A defense of anarchism

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A defense of anarchism is a major political and philosophical work by Robert Paul Wolff . It was published in 1970, is now available in the 5th edition of the English edition and in a German translation, has received many comments and is one of the most important works of anarchist political philosophy.

Theses and arguments of the work

As early as 1969 Wolff had advocated the thesis that, for conceptual reasons, no state necessarily disposes or can not dispose of de jure legitimate authority. A central argument for this thesis outlined in the first chapter of the work attempts to establish a contradiction between the virtue of man's obligation to autonomy in the roughly Kantian sense on the one hand and political authority on the other. Several definitions are decisive for the conclusiveness of the argument. The moral autonomy of the individual is defined in such a way that a person, insofar as he is autonomous, does not obey the will of another. The heteronomous claim to authority of the state is determined as an obligation of man to obey the state laws simply because they are the laws. Wolff also uses legal positivism as a conceptual basis. While other political philosophers have a political obligation, a technical term that has no direct equivalent in classical German practical philosophy) e.g. B. define as an obligation to valid laws and aimed at the promotion of just social institutions, Wolff defines this term without any normative clause as an obligation to the law only because it is the law whether or not there are assumptions about the moral justifiability of the law . Wolff argues that the concept of an authority de jure is a normative concept and must be deduced from a priori arguments. Such a deduction fails because any such attempt remains incompatible with the basic moral concept of individual autonomy.

The second chapter of the work discusses the usual solutions for conflicts between individual autonomy and state power, the establishment of state laws by the citizens themselves. However, a unanimous direct democracy is ruled out as a real possibility as soon as a society becomes sufficiently complex. Wolff first attacks the two extremes among the possibilities of realizing a representative democracy:

  1. direct legislation
  2. irrevocable election of a sovereign ("king")

Wolff argues with theoretical reasons and examples that (2) give up autonomy and (1) is not feasible even in situations of minimal complexity. However, direct participation can be achieved through direct referenda via voting machines in every household. In the case of a democracy following a majority, the autonomy of the minorities is hardly respected. Wolff discusses v. a. the justification for this neglect discussed by Rousseau : the will of the majority could be identified with the general will to achieve what is good for all, and the desire for certain means is often mistakenly confused by individuals with the desire for what is ultimately considered to be Purpose is wanted. Even if the majority wanted to achieve this goal, there was no guarantee that they would actually achieve it. Wolff's final diagnosis is that a government does indeed have a moral right to rule if it is based on a unanimous promise of obedience by the citizens, but that there is no moral reason for such a promise to be found. The democratic theories leave the conflict between autonomy and authority unsolved, which is due to the need to choose between the two alternatives; but since moral autonomy cannot be given up, all governments must be regarded as illegitimate; Their instructions are to be checked in each individual case before they are followed if necessary.

The third and last chapter of the work tries to show that functioning social coexistence is possible even without a state authority and discusses various conditions that could favor this, such as the military based on voluntary engagement and economic decentralization.

Reception and discussion of the work

Harry Frankfurt pointed out that Wolff's argument contained an apparent contradiction. Because Wolff also advocates the thesis that every contractually established democracy is legitimized, since it is based on the promise of the citizens themselves to follow the instructions of the state. Frankfurt, who also considers various conceptual definitions and individual considerations implausible, explains this contradiction to the otherwise held thesis of a conceptual contradiction between heteronomous state and autonomous individual authority with the implication of the necessary illegitimacy of every state authority by confusing two questions:

  1. Are there conditions under which an authority de jure is legitimate?
  2. Is it morally justified to create these conditions?

Wolff is led by his considerations to a negative of (2). However, he did not offer enough justification to also deny (1). This sometimes leaves Wolff leeway to take the plausible, but quite trivial position that in the case of promises made in a contract, legitimate authority can exist. Ultimately, therefore, Wolff would not deny the possibility of a direct democratic state at all, but only defend a posterioric anarchism, i.e. the position that the authority of the actually existing states is not legitimized, but that this is not necessarily the case; a priori anarchism, on the other hand, is obliged to the fact that something in the concept or essence of a state per se implies that in principle no state can be legitimate.

