Теория анархизма: часто задаваемые вопросы или что-то вместо этого, написанное человеком, слишком занятым, чтобы написать ответы на эти вопросы. Версия 5.2

[W]hoever desires liberty, should understand these vital facts, viz.: 1. That every man who puts money into the hands of a "government" (so called) puts into its hands a sword which will be used against himself, to extort more money from him, and also to keep him in subjection to its arbitrary will. 2. That those who will take his money, without his consent, in the first place, will use it for his further robbery and enslavement, if he presumes to resist their demands in the future. 3. That it is a perfect absurdity to suppose that any body of men would ever take a man's money without his consent, for any such object as they profess to take it for, viz., that of protecting him; for why should they wish to protect him, if he does not wish them to do so?... 4. If a man wants "protection," he is competent to make his own bargains for it; and nobody has any occasion to rob him, in order to "protect" him against his will. 5. That the only security men can have for their political liberty, consists in their keeping their money in their own pockets, until they have assurances, perfectly satisfactory to themselves, that it will be used as they wish it to be used, for their benefit, and not for their injury. 6. That no government, so called, can reasonably be trusted for a moment, or reasonably be supposed to have honest purposes in view, any longer than it depends wholly upon voluntary support.

-- Lysander Spooner, No Treason: the Constitution of No Authority

It should be noted that Tom Wetzel disputes my characterization of anarcho-syndicalism; he argues that very few anarcho-syndicalists ever imagined that workers would simply take over their firms, while maintaining the basic features of the market economy. Rather, the goal has usually been the establishment of an overarching democratic structure, rather than a multitude of uncoordinated firm-centered democracies. Or at Wetzel states, "Anarcho-syndicalism advocates the development of a mass workers' movement based on direct democracy as the vehicle for reorganization of the society on the basis of direct workers' collective power over social production, thus eliminating the domination and exploitation of the producing class by an exploiting class. Workers cannot have collective power over the system of social production as isolated groups competing in a market economy; rather, workers self- management requires structures of democratic control over social production and public affairs generally. Workers' self- management thus refers, not just to self-management of the individual workplace, but of the whole system of social production. This requires grassroots bodies, such as workers' congresses or conventions, through which coordinated policies for the society can be developed in a democratic manner. This is proposed as a substitute or replacement for the historical nation-state." On this interpretation of anarcho-syndicalism, the revolutionary trade unions are a means for achieving an anarchist society, rather than a proposed basis for social organization under anarchy.

Many would observe that there is nothing anarchistic about this proposal; indeed, names aside, it fits easily into the orthodox state-socialist tradition. Bakunin would have probably ridiculed such ideas as authoritarian Marxist socialism in disguise, and predicted that the leading anarchist revolutionaries would swiftly become the new despots. But Wetzel is perhaps right that many or even most historical anarcho-syndicalists were championing the system outlined in his preceding quotation. He goes on to add that "[I]f you look at the concept of 'state' in the very abstract way it often is in the social sciences, as in Weber's definition, then what the anarcho-syndicalists were proposing is not elimination of the state or government, but its radical democratization. That was not how anarchists themselves spoke about it, but it can be plausibly argued that this is a logical consequence of a certain major stream of left-anarchist thought."

Ronald Fraser's discussion of the ideology of the Spanish Anarchists (historically the largest European anarchist movement) strongly undermines Wetzel's claim, however. There were two well-developed lines of thought, both of which favored the abolition of the State in the broad Weberian sense of the word, and which did indeed believe that the workers should literally have control over their workplaces. After distinguishing the rural and the urban tendencies among the Spanish ideologists, Fraser explains:

