THE PHILOSOPHICAL ANARCHISM of ROBERT PAUL WOLFF By
STRANGE ANARCHY: THE PHILOSOPHICAL ANARCHISM OF ROBERT PAUL WOLFF
by
GRAHAM JAMES BAUGH
A., The University of British Columbia, 1982
THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTERS OF ARTS
i n
THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
(Department of Philosophy)
We accept this thesis as conforming
to_ the required standard
THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
September 1984
©Graham James Baugh, 1984 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission.
Department of
The University of British Columbia 1956 Main Mall Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Y3
DE-6 (3/81) Abstract
This thesis presents a reconstruction and critique of
Robert Paul Wolff's defence of anarchism. In Part One, the
underlying moral theory upon which this defence is based is analyzed. The defence of anarchism is then reconstructed on the
basis of this moral theory. It is argued that all claims to
legitimate political authority are apparently illegitimate
because such claims conflict with an overriding obligation of
rational agents to be autonomous. Utilitarian and social
contract solutions to this conflict are discussed in relation to
the same moral theory. It is argued that some forms of
authority are compatible with individual autonomy but that the
state, due to its inherently coercive nature, is not. Wolff's
anarchist alternative to the state is then discussed as the form
of society in which people enjoy the fullest autonomy.
In Part Two of this thesis Wolff's arguments for anarchism,
his underlying moral theory and his instrumental view of reason
are criticized. It is argued that Wolff's argument fails as a
defence of anarchism and the anarchist status of Wolff's
argument is itself put into question. Wolff's position is held
to be a form of moral and political scepticism distinct from the
political theory of anarchism. Wolff's moral theory is
criticized for failing to provide any basis for meaningful moral discourse or for the rational resolution of moral conflict.
Wolff's concepts of autonomy, obligation and moral
- ii - contractarianism are held to be conceptually incoherent.
Wolff's claim that reason functions merely as an instrument for the achievement of nonrational goals is rejected. It is argued that Wolff's instrumental view of reason itself expresses certain moral values typical of modern society. The thesis concludes with a short section outlining some alternative approaches to anarchism which seem more plausible and coherent than the approach taken by Wolff. STRANGE ANARCHY: THE PHILOSOPHICAL ANARCHISM OP ROBERT PAUL WOLFF
Abstract ii
Aknowledgement vi
Introduction 1
Part One 5
Chapter I: Autonomous Ethics 5
Introduction 5
Autonomy and Rational Agency 6
Hypothetical and Categorical Imperatives 9
Obligation, Rationality and Responsibility 14
Moral Contractarianism 21
Chapter II: From Autonomy to Anarchism 30
Introduction 30
De Facto and De Jure Authority 30
The Apparent Conflict Between Authority and Autonomy 38
Possible Solutions to the Conflict 44
The State of Nature as a Viable Alternative 59
- iv - Part Two 67
Chapter III: Strange Anarchy . 67
Introduction 67
Wolff's "Anarchist" Ideal 70
Wolff's Critique of Existing Society 80
Wolff's View of Human Nature 84
Wolff and Political Anarchism 89
Chapter IV: Autonomous Ethics and Instrumental Reason 92
Introduction 92
Autonomous "Obligation" and Moral
Contractarianism 95
Critique of Instrumental Reason 102
Conclusion:WhitherAnarchism? 110
Notes 121
Bibliography 135
- v - Ac knowledgement
I would like to acknowledge the helpful comments and criticisms regarding this thesis which I have received from Earl
Winkler, my thesis adviser, and Robert Rowan, the second reader.
Special thanks to Pelar Davidson for preparing the thesis in manuscript form.
G.J.B.
- vi - Introducti on
Robert Paul Wolff has presented an original argument for philosophical anarchism based on the purported incompatibility between political authority and individual autonomy. Wolff holds that because all rational agents have an overriding obligation to be autonomous, all claims to legitimate political authority must be rejected.
The plausibility of Wolff's argument ultimately depends on the validity of a separate general moral theory which is meant to establish the fundamental obligation of all rational agents to be autonomous. Consequently, any reconstruction of Wolff's defence of anarchism must first clearly articulate the moral theory upon which that defence is based.
Through a formal analysis of rational agency tied to an instrumental view of reason Wolff seeks to demonstrate that insofar as agents are rational and they are to act, they must be autonomous. By autonomy Wolff means acting only on one's self-chosen policies rationally connected to one's self-chosen ends. Thus, autonomy requires rational choice and deliberation and rational action., By rational action Wolff means action based on rational policies which are not self-contradictory, or self-defeating, and which are consistent, taken as a whole, with each other. Two important consequences follow from Wolff's analysis of rational agency. The first is that ultimately the
1 only obligation rational agents have, insofar as they are rational agents, is to be autonomous. The second is that, because of Wolff's commitment to an instrumental view of reason, all choice of ends or goals is ultimately determined by neither
reason nor desire, but is both nonrational and uncaused. Wolff describes his position as a form of moral contractarianism but,
it is argued, this description is somewhat misleading.
Wolff argues that all claims to legitimate political authority are illegitimate for such claims seek to establish a
right of authority to command rational agents to act contrary to
their own self-chosen policies. For rational agents, obedience
to such commands constitutes a heteronomous policy. Because all
rational agents have an overriding obligation to act autonomously, they must reject all claims to legitimate
political authority. Because all states necessarily claim such
authority, rational agents must reject the state and become
anarchists. Wolff discusses some purported solutions to the
conflict between authority and autonomy but argues that they are
failures. He then puts forward some proposals designed to add
some plausibility to anarchist claims that rational agents can
and must live without the state.
However, both the success of Wolff's argument and its
anarchist status must be questioned. It is argued that Wolff
fails to establish that anarchy is the only form of society
compatible with individual autonomy. It is further argued that
given the truth of Wolff's moral theory, the sort of rational,
2 anarchist community he envisages is impossible to achieve.
Instead, Wolff's moral theory can provide a rational justification for some agents to infringe the autonomy of other agents, and therefore his moral theory provides a possible justification for the state conceived as a group of persons wielding political power over others. Wolff's view of human nature is held to be implausible, providing no rational basis for hope of progress toward the anarchist ideal. Wolff endorses a Marxist political strategy contrary to anarchist ideals and in opposition to the mainstream of anarchist thought. For these reasons, it is argued that it would be inappropriate to describe
Wolff's position as an anarchist one.
Wolff's general moral theory, analyzed in its own right rather than as a form of anarchism, is held to be deficient for a number of reasons. It is argued that an unintended consequence of Wolff's moral theory is that agents will be unable to engage in any meaningful moral discourse. Therefore, any moral conflict cannot be resolved through rational means.
Wolff's concepts of autonomy, obligation, and. moral contractarianism in general are held to be conceptually incoherent. Wolffian agents must treat each other as mere means to their nonrational ends, thus precluding the prospect of any rational community.
Wolff's instrumental view of reason is criticized on a number of grounds. It is argued that the claim that reason neither rules in nor rules out any choice of ends is absurd and
3 false. A variety of examples and arguments are presented to substantiate this point. The claim that instrumental reason is itself value-free and objective is rejected on the grounds that any concept of reason is itself based on certain values. Thus,
Wolff's attempt to reduce moral reason to instrumental reason fails. Wolff's concept of instrumental reason is itself held to express certain values and a consequentialist moral outlook.
This moral outlook is typical of modern techno-bureaucratic society, and exceedingly narrow and impoverished.
In the conclusion some alternative approaches to anarchism are sketched out. It is argued that these approaches are more promising and plausible than the approach taken by Wolff. It is suggested that the ultimate anarchist ideal is not absolute liberty or individual autonomy, but a more complex value, communal individuality.
4 PART ONE
Chapter I: Autonomous Ethics
I. Introduction
Since its original publication, Robert. Paul Wolff's, Jji
Defense of Anarchism has generated considerable debate in philosophical circles.1 Yet, as Wolff himself admits, in formulating his argument for anarchism he has "simply taken for 2 granted an entire ethical theory." It is only in his later work, The Autonomy of Reason: A Commentary on Kant's
"Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals", that Wolff provides a sketch of the underlying moral theory upon which the arguments of In Defense of Anarchism ultimately depend. However, to further complicate matters, in this later work Wolff indicates that "I have altered my views in ways which require... some significant revision of the argument of In Defense of 3 Anarchi sm." To reconstruct Wolff's defence of anarchism by directly relating it to the moral theory he expounds in The
Autonomy of Reason, as I propose to do in the first part of this thesis, therefore presents some difficulties. In this chapter I will sketch out Wolff's moral theory in the greatest detail possible, so that in the following chapter the relation between this moral theory and Wolff's anarchism can be clearly established. It is the purpose of this chapter to present 5 Wolff's moral theory in as clear and as convincing a manner as is possible. Substantive criticisms of Wolff's moral theory will be reserved until Part Two of this thesis.
II. Autonomy and Rational Agency
The key concept in both Wolff's defence of anarchism and his supporting moral theory is the concept of autonomy. Wolff distinguishes his concept of autonomy from Kant's more celebrated conception. According to Wolff, by "autonomy" Kant means the disinterested willing of a rational agent (abstracting
from all self-interest and sensuous motives) of laws, maxims and policies for human conduct. These laws, or "categorical
imperatives," are unconditionally and universally valid and
binding for all rational agents. For insofar as they are
rational and they abstract from all particular, contingent motives and interests, all agents will will exactly the same
laws in similar circumstances. That they must will these laws
for themselves in order to be autonomous is necessary from
Kant's point of view because only those actions done for the
sake of duty, i.e. simply because they are right, have moral
worth. Agents who conform to the moral law for any other reason
-- self-interest for example -- are heteronomous. For Kant
then, writes Wolff, "to be autonomous... is to be 'subject only
to laws which are made by (oneself) and yet are universal.'"^
Wolff downplays the requirement of universality in his
6 account of autonomy, emphasizing instead that "every single 5 rational agent... decide for himself what is right." For
Wolff then, the essence of autonomy is "self-1egislation ," and by that he means "acting only on laws that one has given to oneself and being bound by them only because one has so given them."^ The term "law" should not be interpreted literally.
By "law" Wolff means general policies, maxims, imperatives and other rules of conduct which agents may adopt; he clearly does not mean "law" in the conventional, legalistic sense of the word.
Wolff holds that not only are "self-legislated" policies binding on the agent who legislates them, but also that any rational agent -- that is, anyone who "has the capacity to reason about his choices" -- is "under a continuing obligation" to act autonomously, or more concretely, to take "full responsibility" for his or her actions by "making the final decisions about what one should do."^ Both the obligation to be autonomous and the binding nature of autonomously willed policies follow, Wolff argues, from an analysis of rational agency itself.
To be a rational agent is "to be capable of being moved by reason," and "to be moved by reason" means "to be moved by one's conception of a rational connection between an end that one has posited for oneself and a bit of behavior which either is an Q instance of or else will accomplish that end." Thus,
"rational action is purposive action," or "wi1 led 7 g behavior." It follows from this conception of rational agency that, as Kant argues, "who wills the end, wills (so far as reason has decisive influence on his actions) also the means which are indispensably necessary and in his power.
To deny the possibility of rational agency in a cognitively significant and meaningful way is self-refuting, for, as Wolff argues: the assertion of a proposition is an act, an exercise of the capacity for rational agency. To construe assertion otherwise is to reduce it to the mere exhibition of verbal or other physical behavior, which can certainly be explained without the presupposition of rational agency but which also is devoid of the cognitive significance that is the essence of the assertion of propositions. 11 So to the moral sceptic who denies the possibility of people
"being moved by reason," Wolff and Kant reply, "either step forward and state your views, in which case you perform a linguistic action and eo ipso refute yourself" by so acting intentionally and intelligibly, "or else retire from the field 12 in silence, in which case [we] claim victory."
But rational agency requires more than just being moved by reason, or "willed" behaviour. Just as theoretical reason requires rational consistency, practical reason requires that one act consistently. Now, according to Wolff, "whenever any rational agent acts... he acts on the basis of a policy which he 13 has adopted covering a class of relevantly similar cases."
Therefore, to act consistently is to act according to policies
8 which are internally consistent (i.e. not self-contradictory) and consistent with (or not contrary to) each other. But for rational action to be truly rational, there must also be a rational basis for the adoption of one's policies, and these policies, once adopted, must be consistently applied.
Wolff does not mean to imply that all rational agents act according to consciously formulated policies (although, Wolff notes, there is "some historical evidence that Kant" actually did so).1^ All that is necessary for Wolff's analysis is that any rational action "can be analyzed, or rationally 15 reconstructed as having that structure." Having a certain end provides an agent with a reason for adopting some appropriate means for achieving it. This means, or form of action, can be interpreted as a general policy, for in all situations where the agent has a certain goal and he or she can achieve that goal through a particular form of action, the agent will adopt that form of action insofar as he or she is rational.
It is in this sense then that we can say the agent has adopted a general policy for the achievement of some end (for example, we can say that a person having the goal of quenching his or her thirst who typically does this by drinking water has adopted a general policy of drinking water to quench his or her thirst).
III. Hypothetical and Categorical Imperatives
Formal principles of practical reason provide the criteria,
9 or rules, "for the adoption of policies," stating "the conditions under which the adoption of a policy is 16 rational." Following Kant, Wolff divides these principles of practical reason into two categories, hypotheti cal principles of practical reason and categorical principles of practical reason. Because "all principles of practical reason appear to or are experienced by imperfectly rational creatures
[e.g. human beings] as commands... they are expressed in formulae whose grammatical form is the imperative," or more specifically, in the form of hypothetical and categorical imperati ves.^
Generally, someone has a good reason for adopting a policy if "the adoption of the policy will further a purpose which he has," and this reason "is an equally good reason for all rational agents similarly constituted and possessed of the same 18 purpose." Hypothetical principles of practical reason assert that "the adoption of a policy is rational under conditions which are not necessarily or universally met by all 19 rational agents as such." That is, hypothetical principles of practical reason state that the adoption of a policy is rational provided that the agent has adopted the goal at which the policy aims. Categorical principles of practical reason assert that "the adoption of a policy is rational under conditions which are necessarily and universally met by all 20 rational agents as such." That is, "a categorical principle 10 of practical reason asserts the adoption of a policy is rational, simp!iciter." Simply by virtue of being a rational agent, it is rational for the agent to adopt the policy.
Hypothetical principles of practical reason are then instrumental in nature, categorical imperatives are not.
Hypothetical principles state that, given the adoption of some end, or group of ends, such and such a policy or means of action will accomplish that end. What actions will accomplish what ends is a matter of fact which can be, at least theoretically, empirically determined. Consequently, "although the connection between the policy and the end is deductive" -- because "who wills the end wills the means" -- "the empirical knowledge on which the policy rests is not, and so the familiar distinction between the subjectively right or rational and the objectively 22 right or rational is preserved."
The "rational connection" between an end and an action or general policy is of two types. In the first case, the action
"stands in a causal relation" to the end, such that it is "an 2 3 efficient means" for the achievement of the end. For example, drinking water is (usually) an efficient means for quenching someone's thirst, and this is an empirical fact. In the second case, the action simply is an instance of the end.
For example, making music may be an end in itself, so by making music one has accomplished one's end. The exact nature of a policy will depend on and be determined by not only the agent's goal and the specific situations and laws of nature within which 11 the agent must act, but also by the other goals and concomitant policies which the agent has adopted. That is, a policy must not only be an effective means to the agent's end, it must also be consistent with the agent's other policies. This is where the categorical principles of practical reason come in.
As we may recall, a categorical principle of practical reason asserts that "there are reasons" for the adoption of a policy "which are good reasons for all rational agents as 24 such." That is, insofar as an agent is rational and he or she is to act, he or she will act according to the categorical principles of practical reason. Now, we may also recall, an agent has a good reason for adopting a policy if that policy is an efficient means toward his or her end. But, Wolff argues,
"there are no ends which all rational agents as such have good reasons to choose," so there are no ends which are binding on 25 all rational agents. Thus, "the only categorical principles of practical reason" binding on all rational agents are
"negative or purely formal principles which rule out the adoption of certain policies as irrational."
Essentially, the reason why there are no ends which all agents have good reasons to adopt is simply because "there are 27 no reasons for the choice of ends." This is because "there is no rational connection between" an agent's wants, desires and inclinations and a certain "bit of behavior," or physical event,
"just as there is no rational connection between fire and heat or between the motion of the cue bal12 l and the subsequent motion of an object ball.". There may be a contingent correlation or a causal connection (depending on one's view of causality), but there is no necessary reason for the agent to adopt as his or her end something which he or she may desire. "Indeed," writes Wolff, "the willingness to forgo ends that one desires is normally taken as a prerequisite both of prudence and 29 morality." Thus, Wolff argues, "the adoption, or positing of ends is a nonrational process determined neither by reason nor by desire. There are, in principle, no ends that reason 30 requires and no ends that it rules out."
Because the hypothetical and categorical principles of practical reason do not stipulate which ends would be rational to adopt, but only which policies would be rational to adopt given the previous adoption of various ends, and because there are no substantive ends universally binding on all rational agents, the categorical imperative serves only as "a perfectly universal negative criterion of the rationality of 31 policies." What this means is that the categorical imperative "rules out contradictory willing," that is, "the adoption of policies or sets of policies which are internally inconsistent and, hence, impossible to carry out as 32 specified." It is inconsistent, and hence irrational, to fail "to treat alike those cases which one's policy defines as relevantly alike," or to adopt "several policies which, taken 33 conjointly, constitute an inconsisten13 t policy." We can see then that for the adoption of a policy to be rational, not only must it be an efficient means to an agent's self-posited end (in accordance with the hypothetical principles of practical reason), but it also must be internally consistent and consistent with the agent's other policies (in accordance with the categorical principles of practical reason).
IV. Obligation, Rationality and Responsibility
From this analysis of rational agency, Wolff argues, follow the obligation to be autonomous and the binding nature of autonomously willed policies. To be a rational agent, for
Wolff, is to act according to policies adopted by the agent for the accomplishment of his or her self-chosen ends. But if these policies are interpreted as laws of some sort (not legal rules, of course, but general rules of conduct), then rational agency could be said to consist of "acting only on laws that one has given to oneself," which is exactly how Wolff defines 34 autonomy. In a sense then, to say that rational agents have an "obligation" to be autonomous is misleading, for rational agency and autonomy are, ultimately, one and the same thing.
This is something we shall come back to shortly.
It is also misleading for Wolff to say that "there are at least some situations in which it is reasonable to give up one's autonomy," for if it is "reasonable," i.e. rational, to do so then one is not really giving up one's autonomy. 3 5 For, according to Wolff's analysis, rational, and hence autonomous,
14 action is action caused by reason. The only real instances of heteronomous actions are instances of nonrational behaviour, behaviour caused by something other than reason, be it passion, coercion, habit or whatever. To ask for advice from a technical expert, such as a doctor, to use Wolff's own example, in an area where that expert has some special competence which the agent lacks, is far from being an irrational course of action, or policy. Indeed, it is rational in such circumstances to adopt a policy of following the expert's advice for this is a much more efficient means to the agent's end than relying on his or her own limited knowledge, or guesswork, or intuition (the latter two being quite clearly irrational policies). Also, the agent can still decide whether to follow the expert's advice (after all, the doctor could prescribe cyanide), and that advice remains a freely solicited (on the part of the agent) means to the agent's self-chosen ends.
The grain of truth in Wolff's remark is that insofar as the agent must depend on technical experts (or anyone else) for policy advice for the achievement of his or her ends, the agent's rational agency and autonomy is diminished because he or she will not fully comprehend the rationale, or reasons, for following the policies recommended to him or her by others. The agent then leaves him or herself open to manipulation by experts and his or her actions will not be completely determined by reason but partly by trust in the expert's advice (but this trust can itself be rationally based, so short of requiring
15 omniscience on the part of rational agents, any diminution of rational agency appears to be minimal). In this regard, Wolff is correct to say that autonomy not only "involves attempting to determine what one ought to do" but that it also "lays upon one the additional burdens of gaining knowledge, reflecting on motives, predicting outcomes, criticizing principles, and so forth," and this may in turn require "the gathering of special, even technical, information."
