form of Propaganda of the deed [95].
The illegalists embraced direct
action and propaganda by the
deed[98].
Influenced by theorist Max Stirner's egoism as well as Proudhon (his view that Property is theft!), Clément Duval and Marius
Jacob proposed the theory of la reprise individuelle (Eng: individual reclamation) which
justified robbery on the rich and personal direct action against
exploiters and the system.[97],
Illegalism first rose to prominence
among a generation of Europeans inspired by the unrest of the 1890s,
during which Ravachol, Émile Henry, Auguste Vaillant, and Caserio committed daring crimes in
the name of anarchism[99],
in what is known as propaganda of the deed. France's Bonnot
Gang was the most famous group to embrace illegalism.
Italy
In Italy individualist anarchism had a
strong tendency towards illegalism
and violent propaganda by the
deed similar to French individualist anarchism but perhaps more
extreme[100].
In this respect we can consider notorious magnicides carried out or
attempted by individualists Giovanni Passannante, Sante Caserio, Michele Angiolillo, Luigi Luccheni, Gaetano Bresci who murdered king Umberto I. Caserio lived in France and
coexisted within French illegalism and later assassinated French
president Sadi Carnot. The theoretical seeds of current Insurrectionary anarchism
were already laid out at the end of 19th century Italy in a combination
of individualist anarchism criticism of permanent groups and
organization with a socialist class struggle worldview[101].During
the rise of fascism this thought also motivated Gino
Lucetti, Michele Schirru and Angelo Sbardellotto in attempting the
assassination of Benito Mussolini.
During the early 20th century it is
important the intellectual work of individualist anarchist Renzo Novatore which was influenced by
Stirner, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Palante, Oscar
Wilde, Henrik Ibsen, Arthur Schopenhauer and Charles Baudelaire. He collaborated in
numerous anarchist journals and participated in futurism
avant-garde currents. In his thought he adhered to stirnerist
disrespect to private property only recognizing property of one's own
spirit.[102].
Novatore collaborated in the individualist anarchist journal Iconoclasta!
alongside the young stirnerist illegalist
Bruno Filippi[103]
Spain
Spain
received the influence of American individualist anarchism but most
importantly it was related to the French currents. At the turn of the
century individualism in Spain takes force through the efforts of
people such as Dorado Montero, Ricardo Mella, Federico Urales and J.
Elizalde who will translatre French and American individualists[20].
Important in this respect were also magazines such as La Idea Libre,
La revista blanca,
Etica, Iniciales, Al margen and Nosotros.
The most influential thinkers there were Max
Stirner, Emile Armand and Han
Ryner. Just as in France, the spreading of Esperanto
had importance just as naturism and free
love currents[20].
Later
Armand and Ryner themselves will start writing in the Spanish
invidualist press. The concept of Armand of amorous chamaraderie had an
important role in motivating polyamory
as realization of the individual[20].
An important Spanish individualist anarchist was also Miguel Giménez Igualada who
wrote the lengthy theory book called Anarchism espousing his
individualist anarchism[104].
Recently spanish historian Xavier Diez
has dedicated extensive
research on spanish individualist anarchism as can be seen in his books
El anarquismo individualista en España: 1923-1938[105]
y Utopia sexual a la premsa anarquista de Catalunya. La revista
Ética-Iniciales(1927-1937) (which deals with free love
thought as present in the spanish individualist anarchist magazine Iniciales)[106].
Germany
In Germany
the Scottish-german John Henry McKay
became the most important propagandist for individualist anarchist
ideas. He fused stirnerist egoism with the positions of Benjamin Tucker
and actually translated Tucker into german. Two semi-fictional writings
of his own Die Anarchisten and Der
Freiheitsucher
contributed to individualist theory through an updating of egoist
themes within a consideration of the anarchist movement. English
translations of these works arrived in the United Kingdom and in
individualist American circles lead by Tucker[107].
McKay is also known as an important European early activist for LGBT rights.
Using the pseudonym
Sagitta, Mackay wrote a series of works for pederastic
emancipation,
titled Die Buecher der namenlosen Liebe (Books of the
Nameless Love). This series was conceived in 1905 and completed in
1913 and included the Fenny Skaller, a story of a pederast.[108]
Under the same pseudonym he also published fiction, such as Holland
(1924) and a pederastic novel of the Berlin
boy-bars, Der Puppenjunge (The Hustler) (1926).
Adolf
Brand (1874-1945) was a German
writer,
stirnerist anarchist
and pioneering campaigner for the
acceptance of male bisexuality and homosexuality.
Brand published a German homosexual periodical, Der
Eigene in 1896. This was the first ongoing homosexual
publication in the world[109].
The name was taken from writings of egoist philosopher Max
Stirner, who had greatly influenced the young Brand, and refers to
Stirner's concept of "self-ownership" of the individual. Der
Eigene
concentrated on cultural and scholarly material, and may have had an
average of around 1500 subscribers per issue during its lifetime,
although the exact numbers are uncertain. Contributors included Erich Mühsam, Kurt
Hiller, John Henry Mackay (under the pseudonym
Sagitta) and artists Wilhelm von Gloeden, Fidus and Sascha Schneider. Brand contributed many
poems and articles himself.
Russia
In Russia, Lev
Chernyi
was an important individualist anarchist involved in resistance against
the rise to power of the Bolchevik Party. He adhered mainly to Stirner
and the ideas of Benjamin Tucker. In 1907, he published a
book entitled Associational Anarchism, in which he advocated
the "free association of independent individuals."[110].
On
his return from Siberia in 1917 he enjoyed great popularity among
Moscow workers as a lecturer. Chernyi was also Secretary of the Moscow
Federation of Anarchist Groups, which was formed in March 1917[110].
He
died after being accused of participation in an episode in which
this group bombed the headquarters of the Moscow Committee of the
Communist Party. Although most likely not being really involved in the
bombing, he might have died of torture[110].
Chernyi advocated a Nietzschean overthrow of the values of
bourgeois Russian society, and rejected the voluntary communes of anarcho-communist Peter Kropotkin as a threat to the freedom
of the individual.[111][112][113]
Scholars including Avrich and Allan Antliff have interpreted this
vision of society to have been greatly influenced by the individualist
anarchists Max Stirner, and Benjamin Tucker.[114]
Subsequent to the book's publication, Chernyi was imprisoned in Siberia
under the Russian Czarist regime for his
revolutionary activities.[115]
Latin
American individualist anarchism
Vicente Rojas Lizcano
pseudonym of Biófilo Panclasta,
was a Colombian individualist
anarchist writer and activist. In 1904
he begins using the name Biofilo Panclasta. "Biofilo" in spanish stands
for "lover of life" and "Panclasta" for "enemy of all". [116]
He visited more than fifty countries propagadizing for anarchism which
in his case was highly influenced by the thought of Max
Stirner and Friedrich Nietszche.
Among his written works there are Siete años enterrado vivo
en una de las mazmorras de Gomezuela: Horripilante relato de un
resucitado(1932) and Mis prisiones, mis destierros y mi vida
(1929) which talk about his many adventures while living his live as an
adventurer, activist and vagabond as well as his thought and the
many times he was imprisioned in different countries.
Maria Lacerda de Moura was a Brazilian
teacher,
journalist,
anarcha-feminist, and
individualist
anarchist. Her ideas regarding education were largely influenced by
Francisco Ferrer. She
later moved to São Paulo and became involved in
journalism for the anarchist and labor press. There she also lectured
on topics including education, women's rights, free
love, and antimilitarism. Her writings and essays
landed her attention not only in Brazil, but also in Argentina
and Uruguay.
In February 1923 she launched Renascença, a periodical
linked with the anarchist, progressive,
and freethinking circles of the period. Her
thought was mainly influenced by individualist
anarchists such as Han Ryner and Emile Armand[117].
Criticisms
Prior to abandoning anarchism,
libertarian socialist Murray Bookchin criticized individualist
anarchism for its opposition to democracy
and its embrace of "lifestylism" at the expense of class struggle.[118]
Bookchin claimed that individualist anarchism supports only negative liberty and rejects the idea of positive liberty.[119]
Anarcho-communist Albert Meltzer
proposed that individualist anarchism differs radically from
revolutionary anarchism, and that it "is sometimes too readily conceded
'that this is, after all, anarchism'." He claimed that Benjamin Tucker's
acceptance of the use of a private police force (including to break up
violent strikes to protect the "employer's 'freedom'") is contradictory
to the definition of anarchism as "no government."[120]
Meltzer opposed anarcho-capitalism
for similar reasons, arguing that since it supports "private armies",
it actually supports a "limited State." He contends that it "is only
possible to conceive of Anarchism which is free, communistic and
offering no economic necessity for repression of countering it."[121]
According to Gareth Griffith, George Bernard Shaw
initially had flirtations with individualist anarchism before coming to
the conclusion that it was "the negation of socialism, and is, in fact,
unsocialism carried as near to its logical conclusion as any sane man
dare carry it." Shaw's argument was that even if wealth was initially
distributed equally, the degree of laissez-faire
advocated by Tucker would result in the distribution of wealth becoming
unequal because it would permit private appropriation and accumulation.[122]
According to academic Carlotta Anderson, American individualist
anarchists accept that free competition results in unequal wealth
distribution, but they "do not see that as an injustice."[123]
Tucker explained, "If I go through life free and rich, I shall not cry
because my neighbor, equally free, is richer. Liberty will ultimately
make all men rich; it will not make all men equally rich. Authority may
(and may not) make all men equally rich in purse; it certainly will
make them equally poor in all that makes life best worth living."[124]
There is also criticism between
contemporary individualist anarchism currents. American mutualist Joe
Peacott
has criticized anarcho-capitalists for trying to hegemonize the label
"individualist anarchism" and make appear as if all individualist
anarchists are pro-capitalism[125].
He
has stated that "some individualists, both past and present, agree
with the communist anarchists that present-day capitalism is based on
economic coercion, not on voluntary contract. Rent and interest are
mainstays of modern capitalism, and are protected and enforced by the
state. Without these two unjust institutions, capitalism could not
exist."[126]
In this way he adheres to mutualist anti-capitalism.
See also
α^
The term "individualist anarchism" is often used as a classificatory
term, but in very different ways. Some sources, such as An Anarchist FAQ use the classification "social anarchism
/ individualist anarchism". Some see individualist anarchism as
distinctly non-socialist, and use the classification "socialist
anarchism / individualist anarchism" accordingly.[127]
Other classifications include "mutualist/communal" anarchism.[128]
β^
Michael Freeden identifies four broad types
of individualist anarchism. He says the first is the type associated
with William Godwin that advocates self-government with a
"progressive rationalism that included benevolence to
others." The second type is the amoral self-serving rationality of Egoism,
as most associated with Max
Stirner. The third type is "found in Herbert Spencer's early predictions, and
in that of some of his disciples such as Donisthorpe,
foreseeing the redundancy of the state in the source of social
evolution." The fourth type retains a moderated form of egoism and
accounts for social cooperation through the advocacy of market
relationships.[5]
γ^ See,
for example, the Winter 2006 issue of the Journal of Libertarian
Studies, dedicated to reviews of Kevin Carson's Studies in
Mutualist Political Economy. Mutualists compose one bloc, along
with agorists and geo-libertarians, in the recently formed Alliance of
the Libertarian Left.
δ^ Though
this term is non-standard usage – by "left", agorists mean "left" in
the general sense used by left-libertarians, as defined by Roderick T. Long, as "...
an
integration, or I’d argue, a reintegration of libertarianism with
concerns that are traditionally thought of as being concerns of the
left. That includes concerns for worker empowerment, worry about
plutocracy, concerns about feminism and various kinds of social
equality."[129]
ε^ Konkin
wrote the article "Copywrongs"in opposition to
the concept and Schulman countered SEK3's arguments in "Informational Property:
Logorights."
ζ^
Individualist
anarchism is also known by the terms "anarchist
individualism", "anarcho-individualism", "individualistic anarchism",
"libertarian anarchism",[130][131][132][133]
"anarcho-libertarianism",[134][135]
"anarchist libertarianism"[134]
and "anarchistic libertarianism".[136]
Murray
Rothbard
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
| Murray
Newton Rothbard |
Rothbard circa 1955 |
| Full name |
Murray Newton Rothbard |
| Born |
March 2, 1926(1926-03-02)
Bronx, New York,
United States |
| Died |
January 7, 1995 (aged 68)
New York City, New York, U.S.
|
| Era |
20th-century Economists
(Austrian Economics) |
| Region |
Western Economists |
| School |
Austrian School |
| Main interests |
Economics,
Political economy, Anarchism,
Natural law, Praxeology,
Numismatics, Philosophy of law, Ethics, Economic history |
| Notable ideas |
Founder of Anarcho-capitalism, Rothbard's law |
Aristotle,
Aquinas, Rand,
Mises, Menger,
Böhm-Bawerk, Molinari, Hayek, Say, Spooner, Tucker, Bastiat, Spencer, Nock, Oppenheimer, Locke,
Laozi,
Mencken, Burke,
Rose Wilder Lane, Frank Chodorov, Étienne de La Boétie
|
Hoppe, Friedman, Rockwell, Konkin, Narveson,
Heath, Callahan, Raico,
Salerno, Sobran,
McElroy, Tucker, Bylund, Long,
Caplan, Murphy, Lottieri, Woods,
Kinsella, Nozick,
Molyneux, Thornton, Scott Horton, Hülsmann, Raimondo, DiLorenzo, Block,
Linda &
Morris Tannehill, Paul, Robert
Higgs
|
Murray Newton Rothbard (March 2,
1926 – January 7, 1995) was an American intellectual,
individualist
anarchist,[1]
author,
and economist
of the Austrian School who helped define modern libertarianism and popularized a form of free-market anarchism he termed "anarcho-capitalism".[2][3]
Rothbard wrote over twenty books.
