Community, Anarchy and Liberty

by Michael Taylor

Can social order be maintained in a stateless society? Is anarchy viable? The contention of this book is that stateless social order is possible only if relations between people are those characteristic of community. Rejecting the libertarian argument that the goods and services which make up 'social order' can be provided by private firms competing in the marketplace, and the liberal argument that because social order is a public good its maintenance requires the state, Michael Taylor goes on to examine the methods actually used to maintain order in anarchic and quasi-anarchic societies and shows how these methods can be effective only in a small and stable community. Community in turn requires a rough economic equality. But according to a traditional argument (recently revitalised by Robert Nozick), no equality would survive for long without state interference - so that communitarian anarchy must break down. Here this argument is shown to be fallacious: the development of gross inequality can be prevented in an anarchic community. At the same time, the small community is not portrayed as continuously harmonious, free from constraint and coercion - the contention is rather that community is necessary if we are to live without the state or substantially reduce its role. But community is defended against the charge of being incompatible with individual liberty. That claim is shown to be no more accurate than the opposite and equally simple assumption, that liberty is possible only in community. For evidence and illustration, the book draws on the experience of stateless primitive societies, peasant communities and utopian and other 'intentional' communities. It sets a new standard of clarity and rigour for theoretical studies in anarchism and will interest a wide range of readers, including political theorists, political anthropologists and sociologists, and anyone concerned with the justification of the state.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction

196 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

Reviews

[astrid · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stupid idiot me putting this godforsaken book on my personal statement... might return to this for a proper review when I force myself into having some smart thoughts about it. If that ever happens.

Nonetheless, still pretty good - probably not the best intro to anarchism, but more bearable with prior knowledge and momentum built up in the reading process.

[Russell Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Taylor's study of anarchic societies--or, specifically, societies that do not take the form of a sovereign state, since that is the strict definition that Taylor uses to describe "anarchy"--is an often enlightening but, at the same time, oddly limited book. Written in the early 1980s and from a very analytical perspective, Taylor develops a definition of community--a crucial part of his argument, since his essential claim is that a certain type of community would be capable of maintaining social order in the absence of the physical organized physical compulsion characteristic of states--completely separate from the many concepts of communitarianism which shaped theoretical debates in political philosophy 20-30 years ago. For those philosophical liberals who found those ways of thinking about community annoyingly romantic or nostalgic or lacking in rigor, that absence will not seem significant. But for myself, as someone who truly wants to reflect seriously about how certain kinds of community structures can take the place of the sort of social-ordering-power wielded by the state, Taylor's reflections on public goods and other similar concepts can't quite cover all the issues which communitarian arguments about identity, tradition, recognition, and the like have made, to my mind, central to understanding how and if human beings relate to claims of sovereignty and statehood.

Still, within its narrow range of questions, the answers that Taylor proposes--that communities need to be small and homogenous, and that if they are, there are a set of possible tools they may be able to use to ensure the ordering of the community in the absence of the state--are often clarifying. An important follow-up that anyone who takes seriously Taylor's claims is how or if those community tools can be imported into communal contexts which are not tribal groups, peasant societies, or intentional separatists (the three groups that he draws the most evidence from). My suspicion is that in certain types of agrarian contexts those tools can be adapted out of that limited set of community types--though Taylor's particular way of presenting his claims unfortunately doesn't lend to the sort of imaginative work which making those adaptations requires. For all that it remains a fine introduction to the basic analytical problems anyone approaching these topics ought to be familiar with.

[David Blynov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Taylor argues that anarchy is viable to the extent that the relations between people are those characteristic of a community.

Community then is a small collection of people who (1) have similar beliefs and values, (2) have relationships with other members that are direct and many-sided, and (3) engage in reciprocity.

Social control and equality are maintained in communities through (1) pressure of public opinion and (2) a tacit pressure of withdrawal of reciprocity.

4.2/5

[Sinta · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read the first few chapters for Politics 249 (State and Freedom) for an essay on anarchism.

Thought it was interesting. Was concerned by some of the archaic language around 'primitive' societies. Thought it was insightful in terms of the social controls that various empirical anarchies use to ensure social order. Not sure how much these empirical anarchies lend to anarchist theory - it's all well and good to critique empirical anarchies for structures they actually produce, but it's a different story when critiquing anarchist theory and when considering what could be possible in different contexts in the future.