The Problem of an Anarchistic Civil Society

Abstract

This essay deals with a peculiar problem that has plagued anarchist thought throughout its history: how to develop and maintain an anarchistic civil society that at once ensures the freedom of all its members and overcomes all threats of domination within it but which is at the same time non-coercive. To be fair, this is not a question that perplexes just anarchism but the entirety of political philosophy since Hegel. In his recent volume, Anarchy as Order: The History and Future of Civic Humanity, Mohammed A. Bamyeh (2010) has grappled with this question, and his curious solution—a reliance on what he calls civic humanity—while of noble intention, suffers from an indelible weakness in balancing subjective freedom with the freedom of others in community. I do not here propose my own solution to this fundamental problem. Rather, my aim is to outline what is at stake in this debate and thereby highlight the urgent need for critical dialogue on this issue because the future of anarchism is, in no small measure, intimately bound with how we approach this question: whether we succumb to an individual voluntarism that is seemingly congruent with the spirit of anarchism but permissive of potentially dominating behaviour in civil society, or, whether we arrive (somehow) at a collective form capable of sustaining individual freedom in ethical life with others. While I am not satisfied in framing the question in this dualistic way, it is perhaps the most incisive method to focus on the key tensions involved.