NEITHER BALLOTS NOR

BULLETS
Essays on Voluntaryism

 
Essays by: Carl Watner, George H. Smith, & Wendy McElroy

 
Published for: The Voluntaryists

Box 5836

Baltimore, Maryland 21208

Voluntaryist.com
 

Table of Contents
Statement of Purpose
Introduction
Party Dialogue
Voluntaryism In The Libertarian Tradition
Demystifying The State
A Voluntaryist Bibliography, Annotated (1982)
A Voluntaryist Bibliography, The Short List
Voluntaryism In The European Anarchist Tradition
Introduction
Proudhon
Syndicalism
The Italian Debate
Anarchists And The Russian Revolution
Emma Goldman: On Revolution And Elections
Anarchists and the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)
Concluding Remarks


Statement of Purpose
 
The Voluntaryists are Libertarians who have organized to promote
non-political strategies to achieve a free society. We reject electoral
politics, in theory and in practice as incompatible with libertarian
goals. Governments must cloak their actions in an aura of moral
legitimacy in order to sustain their power, and political methods
invariably strengthen that legitimacy. Voluntarists seek instead to
delegitimize the state through education, and we advocate
withdrawal of the cooperation and tacit consent on which state power
ultimately depends.


 
 
Introduction
 
The Voluntaryist seeks to reclaim the anti-political heritage of
libertarianism. It seeks to reestablish the clear, clean difference
between the economic and the political means of changing society.
This difference was well perceived by the forerunners of
contemporary libertarianism who tore the veil of legitimacy away
from government to reveal a criminal institution which claimed a
monopoly of force in a given area. Accordingly, early libertarians
such as Benjamin Tucker maintained that one could no more attack
government by electing politicians than one could prevent crime by
becoming a criminal. Although he did not question the sincerity of
political anarchists, he described them as enemies of liberty: “those
who distrust her as a means of progress, believing in her only as an
end to be obtained by first trampling upon, violating, and outraging
her.” This rejection of the political process (by which I mean electoral
politics) was a moral one based on the insight that no one has the
right to a position of power over others and that any man who seeks
such an office, however honorable his intentions, is seeking to join a
criminal band.
 
Somewhere in the history of libertarianism, this rejection of the State
has been eroded to the point that anarchists are now aspiring
politicians and can hear the words “anarchist Senator” without
flinching. No longer is libertarianism directed against the positions of
power, against the offices through which the State is manifested; the
modern message — complete with straw hats, campaign rhetoric
and strategic evasion — is “elect my man to office” as if it were the
man disgracing the office and not the other way around. Those who
point out that no one has the right to such a position, that such
power is anathema to the concept of rights itself, are dismissed as
negative, reactionary or crackpot. They are subject to ad hominem
attacks which divert attention from the substantive issues being
raised, the issues which will be discussed in The Voluntaryist.
 
The Voluntaryist is unique in that it reflects both the several centuries
of libertarian tradition and the current cutting edge of libertarian
theory. The tradition of American libertarianism Is so inextricably
linked with anarchism that, during the Nineteenth Century,
Individualist-anarchism was a synonym for libertarianism. But
anarchism is more than simply the non-initiation of force by which
libertarianism is commonly defined. It is a view of the State as the
major violator of rights, as the main enemy. Anarchism analyzes the
State as an institution whose purpose is to violate rights in order to
secure benefits to a privileged class. For those who believe in the
propriety of a limited government it makes sense to pursue political
office, but for an anarchist who views the State as a fundamentally
evil institution such a pursuit flies in the face of the theory and the
tradition which he claims to share. Thus, the political anarchist must
explain why he aspires to an office he proclaims inherently unjust.
Perhaps one reason for the erosion of anarchism within the
libertarian movement is that many of the questions necessary to a
libertarian institutional analysis of the State have never been
seriously addressed. A goal of The Voluntaryist is to construct a
cohesive theory of anti-political libertarianism, of Voluntaryism, which
will investigate such issues as whether moral or legal liabilities
adhere to the act of voting someone into power over another’s life.
Perhaps by working out the basics of this theory the unhappy
spectacle of “the anarchist as politician” can be avoided.
 
Another major goal is to examine non-political strategies. In
constructing anti-political theory and strategy — which was assumed
by early libertarians without being well defined — we will be labeled
as merely counter Libertarian Party by those who innocently or with
malice are unable to perceive the wider context which leads to a
rejection of the political means itself. The myriad of non-political
strategies available to libertarians will be dismissed or will be
accepted only as useful adjuncts to electoral politics. It is ironic that a
movement which uses the free market as a solution for everything
from roads to national defense declares that political means, the
antithesis of the free market, are necessary to achieve freedom.
 
As Voluntaryists we reject the Libertarian Party on the same level
and for the same reason we reject any other political party. The
rejection is not based on incidental evasions or corruption of
principle which inevitably occur within politics. It is based on the
conviction that to oppose the State one must oppose the specific
instances of the State or else one’s opposition is toward a vague,
floating abstraction and never has practical application. Political
offices are the State. By becoming politicians libertarians legitimize
and perpetuate the office. They legitimize and perpetuate the State.
 
If libertarianism has a future, it is as the movement which takes a
principled, resounding stance against the State. Those who embrace
political office hinder the efforts of Voluntaryists who are attempting
to throw off this institution of force. It is common for libertarians to
view anarchism and minarchism as two trains going down the same
track; minarchism simply stops a little before anarchism’s
destination. This is a mistaken notion. The destination of anarchism
is different from and antagonistic to the destination minarchism. The
theory and the emotional commitment are different. Murray Rothbard
captured the emotional difference by asking his famous question in
Libertarian Forum, “Do you Hate the State?” Voluntaryists respond
with an immediate, heartfelt “yes”. Minarchists give reserved,
qualified agreement all the while explaining the alleged distinction
between a government and a state. Political anarchists are in the
gray realm of agreeing heartily in words to principles which their
actions contradict. It is time to have the differences between
Voluntaryism and political libertarianism clearly expressed and for
non-political alternatives to be pursued.
 
It is time for The Voluntaryist.


Party Dialogue
by George H. Smith

 
Libertarian Party Advocate (LPer) : Considering the success that
the Libertarian Party has enjoyed in recent years, especially in
bringing libertarian ideas to the attention of the general public, I am
curious why you refuse to support the LP – in fact, you criticize it
openly.
 
Anti-Political Libertarian (APL): you raise two issues that need to
be untangled. First, I criticize the political side of the LP, i.e., its effort
to place libertarians in political office. I don’t object to its educational
endeavors, as I don’t object to any organization that seeks to roll
back the State.
Secondly, it is true that the LP gains publicity, but we must ask
whether this is the kind of publicity that furthers libertarian goals.
Publicity that links libertarianism to a political party – when the
essence of libertarianism is anti-political – is counterproductive.
 
LPer: But the public understands that the LP is a party with a
difference; it is devoted to liberty. That is the important thing.
 
APL: You beg the question. Can a political party be dedicated to
uncompromised liberty? I answer, “No,” and this is why I reject the
L.P.
 
LPer: I disagree. There is no reason why libertarian legislators could
not dedicate themselves to the repeal of unjust laws. We must
remember that the ultimate goal of the LP is a free society.
 
APL: Let’s separate campaign rhetoric from reality. It’s easy to say
that the goal of the LP is a free society. What political party in its right
mind would come out against a “free” society. The important point is:
What makes the LP a political party? What is its essential
characteristic? In other words, what does the LP have in common
with other political parties that it does not share with nonpolitical
organizations? The answer is simple: the LP seeks political power.
The immediate goal of the LP, qua political party, is (and must be) to
wrest control of the State apparatus from its competitors, the
Democrats and Republicans. The LP bids in the political auction,
using the currency of votes in an attempt to buy control of the State
machinery.
 
LPer: You’re really off-base. The LP does not seek power. On the
contrary, it wants to reduce power by dismantling the State. Getting
elected to political office is simply a means to this noble end.
 
APL: Let’s be clear about this. There is a difference between having
power and exercising it. Those who control the State have immense
power, whether or not they exercise it in particular instances. Political
power – the capacity and legal sanction to aggress against others –
is integral to political office. A State official, libertarian or not, has
considerable power over defenseless citizens. It is disingenuous to
claim that one aspires to political office but does not seek power.
Power is a defining characteristic of political office.
LPer: But this is mere semantics! A libertarian politician might have
“power” in a legal sense, but he would not use that power unjustly.
His power would be used to combat other politicians and to repeal
invasive laws.
 
APL: You have just conceded my point. Legal power, which you
dismiss so lightly, is what makes a politician a politician. A politician
can get together with his neighbors (other politicians) and vote to rob
people, and he can bring the force of law to back up this vote. But if I
and my neighbors vote to rob someone, we cannot do it with the
sanction of law. The politician has this political power, whereas the
private citizen does not. This characteristic of political office must
never be forgotten.
You admit that even the libertarian politician will have this power after
he is elected, but you stipulate that it will be used for beneficent
purposes. You prefer to emphasize the (presumed) motives of
libertarian politicians – their honorable intentions; whereas I prefer to
stress the reality of what political office entails. I don’t want anyone
to have political power, regardless of his supposed good intentions. I
object to the political office itself and to its legitimized power. Frankly,
I don’t give a whit about the psychological state of the politician.
 
LPer: You seem to be saying that you don’t trust the libertarian
politician to keep his word. Well, we live in an imperfect world with no
absolute guarantees. We hope that libertarian politicians will not
compromise. If they do, we shall be the first to denounce them.
 
APL: The issue of trust is quite secondary. Whether I trust this or
that politician is not the point, although it does raise an interesting
problem. Should the wise maxim often quoted by libertarians, “Power
corrupts,” now be amended to read, “Power corrupts – unless you
are a libertarian?” It is not clear to me why libertarians are any less
susceptible to the temptations of power than the ordinary mortal.
But, as I said, this is not fundamental. I may trust a particular
libertarian politician, but I still don’t want him to have political power
over me. Libertarians stress that liberty is a natural right. If a
legal/political system violates this right as a matter of policy, then the
system is unjust to some degree. Libertarians should oppose this
injustice in principle. We should seek to abolish the mechanism
whereby one individual, in virtue of political office, can employ
legitimized aggression against other individuals.
“Elect me to office,” proclaims the libertarian politician, “give me
enormous power over you and your property, but rest assured that I
shall abstain from using this power unjustly.” I reply: You have no
right to such power in the first place – and as a libertarian you should
know this. You should be denouncing the very office to which you
aspire. You say your campaign literature is honest and forthright, Mr.
would-be-Senator; but search as I may I cannot find the statement,
“The office of Senator, as we know it, should be abolished.” This
lacuna is understandable, however, in view of the embarrassment
that the statement would cause you. For then even a child might be
prompted to ask: “But Mr. would-be-Senator, if the institution of
senator is wrong in itself (because of its built-in political power), then
how can you, in good conscience, ask us to make you a Senator?”
 
LPer: You bog down in technicalities. This business about the
incompatibility of libertarianism and political office is just so much
theoretical fluff. Let’s get down to the real world. I still don’t see why
a libertarian Senator could not consistently and conscientiously work
for the elimination of unjust laws.
 
APL: If you don’t see it, it is because (to paraphrase Plato) you have
eyes but no intelligence. You don’t see the answer because you
don’t ask the right question. We don’t start with the concept of a
“Libertarian Senator” and then inquire whether this person can be
trusted. The basic difficulty is with the concept of a “Libertarian
Senator” to begin with.
“Libertarian” and “Senator” (for Senator, read: “any political office”)
are like a square and a circle. One cannot be both at the same time
and in the same respect. The “technicality” to which you object is the
law of noncontradiction.
What does it mean, in this society, to be a Senator? Among other
things, it signifies the legal privilege; to formulate and enact laws
without any necessary regard for the justice of those laws, and it
permits one to dispense massive amounts of stolen money. Such
powers, inherent in the office of Senator, are incompatible with
libertarian principles. Libertarians should oppose not just this or that
Senator, but the office of “Senator” itself.
 
LPer: But couldn’t a libertarian accept a political office while being
fully aware that the legal power inherent in that office is illegitimate?
He need not exercise the options legally available to him, after all. As
a libertarian, he would know that he has no right to act unjustly,
regardless of his political situation.
 
APL: You confuse the subjective with the objective. A person can
believe just about anything. A libertarian Senator may believe that he
is faking it, that he doesn’t really take the authority of his office
seriously. He may convince himself that, although an agent and
employee of the State, he is really and truly anti-state. It is similarly
possible, I suppose, for an army general to convince himself that he
is anti-military despite his occupation. Whether this kind of
subversion from within is good strategy is a topic for another
conversation. But the facts remain. The office of Senator is defined
independently of the desires of individual Senators. The powers of
political office do not depend upon the secret desires of the LP
politician, nor do they change because the politician keeps his
fingers crossed while taking the oath of office.
One cannot deny the legitimacy of the Senatorial office, as
libertarians must logically do, and simultaneously advocate someone
for that position. One should not accept the designation of “Senator,”
knowing full-well what this implies, while mouthing libertarian
principles.
Consider an extreme case. If we lived under a dictatorship, would
the LP advocate that a libertarian take over the office of dictator, or
would it fight for the abolition of dictatorship itself?
 
LPer: Abolition must certainly be the goal of any libertarian. This
doesn’t mean, however, that abolition could not be achieved through
the former method. It would be preferable to have a libertarian
“dictator” who refuses to exercise the powers of his office, rather
than an authentic dictator. Don’t you agree?
 
APL: If we must have a dictator, then I prefer to have the most
benign one possible. But a benign dictator is still a dictator; and if
there were a group of self-professed “libertarians” who were
expending their time, energy, and resources in an effort to put their
version of a benign dictator in power to replace the current one, then
I would have grave doubts about their libertarian credentials. And I
would view their candidate for dictator as a threat, even if one less
serious than the present dictator.
 
LPer: So you would support the libertarian “dictator.”
 
APL: No. I would not support any dictator. I might prefer your dictator
to the current one, but I wouldn’t support either of them. If I am given
a choice between Mr. Jones, who plans to cut of f my head, and Mr.
White, who plans to cut off my hands, then I may prefer Mr. White to
Mr. Jones, since I would rather lose my hands than my head. But I
certainly wouldn’t support or condone either Mr. Jones or Mr. White.
Both are my enemies, even if one is relatively less harmful than the
other.
We must not forget the central point. Your dictator might be
preferable to another dictator. There are obvious differences in
degree. But we are concerned not only with the relative demerits of
dictators, but with the possibility that one can be a dictator and a
libertarian at the same time. Can libertarians actively support and
promote a benign dictator, just because he might be the best dictator
available? This is a peculiar situation indeed, and it would force
libertarians to support the lesser of two evils.
In short, I would not call your candidate for dictator a libertarian,
because the two are incompatible. I might call him a well-intentioned
dictator, but he is no libertarian. And I would oppose him, because
my principles leave me no option. There is no proviso in my stand
against dictators that exempts those with good intentions.
Similarly, your Libertarian Senator may do less harm (and even
some positive good) when compared to Democrats and
Republicans. He may reduce taxes, for example, or help avoid war.
But fewer taxes and peace are not distinctively libertarian positions;
some conservatives and liberals advocate the same things. What
distinguishes libertarianism is the basis for its opposition to taxes
and war (the rights of the individual) and the logical extreme to which
it carries its opposition. Most importantly, there is the libertarian
analysis of the State as a ruling elite – the fundamental cause of
taxes and war. The oppressive nature of the State is at the core of
libertarian theory, and it requires libertarians to take a principled
stand against the State per se. Now the State is an institution with
different levels of authority, and it is this authority – legitimized
aggression, as I described earlier – which libertarians must oppose.
You see, therefore, that libertarians must stand firm against all
Senators, all Presidents, and so forth, because these offices and the
legal power they embody are indispensable features of the State
apparatus. After all, what can it possibly mean to oppose the State
unless one opposes particular offices and institutions in which State
power manifests itself? Do we dislike President Carter because he
has the wrong ideas? No. We dislike him because he is dangerous,
and he is dangerous because he is President. Millions of individuals
may have even worse ideas than Carter, but we don’t single them
out for disdain unless they are in a position to enforce their views.
The danger lies not in Carter but in the Presidency. Carter derives
his power from the office and its legal sanction. The political office
itself is the fundamental danger, and that is what we must strive to
eliminate. Certainly Carter is a dangerous man, but anyone who is
President is dangerous as well. The Presidency embodies political
power on an enormous scale, and any person occupying that office,
“libertarian” or not, must be opposed by right-thinking libertarians.
 
LPer: Well, your ultimate goals are commendable, but you live in a
fantasy world. You don’t really believe that political offices are just
going to fade away, do you?
 
APL: No, but neither do I believe that a group of libertarians are
going to take over the government, establish themselves in power,
and then attempt to abolish the instrument of their power and
livelihood, the State. Now there is a real fantasy.
 
LPer: So what do you suggest instead? It’s one thing to criticize, but
its more difficult to map an alternate strategy.
 
APL: First of all, let’s get something straight. This is not – I repeat,
not – an issue of strategy. You LPers seem to have difficulty in
understanding this, so I have to place special emphasis on it. I am
not accusing the LP of faulty strategy here (although this is a lively
topic for another discussion). This is not simply a matter of how to
get from here to there.
 
LPer: But we both agree on the desirability of a free society. It
seems to me that we just disagree on how best to achieve it.
 