Building on the Austrian School's
concept of spontaneous order in markets, support
for a free market in money production and condemnation of central planning,[4]
Rothbard sought to minimize coercive
government control of the economy. He considered the monopoly
force of government the greatest danger to liberty and the long-term
wellbeing of the populace, labeling the State
as nothing but a "gang of thieves writ large" - the locus of the most
immoral, grasping and unscrupulous individuals in any society.[5][6][7][8]
Rothbard concluded that virtually all
services provided by monopoly governments
could be provided more efficiently by the private sector. He viewed
many regulations and laws ostensibly promulgated for the "public
interest" as self-interested power grabs by scheming government
bureaucrats engaging in dangerously unfettered self-aggrandizement, as
they were not subject to market disciplines which would quickly
eliminate such parasitic inefficiencies if they were to occur in the
competitive private sector.[9][10][11]
Rothbard was equally condemning of state
corporatism. He criticized
many instances where business elites co-opted government's monopoly
power so as to influence laws and regulatory policy in a manner
benefiting them at the expense of their competitive rivals.[12]
He argued that taxation represents coercive theft on a grand
scale, and "a compulsory monopoly
of force" prohibiting the more efficient voluntary procurement of
defense and judicial services from competing suppliers.[13][6]
He also considered central banking and fractional
reserve banking under a monopoly fiat money system a form of
state-sponsored, legalized financial fraud,
antithetical to libertarian principles and ethics.[14][15][16][17]
Rothbard opposed military, political, and economic interventionism in the
affairs of other nations.[18][19]
Life and work
Rothbard was born to David and Rae
Rothbard, who raised their Jewish family in the Bronx. "I grew up in a Communist culture," he
recalled.[20]
He attended Columbia University, where he was
awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics
and economics in 1945 and a Master of Arts degree in
1946. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in
economics in 1956 at Columbia under Joseph Dorfman.[21][22]
During the early 1950s, he studied under
the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises at his seminars at New York University and was greatly
influenced by Mises' book Human
Action. In the 1950s and 1960s he worked for the liberal William Volker Fund on a book project
that resulted in Man, Economy, and State,
published in 1962. From 1963 to 1985, he taught at Polytechnic
Institute of New York University in Brooklyn,
New
York. From 1986 until his death he was a distinguished professor at
the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Rothbard founded the Center for Libertarian Studies
in 1976 and the Journal of Libertarian Studies
in 1977. He was associated with the 1982 creation of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and
later was its academic vice president. In 1987 he started the scholarly
Review of Austrian Economics, now called the Quarterly Journal of
Austrian Economics.[21]
In 1953 in New
York City he married JoAnn Schumacher, whom he called the
"indispensable framework" for his life and work.[21]
He died in 1995 in Manhattan of a heart attack. The New York Times
obituary called Rothbard "an economist and social philosopher who
fiercely defended individual freedom against government intervention."[23]
Austrian School
writings
Cover of the 2004 edition of Man,
Economy, and State.
The Austrian School attempts to discover
axioms of human action (called "praxeology"
in the Austrian tradition). It supports free market economics
and criticizes command economies
because they destroy the delicate and complex dynamic information
function of fluctuating prices and inevitably lead to totalitarianism,
as government interventions cause inefficient distortions in markets,
requiring yet further intervention. Influential advocates were Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Friedrich Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises.
Rothbard argued that the entire Austrian economic theory is the working
out of the logical implications of the fact that humans engage in
purposeful action.[24]
In working out these axioms he came to the position that a monopoly
price could not exist on the free market. He also anticipated much of
the “rational expectations”
viewpoint in economics. His free market views convinced him that
individual protection and national defense also should be offered on
the market, rather than supplied by government’s coercive monopoly.[21]
Rothbard was an ardent critic of Keynesian economic thought[25]
as well as the utilitarian theory of philosopher Jeremy Bentham.[26]
In Man, Economy, and State
Rothbard divides the various kinds
of state intervention in three categories: "autistic intervention",
which is interference with private non-exchange activities; "binary
intervention", which is forced exchange between individuals and the
state; and "triangular intervention", which is state-mandated exchange
between individuals. According to Sanford Ikeda, Rothbard's typology
"eliminates the gaps and inconsistencies that appear in Mises's
original formulation."[27][28]
Rothbard also was knowledgeable in
history and political philosophy. Rothbard's books, such as Man,
Economy, and State, Power and Market, The Ethics of Liberty, and For a New Liberty, are considered by
some to be classics of natural
law and libertarian thought,
combining libertarian natural rights
philosophy, anti-government anarchism
and a free market
perspective in analyzing a range of contemporary social and economic
issues. He also possessed extensive knowledge of the history of
economic thought, studying the pre-Adam
Smith free market economic schools, such as the Scholastics and the Physiocrats and discussed them in his
unfinished, multi-volume work, An
Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought.
Murray Rothbard points out in Power and Market
that the role of the economist in a free market is limited, but the
role and power of the economist in a government which continually
intervenes in the market expands, as the interventions trigger problems
which require further diagnosis and the need for further policy
recommendations. Murray argues that this simple self-interest
prejudices the views of many economists in favor of increased
government intervention.[29][30]
Rothbard also created "Rothbard's law"
that "people tend to specialize in what they are worst at. Henry
George, for example, is great on everything but land, so therefore
he writes about land 90% of the time. Friedman is great except on money, so he
concentrates on money."[31]
Political views
Rothbard "combined the laissez-faire
economics of his teacher Ludwig von Mises
with the absolutist views of human rights and rejection of the state he
had absorbed from studying the individualist American anarchists of the
nineteenth century such as Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker."[32]
He connected these to more modern views, writing: "There is, in the
body of thought known as 'Austrian economics',
a
scientific explanation of the workings of the free market (and of the
consequences of government intervention in that market) which
individualist anarchists could easily incorporate into their political
and social Weltanschauung."[33]
Rothbard opposed what he considered the
overspecialization of the
academy and sought to fuse the disciplines of economics, history,
ethics, and political science to create a "science of liberty."
Rothbard described the moral basis for his anarcho-capitalist position
in two of his books: For a New Liberty, published in
1972, and The Ethics of Liberty, published
in 1982. In his Power and Market (1970), Rothbard
described how a stateless economy would function.[34]
Self-ownership
In The Ethics of Liberty,
Rothbard asserted the right of total self-ownership, as the only principle
compatible with a moral code that applies to every person—a "universal
ethic"—and that it is a natural
law by being what is naturally best for man.[35]
He believed that, as a result, individuals owned the fruits of their
labor. Accordingly, each person had the right to exchange his property
with others. He believed that if an individual mixes his labor with
unowned land then he is the proper owner, and from that point on it is
private property that may only exchange hands by trade or gift. He also
argued that such land would tend not to remain unused unless it makes
economic sense to not put it to use.[36]
Anarcho-capitalism
Rothbard began to consider himself a
private property anarchist in the 1950s and later began to use "anarcho-capitalist."[37][38]
He wrote: "Capitalism is the fullest expression of anarchism, and
anarchism is the fullest expression of capitalism."[39]
In his anarcho-capitalist model, a system of protection agencies
compete in a free market and are voluntarily supported by consumers who
choose to use their protective and judicial services.
Anarcho-capitalism would mean the end of the state monopoly on force.[37]
Rothbard was equally condemning of the
corrupt and parasitic nexus
between big business and big government. He cited many instances where
business elites co-opted government's monopoly power so as to influence
laws and regulatory policy in a manner benefiting them at the expense
of their competitive rivals. He wrote in criticism of Ayn Rand's "misty
devotion to the Big Businessman" that she: "is too committed
emotionally to worship of the Big Businessman-as-Hero to concede that
it is precisely Big Business that is largely responsible for the
twentieth-century march into aggressive statism..."[40]
According to Rothbard, one example of such cronyism included grants of
monopolistic privilege the railroads derived from sponsoring so-called
conservation laws.[41]
He was also particularly critical of the influence big private banking
institutions/cartels had on Federal Reserve formation and policy.
Free market money
- See also Free banking and Gold
standard
Rothbard believed the monopoly power of
government over the issuance and distribution of money was
inherently destructive and unethical. The belief derived from Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek's Austrian
theory of the business cycle, which holds that undue credit expansion
inevitably leads to a gross misallocation of capital resources,
triggering unsustainable credit bubbles and, eventually, economic depressions.
He therefore strongly opposed central banking and fractional
reserve banking under a fiat
money system, labeling it as "legalized counterfeiting"[42]
or a form of institutionalized embezzlement
and therefore inherently fraudulent.[43][44]
He strongly advocated full reserve banking
("100 percent banking")[45]
and a voluntary, nongovernmental gold
standard[21][46]
or, as a second best solution, free
banking (which he also called "free market money").[47]
In relation to the current central
bank-managed fractional
reserve fiat currency system, he
stated the following:[48]
| “ |
Given this dismal
monetary
and banking situation, given a 39:1 pyramiding of checkable deposits
and currency on top of gold, given a Fed unchecked and out of control,
given a world of fiat moneys, how can we possibly return to a sound
noninflationary market money? The objectives, after the discussion in
this work, should be clear: (a) to return to a gold standard, a
commodity standard unhampered by government intervention; (b) to
abolish the Federal Reserve System and return to a system of free and
competitive banking; (c) to separate the government from money; and (d)
either to enforce 100 percent reserve banking on the commercial banks,
or at least to arrive at a system where any bank, at the slightest hint
of nonpayment of its demand liabilities, is forced quickly into
bankruptcy and liquidation. While the outlawing of fractional reserve
as fraud would be preferable if it could be enforced, the problems of
enforcement, especially where banks can continually innovate in forms
of credit, make free banking an attractive alternative. |
” |
Noninterventionism
Believing like Randolph Bourne that "war is the health of
the state" Rothbard opposed aggressive foreign policy.[21]
He criticized imperialism and the rise of the American empire which
needed war to sustain itself and to expand its global control. His
dislike of U.S. imperialism even led him to eulogize and lament the CIA-assisted
execution of Marxist revolutionary Che
Guevara in 1967, proclaiming that "his enemy was our enemy".[49]
Rothbard believed that stopping new wars was necessary and knowledge of
how government had seduced citizens into earlier wars was important.
Two essays expanded on these views "War, Peace, and the State" and "The
Anatomy of the State". Rothbard used insights of the elitism
theorists Vilfredo Pareto, Gaetano
Mosca, and Robert Michels to build a model of state
personnel, goals, and ideology.[50][51]
In an obituary for historian Harry Elmer Barnes Rothbard explained
why historical knowledge is important:[52]
| “ |
Our entry into World
War II
was the crucial act in foisting a permanent militarization upon the
economy and society, in bringing to the country a permanent garrison
state, an overweening military-industrial complex, a permanent system
of conscription. It was the crucial act in creating a mixed economy run
by Big Government, a system of state-monopoly capitalism run by the
central government in collaboration with Big Business and Big Unionism. |
” |
Rothbard discussed his views on the
principles of a libertarian
foreign policy in a 1973 interview: "minimize State power as much as
possible, down to zero, and isolationism is the full expression in
foreign affairs of the domestic objective of whittling down State
power." He further called for "abstinence from any kind of American
military intervention and political and economic intervention."[18]
In For a New Liberty
he writes: "In a purely libertarian world, therefore, there would be no
'foreign policy' because there would be no States, no governments with
a monopoly of coercion over particular territorial areas."[53]
In "War Guilt in the Middle East"
Rothbard details Israel's
"aggression against Middle East Arabs," confiscatory policies and its
"refusal to let these refugees return and reclaim the property taken
from them."[54]
Rothbard also criticized the “organized Anti-Anti-Semitism” that
critics of the state of Israel have to suffer.[55]
Rothbard criticized as terrorism
the actions of the United States, Israel, and any nation that
"retaliates" against innocents because they cannot pinpoint actual
perpetrators. He held that no retaliation that injures or kills
innocent people is justified, writing "Anything else is an apologia for
unremitting and unending mass murder."[56]
Children and rights
In the Ethics of Liberty
Rothbard explores in terms of
self-ownership and contract several contentious issues regarding
children's rights. These include women's right to abortion,
proscriptions on parents aggressing against children once they are
born, and the issue of the state forcing parents to care for children,
including those with severe health problems. He also holds children
have the right to "run away" from parents and seek new guardians as
soon as they are able to choose to do so. He suggested parents have the
right to put a child out for adoption or even sell the rights to the
child in a voluntary contract, which he feels is more humane than
artificial governmental restriction of the number of children available
to willing and often superior parents. He also discusses how the
current juvenile justice system punishes children for making "adult"
choices, removes children unnecessarily and against their will from
parents, often putting them in uncaring and even brutal foster care or
juvenile facilities.[57][58]
Political activism
As a young man, Rothbard considered
himself part of the Old Right, an anti-statist and
anti-interventionist branch
of the U.S. Republican party.
When interventionist cold
warriors of the National Review, such as William F. Buckley, Jr., gained
influence in the Republican party in the 1950s, Rothbard quit the
party. After Rothbard passed away, William F. Buckley
wrote a bitter obituary in the National Review criticizing
Rothbard's "defective judgement" and views on the Cold War.[59]
During the late 1950s, Rothbard was an
associate of Ayn Rand and her Objectivist philosophy, but later
left her inner circle. He later lampooned the relationship in his play Mozart Was a Red. In the late 1960s,
Rothbard advocated an alliance with the New Left
anti-war movement, on the grounds that the conservative movement had
been completely subsumed by the statist establishment. However,
Rothbard later criticized the New Left for supporting a "People's
Republic" style draft. It was during this phase that he associated with
Karl
Hess and founded Left and
Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought with Leonard Liggio and George Resch, which
existed from 1965 to 1968. From 1969 to 1984 he edited The Libertarian Forum, also
initially with Hess (although Hess's involvement ended in 1971).
Rothbard criticized the "frenzied
nihilism" of left-wing
libertarians, but also criticized right-wing libertarians who were
content to rely only on education to bring down the state; he believed
that libertarians should adopt any non-immoral tactic available to them
in order to bring about liberty.[60]
During the 1970s and 1980s, Rothbard was
active in the Libertarian
Party.