Wolff concludes that despite the technical and intellectual constraints impeding the achievement of full autonomy, "so long as we recognize our responsibility for our actions, and acknowledge the power of reason within us, we must acknowledge as well the continuing obligation to make ourselves the authors 37 of such commands as we may obey." In other words, as rational agents moved by reason, we must act only according to policies which we have a rational basis for adopting (according to the hypothetical principles of practical reason) and which are internally consistent and consistent with each other
(according to the categorical principles of practical reason), and because we are imperfectly rational creatures these principles of practical reason are experienced by us as commands. So insofar as we are to act, we must act autonomously, according to self-willed policies for the achievement of self-chosen goals.
Admittedly, there is a slightly paradoxical air to this analysis of rationality and autonomy, for one can imagine
16 situations where an agent's goals make the adoption of a policy of following the commands of another rational. For example, I could adopt as a goal living in an autocratic religious community where everyone must follow the directives of a religious leader. In such a case, it would be rational for me to adopt a policy of following the religious leader's commands, for such obedience is constituitive of the autocratic community membership in which is my goal. But, Wolff might respond, I am still responsible for adopting such a goal and concomitant policy and, ultimately, I am still following my own command
(i.e. to obey the commands of the religious leader, for this is a means to my end of living in an autocratic religious community). Alternatively, Wolff could argue that the adoption of some goals is irrational because they require the adoption of irrational policies, and the policy of following the commands of another is always irrational. Whether Wolff can extricate himself from this problem is something we shall come back to in
Chapter III.
That self-1egisiated policies are binding on rational agents also follows from the requirements of rational agency.
Consistency requires that, given relevantly similar circumstances, rational agents must act according to the policies they have adopted appropriate to the circumstances and to their goals. However, these general policies remain binding only as long as the agent remains committed to the ends they are meant to achieve. For example, an agent is only bound to adhere
17 to a policy of promise keeping provided that he or she remains committed to the social practice of promising. We see then that to act rationally means "acting only on laws [or policies] that one has given to oneself and being bound by them only because one has so given them," and this is equivalent to saying that to 38 act rationally is to act autonomously. Autonomy and rational agency are, indeed, one and the same thing from Wolff's perspective.
According to Wolff's analysis of rational agency and autonomy the failure to act rationally, and hence autonomously, is always due to imperfect rationality, not some sort of wickedness. Wolff sees "right action as action determined by reason alone," so he denies that an agent "might have reasons 39 for disregarding reason's dictates." One simply cannot rationally choose to act irrationally or, what amounts to the same thing, heteronomously. Consequently, Wolff argues,
"whenever a man fails to do as reason advises, desire has been 40 too strong for him." If reason had been "capable of overcoming desire... there [would] be no possible explanation of why it failed to do so" because "in the absence of direct access to the faculties of desire and reason, our only measure of their relative strengths is the outcome of a struggle between 41 them." On this basis "it would be self-contradictory to say both that we have good grounds for supposing that reason is desirestronge. r thanAn ddesir if ea n anagend that ts actionreason s faileare dcause to dovercom by desire e 42 18 rather than reason, "that relieves him of responsibility for his wrong action. (Strictly speaking, it shows that he didn't act at all, since action is behavior caused by reason.)"^
But this presents us with some paradoxes. How can one have an obligation to be autonomous when one cannot*be blamed for failing to act autonomously? Furthermore, if rational agency and autonomy are ultimately one and the same thing, what sense does it make to say that rational agents have an obligation to be autonomous, or in other words, to be rational agents?
Here, we must distinguish between the various ways one can
"fail" to act autonomously. When one's actions are not caused
by reason but by desire or impulse one's actions are not
rational and therefore, Wolff argues, one cannot be held
responsible for one's nonrational behaviour. But, as with the
person whose goal is to live in an autocratic religious
community mentioned earlier, one can rationally choose to
forfeit one's autonomy in order to achieve a specific goal. In
that case the agent's choice and resulting action are caused by
reason and therefore he or she can be held responsible for that choice and action. Wolff also holds that people can "forfeit
their autonomy at will," refuse to accept responsibility for
their actions and "decide to obey the commands of another
without any attempt to determine... whether what is commanded is 44 good or wise." While this description may fit the example
of someone rationally choosing a heteronomous policy in order to achieve a goal, the emphasis here is more on wi11 rather than
19 rational choice. In this case it is not clear what Wolff's position would be. One would assume that as long as the agent's actions are not strictly determined (by desire, impulse, and so on) then the agent can be held responsible for his or her actions. How a seemingly arbitrary act of will can provide a basis for rational autonomy or moral responsibility is something we will come back to in Chapter III. It should be noted that in
In Defense of Anarchism Wolff sometimes formulates his position somewhat carelessly. In such cases I will defer to the more careful pronouncements of the Autonomy of Reason.
Wolff's notion of obligation is very limited and rather peculiar. In effect, the only standing "obligation" agents have is to act rationally. On the surface, the claim that all rational agents have a standing obligation to be rational agents makes as much sense as the claim that all bachelors have a standing obligation to be unmarried males. But just as the latter claim makes some sense provided that bachelors are somehow committed to not marrying but are still free to renege on that commitment, the former claim makes some sense provided that agents are committed to acting rationally, as they must be if they are to act at all (action just being behaviour caused by reasons), but are free to rationally choose to forfeit their autonomy (completely or partially, temporarily or permanently) in order to achieve some goal, or to renounce reason itself -- 45 as, for example, did Dostoyevsky s Underground Man. It is only because the choice is there that it makes any sense to
20 speak of "obligation."
V. Moral Contractarianism
Rational agents, insofar as they are to act, are bound by the formal requirements of rational consistency. This being so, it is clear that reason can never be an end in itself, for an infinite variety of consistent policies and goals can be adopted and consistently acted upon. Wolff denies that there are any substantive ends binding on all rational agents as such, for reasons we have previously described. Primarily, Wolff argues that because the Categorical Imperative is the only imperative universally valid and binding for all rational agents and because "deducing substantive ends from" the Categorical
Imperative, which functions as a purely negative. criterion for the rationality of policies, is "as impossible as deducing substantive empirical propositions from the law of
Contradiction," there simply "are not and could not be any obligatory ends" for all rational agents as such.^
Wolff acknowledges Rawls1 A Theory of Justice as an attempt to solve this problem by showing that "the purely formal constraints of collective, unanimous, contractual agreement, when added to the constraint of bare consistency, suffice to 47 rule out all but one set of substantive principles."
However, in a later work, Understanding Rawls, Wolff argues
that Rawls1 attempt is a failure. Wolff's main objection is 21 that substantive moral principles cannot be determined in an a^ priori way through the device of a bargaining game because the parties to such a game, as with Kant's moral agents, "are deprived of any knowledge of themselves as particular agents," 48 and consequently, of any "basis for rational deliberation."
Because Rawls later stipulates that the players in the game are rationally self-interested, even if they could rationally and unanimously agree to a substantive set of moral principles these principles would not be universally valid and binding on all rational agents, for there is no reason why all rational agents should commit themselves to pursuing their own self-interest.
Wolff himself argues that because there are no substantive principles or ends binding on all rational agents "substantive obligations can arise only form free acts of commitment by which groups of rational agents collectively bind one another to a set 49 of principles of action." Wolff distinguishes between
"principles of prudence," which are meant to facilitate the achievement of "those ends which one posits by oneself, treating others as external to the process of choice," and "moral principles," which are meant to "faci1itate the achievement of
"those ends which one posits collectively with other rational agents, through a process of rational discourse culminating in 50 unanimous agreement." Because all substantive obligations
"are grounded in the collective commitments of a society of political obligations." Collective commitment is the basis rational agents" there is "no difference between moral and 51 22 of both.
Wolff emphasizes that from this perspective
There is absolutely no substantive limitation to the character of the ends to which a society of rational agents may choose collectively to commit itself. They may choose a system of thorough-going, alienating mutual hostility, such as laissez-faire capitalism, or a system of reciprocal cooperation and communal intimacy or indeed, a system of regulated reciprocal murder, such as the institution of duelling essentially was. So long as the agreement is explicit, consistent, unanimous and confined only to those who actually participate in the choice of the system, there is no rational, which is to say, no moral ground for selecting one system rather than another. 52
Wolff adds that not all moral (and hence, political) obligations need be the result of explicit contractual agreements. In those cases where "persons find themselves associated in ongoing institutionally organized patterns of interaction which neither in fact nor in plausible fiction can be traced to an original contractual agreement... limited or partial obligations exist, the scope and force of which correspond to the degree to which the quasi-contractual situation approximates to the pure case of 53 explicit collective commitment." It is to the degree that these "ongoing institutionally organized patterns of interaction" are voluntarily accepted and sustained that rational agents can be said to have any moral obligations arising from participation in them, for "mutually voluntary" patterns of social interaction "are the behavioral equivalents of explicit collective agreements on the rules of social 23 relationships." Because genuine moral obligations are the result of voluntary commitments entered into "either explicitly or in some tacit behavioral manner," they "can arise only after traditional and involuntary constraints have been replaced by
55 new, freely chosen patterns of social interaction."
It is not clear why Wolff requires unanimous collective agreement to create substantive moral obligations. The only formal constraint on rational agency is the requirement of rational consistency. All rational agents are under a standing obligation, as it were, to act consistently on a consistent set of policies insofar as they are to act. No matter what ends they choose, it is their own individual positing of ends which makes it rational for them to adopt and act on various, internally consisitent policies and sets of policies. Whether their goals are individual or collective, any policy or principle which they adopt for the achievement of their ends will have some substantive content over and above the formal demands of rational consistency. Rational agents are bound to act on these policies simply because it would be irrational for them not to do so. Whether other agents commit themselves to a policy which an individual agent has adopted is only relevant if the adoption of the policy by that agent is somehow predicated on its adoption by other agents, which is not necessarily the case. Even granting this, if the agent is to remain truly autonomous, he or she must be able to alter his or her ends and the corresponding policies at will, so people are only
24 col 1ecti vely bound to a principle or policy as long as they
remain individually committed to the end which makes the
adoption of the principle or policy rational (or "obligatory,"
in Wolff's peculiar sense of the word). So not only is
unanimous, collective agreement not necessary for the creation of substantive obligations, such commitments have a potential
for conflict with individual autonomy itself. In the case of
any such conflict, autonomy must take precedence (for, as Wolff
himself continually insists, an agent's actions are rational
only insofar as they are autonomous).
Clearly, agents may adopt goals that do require some sort
of collective commitment. An agent may want to establish or
participate in a social practice, such as promising, which
requires the ongoing cooperation of others and mutual commitment
to the rules constituting the practice. Or an agent may adopt
as a goal some sort of public good which also cannot be achieved
without the cooperation and commitment of other agents.
Unanimous collective agreement can also fulfill the important
function of providing a forum for agents to voluntarily order
their mutual interaction according to voluntarily agreed upon
principles and policies. These principles and policies, once
agreed upon, provide a stable and predictable framework within
which agents can act, making rational planning for the future
possible, and so on. Because all obligations are the result of
either individual or collective commitment, without them the
agent's actions would be completely unconstrained by any
25 substantive principles. So insofar as an agent wants to engage in rule-governed activity with others, he or she will need to solicit the voluntary agreement of others to these rules, because only voluntary agreement can create substantive obligations on the part of agents to follow these rules, principles or policies.
Another important function of collective agreement between agents is to ensure that individual' autonomy is not violated.
An agent, or a group of agents, may adopt goals and policies which conflict with the autonomy of others -- the most extreme case being murder. Now, "what makes murder wrong," Wolff argues, "is not that it is an instance of killing, but that it is an instance of killing someone who has not accepted a 56 practice of mutual hostility." In contrast, death by duelling is not wrongful murder because the participants have voluntarily accepted and engaged in a practice of reciprocal killing. Thus, not only do agents have no obligation to abide by rules, policies and principles which they have not voluntarily accepted, insofar as they are treated according to such policies they are prevented from exercising their full autonomy, from acting only according to their own self- 1egis1ated policies.
Unfortunately, the idea that agents should not violate the autonomy of others does not seem to follow from the bare, formal requirement of rational consistency. There is certainly nothing logically inconsistent about adopting a general policy of not 26 respecting the autonomy of others. Wolff recognizes this problem, admitting that:
It is one thing to say that I am obligated to abide by those principles to which I have freely committed myself or even to say that I am only obligated insofar as I have freely committed myself. But it is quite something else to claim that I have a standing procedural obligation, as it were, to broaden the scope of my commitments by transforming my interactions with other persons into elements of rational community grounded in collective commitment. 57
Because this principle of unanimous collective commitment to policies regarding mutual interaction "seems to go beyond merely articulating the nature of formal rationality," Wolff is
"unclear about whether a proof for it should be c o discoverable."
Although a strictly formal proof of this principle may be impossible, I would like to argue that, given the real world within which agents must act, it may be rational for them to adopt this principle. All agents have an interest in maximizing their own agency, even if their ultimate goal is the annihilation of that agency (through suicide, for example). No matter what goal an agent may adopt, the agent requires the freedom to adopt and act on policies for the attainment of that goal if the agent is to have any possibility of achieving it through rational action, and as Wolff argues, all agents, insofar as they are agents, have a standing obligation to act rationally. Autonomy then, although not necessarily an end in itself, is a necessary policy for all agents insofar as they are
27 to act rationally according to self-posited policies which can reasonably be expected to achieve their ends (through the
"rational connection" between the policies and the ends).
Agents may either explicitly adopt a policy of not respecting the autonomy of others, or they may act in such a way that we can say that they have implicitly adopted such a policy (by failing to obtain the consent of others to the policies of mutual interaction they have individually adopted). In all consistency, agents who adopt a general policy of treating others as mere means to their ends cannot oppose other agents adopting similar policies toward them (unless they could show such treatment was inconsistent with the other agent's ends and policies, which isn't necessarily so). Although it is logically possible that agents treated as mere means to others' ends will not respond in kind, it is very easy to imagine that they will do so, and, in fact, it is even easier to imagine that it will 59 be rational for them to do so. There may be no formal contradiction in adopting a policy of autonomy for oneself but heteronomy for others, but in the real world in which agents must act the adoption of such a policy will in all probability lead to a contradiction in practice -- namely, the adoption of a policy of heteronomy for others will in turn lead to those others adopting a similar policy, so the agent's general policy of autonomy for him or herself will be frustrated. In that case, it would be irrational for the agent to adopt a policy of treating others as mere means to his or her ends, for the actual
28 effect of such a policy would be to inhibit the agent's own autonomy. But the agent may find him or herself in a situation where, despite his or her adherence to a policy of respect for others' autonomy, a sufficient number of other agents have adopted a policy of treating others as a means to their ends so as to diminish the agent's autonomy. In such a case it may be rational for the agent to adopt a similar policy, since he or she will have already suffered a diminution of autonomy and will have nothing left to lose, and perhaps something to gain, by following such a course of action also. What this shows is that it will be rational for an agent to respect the autonomy of others only if they do so as well. Thus, all rational agents have an interest in devising ways and means for protecting and enlarging their individual autonomy, and this will probably include encouraging each other to adopt policies which do not infringe on individual autonomy. Unanimous collective agreement provides the very process by which this can be done. Instead of pursuing policies which conflict with each other's autonomy agents can collectively agree to order their affairs according to mutually acceptable policies and principles, thus safeguarding their individual autonomy.
29 Chapter II: From Autonomy to Anarchism
I. Introduction
Wolff believes that the "analysis of rational agency, autonomy, and moral principles" which he puts forward in the
Autonomy of Reason "entails the doctrine which in political philosophy is known as anarchism."**0 Now that this analysis has been sketched out, we can deal with Wolff's argument for the philosophical anarchism which he claims follows from his moral theory. The purpose of this chapter is to reconstruct Wolff's defence of anarchism in relation to that underlying moral theory. Substantive criticisms of Wolff's anarchism, as well as his moral theory, will be reserved until Part Two of this thesi s.
It would be useful to make some preliminary remarks about anarchism, anarchy and the state. Wolff generally defines anarchism as the doctrine which categorically denies "any claim to legitimate authority by one man over another."*'*
Thus, anarchy is a condition of society "in which no one claims legitimate authority or would believe such a claim if it were made." Regarding the state, Wolff cites Weber's definition, defining the state as "a group of persons who have supreme authority within a given territory or over a certain population" and who claim " a monopoly of legitimate or justified enforcement" of their commands.
30 II. De Facto and De Jure Authority
An important distinction that Wolff makes in his argument is that between de jure and de facto authority. Wolff defines de jure, or legitimate, authority as "the right to command, and correlatively, the right to be obeyed."64 He defines de facto, or putative, authority as an authority which claims the right to be obeyed and "whose subjects believe it to be legitimate," but which does not necessarily enjoy such a 65 right. De facto authority is then a descriptive concept while de jure authority is a normative concept. To establish that there is such a thing as de facto authority one merely needs to point to an actual instance of it. But to demonstrate that a claim to authority is justified one must employ non-empirical, normative concepts and arguments. This is one of the tasks of political philosophy. For Wolff, the question is not whether people "accede to claims of supreme authority," which can be empirically determined, but whether they "ought to accede" to such claims.66 Wolff does not deny the existence of de facto authority; he does deny the validity of any claim to de jure authority.
Both kinds of authority "must be distinguished from power, which is the ability to compel compliance, either through the use or the threat of force," and from rational argument and persuasion, whereby compliance is obtained through recognition 31 of "the force of an argument or the rightness of a prescription."**^ Authority, whether de jure or de facto, is successfully exercised when obedience is due to a recognition of the right of the authority to command and a corresponding recognition of one's obligation to obey.
Some of Wolff's critics argue that any critique of authority must implicitly assume that some claims to de jure authority are valid because, as Wolff formulates the objection, if "all such claims were wrong... we never would have had the CO concept of legitimate authority at all." Wolff replies that this type of objection "cannot be applied to the case of de facto versus de jure authority, for the key component of both concepts, namely 'right,' is imported into the discussion from 69 the realm of moral philosophy generally." The concept of de jure authority, conceived as "the right to command and the right to be obeyed," is meaningful irrespective of any actually existing authority having such a right because the terms which comprise this definition of authority, namely "right," "command" and "obedience," are themselves meaningful regardless of the validity of any claims to de jure authority. Similarly, the concept of de jure authority can be criticized according to other meaningful moral concepts independent of the concept of de jure authority, such as "autonomy," "obligation," and so forth, without thereby implying that any claim to de jure authority is in fact justified. People may very well believe in the existence of de jure authority but such beliefs in no way 32 prove that any such authority has ever existed or could exist, no more than belief in God proves His existence. And just as
the philosophical atheist can attack the concept of God as contrary to human morality, as logically confused and so forth,
the philosophical anarchist can criticize the concept of de jure authority as incompatible with individual autonomy, without either one thereby implying the existence of the concepts they are criticizing.
The important question is whether anyone has indeed
possessed and defended the concept of de jure authority which
is the object of Wolff's attack. Wolff's critic, Jeffrey
Reiman, claims that Wolff's concept of de jure authority is
confused, "a contradictio in adjecto," and consequently that
no advocate of legitimate political authority need be committed
to defending it.^ I shall argue that Wolff's concept of de
jure authority is taken from classical contract theory,
particularly Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau, so that if the concept
is confused -- as Wolff might well admit -- this is a problem
for contract theorists, not for Wolff. Furthermore, as Wolff
points out, virtually every government claims a right to command
and to be obeyed. I shall argue that no government could exist
without doing so, that the concept of authority Wolff attacks is
central to the concept of government and the state.
