Ideal theory has been extensively contested on the grounds that it is ideology: namely, that it performs the distorting social role of reifying and enforcing unjust features of the status quo. Indeed, a growing number of philosophers adopt a nonideal methodology—which dispenses with ideal theory—because of this ideology critique. I argue, however, that such philosophers are confused about the ultimate dialectical upshot of this critique even if it succeeds. I do so by constructing a parallel—equally plausible—ideology critique of nonideal methodology; (...) specifically, I argue that capitalist and managerial social attitudes have commodified people’s conception of justice and induced suspicion of ideal theory, which is not construed as having direct practical value. Consequently, nonideal methodology performs the distorting role of reifying and enforcing the hegemonies of capitalism and managerialism. Ideal theory and nonideal methodology are, therefore, in symmetrically bad positions. (shrink)

I defend affirmative action on the ground that it increases certain people’s ability to exercise their basic liberties, rather than because it rectifies injustice in the narrow context of educational admission procedures. I present this justification using a Rawlsian contractualist framework to forge a “nonideal principle of justice.” Drawing on social science, I argue that this principle supports affirmative-action policies like those in the contemporary U.S., and blocks the objection that such policies are unfair. In closing, I show how my (...) account can be used to refine some features of contemporary affirmative-action policies, and I reflect more generally on the value of nonideal principles of justice for tackling exigent topics. (shrink)

Local food is often defended on environmental grounds. However, environmental defenses of local food are flawed, and all environmental defenses are limited as they at most establish that local food is instrumentally valuable. These deficiencies motivate a different approach. By drawing on the aesthetics of engagement, a theory of environmental aesthetics, I argue that local food has an overlooked intrinsic value; it can allow people to become engaged with—and thereby aesthetically appreciate—the environment. My argument charts a comparatively neglected area of (...) aesthetics: the aesthetics of taste and smell and, more specifically, the role that these senses play in the aesthetic appreciation of the environment. (shrink)

The contemporary methodological debate about justice has centered around a dispute about the value of so-called ideal theory. I argue that justice performs a social-guiding function, which explains how people should respond to their limited and fallible abilities to realize justice institutionally. My argument helps to re-orientate the contemporary methodological debate. The obvious disagreement between many prominent supporters and skeptics of ideal theory obscures the fact that they are united by a false assumption: the practical value of justice exclusively consists (...) of its institution-guiding function. To capture the overlooked social-guiding function, a richer normative theory of justice is required; I show how such a theory can be supplied by “ideal-transitional” principles. (shrink)

People value local food for various reasons, ranging from environmental sustainability to quality and taste. As a result, it is unclear whether members of the local food movement talk about and value the same thing. And, relatedly, the scope of prominent criticisms of the local food movement is unclear: do such criticisms apply to all senses of local food, or just some? We take this unclarity as an invitation to clarify what local food is, which values are associated with local (...) food, and how consuming local food supports these values. To this end, we distinguish between six concepts of local food that are implicit in the extant umbrella term ‘local food’, each of which is associated with different values. Our non-partisan aim is to bring new clarity to debates about the value of local food. We remain neutral about whether the added clarity will ultimately help or hinder the aims of the local food movement. We also show that engineering the concept of local food has broader theoretical value, since it helps to diffuse Strawson’s challenge to the value of conceptual engineering in a novel way. (shrink)

This chapter delineates two types of ideal theory that are found in Rawls’s corpus of work. The first is ideal-method theory, which is theory constructed using idealizing assumptions that do not directly correspond with the actual world. The second is ideal-content theory, namely criteria for assessing whether something is a perfectly justice institution. The chapter provides an independent justification for both types of theory, arguing that ideal-method theory is valuable within certain parameters; for instance, the idealizing assumption of strict compliance (...) helps to clarify the distinction between distributive and retributive justice. The chapter illuminates the value of ideal-content theory by clarifying and defending Rawls’s claim that nonideal theory depends on ideal-content theory. In particular, it argues that in order to gain a systematic grasp of the more pressing problems of nonideal theory it is plausible to argue that ideal-content theory is necessary. (shrink)

We defend a scalar theory of the relationship between material scarcity and justice. As scarcity increases beyond a specified threshold, we argue that deontological egalitarian constraints should be gradually relaxed and consequentialist considerations should increasingly determine distributions. We construct this theory by taking a bottom-up approach that is guided by principles of medical triage. Armed with this theory, we consider the range of conditions under which justice applies. We argue that there are compelling reasons for thinking that justice applies under (...) a far broader range of conditions than is standardly supposed, including those that could sensibly be labelled as conditions of extreme rather than moderate scarcity. (shrink)

The Allocation Out of Sequence (AOOS) in organ transplantation involves departing from the scheduled sequence to prevent the non-recovery or nonuse of organs. In the United States this practice is...

