Classical anarchism : the political thought of Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin 9780198277446, 019827744X

Table of contents :
INTRODUCTION
1. THREE SOURCES OF ANARCHISM
2. GODWIN
3. PROUDHON
4. BAKUNIN AND KROPOTKIN
5. THE ANARCHIST CASE
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

CLASSICAL ANARCHISM

I

CLASSICAL ANARCHISM The Political Thought of Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin

GEORGE CROWDER

CLARENDON PRESS • OXFORD 1991

Oxjiml I Jnivasily l'rcss, Walton Street, Oxjord ox2 (,DP Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Ca/cul/a Madras Karachi Petaling Jaya Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a trade mark of Oxford University Press Published in the United States by Oxford University Press, New York

© George Crowder 1991 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Crowder, George. Classical anarchism: the political thought of Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin, and Kropotkin/George Crowder. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Anarchism. 2. Anarchism-History-19th Century. I. Title. HX833.C764 1991 320.5'7-dc20 91-4208 ISBN 0-19-827744-X Typeset by Best-set Typesetter Ltd., Hong Kong Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bookcraft (Bath) Ltd. Midsomer Norton, Avon

To the memory of my parents

The liberty of man consists solely in lhis: lh,11 Ill' ohcys natural laws because he has himself' ll'l'O),:llit.!'d 1hc111 :ts such, and not because they have been extern.illy imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatever, divine or huni.rn, collective or individual. Michael Bakunin

PREFACE Commentaries on the classical anarchist thinkers of the nine­ teenth century have tended to be either chiefly historical, out­ lining the doctrines of the main exponents without subjecting these to any very close critical scrutiny, or, less often, purely critical, analysing the anarchist case largely in isolation from historical context. Although each of these approaches is legit­ imate for its own purposes, I hope to show that there is much to be gained from combining them. The balance I have settled upon tends more to the critical than the purely historical kind of study, because it seems to me that this is the area in which the existing literature is weakest. It is too often assumed that the anarchists are interesting only historically or biographically. Against that view I seek to show that they are entitled to be taken seriously as political theorists, albeit theorists whose ilrguments cannot be properly understood without due regard to intellectual context. Although my treatment of the intellectual sources of anarchism is highly selective, I have tried to produce il picture of the classical anarchists that is both critically robust and faithful to their own meaning. The book originated as a doaoral thesis submitted in Oxford in 1987. Of the many debts of gratitude I have accumulated in writing it, the oldest is to Knud Haakensson and Paul Harris, my tutors at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, who awakened my interest in anarchism. At Oxford my research was supervised in turn by R. M. Hare, Alan Ryan, David Miller, and, principally, by Jonathan Barnes. Professor Barnes oversaw the project through most of its course, giving his time unstintingly and saving me from many errors with his clear and rigorous thinking. My examiners, D. D. Raphael and Mark Philp, made many useful suggestions for improvements, and the revised version was read, in whole or in part, by Richard Bellamy, Strefan Fauble, Maria Merritt, David Miller, Mark Philp, and Alan Ritter. Professor Ritter was especially generous in his encouragement despite the differences between our respective interpretations of the anarchists. At Oxford University Press, lienry Hardy and Janet Moth were unfailingly patient and

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helpful. Financial assistance was provided by the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the British Couudl, ,,and the British Academy. My thanks are due to these, and also, for various kinds of help, to Tim Armstrong, Linda Garforth, Alice Ghent, Tim Hodgson, Kate Lilley, Corinne Meag her, and Susan Wiseman. I am grateful to the editors of Political Science for permission to use previously published material, and to Lord Abinger for permission to use material from Godwin's manu­ script diary. Responsibility for those errors and imperfections that no doubt remain in the work is mine alone. I have quoted extensively from the anarchists, since many of their texts will be unfamiliar and some are not widely available. Where possible I have referred the reader to English translations, sometimes in addition to the French reference. Where not, the translations are my own. Berkeley, 1991

