Transcript ECON 325 RADICAL ECONOMICS - College Of Business and …

Varieties of
Anarchism
D. Allen Dalton
ECON 325 – Radical Economics
Boise State University
Fall 2012
Anarchism:
Godwin and Proudhon
William Godwin (1756-1836)
• Followed his father as a nonconformist minister
• early influence of Rousseau and
French materialists, Holbach and
Helvétius
• Turned to atheism and withdrew
from the ministry
• Supported himself by writing
(ficition, politics, newspaper
articles)
William Godwin (1756-1836)
• Married Mary Wollstonecraft
• Daughter Mary
– Married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley
– Author Frankenstein
• Enquiry Concerning Political
Justice (1793)
• Caleb Williams (1794)
• Of Population (1820)
Virtue
“The first object of virtue is to contribute to the
welfare of mankind. The most essential attribute of
right conduct therefore is, that it shall have a
beneficent and salutary tendency. One further
characteristic it is usual t add. Men, in the exercise
of their rational faculties, are influenced by motives
and inducements apprehended by the intellect… A
beneficent action to which a man is incited by a
knowledge of its beneficent tendency, is an act of
virtue. The man who is in the frequent practice of
such actions, is a worthy, virtuous and excellent man.”
- Wm. Godwin, The Enquirer, p. 252
Godwin’s Teaching
• Basis – “the general welfare”
• On Law – Reason and arbitration rather
than law and legislation
• On the State – State is the suppression
of private judgment
• On Society – Society arises out of
mutual assistance; the State arises out
wickedness
Godwin’s Teaching
• Organization of the Stateless Society –
“Government” by common deliberation in
small societies; federation in assemblies
• On Wealth – Inequality of wealth
(“Empire of Accumulated Property’) is
against the common welfare
– Hampers intellectual progress
– Hinders moral perfection
– Great cause of crime
Godwin’s Teaching
• On Rights – Active and Passive Rights
– All rights (actions) fall under the province
of morality; duty to act for the “general
welfare”
– Active: “right to do as one wills” is a fiction
– Passive: “sphere of personal judgment”
– The “right to property” is founded on the
principle of private judgment
Godwin’s Teaching
• On Property – Classes of property and
their relation to inequality of wealth
– Subsistence and Means of intellectual and
moral improvement; Inexpensive
gratifications; Expensive gratifications
inessential to healthful and vigorous life
– Last which causes the “present system of
accumulated property,” augmenting the
hardships of the laboring classes and
reducing the general welfare
Godwin’s Teaching
• Economics – Labor as the source of all
value; labor as the measure of value;
classical view of the relation of
propertied classes and working classes
• On Transition – Reason and persuasion
not force; even for acts that are
against the general welfare, except in
cases of indispensable urgency (the
importance of “private judgment”)
P.J. Proudhon (1809-1865)
• Trained as printer, worked as
merchant
• Pamphleteer and activist
• 1848, elected to National
Assembly
• Twice imprisoned for offenses
against the press laws
• 1849, founded People’s Bank
• Opponent of Bakunin and Marx
• First to adopt the description of
“anarchist”
Justice
“Justice is respect, spontaneously felt and mutually
guaranteed, for human dignity, in whatever person
and under whatever circumstances we find it
compromised, and to whatever risk its defense may
expose us.”
- Proudhon, Of Justice, vol. I, p. 182
“All the most rational teachings of human wisdom about
justice are summed up in the famous adage: Do to
others what you would have done to you; Do not to
others what you would not have done to you.”
-Proudhon, What Is Property?, p. 18.
Proudhon’s Teaching
• Basis – Justice as the measure of all
human actions.
• On Law – Rejects state legislation in
favor of the legal norm of contracts
– Recognizes the variety and variability of
human interests
– Contracts more suitable to such a situation
than law
• On the State – “The government of man
by man is slavery.”
Proudhon’s Teaching
• On Society – Without the State, society
ruled by agreements; government of
man is replaced by the administration of
things- the social life is “anarchy,”
“federation,” “the Republic.”