Kropotkin's anarchism looked to a future defined by communalism. However, his understanding of this potential communal future has rarely been subject to analysis. Particularly important was his distinction between communalism and the tradition of communal experimentation in the US, which drew heavily on the ideas of Charles Fourier. Kropotkin was influenced by Fourier, but thought that attempts to found phalanstèries had been disastrous, vitiating the power of communalist propaganda. To defend the idea of a communal future, Kropotkin therefore advanced a (...) tripartite critique of the US model of utopian experimentation. The image of American utopianism he created consequently served as a useful rhetorical device, allowing him to advance a counter-image of the anarchist communal theory that lay at the heart of his political theory. (shrink)

Crises furnish opportunities for political change. This fact raises neglected normative questions. How should the various possible ways of taking advantage of crises be evaluated? And should such an evaluation be ‘special?’ Namely, should strategies that take advantage of crises, like deliberately playing on people’s fears or rushing through policy changes, be evaluated differently from when essentially the same strategies are used independent of any crisis? To clarify the terrain, we provide an analysis of the concept of taking advantage of (...) a crisis. We then set out an evaluative framework that specifies the different respects in which various strategies that take advantage of crises are pro tanto good and bad. Finally, we argue that strategies that take advantage of crises are normatively special. For they are worse across certain normative dimensions – in virtue of the additional vulnerabilities that crises induce – than essentially the same strategies used independent of any crisis. (shrink)

This chapter first provides an overview of contemporary understandings of ecological crises, including climate change, as an outcome of human activity. It then describes how psychology has been co-opted into addressing this crisis, particularly in terms of trying to understand what factors determine more ‘sustainable behaviour’. This is followed by an account of a ‘social turn’ in literature concerned with climate change mitigation and adaptation. An analysis is provided of the ways in which ‘the social’ is foregrounded in that literature. (...) Finally, more critical approaches to the intersecting social and psychological dimensions of ecological crisis are explored, and their relevance to critical social psychology considered. (shrink)

We argue that the future-like-ours argument against abortion rests on an important assumption. Namely, in the first trimester of an aborted pregnancy, there exists something that would have gone on to enjoy conscious mental states, had the abortion not occurred. To accommodate this assumption, we argue, a proponent of the future-like-ours argument must presuppose that there is ontic vagueness. We anticipate the objection that our argument achieves “too much” because it also applies mutatis mutandis to conscious humans. We respond by (...) showing that an explanation can be given for why it is wrong to kill conscious humans that is independent of the underlying metaphysics. Our response brings into focus a reason why—at least in the context of an ethical argument like the future-like-ours argument—appeal to a highly controversial metaphysics is ad hoc. Such metaphysics is not necessary to explain the wrongness of killing conscious humans, only nonconscious fetuses. (shrink)

For George Woodcock, the key to appreciating Colin Ward was first to understand the importance of Peter Kropotkin’s classic work Mutual Aid (1902). While images of the French Revolution and the Par...

ABSTRACT After the tragedies of the twentieth century, the utopian impulse was subject to searching criticism by a host of liberal intellectuals including Karl Popper, Hannah Arendt, Isaiah Berlin, and Jacob Talmon. Looking to history and political philosophy, these thinkers impugned utopianism for so frequently destroying the freedoms it appeared to pursue. Defined by its theoretical contradictions, the utopian project, rooted in the politics of the Enlightenment, bore some responsibility for the totalitarianism and genocide that had shaped their lives. As (...) this critique became liberal orthodoxy, a heretic group of anarchist thinkers challenged these conclusions. While travelling some distance with the liberal critics, for Paul Goodman, Marie Louise Berneri, and Herbert Read, the twentieth century, rather than invalidating the utopian urge made its boldness and experimentalism all the more vital. Their act of heresy was defending utopianism as a central component of their anarchist critique of the present. (shrink)

