Anarchism and Liberalism

Bruce Buchan

… the anarchy is much alike to have no forme of government at all … John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (1690), §198 ∵

Introduction

The ineluctable conclusion toward which John Locke’s arguments led in his Two Treatises of Government was that the viability of individual liberty hinged on the provision of security. After all, it was in order “to have that Safety and Security in Civil Society” that individuals would prefer to place themselves under the arbitrage of governments to secure “appeal … against any harm they may receive” from others in a “state of Nature.”1 Locke’s great concession was that the individuals concerned would do so voluntarily. He understood this as a matter of either express or merely tacit consent—not as universal consent— that was given exclusively by propertied men. No person having so entered into a state of security could lament its absence,

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 Society: unless any one will say, the State of Nature

1 John Locke, Two Treatises of Government [1690], ed. P. Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), II, §94, 329. I am indebted to Richard Yeo for his guidance on Locke’s sources, and to Harriet Guest, John Barrell, and all the participants at the “Sound and the Senses in Britain c. 1700–1800” symposium in Brisbane in July 2014 for their comments and suggestions. Research for this paper was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant, a Project Grant from the Swedish Foundation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and by the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University.

and Civil Society are one and the same thing, which I have never yet found any one so great a Patron of Anarchy as to affirm.2

Though he used the term sparingly, Locke’s few references to “anarchy” played an important role in his rhetorical strategy.3 For Locke, anarchy denoted the absence of laws and, short of what one could provide for oneself, the loss of pro- tection from (and, hence, exposure to) invasion, fraud, or violence from others without redress. Anarchy, in short, meant insecurity and a lack of safety.4 It was for this reason that Locke was careful to distinguish the right of rebellion (against the tyrannous usurpations of a government that placed itself into a state of war with its own people) from a supposed right to resist any or all governments “as often as any one shall find himself aggrieved,” for this will “unhinge and overturn all Polities, and instead of Government and Order, leave nothing but Anarchy and Confusion.”5 In more recent times, Locke has been portrayed as an early spokesman for the liberal idea that government should be founded on the voluntary consent of its members—a position that some have described as “philosophically, [though] not practically anarchic.”6 In his own time, however, Locke trod a fine line in British political thought and practice. He was especially careful to distinguish the limitations of his own arguments for government by consent from existing models of government which many of his contemporary read- ers would have regarded as both practically and dangerously anarchic. In this paper, I want to examine Locke’s references to two of these “anarchic” forms of government—those practiced by “Indians” in America, and by “Pyrates” on the high seas—as a way of exploring the early modern intellectual history of anarchy and security. Though a settled doctrine of “anarchism” was unknown in the early modern period, the ideas later formulated in the doctrine were a familiar staple of political discourse and debate. In exploring some aspects of this history, I do not claim Locke (or his “Indians” and “Pyrates”) as ante- cedent anarchists. Rather, my aim is to illustrate a longer history of intellectual engagement and active experimentation with anarchic forms of political

2 Ibid., 330. 3 In addition to the references quoted in this chapter, all of which occur in the Second Treatise, Locke refers to “anarchy” only once in the First Treatise. This is in the context of refuting Sir Robert Filmer’s Observations upon Mr. Hunton’s Treatise of Monarchy, or, the Anarchy of a Limited or Mixed Monarchy. See Locke, Two Treatises, I, § 7, 145. 4 On the connotations of both terms see Jeremy Waldron, “Safety and Security,” Nebraska Law Review 85, no. 2 (2006): 454–507. 5 Locke, Two Treatises, II, §203, 401. 6 A.J. Simmons, On the Edge of Anarchy. Locke, Consent, and the Limits of Society (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), 268.