He was frequently involved in the party's internal politics. From 1978
to 1983, he was associated with the Libertarian Party Radical Caucus,
allying himself with Justin Raimondo, Eric
Garris and Williamson Evers. He opposed the "low tax
liberalism" espoused by 1980 Libertarian Party presidential candidate Ed Clark
and Cato Institute president Edward H
Crane III.
Rothbard split with the Radical Caucus at the 1983 national convention
over cultural issues, and aligned himself with what he called the
"rightwing populist" wing of the party, notably Lew
Rockwell and Ron Paul, who ran for President on the
Libertarian Party ticket in 1988 and in the 2008
Republican Party Primaries.
In 1989, Rothbard left the Libertarian
Party and began building bridges to the post-Cold War
anti-interventionist right, calling himself a paleolibertarian.[61]
He was the founding president of the conservative-libertarian John Randolph Club and supported the
presidential campaign of Pat
Buchanan in 1992, saying "with Pat Buchanan as our leader, we shall
break the clock of social democracy."[62]
However, later he became disillusioned and said Buchanan developed too
much faith in economic planning and centralized state power.[63]
Books
Cover from the first volume of the 2006
Ludwig Von
Mises Institute edition of
An Austrian Perspective on the
History of Economic Thought
- Man, Economy, and State (Full Text; ISBN 0-945466-30-7) (1962)
- The Panic of 1819. 1962, 2006
edition: ISBN 1-933550-08-2.
- America's Great Depression.
(Full Text) ([ISBN 0-945466-05-6. (1963,
1972, 1975, 1983, 2000)
- What Has Government
Done to Our Money? (Full Text / Audio Book) ISBN 0-945466-44-7. (1963)
- Economic Depressions: Causes and Cures (1969)
- Power and Market. ISBN 1-933550-05-8. (1970)
(restored to Man, Economy, and State ISBN 0-945466-30-7, 2004)
- Education: Free and Compulsory. ISBN 0-945466-22-6. (1972)
- Left and Right, Selected Essays 1954-65 (1972)
- For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto
(Full text / Audio book) ISBN 0-945466-47-1. (1973, 1978)
- The Essential von Mises (1973)
- The Case for the 100 Percent Gold Dollar. ISBN 0-945466-34-X. (Full Text / Audio Book) (1974)
- Egalitarianism
as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays ISBN 0-945466-23-4. (1974)
- Conceived in Liberty (4 vol.) ISBN 0-945466-26-9. (1975-79)
- Individualism and the Philosophy of the Social Sciences. ISBN 0-932790-03-8. (1979)
- The Ethics of Liberty (Full Text / Audio Book) ISBN 0-8147-7559-4. (1982)
- The Mystery of Banking ISBN 0-943940-04-4. (1983)
- Ludwig von Mises: Scholar, Creator, Hero. OCLC 20856420. (1988)
- Freedom, Inequality, Primitivism, and the Division of Labor.
Full text (included as Chapter 16 in Egalitarianism
above) (1991)
- The Case Against the Fed ISBN 0-945466-17-X. (1994)
- An
Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (2
vol.) ISBN 0-945466-48-X. (1995)
- Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy. (Full Text) with an introduction by Justin Raimondo. (1995)
- Making Economic Sense. ISBN 0-945466-18-8. (1995, 2006)
- Logic of Action (2 vol.) ISBN 1-85898-015-1 and ISBN 1-85898-570-6. (1997, to
be reprinted as Economic Controversies in 2009)
- The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle and Other Essays. ISBN 0-945466-21-8. (also by
Mises, Hayek, & Haberler)
- Irrepressible Rothbard: The Rothbard-Rockwell Report Essays of
Murray N. Rothbard. (Full Text.) (Preface by JoAnn Rothbard) (Introduction by Lew
Rockwell.) ISBN 1-883959-02-0. (2000)
- A History of Money and Banking in the United States.
ISBN 0-945466-33-1. (2005)
- The Complete Libertarian Forum
(2 vol.) (Full Text) ISBN 1-933550-02-3. (1969-84;
2006)
- The Betrayal of the
American Right ISBN 978-1-933550-13-8 (2007)
See also
American
philosophy
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
American philosophy is the philosophical activity or output of Americans,
both within the United States and abroad. The Internet Encyclopedia of
Philosophy
notes that while American philosophy lacks a "core of defining
features, American Philosophy can nevertheless be seen as both
reflecting and shaping collective American identity over the history of
the nation."[1]
17th century
The American philosophical tradition
began at the time of the European colonization
of the New World.[1]
The Puritan
arrival in New York
set the earliest American philosophy into the religious tradition, and
there was also an emphasis on the relationship between the individual
and the community. This is evident by the early colonial documents such
as the Fundamental Orders of
Connecticut (1639) and the Massachusetts Body of Liberties
(1641).[1]
Thinkers such as John Winthrop
emphasized the public life over the private, holding that the former
takes precedence over the latter, while other writers, such as Roger Williams (co-founder of Rhode
Island) held that religious tolerance
was more integral than trying to achieve religious homogeneity in a
community.[2]
18th century
18th century American philosophy is
often broken into two halves, the earlier half being marked by Puritan Calvinism,
and the latter characterized by the American incarnation of the European
Enlightenment that is associated with the political thought of
the Founding Fathers.[1]
Calvinism
Jonathan Edwards is
considered to be "America's most important and original philosophical
theologian."[3]
Noted for his energetic sermons, such as "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God" (which is said to have begun the First Great Awakening), Edwards
emphasized "the absolute sovereignty of God and the beauty of God's
holiness."[3]
Working to unite Christian Platonism
with an empiricist epistemology,
with the aid of Newtonian physics,
Edwards was deeply influenced by George Berkeley,
himself an empiricist, and Edwards derived his importance of the
immaterial for the creation human experience from Bishop Berkeley. The
non-material mind consists of understanding and will, and it is
understanding, interpreted in a Newtonian framework, that leads to
Edwards' fundamental metaphysical category of Resistance. Whatever
features an object may have, it has these properties because the object
resists. Resistance itself is the exertion of God's power, and it can
be seen in Newton's laws of motion,
where an object is "unwilling" to change its current state of motion;
an object at rest will remain at rest and an object in motion will
remain in motion.
As a Calvinist and hard determinist,
Jonathan Edwards also rejected the freedom
of the will,
saying that "we can do as we please, but we cannot please as we
please." According to Edwards, neither good works nor self-originating
faith lead to salvation, but rather it is the unconditional grace of
God which stands as the sole arbiter of human fortune.
The Age of
Enlightenment
While the early 18th century American
philosophical tradition was
decidedly marked by religious themes, the latter half saw a reliance on
reason
and science,
and, in step with the thought of the Age of Enlightenment, a belief in the
perfectibility of human beings, laissez-faire
economics,
and a general focus on political matters.[1]
The Founding Fathers,
namely Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and James
Madison,
wrote extensively on political issues. In continuing with the chief
concerns of the Puritans in the 17th century, the Founding Fathers
debated the relationship between the individual and the state, as well
as the nature of the state, importantly concerning the state's
relationship to God and religion. It was at this time that the United States
Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution were
written, and they are the result of debate and compromise. The
Constitution sets forth a federated republican
form of government that is marked by a balance of powers
accompanied by a checks and balances
system between the three branches of government: a judicial branch, an executive branch led
by the President, and a legislative branch
composed of a bicameral legislature
where the House of Representatives
is the lower house and the Senate is the upper
house.[4]
While the Declaration of Independence does contain within it references
to the Creator, the Founding Fathers were decidedly not religious, and
instead mostly professed varying forms of deism, as
was characteristic of other European Enlightenment thinkers, such as Maximilien Robespierre, François-Marie
Arouet (better known by his pen name,
Voltaire),
and Rousseau.[5]
Thomas
Paine, the intellectual, pamphleteer,
and revolutionary who wrote Common Sense and Rights
of Man was an influential Enlightenment thinker and American
Founding Father. Common Sense, which has been described as “the
most incendiary and popular pamphlet of the entire revolutionary era"[6]
provides justification for the American revolution and independence
from the British Crown.
19th century
The 19th century saw the rise of Romanticism
in America. The American incarnation of Romanticism was transcendentalism
and it stands as a major American innovation. The 19th century also saw
the rise of the school of pragmatism, along with a smaller, Hegelian philosophical movement led by George Holmes Howison that was
focused in St. Louis, though the
influence of American pragmatism far outstripped that of the small
Hegelian movement.[1]
Transcendentalism
Ralph Waldo Emerson, ca. 1857
|
Henry David Thoreau, 1856
|
|
Transcendentalism in the United States
was marked by an emphasis on subjective human experience, and can be
viewed as a reaction against intellectualism in general and the
mechanistic, reductionistic worldview in particular. Transcendentalism
is marked by the holistic
belief in an ideal spiritual state that 'transcends' the physical and
empirical, and this perfect state can only be attained by one's own
intuition and personal reflection, as opposed to the prescriptions and
doctrines of organized religion. Famous transcendentalist writers
include Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt
Whitman.[7]
The transcendentalist writers all
desired a deep return to nature,
and believed that real, true knowledge is intuitive and personal and
arises out of personal immersion and reflection in nature, as opposed
to scientific knowledge that is the result of empirical sense
experience.[8]
Things such as scientific tools, political institutions, and the
conventional rules of morality as dictated by traditional religion need
to be transcended. This is found in Henry David Thoreau's Walden; or,
Life in the Woods where transcendence is achieved through
immersion in nature and the distancing of oneself from society.
Darwinism in America
The release of Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory
in his 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species had
a strong impact on American philosophy. John
Fiske and Chauncey Wright both wrote about and
argued for the re-conceiving of philosophy through an evolutionary
lense. They both wanted to understand morality
and the mind
in Darwinian terms, setting a precedent for evolutionary psychology and evolutionary ethics.
Darwin's biological theory was also
integrated into the social and political philosophies of English thinker Herbert Spencer and American philosopher William Graham Sumner. Herbert
Spencer, who coined the oft-misattributed term "survival of the fittest,"
believed that societies were in a struggle for survival, and that
groups within society are where they are because of some level of
fitness. This struggle is beneficial to human kind, as in the long run
the weak will be weeded out and only the strong will survive. This
position is often referred to as Social Darwinism. Sumner, much influenced
by Spencer, believed along with the industrialist Andrew Carnegie
that the social implication of the fact of the struggle for survival is
that laissez-faire capitalism is the natural political-economic system
and is the one that will lead to the greatest amount of well-being.
William Sumner, in addition to his advocacy of free markets, also
espoused anti-imperialism (having been credited
with coining the term "ethnocentrism"),
and advocated for the gold
standard.[9]
Pragmatism
Perhaps the most influential school of
thought that is uniquely American is pragmatism.
It began in the late nineteenth century in the United States with Charles Sanders Peirce, William
James, and John Dewey. Pragmatism holds that a
proposition's meaning is in the conceivable practical consequences of
its truth or acceptance.[10]
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce, an American pragmatist, logician,
mathematician, philosopher, and scientist.
Polymath,
logician, mathematician,
philosopher, and scientist Charles Sanders Peirce (pronounced /ˈpɜrs/ like "purse")
(1839–1914) coined the term "pragmatism" in the 1870s.[11]
He was a member of The Metaphysical Club, which was a
conversational club of intellectuals that also included Chauncey Wright, Supreme Court Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes,
and another early figure of pragmatism, William
James.[10]
In addition to making profound contributions to semiotics,
logic, and mathematics, Peirce wrote what are considered to be the
founding documents of pragmatism, "The Fixation of Belief"
(1877) and "How to Make Our
Ideas Clear"(1878).
In "The Fixation of Belief" Peirce
argues for the superiority of the scientific method
in overcoming doubt, in fixing one's belief. In "How to Make Our Ideas
Clear" Peirce argued for pragmatism as summed up in that which he later
called the pragmatic maxim:
"Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings,
we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception
of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object". Note
here that a conception's meaning involves conceiving of effects and is
not a definite set of actual practical effects themselves. The maxim is
intended to help clarify confusions caused, for example, by
distinctions that make formal but not practical differences.
Traditionally one analyzes an idea into parts (for example, a
definition of truth as a sign's correspondence to its object). To that
needful but confined step, the maxim adds a further, and
practice-oriented, step (for example, a definition of truth as
inquiry's ideal end). It is the heart of his pragmatism as a method of
experimentational mental reflection[12]
arriving at conceptions in terms of conceivable confirmatory and
disconfirmatory circumstances—a method hospitable to the generation of
explanatory hypotheses, and conducive to the employment and improvement
of verification[13].
Typical
of Peirce is his concern with inference to explanatory
hypotheses as outside the usual foundational alternative between
deductivist rationalism and inductivist empiricism, though he himself
was a mathematician of logic and a founder of statistics.
Peirce's philosophy also includes a
pervasive three-category system, fallibilism,
critical common-sensism
(fallibilistic but not radically skeptical), logic as formal semiotic (including
semiotic
elements and classes of signs, modes of inference, and methods of inquiry), Scholastic realism, theism, objective idealism, and belief in the
reality of continuity and of chance,
mechanical necessity, and creative
love as principles operative in the cosmos and as modes of its
evolution.
William James
William James, an American pragmatist and psychologist.
William
James (1842–1910) was "an original thinker in and between the
disciplines of physiology, psychology and philosophy."[14]
He is famous as the author of The Varieties of
Religious Experience, his monumental tome Principles of Psychology, and
his lecture "The Will to Believe."