G. C.

CONTENTS IN T RODUC T ION

1

1. TH R E E SO U RC E S O F ANARCH I S M

6

2. GODW IN

39

3. P ROUDHON

74

4. BA KUN IN AND K ROPO T K IN

118

5. TH E ANA RCH I S T CA S E

170

Bibliography

197

Index

205

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INTRODUCTION My aim in this study is to take anarchism seriously as political theory. Such a project must begin by confronting a threadbare but persistent prejudice: anarchists, popular opinion has it, are single-minded although intellectually vague fanatics who advocate the violent overthrow of all social order. To this it is routinely replied that neither violence nor disorder is an essential feature of anarchist theory or practice. The anarchist reputation for violence is due largely to the terrorist activity carried out in the name of anarchism during the period of 'propaganda by deed' (about 1880 to 1910), but this tendency reflected the views of only some anarchists. Others, arguably more faithful to the fundamental principles of anarchism, repudiated violence in favour of progress through education and personal moral renewal. Still less is anarchism, properly understood, to be equated with a commitment to social disorder. 'Anarchy', .in the sense in which it is the goal of anarchists, means the absence of a ruler or government, and this should be distinguished from the more common sense of 'anarchy' as the absence of order. 1 In Godwin's words, 'anarchy as it is usually understood, and a well conceived form of society without ,government are exceedingly different from each other' .2 An ordered society without coercive government: this may be taken as a working definition of anarchism. Anarchists reject ' Although anarchists have themselves sometimes used 'anarchy' to mean disorder, in that sense they are referring not to their ideal but to what they oppose. Proudhon and Bakunin, for example, speak of the 'anarchy' that characterizes political and economic conditions in existing bourgeois society: Proudhon, Systeme des contradictions economiques, ou philosophie de /a misere, 2 vols. (Paris, 1923), i. 123, The General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, trans. J. B. Robinson (London, 1923), 46 ff.; Bakunin, . (;, Ritchie, Natural Rights (London, 1 894) , 19. " A. Ritter, Anarchism: 'A Theoretical Analysis ( Cambridge, 1980), ch. I . 1 ' See G . Orwell, 'Politics vs Literature', in Inside the Whale and Other Essays ( l la rmondsworth, 1962) , 1 3 2 - 3 . 111 I agree with Ritter, however, that a demanding level of rationality is part of t he anarchist conception of freedom (although see below for the question

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Three Sources of Anarchism

Both the crude 'negative liberty' interpretation and Ritter's more sophisticated reading fail to give a satisfying account of the relation between freedom and order in anarchist thought, and they do so because they fail to give a satisfactory analysis of anarchist freedom. The defect common to both is that the ideal of freedom they attribute to the anarchists is too open -ended. C lassical anarchism is committed to untrammelled freedom, but the anarchists do not characterize the good society simply as one in which people act as they please, even if this is sanctioned by a strong rationality. Negative liberty and critical rationality do matter to the anarchists, but their thought cannot be explained in these terms alone. If it could be, there might be more justice in the allegation of disorder-unless, as on Ritter's view, one were prepared to see them as limiting freedom by public censure. Such speculations are irrelevant, however, once one has grasped cenain crucial features of the anarchist conception of freedom that have generally been overlooked. To begin with, the anarchist idea is not negative but positive. 1 1 The anarchists are most concerned to promote a freedom to act in accordance not with the empirical self but with the authentic self, with that part of my personality which identifies me most fundamentally. What meaning do they attach to the 'authentic' here? It has two elements. First, rationality. Authentic indi­ viduals are governed by a stringent, critical reason, such that they judge or act only for reasons that are 'their own' in a strong sense. (Thus far Ritter is a helpful guide, although he does not present the anarchist ideal of rationality as part of an ideal of authenticity.) Secondly (crucially omitted by Ritter), virtue. The authentic self is not only the rational but also of how 'rationality' should be interpreted in this context). It might also be argued that the notion of ·communal individuality· that Ritter attributes to lhe anarchists as their primary goal is in some respects not far from what I shall identify as their idea of the desirable freedom. '1 On the question of whether classical anarchism is more properly described as an extension of liberalism or as a species of socialism. it is more difficult to reach a straightforward conclusion. My own view is that from a historical point of view classical anarchism belongs more properly within the socialist tradition (see M. Fleming, The Anarchist Way to Socialism.· Elisee Rec/us and Nineteenth· Century European Anarchi.,m (London, 1 979); G . D. H. Cole, A History of Socialist Thought, ii (London, 1 9 54) ), but that conceptually it shares a good deal of ground with liberalism, although this should not entail its misinterpretation as a doctrine of negative liberty.