Common to both tendencies was the idea that the working class 'simply' took over factories and workplaces and ran them collectively but otherwise as before... Underlying this vision of simple continuity was the anarcho-syndicalist concept of the revolution not as a rupture with, the destruction and replacement of, the bourgeois order but as the latter's displacement. The taking over of factories and workplaces, however violently carried out, was not the beginning of the revolution to create a new order but its final goal. This view, in turn was conditioned by a particular view of the state. Any state (bourgeois or working class) was considered an oppressive power tout court - not as the organization of a particular class's coercive power. The 'state' in consequence, rather than the existence of the capitalist mode of production which gave rise to its particular form, often appeared as the major enemy. The state did not have to be taken, crushed, and a new - revolutionary - power established. No. If it could be swept away, abolished, everything else, including oppression, disappeared. The capitalist order was simply displaced by the new-won workers' freedom to administer the workplaces they had taken over. Self-organized in autonomous communes or in all-powerful syndicates, the workers, as the primary factor in production, dispensed with the bourgeoisie. The consequences of this were seen in the 1936 Barcelona revolution; capitalist production and market relations continued to exist within collectivized industry.

Overall, the syndicalist is probably the best elaborated of the left-anarchist systems. But others in the broader tradition imagine individuals forming communes and cooperatives which would be less specialized and more self- sufficient than the typical one-product-line anarcho- syndicalist firm. These notions are often closely linked to the idea of creating a more environmentally sound society, in which small and decentralized collectives redirect their energies towards a Greener way of life.

Many left-anarchists and anarchist sympathizers have also been attracted to Guild Socialism in one form or another. Economist Roger A. McCain thoughtfully explores Guild Socialism as an alternative to both capitalism and the state in "Guild Socialism Reconsidered," one of his working papers. To view it, click here.

Kropotkin's lucid essay "Law and Authority" gives a thoughtful presentation of the left-anarchist's view of law. Primitive human societies, explains Kropotkin, live by what legal thinkers call "customary law": an unwritten but broadly understood body of rules and appropriate behavior backed up primarily by social pressure. Kropotkin considers this sort of behavioral regulation to be unobjectionable, and probably consistent with his envisaged anarchist society. But when centralized governments codified customary law, they mingled the sensible dictates of tribal conscience with governmental sanctions for exploitation and injustice. As Kropotkin writes, "[L]egislators confounded in one code the two currents of custom ... the maxims which represent principles of morality and social union wrought out as a result of life in common, and the mandates which are meant to ensure external existence to inequality. Customs, absolutely essential to the very being of society, are, in the code, cleverly intermingled with usages imposed by the ruling caste, and both claim equal respect from the crowd. 'Do not kill,' says the code, and hastens to add, 'And pay tithes to the priest.' 'Do not steal,' says the code, and immediately after, 'He who refuses to pay taxes, shall have his hand struck off.'"

So perhaps Kropotkin's ideal society would live under the guidance of a reformed customary law stripped of the class legislation with which it is now so closely associated. But Kropotkin continues to give what appear to be arguments against even customary law prohibiting e.g. murder. Almost all violent crime is actually caused by poverty and inequality created by existing law. A small residual of violent crime might persist, but efforts to handle it by legal channels are futile. Why? Because punishment has no effect on crime, especially such crimes of passion as would survive the abolition of private property. Moreover, criminals should not be judged wicked, but rather treated as we now treat the sick and disadvantaged.

Most left-anarchists probably hold to a mix of Kropotkin's fairly distinct positions on law and crime. Existing law should be replaced by sensible and communitarian customs; and the critic of anarchism underestimates the extent to which existing crime is in fact a product of the legal system's perpetuation of inequality and poverty. And since punishment is not an effective deterrent, and criminals are not ultimately responsible for their misdeeds, a strictly enforced legal code may be undesirable anyway.

Some other crucial features of the left-anarchist society are quite unclear. Whether dissidents who despised all forms of communal living would be permitted to set up their own inegalitarian separatist societies is rarely touched upon. Occasionally left-anarchists have insisted that small farmers and the like would not be forcibly collectivized, but the limits of the right to refuse to adopt an egalitarian way of life are rarely specified.

Most of the prominent anarcho-capitalist writers have been academic economists, and as such have felt it necessary to spell out the workings of their preferred society in rather greater detail than the left-anarchists have. In order to best grasp the anarcho-capitalist position, it is helpful to realize that anarcho-capitalists have emerged almost entirely out of the modern American libertarian movement, and believe that their view is simply a slightly more extreme version of the libertarianism propounded by e.g. Robert Nozick.