• On Rights – makes a distinction between
rights under Justice and rights under
laws; only some existing individual rights
by law conform to rights under Justice
Proudhon’s Teaching
• On Property – “Property is Theft!”
“Property is Liberty!”
– The central question is relationship to
Justice – the balance of interests –
achievable only through contract
– Property by contract is to be substituted
for Property from law
– Evolution of position – property as abuse v.
possession as use to reciprocity and
mutualism as the foundation of justice in
property
Proudhon’s Teaching
• Economics – Labor is the source of all
production and value.
– Inequality arises from inequity in exchange.
– Under justice, products must exchange for
products.
– Law of reciprocity as foundation of social
life under anarchy
• On Transition – “Popularize the idea.”
– Examples of anarchy within the current
regime – “The People’s Bank.”
Proudhon’s Teaching
• The People’s Bank
– Idea and Foundation
– History
• January – March 1849
• Membership of 27,000; receipts of 18,000 francs
• Never reached stage where it could actually begin
business under its charter
• “Never more than a project in search of finances…”
- Woodcock, Proudhon, p. 144
– Forerunner of credit unions and mutual banking
Anarchism:
Stirner and Bakunin
Max Stirner (1806-1856)
• Born Johann Kaspar Schmidt in
Bavaria
• Studied philosophy and theology in
Berlin and Erlanger
• Passed Gymnasiallehrer in 1835,
but received no government
appointment
• 1839 – teacher at young ladies
school
• Associate of the Young Hegelians
during the 1840s
Max Stirner (1806-1856)
• Wrote under pseudonym of Max
Stirner and also wrote several
anonymous works
• The Ego and His Own (1845)
– Attack on communism and the leftist
Young Hegelians, including Feuerbach
and Bauer
– Defense of egoistic individualism
• Resigned from teaching upon
publication; lived his later years on
the edge of poverty, twice ending
up in debtor’s prison
Egoism
“Men are such as they should be – can be.
What should they be? Surely not more
than they can be!”
- Ego and His Own, p. 435
…my relation to the world is this: I no
longer do anything for it ‘for God’s
sake’, I do nothing ‘for man’s sake’, but
what I do I do ‘for my sake’.”
- Ego and His Own, p. 426
Stirner’s Teaching
• Basis – individual’s own welfare
• On Law – Law only exists through
individual recognition of favor to own
interests; sacred law v. individual
welfare; “rights” v. self-ownership
• On the State – State can not exist
independent of the sacredness of law;
state’s behavior can not be judged
sacred – based on violence
State and Individual
“The State has never any object but to
limit the individual, to tame him, to
subordinate him, to subject him to
something general; it lasts only so long
as the individual is not all in all, and is
only the clear-cut limitation of me, my
limitedness, my slavery.”
- Ego and His Own, p. 298
Stirner’s Teaching
• Organization of the Stateless Society –
“the union of egoists.” Individuals are
held together by the advantage which
each individual receives at every
moment from the union.
• On Property – As it exists, it is sacred;
but it is not – for as it exists it is not
favorable to the individual’s welfare.
Property relations must exist based on
competence.
Self-Ownership and Union
“What a difference between freedom and selfownership! I am free from what I am rid of; I
am owner of what I have in my power. …Each
must say to himself, I am all to myself and I do
all for my sake.”
- Ego and His Own, p. 207,214
“…the union exists for you and by you, society
contrariwise claims you for itself and exists
even without you; in short, society is sacred,
the union is your own; society uses you up, you
use up the union.”
- Ego and His Own, p. 417-8
Stirner’s Teaching
“To what property am I entitled? To any
which I empower myself. I give myself
the right of property in taking property
to myself…”
“Property…must be torn from ghostly
hands and become my property…”
“…I must have as much as I am competent
to appropriate to myself.”
- Ego and His Own, p. 339, 349
Stirner’s Teaching
• On Transition – An inward change of
mankind from an obedience to the
sacred to egoism; afterwards a violent
transformation of social conditions will
occur. Stirner rejects no methods in
the violent transformation.
Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876)
• Artillery school, St. Petersburg,
became officer, resigned commission
• Left Russia in 1840, over next decade
involved himself in revolutionary
activities across Europe; in Paris,
associated with Proudhon
• Twice sentenced to death, Saxony and
Austria, imprisoned
• In 1851, deported to Russia; escaped
Siberia to London in 1865
• From 1868 to death, moved about
Europe continuing activities
Evolutionary Progress
“History consists in the
progressive negation of man’s
original bestiality by the
evolution of his humanity.”
- God and State, p. 16
Bakunin’s Teaching
• On Law – Enacted law belongs to a lower
stage of human evolution and has the
aim of the exploitation of the laboring
classes by rulers.
• On the State – The State is a necessary
evil as man transforms himself from
beast to human. Man takes the first
step from beast to humanity by religion;
the State is the product of religion.
God and State
“No State is without religion, and none can be
without religion.”
“There is a class of people who, even if they do not
believe, must necessarily act as if they believed.
This class embraces all mankind’s tormentors,
oppressors, and exploiters. Priests, monarchs,
statesmen, soldiers, financiers, office-holders of
all sorts; policemen, gendarmes, jailers, and
executioners; capitalists, usurers, heads of
business, and house-owners; lawyers, economists,
politicians of all shades…”
- God and State, p. 9, 11
Bakunin’s Teaching
• On Society – Complete humanity can
only be achieved in society; only joint
labor can free humanity from nature;
liberty arises from mutuality.
• On Rights – All rights and duties are
founded in liberty, which arises from
mutuality.
“A free society can not be held together by
authority, but only by contract.”
- Proposition, p. 155
Bakunin’s Teaching
• On Property – Unlimited private
property is a result of the State and
serves only to exploit the laboring
classes.In the future society ruled by
contract, private property will only
extend to objects of consumption;
landand capital will be social property.
Bakunin’s Teaching
• Economics – “I am not a Communist, but
a Collectivist.”
– Simple justice demands that enjoyment
corresponds to the quantity of goods
produced.
– Organization formed from below by free
union. Land and capital owned by “industrial
and agricultural associations.”
Bakunin’s Teaching
• On Transition – A social revolution is near
that will destroy all institutions of inequality
and establish economic and social equality.
Bloody revolution often necessary due to
human stupidity; but are always an evil.
“If one would make a thorough revolution,
therefore, one must attach things and
relationships, destroy property and the
State: then there is no need of destroying
men and exposing one’s self to the inevitable
reaction…”
Anarchism:
Spooner and Tucker
Lysander Spooner (1808-1887)
• Born on farm in Athol, Massachusetts
• Trained, but not educated in law; set
up practice in Worcester, led to
repeal of college requirement for
licensing
• Founded American Letter Mail
Company in 1844, challenging US Post
Office monopoly; commercially
successful but government legal
actions forced out of business
• Abolitionist, The Unconstitutionality
of Slavery (1846)
Lysander Spooner (1808-1887)
• Essay on the Trial by Jury (1852)
• Condemned the Civil War and
Reconstruction and the hypocrisy of
the Republican Party
• No Treason pamphlets (1867-1870),
including No Treason No. 6: The
Constitution of No Authority
• Vices are Not Crimes: A vindication
of Moral Liberty (1875)
• Natural Law, Or the Science of
Justice (1882)
Justice
“The science of mine and thine – the science of justice –
is the science of all human rights…
It is the science which alone can tell any man what he
can, and cannot, do; what he can, and cannot have;
what he can, and cannot, say, without infringing the
rights of any other person…
…obedience to this one only universal obligation: viz.,
that each should live honestly towards every other.
The ancient maxim makes the sum of a man’s legal duty
to his fellow men to be simply this: ‘To live honestly,
to hurt no one, to give to every one his due.’ “
- Natural Law, p. 1
Spooner’s Teaching
• Basis – Natural Law, the Science of Justice;
acts of initiatory coercion violate justice
• On Law – Man-made legislation not confirming
to the Natural Law are null and void, and are
themselves illegal.