Three Sources of Anarchism

11

the moral self: that part of the personality that wills morally right action. I am free, for the anarchists, to the extent that I conscientiously govern my actions in accordance with moral rules. The good society is a realm neither of chaos nor of com­ petition nor of purely procedural reason, but a moral order in which freedom implies virtue as part of its meaning. Freedom in this sense need not be restricted on moral grounds, since it already entails obedience to moral rules by definition. I shall refer to this conception of freedom as 'moral self-direction'. The moral rules which, according to the anarchists, must be followed by the free man are not merely his own subjective inventions or projections, or even those of mankind at large. If they were, that might leave room for divergence in the judge­ ment and conduct of free men, and consequently the renewal of doubts about anarchist order. Although the classical anarchists might regard particular conventional moralities as subjective and divergent, they all hold that beyond convention there is an overarching moral law, 'immanent' (to use Proudhon's word) in the nature of things, that is objectively valid or 'true'. The anarchists subscribe (in Godwin's case only implicitly) to the ancient tradition of 'natural law'. Truly free men, by definition obedient to that law, will necessarily converge on the same universal norms. As to exactly what sort of conduct is enjoined by the moral law, the anarchists give somewhat differing, although over­ lapping, accounts, and these tend to be fairly vague. ( For reasons that will become clearer, they might reasonably argue that they are not yet in a position to be more precise . ) Godwin is an avowed utilitarian who commends the pleasures of benevolence, while Proudhon rejects uncompensated assistance in favour of strict reciprocity. Both give a central place in the pictures they draw of the good society to images of reason controlling the passions, and to aspects of self-sufficiency. Bakunin and Kropotkin, on the other hand, are more open to the cultivation of the emotional side of human nature, especially the sentiments of sympathy and brotherhood. These they see as the basis for an interdependent and solidaristic community, although they differ over the criteria according to which such a community will distribute property. All four are agreed on one point, however, which is that moral self-direction

Three Sources of Anarchism

12

is itself enjoined by the moral law, indeed is the highest value of all. It might be objected that moral self-direction as thus con­ ceived contains a conceptual difficulty: its rational and moral elements may pull apart. My reason, that is, may not invariably lead me to act rightly, may even suggest the opposite. The short analytical answer to this apparent difficulty is that it depends on a failure to give proper weight to the role played here by the notion of authenticity. So far as I am 'free', reasons T find convincing, as the anarchists understand these terms, can never lead me away from substantive moral imperatives. This is because the T here is not just an empirical (albeit rational) self, but the authentic self, which is conceived as partly constituted by a commitment to right action. Classical anarchist freedom is not simply Ritter's procedural freedom plus obedience to moral rules, the two juxtaposed, but the freedom of an authentic self in which reason and moral will are fused or in harmony. Reason, so far as it is authentic, will necessarily lead to right action. To understand this more clearly requires some appreciation of the historical dimension of the idea of moral self-direction. Far from being peculiar to the anarchists, the notion can be traced back at least as far as the concept of 'self-mastery', the rule of the 'naturally better', that is to say, rational and right-willing, element of the personality over the 'worse', found in Plato. 1 2 There the sense o f self-mastery as 'freedom' is only latent, but it becomes explicit in the work of a long line of successors: in the Stoics and other thinkers in the natural law tradition, in Spinoza, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel. I shall call this way of thinking about freedom the 'perfectionist' tradition. According to this tradition, men are capable of achieving an authentic or perfected condition in which their nature or essence as human beings is fully realized. That authenticity or perfection consists in the full development of man's two distinctive faculties, his reason and his moral nature. The two are not merely contingently related but fused or harmonized. To be fully human is to be fully rational, which is necessarily to be virtuous. Perfected reason can only lead to the perfection of 12

Republic, 43 1 .

