Rethinking Anarchy and the State in IR Theory:
The Contributions of Classical Anarchism
Dr Alex Prichard
ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Bristol
a.prichard@bristol.ac.uk
Draft. Please do not cite without permission.
Keywords: Anarchism, International Relations, State Theory, Scientific Realism
Abstract:
In this paper I intervene in an ongoing debate between Colin Wight and Alex Wendt
regarding the nature of the state. My intervention is derived from a reading of the work of the
nineteenth-century anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. The debate to date revolves around
whether the state is an agent or a structure and seems to have become stuck as regards to the
ontological status of groups. For Wendt the state is a person; for Wight the state is a structure
that constrains and enables individuals. Wendt conflates the state with all other groups, and
Wight, in an effort to reclaim the individual from Wendt’s organicism, posits that it is only
individuals and structures that are ontologically significant when discussing state agency –
groups are unimportant. Proudhon’s solution formed the basis of his anarchism. He argued
that states, like all other social groups, are emergent from and irreducible to the historically
and culturally distinct groupings of individuals of which they are comprised. Indeed, society
is comprised of individuals who are simultaneously members of plural groups, and their
interrelations (and those between relatively autonomous groups) are mediated by complex
institutions and structures (for him law). The normative consequences for a theory of anarchy
and world politics are clear: if states are but one, relatively small if disproportionately
powerful group among many, we need a quite separate political theory to assert that the state
is anything more than just a group. Inter-state anarchy is a form of inter-group relations
replicated at all social levels and all inter-group relations take place in anarchy. I will show
that anarchism is a source of ethical and political insight here.
1
Introduction1
Kenneth Waltz once argued that ‘[t]he problem [in International Relations (IR)] is this: how
to conceive of an order without an orderer and of organizational effects where formal
organization is lacking’ (Waltz, 1979: 89). This problem is rarely stated as clearly in the
anarchist literature, though the central problem is substantively the same. While in the former
the argument is seen to be cynical or tragic realism, when anarchists ask this question it is
considered naïve utopianism. The solution, I will argue, is the same for both IR and anarchist
theorists. The ‘utopian realism’ (Booth 1991) that emerges from viewing this ‘anarchy
problematique’ (Ashley 1988) from an anarchist perspective deserves reconsideration.
My way into this problematique is through theories of the state in IR. I will engage with two
of the most recent and well thought-through ontologies of the state in IR and present
Proudhon’s long-ignored anarchist variation on the theme (Proudhon 1860, 1861, 1863a, b).
While there is a mass of literature on the ‘agential capacity of the state’ (for a good overview
see Hobson 2000), there is much less writing on what the state is. It is the latter issue with
which this paper is concerned and the most prominent articulations of it are those of Alex
Wendt (1991, 2004) and Colin Wight (2004, 2007).
Wendt and Wight first locked horns over this issue in a special forum in Review of
International Studies in 2004. While others have joined the discussion (Chernoff, Jackson,
Neuman 2004, Michels), and many of the responses are salient to the discussion here, I will
nevertheless focus solely on Wight’s extended discussions with Wendt surrounding his
theory of state agency. This is mainly because both Wendt and Wight operate within a shared
scientifically realist ontology. This sets the terms of the debate on coherent grounds and
because, as I will argue, Proudhon was also a scientific realist, this makes comparison and
dialogue much easier. Secondly, the debate has thus far been constrained within the agentstructure debate. Where Wendt sees states as agents, persons even, Wight sees states as
structures populated by individuals only. Proudhon argued that states are not the only groups
and there is more to social life than structures and individuals. Understanding this
contribution brings us to the third reason for keeping the discussion narrow. While for Wendt
anarchy becomes what states make of it, grouped as they are in mutual antagonism and
crowned with formal sovereignty, for Wight anarchy all but drops out of his social ontology.
Since structures permeate all of social life and constrain and enable individuals (as opposed
to groups) only, anarchy is not analytically or politically significant.
For Proudhon not only was anarchy the ontological condition of social life as such, it was
also the precondition of freedom as such. Anarchism arose out of this way of understanding
social order. First, Proudhon’s anarchist political theory provides novel conceptual tools of
understanding how order is created in anarchy. In brief, states are not the precondition of
order, as IR theorists have shown conclusively vis-à-vis international order. Secondly,
anarchists argue that states and capitalism are the symbiotic precondition of disorder and
conflict. They argue that both are detrimental to human autonomy and flourishing. There is
thus a robust ethical and political element to the theory. Finally, given the above, anarchists
actively seek a world without sovereigns. In this paper I will focus mainly on the first part of
this contribution. I will outline Proudhon’s state theory with a view to showing how he
understood social order and do so in dialogue with current debates on the same subject.
1
I would like to thank participants at research seminars at the University of Bristol, the BISA annual conference
2009, Queen Mary, University of London, and the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice at
Nottingham University for a number of helpful comments and suggestions.
2
There are of course clear normative, political and ethical issues at stake here and I will enage
with these issues also – but less so for reasons of space. Wendt argues that his collectivist
theory of the state, which has clear Hegelian and Durkheimian roots (Neuman 2004),
suggests that liberalism needs to justify political order on grounds other than the state.
However, as Wight argues, reducing individuals to ‘cultural dopes’ is ethically and
politically, not to mention ontologically or theoretically, unnecessary and dangerous. Wight’s
solution is to ignore the collective and irreducible agency of groups and posit that the social
world is simply made up of individuals and structures, little else, and in this way, he brings
individuals back in to state theory. Again, what we can do with Proudhon’s writings is find a
way in which groups and individuals, structures and institutions can be conceptualised as part
of the same social whole thereby widening and strengthening the normative force of the
theory. However, while the normative implications of Proudhon’s theory for groups and
individuals might be welcome to some, the consequences for a theory of state sovereignty
will be unwelcome to others. Proudhon’s anarchism, as I will show, leaves no room for
positing the state as the highest, as in best, or necessarily the only sovereign form of human
organisation, nor does he see the state as the sine qua non of political order. The consequence
of this way of framing issues is again to radically transform our conception of anarchy in
political theory. It is to this issue that I will devote most attention. As I will show, debates
about what the state ‘is’ are never far from debates about what the state should be. I will
argue that anarchy is what our (as in us academics) state theory makes of it.