FAQs on the broader libertarian movement are widely available on the Net, so we will only give the necessary background here. So-called "minarchist" libertarians such as Nozick have argued that the largest justified government was one which was limited to the protection of individuals and their private property against physical invasion; accordingly, they favor a government limited to supplying police, courts, a legal code, and national defense. This normative theory is closely linked to laissez-faire economic theory, according to which private property and unregulated competition generally lead to both an efficient allocation of resources and (more importantly) a high rate of economic progress. While left-anarchists are often hostile to "bourgeois economics," anarcho-capitalists hold classical economists such as Adam Smith, David Hume, and Jean-Baptiste Say in high regard, as well as more modern economists such as Joseph Schumpeter, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, George Stigler, and James Buchanan. The problem with free-market economists, say the anarcho-capitalists, is not that they defend the free market, but merely that their defense is too moderate and compromising.

(Note however that the left-anarchists' low opinion of the famous "free-market economists" is not monolithic: Noam Chomsky in particular has repeatedly praised some of the political insights of Adam Smith. And Peter Kropotkin also had good things to say about Smith as both social scientist and moralist; Conal Smith explains that "In particular he approved of Smith's attempt to apply the scientific method to the study of morals and society, his critique of the state in The Wealth of Nations, and his theory of human sociability in The Theory of Moral Sentiments.")

Now the anarcho-capitalist essentially turns the minarchist's own logic against him, and asks why the remaining functions of the state could not be turned over to the free market. And so, the anarcho-capitalist imagines that police services could be sold by freely competitive firms; that a court system would emerge to peacefully arbitrate disputes between firms; and that a sensible legal code could be developed through custom, precedent, and contract. And in fact, notes the anarcho-capitalist, a great deal of modern law (such as the Anglo-American common law) originated not in legislatures, but from the decentralized rulings of judges. (The anarcho-capitalist shares Kropotkin's interest in customary law, but normally believes that it requires extensive modernization and articulation.)

The anarcho-capitalist typically hails modern society's increasing reliance on private security guards, gated communities, arbitration and mediation, and other demonstrations of the free market's ability to supply the defensive and legal services normally assumed to be of necessity a government monopoly. In his ideal society, these market alternatives to government services would take over all legitimate security services. One plausible market structure would involve individuals subscribing to one of a large number of competing police services; these police services would then set up contracts or networks for peacefully handling disputes between members of each others' agencies. Alternately, police services might be "bundled" with housing services, just as landlords often bundle water and power with rental housing, and gardening and security are today provided to residents in gated communities and apartment complexes.

The underlying idea is that contrary to popular belief, private police would have strong incentives to be peaceful and respect individual rights. For first of all, failure to peacefully arbitrate will yield to jointly destructive warfare, which will be bad for profits. Second, firms will want to develop long- term business relationships, and hence be willing to negotiate in good faith to insure their long-term profitability. And third, aggressive firms would be likely to attract only high-risk clients and thus suffer from extraordinarily high costs (a problem parallel to the well-known "adverse selection problem" in e.g. medical insurance -- the problem being that high-risk people are especially likely to seek insurance, which drives up the price when riskiness is hard for the insurer to discern or if regulation requires a uniform price regardless of risk). Anarcho-capitalists generally give little credence to the view that their "private police agencies" would be equivalent to today's Mafia -- the cost advantages of open, legitimate business would make "criminal police" uncompetitive. As David Friedman explains in The Machinery of Freedom, "Perhaps the best way to see why anarcho-capitalism would be so much more peaceful than our present system is by analogy. Consider our world as it would be if the cost of moving from one country to another were zero. Everyone lives in a housetrailer and speaks the same language. One day, the president of France announces that because of troubles with neighboring countries, new military taxes are being levied and conscription will begin shortly. The next morning the president of France finds himself ruling a peaceful but empty landscape, the population having been reduced to himself, three generals, and twenty-seven war correspondents."

