Thenegativitoyf Anarchism DavidThoreauWieck ANARCHISM is notoriously pluralistic in the sense that there are many «philosophers» and many <<schools'>with no obvious common ground except the rejection of political sovereignty implicit in an-archia. Not unreasonably, anarchism is frequently taken to be a family of minimally related ideas that deny the legitimacy of the state and (usually) propose its abolition. This view, although texts in support of it could be cited, is narrow; for anarchism is not merely antistate, somehow it is an idea or theory of freedom. But this not merely, this freedom, are indefinite and much in need of elucidation. I offer here a view of anarchism, a way of understanding it in terms of a common basis, that I hope will make evident its importance and its meaning. This is a problematical undertaking, quite different from a study of the thought of an individual anarchist writer. It calls for decisions about what is essential in the various anarchist traditions, and there is high risk that the result be more revelatory of one's own bias or predilections than of anarchism past or present. More exactly, then, the present article is an expression of my intuition, based chiefly on my personal experience of anarchism, of what is central to anarchism and what most worthwhile in the sense of statement about human society and human being. In the course of the reflective effort to express my intuition as precisely as I can, I have come to see a number of fundamental issues in a way that is new and illuminating to me. My discourse is objective in mode and intended for philosophical scrutiny. I wish to make it quite clear, however, especially because I believe that what one thinks and claims to know in the objective mode is inseparable from one's convictions («where one is coming from,» as the apt phrase had it), that I share the broad attitude or orientation that I identify as anarchist. As I say later on, the perspective of anarchism, as a living idea rather than as an intellectual possibility, is a perspective o.f oppressed people to whose anger at their oppression and the 25
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