Analytical anarchism: Some conceptual foundations

Political Theory

Volumn 28, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 230-253

  Carter, Alan ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 0034395215     PISSN: 00905917     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0090591700028002005     Document Type: Review

References (40)

1. See G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defense (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1978).
2. See P. Thomas, Karl Marx and the Anarchists (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1980).
3. The principles of equality that, according to Baker, egalitarians generally wish to defend are the following: first, everyone's basic needs ought to be met. Second, everyone deserves sufficient respect for snobbery and patronizing attitudes to be unacceptable. Third, massive income differentials should not exist, and some should not be forced to spend their lives confined to unpleasant work. Undesirable tasks ought, instead, to be shared out. Fourth, power should be more equal so that those who are presently powerless have greater control over their own lives. Fifth, different treatment based on color, sex, culture, religion, or disability ought to be opposed. In Baker's opinion, egalitarians usually wish to defend these five principles. Thus, in his view, the demand for equality is not a demand for one simple thing, such as the same income for everyone. Rather, it is a demand for a number of substantive inequalities to be removed. See John Baker, Arguing for Equality (London: Verso, 1987), 4-5. However, while Baker does mention inequalities in power, which includes political power, most egalitarians have tended to focus their opposition on inequalities in economic power.
4. Moreover, it seems to me that this conception of what it is to be an "anarchist" captures all of the classical anarchist theorists, including William Godwin, Max Stirner, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, and Peter Kropotkin, as well as more recent anarchists such as Paul Goodman, Noam Chomsky, Colin Ward, Nicholas Walter, and Murray Bookchin. Furthermore, it avoids anarchists having to offer attempted defenses of seemingly indefensible views, such as feeling compelled to advocate a society without any power relations or authority whatsoever.
5. For one interpretation of several of the major anarchist theorists that stresses the central role of morality in their thought, see George Crowder, Classical Anarchism: The Political Thought of Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1991).
6. See, for example, Karl Marx, "Letter to Weydemeyer, 5 March 1852, "Selected Writings, ed. David McLellan (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1977), 341.
7. Regarding coercion: "As long as the other classes, and in particular the capitalist class, still exist, as long as the proletariat is still struggling with it (because, with the proletariat's conquest of governmental power its enemies and the old organization of society have not yet disappeared), it must use coercive means, hence governmental means." Karl Marx, "On Bakunin's Statism and Anarchy, "Selected Writings, 561. Regarding centralization, in response to Bakunin's query concerning whether the proletariat as a whole will head the government, Marx answers with the rhetorical question: "In a trade union, for example, is the executive committee composed of the whole of the union?" Ibid., 562. For one account of Marx's political approach, see Alan Carter, "The Real Politics of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "Studies in Marxism 6(1999): 1-30.
8. Regarding coercion: "As long as the other classes, and in particular the capitalist class, still exist, as long as the proletariat is still struggling with it (because, with the proletariat's conquest of governmental power its enemies and the old organization of society have not yet disappeared), it must use coercive means, hence governmental means." Karl Marx, "On Bakunin's Statism and Anarchy, "Selected Writings, 561. Regarding centralization, in response to Bakunin's query concerning whether the proletariat as a whole will head the government, Marx answers with the rhetorical question: "In a trade union, for example, is the executive committee composed of the whole of the union?" Ibid., 562. For one account of Marx's political approach, see Alan Carter, "The Real Politics of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "Studies in Marxism 6(1999): 1-30.
9. Regarding coercion: "As long as the other classes, and in particular the capitalist class, still exist, as long as the proletariat is still struggling with it (because, with the proletariat's conquest of governmental power its enemies and the old organization of society have not yet disappeared), it must use coercive means, hence governmental means." Karl Marx, "On Bakunin's Statism and Anarchy, "Selected Writings, 561. Regarding centralization, in response to Bakunin's query concerning whether the proletariat as a whole will head the government, Marx answers with the rhetorical question: "In a trade union, for example, is the executive committee composed of the whole of the union?" Ibid., 562. For one account of Marx's political approach, see Alan Carter, "The Real Politics of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "Studies in Marxism 6(1999): 1-30.
10. For an appropriate conception of "power, "see Alan Carter, "A 'Counterfactualist, ' Four-Dimensional Theory of Power, "The Heythrop Journal 33, no. 2 (April 1992): 192-203.
11. I include within the category "economic relations" the relations of control not just over production but also over exchange because, it seems to me, the common Marxist view that exploitation in capitalist societies only occurs at the point of production and only results from an employer-employee relationship misses what is perhaps the most important kind of exploitation in the world today - namely, that of the Third World by the advanced countries. Such exploitation can take place without the First World as a whole employing the Third World and without First World firms employing Third World workers. Exploitation can take place because the First World, having a dominant position in the world market, can effectively insist on a high price for its products and a low price for what is produced elsewhere. By the First World selling its products dear and buying Third World goods cheap, the surplus-product of the Third World is transferred to the First World. This is not exploitation of employees by employers, nor is it a case of the Third World exploiting itself. It is a case of market exploitation. For a more appropriate theory of exploitation than that employed by traditional Marxists, see John Roemer, "New Directions in the Marxian Theory of Exploitation and Class, "Analytical Marxism, ed. John Roemer (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986). On Roemer's theory, exploitation "can be accomplished, in principle, with or without any direct relationship between the exploiters and the exploited in the process of work" (ibid., 95), and his theory therefore allows us to comprehend the exploitation of the Third World by the First through "unequal exchange" (see ibid., 112).