APL: Yes, we are in basic agreement concerning the goal to be
achieved. But I am not merely asserting that the political method is
inefficient in pursuit of this goal. Rather, I am arguing that the political
means is inconsistent with libertarian principles, that it flies in the
face of basic libertarian ideals. Consider an analogy. I state that a
basic goal in my life is to acquire a good deal of money. You concede
that this goal is, in itself, unobjectionable. Then I proceed to rob a
bank. You are horrified and demand to know how I could do such a
thing. I reply that we have a strategic difference of opinion. We both
agree that my goal is laudable; we simply disagree concerning the
means by which to attain it. We disagree on how to get from here to
there. So I demand from you an alternative strategy for me to get
rich. Sure, I say, my plan may not be perfect, but what can you
purists offer in it place? Give me an alternate strategy, I demand,
before taking pot shots at mine.
How would you reply to this? I suspect that you would accuse me of
shifting ground. You would point out that the objection to robbing
banks is not a simple issue of strategy, but involves profound moral
questions. And you would say that your protest against my action
was moral, rather than strategic, in nature. Therefore, unless I can
surmount the moral objections to robbing banks, the strategy
question is irrelevant. I cannot squirm past the moral issues, the
matters of principle, in the guise of demanding alternate strategies.
Now, returning to the subject of political action, I respond to your
question the same way. Fine, let’s get together and talk over the
issue of strategy some day – we can talk about education, moral
suasion, counter-economics, alternative institutions, civil
disobedience, or what have you – but that’s not the issue here. I
submit that there is a profoundly anti-libertarian aspect of political
action – i.e., of attempting to elect libertarians to public office – and
this is the issue to which political libertarians must first address
themselves. Show me that political action is consistent with
libertarian principles, and then we can take up the issue of strategy.
 
LPer: But you must address yourself to the issue of strategy at some
point. You wish to disqualify the political means altogether, which
seems to leave you precious little by which you can work for a free
society. If your principles condemn you to inaction and certain
defeat, then surely there must be something wrong with your
principles.
 
APL: This is quite curious. You equate activism with political action.
Doing something, for you means, doing something political. You
regard an anti-political libertarian as a non-activist, and this is surely
one of the most pernicious myths circulating in the LP today. Often,
when LP members learn that I am not a member of “The Party,” I am
greeted with the cute remark: “Oh, you’re. a libertarian with a small
ÔI’.” To this I frankly feel like replying, “Yes, and you’re an Idiot with
a big ÔI’.”
 
LPer: O.K., so you don’t advocate inaction or passivity. Then what
kind of activity, in your view, should libertarians engage in?
 
APL: I will state what I regard as the major challenge confronting
libertarians today, and from this you could justify any number of
diferent strategies. Here is the basic issue.
The fight against the State is not merely a fight against naked power
– the battle would be much easier if that were so. The essence of the
State is not aggression per se, but legitimized aggression. The State
uses the sanction of law to legitimize its criminal acts. This is what
distinguishes it from the average criminal in the street.
Unfortunately, the reality of the State – what it is in fact – is not how it
is perceived by most Americans. To put it bluntly, the vast majority of
Americans disagree with the libertarian view of the State. We may
get some agreement on particular points, but the vision of the State
as, in essence, a criminal gang, is far more radical than most
Americans are willing to accept.
This defines our ultimate educational goal. We must strip the State of
its legitimacy in the public eye. We must persuade people to apply
the same moral standards to the State as they apply to anyone else.
We need not convince people that theft is wrong; we need to
convince them that theft, when committed by the State in the name
of taxation, does not differ from theft when committed by an
individual. We need not persuade people that murder is wrong; we
need to persuade them that murder, when committed by the State in
the name of war or national defense, does not differ from murder
when committed by an individual.
As I said before, political power represents legitimized aggression.
Libertarians may not be able to stop all aggression – this would
indeed be an unrealistic goal – but they can go far in stripping
political aggression of its moral sanctity. This requires all the tools of
persuasion that we can muster, and it also underscores the
illegitimacy of political action. To run for or support candidates for
political office is to grant legitimacy to the very thing we are
attempting to strip of legitimacy. One cannot consistently denounce
the State as a band of criminals while attempting to swell the ranks
of this criminal class with one’s own cronies. The hypocrisy is there
for all to see. So either you have to reject political action, or you have
to waterdown or abandon your basic principles in order to conceal
the glaring inconsistency. Some people call this latter alternative,
being practical. I call it being dishonest and hypocritical.
 
LPer: So you don’t think libertarians should run for political office.
Does this mean that libertarians shouldn’t vote either?
 
APL: Definitely, but there is more involved than simply not voting.
Libertarians should oppose the vote in principle – they should
oppose the mechanism by which political sanctification occurs.
Political power is legitimized through the electoral process. The
present voting system is based on the premise that fundamental
rights can be gained or surrendered depending on the vote total.
Libertarians must oppose this unconscionable process. We must
oppose the political process itself – the mechanism whereby some
persons gain unjust (but legitimized) power over others.
The vote sanctifies injustice. If the libertarian message is to be truly
radical – if liberatarians are to lead the fight, not only against this or
that injustice, but against the political system that perpetuates and
legitimizes injustice – then we must condemn voting altogether. A
libertarian cannot use the vote for his own end, as if the vote were
morally neutral. The vote is the method by which the State maintains
its illusion of legitimacy. There is no way a libertarian organization
can assail the legitimacy of the State while soliciting votes.
 
LPer: You make it sound as if pulling a lever in the election booth is
an aggressive act. But it’s not, and there’s no way you can equate
the two, particularly if one votes for a libertarian.
 
APL: Voting is not an aggressive act in the narrow sense. But
politicians don’t aggress in this sense either. A President or Senator
doesn’t personally go out and arrest or strong-arm people who
disobey their decrees. It’s possible that President Carter has never
personally committed an aggressive act in his life. President
Johnson didn’t personally travel to Vietnam to murder Vietnamese.
Does this mean that libertarians cannot regard these politicians as
violators of human rights? Of course not. We are dealing with a
chain of command where the upper echelon does not have to
implement its own dirty work. Referring to my earlier point, however,
President Johnson did not have the moral right to order the murder
of innocent Vietnamese; and no politician has the moral right to order
the violation of rights, however small.
Now let’s apply this idea to the voting booth. To be elected to public
office is to gain the legal sanction to aggress. This is a fact, whether
we like it or not, and whether a given politician uses his power or not.
But there is no corresponding moral right. The political right to
aggress is a legal fiction without foundation in moral law.
I maintain, therefore, that no person has the moral right to vote. To
vote a person into office is to give that person unjust authority over
others. To vote for a presidential candidate is to grant to that person
the legal sanction for injustice. Let us suppose that an LPer votes for
Ed Clark for President. If Ed Clark were elected, he would, in his
capacity as President, have the legal right of aggression. For
instance, he could order the incarceration of political dissidents
during a “national emergency.” But there is no such moral right as
this. It is the usurption of rights. And just as Ed Clark does not have
the moral right to this kind of power, so no one has the right to grant
him that power, or to legitimize that power. When an LPer enters the
voting booth, he is attempting to place in office a person who will
have unjust authority over me. But, claims the LPer, his candidate
will not use that power. I reply that this, even if true, is immaterial.
The legitimized power embodied in the political office is not his to
give in the first place. The LPer does not have the right to aggress
against me, and it is sheer presumption to assume that he has the
right to grant this privilege to his political favorite. How the libertarian,
of all people, can calmly grant his political candidate the legal right to
aggress without the slightest qualms – when all libertarians know
that one cannot transfer rights that one does not have in the first
place – escapes my understanding.
 
LPer: Again, I sympathize with your point of view, but I must bring
you back to the real world. In an ideal libertarian society there would
not exist voting as we know it – agreed. But in this world, voting is
the method by which political change is effected, for better or worse.
Today libertarians should vote as a matter of self-defense. The
government aggresses against us and will continue to aggress
unless we fight back, using its own weapons, if need be. Surely you
wouldn’t deny to libertarians the right to vote in self-defense, as a
means of fighting against the encroachment of state power. One can
use the vote in this way without lending it moral sanction.
 
APL: Again I am accused of not living in the real world. May I
suggest that this jab applies more to you than to me. I have argued
that we should take a good, hard look at the world of politics. What is
the State? What is the nature of political office? You reply that this is
immaterial? Why? Because libertarian candidates are brimming over
with good intentions. They will sneak up on the State and turn this
engine of monstrous power against itself. They will win the voting
game, and all the bad politicians will gracefully concede defeat, pick
up their marbles, and go home in pursuit of honest work.
Next I argued that voting entails empowering someone to act as your
agent, and that you cannot morally grant to your agent rights which
you do not properly possess. Moreover, I pointed out that the vote is
the basis of political legitimacy in America today. It is the taproot of
political authority in the minds of most Americans. Now this is a hard
fact, whether we like it or not. You reply that this doesn’t matter, that
libertarians can overlook these inconvenient details. Other people,
you argue, may think that we approve of voting and the political
process because we run candidates for office, just like every political
party, and because we encourage people to vote, just like every
political party. Those poor silly people. They obviously don’t realize
that, despite appearances, we are really against voting and political
power. Deep down inside we really oppose these things. It’s just that
we have to defend ourselves.
To your plea of self-defense, I reply: Fine, defend yourself, but leave
me alone. But voting is wrong precisely because it does not leave
me alone. If you elect your candidate to office in the name of self-
defense, his power will not be restricted to you and to those who
voted for him. He will have power over me and others like me as
well.
When you enter the voting booth, you are committing an act of
enormous presumption. You presume that you have the right to
appoint a political guardian over me – a benevolent one, you claim,
but a guardian nonetheless. Now as one libertarian to another, I
must repeat my question: Where did you get such a right? You have
no special authority over me. Where, then, did you obtain the right to
appoint an agent with this authority? Where do you get the nerve to
advocate that Ed Clark (or anyone else) should have the power of
life and death over me and millions of other Americans? You claim
self-defense. I claim that your vote extends far beyond the legitimate
boundaries of self-defense.
 
LPer: You place great stress on this notion of abstract political
power, which you say is the legal right to aggress, and you claim that
the vote sanctions this power, whether or not a particular politician
exercises it. It is primarily on this basis that you exclude political
action. It seems to me that you sacrifice a strategy with great
potential in the name of this abstract notion. We confront real-life
crises, questions of economic survival and even of life-and-death. If
we can elect politicians who will roll back the powers of the State,
and who will not use those unjust powers inherent in their offices,
then I say we contribute greatly to the cause of liberty.
 
APL: You miss the point of much of what I said. I, as an individual,
do not somehow forbid political action. I contend that libertarian
principles forbid it. You find this inconvenient, and you complain. I
say, if you wish to complain, then complain about the principles, not
about me. Political action conflicts with libertarian opposition to
legitimized aggression – political power. Consistency demands, that I
reject it. I accept libertarianism, and this very acceptance compels
me to reject political action.
Therefore, when I am told that political action is a good strategy to
achieve libertarian goals, I can only reply: Even if that were true
(which I don’t accept), it would not change the rightness involved. As
the poet Heine once wrote: “We do not take possession of our ideas,
but are possessed by them. They master us and force us into the
arena, where, like gladiators, we must fight for them.” So here I am,
logically mastered by the consistency of libertarianism, forced into
the arena to fight against political action.
 
LPer: You anti-party types amaze me. Here we have thousands of
dedicated libertarians working to change things in America, and you
purists sit in your ivory towers carping away. Words, words, words! If
libertarians listened to you purists, nobody would do anything, and
government power would continue to increase. I suppose you’ll still
be spouting your principles when the State comes to haul you off to
jail.
 
APL: If the State hauls me off to jail then, yes, I will still be spouting
my principles, especially if it’s a libertarian State that does the
haulng. You accuse me of purism. I reply, “So what?” If “purism”
means anything, it means the refusal to budge on matters of
principle even at the expense of apparent short-term gains. What is
the alternative? “Impurism?” “Corruptism?” “Selling Outism?”
And as long as we’re discussing amazing things, let’s go back to the
issue of strategy of which you seem so fond. Hasn’t it ever struck
you as paradoxical how libertarians who are innovative when it
comes to free-market alternatives, can be so pedestrian and
orthodox in the area of political strategy. I mean, libertarians never
tire of outlining plans for free-market roads, sewers, utilities,
charities, schools, police forces, and even courts of law. When our
critics ridicule free-market education, for instance, we encourage
them to expand their thinking and to reject the notion that just
because government has provided something in the past, it must
continue to provide it in the future. Fresh, imaginative thinking is the
key here. But now comes the issue of political strategy, and the
imaginative libertarian suddenly turns slavishly orthodox. “How can
we change things,” he asks, “without political action? Nobody,
especially the media, will pay any attention to us. Everyone knows
that you have to muster the power of votes before you can change
things significantly. We must get petitions signed; we must get our
people on the ballot; we must get them elected to offce – this is the
only effective way to implement our goals.”
To this political libertarian, I say: “if you spent a fraction of the time
considering alternatives to political action as you do considering
alternatives to public roads, utilities, etc., something might occur to
you. You spend thousands of dollars and expend thousands of hours
to get petitions signed and run political campaigns. If you spent a
fraction of that energy and money on nonpolitical alternatives, you
might witness a degree of progress that you now consider
impossible.
 
LPer: But you’re forgetting about the government and its repressive
laws. Somebody, at some time, must work to repeal those laws.
Education, counter-economics, civil disobedience, alternative
institutions – all those things sound good, but of what use are they
unless they result in the repeal of laws and regulations that restrict
our freedom? And this repeal necessarily entails political action.
 
APL: First, it’s not true that laws have to be repealed in order to be
rendered ineffective. There are thousands of laws on the books
today which are virtually dead, because the public would not tolerate
their enforcement.
Second, there are always plenty of political hacks around who will
attempt to curry favor by doing whatever is popular with the general
public. Laws will become ineffective or will be repealed when it
becomes impossible to enforce them – when the public sentiment
overwhelmingly opposes them.
This brings me to a fundamental difference in our view of what
libertarians should strive for. You wish to work directly through the
political process. I maintain that this reinforces the legitimacy of that
process. You tell people, in effect, that the way to assert their natural
rights is to ask the government’s permission. When the government
gives you permission to keep your earnings, or to teach your
children, or to live a particular lifestyle, then it’s O.K. to do so. It’s all
very proper; the game is played by the State’s own rules.
I maintain on the contrary, that libertarians should breed a thorough
and uncompromising disrespect for the government and its laws. We
should tell people, in no uncertain terms, that decrees of the
government have no moral legitimacy whatever – that they are on
par with decrees of the mafia. We must work to minimize and
demystify the State. Of course, there is the practical problem of
avoiding penalties, and individuals may choose to obey particular
laws in order to escape punishment. But a government that must rely
entirely on fear cannot long survive. All governments must cloak
themselves in legitimacy in order to win the passive acquiescence of
their subjects. Libertarians must seek to dissolve this aura of
legitimacy. We must tell people: you have certain rights, period; and
what the government does cannot change that. The government is a
thug and a thief; be on your guard, watch it with caution, for it is
powerful. But do not be awed by it. Do not grant it respect or moral
sanction. Treat it as you would any villain.
I submit that if this disrespect could be inculcated on a wide scale,
we would experience a rebirth of liberty in America. Politicians would
would be beside themselves if only one percent of the population
showed up to vote. Politics would be a laughing stock. One law after
another could be passed, and nobody would pay any attention. The
government would die of neglect. This rather than political action, is
the course I would recommend to libertarians. And the likelihood of
its success is no less than the prospect of dismantling the
government from within. Granted, it lacks the flashy trappings of
political campaigns. There would be no campaigns and media hype.
It would be a quiet revolution and one that is largely decentralized. It
would entail dozens of different strategies. It would take a long time,
and it wouldn’t be glamorous. There would be few, if any, positions of
power to fight for. It would require dedication and knowledge. But it
could be deadly.
This strategic vision, as I have argued, is incompatible with political
action. We wish people to look elsewhere than government for their
freedom. We wish them to view government with contemptuous
indifference. This cannot be achieved through political action.
“Party Dialogue by George H. Smith” first appeared in New
Libertarian (Vol. IV, No.8, Dec. 1980 – Feb. 1981) Box 1748, Long
Beach, CA 90801


Voluntaryism In The Libertarian Tradition

by Carl Watner

 
Voluntaryism figures prominently in the libertarian tradition in three
distinct ways. First, voluntaryism represents the final goal of all
libertarians. After all, libertarianism is the doctrine that all the affairs
of people, both public and private, should be carried out by
individuals or their voluntary associations. Secondly, voluntaryism is
a realization about the nature of political society. The voluntaryist
approach rests on the crucial, theoretical insight that all tyranny and
government are grounded on general popular acceptance. The
primary responsibility for the existence and continuation of any
political system rests on the majority of the population, who willingly
acquiesce in their own subjection. Thirdly, voluntaryism represents a
way of achieving significant social change without resort to politics or
violent revolution. Since voluntaryists realize that government rests
on popular consent, they conclude that the only way to abolish
government power is simply for the people at large to withdraw that
consent. As a means, voluntaryism calls for peaceful persuasion,
education, civil disobedience, and non-violent resistance to the
State. To libertarians, voluntaryism thus represents a means, an end,
and an insight. Only voluntary means can be used to attain the truly
voluntary society, based on the insight that existing tyrannies depend
on the voluntary submission of the governed. The purpose of this
essay is to elucidate the history, the development, and the actual
practice of these ideas within the context of the libertarian tradition.
 
These three aspects of voluntaryism mutually reinforce each other.
The very goal of an all-voluntary society suggests its own means.
The means are the seeds which bud into flowers and come into
fruition. It is impossible to plant the seed of coercion and reap the
flower of liberty. Thus politics and government, which libertarians
view as essentially coercive processes, can never legitimately be
used to attain libertarian goals. The non-voluntaryist always
proposes to compel people to do something; usually by passing laws
or electing politicians to office. These laws and officials depend upon
political action and physical violence. Voluntaryistic means, like non-
violent resistance, for example, violate no one’s rights. They only
serve to nullify laws and politicians by ignoring them. Voluntaryism
does not require of people that they shall violently overthrow their
government or every use the electoral process to change it; but
merely that they shall cease to support their government, whereupon
it will fall of its own dead weight.
 
