Abstract
Scholars of political ideology commonly allege that anarchism is not a coherent ideology because of the coexistence within it of irreconcilably opposed individualist and communalist strands. This chapter argues, to the contrary, that the coexistence within anarchism of well-developed and very different individualist and communalist strands is a primary source of its ideological coherence, distinction, and political strength. It argues, moreover, that the sometimes competing demands of individuality and community can never be perfectly reconciled, even in an ‘ideal anarchy’, and that this seeming limitation of anarchism is actually one of its greatest strengths. These points are illustrated with reference to anarchist debates about and expressions of so-called ‘lifestyle’ politics, radical democracy, and literary utopianism.
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Notes
- 1.
David Miller, Anarchism (London and Melbourne: J.M. Dent, 1984), 3.
- 2.
Terence Ball and Richard Dagger, Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal, 4th ed. (New York and San Francisco: Longman, 2002), 14.
- 3.
Andrew Heywood, Political Ideologies: An Introduction, 5th ed. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 142.
- 4.
Ibid.
- 5.
Alan Ritter, Anarchism: A Theoretical Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 117.
- 6.
Ibid.
- 7.
Ibid., 127.
- 8.
Individualist anarchism may plausibly be regarded as a form of both socialism and anarchism. Whether the individualist anarchists were consistent anarchists (and socialists) is another question entirely. See, on this point, Iain McKay, An Anarchist FAQ, vol. 2 (Edinburgh and Oakland: AK Press, 2012), 623–639. McKay comments as follows: ‘any individualist anarchism which supports wage labour is inconsistent anarchism. It can easily be made consistent anarchism by applying its own principles consistently. In contrast, “anarcho”-capitalism rejects so many of the basic, underlying, principles of anarchism … that it cannot be made consistent with the ideals of anarchism’ (Ibid., 638).
- 9.
Quoted in McKay, Ibid., 581–582; see also Peter Ryley, Making Another World Possible: Anarchism, Anti-Capitalism and Ecology in Late 19th and Early 20th Century Britain (New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2013), ch. 4.
- 10.
John Clark, The Impossible Community: Realizing Communitarian Anarchism (New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 170.
- 11.
Ritter, Anarchism, 28–29.
- 12.
Quoted in Ibid.
- 13.
Ibid., 137.
- 14.
Ibid., 140.
- 15.
Laura Portwood-Stacer, Lifestyle Politics and Radical Activism (New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 142.
- 16.
Laurence Davis, ‘Love and Revolution in Ursula Le Guin’sFour Ways to Forgiveness’, in Jamie Heckert and Richard Cleminson (Eds), Anarchism and Sexuality: Ethics, Relationships and Power (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2011), 104.
- 17.
Murray Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism (Edinburgh and Oakland: AK Press, 2004 [1971]), 10.
- 18.
Jonathan Purkis and James Bowen (Eds), Changing Anarchism: Anarchist Theory and Practice in a Global Age (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 8; quoted in Portwood-Stacer Lifestyle Politics, 134.
- 19.
Portwood-Stacer, Ibid.
- 20.
Murray Bookchin, Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm (Edinburgh and San Francisco: AK Press, 1995).
- 21.
I explore these contrasts in greater depth, and with much more attention to historical context, in a journal article that has significantly informed the current discussion. See Laurence Davis, ‘Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unhelpful Dichotomy’, Anarchist Studies, 18:1 (2010), 62–82.
- 22.
Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism, 168.
- 23.
Ibid., 11.
- 24.
Bookchin, ‘Anarchy and Organisation: A Letter to the Left’, reprinted from New Left Notes, January 15, 1969: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/bookchin/leftletterprint.html. Last accessed on 24 September 2017.
- 25.
Bookchin, ‘Toward a post-scarcity society: The American perspective and the SDS’, May 1969: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/bookchin/sds.html. Last accessed on 24 September 2017.
- 26.
Bookchin, ‘On Spontaneity and Organisation’ (London: Solidarity Pamphlet, 1975 [1972]).
- 27.
Ibid., 8.
- 28.
Bookchin, Social Anarchism, 4.
- 29.
Clark, The Impossible Community, 172.
- 30.
Cindy Milstein, Anarchism and Its Aspirations (Oakland and Edinburgh: AK Press, 2010); Clark, Ibid.; Ritter, Anarchism; Portwood-Stacer, Lifestyle Politics.
- 31.
Portwood-Stacer, Ibid., 142.
- 32.
Bookchin, ‘Whither Anarchism? A Reply to Recent Anarchist Critics’, 1998: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/bookchin/whither.html. Last accessed on 25 September 2017.