12. I include within the category "economic relations" the relations of control not just over production but also over exchange because, it seems to me, the common Marxist view that exploitation in capitalist societies only occurs at the point of production and only results from an employer-employee relationship misses what is perhaps the most important kind of exploitation in the world today - namely, that of the Third World by the advanced countries. Such exploitation can take place without the First World as a whole employing the Third World and without First World firms employing Third World workers. Exploitation can take place because the First World, having a dominant position in the world market, can effectively insist on a high price for its products and a low price for what is produced elsewhere. By the First World selling its products dear and buying Third World goods cheap, the surplus-product of the Third World is transferred to the First World. This is not exploitation of employees by employers, nor is it a case of the Third World exploiting itself. It is a case of market exploitation. For a more appropriate theory of exploitation than that employed by traditional Marxists, see John Roemer, "New Directions in the Marxian Theory of Exploitation and Class, "Analytical Marxism, ed. John Roemer (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986). On Roemer's theory, exploitation "can be accomplished, in principle, with or without any direct relationship between the exploiters and the exploited in the process of work" (ibid., 95), and his theory therefore allows us to comprehend the exploitation of the Third World by the First through "unequal exchange" (see ibid., 112).
13. I include within the category "economic relations" the relations of control not just over production but also over exchange because, it seems to me, the common Marxist view that exploitation in capitalist societies only occurs at the point of production and only results from an employer-employee relationship misses what is perhaps the most important kind of exploitation in the world today - namely, that of the Third World by the advanced countries. Such exploitation can take place without the First World as a whole employing the Third World and without First World firms employing Third World workers. Exploitation can take place because the First World, having a dominant position in the world market, can effectively insist on a high price for its products and a low price for what is produced elsewhere. By the First World selling its products dear and buying Third World goods cheap, the surplus-product of the Third World is transferred to the First World. This is not exploitation of employees by employers, nor is it a case of the Third World exploiting itself. It is a case of market exploitation. For a more appropriate theory of exploitation than that employed by traditional Marxists, see John Roemer, "New Directions in the Marxian Theory of Exploitation and Class, "Analytical Marxism, ed. John Roemer (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986). On Roemer's theory, exploitation "can be accomplished, in principle, with or without any direct relationship between the exploiters and the exploited in the process of work" (ibid., 95), and his theory therefore allows us to comprehend the exploitation of the Third World by the First through "unequal exchange" (see ibid., 112).
14. This claim is most famously indicated in Karl Marx, "Preface to a Critique of Political Economy, "Selected Writings. See especially pp. 389-90.
15. This appears to be Marx's view in The Communist Manifesto. See, for example, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, "The Communist Manifesto, "in Marx, Selected Writings, 224.
16. G. A. Cohen, "Restricted and Inclusive Historical Materialism, "Irish Philosophical Journal 1, no. 1 (1984): 25.
17. See Frank Parkin, Marxism and Class Theory: A Bourgeois Critique (London: Tavistock, 1981), 44-73, for a pertinent Weberian theory of "social closure as exclusion."
18. On the speculative history outlined above, as states are theoretically conjectured to have originated out of exclusionary groupings formed to prey on the surplus produced by others, and as states have continued to extract such surplus for their own requirements, then states would clearly have interests different from (indeed, have certain interests against) the other groupings within their territories.
19. It can sometimes be rational for a Third World state to be complicit in the underdevelopment of its nation's economy. See Alan Carter, "The Nation-State and Underdevelopment, "Third World Quarterly 16, no. 4 (December 1995): 595-618. And for some indication of how the theory outlined here can deal with the realities of international politics in a world of unequal states, see ibid.
20. It can sometimes be rational for a Third World state to be complicit in the underdevelopment of its nation's economy. See Alan Carter, "The Nation-State and Underdevelopment, "Third World Quarterly 16, no. 4 (December 1995): 595-618. And for some indication of how the theory outlined here can deal with the realities of international politics in a world of unequal states, see ibid.
21. Note that Marx, himself, acknowledges that the state, during the period of the absolute monarchy, "helped to hasten" what he describes as "the decay of the feudal system." See Karl Marx, "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, "Selected Writings, 316.
22. The form could come, eventually, to have the appearance of being, for example, pluralist or even corporatist. Regarding the latter, for an account (drawing on the work of M. J. Smith and assuming state autonomy) of how it was functional for the British state to invite the National Farmers Union "into government" by according it "a statutory right to be consulted over agricultural policy, "thus ensuring that its relationship with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) was a privileged one, see Robert Garner, Environmental Politics (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1996), 157-60.
