Paul McLaughlin

By writing this, Paul McLaughlin has done a great service. He has effectively explained the reasoning behind the fundamental anarchist position shared by diverse thinkers from William Godwin in the 18th century to Murray Bookchin in the 21st. Through impeccable argumentation, McLaughlin consistently makes anarchism commonsensical. I imagine that it may cause readers to exclaim despite themselves, "Ha! There's nothing wrong with 'anarchy' after all."

I liked it not only because of my fundamental agreement with his reasoning, but also because of the skillful execution that made it a real pleasure to read. His writing is some of the most lucid prose I have encountered from the discipline of philosophy. And I generally admire the clever arguments philosophers like him often come up with and their untangling of often confused or conflated concepts. He begins with the misleadingly modest definition: anarchism is skepticism towards authority. From there, he takes you on a roller coaster ride of edge-of-your-seat philosophy.

In a shining example of his persuasive argument, on page 62, McLaughlin compares his philosophy of anarchism to a "'weak' Atheism:" Because no known form of Theism has made a convincing case for the existence of God, there is good reason not to believe in God. Likewise, no convincing case has yet been made for the moral authority of the state, so there is good reason not to believe it is legitimate. In neither case is it necessary to prove the logical impossibility of the claim in question. It is quite enough for most atheists to simply conclude there is no reason to believe in God. There is, therefore, no better reason to believe in state legitimacy. In fact, I suspect that many people do not believe in it--making them, by McLaughlin's definition, anarchists.

Further (p. 80), returning an accusation often leveled against anarchists, he says that political theorists who still argue for some kind of state legitimacy are quintessential utopians with "ideal visions of the state that they seek to impose on reality." The reality of the state has never come close to any such positive ideal nor is there any indication that it ever will.

The slowest portions of the book for a non-philosopher are the analyses of the early anarchist works by Godwin, Proudhon, and Stirner, which the author keeps brief--probably for the impatient reader's benefit--and soon resumes his otherwise vigorous clip.

McLaughlin sums up the literature as follows: "in the spirit of Enlightenment rationality and reasoning [anarchists} acknowledge the justifiability of authority, but maintain their right to question its justification in each and every instance and to challenge those instances which are unjustified by any recognizable standard..." (p.169) Despite the apparent validity of this philosophical position, anarchism has always been the target of (mutually contradictory) straw-man criticism. It is "condemned for its lack of alternatives (when it refrains from speculation about the future) and condemned for its utopianism (when it appears to speculate about the future)." (p.171 Note 2)

The author concludes by trying to show how anarchist critique is relevant to major contemporary social problems--politics, international relations, the environment, and economics. This section basically states the obvious conclusions that anyone should be able draw from anarchism, but it is a nice bonus to be reminded of the parsimony it brings to what otherwise seem like unrelated social issues. Here is one last quote to drive it home:

"Then there are spurious intellectual discussions about 'voter apathy' and so on, as if such factors could possibly explain and somehow justify massive disengagement from our political processes. Indeed, such discussion is hugely insulting to those who choose to abstain from the political lottery on principle or out of plain disgust (and who, incidentally, might participate in dramatic numbers if a 'none of the above' option were offered on the ballot, a solution to the turnout problem that has been vigorously thwarted since it would make an implicit rejection of the political process as it stands more explicit)." (p.174)… (mais)