Etienne de la Boetie (1530-1563), the first libertarian political
philosopher in the Western world, was largely responsible for the
original statement and elaboration of the voluntaryist principle. In his
Discourse On Voluntary Servitude, probably written during the mid
1550’s, la Boetie discussed one of the roost critical problems of
political philosophy; namely, the question of civil obedience. “Why in
the world do people consent to their own enslavement?”, he asked.
“Why do the bulk of the people acquiesce in their own subjection?”
La Boetie answered these questions by explaining the governmental
mystique created by rulers and their intellectual apologists. By
relying on custom, by providing bread and circuses to the citizenry,
and by creating a vast network of governmental supporters
dependent on political plunder, governments were able to engineer
and sustain their own popular acceptance among the populace.
 
La Boetie’s voluntaryist insight, that consent is brought about largely
by government propaganda, speaks sharply to the problem of
strategy. It leads directly to the conclusion that mass civil
disobedience and mass non-violent resistance are the only true
methods for overthrowing tyranny. Realizing the great value of
natural liberty, la Boetie called for a thorough process of educating
the public to the truth, a process which would give back to the people
a knowledge of the blessings of liberty and a knowledge of the myths
and illusions fostered by the State. The primary task of opponents of
tyranny is an educational one; to alert the public to their despotic
condition, to demystify and desanctify the entire State apparatus. La
Boetie was thus the first political philosopher to move from an
emphasis on the importance of consent to the strategic importance
of toppling tyranny by leading the public to withdraw their consent.
 
The value of la Boetie’s insights were somewhat lost to the 16th and
17th Century English, yet voluntaryism played a significant part in
the struggle between Church and State during these centuries.
During the mid-17th Century, the English Independents were moving
towards a completely voluntaryistic conception of the Church. They
considered that maintenance of churches by tithes and State support
ought to be done away with. This was no new idea and for a long
period there had been Independents who realized that this was the
logical outcome of their views of separation of Church and State. For
example, a petition circulated in London in 1647, demanded that
“tithes and all other enforced maintenance may be forever abolished,
and nothing in the place thereof imposed; but that all ministers be
paid only by those who voluntarily chose them and contract with
them for their labors.” By substituting ‘taxes’ for ‘tithes’ and
‘governmental officials’ for ministers’, we realize how close these
early religious dissenters were to espousing the ideas of a truly
voluntary State. The early advocates of church-state separation were
in the vanguard of the libertarian tradition because they took one of
the first steps necessary to separate the State from all the rest of
society.
 
In these religious controversies, the term ‘voluntaryism’ was
representative of those who advocated complete separation of
Church and State. The term itself came into common usage during
the extensive disputes between the Churchmen and dissenters in
Scotland during the second decade of the 19th Century. It was then
picked up by the English non-conformists during the 1830’s, and
applied to their agitation to keep the English government out of the
educational process. The ‘voluntary educationists’ saw a religious
threat in State controlled education and many believed that the law
of supply and demand, or the voluntary principle, as they termed it,
would provide for the education of the whole English people.
Auberon Herbert attempted to repopularize the term during the
1880’s and the 1890’s in his voluntaryist journal, Free Life. William
Godwin, author of an Enquiry Concerning Political Justice in 1793,
offers a good example of voluntaryistic thinking in late 18th Century
England. It is interesting to note that revolutionary violence never
became a serious threat to England because of the Influence of the
religious non-conformist teachings among the working classes.
Godwin, among other extreme political thinkers of that era, believed
that physical force was too uncertain in its results and that peaceful
resistance was more desirable and effective. Godwin argued for
reasonable discussion and disciplined non-cooperation as the
means of fighting against authority. In Political Justice (Book II,
Chap. III, and Book IV, Chap. 1) he urged that “all government is
founded in opinion. Men at present live under any particular form,
because they conceive it their interest to do so. … Destroy this
opinion, and the fabric which is built upon it falls to the ground.”
“Make men wise and by that very operation you make them free.
Civil liberty follows as a consequence of this; no usurped power can
stand against the artillery of opinion.”
 
Godwin, in one important particular, was at variance with the main
tradition of dissent in the 18th Century. A large body of dissenters
thought in terms of politics; they tended to see problems as political
and to seek political solutions. They favored associations and the
normal methods of bringing political pressure to bear; they looked to
legislative action for a solution of problems. Godwin, on the other
hand, looked only to the reformation of the individual, objected to
political parties, and had no faith in political solutions of what were
for him simply moral problems. The voluntaryistic dissenters believed
that moral agitation was always more effective and more proper than
political activity.
 
The 19th Century abolitionists both in England and the United
States, struggling to abolish slavery and the slave trade, were faced
with similar problems. Was slave-holding to be abolished by moral
suasion or political means? Should abolitionists participate in party
politics or should they hold aloof from such controversies? Should
they create their own third party organizations to propagate the
abolition of slavery? The radical abolitionists were on the cutting
edge of the libertarian movement because they viewed slavery as
the worst form of stealing. Slavery was called ‘man-stealing’ because
it reflected the theft of a person’s self-ownership rights. The
problems faced by the 19th Century abolitionists, both in terms of
goals and strategy, have much to say about the place of
voluntaryism in the libertarian movement today.
 
William Lloyd Garrison led one wing of the abolitionist movement,
and it is his views which we shall first examine. By the mid 1840’s,
Garrison and his chief lieutenants, Wendell Phillips and Henry Clarke
Wright, had come to the conclusion that all office-holding and voting
was wrong and morally reprehensible. These men arrived at their
views in two different ways. During the 1830’s, Garrison had
addressed himself to the issues of perfectionism and non-resistance.
He and his fellow non-resistants rejected not only war, but the entire
apparatus that sustained government in power. He summarized their
position in the 1838 Declaration of Sentiments adopted by the Peace
Convention held in Boston that year. Non-resistants renounced all
allegiance to human governments and disabled themselves from
holding any political office. This carried with it a rejection of voting. “If
we cannot occupy a seat in the legislature or on the bench, neither
can we elect others to act as our substitutes in any such capacity.”
 
In 1841, Garrison and his followers underwent a further
transformation, which led to a reinforcement of their beliefs against
political action. The Liberty Party, which had been purposely formed
as an anti-slavery party in 1840, appalled Garrison, both as a matter
of theory and tactics. He claimed that an anti-slavery third party
would split the movement and dilute anti-slavery principles by
dragging them into the political gutter. Nearly at the same time, the
Garrisonians came to the realization that the Constitution was
actually a pro-slavery document and that disunion should be the rule
of the day. They came to see the Constitution as “a covenant with
death and an agreement with hell” and therefore advocated personal
disallegiance from the federal government and sectional disunion
from the South.
 
This outlook on the Constitution was only developed after the
Garrisonians had been preaching their non-resistance and no-voting
theories for a number of years. Since Garrison took all of these
demands seriously, he came to condemn voting not only for all non-
resistants but for all enfranchised citizens. He took the ground that to
vote for any public officer, local, state, or federal, would be to
endorse someone who would have to take an oath to uphold the
United States Constitution which supported slavery. Any act of
allegiance to a government whose constitution supported slavery
“means either to undertake to execute the law which I think wrong or
to appoint another to do so” for me.

The Garrisonian ideas were propagated in many forums. Garrison

himself engaged in a debate with James Birney, soon to be head of
the Liberty Party, in the late 1830’s. In this “Letter on the Political
Obligations of Abolitionists”, Garrison maintained that the political
reformation which would bring about the abolition of slavery “is to be
expected solely by a change in the moral vision of the people; – not
by attempting to prove that it is the duty of every abolitionist to be a
voter, but that it is the duty of every voter to be an abolitionist.” It
was, in his opinion, the general object of the antislavery movement
to so “affect public sentiment …and alter the views and feelings of
the people in regard to the crime of slave holding, that all classes of
society… may be induced to rally together en masse for the entire
abolition of slavery.” Garrison’s field was not the field of political
action but that of moral suasion. In seeking to reform public
sentiment that lay behind laws and constitutions, Garrison was
striking at the heart of the problem.
 
Both of Garrison’s chief helpers, Phillips and Wright, independently
expressed their anti-political views. Phillips wrote of his “No-Voting
Theory” in the Liberator during the 1844 and then further clarified his
views in his 1845 pamphlet, “Can Abolitionists Vote or Take Office
under the United States Constitution?” Henry Clarke Wright had
earlier formulated his views in his 1841 booklet on “Ballot Box and
Battle Field”. Wright maintained the non-resistant position, claiming
that the ballot box was at most only a make-shift substitute for the
violence of bullets on the battle field. According to his lights, no man
could honestly accept the office of voter and then vote against the
existence of government. “May a man consent to be invested with
power to do an evil and swear to do it, even for the purpose of
abolishing that evil?”, he asked. Wright claimed that a man may
never rightfully consent to do what he thinks wrong. He who would
do it proves himself dishonest. “He consents to be vested with power
to do what he acknowledges to be wrong, and swears to do it, and
then gravely assures us that he never intended to do it. Such a man
is unworthy of any trust.” Thus Wright concluded the fact that any
man, knowing the nature and duties of a Congressman or President,
“will consent to hold these offices, is of itself sufficient evidence that
he is not a true and good man.” Wright summarized his argument by
stating that he would not vote, even if by his one vote he could free
all the slaves.
 
Wendell Phillips in his consideration of the question: can abolitionists
vote or take office under the Constitution? came to a very simple
conclusion; namely, that they could not. The position of non-
voter,and conscientious objector to the government was to be
jealously guarded. In a land where the ballot is idolized, the non-
voter “kindles in every beholder’s bosom something of the warm
sympathy which waits on the persecuted, carries with it all the weight
of a disinterested testimony to truth and pricks each voter’s
conscience with an uneasy doubt, whether after all voting is right.
There is constantly a Mordecai in the gate.” Phillips sustained his
claim that “it is by no means necessary that every man should
actually vote, in order to influence his times,” by citing the historical
examples of conscientious objectors who wielded a moral influence
widely disproportionate to their numbers.
 
Other wings of the radical abolitionist movement supported the no-
voting stance taken by the Garrisonians. Nathaniel Peabody Rogers,
long-time editor of the New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society journal,
Herald of Freedom, noted that men in this country have been
brought up to believe that nothing can be accomplished except by
political methods. “They cannot understand how any sane mind can
discern any other way to any end.” The only object of party politics,
for Rogers, was Power. “To get it or preserve it is the only possible
motive.” Rogers realized that the vote which a man casts is but a
very insignificant emblem of his political power. “The influence which
goes out from every man, whether for good or evil, can be but very
imperfectly measured by the standard of a ballot. What he seems to
lose by the withdrawal of his single vote, is gained 100 fold in the
increased force which is given to the testimony of the lips and of the
life by that disinterested act. … We only know that we are following
the dictates of plain, practical common sense, in refusing to commit
what we see to be a crime, in order to extirpate another crime. We
will not consent to obtain power by false pretenses, even for the
purpose of abolishing slavery.” Rogers realized the futility of gaining
power temporarily; for what can be voted up today, may be voted
down tomorrow.
 
Lysander Spooner was another radical abolitionist who totally
rejected voting and political party activity. Prior to the Civil War,
Spooner had been asked to lend his support to the Liberty Party. He
refused in no uncertain terms in his letter of March 12, 1856:
 
I feel at liberty standing outside of the constitution and knowing that
government of some kind will be carried on in the name of the
constitution – to interpret the constitution, on those points wherein it
is right, and then appeal to those, who professed to be governed by
it, to act up to their own standard. I do this on the same principle
that, standing outside the Mohammedan religion, I should feel at
liberty to interpret the Koran, and appeal to believers to act up to
their own creed, wherein it was right. It is on this ground that I write
about the constitution, and not because I ever intend to take any
part, directly or indirectly, in administering it. I think no robbery is
more flagrant or palpable – nor hardly any more unjustifiable – than
taxing men for the support of government, without their personal
consent. … Such taxation is not only robbery in itself, but it supplies
the means for, and is the legitimate parent of, nearly all the other
tyranny, which governments practice. You will see therefore that it is
impossible for me to support any government that acts on that
principle, or to act with any party that adopts it.
 
Spooner echoed Henry Clarke Wright’s analysis of voting and
consent. Wright wrote that “when a man consents to receive and
exercise the right of suffrage … he consents that a majority shall rule
and pledges himself to aid in executing the will of the majority.
Whether he votes with the majority or not, by consenting to vote at
all, he becomes responsible for whatever it does.” Spooner wrote, “I
would advocate natural law and constitutional law, wherever I could
get an audience to listen; because all men in office and out of office
are bound by them without regard to minorities or majorities among
the people. But I do not rely upon ‘political machinery’ (although it
may or may not do good, according as its objects are, or are not
legal and constitutional) – but I do not rely upon it as such – because
the principle of it is wrong. For it admits (and this is my objection to
it) that even under a constitution, the law depends upon the will of
majorities, for the time being, as indicated by the acts of the
legislature. It admits the right of majorities – even under a
constitution which purports to fix men’s rights – to make and unmake
laws at pleasure – or at least with very little limitation.”
 
After the Civil War, Spooner wrote in his No Treason pamphlets that
voting and tax-paying were not legal evidence of assent to the
Constitution. Both were done under duress and were, in effect, acts
of self-defense. Spooner never maintained that people should vote
or that voting was proper. Rather he argued, that when and if people
vote, their actions were not to be interpreted as unquestioning
obedience to the Constitution. Spooner eventually concluded that no
one should have the right to vote or make laws. “No human being,
nor any number of human beings, have any right to make laws, and
compel other human beings to obey them. To say that they have is to
say that they are masters and owners of those whom they require
obedience.” In the final analysis, Spooner rejected the Constitution
and politics entirely: “This much is certain – the Constitution either
authorized such a government as we have had, or has been
powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.”
 
Henry David Thoreau, the famous civil resistant, was most
sympathetic to the abolitionist cause. Thoreau was influenced by his
friendship with Ralph Waldo Emerson, who in turn was an admirer of
William Lloyd Garrison. All three shared in common the idea of
individual conscience standing in opposition to the State. The core of
Thoreau’s argument is that men become machines when they obey
orders without thinking or when they give the government authority
to speak or act on their behalf. “Must the citizen … resign his
conscience to the legislator?”, Thoreau asked. “Why has every man
a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first. … It is not
desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
… Law never made a man a whit more just; and, by means of their
respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of
injustice.” Thoreau was speaking out against slavery as well as
against the American invasion of Mexico, which took place in 1846.
 
Thoreau was particularly out-spoken against voting. He saw voting
as a sort of gaming. “The character of the voters is not staked. …
Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. … A wise man will not
leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through
the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of
masses of men.” Thoreau recognized the importance of civil
disobedience, both as an individual moral statement and tactical
position. Referring to his own short imprisonment and his influence,
Thoreau wrote: “If any think that their influence would be lost [in
prison], and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, …they
do not know how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much
more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has
experienced a little in his own person.”
Adopting la Boetie’s strategic outlook, he then wrote:
 
“Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your influence.
A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not
even a minority then; but it is irrestible when it clogs by its whole
weight. … If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year,
that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to
pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed
innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable
revolution, if any such is possible. If the taxgatherer, or any other
public of ficer, asks me, as one has done, ‘But what shall I do?’ my
answer is, ‘If you really wish to do anything, resign your office. ‘When
the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his
office, then the revolution is accomplished.”
 
Thus concludes our brief survey of voluntaryism in the libertarian
tradition. Voluntaryism in the hands of 20th Century libertarians has
a revolutionary potential that has not been adequately recognized. If
we wish to remain true to our libertarian heritage, it is clear that
voluntaryism as a means, an end, and an insight, deserves our
support at this time.
Short Bibliography
 
Etienne de la Boetie, The Politics of Obedience: The
Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, Introduction by Murray
N. Rothbard, Translated by Harry Kurz, New York: Free
Life Editions, 1975.
Chambers’s Encyclopedia, “Voluntaryism”, Vol. X, p. 23,
Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co.,1882.
William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice And
Its Influence on Morals And Happiness, Critical
Introduction by F.E.L. Priestley, Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 1946.
Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy And The
Government Of God In Anti-Stavery Thought, Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1973. See esp. pp.198-205 on
Spooner.
 
Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, A Collection From The Miscellaneous
Writings Of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, Boston: Benjamin B.
Mussey, 1849.
Lysander Spooner, The Collected Works Of Lysander Spooner,
Introductions by Charles Shively, Weston, Mass.: M & S Press,
1971.
Henry David Thoreau, Walden And On The Duty Of Civil
Disobedience with an Afterward by Perry Miller, New York:The
American Library, 1960.
William Wiecek, The Sources Of Anti-Stavery Constitutionalism
In America, 1760-1848, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977.
See esp. Chap. 10 on “The Garrisonian Critique”.
George Woodcock, Civil Disobedience, Toronto: Canadian
Broadcasting Corp., 1966, Esp. good on Thoreau, Gandhi, and
the “Tradition of English Dissent”.


Demystifying The State

by Wendy McElroy

 
Mystification is the process by which the commonplace is elevated to
the level of the divine by those who have a vested interest in its
unassailability. Government is a perfect example of mystification at
work. Government is a group of individuals organized for the
purpose of extracting wealth and exerting power over people and
resources in a given geographic area. Ordinarily people object to
and resist thieves and robbers; but in the case of government, they
do not because the government has created a mystique of legitimacy
about its activities.
 
“Government is founded on opinion,” wrote William Godwin. “A
nation must have learned to respect a king, before a king can
exercise any authority over them.” Past governments used the divine
right of kings, by which monarchs claimed the divinity of being
appointed to rule by God, as a means of instilling this respect;
rebellion against the king became rebellion against the will of God.
Contemporary governments have replaced this with the legitimacy
derived from such concepts as “democracy,” “equality,” the
“motherland,” or the “American way of life.” Such patriotic concepts
have the ability to rouse feelings of awe and reverence in the
population. These reactions are ingeniously channeled to support
the government, and in turn help create the mystique of legitimacy
which governments need to survive.
 