(Moreover, anarcho-capitalists argue, the Mafia can only thrive in the artificial market niche created by the prohibition of alcohol, drugs, prostitution, gambling, and other victimless crimes. Mafia gangs might kill each other over turf, but liquor-store owners generally do not.)

Unlike some left-anarchists, the anarcho-capitalist has no objection to punishing criminals; and he finds the former's claim that punishment does not deter crime to be the height of naivete. Traditional punishment might be meted out after a conviction by a neutral arbitrator; or a system of monetary restitution (probably in conjunction with a prison factory system) might exist instead. A convicted criminal would owe his victim compensation, and would be forced to work until he paid off his debt. Overall, anarcho-capitalists probably lean more towards the restitutionalist rather than the pure retributivist position.

Probably the main division between the anarcho-capitalists stems from the apparent differences between Rothbard's natural-law anarchism, and David Friedman's more economistic approach. Rothbard puts more emphasis on the need for a generally recognized libertarian legal code (which he thinks could be developed fairly easily by purification of the Anglo-American common law), whereas Friedman focuses more intently on the possibility of plural legal systems co-existing and responding to the consumer demands of different elements of the population. The difference, however, is probably over-stated. Rothbard believes that it is legitimate for consumer demand to determine the philosophically neutral content of the law, such as legal procedure, as well as technical issues of property right definition such as water law, mining law, etc. And Friedman admits that "focal points" including prevalent norms are likely to circumscribe and somewhat standardize the menu of available legal codes.

Critics of anarcho-capitalism sometimes assume that communal or worker-owned firms would be penalized or prohibited in an anarcho-capitalist society. It would be more accurate to state that while individuals would be free to voluntarily form communitarian organizations, the anarcho- capitalist simply doubts that they would be widespread or prevalent. However, in theory an "anarcho-capitalist" society might be filled with nothing but communes or worker- owned firms, so long as these associations were formed voluntarily (i.e., individuals joined voluntarily and capital was obtained with the consent of the owners) and individuals retained the right to exit and set up corporations or other profit-making, individualistic firms.

On other issues, the anarcho-capitalist differs little if at all from the more moderate libertarian. Services should be privatized and opened to free competition; regulation of personal AND economic behavior should be done away with. Poverty would be handled by work and responsibility for those able to care for themselves, and voluntary charity for those who cannot. (Libertarians hasten to add that a deregulated economy would greatly increase the economic opportunities of the poor, and elimination of taxation would lead to a large increase in charitable giving.)

For a detailed discussion of the economics of privatization of dispute resolution, rule creation, and enforcement, see my "The Economics of Non-State Legal Systems," which is archived with my other economics writings.

Anarchism of various breeds has been criticized from an extremely wide range of perspectives. State-socialists, classical liberals, and conservatives have each on occasion examined anarchist theorists and found them wanting. After considering the unifying argument endorsed by virtually all of the critics of anarchism, we shall turn to the more specific attacks of Marxist, moderate libertarian, and conservative lineage.

The most common criticism, shared by the entire range of critics, is basically that anarchism would swiftly degenerate into a chaotic Hobbesian war of all-against-all. Thus the communist Friedrich Engels wonders "[H]ow these people propose to run a factory, operate a railway or steer a ship without having in the last resort one deciding will, without single management, they of course do not tell us." He continues: "The authority of the majority over the minority also ceases. Every individual and every community is autonomous; but as to how society, even of only two people, is possible unless each gives up some of his autonomy, Bakunin again maintains silence." And similarly, the classical liberal Ludwig von Mises states that "An anarchistic society would be exposed to the mercy of every individual. Society cannot exist if the majority is not ready to hinder, by the application or threat of violent action, minorities from destroying the social order. This power is vested in the state or government."

