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Introduction
Liberalism and anarchism are two influential political movements that have a great impact on political ideas of the XX century and their historical development. Interns of liberalism, once the government gets involved in one realm of activity, it can surely get involved in another. For modern liberalism, there appears to be a paradox, one ultimately pressing at the heart of the community. Liberals might disingenuously argue that neutrality in economic issues need not be achieved because these issues don’t impinge on our ability to make lifestyle choices — that is, our ability to be ourselves in conformity with the dictates of moral agency. In contrast, anarchists opposed to hierarchy in any form; anarchists have created their organizations, chief among which is the Fédération Anarchiste. With growing criticism among intellectuals of Soviet reality, anarchism spurted in popularity in the 1950s. Anarchism and liberalism are based on similar doctrines which protect human freedom and liberty but Anarchism is the only political doctrine that promotes real and unlimited freedom from political and economic constraints.
Main body
Liberalism cannot be seen as a real doctrine of human freedom because it stipulates norms and conditions for each individual. A person is limited by the state and its laws, social and economic policies, etc. Liberalism establishes state protectionism and stipulates norms for social order. Liberals merely affect the integrity of the framework that will enable us to continue relying on our agency. But privacy issues do speak to the essence of individualism, which is no less than the essence of the agency. Consequently, liberals often insist that those matters concerning personal privacy, or those matters affecting our fundamental rights — those rights that are essential for securing what Justice Cardozo referred to as “ordered liberty”– strictly adhere to principles of moral neutrality (Ong, 2006). Moreover, the distinction can find legitimacy because what one does in the marketplace will affect others, whereas what one does in privacy will not. The same potential for harm doesn’t exist in the realm of privacy as it does in the marketplace. What remains to be seen is whether this proposition is true. On matters of privacy, there would appear to be a balkanization of community, or at least that is the impression often portrayed by conservatives (Saadi-Failho and Johnston 2005). Because the government cannot make moral choices, it ought not to maintain any common standards of morality, principally because we in a liberal society cannot agree on just what those standards might be. While neutrality has had to be abandoned for liberal purposes on policies concerning material goods, it is still the ideal to be achieved when it comes to matters of conscience. Consequently, the liberal framework should tolerate a diversity of religious positions, political forms of expression, and alternative lifestyles (Aglietta, 1979).
In contrast, anarchism permits freedom in all social and economic spheres. “Today, dictionary definitions still define anarchism as the absence of government. These modern dictionary definitions of anarchism are based on the writings and actions of anarchists of history and present” (Defining Anarchism 2008). Anarchist thought unfolded in two stages: the negative (or a systematic critique of all existing modern societies, whether capitalist or communist) and the positive. Anarchism has been a powerful current in French political and cultural life ever since the Industrial Revolution. Inspired by Proudhon and Bakunin (although disciples of each deny the influence of the other), anarchists are first and foremost enemies of the state, which embodies and enforces the social relationships they detest (Krieger, 2001). The state uses coercion, creates a hierarchy whose most perfect and criminal expression is bureaucracy and crushes the individual. Hierarchy and domination are the foes wherever they exist — in economic life, the family, religion, schools, and social relationships. Anarchists thus reject capitalism (the oppression of workers by capitalists), property (which is theft), machine technology (which serves the interests of capital and stamps out individuality), factories, cities, everything that reduces people to cogs and commodities (Harvey, 2007). Anarchism was particularly attractive to workers in the early stages of industrialization when they were wrenched out of their agrarian existence and forced into factories and cities where working conditions and life were strange and painful. Most anarchists and surrealists derived satisfaction mainly from the negative, that is, criticizing existing society; they paid little attention to the positive, that is, proposing solutions. It was the anarchists primarily who found answers in their tradition — the writings of Proudhon and Bakunin and the revolutionary practice of the French and world proletariats (Ward 1991).
While anarchism is free from state interventions liberalism is a form of social control over society and the economy. It is this relationship that appears to have given liberalism in recent years an image of being bereft of value. At issue, then, is if the preservation of society requires greater reliance on community -even at the expense of some forms of individualism — just what are the limits to that community? More to the point, however, can we justify liberalism calling for the greater community in one area while allowing for greater atomism in another? (Jiggins, 1987). If neutrality must be abandoned in favor of “liberal purposes” in the material realm, why does it necessarily follow that greater neutrality will further those same purposes in the realm of privacy? When we consider a set of policies that pull in the opposite direction of those we have been considering thus far, we ultimately achieve some refinement of Mill’s harm principle as well as Locke’s exhortation to preserve society. But such a refinement involves viewing harm in terms of physical or material threats to our well-being. Ironically, these are the same arguments used by conservatives to justify fewer regulations on business. Still, it begs the question of whether a community can be held together by nothing more than the need to prevent harm to others or whether the community also requires a common bonding. At issue, ultimately, is what does it mean to talk about an inclusive community. These issues press against the very meaning of our common project (Collier and Collier 1991).