Three Sources of Anarchism

13

man's moral nature. Why should that be so? Underlying the perfectionist view is an assumption of ultimate harmony in the universe. Where reason is perfected it surely cannot, it is supposed, give equal sanction to two conflicting ends, since that would deny the evident nature of the universe as a rationally comprehensible whole. This, as Berlin has pointed out, is the assumption of 'the central Western tradition in ethics and politics', and its consequence is the belief 'that the ends of all rational beings must of necessity fit into a single universal, harmonious pattern'. 1 3 The human personality, which is an integral part of the universal order, must, when perfected, reflect the harmony of the universe at large. Since this per­ fection of the human personality involves the release of the authentic nature from that which is unauthentic or alien-the lower passions, ignorance, vice-it naturally suggests a con­ ception of freedom. As Berlin puts it: 'when all men have been made rational, they will obey the rational laws of their own natures, which are one and the same in them all, and so be at once wholly law-abiding and wholly free'. 1 4 This is the source of the basic anarchist conception of freedom. When the anarchists talk about the freedom they uphold as a social and political ideal, they are talking about the liberation not of an empirical, open-ended self, but of a perfected self which is in part constituted by ethical commitments sanctioned by reason. Such a view contrasts with the modern outlook introduced by thinkers like Machiavelli and Hobbes, according to which the individual's reason may well bring him into con­ llict with moral norms, since the whole notion of a human essence that mirrors the harmony of a universal order has been abandoned. Rationality, on this latter view, is entirely instru­ mental and open-ended, a picture that is now, for the most part, our own. But it was not the view of the anarchists. For them, in accordance with the earlier tradition, to be truly free is to realize one's nature as a human being, to be fully rational and, there­ fore, moral. The anarchists, moreover, are heirs to the per­ fectionist tradition in the form of argument they advance for the high value they place on freedom as moral self-direction. Man is 13 14

Berlin, 'Two Concepts of Liberty', 1 54. Ibid.

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Three Sources of Anarchism

free, his true potential realized, when that part of him that expresses his full humanity-that is closest to the divine or, in the secular version, furthest removed from the non-human­ is released from bondage to his merely animal component. Freedom in thi s sense is valuable because equivalent to the perfecting of human nature; to deny such freedom is to deny man his status as a fully human being. The idea of freedom as moral self-direction finds little favour with current philosophers and social theorists, but it was wide­ spread among their counterparts of the nineteenth century. It was associated with philosophical positions as diverse as idealism and materialism, and with political ideologies of the right ( Fichte and Hegel) , of the centre (the British neo-Hegelians T. H. Green and B osanquet ) , and of the left (Marx, for whom work rather than reason or morality is definitive of human authenticity) . Uniting these disparate writers i n their commitment t o moral self-direction and cognate notions of positive freedom is their use of these concepts to criticize the ascendant doctrines and sensibility of laissez-faire liberalism. 15 The basic insight is trench­ antly expressed by Hegel. The purely negative notion of liberty as the ability to do as we please is 'mere arbitrariness', the determination of the will by 'natural impulses', an idea that reveals 'an utter immaturity of thought' since it lacks any inkling of, among other things, 'right' and 'the ethical life'. True free­ dom is obedience to duty, 'the attainment of our essence, the winning of positive freedom'. 16 The freedom promised and, at least for some, delivered by the laissez-faire system is for Hegel and like-minded theorists not true freedom but mere 'licence', the enslavement of man by his lower, animal nature. The free­ dom worthy of humanity could only be created by a different social order-or at least, in the case of the B ritish neo- Hegelians, by the energetic amelioration of the existing order. 15 This is by no means true of every proponent of positive liberty, as shown by the example of J. S. Mill. For the positive idea i n Mill see J. N . Gray, Mill on Liberty: A Defence (London, 1 98 3 ) ; G. W. Smith, 'Mill on Freedom', in Z. Pelczynski and J. N. Gray (eds.), Conceptions of Liberty in Political Philosophy (London, 1 984), 1 82 - 2 1 6. 16 Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox ( London, 1 9 5 2 ) , paras. 1 5, 1 49, 149A. Hegel did not reject negative liberty entirely, since he also saw the market economy as having a liberating aspect. B u t he clearly believed that the positive freedom he commended was a more complete and valuable form of liberty.