I argue that the degree to which a criminal should be punished is determined by three elements: a baseline amount that proportionally compensates the victim and an additional penalty that, first, reforms the criminal and, second, deters others from becoming unjust. My interpretation provides a solution to the interpretive puzzle that has most vexed commentators: the alleged tension between Plato's philosophical theory of punishment and the content of his penal code. I defend a two-step solution to the puzzle. First, on (...) my interpretation, because of the broad role that deterrence must play, this alleged tension is—to a degree—merely apparent. Second, the actual tension can be explained by Plato's commitment to the rule of law, given the epistemic limitations of actual people. (shrink)

Colin Ward is not necessarily a gift for the biographer. As Sophie Scott-Brown’s engaging study reminds us, one of his defining characteristics was a thoroughgoing humility, and one consequence of...

Rawls: Reticent Socialist. By EdmundsonWilliam A. ).

Centring on the defining debate between Kropotkin and Malatesta, this chapter contextualises anarchist responses to the outbreak of war in the major belligerents—Britain, France, Italy, Germany, the United States, and Russia. Drawing on the latest historical research, it examines the multifaceted reactions to the war amongst anarchists and their struggles to plot a path through the unprecedented crisis confronting them in 1914. In so doing, it demonstrates the importance of grappling with these challenges to the articulation of a distinctive anarchist (...) political identity; the importance of the war in generating fresh tactical perspectives, especially in terms of anti-militarism and anti-colonialism; and, the tactical and theoretical plurality obscured by undue focus on the Kropotkin/Malatesta debate. (shrink)

It is popularly believed that British anarchism underwent a ‘renaissance’ in the 1960s, as conventional revolutionary tactics were replaced by an ethos of permanent protest. Often associated with Colin Ward and his journal Anarchy, this tactical shift is said to have occurred due to growing awareness of Gustav Landauer's work. This article challenges these readings by focusing on Herbert Read's book Education through Art, a work motivated by Read's dissatisfaction with anarchism's association with political violence. Arguing that aesthetic education could (...) remodel social relationships in a non-hierarchical fashion, Read pioneered the reassessment of revolutionary tactics in the 1940s that is associated with the 1960s generation. His role in these debates has been ignored, but the broader political context of Read's contribution to anarchist theory has also been neglected. The reading of Read's work advanced here recovers his importance to these debates, and highlights the presence of an indigenous strand of radical thought that sought novel solutions for the problems of the age. (shrink)

In the original version of the article, the Acknowledgements section was not included.

This handbook unites leading scholars from around the world in exploring anarchism as a political ideology, from an examination of its core principles, an analysis of its history, and an assessment of its contribution to the struggles that face humanity today. Grounded in a conceptual and historical approach, each entry charts what is distinctive about the anarchist response to particular intellectual, political, cultural and social phenomena, and considers how these values have changed over time. At its heart is a sustained (...) process of conceptual definition and an extended examination of the core claims of this frequently misunderstood political tradition. It is the definitive scholarly reference work on anarchism as a political ideology, and should be a crucial text for scholars, students, and activists alike. (shrink)

This essay critically examines one of the dominant tendencies in recent theoretical discussions of anarchism, postanarchism, and argues that this tradition fails to engage sufficiently with anarchism’s history. Through an examination of late 19th-century anarchist political thought—as represented by one of its foremost exponents, Peter Kropotkin—we demonstrate the extent to which postanarchism has tended to oversimplify and misrepresent the historical tradition of anarchism. The article concludes by arguing that all political-theoretical discussions of anarchism going forward should begin with a fresh (...) appraisal of the actual content of anarchist political thought, based on a rigorous analysis of its political, social, and cultural history. (shrink)

Volume 27, Issue 3, May 2019, Page 648-650.