James, along with Peirce,[15]
saw pragmatism as embodying familiar attitudes elaborated into a
radical new philosophical method of thinking and resolving dilemmas. In
his 1910 Pragmatism:
A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking he wrote:
| “ |
[T]he tangible fact
at the
root of all our thought-distinctions, however subtle, is that there is
no one of them so fine as to consist in anything but a possible
difference of practice. To attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of
an object, then, we need only consider what conceivable effects of a
practical kind the object may involve—what sensations we are to expect
from it, and what reactions we must prepare. |
” |
James is also known for his radical empiricism
which holds that relations between objects are as real as the objects
themselves. James was also a pluralist in that he believed that there
may actually be multiple correct accounts of truth. He rejected the correspondence theory of truth
and instead held that truth involves a belief, facts about the world,
other background beliefs, and future consequences of those beliefs.
Later in his life James would also come to adopt neutral monism, the view that the ultimate reality
is of one kind, and is neither mental nor physical.[16]
John Dewey
John Dewey, an American pragmatist, psychologist, and educational
reformer.
John
Dewey
(1859–1952), while still engaging in the lofty academic philosophical
work of James and Peirce before him, also wrote extensively on
political and social matters, and his presence in the public sphere was
much greater than his pragmatist predecessors. In addition to being one
of the founding members of pragmatism, John Dewey was one of the
founders of functional psychology and was a
leading figure of the progressive movement in U.S.
schooling during the first half of the 20th century.[17]
Dewey argued against the individualism of classical liberalism,
asserting that social institutions are not "means for obtaining
something for individuals. They are means for creating individuals."[18]
He held that individuals are not things that should be accommodated by
social institutions, instead, social institutions are prior to and
shape the individuals. These social arrangements are a means of
creating individuals and promoting individual freedom.
Dewey is well-known for his work in the applied philosophy
of the philosophy of education.
Dewey's philosophy of education is one where children learn by doing.
Dewey believed that schooling was unnecessarily long and formal, and
that children would be better suited to learn by engaging in real-life
activities. For example, in math, students could learn by figuring out
proportions in cooking or seeing how long it would take to travel
distances with certain modes of transportation.[19]
20th century
George Santayana, the most famous Hispanic-American philosopher.
Pragmatism, which began in the 19th
century in America, by the
beginning of the 20th century began to be accompanied by other
philosophical schools of thought, and was eventually eclipsed by them,
though only temporarily. The 20th century saw the emergence of process
philosophy, itself influenced by the scientific world-view and Einstein's theory of relativity. The middle of
the 20th century was witness to the increase in popularity of the philosophy of language and analytic
philosophy in America. Existentialism and phenomenology,
while
very popular in Europe in the 20th century, never achieved the
level of popularity in America as they did in continental Europe.[1]
Rejection of idealism
Pragmatism continued its influence into
the 20th century, and Spanish-American
philosopher George Santayana was one of the leading
proponents of pragmatism in this period. He held that idealism
was an outright contradiction and rejection of common
sense.
He held that, if something must be certain in order to be knowledge,
then it seems no knowledge may be possible, and the result will be skepticism.
According to Santayana, knowledge involved a sort of faith, which he
termed "animal faith." In his book Scepticism and Animal Faith
he asserts that knowledge is not the result of reasoning. Instead,
knowledge is what is required to order to act and successfully engage
with the world.[20]
As a naturalist, Santayana was a harsh critic of epistemological foundationalism.
The explanation of events in the natural world is within the realm of
science, while the meaning and value of this action should be studied
by philosophers. Santayana was accompanied in the intellectual climate
of 'common sense' philosophy by the thinkers of the New Realism movement, such as Ralph Barton Perry.
Process philosophy
Process philosophy embraces the
Einsteinian world-view, and its main proponents include Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. The core belief of
process philosophy is the claim that events and processes are principle
ontological categories.[21]
Whitehead asserted in his book The Concept of Nature
that the things in nature, what he referred to as "concresences" are a
conjunction of events that maintain a permanence of character. Process
philosophy is Heraclitan in the sense
that a fundamental ontological category is change.[22]
Charles Hartshorne was also responsible for developing the process
philosophy of Whitehead into process theology.
Analytic philosophy
An image of Quine as seen on his
passport.
The middle of the 20th century was the
beginning of the dominance of analytic philosophy in America.
Analytic philosophy, prior to its arrival in America, had began in
Europe with the work of Gottlob
Frege, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and the logical positivists.
According to logical positivism, the truths of logic and mathematics
are tautologies,
and those of science are empirically verifiable. Any other claim,
including the claims of ethics, aesthetics, theology, metaphysics, and
ontology, are meaningless (this theory is called verificationism). With the rise of Adolf
Hitler and the Nazi Party, many positivists fled Germany
to Britain and America, and this helped
reinforce the dominance of analytic philosophy in the United States in
subsequent years.[1]
W.V.O. Quine,
while not a logical positivist, shared their view that philosophy
should stand shoulder to shoulder with science in its pursuit of
intellectual clarity and understanding of the world. He criticized the
logical positivists and the analytic/synthetic distinction
of knowledge in his essay "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" and
advocated for his "web of belief," which is a coherentist
theory of justificiation. In Quine's epistemology, since no experiences
occur in isolation, there is actually a holistic approach to knowledge
where every belief or experience is intertwined with the whole. Quine
is also famous for inventing the term "gavagai" as part of his theory
of the indeterminacy of translation.[23]
David Kellogg Lewis, one of Quine's
students at Harvard, came to be known as
one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century.[24]
He is well-known for his controversial advocacy of modal
realism, the position which holds that there is an infinite number
of concrete and causally isolated possible worlds, of
which ours is one.[25]
These possible words arise in the field of modal
logic.
Thomas Kuhn was an important philosopher and
writer who worked extensively in the fields of the history of science and the philosophy of science. He is famous
for writing The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions, one of the most cited academic works of
all time, which argues that science proceeds through different paradigms
as scientists find new puzzles to solve, once one there is widespread
struggle to find ansers to question, a shift in world views occurs,
which is refereed to by Kuhn as a paradigm shift.[26]
The work is considered a milestone in the sociology of knowledge.
Return to
political philosophy
The analytic philosophers troubled
themselves with the abstract and
the conceptual, and American philosophy did not fully return to social
and political concerns (that dominated American philosophy at the time
of the founding of the United States) until the 1970s. The return to
political and social concerns began with Ayn Rand,
the developer of Objectivism. Rand, a Russian-born
philosopher and writer, wrote The Fountainhead in 1943 and Atlas Shrugged in 1957. These two
novels gave birth to the Objectivist movement, one which
started as a small group of students called The Collective, one of whom
was a young Alan Greenspan, the well-known libertarian Chairman
of the Federal Reserve. Objectivism holds that there is an
objective external reality that can be known with reason, that human
beings should act in accordance with their own rational
self-interest, and that the proper form of economic organization is
laissez-faire capitalism.[27]
In 1971 John
Rawls published his book A Theory of Justice. The book puts
forth Rawls' view of justice as fairness,
once which is based on a form of social contract theory. Rawls employs the
use of a conceptual mechanism called the veil of ignorance to outline his idea of
the original position.[28]
In Rawls' philosophy, the original position is the correlate to the Hobbesian
state of nature.
While in the original position, persons are said to be behind the veil
of ignorance, which makes these persons unaware of their individual
characteristics and their place in society, such as their race,
religion, wealth, etc. The principles of justice are chosen by rational
persons while in this original position. The two principles of justice
are the equal liberty principle and the principle which governs the
distribution of social and economic inequalities. From this, Rawls
argues for a system of distributive justice
in accordance with the Difference Principle, which says that all social
and economic inequalities must be to the greatest benefit of the least
advantaged.[29]
Viewing Rawls as promoting excessive
government control and rights violations, libertarian Robert
Nozick published Anarchy, State, and Utopia
in 1974. The book advocates for a minimal state and defends the liberty
of the individual. He argues that the role of government should be
limited to "police protection, national defense, and the administration
of courts of law, with all other tasks commonly performed by modern
governments – education, social insurance, welfare, and so forth –
taken over by religious bodies, charities, and other private
institutions operating in a free market."[30]
Nozick asserts his view of the entitlement theory
of justice, which says that if everyone in society has acquired their
holdings in accordance with the principles of acquisition, transfer,
and rectification, then any pattern of allocation, no matter how
unequal the distribution may be, is just. The entitlement theory of
justice holds that the "justice of a distribution is indeed determined
by certain historical circumstances (contrary to end-state theories),
but it has nothing to do with fitting any pattern guaranteeing that
those who worked the hardest or are most deserving have the most
shares."[31]
Alasdair MacIntyre, while he was born
and educated in the United Kingdom, has spent around forty
years living and working in the United States. He is responsible for
the resurgence of interest in virtue
ethics, a moral theory first propounded by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle.[32][33]
He is considered to be the preeminent Thomist
political philosopher. He holds that "modern philosophy and modern life
are characterized by the absence of any coherent moral code, and that
the vast majority of individuals living in this world lack a meaningful
sense of purpose in their lives and also lack any genuine community".[34]
He believes that the proper way to correct this state of affairs is to
return to genuine political communities where individuals can properly
acquire their virtues.
Outside academic philosophy, political and social
concerns took center stage with the Civil Rights Movement
and the writings of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Feminism
While there were earlier writers who
would be considered feminist, such as Sarah Grimké, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Anne Hutchinson, the feminist movement of
the 1960s and 1970s, also known as second-wave feminism, is notable for
its impact in philosophy.[35]
The popular mind was taken with Betty
Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. This was
accompanied by other feminist philosophers, such as Adrienne
Rich.
These philosophers critiqued basic assumptions and values of
philosophy, such as objectivity and what they believe to be masculine
approaches to ethics, for example, rights-based political theories.
They wrote that there is no such thing as a value-neutral inquiry and
they sought to analyze the social dimensions of philosophical issues.
Modern times
Towards the end of the 20th century
there was a resurgence of interest in pragmatism. Largely responsible
for this are Hilary Putnam and Richard
Rorty. Rorty is famous as the author of Philosophy and the Mirror
of Nature and Philosophy and Social Hope.
Hilary Putnam is well known for his quasi-empiricism in mathematics[36],
his challenge of the brain in a vat thought experiment[37],
and his other work in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science.
The debates that occur within the philosophy of mind have taken center
stage. American philosophers such as Hilary Putnam, Donald Davidson[38],
Daniel Dennett[39],
Douglas Hofstadter[40],
John
Searle[41],
as well as Patricia and Paul Churchland[42]
continue the discussion of such issues as the nature of mind and the
hard problem of consciousness,
a philosophical problem indicated by the Australian philosopher David Chalmers.[43]
Noted American legal philosophers Ronald Dworkin and Richard Posner work in the fields of
political philosophy and jurisprudence.
Posner is famous for his economic analysis
of law, a theory which uses microeconomics to understand legal
rules and institutions.[44]
Dworkin is famous for his theory of law as integrity and legal interpretivism.[45][46]
African-American
philosopher Cornel West is known for his analysis of
American cultural life with regards to race, gender,
and class
issues, as well as his associations with pragmatism
and transcendentalism.
Alvin Plantinga is a Christian
thinker known for his evolutionary argument
against naturalism, his assertion that one can know God as a
properly basic belief, and his modal
version of the ontological argument for the
existence of God.
See also
Agorism
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
Agorism is a political philosophy founded by Samuel Edward Konkin III and
developed with contributions by J. Neil Schulman that holds as its
ultimate goal bringing about a society in which all "relations between
people are voluntary exchanges – a free
market."[1]
The term comes from the Greek word "agora,"
referring to an open place for assembly and market in ancient Greek
city-states. Ideologically, it is a term representing a revolutionary
type of anarcho-capitalism or free-market anarchism.[2]
Schulman integrated the idea of counter-economics into Konkin's
libertarian philosophy[3],
which is the advocacy of untaxed black market activity, which agorists say will
lead to development of private defense force
sufficient to protect private property and liberty from the state to
the point where such protection is strong enough to overthrow the state.
Origins
Konkin's treatise, New Libertarian Manifesto,[1]
was published in 1980. Previously, the philosophy was presented
fictionally in J. Neil Schulman's novel Alongside Night in 1979. He was
inspired to portray Konkin's ideas in fictional form by the example of Ayn Rand's
novel Atlas Shrugged. Konkin wrote an
afterword 'How Far Alongside Night?' for Alongside Night
crediting Schulman with integrating the "science of counter-economics"
with Konkin's basic economic philosophy.[4]
Agorists are propertarian market anarchists who
consider property rights to be natural rights deriving from the primary right
of self-ownership.
Thus, together with agorism's advocacy of using counter-economics and
private defense to defeat the state, agorism can be considered a type
of anarcho-capitalism that has a
revolutionary streak.[5]
Agorists consider their ideas to be an evolution and superlation of
those of Murray Rothbard. Konkin describes agorists
as "strict Rothbardians... and even more Rothbardian than Rothbard
[himself]."[6]
Strategically, agorists are advocates or
conscious practitioners of counter-economics (peaceful black and grey
markets).[7]
Agorism advocates achieving a market anarchist
society through growth of the underground economy
- the "counter economy." As the counter economy expands, it challenges
the authority of the State, crippling its ability to operate. With the
State's coercive monopoly undermined, the market is then able to
generate the security services necessary to openly defend their
clientele against coercive government as a criminal activity (with
taxation being treated as theft, war being treated as mass murder, et
cetera).
The organisational nature of these services will ultimately be
determined by the market based on effectiveness, efficiency, and
expense. Agorists spurn political participation in favour of
counter-economics, as political participation is seen to be costly,
time consuming, and ineffective. Involvement in advocacy
and outreach
activities are motivated by the goal of making more people aware of
Agorism and counter-economics, indirectly increasing the conscious
practice of counter-economic activity.