23. Cohen, Karl Marx's Theory of History, 134.
24. This parallels the famous disagreement in Marxist circles between Nicos Poulantzas and Ralph Miliband. See their respective contributions in Robin Blackburn, ed., Ideology in Social Science (London: Fontana, 1972).
25. See Alan Carter, "On Individualism, Collectivism and Interrelationism, "The Heythrop Journal 31, no. 1 (January 1990): 23-38.
26. John Dearlove and Peter Saunders, Introduction to British Politics: Analyzing a Capitalist Democracy (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1984), 116.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid., 125.
29. Max Weber, "Politics as a Vocation, "From Max Weber, ed. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1970), 78.
30. Ralph Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society (London: Quartet, 1973), 50. And as Patrick Dunleavy and Brendan O'Leary add, "The state is a recognizably separate institution or set of institutions, so differentiated from the rest of its society as to create identifiable public and private spheres." Patrick Dunleavy and Brendan O'Leary, Theories of the State: The Politics of Liberal Democracy (London: Macmillan, 1987), 2.
31. Ralph Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society (London: Quartet, 1973), 50. And as Patrick Dunleavy and Brendan O'Leary add, "The state is a recognizably separate institution or set of institutions, so differentiated from the rest of its society as to create identifiable public and private spheres." Patrick Dunleavy and Brendan O'Leary, Theories of the State: The Politics of Liberal Democracy (London: Macmillan, 1987), 2.
32. Given that the state comprises various institutions, then there will be conflicts of interests between them. In fact, the institutions themselves may well contain fairly severe internal fractures. Hence, the state should never be regarded as monolithic or homogeneous. This notwithstanding, all state institutions, like virtually all state actors within them, are at least united in having an interest in the preservation of the state.
33. Cohen, Karl Marx's Theory of History, 162.
34. See Jon Elster, Making Sense of Marx (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 17.
35. See Frederick Engels, Anti-Dühring, Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1976), 363.
36. V. I. Lenin, The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1970), 6.
37. Moreover, as Bakunin so prophetically writes, "It is clear why the dictatorial revolutionists, who aim to overthrow the existing powers and social structures in order to erect upon their ruins their own dictatorship, never are or will be the enemies of government, but, on the contrary, always will be the most ardent promoters of the government idea. They are the enemies only of contemporary governments, because they wish to replace them. They are the enemies of the present governmental structure, because it excludes the possibility of their dictatorship. At the same time they are the most devoted friends of governmental power. For if the revolution destroyed this power by actually freeing the masses, it would deprive this pseudo-revolutionary minority of any hope to harness the masses in order to make them the beneficiaries of their own government policy." Michael Bakunin, Bakunin on Anarchy, ed. Sam Dolgoff (London: Allen & Unwin, 1973), 329.
38. There are, of course, numerous objections that could be leveled against the State-Primacy Theory, but, it seems to me, the theory possesses the resources to deal with them. Lack of space militates against a full response to the objections that might be raised, so I shall confine myself to some brief remarks in reply to the most obvious of them. (1) The events of 1917 in Eastern Europe might corroborate the State-Primacy Theory, but those of 1989 do not. To the contrary, whereas a state-planned economy might have been thought in 1917 to provide a greater revenue to the state, by the 1980s it was clear that the Russian economy could not compete with that of the United States, and hence the former Soviet Union could not continue to compete militarily because it lacked the required revenue. It was therefore rational for the Russian state to support a move to a capitalist economy that offered the prospect of greater revenue. (2) Explanatory primacy cannot be accorded to the state because it is the instrument of capitalists who can withdraw their capital and hold the state to ransom. But, in response, capitalists can only retain or withdraw their capital on the state's sufferance. States have nationalized private capital and have imposed currency restrictions. Moreover, capital, in the form of money, can be moved rapidly from one country to another, but what it is especially useful for acquiring cannot be. Certain productive forces that are ultimately essential for increasing capital - fields and factories - are immobile. (3) States have their policies dictated to them by global financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). But, in response, the behavior of such institutions is determined by states. They impose terms and conditions on weaker states that are in the interests of stronger ones, usually by increasing the surplus available to the more powerful states. See, for example, Alan Carter, "State-Primacy and Third World Debt, "The Heythrop Journal 38, no. 3 (July 1997): 300-14.
39. For further arguments on the superiority of the State-Primacy Theory over Cohen's Marxist theory, see Alan Carter, "Fettering, Development and Revolution, "The Heythrop Journal 39, no. 2 (April 1998): 170-88. Moreover, the State-Primacy Theory also possesses the resources to ground a radical environmental political theory. See Alan Carter, "Towards a Green Political Theory, "The Politics of Nature: Explorations in Green Political Theory, ed. Andrew Dobson and Paul Lucardie (London: Routledge, 1993).
40. For further arguments on the superiority of the State-Primacy Theory over Cohen's Marxist theory, see Alan Carter, "Fettering, Development and Revolution, "The Heythrop Journal 39, no. 2 (April 1998): 170-88. Moreover, the State-Primacy Theory also possesses the resources to ground a radical environmental political theory. See Alan Carter, "Towards a Green Political Theory, "The Politics of Nature: Explorations in Green Political Theory, ed. Andrew Dobson and Paul Lucardie (London: Routledge, 1993).