Anarchism is a political concept and social movement associated with future or present politico-social projects without the state. It is informed by a commitment to the autonomy of the individual and the quest for voluntary consensus. In historical overviews of anarchism, it is often presented as possessing family resemblances to political, intellectual, and cultural innovations in classical Greece, ancient China, medieval Basra and medieval Europe, Civil War England, and Revolutionary Paris. Equally anthropologists will point to ‘stateless peoples’ throughout the world (...) and human history as evidence of the deep pedigree that informs anarchist rejections of the state as an organising principle, and, indeed for most of humankind’s existence, the state did not exist. As a self-conscious ideology—as an ‘ism’—anarchism may owe its existence to the political formulations and intellectual currents that shaped Europe in the wake of the dual revolution, but it is also, crucially, a global and not merely European tradition. Anarchism’s history—its tenets, concepts, approaches, arguments, and style—was thus nurtured by global currents that spread people and ideas around the world, and its local manifestation was often shaped by domestic cultural and intellectual traditions that make anarchism an elusively protean ideology. (shrink)

This chapter outlines and critically evaluates the “new casuistry” account of Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin. It begins by explaining the core elements of casuistical analyses of this kind, such as the theoretical primacy they place on actual cases as opposed to principles. In doing so, it clarifies how the “new casuistry” differs from the method of casuistry pioneers in the Middle Ages who brought abstract and universal ethico-religious precepts to bear on particular moral situations. The chapter then outlines some (...) advantages of the method before uncovering some of its problems. In particular, problems arise from trying to separate out which cases are morally significant, and there are concerns about casuistry’s handling of the issues of indeterminacy and consensus. (shrink)

This chapter examines the “classical” roots of American pragmatism, and explains the ongoing importance understanding these roots holds for contemporary bioethics. It begins by outlining some central themes from the work of John Dewey, particularly his understanding of principles. The chapter then examines the relevant aspects of Richard Rorty’s philosophy and explains the way in which Rorty was influenced by Dewey, despite parting company with him on several important issues. Both the appeal and the limitation of these two authors’ work (...) is brought into focus, in order to prepare the way for the discussion of “freestanding” pragmatism in chapter 7. (shrink)

This chapter considers the method of reflective equilibrium, and how it has been used in the context of debates in bioethics. It uncovers the method’s origins in the work of John Rawls and explores how it came to be adopted by Beauchamp and Childress as the unifying method of bioethics. After distinguishing between narrow and wide versions of reflective equilibrium, the chapter proceeds to discuss some problems with the view. The preliminary difficulty that is raised about wide reflective equilibrium in (...) particular is that it is too comprehensive and indeterminate to be useful in bioethics. The chapter ends by outlining deeper concerns with the view, and to what extent internal morality’s conception of “coherence” possesses justificatory force. (shrink)

This chapter examines the “internal morality” approach to medicine. According to this method, a medical ethic can be derived entirely from the contemplation of medicine’s proper nature, goals, and practice. The chapter outlines the central features of the internal morality view and distinguishes between the different versions of it that have developed, such as “essentialism” and the “practical precondition account.” The chapter then gives consideration to some objections that have been leveled against the internal morality approach. The conclusion of the (...) chapter is that, rather than rejecting the method altogether, we should revise our expectations by assigning it a role that is more modest than that of its original, overly ambitious goal of solving substantive moral problems. (shrink)

This chapter is an exposition and assessment of Bernard Gert’s arguments for a conception of common morality as the keystone of ethics. It begins by outlining the moral rules, ideals, and decision procedures that Gert defines as constitutive of the content of common morality. It explains how Gert’s appeal to common morality differs from the role that it plays in the work of Beauchamp and Childress. The chapter then canvasses two objections to Gert’s position. The first raises doubts about whether (...) his description of the content of common morality is accurate, particularly given that it is _not_ supported by any rigorous empirical evidence, and the second challenges his claim that common morality does not change over time. (shrink)

This chapter explores the recent shift that has occurred in bioethics away from the pursuit of objectivity or truth. Instead, the emphasis has increasingly been on narrative ethics, an approach that argues for a view of ethics as being primarily local and contingent. The chapter begins by outlining the central features of narrative ethics, explaining both the conception of narrative as the grounds for moral principles and the connections between narrative ethics and postmodernism. The chapter then outlines some problems that (...) arise for the method of narrative ethics, such as the threat of subjectivism and the dangers of fetishizing “little narratives” at the expense of broader social understanding and critique. (shrink)