In a libertarian context, the issue of state legitimacy reduces to one
question: Does any individual or group have the right to initiate
force? For the libertarian, it is always illegitimate to initiate force
against nonaggressors. Libertarianism is the political philosophy
based on the concept of self-ownership; that is, every human being,
simply by being a human being, has moral justification over his or
her own body. This jurisdiction, which is called individual rights,
cannot properly be violated, for this would be tantamount to claiming
that human beings are not self-owners.
 
If individuals cannot properly violate rights, then it cannot be proper
for any organization or group of individuals to do so. Certainly the
number of people involved in initiating aggression has no bearing on
whether or not the violation of rights is legitimate. This was clearly
pointed out by a 17th-century libertarian who wrote:
 
What can be more absurd in nature and contrary to all
common sense than to call him Thief and kill him that
comes alone with a few to rob me; and to call him Lord
Protector and obey him that robs me with regiments and
troops? As if to rove with 2 or 3 ships were to be a
Pirate, but with 50 an Admiral? But if it be the number of
adherents only, not the cause, that makes the difference
between a Robber and a Protector: I will that number
were defined, that the Prince begins. And be able to
distinguish between a Robbery and a Tax.
 
. . . Without a doubt, the most effective method by which the state
creates a mystique is through control of education. The evolution of
compulsory state-controlled schooling reads like a history of political
maneuvering, in which the goal of teaching children literacy skills
plays a minor role. Public education is by no means inept or
disordered as it is made out to be. It is an ice- cold, superb machine
designed to perform one very important job. The problem is not that
public schools do not work well, but rather that they do. The first goal
and primary function of schools is not to educate good people, but
good citizens. It is the function which we normally label state
indoctrination.
 
The early supporters of state education understood this. Horace
Mann, for example, a 19th-century supporter of public education,
saw it as a means of assimilating foreign elements into an otherwise
established Protestant, puritan culture. With regard to the Irish
Catholics, Mann maintained:
With the old not much can be done; but with their
children, the great remedy is education. The rising
generation must be taught as our children are taught.
We say must be, because in many cases this can only
be accomplished by coercion. . . . Children must be
gathered up and forced into schools and those who
resist and impede this plan, whether parents or priests,
must be held accountable and punished.
 
From their inception, public schools were a form of social control.
One Irish newspaper, which represented those children being
unwillingly assimilated, observed:
 
The general principle upon which these compulsory
schooling laws are based is radically unsound, untrue,
and A-theistical. . . . It is that the education of children is
not the work of the Church, or of the Family, but that it is
the work of the State.
 
In contrast to the xenophobic fever with which many native
Americans rushed to impose their cultural preferences upon
immigrants, libertarians condemned state schools. Josiah Warren
compared them to “paying the fox to take care of the chickens.” He
realized that state control of education, like state control of religion,
would create an orthodoxy which would suppress dissenting views. It
would become a bureaucracy to serve the interest of the bureaucrats
and those who ultimately controlled the state apparatus. When the
statists insisted that compulsory, regulated education was necessary
because people could not distinguish truth from falsehood and might
be led astray, Herbert Spencer countered: “There is hardly a single
department of life over which, for similar reasons, legislative
supervision has not been, nor may be, established.”
 
Today, the ideal of social control through education has been
realized. Like Pavlovian dogs, children enter and exit schools to the
sound of bells. They begin each day by pledging allegiance to the
flag of the United States of America and by singing the national
anthem. Through political science and history classes, which present
severely slanted history, they are taught to revere democracy and
the Constitution. School is “the twelve-year sentence” during which
children are molded into good citizens. Indeed, as we have seen, the
chief function of education is to train obedient citizens. “It is
inevitable that compulsory, state-regulated schooling will reflect the
philosophy of the status quo,” commented historian Joel Spring. “It is
after all those who have political and social power who gain the most
benefit from the existing political climate and depend on its
continuation.” In practical terms, the public school system has
assumed the role of an official church by imbuing its subjects with a
genuflecting respect for the state.
 
The state projects an image of massive strength, the image of a self-
perpetuating, self-contained institution upon whose goodwill the
people depend. In fact, the reverse is true. Government rests upon
the goodwill of the people. Without their support, it becomes fragile
and will eventually disintegrate. A government is no more powerful
than the human resources, the skills, the knowledge, and attitudes of
obedience it commands. Every dollar the state spends has been
taken from an individual. It has no resources of its own. Every law it
maintains is enforced by an individual. As Étienne de la Boétie,
observed of the state: “He who abuses you so has only two eyes,
has but two hands, one body, and has naught but what the least man
. . . except for the advantage you give him to destroy.” That
advantage is what we call the sanction of the victim or the consent
which the oppressed must give to their oppressors.
 
Libertarianism is a direct attack upon the mystique of the state. It
recognizes that the state is only an abstraction and reduces it to the
actions of individuals. It applies the same standard of morality to the
state as it would to a next-door neighbor. If it is not proper for a
neighbor to tax or pass laws regulating your private life, then it
cannot be proper for the state to do so. Only by elevating itself above
the standards of personal morality can the state make these claims
on your life. . . .
 
Conservatives and liberals demand different varieties of law and
order without regard to the fact that the ultimate in order may be
found in a concentration camp. On the surface, it might seem that
conservatives and liberals are engaged in deadly combat, but they
are actually in fundamental agreement on one crucial methodological
point: namely, that the state is a proper means of achieving social
change–that the use of force legitimized by the state is a proper way
of controlling other people’s peaceful activities. This is their
fundamental disagreement with libertarianism.
 
William Godwin formulated the libertarian rejection of force in
epistemological terms:
Force is an expedient, the use of which must be
deplored. It is contrary to the intellect, which cannot be
improved but by conviction and persuasion. Violence
corrupts the man who employs it and the man upon
whom it is employed.
 
. . . The battle against statism today is not a battle against any
particular politician. The issue is deeper. It is a battle against a way
of thinking, a way of viewing the state. The main victory of the state
has been within the minds of the people who obey. In commenting
on the British rule over India, Leo Tolstoy wrote:
A commercial company enslaves a nation comprising
two hundred millions. Tell this to a man free from
superstition and he will fail to grasp what those words
mean. What does it mean that thirty thousand men . . .
have subdued two hundred million? Do the figures
make clear that it is not the English who have enslaved
the Indians, but the Indians who have enslaved
themselves?
 
People today enslave themselves when all that freedom requires is
the word “No.”


A Voluntaryist Bibliography, Annotated (1982)

by Carl Watner

 
The Voluntaryists are a newly formed group of libertarians who have
organized to promote non-political strategies to achieve a free
society. We have chosen to label ourselves Voluntaryists because
the term “libertarian” has become too closely associated with the
Libertarian Party. We believe that all efforts to elect libertarians to
political office conflict with libertarian principles and that such efforts
are strategically unsound. Engaging in political action, running
candidates for office, and encouraging people to vote must inevitably
sabotage the Voluntaryist goal of delegitimizing the State. The only
long-range and lasting way to curtail State power is to dissolve the
illusion of legitimacy which all States must have in order to sustain
themselves. Libertarians must come to act consistently with the
Voluntaryist insight: that all State power ultimately depends on the
sanction and cooperation of its victims.
 
The Voluntaryist Insight
 
The Voluntaryist insight, that all State power is grounded on general
popular acceptance, was first formulated by Etienne de la Boetie
(1530-1563). In his Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, which was
probably written during the 1550’s, la Boetie discussed one of the
most critical problems of political philosophy; namely, the question of
civil obedience. “Why in the world do people consent to their own
enslavement?” he asked. “Why do the bulk of the people acquiesce
in their own subjection?” La Boetie answered these questions by
explaining the governmental mystique created by the rulers and their
intellectual apologists. By relying on custom, by providing both bread
and circuses to the citizenry, and by creating a vast network of
governmental supporters dependent on political plunder,
governments were able to engineer and sustain their own popular
acceptance among the populace.
 
La Boetie was also the first political philosopher to move from an
emphasis on the importance of consent to the strategic question of
toppling tyranny by leading the public to withdraw their consent. He
saw that violence was not necessary:
 
“Obviously there is no need of fighting to overcome the tyrant, for he
is automatically defeated if the country refuses to consent to its own
enslavement: it is not necessary to deprive him of anything, but
simply to give him nothing; … is therefore the inhabitants themselves
who permit, or, rather, bring about, their own subjection, since by
ceasing to submit, they would put an end to their servitude”(p. 50).
Realizing the great value of natural liberty, la Boetie called for a
thorough process of educating the public to the truth, a process
which would give back to the people a knowledge of the the myths
and illusions fostered by the State. The primary task of the
opponents of State power is therefore an educational one: to alert
the public to their despotic condition and then to demystify and
desanctify the entire State apparatus.
 
There are two English language editions of la Boetie’s essay readily
available. The best, and the one quoted from above, was prepared
by Free Life Editions of New York in 1975 with the title of The Politics
of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude. (See rear of
this pamphlet for ordering instructions.) Despite his advocacy of
libertarian political activity, Murray Rothbard’s introduction for this
edition, “The Political Thought of Etienne de la Boetie”, gives a great
deal of support to the ‘Voluntaryist critique of political action. Political
activity not only unnecessarily reinforces the image of State
legitimacy, which, as la Boetie points out, we must destroy, but it is
also unlikely to end State power. La Boetie’s analysis implies that
educational activities and non-violent resistance to the State (such
as occurred in India during the Gandhian campaigns against the
British) are sufficient to topple States. The other edition of The
Discourse was prepared by William Flygare and is accompanied by
a preface from James Martin. It is titled The Will to Bondage
(Colorado Springs: Ralph Myles Publisher, 1974). Included is the
original French version of the essay, along side the first English
translation, which was prepared in 1735. The Free Life edition
carries a 1942 translation, so it is worthwhile to compare the two.
 
There is not, a great deal of secondary material concerning la Boetie
and his Discourse in English. The two best general discussions have
been prepared by Nannerl O. Keohane and James Brown Scott.
Scott includes a chapter entitled “Le Contr ‘Un de la Boetie –
Tyrannicide through the Ages” in his The Catholic Conception of
International Law (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press,
1934). La Boetie’s essay is treated as part of the historical tradition
of tyrannicide. Scott refers to it as “a literary exercise in behalf of
liberty in which he [la Boetie] condemns tyranny in any and all of its
forms as ruinous alike to the tyrant, the state, and the people”
(p.299). He aptly summarizes la Boetie’s position: “He does not
require of the people that they shall violently overthrow the tyrant,
but merely that they shall cease to support him, whereupon he will
fall of his own dead weight” (p.302). Keohane’s discussion of la
Boetie originally appeared as “The Radical Humanism of Etienne de
la Boetie” (38 Journal of the History of Ideas, Jan. – March, 1977,
pp. 119-130) and then was condensed for his book, Philosophy and
the State in France: The Renaissance to the Enlightenment
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980) as “On Voluntary
Servitude: La Boetie” (pp. 92-98). Keohane places la Boetie in the
historical perspective of 16th Century France by pointing out that la
Boetie was both a lawyer and member of parliament. Despite his
place in the State apparatus, Keohane regards la Boetie’s premises
as basically anarchistic, because they lead to the conclusion that no
man or group of men should have authority over other individuals.
 
In his newly published The Ethics of Liberty (Atlantic Highlands:
Humanities Press, 1982), Murray Rothbard devotes some space to
the Voluntaryist insight in his chapter on “The Nature of the State”.
The latter half of this chapter deals explicitly with la Boetie and
generally discusses the significance of State legitimacy. Rothbard
shows how the State has historically aligned itself with the Church,
and that when this became no longer possible,how the State
assumed control over public education. The State is thus able to
“mould the minds of its subjects” from kindergarten to graduate
school in order to foster this voluntary servitude. In a footnote
Rothbard cites two other disparate thinkers who have understood the
importance of majority consent to governmental tyranny. He quotes
from David Hume’s essay “On the First Principles of Government”
(see any edition of David Hume, Essays, Literary, Moral and
Political). Hume, who was no libertarian wrote: “Nothing appears
more surprising … than the easiness with which the many are
governed by the few, and the implicit submission with which men
resign their own sentiments … to those of their rulers. … [W]e shall
find that, as ‘force’ is always on the side of the governed, the
governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is, therefore,
on opinion only that government is founded; Rothbard also cites
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1949, p. 188ff).
 
Voluntaryism From A Historical Perspective
 
The Voluntaryist insight and the general non-political approach to
social change which it suggests has a long standing place in the
libertarian tradition. For a general discussion see Voluntaryism in the
Libertarian Tradition (Baltimore: The Voluntaryist, 1982) by Carl
Watner. (See reverse of this pamphlet for ordering instructions.) Any
late 19th Century encyclopedia should have an entry under
“Voluntaryism”, since the term originated back in the early 1820’s
when it was used in the religious disputes between established
churchmen in England and the dissenters. Typical of such articles is
the one found in Chambers’ Encyclopedia at volume 10, page 23
(Philadelphia: J. P. Lippincott and Co., 1882). During the 1830’s and
until the 1850’s, the term Voluntaryism was applied to the advocates
of private schools in England. These voluntary educationists saw a
religious threat in State controlled education and many believed that
the law of supply, and demand, or the voluntary principle, as they
termed it, would provide for the education of the whole English
people. Edward Miall, a well known publisher and dissenter wrote a
book, entitled Views of the Voluntary Principle (London: Aylott and
Jones, 1845) which characterized the meaning of Voluntaryism for
mid-19th Century England.
 
Auberon Herbert attempted to repopularize the term Voluntaryism
during the 1880’s and 1890’s in his voluntaryist journal Free Life.
Herbert was a supporter of voluntary taxation and one of the last
projects of his life was the preparation and publication of “A Plea for
Voluntaryism” which appeared in The Voluntaryist Creed (Oxford,
1908). Both the “Plea” and “The Principles of Voluntaryism and Free
Life” by an American supporter of Herbert have been reprinted in
Eric Mack’s collection The Right and Wrong of State Compulsion and
Other Essaysby Auberon Herbert (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics,
1978).
 
Another classical example of Voluntaryism at work in England is to
be found in William Godwin’s Enquiry Concerning Political Justice
which first appeared in 1793. The best introduction to Godwin is
found in the 1946 reprint edition by F.E.L. Priestley (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press.) Godwin believed that physical force
was too uncertain in its results and that peaceful resistance to
tyrannical government was more desirable and effective. Godwin
argued for reasonable discussion and disciplined non-cooperation as
the means of fighting authority. In Book II, Chapter III, and Book IV,
Chapter I, he urged that “All government is founded on opinion. Men
at present live under any particular form, because they conceive it
their interest to so do. …Destroy this opinion, and the fabric which is
built upon it falls to the ground.” “Make men wise, and by that very
operation you make them free. Civil liberty follows as a consequence
of this; no usurped power can stand against the artillery of opinion.”
 
Godwin, in one important particular, was at variance with the main
tradition of dissent in the 18th Century. A large body of dissenters
thought in terms of politics; they tended to see problems as political
and to seek political solutions. They favored associations and the
normal methods of bringing political pressure to bear; they looked to
legislative action for a solution of problems. Godwin, on the other
hand, looked only to the reformation of the individual, objected to
political parties, and had no faith in political solutions of what were
for him simply moral problems. The voluntaryistic dissenters believed
that moral agitation was always more effective and more proper than
political activity.
 
The 19th Century abolitionists both in England and the United
States, struggling to abolish slavery and the slave trade, were faced
with similar problems. Was slave-holding to be abolished by moral
suasion or political means? Should abolitionists participate in party
politics or should they hold aloof from such controversies? Should
they create their own organizations to propagate the abolition of
slavery? Should they use political action to achieve their goals? The
problems faced by the 19th Century abolitionists were very similar to
the ones faced by 20th Century libertarians in their struggle to
achieve a free society.
 
William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Henry Clarke Wright
were the leaders of the radical abolitionist movement in America.
These men and their followers in the New England Non-Resistance
Society held that all office holding and voting was morally wrong and
reprehensible. Ultimately, the Garrisonians came to see the
Constitution as a document which supported slavery and one to
which they could not swear personal allegiance. These abolitionists
suggested many of the arguments used by anti-political libertarians
today. For example, they raised the issue of personal integrity. How
could any abolitionist (read, libertarian) accept a government salary
or swear a public oath of allegiance to the Constitution, or uphold
laws which violate personal liberty? Garrison argued that political
parties alter one’s fundamental outlook towards the State. The
Liberty Party, which had been purposely formed as an anti-slavery
party in 1840, appalled Garrison, both as a matter of theory and of
tactics. He claimed that an anti-slavery party would split the
movement and dilute anti-slavery principles by dragging them into
the political gutter.
 
The Garrisonian ideas were propagated in many forums. Garrison
engaged in a debate with James Birney, soon to be head of the
Liberty Party in the 1830’s. In their A Letter on the Political
Obligations of Abolitionists(Boston: Dow and Jackson, 1839)
Garrison argued that moral suasion, not political action, was needed
to reform public sentiment. Both of Garrison’s chief helpers, Phillips
and Wright, independently expressed their anti-political views. Wright
authored a small book entitled Ballot Box and Battlefield (Boston:
Dow and Jackson, 1842) in which he claimed that the ballot box was
only a make shift substitute for the violence of bullets on the
battlefield. Wright held that no man could honestly undertake to
become a voter and then vote against the existence of government.
“May a man consent to be invested with power to do an evil?”, he
asked. Wright claimed that a man may never rightfully consent to do
what he thinks wrong. He who would do so proves himself dishonest.
“He consents to be vested with power to do what he acknowledges
to be wrong, and swears to do it. Such a man is unworthy of any
trust.” Thus Wright concluded the fact that any man, knowing the
nature and duties of a Congressman or President, “will consent to
hold these offices, is of itself sufficient evidence that he is not a true
and good man.” Wright summarized his argument by stating that he
would not vote, even if by his one vote he could free all the slaves.
Wendell Phillips considered the question: Can an Abolitionist Vote or
Take Office Under the United States Constitution? (New York:
American Anti-Slavery Society, 1845) and concluded quite straight
forwardly that they could not.
 
