anarchism

=anarchism=

Greek: anarkos: "without rulers"

Anarchy is not (necessarily) anomie: "without rules."

The "nomos" or rules of anarchism are of course subject to serious debate. Any approach to the subject will have to confront a variety of difficult and complex questions. Are anarchist(ic) ethics utilitarian or deontological, or something else?

Some anarchist(ic) thinkers seem to invoke a sort of theonomy: an implicitly pantheistic notion of "natural law" contrasted with, as Emma Goldman's put it in her famous definition of anarchism, "man-made law."

Chomsky's definition: not a "doctrine" ("no 'catechism'"), no one 'owns' the term "a tendency in human thought and action" challenge the legitimacy of power and coercion

what it does, by any other name

voluntarism? mutualism federalism...

(mis)understanding anarchism
The first, and perhaps least important or interesting, difficulty is simply the matter of anarchism's lousy reputation.

Describing research into anarchism consistently involves repeated introductory explanations, disavowals and demystifications, which can become very tiresome. For people interested in anarchist ideas, this obligatory routine of preempting objections may be the first and most frequent exercise in the development (and depletion) of patience — a virtue that many anarchists, including myself, have extolled (if not exemplified).

However, even after certain parameters have been set, and anarchism has been acquitted of those intellectual crimes of which it customarily stands accused, further and deeper difficulties immediately arise.

If anarchism involves questioning and challenging the legitimacy of authority, by what process does any one make confident (or, dare i say, 'authoritative') assertions? How does one practice a sufficiently rigorous ongoing self-critical assessment while also pursuing any positive agenda, however modest? Does anarchism undercut itself (or its advocates) to a point where nothing can be known, said or done?

Some particularly mystic anarchists may indeed wish to claim that there can be no legitimacy of any sort, even provisionally, and that therefore nothing can be (un)justified. I find this type of argument repugnant and also inconsistent with other important aspects of anarchism. Robert Paul Wolff, author of a thorough philosophical "defense" of anarchism in which he claims that there cannot be a legitimate state, argues that this does not mean that there is no reason to obey the law. Wolff simply asserts that whether an act is against the law or not has nothing whatsoever to do with its moral status; however, there may be compelling practical reasons for obeying the law (eg: to avoid punishment).

Adoption of an "antinomian" stance is irreconcilable with anarchism's fundamental pro-sociality.

However, as Collis notes, "anti-nomian" is an epithet that has been applied many times to dissenters and anyone who disobeys, and may therefore, in some contexts at least, be seen rather in a positive light and as analogous to the frequent use of "anarchist" as a dismissive insult — a practice that was well established //prior// to Proudhon's defiant, voluntary adoption of "anarchist" as a self-identied political orientation.

So, as always, the ambiguity of "isms" warrants caution: while i wish to distance anarchism from antinomianism in order to elucidate a distinction between rules (nomos) and rulers (arkos), the frequent (if not ubiquitous) conflation of these — by both their advocates and detractors — necessitates a nuanced reading of the terms.

In some cases, a stance labeled "antinomian" (when the term is applied by those //defending// a law, to make an accusation against those rejecting or defying it: to imply that abandonment of a particular law is equal to having abandoned any and all morality), might be an expression of anarchistic resistance to authoritarianism. However, just as the critique of moral relativism demonstrates, an absolutistic antinomianism would not merely be incompatible with anarchism, but also with any even provisional theory of ethical conduct, and indeed, ultimately, even with itself.

As Thomas Kulka says of aesthetic concepts, my anarchism would assert that simply because our conceptions of morality are subject to ongoing revision, reevaluation and refinement, this does not imply that it is impossible or worthless to articulate them: this process of (re)articulation is precisely how our understanding is developed. Which is to say: anarchistic morality is bound to ongoing, open-ended processes of learning.