Or to consider a perhaps less ideological writer, Thomas Hobbes implicitly criticizes anarchist theory when he explains that "Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man." Hobbes goes on to add that "It may peradventure be thought, there was never such a time, nor condition of warre as this; and I believe it was never generally so, over all the world: but there are many places, where they live so now. For the savage people in many places of America, except the government of small Families, the concord whereof dependeth on naturall lust, have no government at all; and live at this day in that brutish manner, as I said before." Since it is in the interest of the strong to take what they want from the weak, the absence of government lead inexorably to widespread violence and the prevention or destruction of civilization itself.

Anarchists of all varieties would reject this argument; sometimes claiming that the critic misunderstands their position, other times that the critic's assumptions are too pessimistic. Kropotkin, for example, would seriously dispute the claim that war is the natural state of ungoverned human beings; like many other species of animals, cooperation is more common, natural, and likely. Left- anarchists generally would normally object that these criticisms rest upon contingent cultural assumptions arising from a competitive scarcity economy. Replace these institutions with humane and egalitarian ones; then poverty, the cause of crime and aggression, would greatly decrease. Finally, many left- anarchists envisage cooperatives and communes adopting and enforcing rules of appropriate conduct for those who wish to join.

The anarcho-capitalist would likely protest that the critic misunderstands his view: he does believe that police and laws are necessary and desirable, and merely holds that they could be supplied by the free market rather than government. More fundamentally, he doubts the game- theoretic underpinnings of Hobbes' argument, for it ignores the likelihood that aggressive individuals or firms will provoke retaliation. Just as territorial animals fight when defending their territory, but yield when confronted on the territory of another animal, rational self-interested individuals and firms would usually find aggression a dangerous and unprofitable practice. In terms of game theory, the anarcho-capitalist thinks that Hobbes' situation is a Hawk-Dove game rather than a Prisoners' Dilemma. (In the Prisoners' Dilemma, war/non-cooperation would be a strictly dominant strategy; in a Hawk-Dove game there is normally a mixed-strategy equilibrium in which cooperation/peace is the norm but a small percentage of players continue to play war/non-cooperation.) Self- interested police firms would gladly make long-term arbitration contracts with each other to avoid mutually destructive bloodshed.

(To view an excellent short related essay on anarchism and game theory, click here.)

Second, Marx ridiculed Bakunin's claim that a socialist government would become a new despotism by socialist intellectuals. In light of the prophetic accuracy of Bakunin's prediction in this area, Marx's reply is almost ironic: "Under collective ownership the so-called people's will disappears to make way for the real will of the cooperative." It is on this point that most left-anarchists reasonably claim complete vindication; just as Bakunin predicted, the Marxist "dictatorship of the proletariat" swiftly became a ruthless "dictatorship over the proletariat."

Finally, Marx stated that the anarchists erroneously believed that the government supported the capitalist system rather than the other way around. In consequence, they were attacking the wrong target and diverting the workers' movement from its proper course. Engels delineated the Marxist and left-anarchist positions quite well: "Bakunin maintains that it is the state which has created capital, that the capitalist has his capital only by the grace of the state. As, therefore, the state is the chief evil, it is above all the state which must be done away with and then capitalism will go to blazes of itself. We, on the contrary, say: Do away with capital, the concentration of the means of production in the hands of the few, and the state will fall of itself." The left-anarchist would probably accept this as a fair assessment of their disagreement with the Marxists, but point out how in many historical cases since (and before) Marx's time governments have steered their countries towards very different aims and policies, whereas capitalists are often fairly adaptive and passive.

Probably the earliest minarchist attack on anarcho- capitalism may be found in Ayn Rand's essay "The Nature of Government." ("Minarchism" designates the advocacy of a "minimal" or nightwatchman state, supplying only police, courts, a legal system, and national defense.) Her critique contained four essential arguments. The first essentially repeated Hobbes' view that society without government would collapse into violent chaos. The second was that anarcho-capitalist police firms would turn to war as soon as a dispute broke out between individuals employing different protection agencies: "[S]uppose Mr. Smith, a customer of Government A, suspects that his next-door neighbor, Mr. Jones, a customer of Government B, has robbed him; a squad of Police A proceeds to Mr. Jones' house and is met at the door by a squad of Police B, who declare that they do not recognize the authority of Government A. What happens then? You take it from there." Her third argument was that anarcho-capitalism was an expression of an irrational subjectivist epistemology which would allow each person to decide for himself or herself whether the use of physical force was justified. Finally, her fourth argument was that anarcho-capitalism would lack an objective legal code (meaning, presumably, both publicly known and morally valid).