We may begin with a short discussion of classical contract
theory. In Levi athan, Hobbes explicitly states that the
sovereign power has "the right to command," and correlatively,
33 that its subjects have an obligation to obey, "because whatsoever is commanded by the sovereign power is as to the subject... justified by the command, for of such command every subject is the author."71
Locke, despite his differences with Hobbes on other points, holds a similar concept of legitimate political authority. In
The Second Treatise of Government, Locke argues that "everyone of the society ought to obey" duly constituted, legitimate authority, "for if any man may do what he thinks fit, and there be no appeal on earth for redress or security against any harm he shall do, I ask whether he be not perfectly still in the state of nature, and so can be no part or member of that civil 7 2 society." Thus, legitimate political authority has "the right... to make laws for all the parts and for every member of the society, prescribing rules to their actions, and giving power of execution whence they are transgressed," and this further requires that the legitimate authority have "the supreme power," with "all other powers in any members or parts of the 7 3 society derived from and subordinate to it."
Although Locke defends the right of people to rebel against their government, this is only when their government no longer has nor exercises legitimate authority. But as long as the government satisfies Locke's criterion for legitimacy, it retains its right to be obeyed, and those subject to it are obligated to obey it. (The grounds of their obligation, as with
Hobbes and Rousseau, rest upon their consent. The theoretical 34 significance of this is something I will come back to, but at this point I am merely trying to explicate the classical contract conception of legitimate political authority, not to provide an explanation or justification for it). Locke makes clear that the agreement to create a supreme political authority requires an at least partial forfeiture of individual autonomy, namely: the giving up of the "power... of doing whatsoever" a person thinks fit "for the preservation of himself and the rest of mankind," and the giving up of "the power to punish the 7 4 crimes committed against" the law of nature. The individual agent, upon agreeing to establish a common, legitimate political authority to escape the state of nature, must agree "to part also with as much of his natural liberty... as the good, 7 5 prosperity, and safety of the society shall require."
Anyone who does not forfeit his or her right to be "judge for himself and executioner" is "still in the state of nature."76
We find Rousseau putting forward a similar concept of legitimate political authority in The Social Contract, although, of course, his criterion of legitimacy is different from both Locke's and Hobbes'. The Social Contract, Rousseau argues, requires "the total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole community... for, if the individual retained certain rights, as there would be no common superior to decide between them and the public, each, being on one point his own judge, would ask to be so on all; the state of nature would thus continue, and the association would 35 necessarily become inoperative or tyrannical."
Consequently, "in order... that the social compact may not be an empty formula, it tacitly includes the undertaking, which alone
can give force to the rest, that whoever refuses to obey the
general will [of the community] shall be compelled to do so by 78 the whole body." Rousseau further argues that "it must also be granted that the sovereign is sole judge of what is 7 9 important." The sovereign, or supreme authority, then has "absolute power over all its members," and its commands are 80 binding on all citizens.
Reiman disputes this characterization, accepted by Wolff,
of legitimate or de jure political authority as the right to
command and to be obeyed, and he further rejects "the
monopolistic claims of the traditional theory" that those subject to legitimate authority are always obligated to 81 obey. According to Reiman, legitimate political authority should be conceived in terms of "the right to make commands and 8 2 use coercion to discourage noncompliance with them." Reiman
also holds that people have only a prima facie obligation to
obey legitimate authority.
I would like to argue that the right to make and enforce
commands carries with it the right to be obeyed. By what right
does a legitimate authority enforce its commands? Hobbes, Locke
and Rousseau argue it has a right to enforce its commands
because those subject to it have agreed to obey, and hence are
obligated to do so, and they have also authorized such enforce-
36 ment against those who disobey, including themselves. By
enforcing its commands when necessary, a legitimate authority is merely forcing people to fulfill their rightful obligations (or
so the argument goes). It would be absurd and injust to force
people to obey commands which they had no obligation to obey.
As Hobbes, Rousseau and even Locke (with important
qualifications) also argue, whether disobedience to 1egi ti mate
authority is ever justified is something which only the supreme
authority, the state or sovereign, can determine, for if it were
left up to individual conscience people would soon find
themselves back in the state of nature, individually evaluating
each command on its own merits instead of accepting the
authority of the state. But authorities do not issue commands
and then leave it up to each individual to obey. It goes with
the concept of a command that they are meant to be obeyed, not
just taken into consideration as interesting suggestions which
can be freely accepted or rejected. No sovereign or state will
tolerate disobedience to its authority (needless to say, this
presents some serious problems for advocates of civil
disobedience who also support the existence of legitimate
authority). If there is to be any rule of law, the state or
sovereign must be the supreme authority. And if this authority
is to be more than a coercive imposition, there must be some
sense in which those subject to it have an obligation to obey,
and hence can be justifiably forced to abide by their
commi tments.
37 Reiman downplays the obligatory nature of authoritative commands because he accepts a utilitarian justification of authority. From this perspective, people should obey an authority not because they have agreed to, and hence have a special obligation to honour their commitments, but because obedience will create greater utility. Civil disobedience is then justified if it is of greater utility than obedience. In effect, the only real obligation people have is to maximize utility, and this may require either obedience or disobedience to the state, depending on the circumstances. The enforcement of authoritative commands is in turn justified according to the utility of such enforcement. The state has the right to make and enforce commands only insofar as greater utility is created by such activity. But if utility is the measure of all things, the only commands that are justifiably enforceable are commands which will yield greater utility if obeyed. And if all agents have a duty, or ongoing obligation, to maximize utility, then they will have a duty or obligation to obey optimific commands.
Thus, even from a utilitarian standpoint, any justifiably enforceable command will also be a command which agents have an obligation to obey.
III. The Apparent Conflict Between Authority and Autonomy
Wolff argues that there is an apparent conflict between autonomy, the "submission [only] to laws which one has made for
38 oneself" and authority, de facto or de jure, conceived either in terms of a "right to be obeyed" or in terms of a 8 3 "right to make and enforce commands." Although I have argued that these two concepts of de jure authority are in fact inseparable, I will follow Wolff's example and treat them separately. The advantage of this approach is that it will show that even if we accept Reiman's characterization of authority, such authority still involves the infringement of personal autonomy, and is therefore -- at least according to Wolff -- i11egi timate.
Legitimate authority, either conceived as a right to command and to be obeyed or as a right to make and enforce commands, can be absolute or limited. But the defining characteristic of all forms of authority, which distinguishes it from other forms of social control, is the reasons for obedience. People obey the commands of a legitimate authority because that authority has issued the commands and is perceived as having a right to do so. The commands are not individually o evaluated on independent grounds, at least in paradigm cases.
For example, people usually obey the commands of their government without evaluating the commands on their own merits, because they feel the government has the legitimate authority to command, and that they have an obligation to obey. Of course, people (and political philosophers) will have differing criteria for both the legitimacy of authority and the legitimacy of the commands issued by a legitimate authority. In the first case, 39 people are under no obligation to obey an authority which has no right to command. In the second case, people may not be obligated to obey a command because it violates a basic principle constitutive of legitimate authority (e.g. it is unconstitutional), or because it is contrary to the purpose for which that authority has been constituted (e.g. the pursuit of the public interest), or because the command has not been made through the proper procedures (e.g. it is ultra vires). But in those cases where the command satisfies the basic criteria of legitimacy (for example, the authority issuing the command has the right to do so and the command itself is constitutional), people have an obligation to obey and are not entitled to individually evaluate the command on its own merits and then decide whether it should be obeyed. If authoritative commands could be individually and independently evaluated on their own merits (rather than by various criteria of legitimacy), those commands would no longer have the force of law, nor would there be any rule of law (although there could very well be the rule of force or power). When people "obey" a command on independent grounds (they may have decided that, in the circumstances, it was the best thing to do anyway), they are not, "strictly speaking, obeying a command, but rather acknowledging the force of an argument or the rightness of a prescription," or perhaps 84 the force at the disposal of the issuer of the command.
An autonomous agent, to be truly autonomous, must individually evaluate all courses of action in relation to his
40 or her self-chosen ends, and can act only on those policies
consistent with those ends and consistent, taken collectively,
with each other. "For the autonomous" person, Wolff argues,
there can be "no such thing, strictly speaking, as a
8 5 command." The only "commands" an autonomous agent can
obey and remain autonomous are those hypothetical and
categorical imperatives which impose rational constraints on the
agent's behaviour. In a sense, the only authority an autonomous
agent recognizes is the authority of his or her own reason. How
is it possible, then, for an autonomous agent to obey the
commands of another and yet remain autonomous? Wolff argues
that there is a fatal contradiction between autonomy and
authority, and because all rational agents have an overriding
obligation to be autonomous, they must necessarily choose
autonomy over authority.
The problem with de jure authority is not that it is a
vacuous concept, as Wolff at one point misleadingly claims, but
that it seems to require agents to adopt a general policy of
heteronomous obedience, which is irrational according to Wolff's
analysis of rational agency. De jure authority has a right to
command agents to act in certain ways. Even if this right is
not absolute, even if there are some actions which no authority
can legitimately command, there will be at least some cases when
agents will be commanded to act in certain ways without the
agents being entitled to decide for themselves whether it is
rational for them to adopt such policies. No agent is free to
41 decide in all cases, on the basis of his or her own freely chosen goals and policies, whether or not to obey the commands of authority. If they were free to do so, there would be no political authority in the normal sense of the word. If agents have an obligation to obey the commands of an authority simply because both the commands and the authority satisfy certain criteria of legitimacy, and not because of the specific content of a particular command, then they will have to adopt a general policy of obedience to authority which may require them to act contrary to their own reason, goals and policies, and this would be a heteronomous policy.
Even authority conceived as either the absolute or prima facie right to make and enforce commands, without the concomitant right to be obeyed, potentially conflicts with individual autonomy. Although it is theoretically possible that a de jure authority might not ever exercise its right to make and enforce commands (perhaps because everyone voluntarily obeys them, but in that case authority would seem unnecessary), the right itself entitles the authority to force people to act contrary to their own goals and policies, and this would surely be an infringement of their autonomy, if ever exercised.
Reiman denies that there is a conflict between authority so conceived (i.e. as the right to make and enforce commands) and autonomy because he defines autonomy as "making the final
Q C decisions about what one should do." Autonomy then "is a purely internal refusal to accept, any claim to moral authority,"
42 a subjective act of judgement which requires no physical action:
8 7 "bound and gagged, one can still make this refusal." But as we have seen, for Wolff autonomy means not only deciding for oneself what one ought to do, but also acting on those decisions.
The basis of Reiman's confusion lies in Wolff's own ambiguous use of the term "autonomy" in his In Defense of
Anarchi sm. Indeed, at one point Wolff himself defines autonomy 88 as "making the final decisions about what one should do."
It is only in his later work, The Autonomy of Reason, that
Wolff makes clear that by "autonomy" he means both "making the final decisions about what one should do," which Reiman calls moral autonomy, and acting on those decisions, which Reiman calls poli ti cal autonomy. Reiman admits that "a defense of political autonomy can be an argument against coercion, against the authority of the state;" he just did not think that Wolff was committed to defending this stronger form of
8 9 autonomy. What further misled him was Wolff's own not infrequent admissions that autonomous individuals can decide to comply with the commands of another and yet remain autonomous.
With his instrumental view of reason, Wolff often adopts a form of consequential ism, arguing that: men should conform their behavior to the law when the consequences of conformity are better than those of disobedience; otherwise they should ignore the law or actively disobey it. The law itself, independent of the consequences of obedience or disobedience, has no majesty, no mystery, no 43 authority which can legitimately claim our allegiance.90
What makes compliance with a command compatible with autonomy and different from obedience to a command are the reasons the agent has for following the command. In the case of compliance, the agent follows the command not because it conforms to various criteria of authoritative legitimacy (e.g. not because it was issued by an authority which the agent recognizes as legitimate), but because he or she has decided on independent grounds that following this specific command would be the best policy in relation to his or her own goals and policies. When complying with a command the agent does not recognize the issuer of the command, or the process by which the command was issued, as having any special legitimacy or authority. The agent remains autonomous because he or she is voluntarily following a command adherence to which is consistent with his or her goals and policies, and precisely for that reason.
IV. Possible Solutions to the Conflict
Wolff argues that "there is only one form of political community which offers any hope of resolving the conflict 91 between authority and autonomy, and that is democracy." But there are primarily two different ways for justifying democracy.
One is through classical democratic social contract theory, the other is through utilitarianism. Wolff argues that the
44 utilitarian approach is completely inadequate as a justification for democracy (as opposed to some other form of government), and therefore, if there is to be any solution at all to the conflict between autonomy and authority, it will have to come from social contract theory.
The primary inadequacy of utilitarian justifications of authority in general is their inability to establish any sort of
special relationship between an authority and those subject to
it. Utilitarianism fails to show that people subject to authority have any special obligation to obey over and above the obligations of any moral agent. From,a utilitarian perspective,
people are obligated to obey commands because obedience to them, either taken individually or as a system of rules, will create
greater utility. Whether people have agreed or consented to obey the commands of an authority is not strictly relevant. One might argue that such consent will increase feelings of
legitimacy among people so that they will be "more tractable...
but that is merely an argument for social engineering, not for 92
democracy." According to utilitarian moral theory, all moral agents, not just those who have committed themselves in
some way to the authority issuing commands, have an obligation
to obey commands and rules when such obedience is of the
greatest utility. The foreigner, just as much as the citizen,
is obligated to obey the commands of a utilitarian state; their
respective relationships to that state are virtually the same.
Because it is by virtue of their consequences, and not by virtue 45 of who issues them, that commands should be obeyed, who issues the commands is irrelevant -- it could be a democratic government, an occupying army or an enlightened despot. In a democratic state a utilitarian "will carry out the same moral calculation that he would perform in a state of nature (or, what
is presumably the same thing, in an illegitimate state). No new morally relevant consideration will be introduced into the calculation in the legitimate state. Which means, of course,
that in any ordinary sense of the word, the state is not
'legitimate.'"93
A more fundamental objection to utilitarian justifications
of authority is that, because utilitarianism does not recognize
the overriding value and importance of autonomy, it can also
provide justifications for the severe curtailment of individual 94 autonomy in the interest of utility. Also, from Wolff's
perspective utilitarian theories and arguments are only valid
and binding for those who have adopted the maximization of
utility as their primary goal. According to Wolff, it is
illegitimate to force people who have not adopted utility as
their goal to conform to policies, commands or rules designed to maximize utility, because this infringes on their autonomy.
But what of those people who have adopted the
maximization of utility as their goal? Here it must be admitted
that, given Wolff's later moral theory, a major revision to his
original anarchist argument will be necessary. Although it
could be argued that all forms of authority, particularly 46 government and the state, are of great disutility, and therefore that one should be an anarchist on utilitarian grounds, if one could show that in fact the authority of government and the state can be justified on utilitarian grounds, then anyone committed to the end of utility would be obligated, in all consistency, to support and obey such utilitarian forms of 95 authority. In principle, then, it is possible to reconcile the purported conflict between autonomy and authority, at least in some cases. In reality though, it is extremely unlikely that there will ever be an authority which maximizes utility and which also only exercises its authority over committed utilitarians, so this is hardly a crushing objection to Wolff's anarchist position.
A utilitarian authority, from Wolff's perspective, would only have authority over committed utilitarians as long as their commitment lasted. It would have no authority over anyone else, nor could it be said to have any special authority over any geographical area. If such an authority did try to claim sovereignty over an area, the non-utilitarians living there would have no obligation to obey and every right to resist its coercive impositions. This sort of authority compatible with autonomy would be very unstable because it would depend on the ongoing commitment of its members to an end which they would have no standing obligation, or even reason, to adopt (because choice of ends is supposedly a nonrational process). One gets the impression that this authority would be correspondingly 47 small and weak. Although it would have a right to command and to be obeyed (by utilitarians), and its utilitarian subjects would have an obligation to obey its commands, it would have no right to enforce its commands. This is because all agents have a standing obligation to be autonomous, to have their actions caused by reason. To force people to act in certain ways, even to help them to achieve their goals, is then illegitimate because the cause of their actions is no longer their own reason, but the threat or use of force, and therefore their actions are no longer autonomous. To force people to be autonomous is a contradiction in terms. So although it is possible in extraordinary circumstances to reconcile the demands of autonomy with the demands of de jure authority, conceived as the right to command and to be obeyed, it is impossible to reconcile autonomy with de jure authority conceived as the right to enforce commands.
Wolff believes that social contract theory provides a more hopeful justification of democracy and authority because it purportedly shows that people can be obligated to obey de jure authority and yet remain autonomous and free to collectively adopt and pursue any number of ends, not necessarily utility.
Only a democratic form of government resting on "the consent of the governed" can possibly reconcile the obligation 96 to obey with the obligation to be autonomous. According to this argument, people are obligated to obey the commands of a democratic government because not only have they in some sense 48 contracted, or agreed, to abide by its authority, but they also
legislate the laws which they obey. Being "both law-givers and
1aw-obeyers," people in a democracy remain free and autonomous because they are the true authors of any commands they may 97 obey. '
Wolff emphasizes that consent is not enough to legitimize democracy, "for the contracting citizens could as well have
promised to abide by minority rule, or random choice, or the
rule of a monarch, or rule by the best educated, or rule by the least educated, or even rule by a daily dictator chosen by 98
lot." Any promise to obey which entails a forfeiture of
autonomy is illegitimate. "Insofar as democracy originates" in
a promise by citizens "to obey laws which they do not will, and
indeed even laws which they vigorously reject... it is no more 99 than voluntary slavery."
In the original version of In Defense of Anarchism, Wolff
argued that the only form of government which reconciles
authority with autonomy is unanimous, direct democracy. This is
because under unanimous direct democracy, every mem• ber of the society wills freely every law which is actually passed. Hence, he is only confronted as a citizen with laws to which he has consented. Since a man who is constrained only by the dictates of his own will is autonomous, it follows that under the directions.of unanimous direct demo• cracy, men can harmonize the duty of auto• But as Wolff'nomsy witcritich ths e havcommande pointes odf ouauthorityt (notabl. y10 0Reiman) , under
49 such a unanimous direct democracy there is neither any real political authority, at least as Wolff defines it, nor do agents necessarily remain autonomous.101
There is no political authority, in Wolff's sense of the term, in a unanimous direct democracy because there are no persons or groups which have a right to be obeyed simply "by virtue of who they are and not by virtue of what they 102 command." In a unanimous direct democracy people are obligated to obey the law because it is what they have, as individuals, autonomously willed, not because some authoritative body has issued the commands. Their "obedience" to the decisions or laws made by a unanimous direct democracy is of the same quality as the compliance of an autonomous agent to the laws of an illegitimate authority. Properly speaking, they are not obeying anyone except themselves, and their obligation to "obey" their own self-posited policies follows from the requirements of rational consistency, not from the fact that other agents have also unanimously adopted the same policies
(although an agent's reason for adopting a policy may be based on the expectation that others will do so as well). Although autonomous individuals may simultaneously and unanimously commit themselves to the same policies, this does not create a supra-individual authority with a right to be obeyed.
If unanimous collective commitment did create a supra- individual authority, as Wolff seems to argue, individual autonomy would be threatened. Individuals would be bound by 50 this authority to obey laws which they unanimously consented to even if they later changed their minds and decided that obedience to any such laws was not the best policy. They would not be entitled to individually evaluate laws according to their current individual goals and policies, so they would have to obey laws or policies either against their will or without rationally evaluating them with regard to their current goals and policies. In either case, they would no longer be autonomous. Unanimous direct democracy is then either
superfluous, in the sense that it does not add to the obligations resulting from individual commitments, or it is
illegitimate, as it requires autonomous individuals to act contrary to their own reason (even if it does require them to act according to their own past, and presumably deficient,
reason). In his "A Reply to Reiman," Wolff himself admits the validity of Reiman's criticisms, granting that although "it may be that men are bound by the collective commitments they make...
such commitments do not create the sort of political authority I 103 was attempting to analyze."