I have argued elsewhere that the core contribution of classical anarchism to contemporary IR
resides at the level of state theory (Prichard 2007, forthcoming, a, b). Here I will set this
contribution out in some detail. My argument is drawn from an original reading of the fourth
etude, entitled L’État, of Proudhon’s untranslated magnum opus, De la Justice dans la
Revolution et dans l’Église. I will supplement the analysis he provides here with discussions
that we find in La Guerre et la Paix (1861), Si les Traites de 1815 ont cesse d’exister (1863),
and Federation et l’Unite en Italie (1863) so as to relate his state theory directly to his theory
of world politics. To date I am not aware of any literature that sets out Proudhon’s state
theory in either English or French, let alone link it to his international political theory and
thus the theoretical contribution of this paper is also supported by a degree of historical
originality. What going back to Proudhon’s thought allows us to do is unsettle the
conventional discursive norms that have settled around concepts of anarchy in contemporary
IR theory. By unsettling the norm I hope to make room for an unconventional alternative and
demonstrate its analytical and political implications. In this regard, this paper is another layer
of under-labouring in preparation for a fuller anarchist theory of world politics.
The paper proceeds as follows. In part one I discuss Wendt’s thesis that ‘the state is a
person’; I argue that his understanding of group agency is sound, but inconsistently applied.
States are not the only groups. To illustrate this oversight I will show that Wendt’s
understanding of the pluralist literature is thin and his rejection of pluralism weak. I then turn
to Colin Wight’s rejoinder to Wendt. I set out Wight’s contributions in two parts. First, I
discuss Wight’s critique of Wendt’s collectivism and his elision of the individual and
secondly, I repeat Wight’s critique of Wendt’s decision to ignore the structural aspects of
states. Both are valid critiques in my view. However, Wight does a disservice to Wendt’s
theory of corporate agency and his decision to bifurcate the social world between individuals
and structures would seem to denude IR theory of a realistic understanding of corporate
agency, be that classes, trade unions, NGOs, multinationals and so forth. We must retain a
conception of these groups in order to explain how individuals achieve what they do within
state and wider social structures.
3
Part three seeks to demonstrate the ontological importance of all ‘natural groups’ as
Proudhon called them, and the importance of developing a theory of their complex and crosscutting inter-relations. States are not the only groups, but their structural power clearly
supersedes most other groups considered individually. However, states act in concert as do
other social groups and for a realistic social theory of world politics we need to understand
how trade unions, multi-nationals and so forth are social groups with causally efficacious
corporate agency. If we see states and other natural groups as enmeshed within complex
social relations, far from being peculiar to IR, anarchy becomes the sine qua non of politics
as such. It is here that a bit of realistic utopianism is required. What I will show is that by
turning to Proudhon’s thought we will see that anarchism can help us conceptualise the
normative ethics of this way of seeing (world) politics. Again, anarchy is what our state
theory makes it.
Wendt – the state as person
While, there is a wealth of implicit state theory in IR, there is little thorough state theory and
little of the type of state theory Alex Wendt wants to see more of: that is theory that seeks to
conceptualise the things which make the state an agent (Wendt, 1999: 195-198; 2004: 290291). It is all very well talking about state agency and looking to understand the things that
enable and inhibit it, but how can a state actually be an agent? This is an ontological question
first – particularly if one approaches this question from the perspective of scientific realism.
Wendt posits that the state has agential capacity and, perhaps more controversially, that it is
‘a person’. In order to claim the former, something like the latter would have to be true, but
the significance of Wendt’s work is that he is both a scientific realist and a thorough theorist,
which means that his theory is largely internally coherent, realist and rigorous to a degree
strikingly absent in the literature.
Following Kant, scientific realists ask: what must be the case in order for such and such to be
possible (Bhaskar and special ed of New Formations). What must there be in order to explain
why apples consistently fall downwards from the tree when overripe? The answer, gravity, is
an unobservable background process or mechanism that must exist in order to explain like
occurrences. This is not to say that once posited gravity takes on a transcendental quality,
only that it becomes intransitive. That is to say no matter what we think about it (though we
may come to understand it better), gravity exerts causal pressures. Moreover, understanding
the nature of gravity allows scientists to perform elaborate experiments and launch humans
into space. Scientists do not proceed as if gravity existed (but some might think like this and
this does not affect gravity itself), but know that it must exist in order to be able to explain
why it is always so difficult to launch a rocket and why things always fall towards earth
(Bhaskar 1978, 1989). Gravity exists even though you can’t see it and observation therefore
becomes the criterion for a crude empiricist epistemology and is widely dismissed by realists.
For scientific realists, the same principle of realism applies to ideas, to social forms and facts
and to abstract theory. There is always an intransitive reality behind what is directly
observable that we gain progressively better (or in degenerating research programmes, worse)
access to it through theory building and empirical analysis.
So, for Wendt, positing the reality of the personhood of the state is important because it helps
explain effects in the world. It is real rather than a convenient fiction. His theory of corporate
agency allows us to theorise anarchy as populated by states-as-persons and it is only if we
posit this reality that we can explain why international relations has the character it does.
4
States-as-persons have identities and while anarchy, for Wendt, is permissive, its existence
alone cannot explain, nor is it causal of, war, conflict or anything else. For that we need to
understand the mutual constitution of state identity and from there we will see that ‘anarchy
is what states make of it.’ (Wendt, 1991) This is not a metaphor, nor is it an analogy. ‘States
are people too.’ (Wendt, 2004)
So how does Wendt sustain this argument? It is impossible to survey the wealth of material
he brings to bear on this discussion, and so a brief summary will have to suffice. Wendt
(2004) draws our attention to the scientific literature on intentional systems, supervenience,
emergence, superorganisms and collective conscience.2 Each of these theories, backed up by
empirical analysis, sustains the argument that states are persons and that their corporate
identity is real. In order to get to the position where it becomes possible to talk of corporate
agency, Wendt, like a good neo-realist, rejects reductionism. In the context of his argument
this first involves rejecting the idea that consciousness can be reduced to the hard matter of
the brain, a position we might also call materialism or, more technically, ‘physicalism’.
Drawing on a large and growing body of scientific literature, Wendt sustains the argument
that consciousness is more than the sum, or the co-acting parts of the brain. Consciousness is
dependent upon, but irreducible to, brain matter. Furthermore, he argues, personhood is
irreducible to consciousness, and involves formal and informal social recognition. Identityproduction is, Wendt argues, ‘mutually constituted’ through social interactions, specifically
‘process’, (learning and ideas), and ‘institutions’ (or rules, norms etc) (Wendt 1991). Wendt
also supports work that argues, ontologically consistently, that collective consciousness, or
collective persons, can likewise not be reduced to the individual consciousness of which such
collectives are composed. Corporate identity is more than the sum of its parts and irreducible
to them. This, again, is not an analogy but a social fact of a Durkheimian variety (cf. Jackson
2004). If you want to explain individual actions like suicide, Durkheim argued, you should
not look at the individuals or their actions, but the society in which they live. Society, ‘social
facts’, or the collective rationalisations in socially and temporally specific times and places,
exert exogenous pressures on the individuals which compose them. As an aside, Kenneth
Waltz (1979) has been considered a Durkheimian in the way in which he conceptualises
anarchy as exerting pressures on state behaviour irrespective of their individual preferences.