Agorism's proponents characterize it as left-libertarian. According to Konkin,[6]
it was Murray Rothbard's
idea to call his and Konkin's radical free-market libertarianism
"Left," the reasons being that they wanted to use a label that was
appealing to the New Left in order to solidify an alliance with
them and in order to distinguish Agorists as those interested in
building counter-economic
enterprises. As well, the tendency of Agorists to label themselves
"leftist" is partially a nod to the old French Assembly, where many of the classical liberals
and free-marketeers sat on the left side of the assembly hall. In this
view that considers radical libertarians "Left", libertarians based in minarchism,
gradualism,
conservatism,
and reformism
are considered to be on the "Right."[6]
The labeling of market anarchism as left-wing libertarianism is not
accepted by some scholars, such as David DeLeon, who regard
"anarchists" that stress "the individualism of the unregulated
marketplace" to be right-wing libertarians, with left-wing libertarians
being communitarians such as anarcho-communists.[8]
Likewise, Barbara Goodwin regards anarcho-communists such as Kropotkin and anarcho-Collectivists
such as Bakunin to be left libertarians.[9]
Counter-economics
as revolutionary theory
According to a short summary of the
Agorist conception of market anarchist revolution, Agorist
Revolution in a Nutshell:
Agorism is revolutionary market anarchism. In a market
anarchist society, law and security will be provided by market
institutions, not political institutions. Agorists recognize,
therefore, that those institutions can not develop through political
reform. Instead, they will come about as a result of market processes.
As government is banditry, revolution culminates in the suppression of
government by market providers of security and law. Market demand for
such service providers is what will lead to their emergence.
Development of that demand will come from economic growth in the sector
of the economy that explicitly shuns state involvement (and therefore
can not turn to the state in its role as monopoly provider of security
and law). That sector of the economy is the counter-economy –
black and
grey markets.
– Brad Spangler, Agorist Revolution in a
Nutshell
Views on capitalism
Agorists hold that the evils attributed
to capitalism are not caused by laissez-faire
but by government working together with private industry.[10]
By preferring the term "free
market," Agorists feel they are not bound by the implications of
the term "capitalism".
Konkin does not oppose the existence of joint stock companies,
but opposes government-granted limited liability
privileges on them (He reserves the term "corporation" to refer only to
joint stock companies for which government grants limited liability.).[11]
Agorists believe this corrupts those businesses such that the upper
management acts irresponsibly with corporate assets. For example, if
such businesses excessively pay executives and are then unable to meet
contractual debts, many state laws protect the wages of those
responsible for the bankruptcy. Agorists argue that liability cannot
simply disappear by act of government and so legitimate business will
always have managers or owners who will be held responsible for any
actions taken.
Corporations are creatures of the State, created by it and having
two privileges that protect them from market pressures. First,
corporate liability for damages to others is automatically limited by
fiat; and second, responsibility is shifted away from individuals to a
fictional entity. Each of the Cadre assumes full responsibility for his
or her actions, though liabilities may be insured.
– Merce Rampart, "Chairman of
the Revolutionary Agorist Cadre" in Schulman's Alongside Night
Entrepreneurship
Konkin says[12]
he has no "moral" opposition to "hierarchy" in the workplace and says
such hierarchy is "not necessarily 'unlibertarian' nor non-agorist",
but that his "New Libertarianism" prefers to promote a society of all
entrepreneurs and independent contractors because he believes it
optimal for furthering the elimination of the state. He does not deny
"wage-labor's historical benefit," but believes that the society of
entrepreneurs that he proposes is a significant advance in economic
organization.
Intellectual property
Konkin was opposed to the concept of intellectual property rights and
wrote the article "Copywrongs" to explain and
support this position. Schulman later took position against Konkin's
arguments in "Informational Property: Logorights."
While
Konkin opposed state copyright and patent laws as constructs of
the state, and creators of illegitimate monopoly, as did Benjamin Tucker before him, Schulman
argued, like Lysander Spooner, that the material
identity displayed by an original creation could be owned as an
exclusive natural property right.
Agorist class theory
The use of the word "capitalism" in
reference to the free market
varies from each Agorist. Some Agorists, like Anarcho-Capitalists will
use the term synonymously with "free market", while many don't and shun
the term for its connotations with the state regulated economy.
Regardless, Agorists maintain a class theory that separates each class
based on who benefits from the state's existence under Capitalism.
Agorists make a three-part distinction, victims of the state, neutral
or statist.
| entrepreneur[13]
or venture capitalist |
non-statist capitalist |
pro-statist capitalist |
| (good) |
(neutral) |
(bad) |
innovator, risk-taker, producer
the strength of a free market |
holders of capital
not necessarily ideologically aware
"relatively drone-like non-innovators" |
"the main Evil in the political realm" |
Konkin claimed that while agorists see
these three classes differently, anarcho-capitalists
tend to conflate the first and second types and implied that "Marxoids
and cruder collectivists" conflate all three.[6]
Political action
Generally, self-identified "agorists"
oppose voting for political
candidates and oppose political reform. Instead, agorists stress the
importance of alternative strategies rather than politics to achieve a
free society. Agorists claim that we can achieve a free society more
easily and sooner by employing such alternative methods.
Such alternative strategies consist of a
mixture of education, direct
action — and especially entrepreneurship and counter-economics. Agorists use
"education" to mean getting others educated about Austrian economics,
libertarian political theory, and
libertarian ethics
to bring about a free society. Furthermore, they use the term "direct
action" to emphasize the importance of more direct practices such as
straightforward marketplace participation rather than indirectly voting
for political representatives. (For clarity, we should note that "direct
action" in this context does not mean inducing riots, drawing graffiti,
inciting sabotage, and vandalism
that some insurrectionary
anarchists and social anarchists
advocate.) Agorists especially focus on counter-economics, in which they mean to
build and establish business structures without complying with immoral regulations,
getting government licenses, and paying taxes.
Other entrepreneural methods include establishing micronations
and seasteads, using crypto-anarchism
to circumvent government intrusion, and developing technologies that
can diminish government power. Agorists, who practice alternative
strategies rather than electoral politics, label their strategy as revolutionary.
This strongly contrasts with electoral politics, which agorists label
as reformist or gradualist.
Agorists' opposition to voting differs
from some other individualist anarchists, such as Murray Rothbard who defended the act of
voting.[14]
See also
Notes
- ^ a
b
Konkin, Samuel Edward. New Libertarian Manifesto
- ^
"Agorism is revolutionary market anarchism." Agorism.info
- ^
Afterword by Samuel Edward Konkin in Alongside Night. Pulpless.Com,
1999. p. 274. ISBN 1-58445-120-3,
9781584451204
- ^
Afterword by Samuel Edward Konkin in Alongside Night. Pulpless.Com,
1999. p. 271 - 290. ISBN 1-58445-120-3,
9781584451204
- ^
Agorism satisfies standard definitions of anarcho-capitalism, including
the one in the anarcho-capitalism Wikipedia article.
For a discussion, see Discussion on Agorism vs.
Anarcho-Capitalism.
- ^ a
b
c
d
Smashing the State for Fun and
Profit Since 1969: An Interview With the Libertarian Icon Samuel Edward
Konkin III (a.k.a. SEK3)
- ^ For
Konkin's definition and exposition of counter-economics, see "Counter Economics" in The
New Libertarian Manifesto
- ^
DeLeon, David. The American as Anarchist: Reflections on Indigenous
Radicalism. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978, p. 123
- ^
Goodwin, Barbara. 1987. Using Political Ideas, 4th edition. John Wiley
& Sons. p. 137-138
- ^
Schulman, Neil F. Alongside Night. Pulpless.Com, 1999. p. 249 - 250. ISBN 1-58445-120-3,
9781584451204
- ^
Konkin. New Libertarian Manifesto
- ^ In
"Reply to Rothbard" by Samuel Konkin
- ^ Note
that an entrepreneur in this instance is not
necessarily a capitalist.
- ^
Rothbard, Murray N. The State versus Liberty.
External links
Mikhail
Bakunin
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
This article is about
the Russian anarchist. For the television character, see
Characters of Lost.
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (30
May [O.S. 18 May] 1814 -
1 July 1876) (Russian: Михаи́л
Алекса́ндрович Баку́нин) was a well-known Russian revolutionary
and theorist of collectivist anarchism.[1]
Born in the Russian Empire to a family of Russian nobles,
Bakunin spent his youth as a junior officer in the Russian army but
resigned his commission in 1835. He went to school in Moscow
to study philosophy and began to frequent radical
circles where he was greatly influenced by Alexander Herzen. Bakunin left Russia in
1842 for Dresden,
and eventually arrived in Paris, where he met George
Sand, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Karl
Marx.
He was eventually deported from France
for speaking against Russia's oppression of Poland.
In 1849 he was apprehended in Dresden for his participation in the Czech rebellion of 1848. He was turned
over to Russia where he was imprisoned in Peter-Paul Fortress in Saint Petersburg. He remained there until
1857, when he was exiled to a work camp in Siberia.
He was able to escape via Japan and
the USA, and ended up in London
for a short time, where he worked with Herzen on the radical journal Kolokol
("The Bell"). In 1863, he left to join the insurrection in
Poland, but he failed to reach his destination and spent some time in Switzerland
and Italy.
Despite
his criminal status, Bakunin gained great influence with
radical youth in Russia, and all of Europe. In 1870, he was involved in
the insurrection in Lyon, which foreshadowed the Paris
Commune.
In 1868, Bakunin joined the International
Working Men's Association, a federation of radical and trade
union
organizations with sections in most European countries. The 1872
Congress was dominated by a fight between a faction around Marx who
argued for participation in parliamentary elections and a faction
around Bakunin who opposed it. Bakunin's faction lost the vote on this
issue, and at the end of the congress, Bakunin and several of his
faction were expelled for supposedly maintaining a secret organisation
within the international. The anarchists insisted the congress was
rigged, and so held their own conference of the International at
Saint-Imier in Switzerland in 1872. Bakunin remained very active in
this and the European socialist movement. From 1870 to 1876, he wrote
much of his seminal work such as Statism and Anarchy and God and the State. Despite his
declining health, he tried to take part in an insurrection in Bologna,
but was forced to return to Switzerland in disguise, and settled in Lugano.
He remained active in the radical movement of Europe until further
health problems caused him to be moved to a hospital in Berne, where he died in 1876.
Bakunin is remembered as a major figure
in the history of anarchism and an opponent of Marxism, especially of
Marx's idea of dictatorship of the proletariat.
He continues to be an influence on modern-day anarchists, such as Noam
Chomsky.[2]
Biography
Early years
In the spring of 1814, Mikhail
Alexandrovich Bakunin was born to an aristocratic
family in the village of Pryamukhino
(Прямухино) between Torzhok (Торжок) and Kuvshinovo
(Кувшиново), in Tver guberniya, northwest of Moscow.
At the age of 14 he left for Saint Petersburg,
receiving military training at the Artillery University. He completed
his studies in 1832, and in 1834 was commissioned a junior officer in
the Russian Imperial
Guard and sent to Minsk and Gardinas
in Lithuania
(now Belarus).
That
summer, Bakunin became embroiled in a family row, taking his
sister’s side in rebellion to an unhappy marriage. Though his father
wished him to continue in either the military or the civil service,
Bakunin abandoned both in 1835, and made his way to Moscow, hoping to
study philosophy.
Interest in philosophy
In Moscow, Bakunin soon became friends
with a group of former university students, and engaged in the
systematic study of Idealist philosophy, grouped
around the poet Nikolay Stankevich,
“the bold pioneer who opened to Russian thought the vast and fertile
continent of German metaphysics” (E.
H. Carr). The philosophy of Kant initially was central to their study, but
then progressed to Schelling, Fichte, and Hegel.
By autumn of 1835, Bakunin had conceived of forming a philosophical
circle in his home town of Pryamukhino; a passionate environment for
the young people involved. For example, Vissarion Belinsky
fell in love with one of Bakunin’s sisters. Moreover, by early 1836,
Bakunin was back in Moscow, where he published translations of Fichte’s
Some Lectures Concerning the Scholar's Vocation and The Way
to a Blessed Life, which became his favorite book. With Stankevich
he also read Goethe, Schiller, and E.T.A. Hoffmann.
At this time he embraced a religious but
extra-ecclesiastical immanentism:
| “ |
Let religion become
the
basis and reality of your life and your actions, but let it be the pure
and single-minded religion of divine reason and divine love, and not …
that religion which strove to disassociate itself from everything that
makes up the substance and life of truly moral existence. … Look at
Christ, my dear friend; … His life was divine through and through, full
of self-denial, and He did everything for mankind, finding His
satisfaction and His delight in the dissolution of His material being.
… Because we have baptized in this world and are in communion
with
this heavenly love, we feel that we are divine creatures, that we are
free, and that we have been ordained for the emancipation of humanity,
which has remained a victim of the instinctive laws of unconscious
existence. … Absolute freedom and absolute love—that is our aim; the
freeing of humanity and the whole world–that is our purpose.
|
” |
He became increasingly influenced by Hegel and provided the first Russian translation of his work. During
this period he met slavophile Konstantin Aksakov, Piotr Tschaadaev and
the socialists Alexander Herzen and Nikolay Ogarev. In this period he began to
develop his panslavic views. After
long wrangles with his father, Bakunin went to Berlin
in 1840. His stated plan at the time was still to become a university
professor (a “priest of truth,” as he and his friends imagined it), but
he soon encountered and joined radical students of the so-called
“Hegelian Left,” and joined the socialist
movement in Berlin. In his 1842 essay The Reaction in
Germany, he argued in favor of the revolutionary role of negation,
summed up in the phrase
| “ |
the passion for
destruction is a creative passion.[3] |
” |
After three semesters in Berlin, Bakunin
went to Dresden
where he became friends with Arnold
Ruge. Here he also read Lorenz von Stein's Der Sozialismus
und Kommunismus des heutigen Frankreich and developed a passion for
socialism.
He abandoned his interest in an academic career, devoting more and more
of his time to promoting revolution.The
Russian
government, becoming aware of his radicalism, ordered him to
return to Russia. On his refusal his property was confiscated. Instead
he went with Georg Herwegh to Zürich,
Switzerland.
Switzerland,
Brussels, Prague, Dresden and Paris
The young Mikhail Bakunin
During his six month stay in
Zürich, he became closely associated with German
communist Wilhelm Weitling.