One possible solution to this problem would be to argue that the decisions arrived at collectively in a public forum or assembly, by either a unanimous or majority vote, express the true will of the individuals involved. They are then doubly bound to obey the decisions of the assembly because they have consented to abide by its decisions and because those decisions express their real will. To disobey would then be irrational,
51 for it would be to contradict one's own will. So not only does this scheme supposedly preserve individual autonomy, it shows that disobedience is irrational, and hence, heteronomous. This, in fact, is one way to interpret the argument Rousseau puts forward in The Social Contract.
Although Wolff is willing to grant at least the theoretical possibility of a public interest, and therefore of a general will common to all individuals pursuing that interest, he does not accept this Rousseauian argument. Because there are no substantive ends binding on all agents, individual agents have no ongoing obligation to adopt or remain committed to any end, even the general good. To remain autonomous, individual agents must be free to alter their goals and corresponding policies.
Thus, only as long as each individual remains committed to the pursuit of some general good can policies for the achievement of that good be binding on him or her. Furthermore, even if all members of a society adopt and remain committed to the common pursuit of some general good, it remains unclear how one is to determine whether any given law or policy is consistent with that goal, and thereby expresses the "true" will of each individual. Rousseau claims, albeit with important qualifications, that any law approved by a majority vote in a public assembly of all citizens is in fact a true expression of the general will aiming at the general good. These laws are binding on all the members of society, for they express the true will of the citizens, who also aim at the general good. The
52 problem here, as Wolff points out, "is the apparently groundless assumption that the majority are always right in their opinion 104 concerning the general good."
But even if it could be shown that the majority is always right (or that some other group -- a minority, or even a unanimity is always right), or that some other kind of decision-making procedure always yields correct answers, this does not solve the problem. If the majority, as the case may be, enforced its decisions against a recalcitrant minority this would still entail an infringement of the latter's autonomy, for the minority would be forced to act contrary to its own (albeit mistaken) reason, and would therefore no longer be autonomous.
And if the minority voluntarily obeyed the majority decision without understanding the reasons for doing so, it would no
longer be autonomous either. Any group or person which either does not accept or does not understand a decision which really does express the general will (and hence the "true" will of each member of society) cannot obey such a decision and remain autonomous. (Suprisingly, Wolff defends Rousseau's notion of
"forcing to be free," if that is interpreted as forcing people to do what they want against their own (mistaken) will.^6
But the pos i ti ve conception of freedom which underlies this argument is not synonymous with autonomy, so although it may be
possible to force people to be free (if freedom is suitably defined), they cannot, I have argued, be forced to be autonomous. )
53 Despite this, and despite Wolff's general anarchist arguments, I would like to argue that according to Wolff's own premises it is at least theoretically possible to reconcile legitimate authority and autonomy, but only in a very tenuous way which would be extremely unlikely to be achieved in practice. A group of autonomous agents pursuing a common good could recognize the commands of an authority as legitimate and authoritative in the sense that they are the most rational and efficient means for the realization of the common good. Dis• regarding the grounds upon which this recognition is based (the authority could have greater access to important information each individual lacked, it could be better able to utilize this
knowledge, it could have repeatedly demonstrated its superior competence in practice, and so on), so long as each agent has a
rational understanding as to why the authority's commands are the most rational and efficient means to the common good, and so
long as these commands are indeed the most rational and efficient means, each agent pursuing the common good but who
rationally understands that he or she lacks this special competence (due to unavoidable limitations, lack of knowledge, etc.) would be obligated, according to Wolff's analysis, to obey
the commands of this authority. Rather than conflicting with
autonomy or rational agency, such recognition and obedience
would be an expression of individual autonomy, the most rational
and efficient means for the achievement of each agent's end, the
common good. In this case, disobedience would be irrational.
54 It should be emphasized that in this case the agent does not independently evaluate each command, for the agent's obedience to the command is based in part on his or her own rationally based acknowledgement that he or she lacks the same competence as the authority which issued the command. Due to its special competence it could be said that this authority has a right to command and that its subjects have a corresponding obligation to obey.
But as with the utilitarian authority discussed earlier, this authority would only have authority over those agents committed to the general good (and only as long as they remained so committed). It would have no authority over anyone else and, in fact, if resistance and disobedience to the commands of this authority were a rational and efficient means for realizing these other agents' ends, they would have an obligation to resist and disobey such authority, for according to Wolff's moral theory ultimately agents are only obligated to do what is most rational for them as individuals. Finally, this authority would have no right to enforce its commands, because such a right of enforcement necessarily conflicts with individual autonomy conceived in Wolffian terms as rational agency. This last point requires emphasis. For Wolff, an agent's actions are rational and autonomous only insofar as they are caused by the agent's own reason. When someone's actions are caused by something else, such as the threat or application of coercion, then that person is no longer a rational, autonomous agent (at
55 least in this specific instance). And because Wolff holds that all agents have an overriding obligation, insofar as they are autonomous, rational agents, to act rationally, any infringement of their rational autonomy is illegitimate, even if the agents themselves have agreed to such infringement.
Although it is theoretically possible to reconcile some forms of authority with individual autonomy, it is virtually impossible to reconcile autononmy with government or the state.
All states and all governments claim supreme authority over all the inhabitants of a specific geographical area, whether or not all (or any) of those inhabitants actually consent to being ruled by such an authority. No state or government permits individuals to opt out of its jurisdiction and yet remain in the area it claims sovereignty over. All who choose to remain are subject to the putative authority of the state or government, whether they consent or not. No state or government will tolerate disobedience to its laws, even if those laws conflict with the goals and policies of autonomous agents. All states claim a monopoly of the legitimate use of violence in their domains, and they use this violence to compel obedience to their laws. None of these practices are compatible with individual autonomy, yet a state or government which failed to engage in them is scarcely imaginable. Wolff may not have provided an a^ priori justification of anarchism, but given the real world in which agents must act, and the claims real states and governments make, any reconciliation between individual autonomy
56 and state or government authority appears impossible.
Ultimately, all government or state authority depends on coercion, and coercion is incompatible with autonomy. Forcing someone to act in any way, even in a way that person had previously agreed to, is a violation of individual autonomy.
All forms of government which rely on enforced obedience, whether a unanimous direct democracy, a majoritarian
representative democracy, or a dictatorship, are equally
illegitimate (although this illegitimate authority can be used
for more or less evil purposes). Autonomy, the individual's obligation to act only according to freely chosen policies for
the achievement of freely chosen ends, and state authority,
conceived as the right to command, to be obeyed, and to enforce
commands, are simply irreconcilable from a Wolffian perspective.
Autonomy, Wolff argues, is a necessary policy for all
agents insofar as they are rational and they are to act. To
forfeit one's autonomy is to forfeit one's rational agency. The
policy of autonomy then takes precedence .over all other policies
(although it does not take precedence over all other goals; an
agent may very well adopt as a goal the forfeiture or even
annihilation of his or her autonomy.^6 Even still, autonomy
remains the necessary precondition for the rational achievement
of this goal). Because autonomy is the necessary precondition
for all rational action, anything which inhibits or conflicts
with autonomy is illegitimate, or put another way, contrary to
reason. The state, conceived as having a right to make and
57 enforce commands, and to be obeyed, is incompatible with autonomy and therefore illegitimate. Only a society without a state (or a "state of nature," as Wolff describes it) provides the possibility for complete autonomy. Because autonomy is the necessary precondition for all rational action, the state of nature is a rational, that is to say a moral, necessity.
Critics of Wolff and anarchism in general will undoubtedly respond that in the state of nature autonomy will in practice suffer even greater infringements than in a society with a state. This, however, is an empirical prediction, subject to possible refutation, not a theoretical truth. It is theoretic• ally true that in a society with a state, at least as we conceive it, people will not enjoy complete autonomy. It remains to be seen whether full autonomy in the state of nature, although theoretically possible, is in fact a practical possibility.
Unfortunately, Wolff does not devote a great deal of attention to this question. Hobbes, the most formidable critic of the state of nature, is not directly answered.107 But answered he must be, for if the moral condition of full autonomy which Wolff sees as the only morally justifiable form of society is in fact impossible to achieve, then one would think there is something dreadfully wrong with the moral theory Wolff espouses which gives rise to such an impossible ideal. Be this as it may, Wolff does offer some comments which he hopes "may serve to make the ideal a bit less like a mere fantasy of Utopian
58 political philosophy."
V. The State of Nature as a Viable Alternative
What primarily distinguishes the state of nature from a
society with a state is that the former is moral!y
symmetrical; "there is no rule, no party possessing rights of 109 decision and enforcement which are not possessed by all."
Each person has the right and the duty to be completely autonomous. In his "A Reply to Reiman," Wolff adds that everyone in the state of nature also "has the right to use force to compel compliance with what he judges to be his morally justified commands," but given the moral theory he sketches out
in The Autonomy of Reason, this claim is too strong, even false.11** (Wolff notes in the "Reply" that he does not now agree with his earlier view, which he held when writing In
Defense of Anarchism, that people in the state of nature have
standing obligations and rights, including "the obligation to
respect the legitimate pursuits of others and the right of
self-defense," but he has "adopted the simp!ifying.device of speaking from my earlier point of view.")111 In the state of nature the only obligation all agents have is the obligation to
be autonomous. It would seem at most that agents in a state of
nature would have a right to resist any attacks on their autonomy, but they would certainly have no right to force compliance to their commands (except, perhaps, those commands
59 directing a violator of one's autonomy to cease and desist).
What would a stateless society of autonomous agents be like? Hobbes provides an extremely negative picture of such a society in Leviathan. But perhaps there are reasons for being less pessimistic. Wolff envisages a society of autonomous agents voluntarily regulating their mutual activities by free, collective agreements. Although, as was discussed earlier, there is no formal contradiction in adopting policies without respect for the autonomy of others, if a sufficient number of agents do so they will frustrate one another's autonomy. It is possible that some people would enjoy enough power that they could infringe other people's autonomy without those others being able to respond in kind, but as anarchists have traditionally argued, such accumulations of power are really only possible in statist societies, as they are created, protected and maintained to a large extent by the activities of 112 the state itself. It is in the interests of people with relatively equal power to arrange their affairs so as to protect and maximize their individual autonomy, and this can be done through unanimous collective commitment to policies dealing with their mutual interaction. By engaging in constructive dialogue with one another, autonomous agents can determine each other's self-chosen goals and policies and arrive at collective agreements for the regulation and coordination of their mutual activities which will respect each agent's autonomy. Because there are no ends binding on all rational agents and choice of
60 ends is a nonrational process, what goals, practices and policies people may collectively choose to commit themselves to remains open. Nevertheless, Wolff offers some suggestions which he hopes "will commend themselves to the reader as an appealing alternative," even though he can offer no "systematic proof of 113 [their] objective goodness."
In order to "achieve an adequate level of social coordination" in the state of nature, Wolff believes that "much could be done through the local, community-based development of a consensual or general will with regard to matters of 114 collective rather than particular interest." This consensual will can be developed on the basis of shared "social values of community," consisting of three major types: Affective 115 Community, Productive Community and Rational Community.
Wolff defines community in general as "a group of persons who together experience a reciprocity of awareness."116 Each particular form of community he analyzes deals with different aspects of this "reciprocal awareness." What is noteworthy about reciprocal awareness in any form is that insofar as it is valued for its own sake, it is an intersubjective value which can only be realized in a specific social context.
One form of community which is "an element of a possible
general good" upon which a consensual, general will can be developed, is "Affective Community... the reciprocal consciousness of a shared culture."117 Autonomous agents "can deliberately choose to cherish thei61 r culture, and through that cherishing to bind themselves to one another." This commitment to a shared culture provides autonomous individuals with a common interest which can form the basis for deliberation regarding how they should voluntarily arrange their collective affai rs.
Another form of community which is "an element of a possible general good" is "Productive Community," the
"satisfaction in coming to know one another through 119 cooperation in collective productive activity." Agents who value Productive Community will share a common interest "in the creation and enjoyment of a reciprocal awareness in the work process," and they can autonomously and collectively choose "to organize the productive activity of the community in such a way that this reciprocal awareness is increased and strengthened."
Rational Community is the true foundation of a stateless society of autonomous agents, for it consists of "that reciprocity of consciousness which is achieved and sustained by equals who discourse together publicly for the specific purpose 121 of social decision and action." Agents who value Rational Community share a common interest "in the positing of collective 122 goals and in the performance of common actions." It is only through such Rational Community that agents are able to autonomously and collectively choose other social goods, such as
Affective and Productive Community. But Rational Community is not merely a means to various ends; it can be valued for itself. 62 Furthermore, Wolff argues, those agents committed to such an
intersubjective value should support "absolute liberty of speech and communication," for a truly rational community requires that
"each member... recognize his fellow citizens as rational moral agents and must freely acknowledge their right (and his) to 123 reciprocal equality in the dialogue of politics."
Through these three forms of community, and "voluntary compliance," Wolff argues, "sufficient social coordination" can
be generated "to permit collective pursuit of domestic goals,"
provided that there is also "extreme economic 124 decentralization." Such decentralization, based on "a
cheap, local source of power and an advanced technology of
small-scale production," would "permit the sort of voluntary economic coordination consistent with the ideals of anarchism
and affluence," although there would be "a high level of 125 economic waste." Wolff might have added that what would be
lost in so-called economic efficiency would be well made up for
in the ecological benefits of decentralization and in the enjoyment of the reciprocal awareness of Productive 126
Communi ty.
Wolff also believes that the autonomous agents living in
such a society "would be perfectly capable of choosing freely
whether to defend the nation [or communi ty] and carry its 127 purpose beyond national borders." People with a shared
commitment to a common culture, 63collectiv e productive
enterprises, and noncoercive forms of rational, consensual decision-making and cooperative action, would certainly have much to lose in the event of a foreign invasion. Wolff points to "Yugoslav partisans and Israeli soldiers" to support his claim that people who really value their way of life will voluntarily choose to defend it against aggressors. He also suggests that "the army itself could be run on the basis of 128 voluntary commitments and submission to orders." In this
regard he could have cited the anarchist peasant army led by
Nestor Makhno in the Ukraine during the Russian Civil War, which was organized along these lines and also operated fairly
successfully (until doublecrossed by its erstwhile allies, the
Bolsheviks).129
Despite all this, Wolff is generally pessimistic about the
practical possibility of anarchism. He offers no real strategy or practical proposals for either abolishing the state or for
actually creating an anarchist society. At one point, he even equates an association of autonomous agents who "determine to
set private interest aside and pursue the general good" with the
state, albeit a state "which accomplishes that end without 130 depriving some of them of their moral autonomy." Although
I have argued that such a reconciliation between political
authority and autonomy is theoretically possible, the state
conceived in such terms clearly does not resemble any actually
or previously existing state. Furthermore, one must question
the wisdom of so loosely defining the state as merely "a form of
association" composed of autonomous agents collectively pursuing 64 the "general good." According to the Weberian definition of the state, which Wolff himself approvingly cites, the state is not merely a form of association pursuing the general good but a particular form of association which claims a monopoly of the legitimate use of violence, and the right to command and to be obeyed, irrespective of individual agents' own goals, policies and wishes. As such, it is incompatible with individual autonomy according to Wolff's own analysis. Thus it is misleading and somewhat confusing for Wolff to begin speaking of the state as being compatible with autonomy without any further explanation. Wolff's alternative definition of the state as a form of association of autonomous agents united in pursuit of a common good also seems to entail such absurd claims as that most voluntary associations in pursuit of a common good, from creative writing clubs to worker cooperatives, are states, and that most anarchists, from Proudhon to Paul Goodman, are really statists, for they advocate the creation of such voluntary associations. If Wolff seriously believes that a consistent anarchist must oppose such voluntary associations as well as the state conceived in Weberian terms, no wonder he is pessimistic about the possibility of anarchism.
But there is another reason for Wolff's pessimism. He is not sure whether "a social order [can] survive the autonomy of
individual conscience when that conscience is not confined to a 131 rare few or restricted to one or two great moral issues."
Wolff speculates that "the healthy functioning of society -- 65 any society -- [may] require that the great preponderance of men believe in the legitimacy of some social authority, even 132 though such beliefs [may] be always wrong." He adds that
"the romantic optimism of most anarchists concerning human nature bears no relation to any ot the facts of human behavior 133 with which I am acquainted." But perhaps there is another reason for Wolff's pessimism, related to his own belief that choice of ends is a nonrational process. If this is indeed the case, then which ends rational agents choose to adopt remains entirely open; there is no reason for them to collectively adopt as goals the pursuit of a common good or the creation of the various forms of community which Wolff advocates and sees as necessary for the maintenance of "social coordination" in an anarchist society. Perhaps it is because of doubts such as these that Wolff concludes by saying, "since it is beneath the dignity of a truly free man to obey a law he has not made, we can only hope that as men begin to make their own laws they will 134 make good laws." In subsequent chapters we shall see if there is any basis for such hope.
66 PART TWO
Chapter III: Strange Anarchy
I. Introduction
In this chapter I propose to critically evaluate Wolff's position considered as a defence of anarchism. I will begin by discussing some preliminary objections to the anarchist status of Wolff's argument. I argue that these objections do not hold, at least as initially formulated. I will then more carefully examine Wolff's position according to a four point definition of anarchism developed by John P. Clark.
Jeffrey Reiman claims that Wolff's anarchism "is a personal, inner moral attitude -- and not the political 13 5 doctrine of anarchism at all!" The anarchist theorist
John P. Clark agrees with Reiman that "Wolff's argument that autonomy and moral authority are incompatible constitutes neither a defense of anarchism as a political theory nor a proof 13 6 of the unjustifiable nature of the state and government."
Reiman argues that a poli ti cal anarchist, as opposed to a
Wolffian mora 1 anarchist, "decries the state in the name of... freedom from coercion, not in the name of any inner freedom or 137 moral autonomy." Alan Ritter, in his book, Anarchism: A
Theoretical Analysis, backs up this claim by pointing out that none of the four major classica6l 7 anarchist theorists, Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin or Kropotkin, "use Kantian autonomy as the 1 38 normative basis for their opposition to state coercion."
These attempts to deny the anarchist status of Wolff's position fail, however, for primarily two reasons. First, as was argued in Part One of this thesis, by autonomy Wolff means both deciding for oneself what one ought to do and acting on these decisions. Autonomy so conceived is incompatible with any form of coercion, so Wolff's argument for autonomy is equally an argument against the coercion of the state. Second, the classical anarchist thinkers value autonomy very highly, in the sense of both moral autonomy and rational agency, even if they do not assign either kind of autonomy supreme normative value in their theories and arguments. As John P. Clark himself has argued, the concept of personal autonomy, the "ability on the part of the individual to make meaningful, critical, unprejudiced decisions," is central to the classical anarchist 139 conception of freedom itself. Virtually all of the major anarchist thinkers emphasize the need for individuals to act according to their own reason rather than the dictates of authority. The supposed distinction between Wolff's "moral" anarchism and "political" anarchism is then not as clear cut as
Wolff's critics claim.
Nevertheless, Wolff's "anarchism" is distinct from classical anarchism, and far less coherent or convincing. The best way to show this is by evaluating Wolff's anarchism according to a four point definition of anarchism developed by , 68 John P. Clark. Clark argues that "for one to be described as an anarchist in a full sense, all four criteria should be met," as they are by "the founders of anarchist theory (Godwin, Proudhon,
Bakunin, and Kropotkin)."We shall see that there are serious reasons for believing that Wolff's anarchism fails to satisfy any of Clark's four criteria, and therefore that his theory is not really an anarchist theory, properly so-called.