Wendt strips back his conception of personhood to at a minimum comprise of intentionality,
to be an organism, and to have ‘consciousness, by which I mean a capacity for first-person
subjective experience’ (2004: 296). States are intentional systems, Wendt argues, because
they are groups and groups, just like people, can be shown to be intentional (I will discuss
their organismic qualities below). The intentionality of a group can be seen in any mass
action, a riot, a war, a class action law suit, etc. Here groups have agency which is irreducible
to any one individual and by the nature of the collective action itself, irreducible to all
individuals together as well. That said, group intentions are more easily attributable to
individuals in a class action law suit than in a riot, but it is without question that neither a riot
nor a class action law suit can be reduced to particular (or the sum of) individuals – it is the
collective nature of the group and the plurality or uniformity of the members which gives it
its collective character.
These groups are distinct for three further reasons. First, they have a collective ‘idea’ which
provides them with group identity and intentionality. Secondly, decision-making in the group
is institutionalised, third, the decisions of the group are authoritative and direct the actions of
2
He also discusses reductionism and the literature on personhood, which I have covered briefly above.
5
the individuals. While ‘group intentions […] are dependent on the structured interaction of
individuals’ (Wendt, 2004: 298), group intentionality, once constituted, shapes the actions of
individuals in turn, but this shaping force cannot be reduced to any one individual – it is a
group decision, ergo, group intentions are real because they are causal too. In this sense,
group intentions supervene those of individuals. Supervenience is an argument that posits that
‘We-intentions’ are not reducible to ‘I-intentions’ but that the collective form of the former
needs some form of collective agreement that the supervening nature of group intentions and
decisions are consensually acceded to (as in a class action law suit, but not necessarily in a
riot). Wendt moves from these arguments to his state-as-a-person argument without taking a
breath when he argues that ‘even though the intentions of a state person at any given moment
are ontologically dependent on its constituent members, its intentions are not dependent on
any particular members.’ (Ibid: 300).
However, Wendt is unhappy with this argument. Supervenience arguments are too
reductionist for Wendt because they presuppose the structured interaction of individuals and
the clear apportioning of agency to key individuals. He does not state clearly why this is a
problem, only that the concept of emergence seems to capture reality more adequately. With
the concept of emergence, Wendt is able to argue that collective ideas are irreducible to those
of individuals irrespective of formal decision making procedures – class action law suits
become more like well-organised riots! For all its elegant simplicity, the argument that the
decision of the US to invade Iraq can be reduced to the intentions of George W. Bush, Tony
Blair, or any other individual or collections of individuals, is, by this analysis, false. Complex
‘processes’ and ‘institutions’ mediate and facilitate an outcome and a collective ‘brain state’
such as a US decision to go to war, is or was ‘relatively insensitive to which of its members
hold it’ (ibid: 299). Again, the point here is to show that collective intentions, ‘in this case
state persons’ (ibid: 304), cannot be reduced to individuals, but that individuals mutually
constitute the higher-order relations that emerge from their interactions. We might well ask,
in the context of the invasion of Iraq, whether the UK’s decision to work with the US
produced an emergent super-super brain or whether the UK became part of the US brainperson. Supervenience theory would make either position ridiculous, because of the need to
always pay attention to the formal mechanisms and processes of decision-making, but
emergence theory would not. The question is, can we still understand the intentions of the US
and the UK in these terms? Surely something like reductionism must take place to
demonstrate which part of the state-persons in the UK and US merged and which didn’t. I
will show that it is here that Colin Wight argues that Wendt is inconsistently a
methodological structuralist, and is guilty of what Margaret archer would call ‘upwards
conflation’ (Archer 1995).
We can make this clear in the following way. Wendt’s aim is to consistently distance himself
from the physicalist bias in supervenience theory in favour of a theory that allows him to
posit an irreducible collective conscience that is internally formed and relatively autonomous
from its surroundings and constituent units. Indeed, if states are people this is what he must
posit. The problem is that Wendt is inconsistent in his definition of emergence. Wendt
defines emergence like this: ‘in the emergence approach individual intentions are constituted
by shared meanings in which they are embedded, making the relationship between individual
and group intentions mutually constitutive rather than asymmetric’ (ibid: 305). But if Wendt
is to be consistent he must surely argue that emergence produces qualities that are irreducible
to their constituent units – otherwise some sort of physicalism would do just fine. The
relations must not only be complex and asymmetric, but also irreducible to any one or more
of the individuals that co-act (intentionally or otherwise). A consistent stand on emergence
6
would produce a ‘depth ontology’, in which the higher layers emerge from lower ones and
are irreducible to them. Mutual constitution is problematic in this context, because if
emergent properties are shared or mutually constituted, in what sense can they be said to be
irreducible? This, as Colin Wight has argued, shows that Wendt is more of a structurationist
than a Bhaskarian scientific realist (Wight ???). It also means that he is somewhat
inconsistent and his ontology is somewhat ‘flat’. It is composed of individuals and states
which are persons with little or nothing in between , Not only are there no emergent
intervening groups, but symmetrical mutual constitution, which presupposes intentional
human interaction and can be reduced to it, would suggest a degree of irrealism surely
unwarranted and inconsistent with Wendt’s own emergentist ambitions?
I hope I have now outlined coherently how Wendt conceptualises the possibility of collective
consciousness. What I want to do now is show how this works in the context of states. Here
Wendt employs to two further theories to sustain the unitary collective intentions of his
states-as-actors. The first is the theory that the state is a superorganism and the second that it
has collective conscience, both work in this theory to give the state an organismic quality –
and actual physical and real quality to the personhood of the state.
Formal source of collective agency
The concept of a superorganism is quite straightforward to explain. An anthill or a termite
mound, for example, is a superorganism. It is irreducible to an ant but through the collective
actions of ants, the anthill is a living thing. It is not the vessel for a lot of ants, it is
fundamentally part of the possibility of being an ant and yet is irreducible to ants. Wendt
argues that states are the same. The concept of collective conscience has been touched upon
earlier, but implies something like a religion. Religions are similar, functionally and
conceptually distinct and internally complex, and they are irreducible to the intentions of
individuals. They nevertheless give meaning to individuals and for many their existence
would be incomprehensible without it. It is irrelevant whether religion is true or not, or
whether God exists or not. It suffices to say that religion does exist and that it is causal. We
can link religions to churches, mosques and other physical things, and we might claim the
rules of particular religions set down in books are also important. While this is important, the
religion itself is not reducible to these things in the same way that a superorganism like an ant
hill has a clear physical form. Collective conscience is a very important sociological theory in
these sorts of contexts.
