IDEOLOGIES - Anarchism Flashcards
What are the 5 key principles of Anarchism?
- Rejection of the state
- Liberty
- Anarchy is Order
- Economic Freedom
- Utopian
What are the 2 sects of anarchism and their parts?
Collectivist anarchism: Anarcho-communism, mutualism, and Anarcho-syndicalist
Individualist anarchism: Egoism and Anarcho-capitalist
Name the 5 key anarchist key thinkers and their sect?
- Max Stirner (Egoism)
- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (Mutualist)
- Mikhail Bakunin (Anarcho-syndicalist)
- Peter Kropotkin (Anarcho-communist)
- Emma Goldman (Anarcho-capitalist)
(ALL) What did Faure define anarchism as?
“The negation of the principle of authority.”
- Faure, Enyclopedia Anarchiste
(ALL) What is the wider case against authority and what is it based on?
It damages liberty; the idea of authority is based on the alleged right of one to have power over another.
(ALL) How is authority damaging for all involved?
Those that are subject to authority have their essential human nature (freedom) suppressed; those that have authority gain an appetite for it and are equally damaged.
(ALL) What did Emma Goldman (I) call the state?
a ‘cold monster’ which relies on the threat of violence to control people
- A speech to the International Working Men’s Association
(ALL) What did Emma Goldman (I) define anarchism as?
‘The theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.’
- Mother Earth Volume IX
(ALL) According to Proudhon (C), what is it ‘to be governed’? [QUOTE]
‘To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated, regimented, closed in, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled assessed, evaluated, censored, commanded; all by creatures with neither the right, nor the wisdom, nor the virtue.’
- The General Idea of Revolution
(ALL) According to Proudhon (C), what four criteria does the state fulfill?
- It is a sovereign body with absolute authority over citizens
- It is compulsory as citizens have no realistic, way of leaving the ‘social contract’.
- It is coercive, all laws must be obeyed because they are backed up by threat of punsihment
- It is exploitative, robbing indiviuals of their liberty and property for its members’ gains.
(ALL) Who added to Proudhon’s four, and what is their fifth criteria for the state?
Bourne argued that the state is destructive and called war ‘the health of the state’ as people are required to fight, kill, and die for their country.
(ALL) Aside from the state, what authority do anarchists largely take issue with, and why?
Religion, specifically the Church, is negative for aarchists as it ‘God’ is seen as the ultimate unquestionable authority, commanding people with the threat of punishment and power that is allegedly devolved to religious leaders and monarchs.
(ALL) Bakunin (C) quote about the Church:
‘The abolition of the Church and the state must be the first and indispensable condition of true liberation in society.’
- The Paris Commune
(ALL) What was Stirner’s (I) issue with religion?
It seeks to impose a set of moral principles onto liberated indivuals, requring conformity to standards controlled by religious authorities.
(ALL) What does liberty mean to anarchists?
- Being genuinly free to pursue and explore one’s choices to the full, with freedom from the state and Church as a byproduct, and any hierarchies imposed.
(ALL) Stirner (I) quote about liberty:
‘I am free in no state’
- The Ego and Its Own
(ALL) Why don’t anarchists believe we need a state?
Humans are self-governing, and in fact, the state restricts this by corrupting us and minimizes our liberty.
(ALL) What is the difference between state order and natural order?
State order is fiction, order under the state is the product of exploitation and corruption; natural order is the resulting self-governance post-state.
(IA) For individualists, what is human nature and how does that affect their idea of liberty?
Humans are rational but self-reliant so liberty is the ability to make choices for oneself and explore one’s individuality, free from the state and wider social obligation but individuals can still associate, now freely rather than coerced.
(IA) Stirner quote about liberty:
‘I am my own only when i am master of myself, instead of being mastered… by anything else.’
- The Ego and Its Own
(CA) For collectivists, what is human nature and how does that affect their idea of liberty?
Human nature is rational but social and based on altruism so liberty is a system without the exploitation of the state or the capitalist system which discourages cooperation.
(ALL) Which anarchist turned ‘Social Contract’ theory on its head, and how?
Godwin, unlike social contract theory, argued that people are rational, guided by universal moral principles, and have a natural inclination to harmony; it is the state that corrupts us and creates injustice.
(ALL) How did Proudhon argue that people have a natural inclination to harmony?
‘Liberty is the mother, not the daughter, of order.’
- Solution of the Social Problem
(ALL) What are the two ways anarchists explain how order arises and is maintained without a state?
- Considering human potential as rational and inclined to order, whether through cooperation or independent human reason
- Belief in post-state institutions that will enhance order without a state, such as common ownership or a free market
(ALL) Why don’t people believe Anarchists ideas about liberty? Give a quote.
The state serves the ruling class so it is good for them to perpetuate the idea that the state is necessary.
- Berkman: ‘Maybe I can show you that we can be decent and live as decent folks without growing wings.’
(ALL) What happens after we remove the state?
There will be a period of instability before rationale and self-preservation kicks in and we figure out it’s unsustainable and become a peaceful ordered society.
(ALL) What is the issue with the current economic system?
The state has entrenched a corrupt economic system that embeds advantage and privelige, free individuals have no need for the state and are hurt by its involvement.
(ALL) What is the guiding principle behind what anarchists think the utopian economic model should be?
There is no compulsion, an economic model should be chosen and constructed based on the wants and needs of communities or groups, as such they agree with a wide range of possibilities from communism to the free-market.
(C) How did Bakunin tie capitalism and the state together?
‘Political power and wealth are inseperable.’
(ALL) What three groups did Bakunin argue exist in developed society?
- An exploited majority
- A both exploited and exploiting minority
- ‘The supreme governing authority’, a small minority of ‘exploiters and oppressors pure and simple’
What Proudhon quote links to economic exploitation, and how?
‘Propert is theft’
- Property is accumulated by the priveliged to exploit others and gain an income off of their ownership rather than efforts.
(ALL) Why do both sects of anarchists dislike any economic system backed by the state?
- CAs believe state intervention exists to prop up the failing exploitative system
- Anarcho-capitalists argue that state intervention distorts the competitive market and inneffectively allocates goods.
(ALL) What did Stirner describe the capitalist system as?
‘Labour that amounts to the same thing as slavery’
- The Ego and Its Own
(ALL) Why is anarchism seen as utopian?
It is the belief that people do not require an authority to act in a harmonious cooperative manner and form a successful, sustainable society ; CAs believe that people will naturally form community, IAs believe human reason will keep us going.
(ALL) What stands in the way of achieving utopia?
The state: it corrupts by isolating us from one another and creating dependence on it so we cannot see it’s unnecessity and exploitation and abolish it together.
(ALL) How did Goldman rebuke negative accusations of utopianism?
‘Every daring attempt to make a great change in existinig conditions… has been labelled utopianism.’
- Socialism: Caught in the Political Trap
(ALL) How did Kropotkin rebuuke accusations of utopianism?
Kropotkin based his ideas in the study of evolution, showing taht species that work together survive: cooperation is natural, not utopian.
(CA) Outline the beliefs of collectivist anarchists on human nature.
People are naturally cooperative and sociable and all have a potential for goodness that is corrupted by the exploitative state so that we see one another as competition in the capitalist system.
(CA) Bakunin quote about social solidarity and its meaning:
‘Social solidarity is the first human law; freedom is the second law.’
- The Program of the International Society of Revolution
- People have no need to be regulated if they recognise our common humanity.
(CA) For Anarcho-communists, how does belief in social solidarity lead to collectivisation?
People work together to produce something like food or clothing; as such, the wealth produced should also be owned in common as well as the means of production.