The secondary literature dealing with the abolitionist position on
voting is quite extensive and certainly much easier to locate than
some of the primary materials. Two standard discussions of the
voting controversy can be found in Aileen Kraditor, Means and Ends
in American Abolitionism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1969) and in
Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government of
God in Antislavery Thought (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973).
Another excellent discussion of the “Garrisonian Critique” of politics
can be found in William Wiecek, The Sources of Antislavery
Constitutionalism in America, 1760-1848 (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1977). Some of Henry Clarke Wright’s writings (see the index
for the entries under Wright), as well as excerpts from the Garrison-
Birney exchange (see pp. 153-160), can be found in Truman
Nelson’s Documents of Upheaval, Selections From Willaim Lloyd
Garrison’s The Liberator 1831-1865 (New York: Hill and Wang,
1966).
 
Another very interesting aspect of the abolitionist movement is to be
found in the writings of Henry David Thoreau and his close friend
Charles Lane. Lane was an Englishman attracted to this country
through his friendship with Bronson Alcott (another close friend of
Thoreau). Both Alcott and Lane were arrested for refusal to pay their
town taxes and their examples served to spur Thoreau onto his well
known example of tax resistance. All three were opposed to voting
and made their views, widely known. Lane wrote an extensive series
of letters which appeared in Garrison’s The Liberator in 1843. They
were entitled A Voluntary Political Government and have been
recently reprinted (Carl Watner, editor, St. Paul: Michael Coughlin,
Publisher, 1982). In the letters, Lane advocated a totally voluntary,
anarchistic society. Lane’s aversion to politics is apparent in many of
the letters and he realized that governmental control rests on the
acquiescence of the citizenry. “This mixture of education with politics
[by which he meant public schooling] is only a contrivance to gild the
iron chains by which men are so despotically bound.” In his third
letter, Lane urged us to go as far as possible from human
governments. Participation in politics is evil. “Like all our enemies,
State oppression will die of itself if we meddle not with it,” and do not
support it. Disown the government and do not support it with your
taxes. Enlighten the oppressed as to their own self-imposed
servitude, but stay away from the State for it will only contaminate
you. The similarity between Lane’s answer and Thoreau’s solution in
Thoreau’s own “Resistance to Civil Government” (better known as
his essay on “Civil Disobedience”) (Aesthetic Papers, Boston:
Elizabeth Peabody, 1849) is quite striking:
 
“When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has
resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished.”
Lysander Spooner, the famous individualist-anarchist and
constitutional lawyer, also played a prominent role in the abolitionist
movement. Before he evolved into an outright anarchist, Spooner
wrote some trenchant and logical attacks against the Garrisonian
claim that the Constitution supported slavery. These are reprinted in
The Collected Works of Lysander Spooner (Charles Shively, editor,
Weston: M & S Press, 1971) and appear as The Unconstituionality of
Slavery (Boston: Bela Marsh, Part I – 1845 and Part II – 1847).
Spooner’s famous An Essay on Trial By Jury (Boston: John Jewett
and Co., 1852) and his attacks on the Fugitive Slave law were all
written to show why the common law, when uncorrupted by State
legislation, upheld individual rights and destroyed slavery. There are
some brilliant passages in all these works upholding natural rights,
and especially the rights of all citizens to resist unjust acts of
oppression perpetrated by the government (see his A Defence For
Fugitive Slaves, Boston: Bela Marsh, 1850, Chapter II, “The Right of
Resistance, and the Right to have the Legality of that Resistance
judged of by a Jury”).
 
After the Civil War, and as a result of having lived through a domestic
rebellion in which all the ideals of the American Revolution were
totally ignored, Spooner became an anarchist. In his No Treason
(1867 and 1870) series Spooner showed that the U.S. government
could not claim either voting or tax-paying as proof that individuals
consented to the government. Neither were evidence of any single
person’s consent to the Constitution as a legal document. Spooner
claimed that both paying taxes and voting were done under indirect
threats, and therefore, were to be construed as acts of self-defense.
However, Spooner never maintained that people should vote or that
voting was proper or that he personally would ever take any part in
the political process. Rather, he argued that when and if people vote,
their actions were not to be interpreted as evidence that they actually
supported the Constitution. Spooner eventually concluded that no
one should have the right to vote or make laws. “No human being,
nor any number of human beings, have any right to make laws, and
compel other human beings to obey them. To say that they have is to
say that they are masters and owners of those whom they require
such obedience.” Spooner’s final conclusions on voting were
expressed in his piece “Against Woman Suffrage”, which was
reprinted in Benjamin Tucker’s Liberty (June 10, 1882, No. 22, p. 4)
and in Rampart Individualist (Vol. 1, No. 1 and 2, Winter and Spring
1981, pp. 53-55).
 
Many other 19th Century individualist-anarchists supported
Spooner’s position against political involvement. Josiah Warren, for
example, one of the earliest American anarchists, rejected politics
and engaged in a life long quest for the development of anarchist
communities. Benjamin Tucker, the student of both Warren and
Spooner, and editor of the famous journal Liberty (1881-1908),
compiled his views on anarchist methods in a section of his book,
Instead of a Book (originally published 1893, and reprinted by
Haskell House Publishers, New York, 1969). The best of Tucker’s
anti-political views are presented in a short editorial called “The
Method of Anarchy” (Liberty, June 18, 1887; Haskell House edition,
p. 415). Tucker advocated passive resistance as the superior
alternative to either ballots or violent revolution.
 
Referring to the Voluntaryist insight, Tucker claimed that passive
resistance (which hereafter shall be referred to as non-violent
resistance) was … the most potent weapon ever wielded by man
against oppression”. “Power feeds on its spoils, and dies when its
victims refuse to be despoiled. They can’t persuade it to death; they
can’t vote it to death; they can’t shoot it to death; but they can always
starve it to death. When a determined body of people, sufficiently
strong in numbers and force of character to command respect and
make it unsafe to imprison them, shall agree to quietly close their
doors in the face of the tax collector… government … will go by the
board.” Tucker cited the near success of the Irish Land League and
No Rent Movement in Ireland as examples of non-violent resistance
campaigns.
 
Francis Tandy (a follower of Tucker) in his chapter on “Methods” in
Voluntary Socialism (Denver: by the author, 1896) reiterated the
strength of Tucker’s argument for non-violent resistance. “To gain
anything by political methods, it is first necessary to gain a majority
of the votes cast, and even then you have to trust to the integrity of
the men elected to office. But with non-violent resistance this is
unnecessary. … A strong, determined and intelligent minority,
employing methods of non-violent resistance, would be able to carry
all before it.” Tandy astutely pointed out the important relationships
between means and ends in libertarian thought. Non-violent
“resistance can never pass a law. It can only nullify laws.
Consequently, it can never be used as a means of coercion and is
particularly adapted to the attainment of Anarchy. All other schools of
reform propose to compel people to do something. For this they
must resort to force, usually by passing laws. These laws depend
upon political action for their inauguration and physical violence for
their enforcement. Anarchists are the only reformers who do not
advocate physical violence. Tyranny must ever depend upon the
weapon of tyranny, but Freedom can be inaugurated only by means
of Freedom.” Tandy realized that when non-violent resistance is
practiced, attention is drawn to its underlying principles. “Thus
education and non-violent resistance go hand in hand and help each
other, step by step, towards the goal of human Freedom.” A good
discussion of late 19th Century individualist-anarchist strategy will
appear in the forthcoming Liberty centennial volume in the chapter
by Morgan Edwards, “Neither Bombs Nor Ballots: Benjamin Tucker
and the Strategy of Anarchism” (Los Angeles: by the author, 1981).
 
During the first half of the 20th Century, the few well known
libertarians actually followed the anti-political pattern set by Spooner,
Tucker, and Tandy. Albert Jay Nock’s overall attitude certainly
precluded political action. In his essay “What The American Votes
For”, (reprinted in Snoring as a Fine Art and Twelve Other Essays,
Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, 1971) which originally appeared
in The American Mercury of February 1933, Nock claims that the
only time he ever voted he cast a write-in ballot for Jefferson Davis
on the basis that “if we can’t have a live statesman, let us by all
means have a first-class corpse” (p. 90). In his essay “Anarchist’s
Progress” (reprinted in On Doing The Right Thing and Other Essays,
Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, 1971, first published 1928) Nock
points out why it is impossible for the best intentioned office holder
not to sell out to the system: Suppose that you put a Sunday school
superintendent in charge of a whorehouse. “He might trim off some
of the coarser fringes of the job, …and put things in … a state of
‘outward order and decency'”, but he must run a whorehouse, or he
would promptly hear from the owners. The voters elect politicians to
administer the State, not to destroy it. In the final analysis, Nock
thought that “great and salutary social transformations, such as in
the end do not cost more than they come to, are not effected by
political shifts, by movements, by programs and platforms, least of all
by violent revolutions, but by sound and disinterested thinking.”
 
H. L. Mencken, despite his outward appearances as a
newspaperman, had some rather acerbic thoughts on the political
system. His book Prejudices: Fourth Series (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1924) carries two implicitly anti-political essays, “The
Politician” and “On Government.” Mencken begins his analysis of the
politician by pointing out the assumption of the great majority of
American voters: that politicians are divided into two classes, and
that one of those classes is made up of good ones. Hence the
American public thinks that every time they turn one set of politicians
out of office, they will get better ones in their place. But how wrong
they are, as history has proved: the “primary error lies in making the
false assumption that some politicians are better than others” (p.
133). Obviously they are not. “Politics, as hopeful men practice it in
the world, consists mainly of the delusion that a change in form is a
change in substance” (p. 227).
 
Frank Chodorov really got to the heart of the matter when he
declared that “the state itself, regardless of its composition, is an
exploitative institution” (Fugitive Essays, Selected Writings of Frank
Chodorov, selected by Charles Hamilton, Indianapolis: Liberty Press,
1980, p. 91). No matter who operates a whorehouse (to use Nock’s
metaphor’) still operates a whorehouse; and any class of politician,
even if they call themselves libertarians, are still politicians. It makes
little difference whether libertarians, socialists, Democrats, or
Republicans are in office; the State is still nothing more than a
criminal gang. In his essays “On Underwriting an Evil” (in Out Of
Step, New York: Devin-Adair, 1962) and “If We Quit Voting” (pp.200-
205 of Fugitive Essays), Chodorov advocated staying away from the
polls. “Why should a self respecting citizen endorse an institution
grounded in thievery?” A voter’s boycott, unlike other revolutions, but
much like non-violent resistance campaigns, “calls for no
organization, no violence, no war fund, and no leader to sell it out.”
 
Other more recent libertarians have similarly called for mass non-
participation in the electoral process. Robert LeFevre engaged in
lengthy correspondence with a number of Congressional
representatives and senators during 1972 in an effort to determine
the legitimacy of their participation in government. Drawing much on
Spooner’s analysis of elected representatives, LeFevre
demonstrates in his The Power of Congress (As Congress Sees It)
(Los Angeles: R. S. Radford, 1976) that the theory of electoral
representation has no firm basis. His correspondents could not
agree “whether representatives should really be agents of their
electors and varied widely in the interpretation of their own function
and authority.” LeFevre contends that because of the secret ballot
and the structure of our political institutions elected office holders are
in fact representatives of no one. They had best all pack up and go
home!
 
Sy Leon in his None of the Above – The Lesser of Two Evils . . . is
Evil (Santa Barbara: Fabian Publishing, 1976) attacks majority rule
as a violation of individual rights and opposes the political vote.
Voting is wrong because it does not give individuals the right to
express their true opinions about the politicians. The politicians do
not dare insert “None of the Above” on the ballot for fear that no
politician would be elected to office. Robert Ringer in his bestseller,
Restoring the American Dream (New York: QED, 1979) cites Leon
favorably and makes some telling comments about the Libertarian
Party and voting in general:”When you vote for a candidate, you are
voting to put someone in a position to rule the lives of your
fellowman – men who either do not want that candidate to rule them
or do not want anyone’ to rule them” (p. 285). “The most
disconcerting thing about the Libertarian Party is that it ‘is’ a political
party” (p. 288). Every political party and every politician is subject to
the historical law of corruption: Power corrupts and absolute power
corrupts absolutely.
 
Among the younger generation of contemporary libertarians, Samuel
Edward Konkin III and George H. Smith have led the attack against
political action. Konkin’s magazine New Libertarian and his
“Movement of the Libertarian Left” have long criticized the Libertarian
Party. “He who serves the Party serves the State” because it is
impossible to destroy the system by joining it. Konklin’s emphasis on
counter-economics and agorism, as alternatives to political
strategies, is set forth in his New Libertarian Manifesto (Box 1748,
Long Beach, California 90801, published 1980). Smith, too, has tried
to convey the message that Politics and libertarianism are
inconsistent. One of his earliest attacks on the Libertarian Party was
a satirical “Victory Speech of the Libertarian Party President-Elect,
1984” which appeared in Supplement 4 of New Libertarian Weekly
(no. 46, October 31, 1976). Smith tried to show why a Libertarian
President would be involved in all sorts of philosophical
predicaments (how would he deal with tax evaders, drug smugglers,
victims of victimless crime laws, etc.?). This criticism was followed
up by a seriously theoretical piece entitled Party Dialogue (New
Libertarian, Vol. 4, No. 8, Dec. 1980 – Feb. 1981; and reprinted
Baltimore: The Voluntaryists, 1982; see reverse of this pamphlet for
ordering instructions) and by an exchange of letters to the editor
between Less Antman, a well-known member of the California LP
and Smith, in New Libertarian (Vol. 5, no. 9, April-June, 1981). His
most recent foray against the LP occurred at the California LP
Convention on board the Queen Elizabeth II in February 1982. Here
he continued his debate with Antman under the title “Political Action
vs. Non Political Action” in which they exchanged their views on the
validity of political action for libertarians. (See Tapes 651 A and B by
Liberty Audio Forum, 824 West Broad Street, Richmond, Va. 23220.)
Smith’s efforts against the LP have been instrumental in the
formation of The Voluntaryists, whose purpose is to spread the
message that libertarianism must be propagated by non-political
means.
 
This brings to a conclusion our survey of literature which deals with
the Voluntaryist insight and the question of anti-political and non-
political activity. As can be seen from the suggestions of Tucker and
Tandy, non-violent resistance is a very useful tool for Voluntaryists to
embrace. It is hoped that the efforts put forth in this bibliographic
essay will spark libertarians to at least investigate the merits and
demerits of non-violent resistance, which itself has an extensive
body of literature built up around it. The findings of such a study
should be of great interest to all Voluntaryists and we hope it is not
long forthcoming.


A Voluntaryist Bibliography, The Short List

Prepared by Carl Watner, July 2009 (With suggestions by subscribers)

 
Books that helped me evolve into a voluntaryist
Ayn Rand, ATLAS SHRUGGED
Ayn Rand, FOR THE NEW INTELLECTUAL
Leonard Read, GOVERNMENT – AN IDEAL CONCEPT
Murray Rothbard, MAN, ECONOMY, AND STATE
Lysander Spooner, NO TREASON, NO. 6
William Graham Sumner, THE FORGOTTEN MAN, THE
CHALLENGE OF FACTS, WAR, EARTH-HUNGER AND
OTHER ESSAYS (4 vols.)
Morris and Linda Tannehill, THE MARKET FOR LIBERTY
Ludwig von Mises, HUMAN ACTION
William Wooldridge, UNCLE SAM, THE MONOPOLY
MAN
Other books that I would recommend to those interested in
voluntaryism
Bruce Benson, THE ENTERPRISE OF LAW: Justice
Without the State
Etienne de La Boetie, THE POLITICS OF OBEDIENCE
Robert LeFevre, THE FUNDAMENTALS OF LIBERTY
Albert Jay Nock, OUR ENEMY, THE STATE
Jim Payne, PRINCESS NAVINA VISITS VOLUNTARIA
Robert Ringer, RESTORING THE AMERICAN DREAM
Murray Rothbard, FOR A NEW LIBERTY
Mary Ruwart, HEALING OUR WORLD IN AN AGE OF
AGGRESSION
Lysander Spooner, THE LYSANDER SPOONER READER
Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience”
Benjamin Tucker, INSTEAD OF A BOOK
Carl Watner, I MUST SPEAK OUT
Economics for those interested in voluntaryism
Walter Block, DEFENDING THE UNDEFENDABLE
Elgin Groseclose, MONEY AND MAN
 Henry Hazlitt, ECONOMICS IN ONE LESSON
Murray Rothbard, POWER AND MARKET
Murray Rothbard, THE CASE FOR A 100 PER CENT
GOLD DOLLAR
Murray Rothbard, WHAT HAS GOVERNMENT DONE TO
OUR MONEY?
Reading Lists
www.mises.org/story/1830: David Gordon, “The Meaning
and History of Liberty: An In-Print Bibliography”
www.tolfa.us/read.htm: Jim Davies, The On Line Freedom
Academy
“The Literature of Liberty,” by Tom G. Palmer in David
Boaz (ed.), THE LIBERTARIAN READER (1997), pp. 415-
453.
Suggestions added by subscribers since June 2012
 
Mark Kurlansky, NONVIOLENCE
Michael Huemer, THE PROBLEM OF POLITICAL
AUTHORITY
Ayn Rand, THE VIRTUE OF SELFISHNESS
Larken Rose, THE MOST DANGEROUS SUPERSTITION
Butler Shaffer, BOUNDARIES OF ORDER
Gene Sharp, THE POLITICS OF NONVIOLENT ACTION
Marc Stevens, ADVENTURES IN LEGAL LAND
Carl Watner, RENDER NOT: THE CASE AGAINST
TAXATION


Voluntaryism In The European Anarchist

Tradition
by Carl Watner

 
Introduction
 
Voluntaryism, the doctrine that the State should be abolished
through peaceful, non-electoral means, has been advocated by
anarchists both in Europe and America. My earlier pamphlets,
Voluntaryism in the Libertarian Tradition and A Voluntaryist
Bibliography, Annotated generally dealt with the roots of the anti-
electoral, voluntaryist tradition and its manifestations in the United
States and England. This essay, however, deals primarily with the
expression of this tradition by European anarchists. The picture
presented here is not an exaggerated view of the anti-political nature
of European anarchism, but it is one seen through a single lens.
There are many other aspects and elements of European anarchism,
which, although not examined here, are still important. Nevertheless,
any historical judgment will credit anti-parliamentarianism as one of
the most important and long-lasting aspects of the anarchist
tradition, both in Europe and North America.
 
