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anarchist rejections of the state 53
The second practical effect of the critique concerns the permissible
means of anarchist change. Here, anarchists are divided into two
camps. On the one hand stand those who argue that change can only
be won through non-violent methods. On the other are those who
contend that organized violence can only be destroyed by violence.
This division will be discussed in Chapter 4. The more immediate
issue to consider is how anarchists explain the success of government.
The answer, in large part, lies in their conceptions of authority.
authority and the state
If government describes the mechanism of the state’s rule, authority
is the principle that legitimizes the capacity to rule. According to
Bakunin:
Every logical and sincere theory of the State is essentially founded
on the principle of authority – that is to say on the … idea that the
masses, always incapable of governing themselves, must submit at
all times to the benevolent yoke of a wisdom and a justice, which
one way or another, is imposed on them from above … . 23
Anarchist conceptions of state authority centre on three ideas: that
authority is commanding, controlling and corrupting. Anarchists
tend to discuss these ideas critically, linking command to the
suspension of reason (‘private judgement’); control to the stifling of
initiative and creativity; and corruption to the inhibition of harmonious
social relations.
The first idea, that authority is incompatible with private judgement,
was at the heart of Godwin’s anarchism. It also formed the core
of Robert Paul Wolff’s essay, In Defence of Anarchism. Wolff characterized
the authority of the state as ‘the right to command’ and the
‘correlative obligation to obey the person who issues the command’.
When subject to authority individuals behave in certain ways not
because they believe them to be justified or right, but merely because
they have been commanded to do them. The exercise of authority ‘is
not a matter of doing what someone tells you to do. It is a matter of
doing what he tells you to do because he tells you to do it’. Wolff contrasted
authority with autonomy: the ‘freedom and responsibility’
that define dignified human behaviour. Autonomy allows individuals
to do what others tell them to do, but only because they have made a
judgement about the rightness of the instruction, and not because