The problem of organisation and relationships
It has been said that anarchism ‘owes more to conventional liberalism than some
of its adherents are willing to admit’ (Hoffman, 1995: 113). It is not only
philosophical and free-market anarchists who embody the problems of the liberal
tradition, so too do the anti-capitalist anarchists. The problem is that even when
liberalism is militantly opposed, liberal values are turned inside out – they are
inverted, but never meaningfully transcended, or moved beyond.
Marshall captures the problem in a graphic way when he criticises Bookchin and
Kropotkin for committing the naturalistic fallacy of deriving an ‘is’ from an ‘ought’.
‘There is’, he argues, ‘no logical connection to make us move from fact to value’
(1993: 620). But this is a misuse of the notion of a naturalistic fallacy. The
‘naturalistic fallacy’ should, it seems to us, refer to an erroneous belief in the
timelessness of nature and of human links with nature. It is, however, quite another
thing to argue that we cannot move from facts to value. This is a positivist (or
empiricist) dictum that arises because thinkers cannot see that facts themselves
embody relationships. Indeed, it is the relational nature of facts that gives them
their evaluative or normative content. Thus, the fact that there are many women
lawyers but few women judges tells us something about the relationship between
men and women in our society, and therefore it would be erroneous to assume that
such a fact has no ethical implications.
This argument suggests that Marshall, an enthusiastic anarchist, is still committed
to a liberal methodology, and to a liberal opposition to understanding individuals
in terms of the relationships that identify them. We see this position in anarchist
attitudes to organisation. Marshall may insist that he does not reject organisation
per se, but only authoritarian organisation. The fact remains, however, that he
accepts a philosophical standpoint that makes it impossible to see organisation as
deriving from the relational character of humans. Even anarchists like Kropotkin
and Bookchin fail to go along with the full implications of seeing humans as
relational beings. By arguing that anarchism is based upon ‘a mechanistic
explanation of all phenomena’ (Marshall, 1993: 318), Kropotkin accepts a static
view of humanity – to which (like Bakunin) he ascribes an ‘instinct’ for sociability.
His notion of the natural sciences is positivist and he appears to argue that because
humans have evolved from nature, they are simply the same as other natural beings.
The specificity of human relationships is not understood.
While Bookchin does stress that humans have a ‘second nature’ – different from
but linked to their biology and their ‘first nature’ – it is revealing that he calls his
blending of anarchism and ecology an ‘ecotopia’. He proclaims that ‘our Science is
Utopia’ without seeing that (traditionally defined) utopias ‘on their own’ are static
and ahistorical, and postulate some kind of final end of history (Marshall, 1993:
621). This emphasises the ideal at the expense of the facts and ignores the dynamic
and fluid nature of the real world. This abstract approach makes it impossible to
account for relationships and the need for organisation – not simply to achieve a
Utopia – but as an ongoing expression of human relationships.Chapter 11 Anarchism 251