Although Emma Goldman was a naturalized U.S. citizen, her roots
were European and many of the activities and debates she engaged
in involved European affairs. Her appearance in this essay also
epitomizes the difference in emphasis between individualist-
anarchists and collectivist-anarchists. The former have approached
libertarian history from the perspective of the self-ownership
principle; that is anarchists and libertarians were usually defined by
their adherence to the axiom that each person is a self-owner and
should control his own person and justly owned property. Within the
context of English and American history this primarily meant dealing
with the radical individualists and radical abolitionists from the 18th,
19th, and 20th Centuries. However, the European anarchist tradition
never fully developed this principle of self-ownership in the same
manner as the individualist-anarchists in the English speaking world.
It was always anti-authoritarian and had a more collectivist
orientation towards property ownership than did the individualist
tradition.
 
Anarchists of whatever persuasion always have and always will view
the State as a criminal institution, as a band of thieves and robbers
who violate the person and property rights of their victims. It is this
anarchist insight into the nature of the State – that the State is
inherently and necessarily an invasive institution – which distinctly
identifies the anarchist, whether individualist or collectivist. What
unites them is their commonly shared view of the State as a criminal
gang and as the chief enemy and most dangerous enemy of all
people in society. Where they differ is in their expectations regarding
the form a future anarchist society will take. Since anarchism is the
doctrine that all the affairs of the people should be conducted on a
voluntary basis, it is up to the people who compose such a society to
arrange their affairs as suits them. Many European anarchists
anticipated a communal, or collectivist organization of society, once
the State was abolished. However, as much as their future
expectations differed from those of the individualists, their approach
to social change was voluntaryist and anti-political. Although the
European anarchist tradition was often looked upon as fraught with
the violence of terrorists and war, it included many nonviolent
revolutionaries among its ranks. As we shall see, the European
experiences offer a rich buffet of historical lessons for all
voluntaryists today.
 
Proudhon
 
Although one of the earliest popularizers of the term “anarchism”
was Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865), another Frenchman,
Anselme Bellegarrigue, his contemporary, was the first to publish a
periodical with an explicitly anarchist title. His L’Anarchie: Journal De
L’Ordre, first appeared in April, 1850. Bellegarrigue was even more
anti-electoral than Proudhon and was explicitly nonviolent. According
to him, the task of abolishing governments “must be carried out
neither by political parties, which will always seek to dominate, nor
by violent revolution, which needs leaders like any other military
operation. The people once enlightened will act for itself.” The
people will make its own revolution, by the sole strength of right, the
force of inertia, “the refusal to co-operate.” From the refusal to co-
operate stems the abrogation of the laws that legalize murder and
the proclamation of equity.
 
Both Bellegarrigue and Proudhon stressed the basic freedom and
spontaneity of anarchism and saw that these elements precluded the
use of rigid organizations, particularly anything like a political party,
which sought to seize and hold power, for creating the future society.
“All parties without exception, in so far as they seek for power, are
varieties of absolutism”, said Proudhon, and none of his followers
have departed from this position. From his own personal
experiences in parliamentary affairs, Proudhon came to reject
parliamentary institutions because “they mean that the individual
abdicates his sovereignty by handing it over to a representative;
once he has done this, decisions may be reached in his name over
which he no longer has any control.” Proudhon opposed democratic
parliaments as well as monarchs, such as Emperor Napoleon III,
when he proudly declared: “Whoever puts his hand on me to govern
me is an usurper and a tyrant; I declare him my enemy.”
 
Proudhon did not begin his “political” career with a rejection of
electoral activity, however. In April 1848, he narrowly missed being
elected to the Constituent Assembly, and in June of that same year
he actually was elected. There is some speculation that he ran for
office with the idea of gathering support for his People’s Bank, since
he had already approached a government cabinet minister for
assistance in promoting the project. His experience was
disillusioning: “As soon as I set foot in the Parliamentary Sinai, … I
ceased to be in touch with the masses; because I was absorbed by
my legislative work. I entirely lost sight of the current of events.” It
was soon clear that, he was completely out of place in the Assembly.
As he recalled his election of 1848, a year afterwards Proudhon
remarked with some justification:
 
When I think of all I have written and published for ten
years on the role of the state in society, on the
subordination of power and the revolutionary incapacity
of government, I am tempted to believe that my election
was the effect of a misunderstanding on the part of the
people.
 
His biographer, George Woodcock, adds, “it seems to have been the
effect of a misunderstanding on his own part as well.”
 
While still in Parliament, Proudhon was charged with sedition when
he denounced Louis-Napoleon. His parliamentary immunity was
waived by his colleagues, and he was sentenced to three years in
prison and a fine of 3000 francs. Thus ended his first involvement in
real politics. Years later, in 1863, when the Bonapartist government
held elections, Proudhon became the center of an anti-voting
movement. Committees of Abstention were set up in Paris and
Bourdeaux and Proudhon penned a detailed exposition of his
abstentionist arguments, which appeared in April 1863, under the
title Les Democrates Assermentes et les Refractaires (Oath-Taking
Democrats and Non-Jurors). Despite some little success, the
Committee of Abstention disbanded after the election. “Yet it
bequeathed to the movements that followed it, and particularly to
anarchism and syndicalism, at least two important elements – the
rejection of expediency as a dominant element in political behaviour,
and the rejection of the democratic myth of the vote as a universal
political panacea.”
 
Although Proudhon may not have totally rejected all forms of
parliamentarism and voting, he believed that political parties were
designed to serve the ruling classes. It is certain that his own political
experiences “hardened his distrust of political methods and helped to
create the anti-parliamentartianism that marked his last years and
was inherited by the anarchist movement in general.” Besides
Proudhon, there were several other European anarchists with similar
electoral experiences. Karl Grun, one of the most ardent German
converts of Proudhon, served “a short disillusioning period as a
parliamentarian – in the Prussian National Assembly in 1849, …”
Another anarchist with similar experience was the Dutchman,
Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, who was also an extreme anti-
militarist. He was elected to parliament in 1888, as a Socialist and he
remained there for three years. Like Proudhon and Grun, he found it
a saddening experience, and emerged a convinced anti-
parliamentarian and began turning towards anarchism. (This also
recalls to mind the British member of Parliament, Auberon Herbert,
who evolved into a voluntaryist.)
 
The anarchist dissatisfaction with electoral politics was not totally a
one way street. There were prominent anarchists who turned
towards parliamentary socialism, as they became disillusioned with
the possibilities of achieving the “anarchist revolution”. Paul Brousse
(1844-1912) was one such personality. He had fallen under the
influence of Bakunin in the early 1870’s and became one of the
leading exponents of the anarchist “propaganda by deed” (acts of
violent terrorism). After 1877, he became mainly concerned with the
revival of the French socialist movement. “This revival, combined
with the growing isolation and ineffectiveness of the anarchists, led
Brousse to change his ideas on political tactics, and when he
returned to France in 1880, he had abandoned the central tenet of
anarchism, abstention from the use of the vote, although he
continued to believe in the ideal of anarcho-communist society.”
 
In Brousse’s own case, he became disillusioned with the possibility
of terror tactics winning a majority of the masses over to anarchism
and thus became willing to experiment with electoral tactics instead.
However previous to his “political” conversion, in 1875, he had
written a pamphlet critical of universal suffrage, attacking it both on
the basis of the French experience, as well as criticizing its
theoretical shortcomings. In the words of his biographer, Brousse
illustrated “how universal suffrage had been used throughout the
century as an instrument of the bourgeoisie, while posturing as an
expression of the will of the people.” Brousse concluded that
electoral agitation would only confirm the bourgeoisie in power.
 
Despite his anti-electoral outpourings, Brousse swallowed his pride
and turned to electoral action, when his anarchist strategies failed to
bring about any immediate results. He joined with the socialists and
became founder of a political party identified with the term
“possibilism”. The “possibilists” had as their aim “to achieve as soon
as possible the organization of public services for the immediate
needs of the working class. One of the ways this could be achieved
was through municipal action” and politics. The choice he made was
a way out of the dilemma faced by anarchists in the late 1870’s and
1880’s. For many saw the dogma of electoral abstention only as a
tactic and when it proved ineffective they were ready to resort to
electoral efforts or trade unionism.
 
Syndicalism
 
The failure of terror tactics during the 1880’s and early 1890’s
created a disillusionment in anarchist ranks, as we have seen. This
resulted in large numbers of French anarchists becoming
syndicalists and entering workers unions. Revolutionary trade
unionism, or syndicalism as it became known, was premised upon
the class struggle between wage earners (the proletariat) and the
State, represented by property owners and the bourgeoisie. The
outcome of the class struggle would result in a social revolution and
the establishment of a socialist society, in which autonomous
syndicates would control each industry. The syndicates in turn would
be controlled by the workers of that particular branch of industry and
would unite in general national federations. Syndicalists thus
combined the Marxian elements of class struggle and distribution
according to need with the collectivist concept of property and the
anarchist idea of statelessness. Syndicates were unique in that they
placed a distinctive emphasis on the role of the labor union in the
struggle against the State and opposed parliamentary democracy
and political weapons in the class struggle.
 
It was from the two makers of the anarchist tradition, Proudhon, and
Michael Bakunin (1814-1876) that the French syndicalists inherited
their “over-powering hatred of the centralized state, a sharp distrust
of politicians, and a rudimentary conception of workers’ control in
industry.” Imbued with strong anarchist tendencies, many of these
unions came to regard the State with hostile eyes and to reject the
conquest of political power. The general strike, comprising workers in
all trade unions, rather than political parties, was to be the primary
means of achieving the social revolution.
 
Many anarchists participated in syndicalist unions, and in fact it was
their participation which largely prevented these unions from
becoming subsidiary to the political parties in their respective
countries. There was a clear distinction between parliamentary
socialism and anarcho-syndicalism. The anarchists believed that the
State could never become an instrument of emancipation even in the
hands of a socialist government. These anarchists denounced
parliamentary action as a “pellmell of compromise, of corruption, of
charlatanism and of absurdities, which does no constructive work.”
On the other hand, most European socialists called for the
workingman to participate in parliamentary life. They didn’t think that
political abstention was helpful or possible. The anarcho-syndicalists
responded that “Politics can never be the way of emancipation for
the workers. … You can change the form of political state, …, but it
will still be coercive.”
 
There was always a danger of these anarchist unions being co-opted
by political parties, socialist or Marxist. In 1907, a leading Italian
anarchist, Errico Malatesta, (whose life and ideas will be examined in
greater detail) cautioned anarchists “against entering unions infested
with socialist politicians, lest they lose sight of the ultimate goal of a
classless society. Fearful that syndicalism would sink into the morass
of trade-unionist reformism and ‘bureaucratism’, Malatesta warned
his anarchist comrades not to become union officials.” The distrust of
parliamentary methods, particularly by the French syndicalists, was
reinforced by the sell-outs performed by their top leaders. Many
French anarcho-syndicalists felt that they were sold out when in
1899, Alexander Millerand accepted the post of Minister of
Commerce.
 
This anti-political bias was the confirmed policy of nearly all the
syndicalist unions all over Europe. Syndicalism was best known for
its advocacy of direct action and the general strike. Workmen were
warned against even accepting beneficial labor legislation since they
would be reinforcing a power they wanted to destroy. Labor reform
could only be obtained independently of parliamentarism.
 
The Italian Debate
 
From their very beginning, anarchists had argued that parliamentary
activity by socialists would corrupt their principles, and that socialists
in bourgeoisie legislatures could not sincerely and effectively work
for the abolition of the State. In Italy, where Bakunin had spawned an
active anarchist movement, there were echoes of this dispute for
many decades. Much of the Italian working class was reluctant to
participate in any kind of disciplined party activity and was against
any kind of parliamentary life, for the very reasons cited by the
anarchists. Workers elected to office soon became renegades to
their cause.
 
These ideas and the defense of the anarchist abstentionist position
were promoted by all of the prominent Italian anarchists during the
last decade of the 19th Century. One of them, Luigi Galleani, in his
recently translated The End of Anarchism?, wrote:
 
The anarchists’ electoral abstentionism implies not only
a conception that is opposed to the principle of
representation (which is totally rejected by anarchism), it
implies above all an absolute lack of confidence in the
State. And this distrust, which is instinctive … is for the
anarchists the result of their historical experience with
the State and its function. … Furthermore,
abstentionism has consequences which are much less
superficial than the inert apathy ascribed to it. It strips
the State of the constitutional fraud with which it
presents itself to the gullible as the true representative
of the whole nation, and in so doing, exposes its
essential character as representative, procurer, and
policeman of the ruling classes.
Galleani’s book was written as a rebuttal to Saverio Merlino. At one
time a very prominent Italian anarchist and lawyer, Merlino became
dissatisfied with anarchism in the late 1890’s, and moved closer and
closer to parliamentary socialism. He eventually became a politician
himself. Merlino’s defection was a source of concern to those
remaining within the Italian anarchist movement and some of its
leading theoreticians, like Galleani and Errico Malatesta, engaged in
long polemical discussions in order to counter the effect of Merlino’s
defection.
 
Merlino had been living outside Italy until 1894, and when he
returned to Naples he was arrested and imprisoned there to serve
out an old sentence. He was freed in late 1896 or early 1897, and
soon thereafter informed the conservative newspaper, Il
Messaggero, that his political opinions had changed. This provoked
a debate with Errico Malatesta, which continued until 1898, when
Malatesta was arrested. Merlino concluded that he no longer
considered himself an anarchist, and would rather define himself as
a ‘libertarian socialist’.
 
Furthermore, he now approved of parliamentary action, so much so,
that, in agreement with other friends, he proposed to present
Galleani (who was then also confined as a political prisoner) as a
candidate for Parliament on the Socialist Party ticket as a protest
against political detention and as a means to set him free by popular
request. Galleani refused the offer. He and other anarchist prisoners
published a special newspaper, in which they rejected the use of
electoral means, even as a way of freeing themselves. As anarchists
they wished to assert, “once and for all their firm refusal to
compromise, or in any way distort their opposition to the State – a
fundamental tenet of their convictions.” The front page of their paper
carried an editorial, signed by Galleani, titled, “The faith remains
unshaken”. The hostages were determined to save the dignity of
their principles and would rather remain in the squalor of their jails or
their islands of confinement, at peace with themselves, “than return
to the so-called free world by bowing down to their jailers – whom
they despised with concessions they knew to be false and
shameful.”
 
The debate between Merlino and Malatesta received wide-spread
attention both in Italy and abroad. Emma Goldman summarized it
years later when she stated her position that anarchists should not
cooperate with communists in elections. She wrote to Alexander
Berkman, that
 
You probably remember the controversy between
Malatesta and Merlino. Of course fascism wasn’t known
then. But black reaction was. And it was Merlino who
argued that anarchists by joining the socialists during
elections would help defeat the reactionary gang. I don’t
know whether you remember Malatesta’s reply. It was to
the effect that the anarchists would, as they had always
done, merely get the chestnuts out of the fire for the
socialists and liberals. And they would injure their ideas
beyond repair.
Merlino’s basic thesis was that the struggle for liberty must be fought
on all fronts, including electoral politics. Although he recognized that
anarchists do not aspire to political power, he did not consider it
contrary to their principles to participate in electoral struggles against
reactionary regimes. It was better to support a republican or socialist
candidate than a conservative one who was likely to impose martial
law. Merlino looked with disfavor on the anarchist abstentionist
position because he thought it had brought about two negative
results: 1) the separation of the abstentionist anarchists from the
most active and militant part of the populace; and 2) their abstention
served to weaken them in front of the government.
 
In practice, Merlino saw nothing contrary to anarchist principles in
the electoral struggle. He did refuse, however, to condone anarchists
serving as ministers in the government. This did not preclude the
election of deputies to parliament, who would probably always
remain in the minority. Their election would be a method of popular
agitation against a reactionary government; it would be their duty to
speak out against the existing government, denouncing its
arbitrariness. Finally Merlino conceded, that although parliamentary
methods, as all things of this world, had their draw backs, it was a
perfectly valid method of agitation and propaganda, suitable to be
used by anarchists.
 
Malatesta bitterly opposed Merlino’s ideas. One of his main themes
was that by getting people accustomed to voting and delegating
authority they are made powerless in handling their own communal
affairs. Since anarchists don’t aspire to power, there was no motive
for them to assist those who do. Both Galleani and Malatesta
rejected the use of protest candidates because they took away the
unity of the struggle which constituted the characteristic opposition of
anarchism to politics. For Malatesta, the essence of parliamentarism
was that parliaments can make and impose laws. Contrary to
Merlino, Malatesta thought that all anarchists had to fight this idea,
as anarchists do not grant to others the ability to bind them. As
Malatesta stated, “Parliamentarism is a form of government and
government means legislative power, judicial and executive powers;
it means violence and coercion, and the imposition of force and the
will of the governors on the governed.” Thus it must always and
firmly be rejected by anarchists.
 