However, the concept of ‘collective conscience’ is relatively under-developed by Wendt and
this is a shame. I will develop it considerably in my discussion of Proudhon’s work, but a few
conjectures as to why Wendt leaves this part of his work relatively under-exploited will open
this up to some critique. We might conclude from the narrative, a narrative I cannot for
reasons of space reproduce here, that Wendt feels uncomfortable with the logical conclusions
of his argument. If we marry collective conscience with his argument that the state is a
‘homeostatic cluster’ of sovereignty, an authoritative and determining legal institutionalorder, a monopoly of legitimate violence, an undifferentiated society and a determinate and
defended territory (Wendt 1999: 202 emphasis added), the ‘uncomfortable truths’ Wendt
highlights become more pronounced. Liberal individualism simply cannot be squared with
this echo of nineteenth-century organicist doctrines that produced the sort of fascism that saw
authority monopolised and centralised, individuals of dubious political or normative
importance and history as static or at an end (Wendt 2004: 292). What worries Wendt is the
idea that the scientific literature points in precisely this direction. The statism that Wendt
7
knew was ‘depressingly familiar’ in his early work (Wendt 1991: 163), here takes on a far
more ominous tone.
But this theory is absolutely central to Wendt’s ability to sustain the ontology of world
politics that he does. He would be unable to posit the ‘three logics of anarchy’ (Wendt 1999),
unless he could show that states in anarchy create Lockean, Kantian and Hobbesian collective
identities, and he would be unable to argue that a world state was inevitable unless he could
show that of the three logics of anarchy the Kantian is most likely to triumph (Wendt 2003).
Only without disaggregating states and conflating all of society in a given and arbitrarily
defined territorial boundary, could such a simplistic concept of large-scale political agency be
viable. Wendt has hoped from the outset of his investigations that the state has a progressive
nature (Wendt 1991: 163-164), but not only is it hard to see where it derives its legitimacy
from in this analysis, but it seems his own conclusions lead him to the position that it is
fundamentally illiberal. The harder Wendt pushes in the directions he wishes to, the less
Kantian his states seem and the more Hobbesian they become.3 If a world state is inevitable
at all, I think Wendt has mischaracterised its cause and future form. At least if we follow his
way of conceptualising states.
There are other less politically questionable incoherences and inconsistencies in Wendt’s
argument. The first is the inconsistency in the argument that states are internally constituted,
externally constituted and ‘mutually constituted’ and Wendt’s seeming inability to consider
that the state might not be the only corporate agent of theoretical and ontological value in
developing a theory of world politics. Wendt argued that the mutual recognition of
sovereignty by states in ‘mature anarchies’ ‘determines the qualities of their interactions’.
Sovereignty provides ‘a social basis for the individuality and security of states [and …] The
essence of this community is a mutual recognition of one another’s right to exercise exclusive
political authority within territorial limits.’ (Wendt 1992: 146-147) This internal constitution
of a state’s ‘individuality’ is sustained and enforced by ‘regular practices [which] produce
mutually constituting sovereign identities (agents) and their associated institutional norms
(structures).’ (ibid: 151) In Social Theory of International Politics Wendt expands on this
discussion of state agency in some detail and it becomes clear that he is not concerned with
what we might call ‘second image’ variables at all. Here, in a somewhat thin analysis of
pluralist state theory that extends across less than two pages, Wendt summarises that if
‘‘state’ for Weberians is an organisational actor, and for pluralists is really just society, then
for Marxists the reference is the structure that binds the two in a relationship of mutual
constitution’. (Wendt, 1999: 200 emphasis added) What I want to draw attention to here is
Wendt’s summary that for pluralists ‘state’ means nothing more than ‘interest groups and
individuals’ (Ibid: 200), but throughout the rest of his many discussions, interest groups drop
out and society is composed of atom-like individuals united in a common sense of a shared
destiny only. When Wendt discusses society he argues that the pluralism of society can be
reduced to ‘shared knowledge that induces them [people] to follow most of the rules of their
society most of the time’ (ibid: 209). This disaggregated or homogenous conception of
society is a huge over-simplification, but one that is central to sustaining the parsimony and
coherence of Wendt’s social theory, in particular his theory of the personhood of the state.
Wendt is quite explicit that his argument that ‘states are people too’ (ibid: 215) reaffirms the
explanatory efficacy of the ‘‘billiard ball’ model of states in systemic IR’ (ibid: 202).
3
Robert Paul Wolff (DATE???) has argued that any consistent Kanitanism leads directly to anarchism not a
world state, which at a minimum complicates Wendt’s neat theory, but more damagingly illustrates what a poor
political and social theorist a background in IR makes us.
8
And so it must; for if states are not person’s that we might consider metaphorically to be
sovereign billiard balls, then what is anarchy? But surely the same arguments can be applied
to every corporate agent and this opens up the possibility that IR might have to have a more
pluralist social ontology (cf. Prichard forthcoming). If we do, we need to have some idea of
the way in which these social groups are interrelated, how or why we do not consider them to
be in condition of anarchy vis-à-vis one another and on what grounds the state is considered
not to be the expression of the collective agency of a particular group in society, rather than
society as a whole.
Despite these criticisms, Wendt’s theory has clear value to any philosophically realist theory
of world politics. Indeed, much of my defence of Proudhon will rely on the assumption that
Wendt is right on many of the issues he raises. As I will show in my discussion of
Proudhon’s theory below, it is important to be able to distinguish collective agency from
individual agency and to show that both are real. It is also important to be able to distinguish
collective agency from structure – as I will illustrate next in my discussion of Wight’s work.
The concepts of emergence and the commitment to scientific realism are also of huge
importance in a discipline given over to idealist irrealism throughout all the non-conservative
literature. Irrespective of the obvious unintended consequences of Wendt’s somewhat naïve
political theory, it is a huge advance on the norm. It also provides us with something to
criticise. While Wendt’s ambition and method is original, the theory of state-personhood is
nearly four hundred years old and usually considered to be quite conservative if not
reactionary. Wendt also highlights the normative implications of this move: what of
individualism if states, our nominally sovereign collective form, are irreducible to
individuals? Does this lead to illiberal politics? This is the argument Colin Wight picks up on,
and while his alternative puts individuals squarely back in the middle of a global social
ontology, we lose the force and importance of the collectivist argument.