Three Sources of Anarchism

15

This is the view of the anarchists. What the dominant classes call freedom is really servitude; the prospects for true freedom depend on the complete abolition of the bourgeois order. Neither their basic conception of freedom itself nor their use of it as the focus of a radical critique of laissez-faire liberalism makes the anarchists unique among nineteenth-century thinkers. What is distinctive in their thought is that while so many nineteenth­ century positive libertarians seek the advancement of freedom through the expansion of the State-or at least, in the case of Marx, through the temporary harnessing of its power-the anarchists move in the opposite direction, toward the State's complete abolition. This raises an interesting conceptual issue. It has often been argued, most famously by B erlin, that the general tendency in positive libertarians to promote the power of the State follows somehow from the nature of the positive idea itself. 1 7 The rationale of this tendency is said to look back to Rousseau's dictum in The Social Contract that the individual who is forced to act in conformity with the General Will, which is identical with his own real will, is in effect 'forced to be free'. B erlin warns of the authoritarian implications of this. The way is opened for a blinkered or unscrupulous regime to represent its own ideals as the real will of the people, and so to j ustify oppression in the name of freedom. If this analysis were correct it would leave the anarchists in a position that is not merely unique among social critics of the nineteenth century but highly anomalous, since they would be upholding a libertarian ideology on the basis of a concept of freedom that is logically or naturally authoritarian. In fact it has been repeatedly demonstrated that the positive idea is by no means logically or naturally authoritarian. One after another of B erlin's 'negative' liberals have been shown to possess (perhaps in addition to the negative idea) a positive

17 Berlin sometimes seems to suggest that his thesis is purely historical-that it does no more than draw attention to the fact, which might have been otherwise, that the positive idea has been abused rather more than the negative: see, especially, the Introduction to Four Essays on Liberty. But he is surely saying more than this when the whole tendency of 'Two Concepts' is to link the ,illegation of historical abuse with an examination of conceptual features of positive liberty not shared by its negative counterpart.

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Three Sources of Anarchism

conception of freedom. 1 8 My argument that the anarchists succeeded in founding a coherent non-authoritarian theory on a positive conception of freedom is therefore not as surprising as it might have been some years ago, although Berlin's influence in this area is still remarkably resilient. My further claim that the success of the anarchist argument in this connection implies the need to revise Berlin's thesis can also be seen as extending an argument the broad pattern of which is already familiar. What will be less familiar is the anarchists' largely successful use of positive freedom as the basis for a theory that is not merely liberal but thoroughly libertarian, involving not merely the limitation of government power but its wholesale rejection. The anarchist case also has its limits, however, and I shall try to indicate some of these by focusing on what remains of value in Berlin. To summarize : the widespread assumption that classical anarchist thought is founded on a negative or open-ended con­ ception of freedom is false and leads to a di�tortion of the anarchists' views, especially on the crucial question of social order. Rather, the anarchist idea is positive, more precisely 'perfectionist' : the idea of moral self-direction. That such an idea could be the basis of a libertarian political theory suggests that the influential view of positive liberty as naturally authoritarian in tendency is mistaken.

2.

T H E A N AR C H I S T S A N D R O U S S E A U

Writing i n 1 8 5 1 , Proudhon refers t o the 'authority' of Rousseau as having 'ruled us for almost a century'. 19 The ambiguity in the word 'authority' here points to a significant ambivalence. For Proudhon, and for the classical anarchist tradition as a whole, Rousseau is both authoritative and authoritarian, both starting 18 For positive liberty in Mill see above, r1. 1 5. The case of Locke is conceded by Berlin himself: 'Two Concepts', 1 47; see also J. Tully, 'Locke on Liberty', i n Pelczynski and Gray, Conceptions of Liberry, 5 7- 82. Constant i s also a posirive libertarian: see S. Holmes, Benjamin Constant and the Making of Modern Liberalism (New Haven, 1 984) . 19 General Idea of the Revolution, 120- 1 (trans. A. Noland, in 'Proudhon and Rousseau', Journal of the History of Ideas 28 ( 1 967), 3 3 - 54, at 36-7).

Three Sources of Anarchism

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point and adversary. Proudhon is inclined to emphasize the negative view, at times exhibiting a near-hysterical hatred of Rousseau : 'Never did a man unite to such a degree intellectual pride, aridity of soul, baseness of tastes, depravity of habits, ingratitude of heart: never did the eloquence of passion, the pretension of sensitiveness, the effrontery of paradox arouse such a fever of infatuation. ' 20 Yet, elsewhere he calls Rousseau a 'great innovator' and 'the apostle of liberty and equality'. 2 1 Rousseau is an ambiguous figure for the other anarchists, too. Godwin, for example, although starting from a more sympathetic perspective, feels obliged to admit reservations. 'Rousseau,' he writes, 'notwithstanding his great genius, was full of weakness and prejudice.' 22 The question of the precise relation between the anarchists and Rousseau is therefore a complicated one. 2 3 He is a figure of unique significance for the origins of anarchist thought, but it is difficult to capture concisely j ust what that significance is. Godwin and Proudhon in particular are vividly aware of him, engaging explicitly with his work in many places. This engage­ ment amounts sometimes to positive influence, sometimes to negative reaction; the former tends to predominate in Godwin, 20