Until 1848 he remained on friendly terms with the German communists,
occasionally calling himself a communist and writing articles on
communism in the Schweitzerische Republikaner. He moved to Geneva
in western Switzerland shortly before Weitling's arrest. His name had
appeared frequently in Weitling's correspondence seized by the police.
This led to reports being circulated to the imperial police. The
Russian ambassador in Berne ordered Bakunin to return to Russia, but
instead he went to Brussels, where he met many leading Polish
nationalists, such as Joachim Lelewel, co-member with Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engels at Brussels. Lelewel
greatly influenced him, however he clashed with the Polish nationalists
over their demand for a historic Poland
based on the borders of 1776 (before the Partitions of Poland) as he defended
the right of autonomy for the non-Polish peoples in these territories.
He also did not support their clericalism
and they did not support his calls for the emancipation of the peasantry.
In 1844 Bakunin went to Paris, then a
centre for European radicalism. He established contacts with Karl
Marx and the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon,
who greatly impressed him and with whom he formed a personal bond. In
December 1844, Emperor Nicholas issued a decree stripping Bakunin of
his privileges as a noble, denying him civil rights, confiscating his
land in Russia, and condemning him to life long exile in Siberia
should the Russian authorities ever get their hands on him. He
responded with a long letter to La Réforme,
denouncing the Emperor as a despot and calling for democracy in Russia
and Poland (Carr, p. 139). In March 1846 in another letter to the Constitutionel
he defended Poland, following the repression of Catholics there.
Some Polish refugees from Kraków,
following the defeat of the uprising there, invited him to speak[4]
at the meeting in November 1847 commemorating the Polish November Uprising of 1830.
In his speech, Bakunin called for an
alliance between the Polish and
Russian peoples against the Emperor, and looked forward to "the
definitive collapse of despotism in Russia." As a result, he was
expelled from France and went to Brussels. Bakunin's attempt to draw Alexander Herzen and Vissarion Belinsky into conspiratorial
action for revolution in Russia fell on deaf ears. In Brussels,
Bakunin
renewed his contacts with revolutionary Poles and Karl Marx. He
spoke at a meeting organised by Lelewel in February 1848 about a great
future for the slavs, whose destiny was to rejuvenate the Western
world. Around this time the Russian embassy circulated rumours that
Bakunin was a Russian agent who had exceeded his orders.
As the revolutionary movement of 1848
broke out, Bakunin was ecstatic, despite disappointment that little was
happening in Russia. Bakunin obtained funding from some socialists in
the Provisional Government, Ferdinand
Flocon, Louis Blanc, Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin
and Albert L'Ouvrier, for a project for a
Slav federation liberating those under the rule of Prussia,
Austro-Hungary and Turkey.
He left for Germany travelling through Baden to Frankfurt and Köln.
Bakunin supported the German
Democratic Legion led by Herwegh in an abortive attempt to join Friedrich Hecker's insurrection in Baden. He
broke with Marx over the latter's criticism of Herwegh. Much later in
1871 – Bakunin was to write: “I
must openly admit that in this controversy Marx and Engels were in the
right. With characteristic insolence, they attacked Herwegh personally
when he was not there to defend himself. In a face-to-face
confrontation with them, I heatedly defended Herwegh, and our mutual
dislike began then.”[5]
Bakunin went on to Berlin, but was
stopped from going to Posen
by the police, which was part of Polish
territories gained by Prussia in the Partitions of Poland, where a
nationalist insurrection
was taking place. Instead Bakunin went to Leipzig
and Breslau, then to Prague
where he participated in the First Pan Slav Congress. The Congress was
followed by an abortive insurrection
that Bakunin had sought to promote and intensify but which was
violently suppressed. He returned to Breslau, where Marx republished
the allegation that Bakunin was an imperial agent, claiming that George
Sand had proof. Marx retracted the statement after George Sand came
to Bakunin's defense.
Bakunin published his Appeal to the
Slavs[6]
in the fall of 1848, in which he proposed that Slav revolutionaries
unite with Hungarian, Italian and German revolutionaries to overthrow
the three major European autocracies, the Russian Empire, the
Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Kingdom of Prussia.
Bakunin played a leading role in the May Uprising in Dresden in 1849,
helping to organize the defense of the barricades against Prussian
troops with Richard Wagner and Wilhelm
Heine. He was captured in Chemnitz
and held for thirteen months before being condemned to death by the
government of Saxony.
As the governments of Russia and Austria were also after him, his
sentence was commuted to life. In June 1850, he was handed over to the
Austrian authorities. Eleven months later he received a further death
sentence, but this too was commuted to life imprisonment. Finally, in
May 1851, Bakunin was handed over to the Russian authorities.
Richard Wagner wrote in his diary about
Bakunin's visit:[7]
| “ |
First of all,
however, with
the view of adapting himself to the most Philistine culture, he had to
submit his huge beard and bushy hair to the tender mercies of the razor
and shears. As no barber was available, Rockel had to undertake the
task. A small group of friends watched the operation, which had to be
executed with a dull razor, causing no little pain, under which none
but the victim himself remained passive. We bade farewell to Bakunin
with the firm conviction that we should never see him again alive. But
in a week he was back once more, as he had realised immediately what a
distorted account he had received as to the state of things in Prague,
where all he found ready for him was a mere handful of childish
students. These admissions made him the butt of Rockel's good-humoured
chaff, and after this he won the reputation among us of being a mere
revolutionary, who was content with theoretical conspiracy. Very
similar to his expectations from the Prague students were his
presumptions with regard to the Russian people. |
” |
Imprisonment,
"confession", and exile
Bakunin was taken to the notorious Peter and Paul Fortress. At the
beginning of his captivity, Count Orlov, an
emissary of the Emperor, visited Bakunin and told him that the Emperor
requested a written confession[8]
hoping that the confession would place Bakunin spiritually as well as
physically in the power of the Russian state. Since all his acts were
known, he had no secrets to reveal, and so he decided to write to the
Emperor:
| “ |
You want my
confession; but
you must know that a penitent sinner is not obliged to implicate or
reveal the misdeeds of others. I have only the honor and the conscience
that I have never betrayed anyone who has confided in me, and this is
why I will not give you any names. |
” |
On reading the letter, Emperor Nicholas
I, remarked, "He is a good
lad, full of spirit, but he is a dangerous man and we must never cease
watching him." This Confession,
which was only published following its discovery in the imperial
archives, has proved to be quite controversial, and is sometimes analysed within the context of a
specifically Russian literary form.
After three years in the underground
dungeons of the Fortress of St
Peter and St Paul, he spent another four years in the castle of Shlisselburg.
It was here that he suffered from scurvy
and all his teeth fell out as a result of the appalling diet. He later
recounted that he found some relief in mentally re-enacting the legend
of Prometheus.
His continuing imprisonment in these awful conditions led him to
entreat his brother to supply him with poison.
Mikhail Bakunin and Antonia Kwiatkowska, circa 1861
Following the death of Nicholas I, the
new Emperor Alexander II
personally struck Bakunin's name off the amnesty list. However in
February 1857, his mother's pleas to the Emperor were finally heeded
and he was allowed to go into permanent exile in the western Siberian
city of Tomsk.
Within
a year of arriving in Tomsk, Bakunin married Antonia
Kwiatkowska, the daughter of a Polish merchant. He had been teaching
her French. In August 1858 Bakunin received a visit from his second
cousin, General Count Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky, who had
been Governor of Eastern Siberia for ten years.
Muravyov was a liberal and Bakunin, as
his relative, became a
particular favourite. In the spring of 1859, Muravyov helped Bakunin
with a job for Amur Development Agency which enabled him to move with
his wife to Irkutsk, the capital of Eastern Siberia.
This enabled Bakunin to be part of the circle involved in political
discussions centred on Muravyov's colonial headquarters. Resenting the
treatment of the colony by the Saint Petersburg bureaucracy, including
its use as a dumping ground for malcontents, a proposal for a United
States of Siberia emerged, independent of Russia and federated into
a new United States of Siberia and America, following the
example of the United States of
America. The circle included Muravyov's young Chief of Staff,
Kukel—who Kropotkin related had the complete works
of Alexander Herzen–
the civil governor Izvolsky, who allowed Bakunin to use his address for
correspondence, and Muravyov's deputy and eventual successor, General Alexander
Dondukov-Korsakov.
When Herzen criticised Muravyov in The
Bell, Bakunin wrote vigorously in his patron's defence.[9]
Bakunin tired of his job as a commercial traveller, but thanks to
Muravyov's influence, was able to keep his sinecure (worth 2,000
roubles a year) without having to perform any duties. However Muravyov
was forced to retire from his post as governor general, partly because
of his liberal views and partly due to fears he might take Siberia
towards independence. He was replaced by Korsakov, who perhaps was even
more sympathetic to the plight of the Siberian exiles. Korsakov was
also related to Bakunin, Bakunin's brother Paul having married his
cousin. Taking Bakunin's word, Korsakov issued him with a letter giving
him passage on all ships on the Amur
River and its tributaries as long as he was back in Irkutsk when
the ice came.
Escape
from exile and return to Europe
On June 5, 1861, Bakunin left Irkutsk
under cover of company business, ostensibly employed by a Siberian
merchant to make a trip to Nikolaevsk.
By July 17 he was on board the Russian warship Strelok bound
for Kastri.
However, in the port of Olga,
Bakunin managed to persuade the American captain of the SS Vickery
to take him on board. Despite bumping into the Russian Consul on board,
Bakunin was able to sail away under the nose of the Russian Imperial Navy.
By August 6 he had reached Hakodate in the northernmost Japanese island
of Hokkaidō and was soon in Yokohama.
In Japan Bakunin met by chance Wilhelm
Heine, one of his comrades-in arms from Dresden. He also met the
German botanist Philipp Franz von Siebold who
had been involved in opening up Japan to Europeans
(particularly Russians and the Dutch)
and was a friend of Bakunin's patron Muraviev.[10]
Von Siebold's son wrote some 40 years later:
| “ |
In that Yokohama
boarding-house we encountered an outlaw from the Wild West Heine,
presumably as well as many other interesting guests. The presence of
the Russian revolutionist Michael Bakunin, in flight from Siberia, was
as far as one could see being winked at by the authorities. He was
well-endowed with money, and none who came to know him could fail to
pay their respects. |
” |
He left Japan from Kanagawa on the SS Carrington,
as one of nineteen passengers including Heine, Rev. P. F. Koe and Joseph
Heco. Heco was a Japanese American, who eight years later
played a significant role giving political advice to Kido Takayoshi and Itō Hirobumi during the revolutionary
overthrow of the feudal Tokugawa shogunate.[11]
They arrived in San Francisco
on October 15. In the period before the trans-continental railroads had
been completed, the quickest way to New York was via Panama. Bakunin
boarded the Orizaba for Panama, where after waiting for two
weeks he boarded the Champion for New York.
In Boston,
Bakunin visited Karol Forster,
a partisan of Ludwik Mieroslawski
during the 1848 Revolution in Paris, and caught up with other "Forty-Eighters", veterans of the 1848
revolutions in Europe, such as Friedrich Kapp.[12]
He then sailed for Liverpool
arriving on December 27. Bakunin immediately went to London to see
Herzen. That evening he burst into the drawing-room where the family
was having supper. "What! Are you sitting down eating oysters! Well!
Tell me the news. What is happening, and where?!"
Relocation to Italy
Having re-entered Western Europe,
Bakunin immediately immersed himself in the revolutionary movement. In
1860, while still in Irkutsk Bakunin and his political associates had
been greatly impressed by Giuseppe Garibaldi and his expedition
to Sicily, during which he
declared himself dictator in the name of Victor Emmanuel II.
Following his return to London, he wrote to Garibaldi on 31 January
1862:
- "If you could have seen as I did the passionate enthusiasm of the
whole town of Irkutsk, the capital of Eastern Siberia, at the news of
your triumphal march across the possession of the mad king of Naples,
you would have said as I did that there is no longer space or
frontiers".[13]
Bakunin asked Garibaldi to participate
in a movement encompassing Italians, Hungarians and South
Slavs against both Austria and Turkey.
Garibaldi was then engaged in preparations for the Expedition against Rome. By May
Bakunin's correspondence was focussing on Italian-slavic unity and the
developments in Poland. By June, he had resolved to move to Italy,
but was waiting for his wife to join him. When he left for Italy in
August, Mazzini
wrote to Maurizio Quadrio, one of his key supporters that Bakunin was a
good and dependable person. However, with the news of the failure at Aspromonte Bakunin paused in Paris
where he was briefly involved with Ludwik Mierosławski.
However Bakunin rejected Mieroslawski's chauvinism and refusal to grant
any concessions to the peasants. Bakunin returned to England in
September and focussed on Polish affairs. When the Polish insurrection
broke out in January 1863, he sailed to Copenhagen
where he hoped to join the Polish Legion. They planned to sail across the
Baltic
in the SS Ward Jackson to join the insurrection. This attempt
failed, and Bakunin met his wife in Stockholm
before returning to London. Now he focussed again on going to Italy and
his friend Aurelio Saffi wrote him letters of introduction for Florence,
Turin
and Milan.
Mazzini wrote letters of commendation to Frederico
Campanella in Genoa and Giuseppe Dolfi
in Florence. Bakunin left London in November 1863 travelling by way of Brussels,
Paris and Vevey
(Switzerland) arriving in Italy on 11 January 1864. It was here that he
first began to develop his anarchist ideas.
He conceived the plan of forming a
secret organization of
revolutionaries to carry on propaganda work and prepare for direct
action. He recruited Italians, Frenchmen, Scandinavians, and Slavs into
the International Brotherhood, also called the Alliance of
Revolutionary Socialists.
