textfiles/politics/SPUNK/sp000279.txt

From the English pamphlet _About Anarchism_, Nicholas Walter, Freedom
Press, 84B Whitechapel High Street, London E 1, England, 1969, 1977

Liberalism and Socialism

	Anarchism may be seen as a development from either liberalism or
socialism, or from both liberalism and socialism.  Like liberals,
anarchists want freedom; like socialists, anarchists want equality.  But we
are not satisfied by liberalism alone or by socialism alone.  Freedom
without equality means that the poor and weak are less free than the rich
and strong, and equality without freedom means that we are all slaves
together.  Freedom and equality are not contradictory, but complementary;
in place of the old polarization of freedom versus equality - according to
which we are told that more freedom equals less equality, and more equality
equals less freedom - anarchists point out that in practice you cannot have
one without the other.  Freedom is not genuine if some people are too poor
or too weak to enjoy it, and equality is not genuine if some people are
ruled by others.  The crucial contribution to political theory made by
anarchists is this realization that freedom and equality are in the end the
same thing.

	Anarchism also departs from both liberalism and socialism in taking
a different view of progress.  Liberals see history as a linear development
from savagery, superstition, intolerance and tyranny to civilization,
enlightenment, tolerance and emancipation.  There are advances and
retreats, but the true progress of humanity is from a bad past to a good
future.  Socialists see history as a dialectical development from savagery,
through despotism, feudalism and capitalism, to the triumph of the
proletariate and the abolition of the class system.  There are revolutions
and reactions, but the true progress of humanity is again from a bad past
to a good future.

	Anarchists see progress quite differently; in fact they often do
not see progress at all.  We see history not as a linear or a dialectical
development in one direction, but as a dualistic process.  The history of
all human society is the story of a struggle between the rulers and the
ruled, between the haves and the have-nots, between the people who want to
govern and be governed and the people who want to free themselves and their
their fellows; the principles of authority and liberty, of government and
rebellion, of state and society, are in perpetual opposition.  This tension
is never resolved; the movement of humanity is now in one direction, now in
another.  The rise of a new regime or the fall of an old one is not a
mysterious break in development or an even more mysterious part of
development, but is exactly what it seems to be.  Historical events are
welcome only to the extent that they increase freedom and equality for the
whole people; there is no hidden reason for calling a bad thing good
because it is inevitable.  We cannot make any useful predictions of the
future, and we cannot be sure that the world is going to get better.  Our
only hope is that, as knowledge and consciousness increase, people will
become more aware that they can look after themselves without any need for
authority.

	Nevertheless, anarchism does derive from liberalism and socialism
both historically and ideologically.  Liberalism and socialism came before
anarchism, and anarchism arose from the contradiction between them; most
anarchists still begin as either liberals or socialists, or both.  The
spirit of revolt is seldom born fully grown, and it generally grows into,
rather than within anarchism.  In a sense, anarchists always remain
liberals and socialists, and whenever they reject what is good in either
they betray anarchism itself.  On one hand we depend on freedom of speech,
assembly, movement, behavior, and especially on the freedom to differ; on
the other hand we depend on equality of possessions, on human solidarity,
and especially on the sharing of power.  We are liberals but more so, and
socialists but more so.

	Yet anarchism is not just a mixture of liberalism and socialism;
that is social democracy, or welfare capitalism, the systems which prevails
in this country.  Whatever we owe to and however close we are to liberals
and socialists, we differ fundamentally from them - and from social
democrats - in rejecting the institution of government.  Both liberals and
socialists depend on government - liberals ostensibly to preserve freedom
but actually to prevent equality, socialists ostensibly to preserve
equality but actually to prevent freedom.  Even the most extreme liberals
and socialists cannot do without government, the exercise of authority by
some people over other people.  The essence of anarchism, the one thing
without which it is not anarchism, is the negation of authority over anyone
by anyone.