Ibid. Carnets, ed. P. Haubtmann (Paris, 1960), no. 8, 26 Oct. 1 850, cited by Noland, 'Proudhon and Rousseau', 3 5 ; What is Property? ( Second Memoir), trans. ll. Tucker (New York, 1970), 391 . 22 Enquiry concerning Political Justice, and its influence on Morals and Happiness, lrd edn., ed. I. Kramnick (Harmundsworth, 1976), v. xv. 497 note. 2 3 The literature occasionally refers to affinities between aspects of Rousseau ,ind of anarchism, and to the influence of the former on the latter, but these rnnnections have never to my knowledge been pursued very fully. In some l',1ses these matters receive no more than a passing mention: see, e.g., A. Carter, /11e Political Theory of Anarchism (London, 197 1 ), l ; D. Guerin, Anarchism, trans. M. Klopper (New York, 1970), p. xi; J. Plamenatz, The English Utilitarians, 2nd 1·dn. ( Oxford, 1958), 90. In others there are brief references to the presence In the anarchists of various Rousseauian themes, including: man's natural f!Oodness and perfectibility, 'dependence', the opposition between 'nature' ,111d repressive civilized convention (especially in education), the rejection ol' Lhe liberal social contract, opposition to the 'overgrown' State. See, e.g., C:. J. Friedrich, Tradition and Authority (London, 1972), 1 00; B. Goodwin, Using l'o/itical Ideas, 2nd edn. (Chichester, 1987), 1 2 3 - 5; J. Passmore, The Perfectibility Man (London, I 970), 1 77-9; J. Joll, The Anarchists, 2nd edn. (London, 1979), 1 5 - 16; C. Pateman, The Problem of Political Obligation (Chichester, 1 979); J. l'lamenatz, Democracy and Illusion (London, 1973), 45 - 7 . As we shall see, similar p.irallels and connections have also been noted between Rousseau and particular ,1 1rnrchists. 21

,,r

18

Three Sources of Anarchism

the latter in Proudhon. There are several points in the thought of the anarchists where some degree of influence, either positive or negative, might plausibly be suspected, although it cannot be demonstrated conclusively. And aside altogether from ques­ tions of causal influence, a comparison of the anarchists with Rousseau reveals many illuminating affinities and contrasts. Explanatory illumination rather than pure historical enquiry will, indeed, be my main concern; it is this that makes the difficult task of unravelling and assessing these connections and parallels worthwhile. The full extent of the Rousseauian con­ nection can emerge only through detailed textual comparison, and much of the evidence for this will be reserved for sub­ sequent chapters dealing with individual anarchists, in particular Godwin and Proudhon. However, the broad pattern of the argument can be sketched in advance. At its most general, Rousseau's significance for classical anarchism is tied to his embodiment, at the level of popular reputation, of certain aspects of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. Beyond the many expressions of resistance to authority contained in Western thought, it was the En­ lightenment and the Revolution that laid the foundations of the systematic social and political theory that became known as anarchism. In many ways Rousseau was not a representative Enlightenment thinker. His doubts about the value of reason and civilization, his sense of religion and community and his rejection of progress set him apart from the confidently rationalistic and cosmopolitan philosophes. On these issues the anarchists are very much closer to Rousseau's rivals than to him. He was, nevertheless, in some respects the most radical thinker of his age, and despite the peculiarities of his position he inevit­ ably became associated in the public, and to some extent the anarchist, mind with that critical, iconoclastic side of the En­ lightenment that challenged received tradition and established institutions. In particular he was identified with the spectacular culmina­ tion of this broad movement of ideas, the French Revolution. That watershed, like the man held to have inspired it, is regarded by the anarchists with mixed feelings. On the one hand 'the myth of the revolution', as James Joli calls it, provides them with a precedent for wholesale social change : for the defeat of

