Anarchism, common-sense democracy
By: Metto A.
Tags: History, Freedom, Philosophy, Anarchism, Democracy

Some years ago, I attended a class of political philosophy. It had a somewhat strange name which I don’t remember. The class itself wasn’t very memorable either but one thing that stayed with me was one session when the professor asked a room of about fifty students: “Is there anyone of you who considers themselves an anarchist?”. The question was met with a cold room, me included. At that moment I thought to myself ‘law and order’ are common-sense, who in their right mind would believe in chaos and..’anarchy’? Since then I have come to believe such dichotomy does not exist and once common-sense is stripped from custom and tradition it comes to coincide with core anarchist principles.

In this short article I’d like to say a few words about common-sense democracy, what I believe is anarchism, as I understand it, and attempt to address some deliberately advanced misconceptions of it. The topic is vast and diverse and cannot be laid out in a short read, however the main corner stones of the anarchist thought strike with their simplicity and could be outlined without much effort.

Common-sense legitimacy

One attempt in political theory to track common-sense purified from traditional beliefs and prejudice (as much as it could be in a thought experiment) was the John Rawls’ Theory of justice. Regardless of whether it delivered what it aimed, what is worth noting is the method used, i.e. the attempt to track our common-sense about what we would find just and correct under some ideal conditions. And as British philosopher Derek Parfit later noted: “The main claims [of the theory] don’t have to be a theory, they are fairly straightforward”¹. I suspect all core claims of anarchism fall into the realm of the obvious. It doesn’t appear that there’s anything complicated or too elaborate in them on an abstract level.

While the issue of what and how authority comes to be legitimate is dealt with since Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, anarchism approaches the question in a somewhat different manner. If we accept that freedom and autonomy are fundamental properties of human nature, then any form of domination is illegitimate, by definition, i.e. we cannot derive any a priori justification of authority². This is a core anarchist assumption. Some philosophers have examined the moral side of the question from the perspective of subject, Robert Paul Wolff discusses that authority is not just illegitimate, but it is in fact immoral (in most cases) to surrender one’s autonomy (See Wolff, 1970, pp.12–19)

On a political level, as long as authority can provide basis for exercising itself it could be justified, not by a predefined set of rules or principles, but only through the acknowledgement of the ones who are subjected to it. And what may be considered legitimate in one place maybe seen as illegitimate in another. In this sense, legitimacy has a universal core but can take a highly relativistic form.

The search for a set of a priori conditions for a legitimate authority is misguided as any form of domination lies diametrically opposite to people’s freedom and should be considered illegitimate until proven otherwise (See Chomsky 2002).

There are different views on what would count as a proof and whether such proof can be obtained at all, but this is something that should ultimately depend upon the recognition of the people subjected to authority. This lies in the essence of democracy and it is, I think, nothing over and above common sense.

The force of tradition

There’s no elaborate theory trying to justify the above-mentioned assumption, in fact, in practice, there are many instances where self-organization and self-government built on the basis of mutual support are naturally occurring phenomena, not backed by force, centralized propaganda nor by complicated theoretical arguments. Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin traces, in much detail, the history of self-governing societies in different parts of the world all up to the 20th century.⁴ He shows how people have continuously established decentralized structures of mutual support and protection, and how these societies have flourished rather than decayed.

One of the main reasons why centralized authority is something widely accepted and considered normal is by and large because of the ‘prescriptive force of tradition’ (Wolff, 1970, p.6). “It has always been like this”, since early days, one is taught that certain people and norms have to be obeyed. Tradition has established what is normal but this need not be where our genuine intuitions lie. When the assumption is challenged it is no longer obvious and I suspect another kind of common-sense appears.