Wight – the state as structure
Wight, perhaps sensing the morally questionable direction this sort of theory leads, rejects it
outright. His conclusion is that ‘we must reject any notion of the state as a psychological
person and inter alia any ascription of moral personhood to the state. This is not to say that
the state cannot be held causally, or legally accountable, but it is in its status as a structural
entity that this accountability occurs.’ (Wight, 2007: 194) For Wight, Wendt’s personification
‘accords human agency no role’, because the state takes on the properties of human agency
and the real human agents that act in the world are ‘theoretically redundant’ ‘cultural dopes’
(ibid: 198, 183). Despite both scholars sharing a scientific realist philosophy of science,
Wendt and Wight disagree fundamentally in their analysis. What I will do here is outline
Wight’s critique of Wendt and then his alternative. What I will show is that Wight thrown the
proverbial baby out with the bathwater.
Let us focus first on emergence. Recall that for Wendt, emergence is framed in
structurationist terms as ‘mutual constitution’. If it is the constituent parts that are
ontologically determinate, why postulate an emergent property? Surely on this basis, Wight
argues that a ‘reductionist explanatory programme would suffice’ (Wight 2007: 145). Indeed,
not only this, but when Wendt discusses emergence at the state level, the attribution of human
characteristics to something which must be irreducible to individuals, implies that either
Wendt is personifying, which is not a realist position, or he is not committed to emergence
theory at all. States cannot be persons, because we all know what persons are. States must be
something else – superorganisms or collective conscience for example, but not persons.
9
Wight goes further and argues that ‘Wendt’s theory of the state rests on the classic error of
methodological structuralism: the attribution of the agential powers and attributes of human
agents to a collective social form.’ (Ibid: 188) It is thus fatally flawed from the perspective of
philosophical realism.
Wight argues that if Wendt is to be consistent and non-reductionist, emergent properties must
be irreducible to the constituent units. If Wendt wants to claim that states exhibit emergent
properties, he must abandon the idea that they are mutually constituted in structurationist
terms and defend the stronger emergentist claim. He must also abandon the idea that states
are people. States, if they emerge from the structured interactions of people, must therefore
be something else other than people. But this is not Wendt’s tactic and as such he defends a
theoretically inconsistent theory of state agency and one which is also normatively suspect.
Wight’s response is to emphasise the place of individuals and the emergent and irreducible
quality of structures.
All sorts of things can be classed as structures for Wight, rules, buildings, capitalism, and so
on, and this makes his analysis somewhat loose. ‘Structure’ he argues, ‘binds the various
planes of the social world [e.g., resources, rules, class, identity] together’ (Wight 2007: 175).
I am not sure how this is so from his analysis, but we can assume that structures are plural
and multi-faceted. States, in Wendt’s analysis, are formal and informal ‘rule structures’ and
Wight argues that ‘the idea of a rule structure that authorises some agents to act in certain
ways does not require that we then assign intentionality and personhood to the structure. The
state functions well enough in this role as structure whilst leaving room for human agency.’
(Wight, 2007: 185) As we can see here, Wight is put flesh onto the leviathan. Paraphrasing
Roy Bhaskar, Wight supports the argument that ‘nothing happens in the social world but
through the actions of individuals’ (Wight, 2007: 187), and from the relevant passages in
Bhaskar’s work it is clear that Bhaskar also means that there are two things in the social
world, individuals and structures. It is unclear whether Bhaskar intends structures to include
such things as trade unions or prayer meetings, transnational de-centred social movements or
just formal institutions, but it is clear for Bhaskar that structures are ‘enabling, not just
coercive’ of individuals (Bhaskar 1989: 43). This ambiguity is important, because we get
little sense in Wight’s work that irreducible corporate agency exists.
Indeed, even when Wight discusses Bob Jessop’s Marxist social theory it is only the
structural elements he highlights. Paraphrasing Jessop, Wight posits that ‘[a] state can be
considered a structuratum consisted of many structured organisational entities and
institutions, which are themselves structured in certain ways.’ (Wight 2007: 219) Within
these structures, the only things that exist that are of sufficient ontological import to warrant
inclusion in any state theory, are individuals. Here Wight leans on Ralph Miliband and argues
that ‘it is in … government institutions that state power lies (or something), and it is through
them that power is wielded by people who occupy the leading positions in each of these
intuitions’ (Ibid: 182). In these, ‘complex institutional ensembles’ individuals are both
constrained and enabled depending on their subject-position within the state. The state is ‘the
totality of this structured ensemble’ (Ibid: 220). Wight is categorical: ‘State activity is always
the activity of particular individuals acting within particular social forms.’ (Ibid: 188). ‘If the
state has agency, it can only be accessed through the agency of individuals’ (Ibid: 189). ‘In
short the state does not exercise power, but facilitates the exercise of power by agents.’ (Ibid:
220)
10
Perhaps if given the opportunity Wight would pluralise his social ontology to include social
groups, but the evidence he presents here, social groups are ontologically insignificant. What
is more striking, is the political individualism that emerges from the analysis. Are we to
assume therefore that we are but isolated individuals related through structures not of our
own making with no link to others other than through said structures and institutions? Can I
not share my identity with someone I have never met not ever come into contact with? Does
our shared identity not constitute us as a (small) group and would we not have a collective
capacity that is irreducible to either structures or institutions? If I were an isolated Catholic
priest during the reformation, or an intellectual during Pol Pot’s reign, the mere fact that there
were others like me whom I may never have met, and the fact of our collective existence, was
enough to justify massive repression and killing. Surely the force of our collective existence –
and little if anything more – is theoretically significant for the ontology of politics? In the
final analysis it seems that because Colin Wight is so determined to provide an antidote to
Wendt’s collectivism, that he lays disproportionate emphasis on individuals.
But what does Wight say about groups? He first defines them on methodologically
individualist grounds, as a collection of individuals, and then dismisses them on these
grounds as being unrealistic. This is a clear mis-reading of Wendt and the wider literatures.
Wight argues that ‘[t]he simple point is that the state is not simply a group of individuals, nor
is it composed of only a collection of groups. Groups are not the issue in relation to state
agency unless the state is nothing more than a group of individuals.’ (Wight, 2007: 186)
Despite the fact that this sentence makes little sense, surely if we define groups in
theoretically consistent emergentist terms then we can posit their agency? We might then find
that ‘the social’ is complicated for Wight because groups and individuals would both co-exist
within complex institutional ensembles and agency would be far more complex than humans
acting. The challenge for IR (not to mention positing its disciplinary autonomy) would then
be far more challenging. To theorise the relationship between individuals, emergent groups,
the structures within groups, and the structures that relate them to one another (or not as the
case may be) is a hugely complex task. It is nevertheless far more realistic than juxtaposing
individuals and structures with collective agent.