• On the State – Founded in violence;
necessarily opposes justice
• On Society – The sum of voluntary
associations by which men seek to maintain
justice and protect themselves against
wrongdoers
Spooner’s Teaching
“The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to
a man: 'Your money, or your life.' And many, if not most,
taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat. The
government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely
place, spring upon him from the roadside, and, holding a
pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the
robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it
is far more dastardly and shameful. The highwayman takes
solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of
his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful
claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your
own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a
robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess
to be merely a 'protector,' and that he takes men's money
against their will, merely to enable him to 'protect' those
infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect
themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of
protection…
Spooner’s Teaching
…Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you
wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the
road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful
'sovereign,' on account of the 'protection' he affords you.
He does not keep 'protecting' you, by commanding you to
bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and
forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as
often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so;
and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to
your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you
dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much
of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults,
and villainies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to
robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his
slave. “
- No Treason, No. 6: The Constitution of No Authority,
p. 19
Spooner’s Teaching
• On Rights – Individuals possess rights
inherently due to their nature as human
beings
“…incapable of being blotted out, extinguished,
annihilated, or separated or eliminated from his
nature as a human being, or deprived of their
inherent authority or obligation.”
- Natural Law, p. 2
“To deny the obligation of justice is…to deny the
existence of any moral obligation whatever
among men, in their relations to each other.”
- Natural Law, p. 3
Spooner’s Teaching
• On Property – Lockean view; property in
justice must be separated from
property by legislation
• Economics – Money monopoly source of
capitalist exploitation of labor
“All the great establishments, of every kind, now
in the hands of a few proprietors, but employing
a great number of wage labourers, would be
broken up; for few, or no persons, who could
hire capital, and do business for themselves,
would consent to labour for wages for another."
- A Letter to Grover Cleveland, p. 41
Spooner’s Teaching
• On Transition – Jury nullification
important source of citizen power in
ending unjust laws; use of law to
overturn legislation; transition must be
peaceful – in accordance with the
Science of Justice
Benjamin Tucker (1854-1939)
• Born in South Dartmouth,
Massachusetts
• Studied technology; became
acquainted with Josiah Warren,
Equitable Commerce (1852); “Cost the
limit of price”
• Turned to publishing; began publishing
“Liberty” in 1881
• Instead of a Book (1893)
• 1908 fire destroys printing equipment
and 30-year stock of books and
pamphlets; retires to France
Egoistic Utilitarianism
“The Anarchists are not only utilitarians,
but egoists in the farthest and fullest
sense.”
- Instead of a Book, p. 21
“Equal liberty means the largest amount
of liberty compatible with equality and
mutuality of respect, on the part of
individuals living in society, for their
respective spheres of action.”
- Instead of a Book, p. 65.
Tucker’s Teaching
• Basis – Fulfilling one’s self-interest is
the basis of human happiness; equality is
necessary for a stable society.
• On Law – Law is necessary for
maintaining equal liberty; the people,
through the jury, are the judges of
facts, law, justice of law, applicability
and punishment.
Tucker’s Teaching
• On the State – The State is opposed to
Equal Liberty; the State is an
organization that aggresses against
Equal Liberty and claims authority over
all those within a geographic area. All
acts of government are dependent upon
taxation and therefore invasive. The
State monopolizes defense services.
Competition would serve individuals
better.
Tucker’s Teaching
• On Society – Society is man’s dearest
possession. Society is inseparable from
individual life.
• Organization of the Stateless Society –
Society will be held together by
contract through the voluntary
association of individuals; such voluntary
associations can have “no dominion over
a territory.” Voluntary “taxation” as well
as payments for service may exist to
support the voluntary associations.
Tucker’s Teaching
• The Stateless Society (cont.) – Mutual
insurance companies, mutual banks, and
competitive voluntary defense
associations will all be prominent
institutions replacing the State.