- 33.
See, on this point, my discussion of the autonomous social movements of the 1980s in Davis, ‘Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism’, 75–76.
- 34.
Portwood-Stacer, Lifestyle Politics, 140, 151–152.
- 35.
Murray Bookchin, The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies and the Promise of Direct Democracy (London and New York: Verso, 2015), 139.
- 36.
Bookchin, ‘The Communalist Project’, Harbinger, A Journal of Social Ecology, 3:1 (September 1, 2002): http://social-ecology.org/wp/2002/09/harbinger-vol-3-no-1-the-communalist-project/#8230. Last accessed on 1 October 2017.
- 37.
Laurence Davis, ‘History, Politics, and Utopia: Toward a Synthesis of Social Theory and Practice’, in Patricia Vieira and Michael Marder (Eds), Existential Utopia: New Perspectives on Utopian Thought (New York and London: Continuum, 2012), 127–140.
- 38.
Anthony Arblaster, Democracy (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1987), 5.
- 39.
James Cairns and Alan Sears, The Democratic Imagination (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 161.
- 40.
Benjamin Isakhan and Stephen Stockwell (Eds), The Secret History of Democracy (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 2.
- 41.
Matthew Festenstein and Michael Kenny (Eds), Political Ideologies: A Reader and Guide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 3.
- 42.
Terence Ball and Richard Dagger, Political Ideologies and the Democratic Ideal, 8th ed. (New York: Pearson, 2011), 39.
- 43.
Hal Draper, ‘The Two Souls of Socialism’, New Politics, 5:1 (Winter 1966), 57–84: https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1966/twosouls/4-anarch.htm. Last accessed on 2 October 2017.
- 44.
Paul Blackledge, ‘Freedom and Democracy: Marxism, Anarchism and the Problem of Human Nature’, in Alex Prichard et al. (Eds), Libertarian Socialism: Politics in Black and Red (Houndmills and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 19–22.
- 45.
See, for example, Iain McKay’s thorough online critiques of Draper and Blackledge in ‘Hal Draper, Numpty!, parts 1–2’ (April 2008 and October 2009): http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/hal-draper-numpty and http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/hal-draper-numpty-part-deux: Last accessed on 15 September 2017; and ‘Yet another SWP numpty on anarchism, parts 1–5’ (March 2013–September 2014): collected at http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/yet-another-swp-numpty-anarchism-part-5: Last accessed on 15 September 2017.
- 46.
Festenstein and Kenny, Political Ideologies, 4–5.
- 47.
Errico Malatesta, ‘Neither Democrats, nor Dictators: Anarchists’, Pensiero e Volontà, May 1926; Translated by Gillian Fleming and published in Vernon Richards (Ed), The Anarchist Revolution (London: Freedom Press, 1995): https://archive.org/stream/al_Errico_Malatesta_Neither_Democrats_nor_Dictators_Anarchists_a4/Errico_Malatesta__Neither_Democrats__nor_Dictators__Anarchists_a4#page/n1/mode/2up. Last accessed on 4 October 2017.
- 48.
Uri Gordon, Anarchy Alive!: Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory (London and Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2008), 67–70.
- 49.
Uri Gordon, ‘Democracy: The Patriotic Temptation’: https://crimethinc.com/2016/05/26/democracy-the-patriotic-temptation. Last accessed on 29 September 2017.
- 50.
CrimethInc., ‘From Democracy to Freedom’: https://crimethinc.com/2016/04/29/feature-from-democracy-to-freedom. Last accessed on 29 September 2017.
- 51.
Wayne Price, ‘Anarchism as Extreme Democracy’, The Utopian, vol. 1 (2000), 7: https://www.utopianmag.com/files/in/1000000006/anarchism_extreme.pdf. Last accessed on 4 October 2017.
- 52.
Ibid., 10.
- 53.
Ibid., 6.
- 54.
Wayne Price, ‘Are Anarchism and Democracy Opposed? A Response to Crimethinc’, AnarchistNews.org (July 2016): https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/wayne-price-are-anarchism-and-democracy-opposed. Last accessed on 1 October 2017. Not surprisingly, Blackledge finds affinities between his own conception of democracy and Price’s. See Blackledge, ‘Freedom and Democracy’, 22–23.
- 55.