Rex Martin also finds in Wolff's thesis that there can be no state that has the right to issue binding instructions to its citizens, it is unclear whether “can” is meant conceptually or factually. Instead of diagnosing a logical contradiction like Frankfurt, Martin suggests the benevolent reading that it is factually impossible, or at least very difficult, to meet the truth conditions that would be necessary in order to ascribe de jure authority. Even if Wolff z. For example, to speak of the concept of a de jure legitimized state being empty (“vacuous”), it would have to be disambiguated between conceptually empty and without any instance. And the fact that Wolff speaks of a “genuine incompatibility” of authority and autonomy is difficult to understand and can also be explained in such a way that they in fact never or hardly go together. If Wolff were obliged to regard de jure legitimacy as contradicting itself, it would have been pointless to distinguish between authority de jure and de facto in general. To explain Wollf's argument, Martin interpolates that an anarchist theory presupposes that there is an analytical relationship between the authority of a state and the strict (heteronomous) obligation of its citizens. Only on the basis of this analytical relationship between authority and (heteronomous) obligation can one understand why Wolff attacks not (only) the latter, but the former. Analyzed in this way, Wolff's position can be identified with an attempt to reduce the concept of political obligation to external reasons. This requires the following terminological distinction:

  1. A political obligation is intrinsic if it only requires conditions (features) that belong to the theory of the political system itself. For example: being a good citizen in a state that generates rights implies a strict obligation to follow the laws that limit these rights.
  2. A political obligation is extrinsic if it requires conditions (features) that are outside the political system. For example: Divine command, oath or promise or a utilitarian principle.

For Wolff, only the moral and rational autonomy of the individual is such an extrinsic foundation. In exactly this sense, according to Wolff's position, there is now an incompatibility between autonomy and obligation (towards state laws), because the latter implies intrinsic conditions that, according to Wolff's position, cannot exist in principle. Martin himself considers it necessary to analyze in individual cases whether a theoretical system of political concepts intrinsically contains a political obligation; most systems so explicit would probably not imply a strict obligation to obey laws simply because they are valid laws. Wolff's argumentative strategy of only discussing extrinsic conditions is unassailable, but simplifying and inviting to reply. Wolff's attack on state authority is only plausible if there is an analytical relationship between authority and obligation. A sentence like “This government has authority, but the citizens are not obliged to obey every single one of its laws” would then have to be self-contradicting, which is implausible. The reason for this is that authority is also compatible with weaker claims than strict obligations. The concepts of the authority of the state and the obligation of the citizens, as Wolff analyzes them, are also not mutually implicit. As a consequence, it is not possible to show the concept of political authority de jure as inconsistent or to get rid of it by perforating the concept of political obligation; Other argumentative strategies remained unaffected for the anarchist.

In a detailed analysis, D. Sobers rejected a single argument by Wolff, which assumes that a democratic government can allow contradicting preferences of the citizens to exist. The argument that discusses a prioritization of three options is based on ambiguities that have to do with the fact that it is not explicitly stated when which options are considered.

Karl Graf Ballestrem has noted that Wolff's reference to Kant's concept of autonomy goes far beyond the definition given in this context; for Kant and several other classics of practical philosophy it is evident that neither the autonomy of the individual nor the authority of the state are absolute in the sense that they have predominance in all areas of life and under all circumstances. The fact that the human conscience has to examine state instructions in the event of a conflict does not imply negating state legitimacy a priori, but rather specifies a principle of how a solution is found in the event of a conflict.

According to MR Dillon's position, the ideal of a state of shared convictions and actions developed in the third chapter is nowhere connected to the idea of ​​a state outlined at the beginning as merely giving orders.

Jeffrey H. Reiman published a replica of more than 100 pages in 1972, shortly after the publication of Wolff's work. According to Reiman, the attempt to identify moral and political authority is already a failure, because the very concept of moral authority, i.e. an authority to issue morally binding instructions, is inherently contradictory. A discussion of the compatibility of moral authority and moral autonomy is therefore a pseudo-problem from the outset. Rex Martin objects to Reiman that he is sitting on a misinterpretation by Wolff. Reiman falsely assumes that Wolff is concerned with whether governments can create moral obligations out of nowhere. In fact, Wolff is concerned that we are not morally obliged to obey laws as such. Martin diagnoses the difference between Reiman and Wolff in the fact that, according to Wolff, all moral duties are governed by strict norms, while for Reiman, as a utilitarian , not even promises come into question as morally binding. In an addendum to his work published in 1976, Wolff himself replicated in detail to Reiman. In conclusion, he argues that even a treaty leaves no room for autonomy. In a statement published in 1978, Reiman sees this addition as a shift in the argumentative basis; this is now an extreme political nominalism , which implies that a "state" does not actually exist.

In his somewhat later work on Kant's Foundation for the Metaphysics of Morals , Wolff advocates a different ethical theory, which necessitates a modification of his earlier argumentation for anarchism. JP Sterba tried to show that this modification was even less suitable to support the anarchist theory intended by Wolff. The anarchist not only needs, as Wolff is now defending, consistency as a basis for argumentation, but also human freedom as the highest value; namely, it is also consistent to be bound by a maximally absolute authority.

Thomas Martin criticizes the fact that Wolff assumes that “the state” and “the autonomous individual” are fixed sizes.