Tucker’s Teaching
• On Property – Property per se, is
unobjectionable. What matters is the
distribution of property. Under the
current system, the distribution of
property is built upon Four Monopolies:
–
–
–
–
Money Monopoly
Land Monopoly
Tariff Monopoly
Patent Monopoly
Tucker’s Teaching
• On Property – The Four Monopolies raise
prices above costs and produce usury (≡
taking of surplus value). Labor does not
receive the full fruits of its production. Free
money and credit, Free land, Free trade, and
Free intellectual property will increase supply
and lower prices to equal costs. All forms of
usury - profits, rent and interest- will
disappear. Labor will be rewarded its full
product. Inequality will not disappear, but only
the limited inequality between one laborer’s
product and another will remain.
Tucker’s Teaching
“Nearly all Anarchists consider labor to be
the only basis of the right of ownership in
harmony with that law [the law of Equal
Liberty]…”
“…in the case of land, or of any other
material the supply of which is so limited
that all cannot hold it in unlimited quantities,
Anarchism undertakes to protect no titles
except such as are based on actual
occupancy and use.”
- Instead of a Book, p. 131, 61
Tucker’s Teaching
• Economics – Tucker possesses the most
sophisticated economics of any of the
major anarchists. He operates within a
theoretical rather than a philosophical
framework. He pays attention to
“economic” questions.
• On Transition – Convince people that
their interests demand change; freedom
of speech and press; individual
resistance leading to general resistance.
Tucker’s Teaching
“Passive resistance is the most potent
weapon ever wielded by man against
oppression.”
“…fallacious idea that Anarchy can be
inaugurated by force.”
- Instead of a Book, p.413, 427
Anarchism:
Kropotkin and Tolstoy
Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921)
• Born Moscow; father landowner and
owner of serfs
• 1857-1861; Corps of Pages
• 1862-67; Cossack officer
• 1867-71; studied Math in St. Petersburg
• 1872- joined IWA, came into contact
with anarchists
• Imprisoned in Russia, escaped to London;
expelled from Switzerland in 1877;
imprisoned in France 1883
• Actively supports WWI against Germany
• Returns to Russia in aftermath of
February Revolution 1917
Evolutionary Utilitarianism
“A society is an aggregation of organisms
trying to combine the wants of the
individual with those of co-operation for
the welfare of the species in
establishing the best conditions for
realizing the greatest happiness of
humanity.”
- Anarchist Communism, p. 4
Kropotkin’s Teaching
• Basis – The goal of social evolution is attaining
the largest possible human happiness.
Fundamental requisites for the attainment of
this goal are “the principle of equality” and
“the commandment of energy.”
– “Do to others as you would have it done to you in
the like case.”
– “Be strong; overflow with the passion of thought
and action: so shall your understanding, your love,
your energy, pour itself into others.”
- Anarchist Morality, p. 41, 61
Kropotkin’s Teaching
• On Law – Legislation is a hindrance to
human happiness. Three classes of
legislation: protection of property,
government, persons. They exist to rob
the producer, uphold privilege of
nobility, clergy and bourgeoisie, and give
a false sense of protection.
• On the State – The State is a hindrance
to human evolution toward greatest
human happiness.
The State
“What does this monstrous engine serve for,
that we call ‘State’? For preventing the
exploitation of the laborer by the capitalist?
of the peasant by the landlord? or for
assuring us of work? for providing us food
when the mother has nothing but water left
for her child? No, a thousand times no.
…’State’ is tantamount to ‘war’ …civil war
rages at the same time with foreign war; …the
State … has become a weapon of the rich
against the exploited; of the propertied
against the propertyless.”
- Words of a Rebel, p. 14
Kropotkin’s Teaching
• On Society – Anarchism is the highest
and inevitable form of society.
– ”Free associations are beginning to take to
themselves the entire field of human
activity.”
- Anarchist Communism, p. 25
• Organization of the Stateless Society –
– Contractual organization of individuals into
communes, contractual organization of
communes into federations.
