difficulties+in+anarchist+theory

There are many significant obstacles facing anyone who seeks to enter into a serious engagement with anarchism.

Suissa's concerns...

defining anarchism
A concession has to be made: "anarchism" cannot be comprehensively defined. For one thing, it is too complex, too multifarious and powerfully paradoxical.

"... a broad back..." Chomsky (however, whereas Chomsky declares that he is interested only in "one" variety of anarchism, i wish to assume a more pluralistic position: i am interested in several, perhaps many, varieties of anarchism, though i do also aim to challenge [if not discredit outright] some varieties as well).

This does not mean that a comprehensive definition is simply impractical or not worth attempting; it means a comprehensive definition is impossible, full stop.

However, just as Thomas Kulka says in "On the Alleged Impossibility of Defining Aesthetic Concepts" just because some definitions may need constant revision doesn't mean it is worthless to attempt to articulate them. So i will be attempting the impossible. I encourage other to do so as well.

necessary / sufficient
... There is something insidious and certainly unanarchistic about the urge to search for one particular condition that is both necessary and sufficient and can therefore be made the definitive criterion for understanding something as inevitably complex as an entire 'approach to intersubjectivity', let alone an approach that is rooted in complex and ambiguous (or "essentially contested") concepts like freedom and justice, a challenge that is common to both anarchism and liberalism (see family tree, below).

If we claim that anarchism is X, and an earnestly self-identified "anarchist" objects that it is not, then — so long as the objection is made in good faith — there can be little dispute. Unless that anarchist attempts to claim that anarchism **can only be** not-X, which is reciprocally disproven by our assertion that, for us, it //is// X. The reason anarchism can be subject to such debates, in ways that other -isms sometimes may not be, is due to anarchism's anti-authoritarian commitments. Anti-authoritarianism has certain requirements. (What a unwieldy thing a truly "authoritative" definition of anarchism would be!)

We can debate and refine forever what the //necessary// conditions of anarchy might be; but there is no real conversation to be had about what its //sufficient// conditions might be.

Anarchism rejects sufficiency, of necessity. Anarchism is necessarily insufficient, because nothing is sufficient to "achieve" anarchy, though many things are necessary.

is / ought
The helpful distinction between descriptive and prescriptive modes of speaking — between the "is" and the "ought" — can be tricky to sustain clearly in discussion of anarchism, for at least two related reasons. First, am i describing anarchism as a movement, or a theory? Second, am i describing this movement / theory as it //is//, or prescribing how (i think) it //ought// to be? All four (describing movement, describing theory; prescribing movement, prescribing theory) are possible, perhaps necessary or inevitable.

Further, there is room (especially for anarchists) to debate the "ought" of description; we can prescribe various modes of describing things. And the same is true of prescription itself. So there are actually four additional tasks presupposed by those above: a descriptive account of how description is done, and a prescription for how it ought to be done, a descriptive account of how prescription is done, and a prescription for how it ought to be.

Fortunately, it is possible, even for anarchists, for an //is// and an //ought// to be the same. Sometimes, it so happens that things //are// as they ought to be.

anarchist family tree? (Woodcock)

As Judith Suissa and Noam Chomsky explain (in their different ways) anarchism can trace one of its lines of descent to classical liberalism. This ancestral connection makes anarchism a cousin of many ideologies to which it is quite strongly opposed. However, while anarchist ideologues may seek to acknowledge only those branches of the family tree that are easy to be proud of (such as the claimed connection to Taoism), philosophically, we can't afford to ignore any relations.

Isiah Berlin's positive and negative liberty, and his conceptions of open-ended ... (see article on Israel and anti-liberalism)

John Rawls' justice as fairness (see Joseph Heath's [or was it Potter's?] explanation of what Rawls was trying to do...)

Robert Nozick [and Joseph Heath on Wilt Chamberlain] (and Anarchism/Minarchism responses; and Wolff's critique...)and Todd May's reflections

see Rothbard on Herbert Spencer, left an right...

Woodcock on Orwell's fear of anarchist intolerance and "moral dictatorship"