Rand's arguments were answered at length in Roy Childs' "Objectivism and the State: An Open Letter to Ayn Rand," which tried to convince her that only the anarcho-capitalist position was consistent with her view that the initiation of force was immoral. In brief, Childs argued that like other free-market institutions, private police would have economic incentives to perform their tasks peacefully and efficiently: police would negotiate arbitration agreements in advance precisely to avoid the kind of stand-off that Rand feared, and an objective legal code could be developed by free-market judges. Childs strongly contested Rand's claim that anarcho-capitalism had any relation to irrationalism; an individual could be rational or irrational in his judgment to use defensive violence, just as a government could be rational or irrational in its judgment to do so. As Childs queried, "By what epistemological criterion is an individual's action classified as 'arbitrary,' while that of a group of individuals is somehow 'objective'?"

Robert Nozick launched the other famous attempt to refute the anarcho-capitalist on libertarian grounds. Basically, Nozick argued that the supply of police and legal services was a geographic natural monopoly, and that therefore a state would emerge by the "invisible hand" processes of the market itself. The details of his argument are rather complex: Nozick postulated a right, strongly contested by other libertarians, to prohibit activities which were exceptionally risky to others; he then added that the persons whose actions were so prohibited were entitled to compensation. Using these two principles, Nozick claimed that the dominant protection agency in a region could justifiably prohibit competition on the grounds that it was "too risky," and therefore become an "ultra-minimal state." But at this point, it would be obligated to compensate consumers who were prohibited from purchasing competitors' services, so it would do so in kind by giving them access to its own police and legal services -- thereby becoming a minimal state. And none of these steps, according to Nozick, violates libertarian rights.

There have been literally dozens of anarchist attacks on Nozick's derivation of the minimal state. To begin with, no state arose in the manner Nozick describes, so all existing states are illegitimate and still merit abolition. Secondly, anarcho-capitalists dispute Nozick's assumption that defense is a natural monopoly, noting that the modern security guard and arbitration industries are extremely decentralized and competitive. Finally, they reject Nozick's principles of risk and compensation, charging that they lead directly to the despotism of preventive law.

The conservative critique of anarchism is much less developed, but can be teased out of the writings of such authors as Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, and Ernest van den Haag. (Interestingly, Burke scholars are still debating whether the early Burke's quasi-anarchistic A Vindication of Natural Society was a serious work or a subtle satire.)

Burke would probably say that, like other radical ideologues, the anarchists place far too much reliance on their imperfect reason and not enough on the accumulated wisdom of tradition. Society functions because we have gradually evolved a system of workable rules. It seems certain that Burke would apply his critique of the French revolutionaries with equal force to the anarchists: "They have no respect for the wisdom of others; but they pay it off by a very full measure of confidence in their own. With them it is a sufficient motive to destroy an old scheme of things, because it is an old one. As to the new, they are in no sort of fear with regard to the duration of a building run up in haste; because duration is no object to those who think little or nothing has been done before their time, and who place all their hopes in discovery." To attempt to replace the wisdom of the ages with a priori theories of justice is sure to lead to disaster, because functional policies must be judicious compromises between important competing ends. Or in Burke's words, "The science of constructing a commonwealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, like every other experimental science, not to be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experience that can instruct us in that practical science; because the real effects of moral causes are not always immediate." The probable result of any attempt to realize anarchist principles would be a brief period of revolutionary zeal, followed by chaos and social breakdown resulting from the impracticality of the revolutionary policies, and finally ending in a brutal dictator winning widespread support by simply restoring order and rebuilding the people's sense of social stability.