Immense knowledge to rule

While these things may look appealing on an abstract level, there are other challenges to the anarchist common-sense. One may say that order is always preferable to chaos. It is this equation of anarchism to chaos that has been continuously and deliberately used to halt democratic development. People cannot govern themselves, they have to be ruled by certain elites as only through them a society can progress. There are a number of false dichotomies here. The obvious one is that order and organization cannot be achieved through a democratic rule, it is through the chosen few that order falls onto the many. The majority cannot rule itself as it doesn’t know itself and therefore Is not capable of doing what is best for itself. It has to be taken care by the masters with their “heads overflowing with brains” as put by Bakunin. He further proceeded to describe the scientific intelligence as “the most aristocratic, despotic, arrogant and contemptuous of all regimes.”⁵ This, most likely, was the case with the communist dictatorship in the Soviet Union, but the point here is that the possession of such immense knowledge is a chimera, it doesn’t really exist and the claim of it is nothing but a claim of arrogance and paternalism.

When it comes to knowledge, I believe it is much more appealing to common sense that people know themselves, their communities, the problems they face every day as well as the means to solve them, better than a group of ‘chosen’ technocrats. It is highly dubious how such complex structures as modern society can be effectively run by a handful of people sitting at the top of the hierarchy. The latter claim could also be traced down to implications of complexity theory⁶. I do not mean to diminish the role of expertise in solving problems. In our world there are highly technical issues and input from experts is certainly useful and needed, however, involvement of all participants seems a necessary element to both the accurate formulation and the solution of complex problems.

Pragmatic concerns

Another prominent attack against anarchism is a pragmatic one — all is good in theory but ‘the world doesn’t work that way’. Certainly, the world we live in works differently for a number of historic reasons, but there are plenty of examples of successful self-governing societies that defy such criticism. Once there’s an established notion of how the world works and when democratic ideas are seen as utopic and unsustainable, it is not difficult to see why anarchism is rejected without much consideration. But this wasn’t the case in Aragon and Catalunya in the late 30s of the 20th century, where it was the spontaneous will of the people to self-organize and provide mutual support that produced remarkable results⁷. The significant increase in industrial and agricultural output were not solely a result of improved techniques and methods of production, but largely owing to the great enthusiasm that possessed people (See Chomsky, 1997).

The idea that they were actual participants in public life and in their workplace undoubtedly created a wide-spread inspiration and individual engagement. It seems to have made the workday purposeful and maybe much less burdensome than we know it today. The idea that motivation springing from a sense of usefulness, belonging and a desire to create for oneself and for others would produce better results than a set of heavy outside pressures is, I think, obvious. There’s also extensive empirical research on the various positive effects of workplace democracy on workers.⁸⁹¹⁰¹¹

There are other contemporary examples of success of highly democratic structures, not just on a political but on an enterprise level as well. Perhaps the best example of the latter is the Basque cooperative ‘Mondragon’ which is one of the biggest companies in Spain and probably the most successful organization of its kind. Workers own the companies and control the workplace, a form of hierarchical structure still exists, but representatives in different committees are elected by workers on the principle one person — one vote¹¹. Other notable examples among the many successful collective enterprises are ‘Semco’ in Brazil and ‘Suma’ in the United Kingdom.

Power and authority

Finally, I want to bring the attention to a conceptual distinction which in practice has puzzled a number of people and not without good reason, i.e. the distinction between ‘power’ and ‘authority’. Authority could be understood as the right to command, correspondingly — the duty to be obey, while power as the ability to compel through some kind of force.

What puzzled philosophers like David Hume is, How come the few have so easily an authority over the many? His answer to this ‘surprising’ state of human affairs was that it is nothing but public opinion that is responsible for this relation, i.e. authority is founded on opinion¹³ (and opinion is often enforced by tradition). Hume suggested that force or what we called ‘power’ is ‘always on the side of the governed’, however the latter isn’t obviously true in a modern context as power structures have a variety of instruments of coercion on their side.

What is obvious is that it is common acceptance that supports authority, but acceptance does not mean, nor does it entail legitimacy. Given a free choice without consequent reprehension, it seems unlikely that status-quo political models would be maintained. As I mentioned earlier, the force of tradition is a key driver of opinion and justification is sometimes given (often cynically) in the form: “this is how it’s always been”. Acceptance by the many for whatever reason is an ingredient that gives both power and authority to the few, but while power is constructed by various forces, authority is based solely on belief. Once the conflict between freedom and authority is fully recognized, the concept of traditional authority becomes vacuous, what remains is one’s right to rule oneself and to effectively participate in anything that concerns them.