Anarchists were hardly concerned about this question because by and large, they had not the slightest interest in keeping technology afloat. The theme that underlies anarchic literature is fierce and unyielding hostility to modern society in all its aspects (Collier and Collier 1991). The generalized idea of freedom was intended not to make the workers more productive, but rather to suppress the status of the proletariat by suppressing work itself. “Never work!” was one of the most popular Situationist slogans in the May 1968 Revolt. The disappearance of the modern economy, especially its nuclear reactors and inhuman factories, will cause the anarchists and surrealists to rejoice; indeed it is their very object. Some anarchists became active in groups that advocate and encourage military desertion; others threw themselves into the campaign against nuclear energy, neatly combining hatred of modern technology and its patron state (Jiggins, 1987).
In contrast to these ideas, liberalism is based on conservative policies aimed to promote a welfare state. If, for instance, the conservative critique of welfare policy in recent years does at all speak to a larger problem in American society, it is that liberalism, which has not only guided our constitutional structure but also much of our policy and positive state, is now impoverished. If it isn’t an adequate response to liberal shortcomings, it is certainly the reaction to a policy program that has failed to achieve its desired results (Buchanan 1991). It is not impoverished because conservatives say it is. It is impoverished because liberals have failed to show the connection between their policies and the values of the community. And they couldn’t do this by relying on neutrality. Karl Popper argues that the primary enemies of the open society are those reactionaries who desire to recapture a more traditional and tribalistic one, that it is the shock of transition that sparks the rise of reactionary movements (Chomsky and McChesney 1998).
The problem is that policy cannot be framed in strict adherence to neutral procedures with total disregard for the community. Policy predicated on neutrality presupposes that it can be applied to any society with similar objective circumstances. Respective social cultures are irrelevant. It would appear to suggest a one-size-fits-all approach to policy. But communities do differ. More fundamentally, however, a policy formulated in such a way that it is disconnected from the values of the community is only bound to invite criticism (Bartell and Payne 1995). By evaluating policy by society’s underpinning philosophic foundations, the policy could be better formulated so that it is more consistent with the ideal. In the end, this might serve to narrow the gap between the liberal political philosophy, as it is grounded in the community-minded conception of the ideal, and liberal public policy aimed at furthering the public interest. Liberalism would effectively be reconstructed because policy framed in its name would be in greater harmony with community interests (Brink, 1989).
Real and unlimited freedom is possible only under anarchism. Anarchism states do not exist today, but historical examples suggest that anarchism permits freedom of choice and privacy. For instance, in the course of their struggle, the workers set out to direct the enterprise themselves, thus offering a test of workers’ control. At first, everyone attended a daily general assembly, lasting one to two hours. Policy proposals were placed before the general assembly by a committee of elected union delegates. Some militants immediately created a rival comité d’action to prevent the union delegates from acquiring too much power. The action committee had a “flexible” membership of between twenty and one hundred workers; its acknowledged leader was Jean Raguènes, the revolutionary Dominican priest. Workers were supposed to participate fully in every aspect of decision-making through a comprehensive committee system (Bookchin, 1989). There were two major committees, popularization, and production, further divided into subcommittees responsible for receiving journalists and issuing press releases, welcoming worker and tourist delegations, arranging for tours of the factory, running the restaurant, organizing entertainment, and theater in the factory, and coordinating production and sales. In addition, the general assembly did not devote itself exclusively to policy questions. During the heroic period, it sat every day for several hours, debating proposals put before it by its two executive committees (Arestis, 1992).
Conclusion
In sum, liberalism, based on state protectionism policies, does not allow freedom to flourish anarchism is the only possible regime that permits real freedom and autonomy outside the state control. The liberal policy cannot conform to the values of society unless a serious discussion of society’s values has been undertaken. Reconstructing liberalism, in the end, requires the joining together again of facts and values.
Bibliography
Defining Anarchism. 2008. Web.
Aglietta, M. 1979, Theory of Capitalist Regulation, London: New Left Books.
Arestis, Ph. 1992, The Post-Keynesian Approach to Economics: An Alternative Analysis of Economic Theory and Policy, Aldershot: Edward Elgowe.
Bookchin, Murray. 1989, Remaking Society. Montreal: Black Rose Books.
Brink, David. 1989, Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bartell E., and L. Payne, eds. 1995, Business and Democracy in Latin America. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Buchanan P. G., 1991, State, Labor, Capital. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Chomsky, N., McChesney, R.W. 1998, Profit Over People: Neoliberalism & Global Order. Seven Stories Press.
Collier R. B., and D. Collier, 1991, Shaping the Political Arena. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Harvey, D. 2007, A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press.
Jiggins, David. 1987, Needs, Values, Truth. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell.
Krieger, Murray, ed. 2001, The Aims of Representation. New York: Columbia University Press.
Saadi-Failho, A., Johnston, D. 2005, Neoliberalism: A Critical Reader. Pluto Press (UK).
Ong, A. 2006, Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty. Duke University Press.
Ward, Colin. 1991, Anarchy in Action. London: Allen & Unwin, 1973. White, Stephen. Political Theory and Postmodernism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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