By July 1866 Bakunin was informing
Herzen and Ogarev about the
fruits of his work over the previous two years. His secret society then
had members in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, England, France,
Spain, and Italy, as well as Polish and Russian members. In his Catechism of a Revolutionary
of 1866, he opposed religion and the state, advocating the
| “ |
absolute rejection of
every authority including that which sacrifices freedom for the
convenience of the state.[14] |
” |
Bakunin's membership card of the
League of Peace and Freedom
During the 1867–1868 period, Bakunin
responded to Emile Acollas's call and became involved in
the League of Peace and Freedom
(LPF), for which he wrote a lengthy essay Federalism, Socialism,
and Anti-Theologism[15]
Here he advocated a federalist socialism, drawing on the work of
Proudhon. He supported freedom of association and the right of
secession for each unit of the federation, but emphasized that this
freedom must be joined with socialism for: "Liberty without socialism
is privilege, injustice; socialism without liberty is slavery and
brutality."
Bakunin played a prominent role in the
Geneva Conference (September
1867), and joined the Central Committee. The founding conference was
attended by 6,000 people. As Bakunin rose to speak:
| “ |
the cry passed from
mouth to mouth: 'Bakunin!' Garibaldi,
who was in the chair, stood up, advanced a few steps and embraced him.
This solemn meeting of two old and tried warriors of the revolution
produced an astonishing impression... Everyone rose and there was a
prolonged and enthusiastic clapping of hands.[16] |
” |
At the Berne Congress of the League (1868) he and
other socialists (Élisée Reclus, Aristide Rey,
Jaclard, Giuseppe Fanelli, N. Joukovsky, V.
Mratchkovsky and others) found themselves in a minority. They seceded
from the League establishing their own International
Alliance of Socialist Democracy which adopted a revolutionary
socialist program.
The
First International and the rise of the anarchist movement
Bakunin speaking to members of the IWA at the Basel Congress in 1869
In 1868, Bakunin joined the Geneva
section of the First International,
in which he remained very active until he was expelled from the
International by Karl Marx and his followers at the Hague Congress in 1872. Bakunin was
instrumental in establishing branches of the International in Italy and
Spain.
In 1869, the Social
Democratic Alliance
was refused entry to the First International, on the grounds that it
was an international organisation in itself, and only national
organisations were permitted membership in the International. The
Alliance dissolved and the various groups which it comprised joined the
International separately.
Between 1869 and 1870, Bakunin became
involved with the Russian revolutionary Sergey Nechayev
in a number of clandestine projects. However, Bakunin broke with
Nechaev over what he described as the latter’s “Jesuit” methods, by
which all means were justified to achieve revolutionary ends.[17]
In 1870 Bakunin led a failed uprising in
Lyon on
the principles later exemplified by the Paris
Commune, calling for a general uprising in response to the collapse
of the French government during the Franco-Prussian War, seeking to
transform an imperialist conflict into social revolution. In his Letters
to A Frenchman on the Present Crisis,
he argued for a revolutionary alliance between the working class and
the peasantry and set forth his formulation of what was later to become
known as propaganda of the deed:
| “ |
we must spread our
principles, not with words but with deeds, for this is the most
popular, the most potent, and the most irresistible form of propaganda.[18] |
” |
Bakunin was a strong supporter of the Paris
Commune
of 1871, which was brutally suppressed by the French government. He saw
the Commune as above all a “rebellion against the State,” and commended
the Communards for rejecting not only the State but also revolutionary
dictatorship.[19]
In a series of powerful pamphlets, he defended the Commune and the
First International against the Italian nationalist Giuseppe Mazzini, thereby winning over
many Italian republicans to the International and the cause of
revolutionary socialism.
Bakunin’s disagreements with Marx, which
led to Bakunin’s expulsion from the International in 1872 after being
outvoted by the Marx party
at the Hague Congress, illustrated the growing divergence between the
"anti-authoritarian" sections of the International, which advocated the
direct revolutionary action and organization of the workers in order to
abolish the state and capitalism, and the social democratic
sections allied with Marx, which advocated the conquest of political
power by the working class.
The anti-authoritarian sections created
their own International at the St.
Imier Congress and adopted a
revolutionary anarchist program.[20]
Although Bakunin accepted Marx’s class analysis
and economic theories regarding capitalism, acknowledging "Marx’s
genius", he thought Marx was arrogant, and that his methods would
compromise the social revolution. More importantly, Bakunin criticized "authoritarian socialism" (which he
associated with Marxism) and the concept of dictatorship of the proletariat
which he adamantly refused.
| “ |
If you took the most
ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he
would be worse than the Tsar himself.[21] |
” |
Bakunin retired to Lugano
in 1873 and died in Bern on July 1, 1876.
Political beliefs
Bakunin’s political beliefs rejected
governing systems in every name
and shape, from the idea of God downwards, and every form of external authority,
whether emanating from the will of a sovereign
or from universal suffrage. He wrote in Dieu et l’Etat (God
and the State[22]),
published posthumously in 1882:
| “ |
The liberty of man
consists
solely in this, that he obeys the laws of nature because he has himself
recognized them as such, and not because they have been imposed upon
him externally by any foreign will whatsoever, human or divine,
collective or individual. |
” |
Bakunin similarly rejected the notion of
any privileged position or class, since
| “ |
it is the peculiarity
of
privilege and of every privileged position to kill the intellect and
heart of man. The privileged man, whether he be privileged politically
or economically, is a man depraved in intellect and heart. |
” |
Bakunin's political beliefs were based
on several interrelated concepts: (1) liberty;
(2) socialism;
(3) federalism; (4) anti-theism; and (5) materialism.
He also developed a (resultantly prescient)[23]
critique of Marxism, predicting that if the Marxists were successful in
seizing power, they would create a party dictatorship "all the more
dangerous because it appears as a sham expression of the people's will."[24]
Liberty
By "liberty", Bakunin did not mean an
abstract ideal but a concrete
reality based on the equal liberty of others. In a positive sense,
liberty consists of "the fullest development of all the faculties and
powers of every human being, by education, by scientific training, and
by material prosperity." Such a conception of liberty is "eminently
social, because it can only be realized in society," not in isolation.
In a negative sense, liberty is "the revolt of the individual against
all divine, collective, and individual authority."[25]
Collectivist anarchism
Bakunin's socialism was known as "collectivist anarchism,"
in which the workers would directly manage the means of production
through their own productive associations. There would be "equal means
of subsistence, support, education, and opportunity for every child,
boy or girl, until maturity, and equal resources and facilities in
adulthood to create his own well-being by his own labor."[26]
Federalism
By federalism Bakunin meant the
organization of society "from the
base to the summit—from the circumference to the center—according to
the principles of free association and federation."[26]
Consequently, society would be organized "on the basis of the absolute
freedom of individuals, of the productive associations, and of the
communes," with "every individual, every association, every commune,
every region, every nation" having "the absolute right to
self-determination, to associate or not to associate, to ally
themselves with whomever they wish."[26]
Anti-theologism
Bakunin argued that "the idea of God
implies the abdication of human
reason and justice; it is the most decisive negation of human liberty,
and necessarily ends in the enslavement of mankind, in theory and
practice." Consequently, Bakunin reversed Voltaire's
famous
aphorism that if God did not exist, it would be necessary to
invent Him, writing instead that "if God really existed, it would be
necessary to abolish Him."[22]
Materialism
Bakunin denied religious concepts of "free
will"
and advocated a materialist explanation of natural phenomena: "the
manifestations of organic life, chemical properties and reactions,
electricity, light, warmth and the natural attraction of physical
bodies, constitute in our view so many different but no less closely
interdependent variants of that totality of real beings which we call
matter" (Selected Writings, page 219). The "mission of science
is, by observation of the general relations of passing and real facts,
to establish the general laws inherent in the development of the
phenomena of the physical and social world." However, Bakunin rejected
the notion of "scientific socialism," writing in God and the State
that a "scientific body to which had been confided the government of
society would soon end by devoting itself no longer to science at all,
but to quite another affair... its own eternal perpetuation by
rendering the society confided to its care ever more stupid and
consequently more in need of its government and direction."[22]
Bakunin's
concept of social revolution
Bakunin’s methods of realizing his
revolutionary program were
consistent with his principles. The workers and peasants were to
organize on a federalist basis, "creating not only the ideas, but also
the facts of the future itself."[27]
The worker's trade union associations would "take possession of all the
tools of production as well as buildings and capital."[28]
The peasants were to "take the land and throw out those landlords who
live by the labor of others."[18]
Bakunin looked to "the rabble," the great masses of the poor and
exploited, the so-called "lumpenproletariat," to "inaugurate and bring
to triumph the Social Revolution," as they were "almost unpolluted by
bourgeois civilization."[29]
Critique of Marxism
The dispute between Mikhail Bakunin and
Karl Marx highlighted the differences between anarchism
and Marxism.
Bakunin
argued—against certain ideas of a number of Marxists–that not
all revolutions need be violent. He also strongly rejected Marx's
concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat", a concept that Marx's
modern adherents use to interpret to mean what would be described as a
"workers democracy", but which also maintains the state in existence
during the transition to the Marxist economical system of "communism".[30]
Bakunin, "who had now abandoned his ideas of revolutionary
dictatorship",[30]
insisted that revolutions must be led by the people directly while any
"enlightened elite" must only exert influence by remaining "invisible...not imposed on
anyone...[and] deprived of all official rights and significance".[31]
He held that the state should be immediately abolished because all
forms of government eventually lead to oppression.[30]
| “ |
They [the Marxists]
maintain that only a dictatorship—their dictatorship, of course—can
create the will of the people, while our answer to this is: No
dictatorship can have any other aim but that of self-perpetuation, and
it can beget only slavery in the people tolerating it; freedom can be
created only by freedom, that is, by a universal rebellion on the part
of the people and free organization of the toiling masses from the
bottom up. |
” |
| |
— Mikhail Bakunin, Statism and
Anarchism[32]
|
While both social anarchists and
Marxists share the same final goal, the creation of a free, egalitarian society without social classes
and government, they strongly disagree on how to achieve this goal.
Anarchists believe that the classless, stateless society should be
established by the direct action of the masses, culminating in social revolution, and refuse any
intermediate stage such as the dictatorship of the proletariat,
on
the basis that such a dictatorship will become a self-perpetuating
fundament. For Bakunin, the fundamental contradiction is that for the
Marxists,
| “ |
anarchism or freedom
is the
aim, while the state and dictatorship is the means, and so, in order to
free the masses, they have first to be enslaved.[33] |
” |
However Bakunin also wrote of meeting
Marx in 1844 that
| “ |
As far as learning
was
concerned, Marx was, and still is, incomparably more advanced than I. I
knew nothing at that time of political economy, I had not yet rid
myself of my metaphysical observations... He called me a sentimental
idealist and he was right; I called him a vain man, perfidious and
crafty, and I also was right.[34] |
” |
Bakunin found Marx's economic analysis
very useful and began the job of translating Das
Kapital
into Russian. In turn Marx wrote of the rebels in the Dresden
insurrection of 1848 that "In the Russian refugee Michael Bakunin they
found a capable and cool headed leader."[35]
Marx wrote to Engels of meeting Bakunin in 1864 after his escape to
Siberia saying "On the whole he is one of the few people whom I find
not to have retrogressed after 16 years, but to have developed further."[36]
Bakunin was perhaps the first theorist
of the "new class",
the intellectuals and administrators forming the bureaucratic apparatus
of the state. Bakunin argued that the "State has always been the
patrimony of some privileged class: a priestly class, an aristocratic
class, a bourgeois class. And finally, when all the other classes have
exhausted themselves, the State then becomes the patrimony of the
bureaucratic class and then falls—or, if you will, rises—to the
position of a machine."[29]
Criticism
Violence,
revolution and "Invisible dictatorship"
Bakunin has been accused[who?] of being a
closet authoritarian. In his letter to Albert Richard,
he wrote that
| “ |
[t]here is only one
power
and one dictatorship whose organisation is salutary and feasible: it is
that collective, invisible dictatorship of those who are allied in the
name of our principle. |
” |
However, Bakunin's supporters argue that
this "invisible
dictatorship" is not a dictatorship in any conventional sense of the
word, as Bakunin was careful to point out that its members would not
exercise any official political power:
| “ |
this dictatorship
will be
all the more salutary and effective for not being dressed up in any
official power or extrinsic character.[31] |
” |
Charles A. Madison claimed that
| “ |
He [Bakunin] rejected
political action as a means of abolishing the state and developed the
doctrine of revolutionary conspiracy under autocratic leadership–
disregarding the conflict of this principle with his philosophy of
anarchism. Madison contended that it was Bakunin's scheming for control
of the First International that brought about his rivalry with Karl
Marx and his expulsion from it in 1872. His approval of violence as a
weapon against the agents of oppression led to nihilism in Russia and
to individual acts of terrorism elsewhere– with the result that
anarchism became generally synonymous with assassination and chaos.[37] |
” |
Others reject this analysis, arguing
that Bakunin never sought to
take personal control over the International, the secret societies he
organized were not subject to his autocratic power, and that he
condemned terrorism as counter-revolutionary.[38]
Nationalism
Anarchist historian Max
Nettlau described Bakunin's pan-slavism as being the result of a nationalist psychosis
from which few are free. The publication of his Confession
of 1851, written while a prisoner of the Tsar in the Peter-Paul
fortress, was used to attack Bakunin because in it he asked the Emperor
for forgiveness for his sins and begged him to place himself at the
head of the slavs as both redeemer
and father.