Many anarchists would in fact accept Burke's critique of violent revolution, which is why they favor advancing their views gradually through education and nonviolent protest. In fact, Bakunin's analysis of Marxism as the ideology (i.e., rationalization for the class interests of) middle-class intellectuals in fact differs little from Burke's analysis: Bakunin, like Burke, perceived that no matter how oppressive the current system may be, there are always power-hungry individuals who favor violent revolution as their most practical route to absolute power. Their protests against actual injustices must be seen in light of their ultimate aim of imposing even more ruthless despotism upon the people.

On other issues, anarchists would disagree strongly with several of Burke's claims. Many forms of misery stem from the blind adherence to tradition; and rational thinking has sparked countless improvements in human society ever since the decline of traditional despotism. Moreover, anarchists do not propose to do away with valuable traditions, but simply request evidence that particular traditions are valuable before they lend them their support. And what is to be done when -- as is usually the case -- a society harbors a wide range of mutually incompatible traditions?

Anarchists might also object that the Burkean analysis relies too heavily upon tradition as a result rather than a process. Cultural evolution may constantly weed out foolish ideas and practices, but it hardly follows that such follies have already perished; for the state to defend tradition is to strangle the competitive process which tends to make tradition sensible. As Vincent Cook explains: "[I]t is precisely because wisdom has to be accumulated in incremental steps that it cannot be centrally planned by any single political or religious authority, contrary to the aspirations of conservatives and collectivists alike. While the collectivists are indeed guilty of trying to rationalistically reconstruct society in defiance of tradition (a valid criticism of left-anarchists), conservatives on the other hand are guilty of trying to freeze old traditions in place. Conservatives have forgotten that the process of wisdom accumulation is an on-going one, and instead have opted for the notion that some existing body of traditions (usually Judeo-Christian) already represent social perfection."

Russell Kirk, noted Burke scholar, has written a brief critique of the modern libertarian movement. (Another conservative, Ernest van den Haag, wrote a lengthier essay with a similar theme and perspective.) In all likelihood, Kirk would apply many (but not all) of the same arguments to left-anarchists.

Kirk faults the libertarians (and when he discusses "libertarians" he usually seems to have the anarcho- capitalists in mind) on at least six counts. First, they deny the existence of a "transcendent moral order." Second, order is prior to liberty, and liberty is possible only after government establishes a constitutional order. Third, libertarians assume that self-interest is the only possible social bond, ignoring the broader communitarian vision of human nature found in both the Aristotelian and Judeo- Christian traditions. Fourth, libertarians erroneously assume that human beings are naturally good or at least perfectible. Fifth, the libertarian foolishly attacks the state as such, rather than merely its abuses. Sixth and last, the libertarian is an arrogant egoist who disregards valuable ancient beliefs and customs.

Left-anarchists would perhaps agree with Kirk on points three and six. So if Kirk were to expand his attack on anarchism to encompass the left-anarchists as well, he might acquit them of these two charges. The remaining four, however, Kirk would probably apply equally to anarchists of both varieties.

How would anarchists reply to Kirk's criticisms? On the "moral transcendence" issue, they would point out there have been religious as well as non-religious anarchists; and moreover, many non-religious anarchists still embrace moral objectivism (notably anarchists in the broader natural law tradition). Most anarchists would deny that they make self- interest the only possible social bond; and even those who would affirm this (such as anarcho-capitalists influenced by Ayn Rand) have a broad conception of self-interest consistent with the Aristotelian tradition.

As to the priority of order over liberty, many anarchists influenced by e.g. Kropotkin would reply that as with other animal species, order and cooperation emerge as a result, not a consequence of freedom; while anarcho- capitalists would probably refer Kirk to the theorists of "spontaneous order" such as Hayek, Hume, Smith, and even Edmund Burke himself.

The FAQ addresses the questions of human perfectibility and utopianism in sections 20 and 21. As for Kirk's final point, most anarchists would reply that they happily accept valuable customs and traditions, but believe that they have shown that some ancient practices and institutions -- above all, the state --have no value whatever.