#classical anarchists

[athousandgateaux]

Some critics have suggested that the reluctance of ‘classical’ anarchists to frame their critique in normative terms belies a lack of philosophical sophistication or rigor. When one consults the historical record, however, one sees that this reluctance is not the result of an oversight but of a deliberate rejection of normative concepts coupled with a principled pragmatism. This does not strike me as the least bit surprising; after all, it seems obvious that a philosophy predicated in large part on the rejection of laws and norms in the political realm would be skeptical toward analogous concepts in the moral realm. The same is true of the anarchists’ pragmatism – that is, their tendency to judge concepts on the basis of their usefulness. Proudhon, as we have already seen, insists that the putatively ‘transcendent concepts…that we place like divinities at the summit of our intelligence are mere products of the analysis of our own intuition, of the hypotheses and postulates of our experience.’ As Jesse Cohn points out, the point of philosophy for Proudhon isn’t to discover mind-independent, transcendent truth but to ‘…draw from the mass of human facts the principles that govern them’; that is, to discover the ‘logic of things.’

Nathan Jun, Anarchism and Political Modernity pg. 132

[athousandgateaux]

It is clear, in any case, that the so-called classical anarchists reject normativity and to this extent anarchist morality is not describable in either deontojuridical or teleological terms. At the same time, it is also clear that anarchist philosophy – as reflected both in its meta-ethical investigations and its emphasis on prefiguration – is deeply historical in orientation. Like Marxists, anarchists have always appreciated the extent to which theory and practice are historically embedded and conditioned, though they categorically reject any concept of historical determinism. Kropotkin, for example, argues that systems of morality both constitute and are constituted by determinate historical contexts. Kropotkin’s argument, in turn, underwrites the concept of prefiguration, which recognizes that political tactics must be constantly revised in light of changes in historical circumstances. The only categorical limitation on tactics adopted – a limitation that is practical rather than normative – is that they must be consistent with their intended ends. Anarchism’s rejection of both normativity as well as historical materialism, which together constitute an important part of political modernity, is further evidence that it represents something altogether different, something that stands apart form, or outside, political modernity

Nathan Jun, Anarchism and Political Modernity pg. 132-33