Following Seamus Miller, Wight does argue that to explain social outcomes we need to
distinguish between social groups, institutions and organisations. This should be a fantastic
addition to his theory. By showing that groups, institutions (rules, norms etc) and
organisations (structures) are functionally distinct but overlap, this would allow us to
disaggregate states and embedded them in wider complexes of other organisations, social
groups and institutions. Yet Wight maintains that ‘social groups consist of a set of individuals
who participate in a number of spheres, or fields, of activity governed by a common
structure’ REFERENCE. Wight is surely right to bring individual agency back to IR and to
show how the state is a complex structure, but is this really all there is?
And finally, because Wight sees structures everywhere, like the green numbers floating down
the screen in The Matrix, he is incapable of understanding or conceptualising the concept of
anarchy. In one of the two places Wight discusses the concept of anarchy he sees it as a
structure. ‘Anarchy […as a structure] has to be seen as part of what a state is, and what a
state does’ (Wight, 2007: 293). This makes little sense and the reason for this, I content, is
because Wight has an unrealistic social ontology.
Proudhon, Pluralism and the State as a ‘natural Group’
11
The politics of corporate agency have been with us from the seventeenth century at least.
Hobbes’ Leviathan, Rousseau’s General Will, the theories of Collective Reason central to the
political philosophy of the Enlightenment were rejected by the Kantians but widely used by
everyone else. It goes without saying that the theory of corporate agency is quintessentially
political. Here I want to discuss the way Proudhon’s theory of corporate agency fed through
into what is the first anarchist state theory.4 The text I will discuss here is the fourth of
thirteen études of Proudhon’s magnum opus, De la Justice dans la Révolution et dans
l’Église. Essais d’une Philosophie Populaire (1860), entitled L’État (pp. 106-152).
In this particular étude, or study, Proudhon sets out three forms of state theory: the state
theory of necessity, providential state theory, and the state according to his own theory of
justice. The first is that of the church which posits a transcendental and unchanging natural
order; the second is of the philosophers or metaphysicians and is premised on a
providentialist philosophy of history. Proudhon’s alternative is the theory of the Revolution,
which is to say historical and scientific, one in which he sets out his ‘revolutionary ontology’
(ibid: 137) and his theory of the reality of social forces. This is set out in the last forty pages
of the study entitled ‘Petit Catéchisme Politique’. The secular religion suggested by the title
was typical of all works of social theory at the time and links the text to Comte’s sociological
and historical attempt to construct a scientific ‘Religion of Humanity’. The connections
between Comte and Proudhon are implicit but have been widely commented upon (Bouglé,
Haubtmann, Vernon). Proudhon rejected Comte’s collectivism while he embraced a theory of
collective agency. He embraced Kant’s individualism while he rejected the idealism and
irrealism of his method. What we find in Proudhon’s ideas is a theory of the state as a group,
how the state and other social groups relate to one another, and how the individual and the
group are related. What I will show is that throughout this we find in Proudhon a theory of
how law provides the formal structure of social order sustained by force. As I hope to show,
Proudhon’s theory allows us to move beyond the sticking point in current thinking about the
state in contemporary IR by showing that it is not the only group, that individuals and groups
are intimately related and that the of the structures and institutions which relate them to one
another, Proudhon believes law to provide the rules of the game.
There are clear normative, political and ethical consequences of this theory that I will outline
as we proceed. The section is structured in the following way. First I want to establish
Proudhon’s credentials as a scientific realist in order to show that Wendt, Wight and
Proudhon are all talking about the same thing in the same sorts of ways. Illustrating his debt
to August Comte will show that my interpretation of his work is also not anachronistic.
Second, I will set out Proudhon’s theory of collective force. The key will be to show that
Proudhon does not conflate society with the state, but conceptualises all social groups as
having relative autonomy vis-à-vis one another. I then give two examples of how Proudhon
uses the concepts of alienation and appropriation to illustrate the ways in which individuals
relate to groups. I will then discuss how he understands internal structures and inter-groups
structures. While there are a number of obvious normative issues that arise from this
discussion, I will focus only on those raised in the previous discussion – namely the moral
status of groups and individuals. What I will argue is that if we value the autonomy of wither,
a statist political ontology is counter-productive. By de-centering the state I also show that
anarchy is far more complex than we generally assume it to be. From this perspective,
anarchism suggests far more in the way of conceptual and political innovation.
As far as I am aware, other than Kropotkin’s The State: Its Historic Role and Bakunin’s Statism and Anarchy,
there is, ironically, little by way of explicit state theory in the anarchist literature.
4
12
As the eminent sociologist George Gurvitch has argued, Proudhon set out his ‘social science’
in the context of the intellectual hegemony of Saint-Simonianism and the sociological
positivism of Auguste Comte (Gurvitch 1965: 31). Positivism had a bad name even then, and
it is for this reason that Proudhon refused either the term sociology or positivism for his
work, though there are clear echoes. One of the core features of Comte’s sociology was its
philosophical realism and its structural materialism. In Proudhon’s work as in Comte’s, what
this implied in practice was a critique of nominalism, or the philosophical idealism which
‘made collective beings and of the power (puissance) within it […mere] words or
conceptions’ (Proudhon 1860: 135). Proudhon set out his philosophical realism in the
following way:
Science tells us that all bodies are composite […] held together by an attraction, a
force […] which the intelligence can only grasp through its manifestations and as
the expression of a relation. The RELATION, there, in the final analysis, is what
all phenomenology, all reality, all force all existence, boils down to’ (ibid).
Force is what holds relations together or breaks them down. On the first page of his ‘Short
Political Catechism’ Proudhon argues that force is an inherent capacity of all things, indeed,
‘force is inherent or immanent in being’ (ibid: 111) and as I will show, ‘immanent in society’
(ibid: 116). Let us begin with inert or inanimate objects. Proudhon argues that they exert
force-as-resistance. Other things exert force in more obvious ways, either through chemical
processes, through gravity, and so on. In the social world force underlies all social relations in
the same way as force underlies all natural relations. From public opinion to a punch in the
face, from war to joinery, there are relations of force within them all. The aim is to clarify
and distinguish between them and to build a social theory atop this clarification.
Proudhon distinguishes between la force, puissance and pouvoir. The former is a base
capacity, the second a collective product (three guys using the force of their muscles to move
a large rock) and the third is a political and social capacity (ibid: 112). In the latter, the way
in which rock-pushing is organised and directed is power and demands cognition. As Viewed
in this way we can see what Proudhon means when he argues that ‘power is immanent in
society’ (Proudhon 1863: 116). These distinctions become important when we discuss the
nature of collective forces, but all we need retain here is that force is at the base of
Proudhon’s realist, relational ontology.