According to Clark, "for a political theory to be called
'anarchism' in a complete sense, it must contain:"
1) a view of an ideal, noncoercive, nonauthoritarian society; 2) a criticism of existing society and its institutions, based on this antiauthori- tarian ideal; 3) a view of human nature that justifies the hope for significant progress toward the ideal ; and 4) a strategy for change, involving imme• diate institution of noncoercive, non- authoritarian, and decentralist alterna• tives. 141
The virtue of this definition of anarchism is that it is broad enough to include all of the major anarchist theorists and the historical anarchist movements, while it is specific enough to exclude other theorists and movements who share somewhat similar ideals and goals but who are normally not considered "anarchist"
-- Marx and his followers, for example, and some liberals who would regard anarchy as morally ideal but practically impossi ble.
69 II. Wolff's "Anarchist" Ideal
It would appear that Wolff's anarchism satisfies Clark's first criterion of providing "a view of an ideal, noncoercive, nonauthoritarian society." However, although Wolff does advocate as an ideal the creation of a noncoercive and nonauthoritarian society of autonomous agents, such an ideal in no way follows from his moral theory, nor has Wolff shown that authority and autonomy are necessarily incompatible, and due to his claim that choice of ends is nonrational he can provide no rational argument for adopting anarchy as a goal. I will further argue that autonomous agents do not have to choose anarchy even as an ongoing policy for the preservation of their autonomy, and that given Wolff's analysis of autonomy and human reason, the sort of rational community of autonomous agents
Wolff envisages is impossible to achieve.
In In Defense of Anarchism, Wolff set out to demonstrate
"that anarchism is the only political doctrine consistent with 142 the virtue of autonomy." I would now like to argue that he has failed to do this. Indeed, as we saw in Chapter II, Wolff was unable to show that there is an irreconcilable conflict between autonomy and de jure authority.
It is conceivable that an authority could promulgate laws in such accordance with an individual agent's goals and policies that it would be rational for that agent to obey the commands of
70 such an authority without individually -evaluating each law or command. And if obedience to such law is the most efficient and rational means to the agent's ends, and such obedience is consistent with his or her other goals and policies, then the agent, insofar as she or he is to be autonomous and rational, must obey such laws. To repeat an example from Chapter II, a committed utilitarian, who due to unavoidable limitations in knowledge (one person can only know so much) lacks the same competence as a state (perhaps with an extensive bureaucracy, expert social scientists and so forth) for determining which policies would create the greatest utility, would be obligated to obey the utilitarian commands of that state even though he or she is unable to independently evaluate each command. In this case the obligation to obey does not conflict with individual autonomy but in fact follows from the agent's own autonomous choice of ends.
Wolff also fails to show that autonomous agents should adopt anarchy as either a goal or an ongoing policy. According to Wolff, choice of ends is nonrational. Wolff can therefore provide no rational arguments for the adoption of any goal, including the goal of anarchy, a stateless noncoercive, nonauthoritarian society of autonomous agents who regulate their affairs through free, collective agreement. One might want to argue that such a society is not necessarily a goal, but rather a necessary infrastructure or means for the full enjoyment of individual autonomy. However, this is not necessarily the case.
71 For example, one could adopt as a goal the exploitation of the working-class, and the best way to achieve this goal could be through a coercive state apparatus which preserves one's own autonomy at the expense of others. This illustrates another fault in Wolff's argument: he is unable to show that autonomous agents must, insofar as they are autonomous, respect the autonomy of others. Whether individual agents should respect the autonomy of others will depend on their own individual goals and policies, and in some cases such goals and policies may actually requi re the infringement of other agents' autonomy.
Thus, Wolff has failed to show that anarchy, conceived either as an ideal goal or as a policy for the preservation of autonomy, should be rationally supported or adopted by autonomous agents.
In fact, given that choice of ends is nonrational, Wolff cannot even provide a rational argument for adopting autonomy itself as a goal. All his arguments show is that autonomy is a necessary policy for the rational achievement of one's goals.
Thus, not only can Wolff provide no arguments for always respecting the autonomy of others, he can provide no arguments against adopting goals injurious to one's own autonomy, 144 including suicide. If follows that Wolff cannot provide any rational arguments against adopting as a goal the creation of a state which infringes even one's own autonomy. As long as reason is conceived in purely instrumental terms, as a mere means to any conceivable end, as it is by Wolff, one cannot show that some ends are more rational than, and hence superior to, 72 others. Only a noninstrumental view of reason is capable of providing rational arguments for the adoption or rejection of various ends, including anarchy and autonomy. I will criticize
Wolff's instrumental view of reason more fully in the next chapter.
One can, of course, give prudential arguments for safeguarding one's own or other's autonomy, as I did in Chapter
I, but there is nothing formally inconsistent about adopting goals and corresponding policies damaging to one's own or other's autonomy, and for Wolff formal inconsistency is the only aspect of such adoption that can be rationally criticized. To be moral, for Wolff, is to be consistent, and nothing else. Again,
I will be criticizing the vacuity of Wolff's moral theory in the next chapter.
It should hardly go without saying that, being unable to provide necessary and sufficient reason for agents to adopt anarchy as a goal or policy, Wolff cannot provide any rational agruments against adopting goals and policies positively incompatible with anarchist ideals. As with the capitalist mentioned earlier, autonomous agents may rationally decide that the continued existence of state power is compatible with and even useful to their own goals and policies, without necessarily recognizing the state as having de jure authority over them.
Autonomous agents do not have to be consistent anarchists.
Wolff himself admits that autonomous agents can comply with the law, "because of prudential self-interest and because of the
73 obvious moral considerations concerning the value of order, the general good consequences of preserving a system of property, 145 and so forth," and yet remain autonomous. That may be so, but they certainly have not remained anarchists.
Despite having failed to show that "anarchism is the only political doctrine consistent with the virtue of autonomy," perhaps Wolff can provide a weaker, more prudential argument for 146 anarchism. Because Wolff cannot show that autonomous agents, insofar as they are to remain autonomous, must respect the autonomy of others, there is a potential for great conflict between autonomous agents, for they may choose goals and act on policies that conflict with the goals and policies of other agents, and which may even directly require the infringement of other agents' autonomy. The singleminded pursuit of one's own goals without respect for other people's autonomy, if practiced widely, could very well lead to the diminution of everyone's autonomy through wide-spread social conflict. Because no agent can be certain that other agents won't adopt goals and policies that conflict with his or her autonomy, it may be in his or her interests to create a society in which everyone enjoys full autonomy, in which any potential conflict between agents can be avoided. And, in fact, Wolff argues that any potential conflict between autonomous agents can be avoided through the device of unanimous, col 1ective commitment, rather than through the state, so that anarchism, although not strictly the only political doctrine theoretically compatible with autonomy, is the 74 political doctrine most compatible with the full and equal autonomy of everyone. In a statist society, there is no guarantee that the state will adopt policies and goals compatible with each agent's autonomy, nor is there any guarantee that the state will not adopt goals and policies i ncompati ble with each person's autonomy. If only in an anarchist society would each person's autonomy be guaranteed then "philosophical anarchism would seem to be the only reasonable political belief for an enlightened man" committed to 147 the preservation of his autonomy.
Through the device of unanimous collective agreement, Wolff would argue, agents can voluntarily arrange their affairs to avoid conflict and mutual infringement of each other's autonomy.
Unfortunately, given Wolff's view that choice of ends is nonrational, there is no way autonomous agents could rational1y agree to the pursuit of any goals. Any agreement would be merely a coincidence of nonrational preferences. In a
Wolffian state of nature there could be no meaningful debate or discussion of collective choice of ends. There would be limited rational discussion of policies but only in an instrumental sense: "given that x is your goal, adopt policy y." Because policies are rational (and hence binding for autonomous agents) only in relation to goals, if one agent opposed the policy of another, or his or her autonomy was threatened by that policy, the only way he or she could convince that person to refrain from acting on that policy would be to convince him or her to
75 abandon the goal which made adoption of the policy rationally binding (or "obligatory," in Wolff's sense of the word). But because choice of ends is nonrational, this cannot be done in a rational manner. The only way to get someone to change his or her goals and corresponding policies would be through threats, bribes, manipulation or some form of nonrational persuasion, but never through rational argument.
We see then that given Wolff's instrumental view of reason, his anarchist ideal of a rational community of fully and equally autonomous agents is impossible to achieve in practice. The members of such a community would be unable to meaningfully debate or discuss the collective adoption of any goals, and consequently they would be unable to rationally influence each other's corresponding choice of policies, except in a purely instrumental sense. Each would step forward to express his or her own nonrational preference, and through this process some coincidence of preferences might obtain, but no rational agreement. So even if agreement among agents could be obtained, one of the primary goals of Wolff's rational community, "that reciprocity of consciousness which is achieved and sustained by equals who discourse,together publicly for the specific purpose of social decision and action," would be, in essence, 148 defeated. Furthermore, each agent would be "obligated" to comply with policies for the achievement of various ends only as long as he or she remained committed to those ends. The collective agreements that would miraculously obtain would then 76 have no real binding force each agent could change his or her goals at will, and thus nullify any "obligation" to adhere to the collectively agreed upon policies for their achievement.
Wolff's community would be anarchic then, but only in the pejorative sense of the word.
Any agent whose choice of ends is determined by manipulation or some form of nonrational persuasion is not autonomous, according to Wolff's analysis, because the agent's action (of choosing) is not caused by his or her own reason.
But to have any reasonable prospect for obtaining other agents' agreement to the pursuit of some goal, rather than merely hoping that everyone will miraculously share the same preferences, an agent will have to devise ways of manipulating and otherwise influencing other agents' nonrational preferences. Other agents will then agree to the pursuit of some goal, not because they were rationally convinced, but because they were successfully manipulated. Thus, the device of unanimous collective agreement will fail to preserve each agent's autonomy, because to get it to function effectively (rather than miraculously) each agent will have to treat all other members of the community as heteronomous agents incapable of rational choice or rational deliberation regarding their nonrational goals. Instead of a rational community of autonomous agents, there will be a group of heteronomous agents mutually manipulating one another.
Although Wolffian autonomous agents cannot rationally agree among themselves to the pursuit of various ends, perhaps they
77 can rationally agree to adopt a rational method for the
resolution of conflict between their nonrational ends and
corresponding policies which will either preserve or maximize
their individual autonomy -- a Rawlsian principle of justice for
^example. However, it is impossible to derive from Wolff's
purely formal analysis of rational agency any notion of justice
or fairness which would limit the autonomy of each agent to a
definite sphere of legitimate action, so that each agent would
enjoy the maximum amount of autonomy consistent with the
autonomy of others. (Significantly, Wolff regards Rawls'
attempt to devise a notion of justice binding on all rational 149 agents as a failure also.) Any agent who acts according to
self-chosen policies, which are internally consistent and
rationally connected to his or her goals, is autonomous in a
Wolffian sense. It is the formal structure of action, and not
the actual content of the agent's goals and policies, which
makes each agent's actions rational, and hence autonomous and,
for Wolff, moral. That the agent may have adopted goals and
policies which threaten the autonomy of others is not strictly
relevant. Autonomous agents are not bound to respect the
autonomy of others.
Even if agents did agree to a principle of equal respect,
perhaps for the prudential reasons outlined earlier, it is
difficult to see how such a principle could be applied.
Virtually any goal or policy may conflict, either directly or
indirectly, with other goals and policies. Upon what basis can 78 such conflict be resolved? Although it may be possible for individual agents to rank their goals on some sort of rational basis, Wolff cannot derive an interpersonal, objective standard or ranking of goals from his instrumental analysis of moral reason. For Wolff, all ends are equally nonrational, so to adopt one common standard or ranking of goals for the resolution of interpersonal conflict either would arbitrarily favour some agents over others, or it would implicitly assume that which
Wolff explicitly denies -- that some ends are rationally or morally superior to others.
Perhaps Wolff would endorse some sort of preference utilitarianism, but the maximization of the satisfaction of everyone's preferences, or autonomy, is a substantive principle which does not strictly follow from Wolff's formal analysis of rational agency. Moreover, such a principle can justify the infringement of some people's autonomy, or the frustration of some people's preferences, in order to maximize the autonomy or satisfaction of others. As Keith Graham argues, it can also provide a possible justification for either unanimous or majoritarian direct democracy rather than anarchism, because in both unanimous and majoritarian direct democracy any conflict between goals and preferences can be resolved in favour of the 150 greatest number.
We seen then that Wolff has failed to show that "anarchism is the only political doctrine consistent with the virtue of autonomy." Autonomous agents can remain autonomous without 79 respecting the autonomy of others or adopting anarchy as a goal or policy. Some forms of government are compatible with individual autonomy, and other forms of government, namely unanimous and majoritarian democracy, are at least compatible with the virtue of maximizing autonomy (but not necessarily with full and equal autonomy for all persons). Wolff can provide no rational method for resolving conflict between agents' goals and policies, and given the underlying moral theory upon which his defence of anarchism is purportedly based, the sort of rational, anarchist community he envisages as an ideal society is formally impossible (it may be both formally and practically possible given a different moral theory or
1 C 1 theoretical perspective). In this sense, it could be argued that Wolff's anarchism fails to satisfy Clark's first requirement for any anarchist theory, that it provide "a view of an ideal, noncoercive, nonauthoritarian society" that is, if we assume that any properly anarchist theory should be based on a coherent ideal and a plausible, rational justification for it.152
III. Wolff's Critique of Existing Society
Given that Wolff's anarchist ideal neither follows from nor is compatible with the moral theory upon which it was supposed to be based, it would seem that Wolff's "anarchism" also fails to satisfy Clark's second criterion of providing "a criticism of
80 existing society and its institutions, based on this antiauthoritarian ideal." One can hardly base a coherent critique of society on an incoherent ideal. Be that as it may,
Wolff does provide a critique of existing society and its institutions. We can further clarify the status of Wolff's argument by seeing how effective this critique really is in view of the preceding discussion.
Due to the very nature of Wolff's moral theory he cannot provide any substantive, positive alternative to existing society. Any alternative must be the creation of autonomous agents, and they will be the ones to provide the substantive content of the alternative. But Wolff can provide a critique of existing society based on his moral theory, albeit not based on the anarchist or antiauthoritarian ideal which Clark's definition of anarchism calls for.
From a Wolffian perspective, all obligations and duties must be voluntarily self-assumed, and they are only binding for a rational agent insofar as they rationally follow from the agent's own goals and policies. On this basis, any law, obligation, duty, institutional requirement or authority which conflicts with, impedes, threatens or violates individual autonomy can be justifiably criticized, opposed and resisted, at least by the agent concerned. No agent has a standing obligation to obey the commands of authority, and every agent has the right to resist their coercive imposition. No agent, through his or her actions, can create obligations for any other
81 agent, but only for him or herself. Wolff's moral theory provides the basis for a critique of involuntary social arrangements, such as the state (and capitalism, judging from
Wolff's own remarks), any form of social control which impedes rationality and threatens autonomy, and virtually any kind of social practice or institution which is not voluntarily created 153 and sustained by autonomous agents.
Unfortunately, the validity of these critiques may often be limited to the individuals whose autonomy is actually infringed or threatened. As we have seen, Wolff can provide no arguments against individual agents or groups of agents (and it is
important to remember that Wolff defines the state itself as "a group of persons") violating the autonomy of others if such violations are consistent with the violator's goals and policies. Furthermore, if violating another agent's autonomy is the most rational means for achieving an agent's goals, then that agent is positively obiigated to violate the other agent's autonomy. This leads to one of the central paradoxes of
Wolff's moral theory. While his theory can provide a basis for an individual agent to justifiably criticize and resist any
infringement of his or her autonomy, it can at the same time not only justify (or "rationalize," if you will) such infringement,
from the perspective of the agent or agents doing the
infringing, it can also show that such infringement is
obligatory on the part of those agents. From Wolff's
perspective, it is impossible to resolve this conflict between
82 the individual agent's "obligation" to act autonomously and the obligation other agents may have, given their adoption of certain goals and policies, to infringe another agent's autonomy, due to Wolff's view that obligations are a strict function of what is instrumentally rational for each agent.
Although the state, conceived as a "group of persons," may not have a right to command and to be obeyed according to Wolff's argument, it is also the case, according to Wolff's own analysis of rationality, morality and obligation, that from the perspective of this "group of persons" it may very well be rati ona 1 and hence obii gatory to command and to compel obedience to their commands. Thus, as Carole Pateman remarks,
"no political ruler need quake at the implications of Wolff's 154
anarchi sm. "
We see then that Wolff's moral theory is incapable of providing a valid, coherent and general (as opposed to agent-specific) critique of existing society or the state.
Indeed, his theory provides a positive rationale, or justification, for those persons wielding power and authority to threaten and violate other agents' autonomy as long as such action is rationally consistent with their individual goals and policies. For, from Wolff's perspective, if something is instrumentally rational there is "no moral ground" for opposing 155 it. This conflation of instrumental rationality with morality is the very essence of Wolff's theory. It could be said then that Wolff's moral theory fails to satisfy Clark's 83 second anarchist criterion of providing "a criticism of existing society and its institutions," based on either an anarchist ideal or Wolff's moral theory itself.
IV. Wolff's View of Human Nature
We now come to Clark's third criterion for an anarchist theory, that it provide "a view of human nature that justifies the hope for significant progress toward the [anarchist] ideal." One could argue that Wolff simply has no view of human nature, or that it is irrelevant to his moral theory, because although his moral theory differs significantly from Kant's in most respects, he does follow Kant in attempting to develop a rational theory of ethics valid for all rational agents, the validity of which does not depend on any empirically contingent facts regarding human biology and psychology. But this would be a mistake. Clearly, for Wolff's position to be at all relevant or plausible, he must hold at least one tenet regarding human nature, namely that human beings are capable of rational agency, of being moved by reason. Given this view of human nature as rational agency, it is legitimate to ask whether it provides any basis for hope of attaining Wolff's morally ideal society.
Wolff's concept of human nature as instrumentally rational agency provides no real hope for progress toward an anarchist ideal. As has been argued, Wolff's morally ideal anarchist society neither follows from nor is compatible with his general
84 moral theory, based on his formal analysis of rational agency.
Beyond this, it is worth emphasizing that Wolff's moral theory can provide no coherent account of autonomous individual moral development, except in the sense of agents developing more efficient means for the realization of their own nonrational ends. According to Wolff, choice of ends is determined by neither reason nor desire. Although various rational considerations may influence one's choice of ends (e.g. the practical availability of the end), in the final analysis one's choice is determined by neither reason nor desire but rather, one can only assume, by an almost Nietzschean act of will.
Because choice of ends is ultimately nonrational, agents cannot rationally progress from one end or set of ends to another end or set of ends. Any movement to new ends or sets of ends, including the anarchist ideal, will be just as arbitrary as the original nonrational choice of ends ultimately was. Thus, agents can have no rational narrative history of moral development -- "moral" conflict will consist of nothing more than conflict between equally nonrational and ultimately arbitrary choices. Because ultimately there is no reason why autonomous agents should embrace anarchism as an ideal, there is no rational basis for hoping that they will purposefully progress towards anarchy. Any such "progress" will be either completely fortuitous or the result of forces beyond each 156 agent's rational control. One must question in what possible sense agents whose
85 actions are ultimately determined by nonrational choice can be said to be free or responsible. To be autonomous, for Wolff, is to be "moved by reason," rather than by desire, impulse and so on. But it is to be moved by reason only in the sense of acting according to policies rationally connected to one's nonrational goals. These nonrational goals, which make the adoption of policies, and action in general, rational, can be said to be the motor of agency, for they provide the necessary impetus and rationale for action. For the autonomous agent, choice of ends and action are inextricably intertwined. It can be said that to choose is to act, at least mentally. The act of choosing ends then, which is uncaused by reason, is not an autonomous act but,
in Wolff's terminology, a "bit of behavior." But, Wolff also
holds, agents cannot be held responsible for their nonrational
behaviour, as opposed to their rational actions. In that case, agents cannot be held responsible for "choosing" the ends they do choose, for such choice is not rational, or in the true sense of the word, autonomous. And if they cannot be held responsible
for the ends they choose, how can they possibly be held
responsible for adopting the policies which rationally follow
from them? To be "autonomous" they must follow these policies,
but by doing so they make themselves slaves to their own
nonrational choices. Ultimately, Wolff's concept of autonomy is
i ncoherent.