Anti-semitism
Bakunin is often seen as a notable anti-semite since his death.[39]
Bakunin used anti-Jewish sentiments during his argument with Karl Marx;
he claimed that Marxian communism,
along with international banking cartels associated with Rothschild,
was part of Jewish system of global exploitation;
| “ |
This whole Jewish
world,
comprising a single exploiting sect, a kind of blood sucking people, a
kind of organic destructive collective parasite, going beyond not only
the frontiers of states, but of political opinion, this world is now,
at least for the most part, at the disposal of Marx on the one hand, and of Rothschild
on the other... This may seem strange. What can there be in common
between socialism and a leading bank? The point is that authoritarian
socialism, Marxist communism, demands a strong centralisation
of the state. And where there is centralisation of the state, there
must necessarily be a central bank, and where such a bank exists, the
parasitic Jewish nation, speculating with the Labour of the people,
will be found.[40][41] |
” |
In regards to his perceptions of Jewry,
Bakunin is not entirely isolated within early anarchism, as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon made similar
remarks (though Proudhon was a mutualist, while Bakunin was a
collectivist).[42]
Proudhon's notebooks, for example, contain a passage in which he calls
for the expulsion of the Jews from France, or their extermination.[43]
Eurocentrism
His Eurocentrism
manifested itself in his call for a United States of Europe, his
support for Russian Colonialism, particularly as practised by his
relative and patron Count Nikolay Muravyov-Amursky and his
indifference to Japan and Japanese peasants during and after his brief stay in
Yokohama.[44]
(Japan was regarded as the most prominent revolutionary country in Asia
following the Meiji Restoration
of 1866–1869.) All these aspects of his thought however date from
before he became an anarchist. Bakunin's conversion to anarchism was
not till 1865, some years after his exile in Siberia and escape through
Japan.[45]
Cultural references
Poster advertising a discussion of Bakunin's anarchism in 1975.
- Bakunin is a character in Tom
Stoppard's 2002 trilogy of plays The Coast of Utopia.
- A character in the TV show Lost was named after him (joining the
list of several LOST characters named after philosophers and/or
scientists, including John Locke, Danielle Rousseau, Desmond David Hume,
Jeremy Bentham and Daniel Faraday).
- After the first ever TV appearance of the Sex
Pistols, on the Granada Television show So It Goes in August 1976,
presenter Tony Wilson's immediate reaction to their
performance of 'Anarchy in the UK'
was: "Bakunin would have loved it."
- Quoted in KMFDM's song "Stray Bullet" from their album Symbols, specifically the quote "even
if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him."
- Bakunin is named among a list of other historical political
figures in a line of the nihilistic song, Nothing by The Fugs:
"Karlos Marx nothing, Engels nothing, Bakunin Kropotkin– nyuthing! Leon
Trotsky, lots of nothing; Stalin less than nothing!"
- Bakunin's The Patriotism is the book Mallory (James
Coburn)
throws into the mud as a result of a discussion with Juan Miranda (Rod
Steiger) in Sergio Leone's 1972 film Duck You Sucker.
- The song "Bakunin", by the punk/ska band Against All Authority, is about the
biography of Bakunin.
- Canadian post-rock band Bakunin's Bum.
- Bakunin, along with Lenin, Marx, and Trotsky is one of the existing last names in
the novel Brave New World.
- Revolutionary Chinese writer Ba Jin
took his nom de plume from the first syllable of Bakunin, and the last
syllable of Kropotkin.
- Boris Akunin chose his pen-name as a
reference to Bakunin.
- Punk band Rancid's socially critical album Life Won't Wait
features several spoken word quotes from "Bakunin on Anarchism" used
throughout the album to demonstrate their anarchist ideals.
Works about Bakunin
- God and the State, ISBN 048622483X
- Bakunin on anarchism / edited, translated and with an
introduction by Sam Dolgoff;[46]
preface by Paul Avrich.—New York : Knopf, originally
published in 1971 as Bakunin on anarchy. Includes James Guillaume’s Bakunin—A
Biographical Sketch.[47]
- Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, ed. A. Lehning. New
York: Grove Press, 1974
- Statism and Anarchy, Cambridge
University Press 1991
- No Gods No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism by Daniel Guérin
- Anarchism:
A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, Volume 1: From Anarchy
to Anarchism (300CE-1939), ed. Robert Graham
- The Political Philosophy of Bakunin edited by G. P.
Maximoff, including "Mikhail Bakunin—a Biographical Sketch" by Max
Nettlau
- The Basic Bakunin: Writings 1869-1871, ed. Robert M.
Cutler (New York: Prometheus Books, 1992)
- Mikhail Bakunin: The Philosophical Basis of his Anarchism,
by Paul McLaughlin (New York: Algora Publishing, 2002, Paperback
Edition ISBN 1892941848
English translations of Bakunin are
generally rare when compared to the comprehensive editions in French
(by Arthur Lehning), Spanish and German.
Madelaine Grawitz’s biography (Paris: Calmann Lévy 2000) remains
to be translated.
The standard English-language biography
is by E. H. Carr. A new biography, Bakunin: The Creative Passion,
by Mark Leier, was published by St. Martin’s Press August 22, 2006,
hardcover, 320 pages, ISBN 0-312-30538-9
An eight-volume complete works of
Bakunin is to be published at some point in the future by AK Press;
according to Ramsey Kanaan these will likely be published
yearly for eight years in hardcover format.
See also
References
- ^
Masters, Anthony (1974). Bakunin,
the Father of Anarchism. Saturday Review Press. ISBN 0-8415-0295-1.
- ^
Chomsky, Noam (1970). For Reasons of State. New York: Pantheon
Books. (See especially title page and "Notes on Anarchism".)
- ^
Bakunin, Mikhail (1842). "The Reaction in Germany". In:
Sam Dolgoff (1971, 1980), Bakunin on
Anarchy.
- ^
On the 17th Anniversary of the
Polish Insurrection of 1830, Mikhail Bakunin, La Réforme,
December 14, 1847
- ^
Michael Bakunin A Biographical
Sketch by James Guillaume
- ^
Appeal to the Slavs, Mikhail
Bakunin, 1848, Bakunin on Anarchy, translated and edited by Sam
Dolgoff, 1971.
- ^
Richard Wagner. "My Life — Volume 1". http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/wglf110.txt. Retrieved 2009-09-08.
- ^
Confession to Tsar Nicholas I,
Mikhail Bakunin, 1851
- ^
Bakunin, Yokohama and the
Dawning of the Pacific by Peter Billingsley
- ^
Edgar Franz, Philipp Franz von Siebold and Russian Policy and
Action on Opening Japan to the West in the Middle of the Nineteenth
Century, Munich: Iudicum 2005
- ^
Joseph Heco (Narrative Writer) James Murdoch
(Editor), The Narrative of a Japanese: What He Has Seen and the
People He Has Met in the Course of the Last 40 Years, Yokohama,
Yokohama Publishing Company (Tokyo, Maruzen), 1895, Vol II, pp 90–98
- ^
An Unpublished Letter of M.A.
Bakunin to R. Solger, Robert M. Cutler, International Review of
Social History 33, no. 2 (1988): 212–217
- ^
"Bakunin, Garibaldi e gli affari slavi 1862 - 1863" by Pier Carlo
Massini and Gianni Bosio, Movimento Operaio year 4, No. 1 (Jan
- Feb, 1952), p81
- ^
Revolutionary Catechism,
Mikhail Bakunin, 1866, Bakunin on Anarchy, translated and
edited by Sam Dolgoff, 1971.
- ^
Federalism, Socialism,
Anti-Theologism, Mikhail Bakunin, September 1867.
- ^
Bakunin's idea of revolution
& revolutionary organisation published by Workers Solidarity Movement in
Red and Black Revolution No.6, Winter 2002
- ^
Bakunin to Nechayev on the role
of secret revolutionary societies, Mikhail Bakunin, June 2, 1870
letter to Sergey Nechayev
- ^ a
b
Letters to a Frenchman on the
Present Crisis, Mikhail Bakunin, 1870
- ^
The Paris Commune and the Idea of
the State, Mikhail Bakunin, 1871
- ^
Anarchism:
A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One: From Anarchy
to Anarchism (300CE to 1939), Robert Graham, Black Rose Books,
March 2005
- ^
Quoted in Daniel Guerin, Anarchism: From Theory to Practice
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970), pp.25-26.
- ^ a
b
c
God and the State, Michael
Bakunin, 1882
- ^
Noam Chomsky. "The Soviet Union Versus
Socialism". Our Generation. http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1986----.htm. Retrieved 2009-09-25.
- ^
Michael Bakunin: Selected Writings, ed. A. Lehning (New
York: Grove Press, 1974), page 268
- ^
Man, Society, and Freedom,
Mikhail Bakunin, 1871
- ^ a
b
c
Revolutionary Catechism,
Mikhail Bakunin, 1866
- ^
Mikhail Bakunin. "Works of Mikhail Bakunin 1871".
Marxists.org. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1871/program.htm#s2. Retrieved 2009-09-08.
- ^
Mikhail Bakunin. "Works of Mikhail Bakunin 1870".
Marxists.org. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1870/albert-richard.htm. Retrieved 2009-09-08.
- ^ a
b
On the International Workingmen's
Association and Karl Marx, Mikhail Bakunin, 1872
- ^ a
b
c
Woodcock, George (1962, 1975). Anarchism, 158. Harmondsworth,
England: Penguin Books. ISBN 0140206221.
- ^ a
b
"Was Bakunin a secret
authoritarian?". Struggle.ws. http://struggle.ws/anarchism/writers/anarcho/anarchism/bakunindictator.html. Retrieved 2009-09-08.
- ^
"Anarchist Theory FAQ Version 5.2".
Gmu.edu. http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/bcaplan/anarfaq.htm. Retrieved 2009-09-08.
- ^
Mikhail Bakunin. "Works of Mikhail Bakunin 1873".
Marxists.org. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/1873/statism-anarchy.htm. Retrieved 2009-09-08.
- ^
Quoted in Brian Morris, Bakunin: The Philosophy of Freedom, 1993, p14
- ^
New York Daily Tribune (October 2, 1852) on 'Revolution and Counter
Revolution in Germany'
- ^
Quoted in Brian Morris, Bakunin: The Philosophy of Freedom, 1993, p29
- ^
Madison, Charles A. (1945).
"Anarchism in the United States". Journal of the History of Ideas
6 (1): 46–66. doi:10.2307/2707055.
- ^
Bakunin, "Program of the International Brotherhood"(1868), reprinted in
Bakunin on Anarchism, ed. S. Dolgoff
- ^
Paul McLaughlin. Mikhail Bakunin: The Philosophical Basis of His
Theory of Anarchism. 2002. ISBN 1892941414 p. 4
- ^
Judaica
1950, p. 101
- ^
Wheen
1999, p. 340
- ^
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin. Marshall Shatz. Statism and Anarchy.
1990. ISBN 0521369738 p.xxx
- ^
"Robert Graham, 'The General Idea
of Proudhon's Revolution'". Dwardmac.pitzer.edu. 2006-01-25. http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/ANARCHIST_ARCHIVES/proudhon/grahamproudhon.html. Retrieved 2009-09-08.
- ^
"Library". libcom.org. http://libcom.org/library/osugi-sakae. Retrieved 2009-09-08.
- ^
"Bakunin's idea of revolution and anarchist
revolutionary organisation". Struggle.ws. http://struggle.ws/rbr/rbr6/bakunin.html. Retrieved 2009-09-08.
- ^
"Mikhail Bakunin Reference
Archive". Marxists.org. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/bakunin-on-anarchism.htm. Retrieved 2009-09-08.
- ^
Karl Marx. "Michael Bakunin by James
Guillaume". Marxists.org. http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/guillaume/works/bakunin.htm. Retrieved 2009-09-08.
Bibliography
- Judaica (1950). Historia judaica, Volumes
12-14. Verlag von Julius Kittls Nachfolger.
- Wheen, Francis
(1999). Karl Marx. Fourth Estate. ISBN 1857026373.
Further reading
External links
Radical
Philosophy
From Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia
Cover of Radical Philosophy issue 141
Radical Philosophy is a
UK-based academic journal of critical theory and continental philosophy,
appearing six times a year. It was founded in 1972 in response to the
widely felt discontent with what they perceived to be the sterility of
academic philosophy at the time, with the purpose of providing a forum
for the theoretical work which was emerging in the wake of the radical
movements of the 1960s, in philosophy and other fields.[1]
Aims
The frontispiece declaration of the
first issue outlined the aims of the group and its magazine:
"Contemporary British philosophy is at a dead end. Its academic
practitioners have all but abandoned the attempt to understand the
world, let alone change it. They have made philosophy into a narrow and
specialised academic subject of little interest to anyone outside the
small circle of professional philosophers...The Radical Philosophy
group has been set up to challenge this situation...But we do not want
to become exclusively preoccupied with the inadequacies of this type of
philosophy. Our aim is to develop positive alternatives. For this there
are other traditions which may inform our work (e.g. phenomenology and
existentialism, Hegelian thought and Marxism). However, the group will
not attempt to lay down a philosophical line. Our main aim is to free
ourselves from the restricting institutions and orthodoxes of the
academic world, and thereby to encourage important philosophical work
to develop."
Content
Cover of Radical Philosophy issue 127
As well as major academic articles, it
has a large and diverse book
reviews section and usually some news and at least one commentary on
matters of topical interest. Although not associated with any specific
left-wing position, the magazine was subtitled a 'Journal of Socialist
and Feminist Philosophy' and has been broadly associated with the New Left.
Editors
of the journal since the early 1970s have included some of the
most important Marxist and feminist thinkers in Britain. In recent
years it has published articles by many of the most famous thinkers in
the social sciences and humanities, from Judith
Butler to Alain Badiou, Gayatri Spivak to Jacques Ranciere.
It is probably the most widely read philosophical publication in
Britain, and has a large circulation throughout the English-speaking
world and beyond.[2]
Writers who
have contributed to Radical Philosophy
Current
editorial collective
- Matthew Charles, Middlesex University
- David Cunningham, English, University of Westminster
- Howard Feather, Sociology, London Metropolitan University
- Peter Hallward, Philosophy, Middlesex University
- Esther Leslie, Humanities, Birkbeck, University of London;
- Stewart Martin, Philosophy, Middlesex University;
- Mark Neocleous, Politics, Brunel University
- Peter Osborne, Philosophy, Middlesex University
- Stella Sandford, Philosophy, Middlesex University
- Christopher Wilbert, Geography, Anglia Ruskin University
References
- A Radical Philosophy Reader, eds Roy Edgley and Richard
Osborne (Verso, 1985)
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