and a modest redistribution of income and resources has been introduced. But these
reforms are vulnerable and can be reversed, and force employed in an increasingly
divisive way by the state. Indeed, one radical theorist has protested that were the
state to disappear overnight, ‘there would be an orgy of unlimited repression and
exploitation by capitalism’, but this comment rests upon a confusion of state and
government. It is crucial to see that many of the activities undertaken in the
name of the state are not necessarily and intrinsically statist in character (Hoffman,
1995: 123).
Anarchist attacks on the ‘welfare state’ as bureaucratic and oppressive can only
be legitimately described as anti-statistif they are able to show that the provision
of welfare and security undermines self-development and is thus part and parcel of
the state’s exercise of force. If this cannot be shown, then the provision of welfare
and security – to the extent that it is genuinely developmental – is governmental
rather than statist in character. The existence of ‘interference’ and constraint is not
in itself evidence of oppression since such attributes are inherent in all organisations
and in relationships.
Carter is right to argue that administration in itself does not require the use of
violence (1978: 324), although, of course, administrators may act in a high-handed
and undemocratic fashion and thus contribute to the alienation which causes the
use of force both by the opponents of the state, and by the state itself. Nevertheless,
we need to keep government and the state conceptually separate, since it is wrong
and counterproductive to identify government with oppression simply because it
involves pressures and sanctions of a constraining kind. Without a distinction
between state and government (see Chapter 1 on the State), it is impossible to move
beyond the state.Summary
Anarchism is often analysed as part of socialism, but anarchism is so distinctive
that it deserves treatment in its own right. Philosophical anarchists are concerned
with the autonomy of the individual as a theoretical problem, while free-market
anarchists argue the case for replacing the state with an unfettered market.
Anti-capitalist anarchists are critical of Marxism either because, like Proudhon,
they dislike collectivist solutions to the problem of inequality, or because, in the
case of anarchists like Bakunin and Kropotkin, they are unconvinced by the need
for a dictatorship of the proletariat in the transformation of capitalism into
communism. The Spanish Civil War constitutes a veritable historical laboratory in
understanding anarchism since anarchists were extremely influential during this
period and their clashes with other sections of the left, and the tactics they adopted,
are extremely instructive.
Anarchism is unable to handle the problem of violence, but it has played a
significant role in the formation of new social movements. Anarchism runs into
particular difficulty in its treatment of the problem of hierarchy and organisation.
It is weakened through its failure to distinguish between state and government, and
force and constraint.Chapter 11 Anarchism 255