This chapter explores “freestanding” pragmatists such as Susan Wolf and Richard Posner, who see their specific conception of the pragmatic as untethered from the classical canon of American pragmatism. The chapter explains the four central features of freestanding pragmatism: contextualism, instrumentalism, eclecticism, and theory-independence. It then outlines some concerns with the approach. First, it examines whether there is anything distinctly pragmatist about the freestanding methodology. Second, it assesses the extent to which the approach is truly novel (i.e., whether it is (...) really distinct from the methodologies surveyed in the previous chapters). (shrink)

Why do we spend so much of our time passing on amusing anecdotes, making wisecracks,watching The Simpsons? In Inside Jokes, Matthew Hurley, DanielDennett, and Reginald Adams offer an evolutionary and cognitive perspective.

Most critical political movements are concerned with the internalised operations of power. But anarchists alone argue that human freedom cannot be institutionalised, or legislated from outside, which gives them a particular interest in psychology. From an anarchist point of view, the risk in using any form of psychology is being diverted from the world outside of ourselves. Still from an anarchist point of view, the risk of not engaging with psychological perspectives is to miss the prefigurative and transformative insights of (...) some psychological practice and research. A focus on the self, ‘being the change you want to see,’ and the inner work of social transformation, loom large in the anarchist vision of action. This chapter will explore the shared frontiers of psychology and anarchism with a view to identifying which aspects of psychological research and psychotherapy, including humanistic psychology, have resonated most authentically with anarchist projects. Psychological perspectives emerging from the work of radical Freudians such as Wilhelm Riech and Otto Gross, and therapeutic practices advanced by the pioneers of Gestalt Therapy have framed the experience of choice and liberation from structures and norms as therapeutic in itself, with politically significant reverberations. Also, the radical therapeutic interventions of some humanistic psychologists such as Marshall Rosenberg have specifically sought to mobilise motivation in the individual for social and political transformation. Where these critical psychological insights have focused on the development of new personal, interpersonal, and collective skills, they have had the most to offer to transformative practices in relation to political and social dilemmas addressed by anarchist movements. (shrink)

The innocent ampersand between ‘anarchism’ and ‘indigeneity’ in our title is actually an invitation to think critically and creatively about the tangled links of these two heterogeneous historical lines of thought. We are looking for resonances across these fields of thinking and acting, without insisting on correspondence or eschewing tensions. We reflect on and pluralise four key concepts: temporalities, states, laws, and sovereignties. Both anarchism and indigeneity are often discarded by dominant ways of thinking and acting because ‘their time has (...) passed’ or ‘their time will never come’. Yet, time can be imagined in the plural as competing trajectories rather than a single arc from ‘then’ to ‘now’. We rethink relations among states, nations, laws, and treaties to open possibilities for self-organising communities. We examine radical education, integral living, and prefigurative politics for their contributions to autonomous communities. By exploring a few fertile sites of encounter between anarchy and Indigeneity, we hope that sparks will fly and affinities will develop. (shrink)

Anarcha-feminism emerged as a ‘school of thought’ in late nineteenth-century Europe and America. Informed by the experience of female subjugation, anarchist women undertook a radical critique of sexual double standards and the gendered division of labour in ways that anarchist men were less inclined to recognise. In addition to describing the sociopolitical conditions from which anarcha-feminism arose, this chapter highlights the following key thinkers: Louise Michel, Charlotte Wilson, Lucía Sánchez Saornil, Lucy Parsons, Voltairine de Cleyre, and Emma Goldman. As a (...) dynamic, loosely formed network of activists who came from diverse socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds, these women held differing ideas on how to create a free society. Yet, several intersecting principles were reflected in their activism, if not explicitly through their public advocacy, then implicitly through their unconventional lifestyles: the liberating potential of individual autonomy, the necessity of sexual freedom in order to achieve autonomy, and the inseparability of women’s liberation from the larger schema of human liberation. Beyond supporting the broader efforts of the anarchist movement, anarcha-feminism offered a model of womanhood that articulated women’s sexual agency as an economic and personal imperative, which in turn provided a radical alternative to the suffrage movement and a critical framework for modern feminism. (shrink)