All things in nature exert force and all social relations are asymmetric. This implies that we
can only understand force in relation to other things – not in and of itself. When forces cohere
and combine, the cumulative result is more than and irreducible to the sum of its parts and the
relations that constitute puissance or pouvoir are of necessity ‘commutative’ (ibid: 133, 114).
This implies two things, that they exhibit no transcendent principle of ordering and that the
ordering exhibits no necessary or natural hierarchy. Out of the constitutive or commutative
arrangement of the parts ‘a force emerges (jaillit)’ (ibid: 117). It is the character of this
emergent force, a force as real as all others but irreducible to any one other thing, that is of
principle concern for us here.
Our purpose here is to understand the reality and collective character of social groups.
Proudhon argues that the emergent character of groups is determined not only by the
individual characters of those that populate them, but also by the way in which the group is
internally organised – the way power is arranged. Proudhon begins by following Kant
13
arguing that ‘the end of man is in himself’ (Proudhon 1988/1998: 347). However, Proudhon
also argues that ‘collective beings are as much realities as individuals’ (Proudhon 1988/1998:
694); ‘just as individualism is the primordial factor in humanity, so association is its
complementary term. Both are present constantly.’ (Edwards 1969: 232) While they are
present constantly, and individuals are ends in themselves, pace Kant, Proudhon argued that
‘the action of society on the individual is immense. The result is that man can never
completely escape this influence in any of his acts, in any of his sentiments, in any of his
predispositions or in the potentialities of his nature’. (Proudhon 1988/1990: 1565) However,
Proudhon is clear that ‘synthetic ideas’ that arise from the confluence of opinions are ‘very
different, often also the inverse of my own conclusions […] But let it be noted that this
conversion does not assume the condemnation of individuality; it presupposes it.’ (Proudhon
1988/1990: 1261) The means to the realisation of the political power of a group, and in order
to respect the autonomy of individuals and the equality with this social anarchy, direct
democracy is the key.
If political right is inherent in man and the citizen, consequently if all suffrage
must be direct, the same right is also logically inherent to each group naturally
formed by citizens, to each corporation, each commune or city; and suffrage in
each of these groups must be equally direct. (Proudhon 1865:286 emphasis
added)
Once so realised, the ‘collective being is neither phantom nor abstraction, but an existence’
(Proudhon 1988/1990: 724) and the ‘quality of social power will vary, its intensity will rise
and fall, depending on the number and the differences of groups’. ‘Unity’ however, ‘is
immutability.’ (Proudhon 1863: 118) In La Guerre et la Paix (1998 [1863]) Proudhon relates
this sentiment to a wider political and historical sociology.
The idea of universal sovereignty, the ideal of the Middle Ages and formulated in
Charlemagne’s pact, is the negation of the independence and the autonomy of
States and the negation of all human liberty, something in which States and
nations are eternally right to refuse. Moreover, that would be to oppose change in
humanity, precisely as despotism in a State, or communism in a tribe is the
immobilisation of that State or tribe. Civilization only moves but for the influence
that political groups exert upon one another, exercising the full plenitude of their
sovereignty and independence; constrain them all from above and the great
organism will halt; neither life nor idea. (Proudhon 1998a: 293)
Social dynamism is a function of difference and diversity, where individuals and social forces
have free reign. Unity, the doctrine of the Jacobins and Collectivists would bring this
movement to a halt. This can also be usefully compared with Comte’s collectivism. For him
“Collective Organisms”, societies or states, are not only real but historically providential. In
these strictly hierarchical and technocratic societies, the ‘Priest Scientists’ were the only
individuals accorded any right to freedom of choice. Positivism was the new ‘Religion of
Humanity’ and society had to be structured in such a way that it was completely harmonious
– from top to bottom. All that was needed was for ‘Men of Genius’ to divine the correct form
of society and then preach the good news and convince all to follow. This newly divined
‘nature of things […] absolutely prohibits freedom of choice by showing, from several
distinct points of view, the class of scientists to be the only one suited to carry out the
theoretical work of social reorganisation.’ (Comte 1998a: 76) Critical theorists, like Kant or
Rousseau were fundamentally misguided in thinking that individuals were in any way bearers
14
of natural rights of any sort. This, ‘the critical prejudice that conceives moral sovereignty as
an innate right in each individual[,] would be insurmountable by anyone other than them
[Priest Scientists].’ (Comte 1998a 77) Furthermore, since civilization follows only one,
predetermined and absolute law, ‘which dominates all particular human differences’ asserting
individuality is quite simply a waste of time. (Comte: 1998a: 97) In Comte’s system while the
individual is vital to the Collective Organism, politically it then becomes completely
subservient to it. Pickering has pointed out, ‘in a sense Rousseau’s Legislator lived on in
Comte’s spiritual power’, (Pickering 1993:707), which is something of an understatement,
and as Manuel has argued, ‘[t]he impression is inescapable that in the positivist religion there
is a total loss of personality as man is merged in the perfect transcendent unity of Humanity.’
(Manuel, 1965: 281) Proudhon makes much the same argument about communism, which at
that time was relatively embryonic, but which he understood perfectly. ‘Communism’, he
argued, would mean,
the indivision of power, an absorbing centralisation, the systematic destruction of
all individual thought, corporative and local, considered dividing [scissionnaire];
an inquisitorial police, the abolition or at least the restriction of the family, and
even of heredity; universal suffrage organised in such a way as to serve as a
perpetual sanction of this anonymous tyranny of the preponderance of the
mediocre or scum, always in majority, over the capable citizens and the
independent characters, declared subject and naturally in small number.
(Proudhon, 1865:115)
Let us flesh this out with a counter-example. Proudhon briefly mentions orchestras.
Individual material instruments are vital to the collective product of the labour of the
orchestra, but the music which issues cannot be reduced to any one material instrument.
Indeed, in the same way that instruments are collections of forces (the density of the wood,
the tension in the strings), individuals that play instruments have their own irreducible styles
and characters with which they relate to the instrument and the score. In an orchestra
musicians do not do as they please; they alienate that part of their autonomy necessary to
produce collective ends – the music. The musicians also alienate part of their autonomy to the
conductor who then guides the music and gives it his or her own interpretation. The
musicians are not ‘cultural dopes’ and, maintaining our relational ontology, the conductor
cannot ‘be’ without his or her orchestra. These social relations constitute the social force, or
pouvoir politique, of the orchestra. It might not seem formally political, but organisation
demands politics. However, the relationship is not mutually constitutive, since the collective
force that emerges from the orchestra, rather than each individual musician, is irreducible,
directed and there is a process of feedback. The relations are more complex than simple coconstitution.