Malatesta also argued that even if anarchists could win at electoral
politics they would still not want to hold positions of power. “We are
against the principle of government and we do not believe that
participating in it is the way to renounce power.” Furthermore, he
recognized that abstentionism, although a question of tactics, was
integrally related to the question of anarchist principles. “When one
renounces it [abstentionism] one ends with renouncing also the
principles involved. And that happens because of the natural
connection between means and ends.” Finally he argued that
instead of legitimizing parliamentary government, anarchists should
stand for its abolition. He wrote:
 
Our mission, as anarchists, instead is showing to the
people that parliamentary government, although it is the
least bad of the types of government, is still a
government. THE REMEDY WILL NOT BE IN
 CHANGING THE FORM OF GOVERNMENT BUT IN
ABOLISHING IT.
The Merlino-Malatesta debate foreshadowed the problems that 20th
Century anarchists were to encounter in their efforts at political
collaboration. We will find this true both in the case of the Russian
and Spanish anarchists which will now be examined.
 
Anarchists And The Russian Revolution
 
The historian, Paul Avrich has noted that the anarchists in Russia
had always set themselves apart from other radical groups by their
“implacable opposition to the state in any form. Faithfully they
cleaved to Bakunin’s dictum that every government, no matter who
controls it, is an instrument of oppression. Nor did they exclude the
‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ from this indictment, …” Years before
Bakunin had predicted the anarchists’ differences with Marx, when
he had written in Statehood and Anarchy that the dictatorship of the
proletariat would be “the most autocratic, the most despotic, the
most arrogant, and the most contemptuous of all regimes.” Though
the anarchists desired, along with Lenin, to destroy the Provisional
Government, Bakunin’s warnings about the power hungry
communists lingered in their minds.
 
When the Czar abdicated in mid-March, 1917, a Provisional
Government was set up under Prince Lvov, who was superseded by
Alexander Kerensky in July. When Kropotkin returned to Russia that
summer, he was well received by the masses and the government.
Kerensky offered the well-known libertarian a cabinet post as
Minister of Education as well as a state pension, both of which
Kropotkin declined. Kerensky certainly had had in mind capitalizing
on the popularity of Kropotkin if he could.
 
Much to the dismay of the anarchists, the downfall of the Czar fell far
short of their principal objective, which was the social revolution and
abolition of the Russian government. Although the February
revolution had overthrown the monarchy, it failed to eliminate the
State. Some anarchists compared the February rising to a game of
musical chairs, in which one ruler took the seat of another. Thus the
immediate aims of both the Bolsheviks and the anarchists came to
coincide since both desired the elimination of the Provisional
Government. As the noted historian of this era, Paul Avrich, has
written, this “was all they shared in common, however. Collaboration
on this end, ultimately resulted in the destruction of anarchism in
Russia.”
 
Kerensky’s Provisional Government had elections scheduled for
October, and as the time drew near for the Constituent Assembly to
be selected, “anarchist spokesmen poured forth a veritable torrent of
invective on the subject of representative government.” Alexander
Shapiro, whom we shall meet again in Spain, wrote that “no
parliament can break the path toward liberty, that the good society
can be realized only through ‘the abolition of all power’ … Bill
Shatov, another Russian emigre anarchist, declared that political
power in any shape … was not worth a rotten egg” and that “political
power can give us nothing.”
 
When Lenin seized power in the November 1917 coup, he was
readily assisted by the anarchists. The latter blindly hoped that no
new government would take the place of the Provisional one.
“Disregarding the preachments of Bakunin and Kropotkin against
political ‘coups’, they had taken part in a seizure of power in the
belief that power, once captured, could somehow be diffused and
eliminated.” With the establishment of the Bolshevik government,
they found that it was impossible to eliminate political power by
capturing it. This … marriage of convenience” (as Paul Avrich
termed it), between the anarchists and Lenin, lasted only as long as
Lenin wanted it to. Lenin had used the anarchists to his own
advantage and when he was finished with them, there was nothing
more to do than to eliminate them, since they were truly a threat to
the Communist Party.
 
The antagonism between the Soviets and the anarchists was further
heightened when Lenin opened peace talks at Brest-Litovsk in the
Spring of 1918. Many anarchists had become so disillusioned with
Lenin, that they sought a complete break with him. The Bolsheviks,
for their part, began to contemplate the suppression of their former
allies, who had outlived their usefulness. A contemporary anarchist
critique of Bolshevik power argued that it had offered abundant proof
that “state power possessed inalienable characteristics; it can
change its label, its theory, and its servitors, but in essence it merely
remains power and despotism in new forms.”
 
Finally in April 1918, armed violence broke out between the
Bolsheviks and anarchists when the government conducted a raid
against 26 anarchist centers in Moscow. A dozen Cheka agents
were slaughtered, about 40 anarchists were killed or wounded, and
more than 500 were taken prisoner. Practically all the anarchist
presses and periodicals were closed down and shortly afterwards,
the Cheka conducted similar raids in Petrograd and the provinces.
 
The anarchists reacted by accusing the Bolsheviks of having acted
as “Judases” and betrayers. They also turned to violence to defend
themselves and counter-attack. Anarchist groups bombed the office
of the Moscow Committee of the Communist Party while it was in
session during 1919. Shortly before the bombing they had described
the Bolshevik dictatorship as the worst tyranny in human history. The
violence was denounced by most prominent anarchist leaders, but
nevertheless the Soviet government used this violence as an excuse
to make massive new arrests from anarchist ranks. “Bolshevik
spokesmen maintained that with the survival of the revolution at
stake, it was imperative to snuff out violent opposition from every
quarter. No anarchists, they insisted, were being arrested for their
beliefs, but only for their criminal deeds.”
 
Paul Avrich has written that, “The deepening of the Civil War of
1918-1921 threw the anarchists into a quandary over whether to
assist the Bolsheviks in their internecine with the Whites. Ardent
libertarians, the anarchists found the repressive policies of the Soviet
government utterly reprehensible; yet the prospect of a White victory
seemed even worse.” The anarchists realized that by refusing to
come to the assistance of the Bolsheviks, they might help tip the
scales in favor of the Whites. The anarchists were split apart by this
issue opinions ranged all across the spectrum; from eager
collaboration with the Communist Party to active, violent resistance
against them. Some anarchists even became Communist Party
members. In the end, a great many gave varying degrees of support
to the regime. Nevertheless there there were a few anarchist
stalwarts and die-hards who had utmost contempt for their renegade
colleagues. They contemptuously labeled them “Soviet anarchists”
and claimed they had succumbed to the blandishments of politics.
“Again and again, they warned that political power is evil, that it
corrupts all who wield it, that government of any kind stifles the
revolutionary spirit of the people and robs them of their freedom.”
 
Lenin was impressed with the support provided by some of his
“Soviet anarchists” and in 1919, he commented that many anarchists
were becoming dedicated supporters of Soviet power. Bill Shatov
was an outstanding example. Shatov, whose comments against
political power we read earlier, served Lenin’s government as a
military officer during 1919 (he took on a significant part of
organizing the defense of Petrograd) and then as Minister of
Transport in the Far Eastern Republic in 1920. Several years later he
was sent to the East to supervise the construction of the Turk-Sib
Railroad. (Perhaps it was poetic justice that Shatov was exiled to
Siberia and was believed to have been shot during the purges of the
late 1930’s.) Shatov justified his participation in the government by
citing the danger of a reactionary takeover. Nevertheless, he
admitted to Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, after their
arrival in Russia in January 1920, that “the Communist State in
action is exactly what we anarchists have always claimed it would be
– a tightly centralized power still more strengthened by the dangers
of Revolution.”
 
When Kropotkin died in February 1921, his funeral represented the
last great anarchist gathering in Russia. Certain important anarchist
political prisoners were released from Cheka prisons for the day and
public support for the deceased “anarchist prince” was
overwhelming. However, the following month, March 1921 witnessed
the climax of the Soviet atrocities against the anarchists. The sailors
and civilian population of Kronstadt, an island base in the Gulf of
Finland, revolted against the Soviets. The rebels were suppressed
by the Red Army, under the direction of Trotsky. Following the climax
of the revolt, new raids against the anarchists swept the country.
Few anarchists were left at large, their book stores were closed, and
even the followers of the pacifist Tolstoy were imprisoned or
banished. A number of pacifists had already been shot during the
Civil War for refusing to serve in the Red Army.
 
It was at this time that Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman and
other foreign-born anarchists were in Russia, hoping to witness the
revolution in practice. Their expectations were sorely disappointed.
Emma Goldman threatened to stage a personal protest in order to
call to Lenin’s attention the persecution of the anarchists in Russia.
Many of them were already in jail (where they had participated in at
least one prolonged hunger strike) and many others had been shot.
Finally the Soviets granted amnesty to many of the better known
anarchist prisoners who had no record of violent opposition to the
Soviet government. These freed prisoners had to leave the country
at once. Meanwhile, “Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and
Sanya [Alexander] Schapiro, profoundly disheartened by the turn the
revolution had taken, had made up their minds to emigrate also.”
 
Emma Goldman: On Revolution And Elections
 
Goldman and Berkman had been in Russia for nearly two years
(January 1920 to December 1921) and had seen the revolution in
action. Emma Goldman’s reaction to that experience was recorded
in her two books, My Disillusionment in Russia and in My Further
Disillusionment in Russia. By the time of her departure from Russia
she had become highly critical of Lenin and his regime. She knew
that power corrupts anarchists and communists, just as it corrupted
their opponents. Her outlook on social revolution had been refined as
a result of her experiences. No longer did she look upon the violent
destruction of an existing regime and the social revolution as
synonymous. The failure of the Russian Revolution was that it took
superficial political changes (the replacement of the Czar by Lenin)
for an indication of systemic change. Nothing could have been
further from the truth. As Emma Goldman wrote,
 
[In] its mad passion for power, the Communist State
even sought to strengthen and deepen the very ideas
and conceptions which the Revolution had come to
destroy. … With the concept that the Revolution was
only a means of securing political power, it was
inevitable that all revolutionary values should be
subordinated to the needs of the Socialist State; indeed
exploited to further the security of the newly acquired
governmental power.
The perversion of the revolution was crystallized for Emma Goldman
by the “all-dominating slogan” of the Communist Party: “THE END
JUSTIFIES ALL MEANS.” In a brilliant analysis of means and ends,
Goldman asserted that,
 
There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and
purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are
another. This conception is a potent menace to social
regeneration. All human experience teaches that means
 cannot be separated from the ultimate aims. The means
employed become, through individual habit and social
practice, part and parcel of the final purpose; they
modify it, and presently the aims and means, become
identical. From the day of my arrival in Russia I felt it, at
first vaguely, then ever more consciously and clearly. …
The whole history of man is continuous proof of the
maxim that to divest one’s methods of ethical concepts
means to sink into the depths of utter demoralization. In
that lies the tragedy of the Bolshevik philosophy as
applied to the Russian Revolution.
One of her final comments on her Russian experience was summed
up in 1936, at the time of the Stalinist purges, when she claimed that
the anarchist criticism of Russia had been vindicated. “Our position,”
she wrote, “as regards power and dictatorship has been
strengthened by the events in Russia.” All the people being purged
began their lives with an ideal for which they suffered prison and
exile. “No sooner did they ascend to power than their past was wiped
out and they became as savage in their persecution of their
opponents as the enemies they came to destroy.” She concluded,
“For nothing so corrupts and disintegrates as power itself.” The
whole essence of the question about Russia was for her the fact that
“you cannot educate men for liberty by making them slaves,” and this
is what the Bolsheviks had tried to do.
 
During the mid-1930’s Emma Goldman was concerned not only with
the direction of events in Stalinist Russia but also with the direction
taken by the anarchist movement in Spain. She was to some extent
intimately connected with the events in Spain, because of her
contacts in the international anarchist movement, as well as her two
visits to Spain during the Civil War. Evidence of her concern is found
in her correspondence and published articles, particularly in her
discussion of “anarchists and elections”. In an article by this title
appearing in the June-July 1936 Vanguard, she proposed and
answered the following questions:
 
 1. [The] question as to whether the abstention from
participation in elections is for Anarchists a matter of
principle? I certainly think it is, and should be for all
anarchists.
2. … [It] is but logical for Anarchists not to consider
political participation as a “simple question of tactics.”
Such tactics are not only incompatible with Anarchist
thought and principles, but they also injure the stand of
Anarchism as the one and only true revolutionary
philosophy.
3. Can Anarchists, without scruple, and in the face of
certain circumstances exercise power during a transition
period? … I cannot understand how they can possibly
aspire to power.
For Emma Goldman, it was “not the abuse of power” which
corrupted everybody, but rather “the thing itself, namely power which
is evil and which takes the very spirit and revolutionary fighting
strength out of everybody who wields it.” Collaboration and
cooperation in elections and with the Communists (as the anarchists
were doing in Spain) did not meet with her approval.
 
I cannot agree with the suggestion that anarchists
should in grave times co-operate with communists in
elections. … I myself consider it not only inconsistent
with our views of vesting power to politicians by means
of voting for them. I also consider it highly dangerous.
We insist, do we not, … that the means must harmonize
as far as possible with the end. And our end being
anarchism, I do not see how we can very well unite with
any political party. … (With our past experience with
socialists and communists, it seems folly to join them.
But more important is my firm belief that we would be
spitting ourselves in the face, if we approved
participation in elections. Fighting ALL POWER AND
ALL GOVERNMENT AS WE DO, how can we help by
putting anyone into positions of power? … WE SIMPLY
CANNOT AND SHOULD NOT MAKE THE PLUNGE. …
We can only state our own position towards the
fundamentals of anarchism. And that has always been
opposition to the slick political machine that has ever
corrupted the best of people or has paralyzed their
efforts.
Anarchists and the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939)
 
Though Emma Goldman aided the Spanish anarchist movement
during the Spanish Civil War, as her statements make clear, she
disagreed with their participation in the Republican government.
However, she stood behind them because they were fighting with
their backs to the wall against the whole world. Their struggle was
her second chance to see the revolution at last. She was in Spain
from September 1936 until January 1937, at which time she went to
London to help publicize the republican cause. She was continually
embroiled in disputes over anarchist principles and their
collaboration in Spain. Her appointment as a collector of relief funds
for the Catalan government somehow seemed to show her
complicity, however much she denied it. She was sickened by the
farcical comedy of anarchist leaders defending government property,
which occurred in the aftermath of the May crisis in Barcelona. She
agreed with her former companion in Russia, Alexander Shapiro,
who complained that “Anarchists in government will and ‘must’ act
like all government officials and ministers.”
 
The important point about the Spanish Civil War is that for the first
and only time in modern political history there were anarchist
ministers serving in both provincial and federal cabinets. Nothing like
this had ever transpired in anarchist history. The Spanish anarchists
had caused a terrible breach among both their international
comrades and their principles. It is important to understand what
motivated the Spaniards into holding office and participating in
governments, and what, if any lessons, are to be learned from their
experiences.
 
The anarchist tradition in Spain has a long and rich history, mostly
embroidered with violence and terrorism. By the first two decades of
the 20th Century, the anarchist presence in Spain was a significant
element, particularly among the working classes and their syndical
trade unions. The CNT (Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo or
National Confederation of Labor) had been founded in 1910 and was
a national trade union. The influence of the anarchists saved it on
various occasions from falling into the hands of other political
organizations. In 1927, the anarchists founded their own trade union,
the FAI (Federacion Anarquista Iberica or Anarchist Federation of
Iberia) in an effort to radicalize their own movement. It was hoped
that the FAI would act as a “radical” watchdog to correct the
deviationist tendencies present within the CNT.
 
The CNT and FAI shunned parliamentary activity and in contrast to
other labor parties, held no seats in the central or local government
and refrained from nominating candidates for parliament. They
followed a syndicalist line, believing that direct action and strikes
were necessary to accomplish the social revolution. The FAI, the
more radical organization of the two, made no distinction between
governments of the right or the left, just as they made no distinction
between individual politicians. For them, all politicians were equally
bad.
 
Post-World War I Spain had suffered a series of military coups and
rebellions and experienced continual struggle against the monarchy.
In December 1931, a new constitution was adopted after the
dissolution of the royal throne. The Republican government of Azana
was hard pressed by discontent, especially in the autonomous
province of Catalan, which was granted home rule in late 1932. In
early 1933, there was a large uprising in Barcelona, sparked by
anarchist and syndicalist unrest with the progress of social reform. In
November of that year the first regular elections for the Cortes were
held.
 
The anarcho-syndicalists generally took a hard line, abstentionist
approach to this election. Both the CNT and FAI had urged their
members not to vote. Tierra y Libertad (Land and Liberty) declared a
month before the elections in November: “Our revolution is not made
in Parliament, but in the streets.” “We are not interested in changing
governments,” Isaac Puente, an influential anarcho- syndicalist, had
written at the same time: “What we want is to suppress them. …
Whatever side wins, whether the right or the left will be our enemy,
… and will have at its disposal the truncheons of the assault guards.”
A few days before the election, Tierra y Libertad editorialized:
 
Workers! Do not vote! The vote is a negation of your
personality. Turn your backs on those who ask you to
vote for them. They are your enemies. … As far as we
are concerned they are all the same; all politicians are
our enemies whether they be Republicans,
monarchists, Communists, or Socialists. … Parliament
… is a filthy house of prostitution toying with the
interests of the country and the people.
The November 1933 election for the Cortes resulted in
giving the Parties of the Right 44% of the seats.
Throughout 1934 and 1935, social and political unrest
continued to plague Spain. Catalan sovereignty was
proclaimed and its independence suppressed by
military efforts. Finally in January 1936, the Cortes was
dissolved and new elections were called for February.
These elections were lukewarmly endorsed by many
Spanish anarchists, after the Popular Front coalition
promised to free all political prisoners. It was largely the
support of the anarchists and syndicalists which
enabled the Popular Front to come to power. This
combination of Republicans, Socialists, Syndicalists,
Communists and anarchists won a decisive victory over
their political opponents.
 