Kropotkin’s Teaching
• On Property – Private property is a
hindrance to the evolution of mankind
toward greatest happiness. Its effects
are chronic crises, unemployment, want
and misery in the midst of overproduction. It produces a caste of
idlers who are a threat to general
morality and offends against justice.
Kropotkin’s Teaching
• On Wealth – All of the entire
accumulated wealth is the product of
labor, present and past.
– “Every discovery, every progress, every
increase in our wealth, has its origin in the
total bodily and mental activity of the past and
present. Then by what right can any one
appropriate to himself the smallest fraction of
this vast total and say ‘this belongs to me and
not to you.’?”
- Conquest of Bread, pp. 8-9
Kropotkin’s Teaching
•
Economics – Community ownership of all property,
consumption as well as producer goods.
Community decisions as to production – access
dependent upon labor. Shares based upon
wants/needs not shares of production.
“It will be recognized that every one who co-operates in production
to a certain extent has in the first place the right to live, and
in the second place the right to live comfortably.”
- Conquest of Bread, p. 229.
“Free taking of everything in superfluity, and rations of that in
which there is a possibility of dearth: rations according to
needs, with preference to children, the aged, and the weak in
general.”
- “Place of Anarchism in Socialistic Evolution,” p. 13
Kropotkin’s Teaching
• On Transition – A social revolution will
occur – the people taking possession of
society’s total stock of goods –
extending for several years to complete
the social and economic transformation.
The “People” will limit the bloodshed
because of their sympathy of their
victims.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
• Born Yasnaya Polyana, Russia
• 1843-1846; student Kazan – oriental
languages and jurisprudence
• 1847-8; studied jurisprudence at St.
Petersburg
• 1851-5; served in Caucasus and Crimea
as artillery officer
• 1861 on; agriculturalist and author
• War and Peace; Anna Karenina
• My Confession (1879); What I Believe
(1884); The Kingdom of God is Within
You (1893)
“The Anarchists are right in everything; in the
negation of the existing order, and in the
assertion that, without Authority, there could
not be worse violence than that of Authority
under existing conditions. They are mistaken
only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted
by a revolution. But it will be instituted only by
there being more and more people who do not
require the protection of governmental
power…There can be only one permanent
revolution - a moral one: the regeneration of the
inner man.”
- On Anarchy
Christianity
Matthew 5: 38-39
[Jesus said,] “You have heard that it was said,
'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.‘ But I tell
you, Do not resist an evil person. “
“I needed only to take these words simply and
downrightly, as they were spoken, and at once
everything in Christ’s whole teaching…was
comprehensible to me…and the main gist
appeared no longer useless but a necessity;
everything formed a whole…”
- “What I Believe”, p. 15
Tolstoy’s Teaching
• Basis – Christian “True Love,” the
setting aside of one’s personal comfort
for others due to his life in God. Faith
is knowledge of the truth based in
reason.
• On Law and the State– Rejects Law and
the State because both are based upon
and upheld by violence. Instead of Law,
Love is to be the rule of action.
Tolstoy’s Teaching
• Kingdom of God – The following of
Christ’s teaching, especially the five
commandments of the Sermon on the
Mount:
–
–
–
–
–
Keep the peace and restore it when broken;
Remain true to one another as man and wife;
Make no vows;
Forgive injury and do not resist evil;
Refrain from breaking the peace for the people’s
sake.
Tolstoy’s Teaching
• On Property – Property establishes
dominion of possessors over nonpossessors, dividing brothers and
sisters into castes, introducing
dependency and exploitation. Labor is
exploited by those who own land and
tools, so that the product of labor
passes out of labor’s hands. Property is
defended by violence.
Tolstoy’s Teaching
•
Economic Organization – A society
based on Love requires a distribution
based on its commandments. Two
precepts that follow from Love are
(1) “Man lives not to be served, but to
serve.”
(2) “Share what you have with the
poor; gather no riches.”
Tolstoy’s Teaching
•
Transition – Self-reform upon the
basis of Love; change one’s life to
conform with Love, and spread the
truth by word and deed.