Rather unhelpfully, Price conflates a range of different varieties of coercion with his catch-all use of the term. For more sophisticated philosophical accounts, see Michael Taylor, Community, Anarchy and Liberty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Magda Egoumenides, Philosophical Anarchism and Political Obligation (New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2014); and Richard Sylvan, ‘Anarchism’, in Robert E. Goodin et al. (Eds), A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007).
- 56.
Price, ‘Are Anarchism and Democracy Opposed?’, 54.
- 57.
Errico Malatesta, ‘A Project of Anarchist Organisation’, 1927: http://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/errico-malatesta-and-nestor-makhno-about-the-platform. Last accessed on 4 October 2017.
- 58.
David Goodway reports that Pateman was an anarchist throughout the 1960s and that she once wrote to him that ‘the critique of subordination which runs throughout my work has its genesis in anarchist political theory’. See David Goodway, Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow: Left Libertarian Thought and British Writers from William Morris to ColinWard (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2012), 265.
- 59.
Carole Pateman, The Problem of Political Obligation (Oxford: Polity Press, 1985), 159–162; see also Robert Graham, ‘The Role of Contract in Anarchist Ideology’, in David Goodway (Ed), For Anarchism: History, Theory, and Practice (London and New York: Routledge, 1989), 170–173.
- 60.
Paul Goodman, ‘The Black Flag of Anarchism’, first published in The New York Times Magazine (July 14, 1968); reprinted in Taylor Stoehr (Ed), Drawing the Line: The Political Essays of Paul Goodman (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1979), 209.
- 61.
Goodman, ‘Unanimity’, first published in Art and Social Nature, 1946; reprinted in Stoehr (Ed), Ibid., 40.
- 62.
Iain McKay, An Anarchist FAQ, vol. 1 (Edinburgh and Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2008), 41.
- 63.
Saul Newman, The Politics of Postanarchism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011 [2010]), 2, 33–34.
- 64.
David Graeber, The Democracy Project (London: Allen Lane, 2013), 154, 186–188.
- 65.
Raymond Williams, Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society (Hammersmith, London: Fontana Press, 1988 [1976]), 37; see also Graeber, Ibid., ch. 3.
- 66.
Amedeo Bertolo, ‘Democracy and Beyond’, Democracy and Nature, 5:2 (July 1999), 311–324: www.democracynature.org/vol5/bertolo_democracy.htm. Last accessed on 4 October 2017.
- 67.
Peter Stillman, ‘“Nothing is, but what is not”: Utopias as Practical Political Philosophy’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 3:2&3 (Summer/Autumn 2000), 11.
- 68.
Bertrand de Jouvenal, ‘Utopias for practical purposes’, in Frank Manuel (Ed), Utopias and Utopian Thought (London: Souvenir Press, 1973), 219–220.
- 69.
Dan Sabia, ‘Individual and Community in Le Guin’sThe Dispossessed’, in Laurence Davis and Peter Stillman (Eds), The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005), 111.
- 70.
Ursula K. Le Guin, quoted in Charles Bigelow and J. McMahon, ‘Science Fiction and the Future of Anarchy: Conversations with Ursula K. Le Guin’, Oregon Times (December 1964), 29.
- 71.
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia (New York: Harper Collins, 1974), 204.
- 72.
Ibid., 300.
- 73.
Ibid., 167–168.
- 74.
Dan Sabia, ‘Individual and Community’, 116.
- 75.
Ibid., 116–119.
- 76.
Le Guin, The Dispossessed, 330.
- 77.
Ibid., 359.
- 78.
Shevek is presumably referring to ‘compromise’ of an individual’s personal integrity or fundamental humanity.
- 79.
Le Guin, The Dispossessed, 333.
- 80.
See, for example, C. Douglas Lummis, Radical Democracy (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1996), 159–163.
- 81.
Benjamin Franks, ‘Anarchism’, in Michael Freeden et al. (Eds), The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 393–394.
- 82.
Ibid., 393.
- 83.
McKay, vol. 1, 478.
- 84.
Interestingly, and revealingly, Franks misquotes the title of an earlier journal article of mine in his thoughtful discussion of it. The citation listed in his bibliography is ‘Davis, L. 2010. “Social anarchism or lifestyle anarchism: An unhelpful distinction”, Anarchist Studies, 18 (1): 62–82’, whereas the actual title of the article is ‘Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unhelpful Dichotomy’.
- 85.
See, on this subject, Laurence Davis, ‘Anarchism’, in Vincent Geoghegan and Rick Wilford (Eds), Political Ideologies: An Introduction, 4th ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), 213–238.
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Davis, L. (2019). Individual and Community. In: Levy, C., Adams, M.S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75620-2_3
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