In Defense of Anarchism

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In Defense of Anarchism
OCLC
82066344

In Defense of Anarchism is a 1970 book by the philosopher

legitimacy of the state collapses.[1]

First published by

anarchist scholarship.[1]

Summary

The book has three parts: "The Conflict between Authority and Autonomy", "The Solution of Classical Democracy", "Beyond the Legitimate State", and an appendix, "Appendix: A proposal for Instant Direct Democracy".[1] The book opens with Part I, "The Conflict between Authority and Autonomy", which Wolff begins by asserting that the moral autonomy of the individual can never be made compatible with the legitimate authority of the state".

Part II, "The Solution of Classical Democracy", is Wolff's account of

democratic representation
, pointing out that representation is an illusion as representatives do not obey the wishes of their constituents, and that it is impossible not to distinguish between the rulers and the ruled in a representational system.

In Part III, "Beyond the Legitimate State", Wolff arrives at the foreshadowed conclusion that because autonomy and the legitimacy of state power are incompatible, one must either embrace anarchism or surrender one's autonomy, as Thomas Hobbes proposed, to whichever authority seems strongest at the time.[1] Democracy, in this schema, is no better than dictatorship, a priori, as both require forsaking one's autonomy.

Reception

The book was well received not only in academic philosophy and in traditional anarchist circles, but also by

right-wingers".[3]

Wolff's premising of "the State" and the "autonomous individual" as fixed, given entities has been criticised by Thomas Martin in

post-anarchism
.

In Wolff's later work, The autonomy of reason; a commentary on Kant's Groundwork of the metaphysic of morals, he mentioned that his views had been revised considerably as a result of criticisms that he received from a student, Andrej Rapacznski, at Colombia University in the late 1960s.[4]

See also

References

  1. ^
    Social Anarchism
     (27). Retrieved 2008-06-19.
  2. Worldcat.org
    .
  3. ^ Carson, Stephen W. (26 May 2005). "In Defense of Anarchism, Rothbard and the Left". Mises Economics Blog. Mises Institute. Retrieved 13 September 2020.
  4. ^ Wolff, Robert Paul (1974). The autonomy of reason; a commentary on Kant's Groundwork of the metaphysic of morals. New York: Harper Touchbooks. p. 223. Retrieved 17 May 2024.

Further reading

External links
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