Three Sources of Anarchism

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24

freedom and equality. On the other hand the history of the revolution, its degeneration from popular uprising to Jacobin Terror and eventually Napoleonic dictatorship, strikes them as a tragic demonstration of how the quest for liberty and social justice can miscarry. The example of the revolution is always before them, as both inspiration and warning. The same is true of the revolutionary role of Rousseau. For Kropotkin, he is a more or less sympathetic figure in this regard, an exceptionally eloquent spokesman for equality and human rights. Equality in particular is a principle which, according to Kropotkin, Rousseau 'upheld . . . so passionately, so alluringly, so convinc­ ingly that his writings exerted a tremendous influence not only in France where the Revolution wrote on its banner "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity" but throughout Europe as well'. 2 5 Bakunin also sees Rousseau as having had a powerful effect on the Revolution, but judges this to be essentially malign. He links Rousseau with Robespierre and the perversion of the Revolution's ideals, calling him the falsest mind . . . of the last century . . . the real creator of modern reaction. To all appearances the most democratic writer of the eighteenth century, he bred within himself the pitiless despotism of the statesman. He was the prophet of the doctrinaire state, as Robespierre, his worthy and faithful disciple, tried to become its high priest. 26

Again, however, it is worth noting that Bakunin had once seen Rousseau in a very different light. In 1 843, while staying on the island of Saint Pierre where the Reveries of the Solitary Walker IIad been written, he refers to the place as 'Rousseau's island', and declares that in his faith in the eventual triumph of man­ kind over priests and tyrants he is at one with the 'immortal Rousseau'. 2 7 Joli, The Anarchists, 3 3 -4. Ethics: Origin and Development, trans. L. S. Friedland and J. R. Piroshnikoff ( New York, 1924), 195. This apparently supersedes Kropotkin's earlier view that Rousseau had only a limited role as an inspirer of the Revolution and that Mably was a more important influence: The Great French Revolution, 1 789- 1 793, trans. N. F. Dryhurst (London, 1909), 1 2. 26 God and the State (New York, 1970), 79. See also CEuvres, I. 263 for d reference to Rousseau and Robespierre as 'absolutist Jacobins'; similarly Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution, 1 2 1 - 2. 2 7 Letter to Ruge, quoted by Carr, Michael Bakunin, 1 1 7, and by A. Kelly, Mikhail Bakunin ( Oxford, 1982), 1 08. 24 25

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Three Sources of Anarchism

At the level of general historical reputation, then, Rousseau gets a mixed reception from the anarchists, corresponding to the ambivalence they feel toward the revolution with which he was associated. But what about their response to his actual writings? Here, too, the story is far from straightforward. Most of Rousseau's main works were well known to Godwin and Proudhon, while Bakunin and Kropotkin, although giving little evidence of first-hand familiarity with the Rousseauian texts, at least knew of them through the writings of others, including Proudhon. 28 Various parts of Rousseau's many-sided output might be expected to have excited the sympathy of some or all of the anarchists. La Nouvelle Heloise was among Godwin's favourite books, and both he and Proudhon would have found much to· admire in the austere morality preached by the Dis­ course on the A rts and Sciences (First Discourse) and the Letter to d'Alembert. The young Bakunin, as just seen, seems to have been attracted by the Reveries. Emile contains, in the Savoyard Priest section, an account of natural law and conscientious self­ direction that is somewhat congenial to anarchist views, while the scheme of natural education advocated in the rest of the book inspired Godwin's attempt to found a school in 1 78 1 and in some degree anticipated the proposals put forward by Bakunin and Kropotkin for 'integral education'. 29 Yet the more significant effect Rousseau had on the anarchists is owed neither to his theory of education nor his romanticism. Ironically, the two works in which his influence is at its most direct and crucial are those which the anarchists purport to dislike most intensely: The Social Contract and the Discourse on Inequality ( Second Discourse). Of all Rousseau's works The Social Contract is the least loved by the anarchists. Godwin, after dealing sympathetically with 28 Godwin's Rousseauian readings are listed below, Ch. 2, s. l. For Proudhon's see Noland. 'Proudhon and Rousseau', 37, and P. Haubtrnann, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon: sa vie et sa pensee 1809- 1 849 (Paris, 1 982), 250- 1 . The evidence concerning Bakunin and Kropotkin is sparse, but references to Rousseau are scattered throughout their writings: see below, Ch. 4, s. l . 29 Godwin, A n Account of the Seminary. etc. . . , i n Four Early Pamphlets, ed. B. R. Follin (Gainesville, Fla., 1 966). Bakunin, 'L'Instruction integrale',