Wolff's criticisms of Robert Nozick can be applied to
himself, for his concept of nonrational choice of ends also
86 excludes any "usable notions of false consciousness, of 157 self-deception, [or] of alienation." Ends must be treated simply as given. Because of Wolff's abstract, quasi-Kantian approach, he cannot criticize some ends as inappropriate to human nature, or "species-being," to use a
Marxian term. Also, Wolff can offer no nonprudential arguments against adopting goals and policies damaging to one's own or to other's autonomy, nor can he explain exactly what is wrong with choosing such things. Indeed, it is obscure how Wolff can even distinguish between the arbitrary choices of an autonomous agent and the compulsive choice of an irrational person. For Wolff, an irrational person would be one who failed to adopt policies rationally connected to his or her ends. But the ends themselves are all equally nonrational, from the end of being world-dictator to that of being a good cook. As long as the agent's policies are rationally connected to his or her goals, that agent is perfectly rational, no matter how strange or
horrible his or her goals may be. From this perspective, not only could one argue that various dictators are autonomous agents, one would not be able to rationally criticize their goals but only their methods for attaining them.
It is hard to see in what sense any agent can be said to be
free and rational, when all of his or her actions (as opposed to
"behaviour") are ultimately based on choices over which the
agent has absolutely no rational control. Either the agent's
actions are ultimately determined by arbitrary choice or they
87 are determined by something else (perhaps the arbitrary choice of another person), but in neither case are they determined by reason. In the first case the agent is a slave to his or her nonrational choice, in the second case he or she is a slave to some sort of internal or external compulsion. Yet, Wolff himself admits that to be free and responsible one must be rational .
To some extent Wolff recognizes the inadequacy of his view of human nature as centrally dependent on and largely confined to rational agency. In both the concluding section of the
Autonomy of Reason and in a separate article, "There's Nobody
Here But Us Persons," he discusses the limitations of this 159 position. As Wolff himself admits, in the account of rational agency which he has adapted from Kant, "man is portrayed as not essentially located in a time, a place, a culture, or a history. The limitations of his will and the constraints of his body are seen as accidental to his nature as a moral and political being."1*10 Wolff also admits that, from this sort of perspective, rational agents "are conceived as essentially unchanging," as "timelessly rational," and their "public or political world as a timeless static community of 161 adults." Consequently, the sort of approach Wolff takes
(which he shares with traditional liberal theory) "simply does nobirtht tak, echildhood seriousl, y aginthe g dominanand death,t fact" sand of, humahe mighn lifet hav, enamel addedy , 162 gender.
88 Given the general inadequacy and implausibi1ity of Wolff's view of human nature, and the fact that it provides no real hope for progress toward an anarchist ideal, it can be said that
Wolff's moral theory fails to satisfy Clark's third criterion for an anarchist theory, that it provide "a view of human nature that justifies the hope for significant progress toward the
[anarchist] ideal." As Clark argues,
For anarchism to be a coherent theory, it must have a conception of human nature which forms the basis for speculation about the ideal society and which gives a foundation for those practical proposals that are necessary if the ideal is to have political and social relevance. 163
As we have seen, Wolff's theory fails on both counts.
V. Wolff and Political Anarchism
Clark's fourth and final criterion for any anarchist theory is that it provide "a strategy for change, involving immediate institution of noncoercive, nonauthoritarian, and decentralist alternatives." It is this criterion which most clearly distinguishes anarchism from other moral or political doctrines which may postulate some form of anarchy as the ultimate ideal, such as Marx's stateless, communist society, or Kant's Kingdom of Ends, but which do not advocate consistently anarchist methods of change. Rather, as Clark notes, "the Marxist, the non-Marxian socialist, the welfare statist and the modern
liberal have quite obviously come to rely increasingly on the
89 state, centralized political authority, and hierarchical 164 bureaucracy as a means toward social change."
It should come as no surprise that Wolff's theory fails to satisfy this requirement as well. Wolff can present no rational method for even convincing autonomous agents to adopt the anarchist ideal, let alone provide them with a strategy for attaining it. What is even more astonishing is that Wolff, as
Clark summarizes his position, "sees no practical proposals that 16 5 follow from his theoretical acceptance of anarchism."
According to Clark, "never before... has any theorist claiming to be an anarchist presented no proposals for action at all."166 In fact, in the same radio interview in which he makes this admission, Wolff explicitly indicates his essential agreement with Marx's view that in order to bring about anarchy one must first strengthen, not lessen, the power of the 167 state. Only a very powerful and centralized state, it is argued, is capable of the massive restructuring of the economy and the redistribution of wealth which provide the necessary preconditions for the creation of a decentralized, anarchist society. Genuine anarchists have always strongly opposed this
idea "that anarchy or freedom is the aim, but the State or dictatorship is the means. Therefore in order to emancipate the 1 6 ft masses they must be enslaved." Furthermore, anarchists have increasingly come to reject the whole base/superstructure model and economic reductionism upon which the Marxist position 169 is based. Political power, anarchists argue, is not merely 90 the "excrescence" of the "economic base," nor will it necessarily disappear with the abolition of capitalism. It would be strange indeed to describe Wolff, who supports the
Marxist call for a powerful "transitional" state to usher in the anarchist Utopia, as an "anarchist" in the appropriate sense of the word.
We see then that Wolff's moral theory fails to really satisfy any of Clark's four criteria for an anarchist theory.
It would be a mistake to describe either Wolff's moral theory or
Wolff himself as being "anarchist," properly so-called. Wolff's critic, Jeffrey Reiman, is right then to say that Wolff's
"moral anarchism bears only the most superficial and largely 170 misleading resemblence to political anarchism." As
Carole Pateman argues, Wolff's moral and political scepticism regarding the legitimacy of authority and the objectivity of
substantive moral ends is a form of "scepticism which is
inherent in abstractly individualist liberalism," but which
"forms no part of a political theory of anarchism."171 In the
following chapter I shall subject Wolff's moral theory itself to
a more thoroughgoing critique, regardless of its status as an
"anarchist" theory. We shall see how well his particular brand
of scepticism holds up as a theory in its own right.
91 Chapter IV: Autonomous Ethics and Instrumental Reason
I. Introduction
In this chapter I propose to criticize both Wolff's moral theory and his related instrumental view of reason. I will begin by making some preliminary remarks regarding Wolff's concept of autonomy.
What many of his critics found startling and distinctive about Wolff's defence of anarchism was his central claim that moral autonomy and political authority are completely incompatible. Wolff was taken to have developed an a priori argument for anarchism. But even if this argument were successful, and I have argued that it is not, it only succeeds by confusing two distinct notions: the notion of mora 1 autonomy, deciding for oneself what one ought to do, and the notion of political autonomy, acting on those decisions. As many of Wolff's critics, notably Reiman, have argued, moral autonomy and the state are not necessarily incompatible. As long as one subjectively denies the "binding moral force" of state laws, to use Wolff's own words, one remains morally autonomous, no matter how rigorously one complies with those 17 2 laws. And it should hardly be surprising that political autonomy, the freedom to act as one pleases, should conflict with the authority of the state to make and enforce laws which are designed precisely to limit such freedom of action. 92 Proponents of moral autonomy, including the classical anarchist theorists, need not embrace Wolff's political autonomy as well. Reiman is mistaken that all anarchists hold that
"everyone should be allowed [or is entitled] to do what he determines as his moral duty." This is closer to a description of Wolff's position rather than the position of "political" anarchists. To my knowledge, none of the major anarchist
theorists (Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, et al) has ever advocated that state officials, for example, should be
allowed or are entitled to do what they may determine as their moral duty, namely enforce the laws of the state. Regarding
Wolff himself, a more accurate description of his position would
be that "everyone is entitled to do what is most instrumentally
efficacious in realizing his or her ends." This sort of
position may lead to very undesirable consequences, due to the
potential for conflict between agents who have adopted mutually
incompatible goals and policies. Because Wolff can provide no
rational method or concept of justice for resolving such
conflict, one gets the impression that conflict between
autonomous agents in a Wolffian state of nature can only be
resolved on the basis of power or force. As we have seen, such
conflict cannot be resolved by means of rational agreement. The
extent of an agent's autonomy will then depend on the amount of
power he or she possesses. In that event, each agent will pose
a permanent threat to each other agent's autonomy. This is
nothing other than Hobbes' state of perpetual war. Other
93 anarchist theorists would do well to avoid the sort of moral 17 3 theory which yields such unpalatable conclusions.
Wolffian agents will lack even a meaningful moral discourse by which to mutually resolve their differences. In a Wolffian state of nature the meaning of moral concepts will be strictly relative to each agent's subjective choices.17^ From a
Wolffian perspective, what is morally right, justified and obligatory for an individual autonomous agent is whatever is the most rational and efficient means to his or her ends. And these ends, or the "good" for each agent, are subjective, nonrational, and relative to the agent. For Wolff, if there is no rational ground for opposing something, there is "no moral ground" for 17 5 opposing it either. Because ends are all equally nonrational, there can be no rational, and hence no moral, ground for opposing them. Moreover, because what is rational for one agent (in relation to his or her goals) is not rational for another agent, what is morally "good" and "obligatory" for one agent, insofar as he or she is to be autonomous, will not be morally "good" and "obligatory" for another. Indeed, if the other agent has goals and policies that are incompatible with the former agent's, then what is morally "good," "right" and
"obligatory" for that agent will be morally "wrong" and
"obligatory" to resist (in order to preserve autonomy) for the latter agent. Thus, any moral discourse between autonomous agents will consist of competing but incommensurable and mutually unintelligible moral claims. 94 II. Autonomous "Obligation" and Moral Contractarianism
It would be useful now to turn to an examination of Wolff's peculiar notion of obligation and then to evaluate his "moral contractarianism" in general. For Wolff, whatever is the most rational and efficient means for attaining an agent's nonrational goals is obligatory for any agent committed to rational autonomy. Thus, Wolffian obligations are purely internal and subjective; they are "owed" only to oneself. They are also involuntary, for they are rationally necessary, following from the agent's subjective ends, regardless of whether the agent actually chooses to accept them. Any agent who refuses to accept such "obligations" is not fully rational, and hence forfeits his or her autonomy. If the agent chooses ends which require conflicting policies, then the agent will have conflicting obligations. But, for Wolff, to adopt and act on conflicting policies is irrational; any genuine moral conflict or conflicting obligations are then incompatible with rational agency, and hence, autonomy. The autonomous agent must therefore hierarchically order his or her nonrational goals, even if arbitrarily, to avoid any such conflict. This helps explain why Wolff invariably adopts some form of consequent!'al i sm in his own moral deliberations.
Wolff's denial of the reality of moral conflict (of course,
he can still hold that people experience feelings of moral
95 conflict but such feelings are "irrational") follows from his failure to adequately distinguish hypothetical imperatives, moral oughts and self-assumed obligations (such as promises).
For Wolff, from the hypothetical imperative, "given x as your goal, do y," it follows both that you ought to do y and that you have an obligation to do y, provided that you are a committed rational agent. Thus, in Wolff's moral theory both "ought" and
"obligation" function in the same purely instrumental sense.
Neither can his theory conceive of moral duties and obligations existing independently of each agent's nonrational choice of ends. But this creates some serious conceptual difficulties.
By conflating "ought" and "obligation," and by making them both a shorthand way of saying "given that you are rational and x is your goal, do y," Wolff cannot envisage a situation where you could have an obligation to do one thing (because one promised, for example) but that, all things considered, you ought to do something else. If, all things considered, you instrumental1y ought to do one thing, then according to Wolff's moral theory you simply did not have an obligation (or any other moral duty) to do the other. From this perspective then, someone who promises to do something has no obligation to do so if some other course of action proves a more efficient means to the agent's ends.
Thus Wolff, and other proponents of this view, are forced to deny "such obvious conceptual truths as that promises create obligations."176 It is simply part of the concept of
96 promising as a social practice that promises oblige, although in ways that can be overridden (if they did not oblige even when they were overridden they would not really be overridden but void). As Carole Pateman puts it, the "meaning of 'I promise'
is not purely subjective and individual but is social and
intersubjective."177 The intersubjective concepts and
impersonal rules which constitute the social practice of promising stipulate that someone who makes a promise at the same time assumes an obligation to fulfill that promise. Such obligations may conflict with and be overridden by other obligatons, duties or moral considerations, and even
self-interest (to protect life and limb, for example), but they
remain obligations nonetheless. Otherwise, not only would there
be no basis for the moral conflict associated with
promise-breaking, promising as it is commonly understood and
practiced would not exist. People could still say "I promise,"
but the meaning would be completely different, something like "I will do something provided that it is the most rational and
efficient means to my ends," rather than "I pledge myself to
this course of action and will fulfill this pledge within
generally accepted moral limits." If one's obligations are
always subordinate to what is most rational for oneself, as
determined by self-interest (which, Wolff admits, may be
egoistic or altruistic), then obligations will simply have no
real, interpersonal, binding force. This indeed is the case
with Wolffian "obligation," which is really no obligation at
97 all.
The only "obligation" Wolffian agents have is to be rational, defined in an instrumental sense, regardless of any promises or commitments they may make. Their rational self-interest overrides all else. Wolff cannot provide a coherent account of obligation, for obligation arises from various social practices, such as promising, and Wolff's purely individualistic and abstract analysis of rational agency simply cannot provide a coherent account of any social practice, for social practices are constituted by intersubjective meanings and impersonal rules which transcend pure, subjective rational agency and arbitrary choice. Wolffian agents lack a common moral vocabulary by which to constitute and sustain social practices. All moral concepts and values will be relative to each agent's subjective, nonrational goals and corresponding policies. Similarly, the "rules" constituting a social practice will be different for each agent, being the most efficient and rational policies consistent with his or her goals and other policies, rather than impersonal standards. Even if agents could agree to abide by the same rules, despite their lack of a common moral vocabulary, these rules will always be subordinate to each agent's ends. Whenever it is rational to break the rules, the agent will be "obligated" to do so. The rules constituting a social practice will then have no binding force
-- they really won't be rules at all. If the rules are binding
and intersubjective, they will threaten individual autonomy just
98 as much as any positive law, for the agent will be required to act in ways not always rationally consistent with a specific personal goal. Wolffian agents must always be superior to any obligations or commitments owed to others, whether an individual to whom one has made a promise or a political authority to whom one has promised obedience. This explains why when Wolff adopts a form of consequentialism, it is a form of act-consequentialism.
The nature of obligations which form a part of the social practice of promising differs markedly from the nature of
Wolffian "obligation." The obligation created by a promise is created by a conscious act of the agent, rather than being an involuntary side-effect of the agent's nonrational choice of ends. The obligation is owed to those whom one promised, not to oneself as an autonomous agent. The agent can decline to make a promise, and thus refuse an obligation, without thereby being irrational and forfeiting his or her autonomy. The agent can justifiably break a promise if, all things considered, he or she ought to do something else. By distinguishing self-assumed obligation from what an agent ought to do, all things 178 considered, the reality of moral conflict is preserved.
That agents can freely assume their obligations and break them when necessary, without thereby being irrational, also provides a basis for ascribing moral responsibility and culpability to agents, which Wolff's theory is incapable of doing. Wolff's moral contractarianism, his idea that the moral
99 principles governing agents' interrelationships and interaction must (and can) be based on unanimous agreement, and that "all obligations are grounded in the collective commitments of a society of rational agents," is incompatible with his analysis of rational agency and his corresponding notion of individual 17 9
"obligation." According to Wolff's own analysis, the act of publicly committing oneself to a policy or a practice, of voluntarily assuming an obligation, adds nothing to the binding character of the policy or practice for the individual agent because any obligation to abide by a policy or practice ultimately depends on the individual agent's subjective commitment to the ends which make adoption of the policy or practice rational, and hence "obligatory" insofar as the agent is to be autonomous. Any "obligation" to adhere to a policy or practice is based on their efficacy in realizing the agent's ends, not on any public agreement. Publicly and voluntarily assumed obligations are superflous to Wolff's abstract analysis of rational agency. As Wolff himself admits, "fidelity to principle is not... deducible from bare formal 180 rationality." Public agreements having binding force can also threaten individual autonomy by requiring agents to abide
by agreements even when it turns out not to be rationally advantageous for each agent to do so.
Without any meaningful intersubjective moral notions and
values, without even a concept of rationality which transcends
individual goals and situations, in effect, without the very 100 notions which form the basis of social practices, Wolffian agents simply will have no meaningful notions of what a promise, a contract, an agreement or the corresponding obligations are.
So not only will they be unable to collectively and rationally agree to the pursuit of certain goals, they will lack the very conceptual apparatus by which to make any binding agreements whatsoever. Bakunin captured the essential absurdity of this sort of position long ago:
How ridiculous then are the ideas of the individualists of the Jean Jacques Rousseau school and of the Proudhonian mutualists who conceive society as the result of the free contract of individuals absolutely independent of one another and entering mutual relations only because of the convention drawn up among them. As if these men had dropped from the skies, bringing with them speech, will, original thought, and as if they were alien to anything of the earth, that is, anything having social origin. Had society consisted of such absolutely independent individuals, there would have been no need, nor even the slightest possibility of them entering into an association; society itself would be non-existent, and those free_2J!di^vj_dua]_s , not being able to live and function upon the earth, would have to wing their way back to the heavenly abode. 181
Ultimately, Wolff's "autonomous" agents are left stranded in a nihilistic desert, unable to engage in any meaningful moral discourse or social practices, reduced to treating each other as morally "mute" means to one another's arbitrary ends. It is a far cry from the "rational community" Wolff originally envisaged. Not even the Categorical Imperative can help us
here.
101 One last remark needs to be made. Even if possible, the reduction of all human relationships to contractual relationships is undesireable and inhuman. There can be no real trust, friendship, fidelity, love or respect -- in other words, no real community among people who must treat each other as means to their ends rather than as ends in themselves. Again,
Wolff's criticisms of Nozick can be applied to himself. Both
"encourage us to treat as already rationalized those spheres of human experience that have not yet been subordinated to the dehumanization of quasi-economic rationalization, and that ought 18 2 to be protected at all cost from such subordination."
III. Critique of Instrumental Reason
One of Wolff's central claims is that reason neither rules in nor rules out any choice of ends. Now, if one defines reason instrumentally, as being solely concerned with determining the most efficient means for attaining ends, then of course it follows that choice of ends must be nonrational. But unless one can present an argument for this position, to define reason in this way, thereby showing that choice of ends is nonrational, is in effect to beg the question.
On the face of it, the claim that reason does not rule out any choice of ends is absurd. There are many ends which are either impossible to achieve, unlikely to be achieved, or simply inappropriate to a situation. In the case of impossible
102 ends, even from the perspective of instrumental reason, to choose an end for which there is no possible means of achievement is irrational. It is no accident that people who choose to be God are considered not only irrational, but positively insane. No matter what policies they adopt, they can never achieve their goal. That they even think they can achieve such a goal (or indeed, have already achieved it) shows that they are irrational. One can think of less extreme examples where an end is unattainable. It would be irrational to choose to become a Russian aristocrat, for the social structure that made such a role possible (even intelligible) no longer exists.