Another example prominent throughout Proudhon’s work is that of the workshop. Let us
assume a capitalist workshop in which the workers produce and the manager coordinates. We
have tools, social puissance again and social power. However, the alienation of the workers’
autonomy is of a quite different sort to that of our orchestra. In capitalist social relations the
workers alienate not only their individual labour-time but also the collective product of that
collective labour. Collective puissance produces surplus irreducible to any one individual,
since without the collective itself, the surplus would be impossible. However, the capitalist
has legal title to this surplus, profit or emergent product, of collective labour and can make
off with it alone. The relation of individuals to one another, and of the capitalist individual to
the workshop, is characterised by alienation and appropriation with the social relations
15
sanctified by law and defended by force. We could easily make a similar argument vis-à-vis
representative democracies. Rousseau’s General Will, for example, is the collective
expression of the political agency of individuals, but in reality, in the representative system,
individuals appropriate this alienated political autonomy and the political class constitute the
state-as-group with an emergent force, puissance and pouvoir of their own: it is, he argued,
like in the factory system, ‘collective force converted into monopoly’ (Proudhon 1860: 120).
Proudhon attributed collective forces with ‘individuality’ (ibid: 112), but stopped a long way
from attributing them with personhood. Each one of these groups, ‘might be regarded as a
social embryo’ and, when considered collectively, ‘form the base of political power’ (ibid).
What he does say, however, is that they have varied capacity, and this capacity is also
derived from the types of collective forces they are. In De la Capacite Politique des Classes
Ouvurieres, which he narrated on his deathbed in 1865, he specifies two types of capacity:
legal and real. The former is ascribed, the latter demonstrable. Law ‘confers’ (Proudhon
1982: 88) capacity upon individuals and groups by supporting or prohibiting them by force.
‘Real’ capacity, on the other hand, is pre-legal or socially emergent derived from the forces
that underpin law. Proudhon argued that for a group or individual to have real capacity it
must have three further properties. First, it must have consciousness of itself, its dignity,
value and place in society. Secondly, the group or individual must affirm this idea as a
manifestation of its understanding of social life. Finally, it is no good to simply think it
through and proclaim it – the idea of collective or individual capacity must be affirmed
practically (ibid: 88-89).
Over time, different groups emerge and constitute themselves in various ways for collective
ends and treaties and law constitute not only the internal relations of groups, but also intergroup relations. The Magna Carta, for example, specified the inter-relationships between the
King and Barons, while the contemporary constellation of the British political system is one
which originally recognised a particular constellation of quite distinct collective force: the
Lords, the Commons, the King or monarchy, and with the emergence of the Labour party in
the twentieth century, the workers or people. However, social groups need not be part of the
political order in order to have collective force and constitute social power. Consider the
emergence of an industrial labour movement and its unionisation, the rise of religious groups,
student groups, terrorist groups, and so forth. Each of these groups is historically situated and
asymmetrically related. Their relations are formalised in law, but law does not constitute their
reality nor is it the extent of their social relations. For Proudhon law, constitutions and
treaties were essentially the same thing: the codification of ‘balance of economic and social
forces’ (Proudhon 1860: 131; cf. Proudhon 1863:129). Society is naturally composed of
plural social forces, collective and individual. While modern liberal society might have
individuated its constitutive elements and bourgeois law refuses to recognise the autonomy of
the association, ‘natural groups’ can also persist without political form, solely as puissance.
The mark of civilisation, Proudhon argues, is the ability of social groups and inter-social
relations to function harmoniously and continue to do so on the basis of both unspoken and
formalised constitutional agreement; the more complex, harmonious and auto-kinetic, the
more civilised that society. When the social conventions which hold these relations of grouppower break down, society collapses, illustrating how fragile social order is, but also, given
the relative infrequency of civilisational collapse, how relatively enduring and stable it is.
The flaw in Wight and Wendt’s social ontology then, is to assume that the state is some
super-group, or that groups don’t matter. We can also show, through a discussion of the role
of law, constitutions and treaties, how we might understand institutions and structures from
16
Proudhon’s perspective. There are clear political and ontological, not to mention ethical
issues at stake here. What is the normative value of the individual, the ethical value of group
autonomy? To what degree is the state right to be sovereign over all other groups? If states
are not the only groups, is not anarchy the constitutive form of all social relations considered
in reality, rather than legally?
Conclusion
I have argued that while Wendt seems to conflate the state with all social groups and Wight
seems unwilling to give groups even relative ontological autonomy, Proudhon assigns all
groups with political importance because he sees all groups as real. The state is but one such
group. The issue of individual autonomy is nicely resolved by Proudhon also. We can see that
individuals have complex relations to groups and we might complicate it further here by
arguing that individuals can be members of more than one group at once and multiple groups
can be related in asymmetric ways within and across other, wider social groups. How this
maps out is an empirical not a theoretical issue from here. All groups are not subsumed
within a state in reality, even though they are such legally. The law, it can be argued, is often
wrong. Raising this issue and exploring it further is beyond the scope of this paper, but
needless to say, there are a wide variety of anarchist responses to the issue.
What I have not made clear, at least not fully, is how this changes the way we understand the
ontology of global politics. First, I have argued that anarchist political theory provides novel
conceptual tools for understanding how order is created in anarchy. The key here was to have
an adequate understanding of the nature of the social which meant, in turn, conceptualizing
the relationship between individuals and social groups. I have argued that not only are states
not the only groups, but that nor are they the precondition of social order. Not only is this
more than evident from the writings of theorists of world politics vis-à-vis order in the
anarchical society of states (Bull 1979), but also as Proudhon has argued vis-à-vis the social
order as well. Secondly, I suggested that anarchists were right to argue that states and
capitalism are the symbiotic precondition of disorder and conflict. The key here is the
appropriation and monopolization of the collective reason through the monopolization and
appropriation of alienated political force, and the in capitalism the monopolization and
appropriation of alienated surplus of collective productive force. A separate theory, one it is
impossible to develop here, must account for the way in which this appropriation causes
conflict, but the basis for the hypothesis is clear enough. From this anarchists will argue that
both state and capitalism are detrimental to human autonomy and flourishing. Thus, finally,
and given the above, anarchists actively seek a world without sovereigns, of either the
capitalist, sovereign proprietors sort, or the more conventional statist form of sovereignty.
Anarchy, or anarchism, is what our state theory makes it. Anarchy is the background
condition of all politics. There is no transcendent order nor is there a natural form to society.
As such, the way we see society and the state, usually in IR this is framed through state
theory, determines what anarchy is. This is the same with anarchism. If one assumes that
order is only possible because of states, clearly anarchists will be anathema to your existential
peace. If you do not see order in this way, anarchism becomes something quite different: a
perspective on a perennial problem perhaps, or a set of tools to understand the system in
which we live.
17
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