John P. Clark has characterized Wolff's major work as the work that has done most to "stop a meaningful analysis and criticism of atheism". He criticizes that for Wolff no practical consequences are explicitly implied; this - in contrast to any known anarchist position - apparent lack of practical consequences undermines any justification for anarchism based on theoretical reasons. In fact, Wolff explicitly declares that he is personally dissatisfied with his theoretical conclusions and unwilling to accept them himself.

Conservative proponents of economic anarchism such as Murray Rothbard received Wolff's work with approval, which the latter took note of with shock.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolff: On Violence, in: Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969), here 607.
  2. ↑ Wolff: In Defense of Anarchism, hereinafter briefly DA , 14.
  3. ↑ DA, 18.
  4. ^ For example, A. John Simmons: Moral Principles and Political Obligations, Princeton University Press 1979, p. 29. See the comprehensive review article Richard Dagger:  Political Obligation. In: Edward N. Zalta (Ed.): Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy .
  5. ↑ See e.g. B. Wilhelm Hennis: Political Science Treatises, Vol. 2: Political Science and Political Thinking, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2000, p. 259.
  6. ↑ DA, 41
  7. ↑ DA, 8
  8. ↑ DA, 33.
  9. ↑ DA, 34-37.
  10. ↑ DA, 56f.
  11. ↑ DA, 57f.
  12. ↑ DA, 71.
  13. ↑ DA, 80f.
  14. ^ Harry G. Frankfurt : The Anarchism of Robert Paul Wolff, in: Political Theory 1/4 (1973), 405-414.
  15. ↑ DA, 69.
  16. ↑ Frankfurt 1973, 406
  17. ↑ Simmons 1979, 20f
  18. ↑ This conclusion from the analysis of Frankfurt draws for example Peter Rinderle: The doubt of the anarchist: for a new theory of political obligation and state legitimacy, Philosophische Abhandlungen 91, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt 2005, 127.
  19. ^ Rex Martin: Wolff's Defense of Philosophical Anarchism, in: The Philosophical Quarterly 24/95 (1974), 140-149, here 141f.
  20. ↑ DA, 71
  21. ↑ Martin, 143f
  22. ↑ Martin, 144f with reference a. a. on DA, 17.72.
  23. ^ Martin, 146.
  24. ^ Martin, 147.
  25. ↑ Martin, 149.
  26. ^ David Sobers: Wolff's Logical Anarchism, in: Ethics 82/2 (1972), 173-176.
  27. ^ Karl G. Ballestrem: The Radicalism of Robert Paul Wolff. In: The Review of Politics. 34/1, 1972, pp. 16-39, here p. 33.
  28. ↑ Michael R. Dillon: The Perennial Appeal of Anarchism, in: Polity 7/2 (1974), 234-247, here 244.
  29. ↑ Jefferey H. Reiman: In defense of political philosophy, a reply to Robert Paul Wolff's In defense of anarchism, New York: Harper & Row 1972.
  30. ^ Rex Martin: In Defense of Political Philosophy: A Reply to Robert Paul Wolff's "In Defense of Anarchism" by Jeffrey H. Reiman, in: The American Political Science Review 71/4 (1977), 1650-1651.
  31. ↑ Jeffrey H. Reiman: Wolff's Latest Obituary for Political Philosophy, in: Ethics 89/1 (1978), 95-110.
  32. ^ Robert Paul Wolff: The Autonomy of Reason, New York 1973, 223.
  33. ↑ James P. Sterba: The Decline of Wolff's Anarchism, in: Journal of Value Inquiry 11/3 (1977), 213-217.
  34. ↑ Thomas Martin: Book Review: In Defense of Anarchism, in: Social Anarchism 122/27 (2000).
  35. ^ John P. Clark: What Is Anarchism ?, in: J. Roland Pennock / John W. Chapman (eds.): Anarchism (Nomos 19), New York University Press, New York 1978, 8; Ders .: The anarchist moment: reflections on culture, nature, and power, Black Rose Books, Montreal 1984, 121.
  36. ↑ DA, 72.78.

literature

Primary text
  • Robert Paul Wolff: A Defense of Anarchism . Büchse der Pandora GmbH, Wetzlar 1979, ISBN 3-88178-031-9 , German translation of In Defense of Anarchism . Harper & Row Inc., New York 1970, ISBN 0-520-21573-7 , now in 5th edition at University of California Press 1998.
Further secondary literature
  • Paul T. Menzel: Wolff's Critics: Confusing the Confusing , in: Personalist 57/3 (1976).
  • Donald Van DeVeer: Intrusions on Moral Autonomy , in: Personalist 57/3 (1976).

Web links

  • Full text of In Defense of Anarchism , with the 1976 replica to Reiman, at ditext.com