One could pretend to be a Russian aritocrat, or an aristocrat in exile, but the actual role of a land-owning, serf-owning 18th century Russian aristocrat is no longer available, and to choose such a role shows that one has not understood certain facts about the real world. This inability to understand these facts, and their implications, is a sign of cognitive failure, not some
sort of poor "value-judgement." It would also be irrational to
adopt goals which one lacks the abilities to attain. Try as I might, I will never be able to write like Tolstoy. Realizing
one's limitations is as much a sign of rationality, of being
able to appreciate certain facts about oneself and about the world, as it is a sign of maturity.
There are some goals which, although not strictly
impossible, are so unlikely to be achieved that to adopt them
would show such poor judgement that one could argue that their
103 adoption is in fact irrational. For example, given that I am not a citizen of the U.S.A. and that because I am not a native born American I am constitutionally barred from being President, although it is not strictly impossible for me to become
President of the U.S.A. (I could be granted citizenship, the
Constitution could be changed), it is extremely unlikely.
Given these facts and probabilities, it would be irrational for me to adopt such a goal, for the ability to make even moderately successful predictions about the future, and to plan accordingly, is as much a sign of rationality as being able to understand current facts and situations (again, even from the viewpoint of instrumental reason).
Bernard Williams and Hilary Putnam argue that some ends are general in nature (e.g. "having a good time this weekend"), so it then becomes a question of determining, in Putnam's words, which "overall pattern of activity... will constitute an acceptable specification of the goal (e.g. 'going to a movie...');" in other words, which specific goal is appropriate 183 to the situation. In this case reason both rules in certain goals and rules out others.
Williams lists some other ways goals can be criticized.
The cost or effort involved in achieving a goal may outweigh the actual satisfaction of achieving it, or it may be so disproportionately valued relative to other values that its singleminded pursuit is indicative of a certain kind of
irrational fanaticism. People may overlook other goals which 104 they could pursue and find more fulfilling. In these cases, the agent pursues inappropriate goals because of ignorance of the costs involved, and of other, more preferable ends available; and because of a failure of imagination. The agent fails to imagine all of the possibilities open to him or her, or the agent fails to properly imagine the degree of satisfaction that will be obtained upon achieving a goal. Thus, as Putnam notes,
"the ability to rationally criticize one's own goals (and those of others) may depend just as much on one's imagination as on one's ability to accept true statements and disbelieve false ones."184
There is one last sense in which goals can be said to be irrational. Putnam argues that goals are irrational if the acceptance and pursuit of them leads agents either "to offer crazy and false arguments for them (if one accepts the task of justifying them within our normal conceptual scheme), or else... to adopt an alternative scheme for representing ordinary moral-descriptive facts (e.g. that someone is compassionate) 185 which is irrational." For example, a Nazi who tries to argue that his or her "goals are morally right and good... will assert all kinds of false 'factual' propositions, e.g. that the democracies are run by a 'Jewish conspiracy'; and he will advance moral propositions (e.g. that, if one is an 'Aryan,' one has a duty to subjugate non-Aryan races to the 'master race') IOC for which he has no good argument." The Nazi can renounce our normal conceptual scheme, but by doing so will have to adopt 105 an alternative scheme which is irrational, in the sense that it will be an "inadequate, unperspicous, repulsive representation 187 of interpersonal and social facts." Putnam admits that
"'inadequate, unperspicous, repulsive' reflect value judgements," but he argues that "the choice of a conceptual scheme necessarily reflects value judgements, and the choice of a conceptual scheme is what cogni ti ve rationality is all 188 about." This is because without a "conception of rationality one objectively ought to have... the notion of a
'fact' is empty," for our notion of a 'fact' is based on "the cognitive values of coherence, simplicity, and instrumental efficacy," and "these cognitive values are arbitrary considered as anything but a part of a holistic conception of human 189 flourishing." Thus, "theory of truth presupposes theory of rationality which in turn presupposes our theory of the good," which "is itself dependent upon assumptions about human nature, about society, about the universe," and which is revisable as 190 those assumptions change and our knowledge increases.
In the case of the Nazi, his or her values lead to a misrepresentation of what we regard as the facts. A Nazi will
use descriptive terms like "compassionate," "considerate,"
"dishonest" and so on completely differently than we do, so that
in "almost all interpersonal situations, the description we give
of the facts will be quite different from the description
[Nazis] give of the facts. Even if none of the statements
they make about the situation ar10e6 false, their description will not be one that we will count as adequate or 191 perspicuous." Disregarding any disagreement we may have with the Nazis over values, "we could not regard their total representation of the human world as fully rationally 192 acceptable." Those who claim that reason itself is relative must remain silent, for to make any rational and intelligible statement the speaker must adopt an idiom which presupposes a certain concept of reason, which implicitly makes certain claims about facts, truth, and so on.
Wolff's attempt to reduce moral reason to instrumental reason fails, for the latter embodies within it certain values.
Reason and morality are inextricable, but not reducible to one another. And to adopt a certain mode of reason or conceptual
scheme is to adopt a certain general moral outlook. In the case of instrumentalism, it is to adopt some sort of consequential ism, as Wolff repeatedly but unwittingly shows.
For Wolff, instrumental rationality and morality are ultimately one and the same thing. Whatever is rational for an autonomous agent is moral and obligatory for that agent, insofar as he or
she is autonomous. And what is rational for an agent is what is
the most efficient means to the agent's nonrational ends. For
Wolff then, "efficiency" is both a descriptive and an evaluative
term which can be used to justify action. By elevating the
concept of "efficiency" to such a high place in his moral
theory, Wolff implicitly downgrades other concepts, asserting
the importance and value of efficiency over them. 107 But is what is most efficient necessarily what is most rational? Only if one has already adopted a crude form of consequentialism. Wolff also implies that there is an objective, rational connection between an end and the means for achieving it. Thus, once one has chosen one's end, all that remains is to determine the most efficient means for achieving it, and this can be done in a precise and even scientific manner. But just as our concept of reason implicitly assumes various values, so our choice of means will depend on and express our values. Eating human meat may be a very efficient means for satisfying one's hunger, but we would regard such action as expressing a strange sensibility and a warped moral outlook. In any situation there will be a multitude of ways by which people can attain their goals, but the specific courses of action they do adopt will be determined by a whole set of considerations, based on their general moral outlook, values and conceptual abilities. There is no single, objective "rational connection" between ends and means just waiting to be di scove red .
The sort of moral outlook which emphasizes efficiency in
its account of rational (and moral) agency, and which treats ends as nonrational, precluding any intelligent debate over
anything of moral importance, is typical of modern bureaucratic, 193
technocratic society, socialist or capitalist. It is not so
much the mode of production in modern society, but its
instrumental mode of reason which distinguishes it from other 108 forms of society. And it is this particularly modern mode of reason which Wolff articulates. Why should we adopt such a narrow, and ironically, fairly useless, concept of reason? As
Putnam puts it, "to be sure it is of value to have an instrument
that helps us select efficient means for the attainment of our various ends; but it is also valuable to know what ends we 194 should choose."
109 Conclusion: Whither Anarchism?
Ultimately, Robert Paul Wolff's defence of anarchism must be judged an ambitious failure. The originality of his argument lay in his attempt to demonstrate the illegitimacy of the state through a purely theoretical, abstract conceptual analysis of autonomy and political authority and the alleged incompatibility between them. But from the failure of Wolff's particular argument neither the legitimacy of the state nor the falsity of anarchism in general follow. The state requires an independent justification (whether such a justification has been successfully provided by any political philosopher is a question that cannot be answered here). Correspondingly, there are alternative defences of anarchism which may differ significantly enough from Wolff's approach to leave open the possibility that, because they do not suffer from the same defects as his theory does, they may be more successful. In this concluding chapter I would like to sketch out some of the lessons to be learned from the failure of Wolff's argument for those interested in defending an anarchist position and to indicate, somewhat cursorily, some alternative approaches to anarchism which may be better able to deal with the problems upon which Wolff's argument foundered.
What must be immediately brought into question is the
110 plausibility and viability of any defence of anarchism based on an insistence on the absolute inviolability of individual autonomy, conceived in Wolffian terms as absolute individual liberty of thought and of action. This is a controversial point, for it is commonly assumed that all anarchists, not just
Wolff, advocate absolute individual liberty conceived in similar terms, and that their critique of government and the state is based on a correspondingly uncompromising opposition to any limitation imposed on this absolute liberty. Yet such an extreme form of 1ibertarianism seems manifestly implausible, for it appears to assume that absolutely free individuals will not seriously threaten or infringe one another's liberty, and this assumption in turn appears to rest on equally implausible views of human nature, overly optimistic evaluations of human rationality and cooperative tendencies, an unrealistic faith in spontaneity, assumptions of a natural harmony of interests once the state (and perhaps capitalism) is abolished, and other questionable views.
Anarchist theorists have attempted to answer these sorts of objections in a variety of ways. Some anarchists have denied that there is any such thing as a fixed, immutable "human nature," arguing instead that how people think and act is largely determined by their enviroment. From this perspective the "problem for anarchists is to create the social conditions under which the libertarian rather than the authoritarian (or, in some cases, the cooperative rather than the competitive)
111 capacities of people are realized." Other anarchists, most notably Kropotkin, have not denied that there is such a thing as human nature but rather have argued that human beings have a natural propensity for gregarious and cooperative behaviour which well suits them for life in an anarchist society but which
196 also tends to atrophy in statist, bureaucratic societies.
More recently Noam Chomsky, drawing on his work in linguistics, has criticized the views of environmental determinists and defended a view of human nature which emphasizes intrinsic human capacities and potential for the free, creative, rational and cooperative activity upon which a viable anarchist society will 197 to a large extent depend. On a more conceptual level,
Michael Taylor has argued in a game theoretic analysis of rational decision-making that, contrary to Hobbes, in the absence of government voluntary cooperation may be a rational strategy, and some empirical research conducted by Robert 198 Axelrod tends to support Taylor's hypothesis.
The viability of any of these approaches remains open to considerable debate but, even assuming that some of them are successful, for anarchists then to deny the possibility of conflict altogether in anarchist society would not be very convincing, and in fact none of the above mentioned writers, including Kropotkin, categorically deny the possibility of conflict in anarchist society. But once anarchists do admit such a possibility serious problems arise, particularly if anarchists are the uncompromising libertarians they are often 112 portrayed as being. To remain consistently libertarian anarchists must put forward plausible proposals for dealing with conflict in anarchist society which will either somehow preserve absolute individual liberty or, barring that, maintain the maximum amount of individual liberty possible with the minimum amount of coercion necessary.
Wolff, it will be recalled, argued that conflict could be avoided through the device of unanimous collective agreement but, due to his sceptical moral theory and his uncompromising commitment to individual autonomy, he was unable to provide a coherent account of such a social practice and the ensuing obligations. Should conflict actually arise, no concept of justice or rational method can be derived from Wolff's moral theory to deal with it other than on the basis of each individual agent's self-interest. On that basis individual agents can easily justify the infringement of other agent's autonomy, thereby exacerbating conflict rather than fairly resolving it.
Other anarchists have also advocated various forms of voluntary contract or free agreement for the voluntary, non-coercive coordination and organization of social activity and communal life in anarchist society. Assuming that such libertarian means of social coordination, if successful, will lessen the possibility of conflict arising in anarchist society, anarchists must still be able to provide a coherent account of these kinds of social practices. This will require a more
113 substantive and intersubjective account of moral reason than that offered by Wolff. It will also require less emphasis on absolute individual liberty and a less individualistic, abstract analysis, for from an abstract, individualist perspective any sort of obligation may appear as an unjustified restraint on absolute individual liberty or autonomy. For example, William
Godwin, whose anarchism, as Carole Pateman has pointed out, shares many affinities with Wolff's, argues on this basis that
"everything that is usually understood by the term co-operation is, in some degree, an evil," and that "promises are, absolutely considered, an evil," for they "stand in opposition to the 199 genuine and wholesome exercise of an intellectual nature."
Later anarchist theorists, such as Proudhon, Bakunin,
Kropotkin and Bookchin, have taken a less individualistic approach, arguing that it is only through various forms of social interaction in a community that individuals develop both self-awareness and moral consciousness. Some forms of cooperation and obligation, they argue, are a necessary part of social life.200 More philosophically acute work has been done recently on these themes by Carole Pateman, who focuses directly on the problem of political obligation and self-assumed 201 obligation, exemplified by promising, in general. She argues that, contrary to Godwin and Wolff, a proper understanding of promising as a social practice not only reveals that promises oblige, but that promising presupposes "individual 202 autonomy, or free, critical judgement and choice." These 114 "creative moral and social capacities" in turn "presuppose, and in practice, can only be exercised and developed as a part of social relationships including relationships of obligation."203 Pateman further argues that the political counterpart of promising is "direct or participatory democratic voting.,|204
Pateman makes two further claims of particular significance for anarchists. She argues that political obligation so conceived "cannot be given expression within the context of liberal democratic institutions" of representative government and the state, and therefore that to "take self-assumed obligation seriously as a political ideal is to deny that the authority of the liberal democratic state and the (hypothesized) 20 5 political obligation of its citizens can be justified."
Pateman argues that this "view of 'political' obligation as a horizontal relationship between citizens" not only "cannot be reconciled with a liberal conception of the 'political'... it presupposes a non-statist political community as a political 206 association of a multiplicity of political associations."
This, arguably, is a form of anarchy -- that is if we recognize, as Carole Pateman does, that "anarchism is not a theory of the chaos with which 'anarchy' is popularly equated, but a theory of a specific form of socio-political organization that is, as it 207 must be, ordered and rule-governed."
These are clearly controversial claims. However, although a critical evaluation of Pateman'115 s arguments cannot be entered into here, if successful they provide a coherent conception of democratic organization, decision-making and political obligation which anarchists can utilize to provide an account of the self-assumed obligation, free agreement and voluntary association which will order social life in anarchist society.
Her arguments also provide anarchists with an alternative critique of the liberal democratic state which does not share
Wolff's abstract, individualist assumptions, and the consequent philosophical and practical problems which follow from them
(Pateman's arguments, of course, may suffer from other defi ciences ).
But again, even if we were to assume that Pateman's arguments are substantially correct, the problem of how anarchists propose to deal with social conflict should it arise remains, particularly if, as Pateman argues, "the practice of self-assumed obligation is meaningless without the practical recognition of the right of minorities to refuse or withdraw 208 consent, or where necessary, to disobey." Pateman argues that through the development of a common political morality or concept of justice much conflict can be resolved in a mutually intelligible fashion. What remains essentially anarchist in
Pateman's approach is that each individual, sharing a common moral vocabulary, social education and values with other members of the community, is deemed competent to judge when disobedience is necessary and justified. Anarchists themselves have more strongly advocated the use of direct action as well as civil
116 disobedience. Both approaches will provoke charges of arbitrariness, vigilantism, mob-rule and so on. Disregarding these important objections, which cannot be dealt with in this short conclusion, it would be useful to focus on how anarchists propose to deal with persons who engage in behavior injurious to the community and contrary to anarchist ideals.
A careful reading of anarchist writings will reveal that anarchists advocate the use of coercive social controls -- namely, public censure and the threat of withdrawal of
cooperation -- to maintain social order in anarchist society.
Some anarchists support the use of violence but only as a means of self-defence. Michael Taylor has argued that the sorts of
social controls advocated by anarchists are, judging from the
anthropological evidence, necessary for the preservation of
social order in anarchic communities, and that such social
controls can only function effectively within the context of a
roughly egalitarian community where relations between people are 210 "direct and many-sided." But, even assuming the practical
feasibility of such a scheme, by advocating various forms of
coercive social control anarchists seem to be involved in some
glaring inconsistencies. Not only would one expect them to show
why these forms of coercive social control are superior to and more acceptable than the forms of coercive social control
utilized by the state, but one would also like to know how the
advocacy of coercive social controls can be made consistent with
the anarchists' purported commitment to absolute individual
117 11berty.
In a very controversial argument, Alan Ritter has attempted 211 to answer both of these questions. Ritter argues that the apparent conflict in anarchist writings between praise for liberty and support for coercive social controls (Ritter focuses on public censure) can be resolved once we see that both play important roles in realizing the anarchists' true ideal,
"communal individuality," which Ritter defines as a combination of "the greatest individual development with the greatest 212 communal unity." Ritter further argues that due to the egalitarian and diffuse structure of anarchist social controls, and because the well-developed individuals in anarchist communities will be "more amenable to reasoned argument," the little coercion that will be necessary to maintain social order in anarchist society will be milder, less coercive, and therefore more libertarian than the forms of social control utilized by the state, particularly legal sanctions and 213 institutionalized punishment. Ritter claims that "legal government is prevented by the inescapable generality and permanence of its controls from taking as much advantage as anarchy can of the potential offered by communal individuality for diminishing coercion through the giving of specific reasons" for engaging or refraining from a certain course of action, and therefore that "anarchist society must be deemed more free."214
Disregarding the plausibilit118y of Ritter's argument that anarchy is more free than legal government based on the rule of
law (which is quite distinct from participatory democracy which
is often criticized because it is not based on the rule of law and is therefore in danger of becoming completely arbitrary),
Ritter's central thesis regarding communal individuality contains a crucial insight for the proper understanding of anarchist theory as it was originally developed by such thinkers as Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin. If, as Ritter argues, the central concept in normative anarchist theory and
criticism is communal individuality rather than liberty or autonomy, the entire thrust, structure and nature of traditional
anarchist argument will differ significantly from Wolff's
abstract, conceptual approach. Instead of couching anarchist
arguments in terms of a conceptual incompatibility between
individual autonomy and political authority, as Wolff does, the
above-mentioned classical anarchist theorists argue in a more
historical, concrete and substantive fashion that the state, due
to its very structure, is destructive of human community and either directly or indirectly (by protecting social institutions
and practices which themselves are alienating, exploitative or oppressive) frustrates the full development of human
individuality. Thus, the anarchist vision of the ideal society
and anarchist criticism of existing society are based less on an
abstract concept of autonomy and more on a substantive and
broader concept of human flourishing, which includes notions
of rational agency, autonomy, self-realization and
119 non-dominating community. This tradition of anarchist thought is then concerned "primarily about the quality of relations between people," or in a more classical vein, about what 215 constitutes the good life and the good society.
I would argue that this is the most promising approach to be taken by those interested in defending an anarchist position, being better able to deal with certain aspects of social life and the human condition than the abstract theoretical analysis of Wolff. A successful defence of anarchism on this basis would need to demonstrate that communal individuality is itself a coherent and realizable ideal, that the state and various other institutions and practices which anarchists oppose are inimical to communal individuality, and that alternative forms of social organization and social control advocated by anarchists are compatible with, or more strongly, necessary for the realization of communal individuality. Needless to say, a defence of anarchism conceived in these terms remains the task of another thesis.
120 NOTES
For a comprehensive list of articles and books dealing with Wolff's argument including works not cited in the present thesis, see Paul T. Menzel, "Wolff's Critics: Confusing the Confusing," The Personalist, 57, no. 3 (Summer 1976), 320 - 321.
Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism: With a Reply to Jeffrey H. Reiman's "In"~Defense of Political Philosophy" (New York: Harper & Row, 197 6), p. v i i i. All further references are to this edition. The original version, minus the reply to Reiman, was published by Harper & Row in 1970.
Wolff, The Autonomy of Reason (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), p. 223.
Wolff, Understanding Rawls: A Reconstruction and Critique of "A Theory of Justice" (Princeton: P~rinceton University Press, 1977 ), p. 113.
Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, p. 87. For two critical evaluations of Wolff's position emphasizing his differences from Kant, which is not the focus of the present thesis, see Patrick Riley, "On the 'Kantian' Foundations of Robert Paul Wolff's Anarchism," in Anarchi sm, ed. J. Roland Pennock and John W. Chapman, Nomos, XIX (New York: New York University Press, 1978), pp. 244 - 319, and Marcus G. Singer, "Reconstructing the Groundwork," Ethics, 93 (April 1983), pp. 566 - 578.
Wolff, The Autonomy of Reason, p. 17 8.
Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, pp. 12, 14 - 15.
Wolff, The Autonomy of Reason, p. 216. ibid, pp. 131, 137.
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. H.J. Paton (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), pp. 84 - 85.
Wolff, The Autonomy of Reason, pp. 192 - 193. ibid, p. 193. ibid, p. 69.
121 14 ibid, p. 69.
15 ibid, p. 69.
16 ibid, p. 132.
17 ibid, p. 133.
18 ibid, p. 128.
19 ibid, p. 132.
20 ibid, p• 132.
21 ibid, pp. 132 - 133
22 ibid, p • 224.
23 ibid, pp. 144, 174.
24 ibid, p. 127.
25 ibid, p. 138.
26 ibid, p. 133.
27 ibid, p • 138.
28 ibid, p. 137.
29 ibid, p • 144.
30 ibid, p. 223.
31 ibid, p., 138.
32 ibid, pp. 168, 159.
33 ibid, p. 217.
34 ibid, p. 178.
35 Woiff, in Defense of Anarchism,
36 ibid, pp. 12, 17.
37 ibid, p. 17.
38 Wolff, The Autonomy of Reason,
39 ibid, p. 135. 40 ibid, pp. 135 - 136. 41 ibid, p. 135. 42 ibid, p. 135. 43 ibid, p. 136. 44 Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, p. 14. As will become clear later in this discussion, Wolff uses such moral and evaluative terms as "good" and "wise" in a purely instrumental sense. 45 See Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes From Underground and the Grand Inquisitor, ed. and trans., Ralph E. Matlaw (New York: Dutton, 1960). 46 Wolff, The Autonomy of Reason, pp. 49, 132. 47 ibid, p. 177. See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971). 48 Wolff, Understanding Rawls, p. 114. 49 Wolff, The Autonomy of Reason, p. 51. 50 ibid, p. 224. 51 ibid, p. 224. 52 ibid, pp. 224 - 225. 53 ibid, p. 224. 54 Wolff, "Afterword," in The Rule of Law, ed. Robert Paul Wolff (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1971), pp. 249 - 250. 55 ibid, p. 251. 56 Wolff, The Autonomy of Reason, p. 51. 57 ibid, pp. 225 - 226. 58 ibid, p. 226. 59 See various work on game theory, and in particular, the Prisoner's Dilemma Game, such as R.D. Luce and H. Raiffa, Games and Decisions (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1957), Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965), Anatol Rapoport and
123 Albert C. Chammah, Prisoner's Dilemma (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1965) and Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984). For an anarchist critique of Hobbesian interpretations of the Prisoner's Dilemma Game, see Michael Taylor, Anarchy and Cooperation (London: John Wiley & Sons, 1976). 60 Wolff, The Autonomy of Reason, p. 129. 61 Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, p. 72. Compare the anarchist Sebastian Faure's remark: "Whoever denies Authority and fights against it is an Anarchist," cited in The Anarchist Reader, ed. George Woodcock (Glasgow: Fontana, 1977), p. 62. 62 ibid, p. 79. Compare the anarchist Errico Malatesta's remark: "Anarchism will not have definitively and universally triumphed until all men will not only not want to be commanded but will not what to command," cited in Man!, ed. Marcus Graham (London: Cienfuiegos Press, 1974), p. 74. 63 ibid, pp. 3, 89. 64 ibid, p. 4. 65 ibid, p. 10. 66 ibid, p. 8. 67 ibid, pp. 4, 6. 68 ibid, p. 9. See Rex Martin, "Anarchism and Skepticism," in Anarchi sm, ed. Pennock and Chapman, pp. 115 - 129. 69 ibid, p. 10. 70 Reiman, In Defense of Political Philosophy: A Reply to Robert Paul Wolff's "In Defense of Anarchism" (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), p. 9. 71 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan: Parts I and II, ed. Herbert W. Schneider (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merri 1 1 , 1958), pp. 169, 184. 72 John Locke, The Second Treatise of Government, ed. Thomas P. Peardon (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merri 1 1 , 1952), pp.50, 54. 73 ibid, p. 85.
124 74 ibid, p. 72. 75 ibid, p. 72. 76 ibid, p. 49. 77 Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, trans. G.D.H. Cole (London: Dent, 1916), p. 12. 78 ibid, p. 15. 79 ibid, p. 24. 80 ibid, p. 24. 81 Wolff, "A Reply to Reiman," in In Defense of Anarchism, p. 94. 82 Reiman, In Defense of Political Philosophy, p. 18. 83 Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, pp. 14, 88 - 100. 84 ibid, p. 6. 85 ibid, p. 15. 86 Reiman, In Defense of Political Philosophy, p. xxiv. 87 ibid, p. xxiv. 88 Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, p. 15. 89 Reiman, In Defense of Political Philosophy, p. xxiv. 90 Wolff, "Afterword," in The Rule of Law, p. 246. 91 Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, p. 21. 92 ibid, pp. 87 - 88. 93 ibid, p. 110. 94 Wolff specifically makes this argument in his critical discussion of John Stuart Mill's attempt to defend liberty on seemingly strictly utilitarian grounds. See Wolff, The Poverty of Liberalism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), pp. 3 - 50. 95 For the classic utilitarian critique of government and
125 defence of anarchism, see William Godwin, Enqui ry Concerning Political Justice, ed. Isaac Kramnick (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976), and John P. Clark's excellent commentary, The Philosophical Anarchism of William Godwin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977 ). 96 Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, p. 42. 97 ibid, p. 21. 98 ibid, p. 42. 99 ibid, p. 42. Rousseau, of course, makes a similar argument in The Social Contract. 100 ibid, p. 23. 101 Reiman, In Defense of Political Philosophy, pp. 10 - 15. 102 Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, p. 6. 103 ibid, p. 88. 104 ibid, pp. 54 - 55. 105 ibid, pp. 51 - 53. 106 Rousseau argues otherwise in The Social Contract, as do most anarchist theorists. However, due to his commitment to the view that choice of ends is entirely nonrational, Wolff, as I will argue later, is prevented from presenting any rational arguments against the choice of any ends. 107 How adequately Wolff has really answered Rousseau is also questionable. See Carole Pateman, The Problem of Political Obligation: A Critical Analysis of Liberal Theory (London: John Wiley & Sons, 1979), pp. 134 - 162, for a discussion of Wolff and Rousseau. 108 Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, p. 82. 109 ibid, p. 93. 110 ibid, p. 103. 111 ibid, p. 90. 112 See Kropotkin, "The State: Its Historic Role," in Selected Writings on Anarchism and Revolution, ed. Martin
126 Miller (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1970), pp. 211 - 264.
113 Wolff, The Poverty of Liberalism, p. 167.
114 Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, pp. 79, 81.
115 Wolff, The Poverty of Liberalism, p. 185.
116 ibid, pp. 184 - 185.
117 ibid, p. 187.
118 ibid, p. 187.
119 ibid, pp. 191, 190.
120 ibid, p. 191.
121 ibid, p. 192.
122 ibid, p. 192.
123 ibid, p. 192.
124 Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, p. 81.
125 ibid, pp. 81 - 82. See Murray Bookchin, Toward an Ecological Society (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1980).
127 Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, p. 80. How appropriate it is to speak of a "nation" and "national-borders" in a society which has done away with the nation-state is a question we shall leave unanswered, but merely note that it has an odd ring to it.
128 ibid, p.80. See Peter Arshinov, History of the Makhnovist Movement (1918 - 1921), trans. Lorraine and Fredy Perlman (Detroit: Black & Red, 1974), Michael Malet, Nestor Makhno in the Russian Civil War (London: Macmillan, 1982), and Michael Pa 1i j, The Anarchism of Nestor Makhno, 1918 - 1921 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977).
130 Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, p. 78.
131 Wolff, "Afterword," in The Rule of Law, p. 247.
132 ibid, p. 247.
127 133 ibid, p. 247. The common claim that anarchists hold a naive and optimistic view of human nature needs to be more critically examined. See Alan Ritter, Anarchism: A Theoretical Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 118 - 120, and John P. Clark, "What is Anarchism?," in Anarchi sm, ed. Pennock and Chapman, pp. 16 17 134 ibid 252, 135 Reiman, In Defense of Political Philosophy, p. xxii. 136 John P. Clark, "What is Anarchism?," p. 8. 137 Reiman, In Defense of Political Philosophy, p. 48. 138 Ritter, Anarchism, p. 115. 139 John P. Clark, Max Stirner's Egoism (London: Freedom Press, 1976), pp. 69, 61. 140 Clark, "What is Anarchism?," p. 13. 141 ibid, p. 13. Two points in Clark's definition require further clarification. First, the claim that anarchists advocate a completely noncoercive society may be disputed on the grounds that some anarchists support the use of public opinion or censure in anarchist society to control misbehaviour, and such censure can be coercive. The answer is that while anarchists advocate as the ultimate ideal the creation of a society in which coercion is entirely eliminated and unnecessary, some advocate that when coercion is unavoidably necessary the form of coercion most compatible with anarchist ideals is public censure. See Ritter, Anarchi sm, pp. 9 - 39. Second, by "immediate institution" of anarchist alternatives Clark makes clear that he means any concrete action which can plausibly be argued to be a step toward anarchy, whether gradual or revolutionary. Thus, his definition of anarchism is meant to include anarchists who advocate a programme of gradual change, such as Godwin and Paul Goodman, as well as anarchists who advocate revolution, such as Bakunin and Kropotki n.
142 Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, 18 143 One can interpret Hegel's argument in The Philosophy of Right in similar terms. To be rational, and hence free one must obey the commands of the Rational State. Obedience to the law is freedom. See Hegel, The
128 Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967). For a trenchant critique of such claims to rational, bureaucratic authority, see Alisdair Maclntyre, After Vi rtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), pp. 84 - 102.
Wolff rejects Kant's argument against suicide, and not because, as some would argue, choosing one's own death is the fullest expression of one's autonomy. Rather, he rejects Kant's argument precisely because there is no natural purpose or goal intrinsic to human beings. See The Autonomy of Reason, pp. 163 - 164.
Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, p. 19. Other anarchists would regard this statement as completely objectionable. Proudhon argued that "property is theft," and later anarchist theorists, such as Bakunin and Kropotkin, were staunchly anti-capitalist, advocating some form of socialism or communism. Anarchists have also denied that compliance to the law provides a basis for a just order. See Proudhon, What is Property?, trans. Benjamin Tucker (New York: Dover, 1970 ) , Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, ed. Paul Avich (New York: New York University Press, 1972) and "Law and Authority," in Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets, ed. Roger Baldwin (New York: Dover, 1970), pp. 196 - 218, and Lester J. Mazor, "Disrespect for Law," in Anarchi sm, ed. Pennock and Chapman, pp. 143 - 159.
Here it would be useful to mention that anarchism can be defended on a more traditional Kantian basis, utilizing the notion of universi1izabi1ity. According to this sort of argument, someone who desires full autonomy and liberty for him or herself must, in all consistency, support the same degree of autonomy and liberty for all rational agents. The state itself can then be criticized, both for denying full autonomy and liberty to all agents, and for issuing laws and pursuing policies which themselves cannot be willed as universal moral laws, which contradict universal morality. For an argument somewhat along these lines see Bakunin, "Federalism, Socialism, Anti-Theologism," in Bakunin on Anarchism, ed. Sam Dolgoff (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1980), pp. 115 - 147. Wolff is precluded from utilizing this sort of argument because of his instrumental view of reason and correspondingly narrow view of rational consi stency.
Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, p. 19.
Wolff, The Poverty of Liberalism, p. 192.
129 149 Wolff, Understanding Rawls. 150 Keith Graham, "Democracy and the Autonomous Moral Agent," i n Contemporary Political Philosophy: Radical Studies, ed. Keith Graham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 113 - 137. 151 For an exposition of such an alternative anarchist perspective, see Alan Ritter, Anarchi sm. 152 Alan Ritter questions the anarchist status of Max Stirner's purportedly anarchist egoism on similar grounds. See Ritter, Anarchi sm p. 6, and John P. Clark, Max Stirner's Egoism, pp. 87 - 94, for a slightly different view. 153 For Wolff's critical remarks regarding capitalism within the context of his anarchist argument, see In Defense of Anarchi sm, pp. 74 - 78, 81, and "Violence and the Law," p. 68, and "Afterword," pp. 250 - 251, both in The Rule of Law. With the exception of some individualist anarchists, the majority of anarchist theorists (and the historical anarchist movement) have been anti-capitalist as well as anti-statist. For a representative sampling of anarchist
Anarchi sts, ed. Paul Berman (New York: Praeger, 1972), pp. 78 - 86. 154 Carole Pateman, The Problem of Political Obligation, p. 137. 155 Wolff, The Autonomy of Reason, p. 225. 156 Thus, it is still possible to hold a rationally justifiable belief that society is evolving toward anarchy as the result of certain historical forces rather than as the result of conscious rational choice. Marxist historical materialism can be interpreted as a theory which purportedly demonstrates just this, according to an analysis of historical change based on technological determinism. See G.A. Cohen, Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978). As we shall see, Wolff seems sympathetic to this view. 157 Wolff, "Nozick's Derivation of the Minimal State," in Reading Nozick: Essays on Anarchy, State and Utopia, ed. Jeffrey Paul (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1981), p. 45. 158 Wolff, The Autonomy of Reason, p. 222.
130 Wolff, The Autonomy of Reason, pp. 226 - 228, and "There's Nobody Here But Us Persons," in Women and Phi 1osophy, ed. Carol C. Gould and Marx W. Wartofsky (New York: Putnam's Sons, 1976), pp. 128 - 144.
Wolff, "There's Nobody Here But Us Persons," p. 130.
ibid, pp. 131, 133.
ibid, p. 133. One assumes that Wolff's theory is gender-blind, but his continual use of male nouns and pronouns would raise the suspicions of a committed femi ni st.
Clark, "What is Anarchism?," p. 16.
ibid, p. 18.
ibid, p. 8.
ibid, p. 8.
Wolff, interviewed in The Black Flag of Anarchism, written and produced by Research Group One (Ba11imore: Great Atlantic Radio Conspiracy, 1973), tape #43.
Bakunin, Selected Writings, ed. Arthur Lehning (New York: Grove, 1974), p. 270. Lest this be dismissed as a purely theoretical squabble, historically this disagreement has led to open conflict between anarchists and Marxists and the forcible suppression of anarchist movements and ideas by various Marxist governments.
See Murray Bookchin, The Ecology of Freedom (Palo Alto: Cheshire, 1982), and John P. Clark, The Anarchist Moment (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1984), for two recent anarchist critiques of Marxian analysis.
Reiman, In Defense of Political Philosophy, p. 52. However, as was argued earlier, Re i man's own reasons for saying this are not entirely correct.
Pateman, The Problem of Political Obligation, p. 137. For a more extended discussion of Wolff's position as a form of scepticism, see Rex Martin, "Anarchism and Skepticism," in Anarchi sm, ed. Pennock and Chapman, pp. 115 - 129.
Wolff, In Defense of Anarchism, p. 18.
131 For an extensive argument that the classical anarchist theorists do not embrace a position resembling Wolff's, see Alan Ritter, Anarchi sm.
In Leviathan Hobbes makes a similar argument regarding the meaning of moral terms in the state of nature. How Hobbesian agents in the state of nature could then reach any meaningful, rational agreements would also seem to be problematical, presenting similar problems for Hobbes1 contractarianism as are being discussed here with regard to Wolff's. For further discussion of this topic, see Carole Pateman, The Problem of Political Obligation, pp. 37 - 60.
Wolff, The Autonomy of Reason, p. 225.
John Searle, "Prima Facie Obligations," in Practical Reason i ng, ed. Joseph Raz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978), p. 86.
Pateman, The Problem of Political Obligation, p. 27.
Some philosophers hold that people have some moral obligations which are not voluntarily self-assumed. For reasons that cannot be gone into here, I believe it is conceptually clearer and philosophically more sound to distinguish between self-assumed obligation, moral duty and what people morally ought to do. For a defence of this approach, see Carole Pateman, The Problem of Political Obi i gati on , pp. 28 - 36. Wolff's moral contractari am" sm is conceptually incoherent regardless of whether some obligations are not voluntarily assumed, so this distinction is not central to my argument.
Wolff, The Autonomy of Reason, p. 224.
Wolff, Understanding Rawls, p. 20.
Bakunin, The Political Philosophy of Bakunin, ed. G.P. Maximoff (New York: Free Press, 1953), p~! 167.
Wolff, "Nozick's Derivation of the Minimal State," pp. 100 - 101.
Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 170 and Bernard Williams, "Internal and External Reason," in Moral Luck: Philosophical Papers, 1973 - 1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 101 - 113.
Putnam, Reason, Truth and History, p. 170.
132 ibid, P- 194. ibid, P- 212. ibid, P- 212. ibid, P- 212. ibid, P- 136. ibid, P- 215. ibid, P- 141. ibid, P- 141.
Cf. Alisdair Mac Intyre, After Virtue.
Putnam, p. 178.
John P. Clark, "What is Anarchism?," p. 17.
See Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (Boston: Extending Horizons, n.d.), Vincent C. Punzo, "The Modern State and the Search for Community: The Anarchist Critique of Peter Kropotkin," International Philosophical Quarterly, 16 (March 1976), 3 - 32, Martin Buber, Paths in Utopia, trans. R.F.C. Hull (Boston: Beacon, 19 58), and for further anthropological evidence, Harold Barclay, People Without Government: An Anthropology of Anarchism (Sanday, Orkney: Cienfuegos, 1982), Pierre Clastres, Society Against the State, trans. Robert Hurley (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977 ) and Michael Taylor, Communi ty, Anarchy and Li berty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
Noam Chomsky, Reflections on Language (New York: Pantheon, 1975), and "Language and Freedom," in For Reasons of State (New York: Viking, 1973), pp. 387 - 408.
Michael Taylor, Anarchy and Cooperation, and Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation.
William Godwin, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, pp. 758, 218. Cf. Carole Pateman, The Problem of Political Obligation, pp. 134 - 141.
On contract, see Proudhon, The Principle of Federation, ed. Richard Vernon (Toronto: University of Toronto, 1979), pp. 36 - 42; on the social bases of morality and
133 individuality, see Bakunin, Selected Writings, pp. 136 - 154, Kropotkin, Ethics: Origin and Development, trans. L.S. Friedland and J.R. Prioshni koff (New York: Dial, 1925), and "Anarchist Morality," in Revo!utionary Pamphlets, pp. 80 - 113. For a more recent discussion of some of these issues, see Murray Bookchin, Toward an Ecological Society.
201 Pateman, The Problem of Political Obligation. 202 ibid, p. 137. 203 ibid, p. 140. 204 ibid, p. 18. 205 ibid, pp. 1, 174. 206 ibid, p. 174. 207 ibid, p. 141. See also Colin Ward, "Anarchy as a Theory of Organization," in Patterns of Anarchy ed. Leonard Krimerman and Lewis Perry (New York: Doubleday, 1966), pp 386 - 396, and his later work, Anarchy in Action (New York: Harper & Row, 1974). 208 ibid, p. 162.
209 Cf. April Carter, Direct Action and Liberal Democracy (New York: Harper & Row, 1974).
210 Michael Taylor, Community, Anarchy and Liberty, p. 32.
211 Alan Ritter, Anarchi sm. 212 ibid, p. 3. 213 ibid, p. 35. 214 ibid, p. 38. 215 Michael Taylor, Community, Anarchy and Liberty, p. 3. Cf. Ritter, Anarchism.
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