The new Popular Front government which took power proclaimed an
amnesty as it had promised, but soon faced the Civil War, which
broke out on July 18, 1936, as the result of a rebellion by military
chiefs in Morocco. The Popular Front government held its own in
Madrid and Barcelona but the nationalist forces made advances in
other parts of the country. Catalan, which had already previously
regained autonomous status, immediately sought anarchist
participation in the existing provincial government, the Generalitat.
 
The CNT had its largest following in Catalan and it was logical that
the existing provincial government would want to take advantage of
its presence. Luis Companys, President of the Generalitat,
summoned representatives of the CNT-FAI to his office as soon as
the uprising had been defeated (July 20, 1936) in order to obtain
anarchist and syndicalist legitimization of his rule. Garcia Oliver and
Diego Abad de Santillan became ministers in the government of the
Catalan Generalitat. Santillan saw no other choice than for
anarchists to share the administrative power with the Companys
government in Catalan. Paralysis of the federal government in
Madrid and continued advances by the nationalist forces threatened
to envelop Spain in fascism. It was up to the anarchists to transform
the militia committee of Catalan into a truly revolutionary body.
Regarding his experience as a minister in the Catalan government,
Santillan, in 1938, wrote: “Simply as governors we [the anarchists]
were no better than anyone else, and we have already proved that
our intervention in governments served only to reinforce
governmentalism.”
 
Meanwhile, the rebel, nationalist forces had made further advances
into Republican Spain and on September 4, 1936, the Popular Front
formed a new government under the leadership of Largo Caballero,
a former socialist minister. If the Caballero government was to be
more than a government in name, it would have to “assume control
of all the elements of state power. … The work of reconstructing
state power could not be achieved or at least would be extremely
difficult to achieve without the participation in the government of the
extreme wing of the libertarian movement, …” This part of the
movement was represented by the anarchist oriented CNT and FAI.
 
Although views differed, most of Caballero’s colleagues advised his
seeking the participation of the libertarians in the government. The
advantages of having them share the responsibility for its measures
would be indubitable. “The entry of representatives of the CNT into
the present Council of Ministers would certainly endow the directive
organ of the nation with fresh energy and authority,” wrote Claridad,
one of Largo Caballero’s journals on October 25, 1936, especially “in
view of the fact that a considerable segment of the working class,
now absent from its deliberations, would feel bound by its measures
and authority.” What Caballero’s advisers could not guess was
whether or not the anarcho-syndicalists would wish to become
ministers in the government and share in the reconstruction of the
State. This was questionable even though quite recently they had
violated their principles by joining the Catalan regional government.
Furthermore, Largo Caballero had tried, when forming his cabinet in
September 1936, to secure the participation of the anarcho-
syndicalists by offering them a single ministerial seat without
portfolio. Burnett Bolloten has noted that, Caballero “needed their
participation in the belief that they would feel themselves bound by
his government measures and authority.” However at that time, they
rejected his offer based on their traditional anti-governmental stand
and their personal distrust. (Caballero had been responsible for
persecution of anarchists, earlier in his political career.)
 
The CNT had not been ready to enter the Madrid government in
September but in October 1936 a plenary session of the regional
federations of the CNT was held for the purpose of discussing the
matter further. The result was that the CNT authorized its
representatives to “conduct negotiations for bringing the CNT into
the government.” The CNT justified its position by stating: “… in
order to win the war and to save our people and the world, it is ready
to collaborate with any one in a directive organ, whether this organ
be called a council or a government.” In their negotiations with
Caballero, the CNT representatives asked for five ministries
including war and finance, but he rejected their demand. Finally, on
November 3, (1936), they accepted four: justice, industry,
commerce, and health, none of which, however, was vital.
Furthermore, the portfolios of industry and commerce had previously
been held by one minister. The four CNT members named to the
government were: Juan Garcia Oliver (justice), Juan Lopez
(commerce), Federica Montseny (health and public assistance), and
Juan Peiro (industry).
 
As we have seen, Caballero was partly motivated by his desire to
invest his government with greater authority. President Azana, who
had to sign the decrees appointing the anarchist ministers, was
hesitant to do so. Caballero claimed that Azana did not see the
significance of getting the anarchists into office. “From terrorism and
direct action, it [Spanish anarchism] had moved to collaboration and
to sharing the responsibilities of power. … It was a unique event in
the world and would not be sterile. I [Caballero] told him [Azana] that
if he did not sign the decrees, I would resign.”
 
The Communists also had a similar, ulterior motive in drawing the
anarchists into the government. They hoped to bolster their own
power. The Communists were concerned with world opinion,
particularly in France, Britain, and America. They wished to give an
appearance of legality to the Spanish Republic. Thus they hoped
that the participation of the anarcho-syndicalists in the government
would placate foreign opinion and enhance their prospects of
receiving military assistance from these Western powers.
Furthermore, after the war, it was revealed that the Communists
hoped to create a breach in the ranks of the anarchists and
syndicalists by drawing the CNT into government collaboration.
 
In fact, there was a discord in the ranks of the anarchists and
syndicalists because nearly everyone was unhappy with what they
recognized to be a compromise. Their justification was simply that if
the anarchists did not take a role in the Republican government, a
dictatorship worse than Russia would result and that trip prospects of
a fascist regime were more unacceptable to them than the act of
collaboration with the existing government.
 
Reluctant criticism, both within Spain and outside Spain, was
immediately forthcoming from anarchists. Emma Goldman, who had
argued with Federica Montseny for hours against collaboration,
“believed that the anarchists had abandoned political principle to
save Spain from further foreign intervention. Such a course was not
surprising in the context of Spanish history, but the real tragedy of
the anarchists was that they were pulled further and further into the
mire of compromise.” The December 1936 Vanguard carried
remarks on the Spanish situation, translated from a French anarchist
journal. The author, Luigi Bertoni, wrote, partly in justification and
partly in recognition of the anarchists departure from principle.
 
The present Spanish government does, indeed, differ
considerably from any ordinary government; that is
especially evident from the hostility shown towards it on
the part of governments all over the world. But it is still
essentially and practically a government, and must
therefore contain to a considerable extent the faults
inherent in it. Thus it is not without apprehension that I
view the discharging of ministerial functions on the part
of our four comrades, despite the complete confidence
we have in them. … Rather than ‘governmental
anarchists’, I should call them ‘revolutionary anarchists’.
Another outspoken critic of anarchist collaboration was Camillo
Berneri, an Italian anarchist living in Barcelona. Robert Kern, a
historian of this era, has noted that beginning October 1936, Berneri
wrote “vitriolic articles in his Guerra Di Classes demanding, among
other things, development of an international revolutionary campaign
as the prime defense of the republic. He also attacked the mood of
anarchist collaboration. Difficulties in Aragon did not necessitate a
total capitulation to the Communists. Membership in the Popular
Front cabinet, far from solving anything, would only put anarchists
under extreme coercion to maintain unanimity in Madrid. All
differences of ideology would eventually be extinguished and
Stalinist statism imposed – a tragic end to a long anarchist tradition.”
Before Berneri was assassinated in 1937 (for his anticommunist
attacks), he wrote an “Open Letter to Federica Montseny” in which
he claimed that the acceptance of the ministerial posts had no direct
bearing on the war effort or upon the problems that the anarchists
hoped to solve by joining the cabinet. In his open letter Berneri
asked, “The hour has come to enquire whether the Anarchists are in
the Government for the purpose of being the vestals to serve as a
Phrygian Cap for some of the politicians flirting with the enemy or
with the forces anxious to restore ‘The Republic of all Classes’.”
 
Federica Montseny, one of the four who had accepted ministerial
positions in the Madrid government of Caballero, was one of their
most outspoken defenders. She and her family represented several
generations of radical anarchist activism in Spain.
 
Federica was born in 1905, the daughter of Federico Urales, who
was one of the most well-respected anarchist theoreticians and
journalists in Spain during the first two decades of the century. In the
early 1920’s, she and her father renewed publication of a famous
anarchist journal, La Revista Blanca. Federica was editor of the
journal and an author of many novels. By the Fall of 1936, she was
one of the most popular anarchist leaders and theoreticians in Spain.
At the age of 31, she accepted the ministerial post for health and
public assistance, becoming the first woman ever to hold a
ministerial office in a Spanish national government.
 
There is little doubt that Montseny was a purist, at least in principle.
In a 1934 article in La Revista Blanca, she wrote that all
governments are evil: “It became obvious that no theory justified the
existence of any state. Be it socialist, communistic, democratic, or
fascistic, they were all the same – they were states. Each kind of
state possessed the same purpose: the promotion of friends, the
suppression of the workers by keeping them submissive, and the
exploitation of the many by the few.” A state in all places and at all
times represented “oppression and the annihilation of man. … [A
state was] incarnated in armed organisms which sustain through the
method of terror and force, the Power which dominates, robs, and
which kills.”
 
As her biographer adds, “Montseny insisted” that her view of the
State applied not only to traditional governments, but to revolutionary
ones as well. So it is clear that Montseny understood that ALL
governments were evil even though she became a minister in one.
 
The underlying justification for her action was that she saw the
Nationalists as a greater threat to anarchist ideals than any liberal
republican government. She felt it foolish to allow oneself to be
drowned by the tide of fascism. The retrograde nature of fascism
demanded a new approach. Anarchists were among the first to
realize that the struggle against fascism was of utmost importance.
In a 1937 talk, she said, “We think [by cooperating with Caballero]
we will avoid a repetition of the fate of the anarchist movements in
other countries where Communists assumed direction of the
revolution.”
 
It was not without trepidation that she entered the government in
November 1936. In a speech she made in France in 1945, she
reportedly said of her doubts about becoming a governmental
minister: “I asked for twenty-four hours to think over the matter. I
consulted my father who, thoughtfully, said, ‘You know what this
means. In fact it is the liquidation of anarchism and of the CNT. Once
in power you will not rid yourselves of power.’ …” After she resigned
from the cabinet in mid-1937, she declared: “As a daughter of
veteran anarchists, … I regarded my entry into the government, my
acceptance of the post to which the CNT had assigned me, as
having more significance than the mere appointment of a minister. …
What inhibitions, what doubts, what anguish I had personally to
overcome in order to accept the post! … [For] me it implied a break
with my life’s work, with a whole past linked to the ideals of my
parents. It meant a tremendous effort, an effort made at the cost of
many tears.” She also noted that the complicity of anarchists in
government would, as she put it, “ruin many of us morally.” Its safe to
conclude that ultimately she regretted her departure from principle
and her involvement in the government. She had not accomplished
anything lasting by her efforts.
 
The Caballero government managed to sustain itself in power until
May 1937, at which time it was succeeded by that of Negrin which
excluded the anarcho-syndicalists from participation. The four
anarchist ministers had done little to strengthen the position of the
anarchist movement during their time in office and had irreparably
injured anarchist ideas. This realization burst upon the libertarian
movement in 1938, as Franco came nearer and nearer to total
victory.
 
During the last two weeks of October 1938, national plenary
meetings of the regional federations of the libertarian movement
were held in Barcelona. Three major divisions of opinion were to be
found among those present. A majority held that the libertarian
movement should participate in politics, as they had already done.
Two minority views existed: 1) that the FAI should be converted into
a political party of the CNT and attempt to represent the libertarian
movement in the government once again, and 2) the view,
represented rather feebly by the Young Libertarians of Catalan, “that
all participation in government should be renounced.” During one of
the sessions of the Young Libertarians, their views came across
rather picturesquely. “To try to join the State in order to destroy it is
like taking your wives and sisters to brothels in order to abolish
prostitution.”
 
The result of the plenary meetings were resolutions in favor of
political participation. One resolution read: “Our direct participation in
the administrative bodies of political, economic, and military life …
was motivated by our high sense of responsibility and the need for
co-operation in the fight against fascism … in order to facilitate a
victory. … [This participation] has not been a correction of our tactics
but rather an intelligent addition to our methods in accord with the
circumstances and in response to an abnormal situation in the life of
the people.” However, in an effort to purify their intentions, another
resolution read: “The Libertarian Movement, having taken part in
politics in violation of its tradition, declares: the political Power, the
State, will always be the antithesis of Anarchism, and [our]
circumstancial participation in Power has been … for the purpose of
opposing to the greatest possible extent, from a position in Power
and from everywhere else, the strangulation of the revolution.”
 
Many historians agree that the collaboration of the CNT and FAI in
the republican government failed to improve the military situation
during the their time in power. Vernon Richards, another historian of
this era, concluded that “it certainly added prestige to the
Government.” In his opinion, there is little question that the
anarchists were “out-witted and outmaneuvered by the politicians on
every issue. Equally significant is that their contact with politicians
had no ideological influence on the politicians whereas a number of
leading members of the CNT were in the end won over to the very
principles of government and centralize authority, …” They became
victims of the false belief that “power was only evil when in the
‘wrong hands’, and for a ‘wrong cause’, and not that ‘power tends to
corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely’, …”
 
If we had measured the number of anarchists in Spain by their
refusal to collaborate in electoral politics, then we would probably
have found very few of them there. Moreover, it seems that few of
them understood the implications of their philosophy, which was not
only anti-electoral but anti-war. One of the most basic contradictions
faced by the Spanish anarchists was the fact, as John Brademas put
it, that they “sought to make war and social revolution at the same
time.” This was impossible in theory and contradictory in practice.
The choice between fighting the forces of Franco, on the one hand,
and fighting for the revolution, on the other hand, seemed to be
answered by violence, no matter which way they turned. Before the
Civil War broke out, there had been interest (by some Spanish
anarchists) in the ideas of the French anarchist, Sebastien Faure,
who was strongly anti-nationalist and anti-militaristic. Faure’s non-
violence … attracted Spaniards fighting a military dictatorship. Faure
believed that organizing masses of everyday people into a Gandhi-
like campaign of public non-violence would render military power
useless.” However, Faure’s ideas were not followed up and here lies
at least part of the real tragedy of Spanish anarchism.
 
The Spaniards did not see the incongruity of trying to wage war on
the basis of anarchist principles. War and anarchism are simply
repugnant; one is destruction and extermination, and the other is
mutualistic voluntaryism. The anarcho-militias, manned by anarchists
during the Civil War, were full of problems, for the simple reason that
the individual anarchist soldier refused to recognize any authority. He
took a dim outlook on rank, military titles, and regimentation. As one
anarchist commentator on the Civil War noted, “War has always
been a tomb, never a means of revolution.”
 
The ultimate problem of violence and social revolution facing the
Spanish anarchists was that an anarchist society could not be
established and maintained on the basis of coercion. Recourse to
violence was always an indication of weakness not strength. The
revolution with the greatest possibility of success would be the one
which was brought about peacefully. Only then would there be any
valid sign of unanimity among the population on the objectives of the
revolution.
 
One of the chief justifications of the Spanish anarchist participation in
government and war was that they were choosing the lesser of two
evils. During the events leading up to the elections of February 1936,
Diego Abad de Santillan observed this very thing, that:
 
“participation in the elections was advisable. We gave
power to the leftists, convinced that under the
circumstances they were the lesser evil.”
In an astute analysis of this justification, Murray Bookchin observed:
 
This could be construed as a reasonable and honest
statement if action based on the “lesser evil” was seen
for what it really was – a distinct departure from
principle, openly admitted to be such, a bitter pill to be
swallowed to deal with an acute illness. … But after this
has been said, one must emphasize that it would have
been preposterous to expect a “lesser evil” to behave
with a noble virtue. … The best the CNT and FAI could
have hoped for from the newly elected state would have
been neutrality; to base one iota of their policy on active
state support was not only absurd, but marked the initial
steps toward the “politicalization” of the Spanish
anarchist movement and its eventual conversion into a
political party. … The Anarchists … were slowly
becoming clients of the creature they most professed to
oppose: the state power itself. … Having taken to the
vote, they began to take to politics.
Concluding Remarks
 
This review of the European anarchist tradition has offered many
reasons for the rejection of electoral participation and political power
by voluntaryists today. Malatesta was the best spokesman for the
non-electoral anarchists, having defended that position against
Merlino, as early as 1897. Malatesta saw not only the dangers of
electoral politics, but he foresaw the dangers of war and
revolutionary violence years before they developed in Spain. In
1930, regarding anarchism and revolutions, he wrote:
 
I incline to the view that the complete triumph of
anarchy will come by evolution, gradually rather than by
violent revolution. … In any case, if we take into
account our sparse numbers and the prevalent attitudes
among the masses, and if we do not wish to confuse
our wishes with the reality, we must expect that the next
revolution will not be an anarchist one, and therefore
what is more pressing, is to think of what we can and
must do in a revolution in which we will be a relatively
small and badly armed minority. … But we must,
however, beware of ourselves becoming less anarchist
because the masses are not ready for anarchy. If they
want a government, it is unlikely that we will be able to
prevent a new government being formed, but this is no
reason for our not trying to persuade people that
government is useless and harmful or of preventing the
government from also imposing on us and others like us
who don’t want it. … If we are unable to prevent the
constitution of a new government, if we are unable to
destroy it immediately, we should in either case refuse
to support it in any shape or form. Disobedience on
principle, resistance to the bitter end against every
imposition by the authorities, and an absolute refusal to
accept any position of command. … In this way we shall
not achieve anarchy, which cannot be imposed against
 the wishes of the people, but at least we shall be
preparing the way for it.
And again in 1932, he wrote:
 
The primary concern of every government is to ensure
its continuance in power, irrespective of the men who
form it. If they are bad, they want to remain in power in
order to enrich themselves and to satisfy their lust for
authority; and if they are honest and sincere they
believe that it is their duty to remain in power for the
people. … The anarchists … could never, even if they
were strong enough, form a government without
contradicting themselves and repudiating their entire
doctrine; and, should they do so, it would be no different
from any other government; perhaps it would even be
worse.
Wherever and whenever anarchists have engaged in war and/or
electoral politics they have inevitably failed both militarily and
politically. One cannot remain an anarchist and take part in war or
government. By compromising one’s anarchism this way, one does
not make failure less certain; only more humiliating. That is the
lesson of anarchist history.