In this chapter, we provide a general overview of the literature on anarchism and disability. We provide an introduction to historically relevant disabled anarchists and the work of contemporary disabled scholars. Relevant disability theory frameworks are discussed, including the fluidity of disability as a category and the use of systems of power in its construction. The hierarchy justifying the medical model of disability is contrasted with the social model of disability which actively critiques systemic oppression. Similarly, the threads of organic (...) anarchism within the disability movement are explored. We outline how the dehumanisation of disabled people is incentivised by capitalism and the state, and how the dismantling of these systems risk leaving disabled people facing a collapse of their life support systems. We discuss how this fear is not without grounds given that anarchism, generally, fails to incorporate intersections of ableism in its studies. As deaf and disabled academic scholars and activists who ground their work in deaf and disability studies, we explore the ways in which research from these and other disciplines might overlap with anarchist theory and praxis. (shrink)

Anarchism has been gaining traction in archaeological theory and practice. In a field marked by quotidian anarchisms such as collective interpretation, health and safety practices of care, protection and caretaking of past materials, and a wide understanding of the diverse ways humans have constructed societies across millennia, archaeology has deep resonance with anarchism. This has in turn made archaeologists more open to models derived from anarchist thought, even as the field has grown out of violent colonialism and ethnonationalism and still (...) struggles with these legacies. In this chapter, we review the burgeoning field of anarchist archaeology, investigating perspectives on ancient history, contemporary anarchist archaeological approaches, labour practices, anarchist heritage, and the work of the Black Trowel Collective. In this, we ask: How does archaeology understand anarchism? What can anarchism bring to archaeology? What can archaeology bring to anarchism? We offer perspectives from archaeological traditions in Europe, Australia, and the United States, in a chapter written collaboratively with named authors and members of the Black Trowel Collective who remain anonymous. (shrink)

The arts have been integral to anarchism since its inception in the nineteenth century. Foundational thinkers including Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Peter Kropotkin, and Emma Goldman wrote persuasively and eloquently about the power of art as a potential tool of social criticism, revolutionary vision, and an essential component of a life free of domination. Some contemporary anarchists pick up on these themes while opening new ones: especially, the relation between art and anarchists’ quest for a life free of alienation, and the role (...) played by some popular forms of art in opening cracks in dominant structures of everyday life where anarchist values and practices can take root. They emphasise the prefigurative capacity of art: its capacity for pointing toward a better world of greater freedom and less domination, and the ways some art forms already model that world. This chapter will, first of all, summarise the arguments of foundational and contemporary anarchists while further developing some of them. Second, for purposes of illustration, it will interpret several popular art forms in terms of anarchist values of autonomy, equality, power, and direct action. Third, the chapter will argue that these art forms prefigure deeper forms of democracy than currently practised in neoliberal democracies. (shrink)

Starting as a hashtag in 2013, Black Lives Matter (BLM) is now a household name. The movement emerged as a response to the ongoing police killings of unarmed Black people in the United States, and specifically after the acquittal of the police officer who murdered Black teenager Trayvon Martin. Since then, the movement has spread internationally, with groups created and protests erupting in the name of BLM, all aiming for the universal dismantling of systemic racism. Those involved in the uprisings (...) have been branded by right-wing critics as ‘anarchists’ in an effort to undermine their actions by defining it as nothing more than frivolous destruction. BLM shares some common features with anarchism, drawing, for instance, on the politics of abolition, a belief in community action, and the aim of creating a decentralised network. However, other actions undertaken by BLM do not fit with anarchism. The movement sometimes focuses on using its actions to influence policy and elections, for example, and it mimics bureaucracy in certain decision-making structures, and appears to endorse neoliberal values in pursuing corporate brand partnership. This chapter explores where BLM fits within the radical tradition of Black anarchism. (shrink)

In most surveys of anarchism, cosmopolitanism is mentioned in reference as one of its sources in discussions of classical Greek thought, namely the Cynics and the Stoics. Whether or not one can draw such a linkage with the theory and practice of anarchism as an ideology in its various shapes and forms since the nineteenth century may be debatable. Nevertheless, the cosmopolitan currents found in the Radical Enlightenment but also in the extra-European thought and practice of the Global South and (...) in liminal encounters between Europe and the colonial Other are important influences for the formation and transmission of anarchism. Furthermore, the engagement with nationalism and patriotism by such anarchists as Rudolf Rocker and Gustav Landauer deal with cosmopolitanism in critical ways. More recently, the revival of cosmopolitan thought in critical International Relations and the practices and theorisations of the Global Justice, Occupy and Square movements link the classical anarchist tradition with New and Post Anarchist currents. This chapter will discuss these themes. (shrink)

This chapter defends the centrality of ethics to anarchist theory and practice. It starts by describing some of the main meta-ethical and normative positions associated with different constellations of anarchism and postanarchism. It then explains and argues for an anti-hierarchical virtue approach as being the most productive and consistent with the main anarchist ideological constellations (socialist anarchisms), its key classical proponents and contemporary practitioners. It demonstrates that this practice-based virtue approach is consistent with anarchism’s wider materialist philosophical commitments—including its critiques (...) of universal values—and micropolitical orientation. This chapter explores and critically evaluates post-left and postanarchist critical rejections of ethical analysis, which uses Max Stirner’s radical egoism as a basis. It goes on to argue that as these critics increasingly engage with material problems, significant areas of convergence develop between them and social anarchisms. The chapter further illustrates the pertinence of the revolutionary Aristotelian virtue approach by providing examples of anarchist practices that are rich in virtues and showing that anarchist virtue theory provides a strong basis for dealing with some standardly contentious questions, such as defending freedom of speech or supporting anti-fascist interventions against discriminatory and oppressive speech acts. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the relations between anarchism and geography following three main directions. First, I discuss the historical and material links existing between the very foundations of both geographical and anarchist thoughts, through the common work of scholars and activists who are considered as founding figures for both, such as Elisée Reclus, Peter Kropotkin and their collaborators. Importantly, this correspondence was not occasional, as early anarchist geographers elaborated notions that merged their political and scholarly spheres such as their ideas on (...) communalism, federalism and decentralisation, their commonly elaborated notion of mutual aid, their critique of maps as instruments of authoritarian education and political power and their anticolonial understanding of geography as a discipline challenging frontiers, racism and Eurocentrism by fostering worldwide fraternity. Second, I expose the plural waves of rediscovering anarchist geographers and geographies that took place since the 1970s in different countries and linguistic areas, highlighting the links between activism and scholarship that variously characterised these moods, especially the interest in anarchism that has affected international geographical scholarship in the last 15–10 years. Third, I propose further applications of anarchist-inspired geographies and geographical approaches to anarchism in political/societal current debates such as decoloniality, geographies of the pluriverse, intersectionality and spatial/social/environmental justice. I conclude arguing that the connection between anarchism and geography still offers relevant instruments to tackle these challenges. The anarchist tradition brings great insights to potentially enrich all these fields, including coherence between theory and praxis, connection between social and spatial freedom and a voluntarist drive to social transformation countering all their possible authoritarian, academic and liberal distortions. (shrink)

This chapter begins by laying out the major features of capitalism as analysed by anarchists historically, noting similarities and differences arising from the various tendencies within the libertarian milieu. Defining anarchist contributions to political economy through identification and analysis of wage labour/exploitation, private property, markets, class society, and states allows for an engagement with historical and contemporary voices within anarchism that highlights these analytical commonalities and differences. Next, the chapter examines the ideological structures and cultural mechanisms through which capitalism is (...) naturalised and defended. Finally, this chapter will outline some anarchist objections to visionary thinking in political economy and the tendency for some in the milieu to think in pluralist terms when it comes to visionary proposals. (shrink)

The intellectual history of the debate between Anarchism and Marxism has its own fascination as a story of two elaborate idea systems in perpetual and inevitable conflict. Yet, they seem to share the same theory of the state. Bakunin brought Machiavelli into the discussion and advanced, along with Jan Wacław Machajski, a critique of Social Democracy as the ideology of the Intelligentsia. Both these impulses found their way into the Marxism of the Bolsheviks. The two great idea systems both endorsed (...) the Paris Commune and for a time the revolutions of 1917. A neglected dimension in historical studies is the attitudes of the two ideologies towards the great states and the balance of power. Marxism pinned its hopes on the rise of Germany, Anarchism on the defence of France, the land of the great revolution. The war of 1914 changed all the valences, with the two ideologies pitted against all the great states. Ironically, Anarchism can be seen as playing a role in saving Russia for its later struggle against fascism. (shrink)