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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 August 2014
In his political theory, William Godwin, the founder of philosophical anarchism, defends a form of decentralized democracy as a transition stage toward his ideal of a stateless society. Godwin sanctioned temporary alliance with liberal political factions, and was a staunch defender of freedom of thought and expression. Contrary to Isaac Kramnick's interpretation, he bitterly opposed authoritarian measures such as Grenville's and Pitt's bills, although he also rejected violence as a valid means toward reform. Kramnick's reduction of anarchist praxis to education and theater constitutes a serious distortion of historical fact, and ignores the significance of revolutionary struggle, syndicalist organization, intentional communities, and nonviolent resistance as anarchist tactics. His assertion that anarchism is elitist involves a misunderstanding of the anarchist principles of popular participation and self-management, and his position that anarchism serves to perpetuate the status quo exhibits a failure to deal with the issues presented by the anarchist analysis of the effects of government and the nature of social change.
1 Kramnick, Isaac, “On Anarchism and the Real World: William Godwin and Radical England,” American Political Science Review, 66 (March 1972), 114–128CrossRefGoogle Scholar. All successive references to that article will be given in the text of this paper.
2 Godwin, William, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, Priestley, F. E. L., ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1946), Vol. II, Book V, chaps. XIV, XXII, XXIII, XXIVGoogle Scholar. Godwin discusses democracy as a necessary stage toward a noncoercive society, in view of the “institutions by which [man] has been corrupted,” p. 210.
3 Pollin, Burton, Education and Enlightenment in the Works of William Godwin (New York: Las Americas, 1962), p. 172Google Scholar. Pollin notes that Godwin was able to support the Whigs both during his more radical period in the 1790s, and also as he became more conservative in his later career. This was possible because of the moderation of the Whigs' own position in the early nineteenth century.
4 Quoted from a letter to Rosser, H. B. in Paul, Charles Kegan, William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries (London: Henry S. King and Co., 1876), Vol. II, p. 263Google Scholar.
5 Godwin, William, Considerations on Lord Grenville's and Mr. Pitt's Bills Concerning Treasonable and Seditious Practices and Unlawful Assemblies (London: J. Johnson, 1795)Google Scholar. For the sake of accuracy, it should be noted that Kramnick incorrectly dates the pamphlet as 1796, and fails to mention the publisher. Godwin notes in his diary that it was published November 21, 1795, and Burton Pollin's exhaustive work (with 3379 entries) Godwin Criticism: A Synoptic Bibliography (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967)Google Scholar lists no other editions. It might also be remarked that of Kramnick's four footnotes concerning the Considerations, three involve incorrect page citations, and one omits reference to the page cited.
6 Considerations, pp. 2–3.
7 Ibid., p. 7.
8 Ibid., p. 14.
9 Ibid., p. 17.
10 Ibid. However, Godwin's argument that political oratory usually deteriorates into ad hominem argument seems well taken.
11 But then again, Godwin may have been aware of more violent intentions on the part of the Society than Kramnick seems willing to admit. F. E. L. Priestley, in his introduction to Political Justice, cites evidence presented by W. P. Hall indicating that members of the Society had plans for violent rebellion and had engaged in “the actual manufacture of weapons.” Political Justice, Vol. III, p. 51Google Scholar.
12 Kramnick's apparent obliviousness to the bulk of Godwin's discussion makes one wonder if he somehow got hold of a defective copy of the text, in which somewhat over 60 of its 89 pages were omitted. He cites nothing past page 22.
13 Considerations, p. 23.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid., p. 25.
16 Ibid., p. 27.
17 Ibid., p. 28.
18 Ibid., p. 30.
19 Ibid., p. 52.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid., p. 55.
22 Ibid., p. 56.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid., p. 58.
25 Ibid., p. 72.
26 Ibid., p. 73.
27 Ibid., p. 86.
28 Ibid., p. 80.
29 Kramnick's article is not the first case of such a glaring distortion of Godwin's position on this issue, although it has the distinction of being the most detailed misinterpretation. As Pollin notes, Beer, M., in his History of British Socialism, makes the same error. Pollin, p. 211Google Scholar.
30 Avrich, Paul, The Russian Anarchists (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967)Google Scholar and The Anarchists in the Russian Revolution (London: Thames and Hudson, 1973)Google Scholar. It should also be noted that Peter Arshinov's work on Ukrainian anarchism, the History of the Makhnovist Movement (1918–1921), which has been out of print since 1923, is again available (Detroit: Black and Red; and Chicago: Solidarity, 1974)Google Scholar.
31 See Orwell, George, Homage to Catalonia (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955)Google Scholar, and Chomsky, Noam, American Power and the New Mandarins (New York: Pantheon, 1969), pp. 72–124Google Scholar. The latest addition to the literature on the Spanish Revolution is Dolgoff's, SamThe Anarchist Collectives: Workers' Self-management in the Spanish Revolution 1936–1939 (New York: Free Life Editions, 1974)Google Scholar. Murray Bookchin's forthcoming two-volume history, The Spanish Anarchists, promises to be the definitive work on the subject.
32 Guerin, Daniel, Anarchism: From Theory to Practice (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970)Google Scholar.
33 See Rocker, Rudolf, Anarcho-Syndicalism (Indore, India: Modern Publishers, N.D.)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
34 For a good brief description of a 19th century community see “The Pattern of Life in an Individualist Anarchist Community” in Krimerman, Leonard and Perry, Lewis, Patterns of Anarchy (Garden City, N. Y.: Anchor Books, 1966), pp. 312–323Google Scholar. For the anarchist elements in the counter-cultural milieu of which today's communes are a part, see Lerner's, Michael “Anarchism and the American Counter-Culture” in Anarchism Today, Apter, David and Joll, James, eds. (Garden City, N. Y.: Anchor, 1972), pp. 41–69Google Scholar, and Fairfield's, RichardCommunes USA (Baltimore: Penguin, 1971)Google Scholar.
35 See, for example, Tolstoy's, writings On Civil Disobedience And Non-Violence (New York: Signet, 1968)Google Scholar.
36 See Ammon Hennacy, “The One-Man Revolution,” and Day, Dorothy, “The Green Revolution,” in Krimerman, and Perry, , pp. 364–378Google Scholar.
37 See Ostergaard, Geoffrey, “Indian Anarchism: The Sarvodaya Movement” in Apter, and Joll, , pp. 169–190Google Scholar, and Ostergaard, Geoffrey and Currell, Melville, The Gentle Anarchists: A Study of The Leaders of The Sarvodaya Movement for Non-Violent Revolution in India (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972)Google Scholar.
38 See Woodcock, George, Anarchism (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1963), especially pp. 368–370Google Scholar. Woodcock, however, considers this an unacceptable deviation from anarchist principles. It must be admitted that attempts by anarchists to form coalitions with authoritarian Marxists have usually ended in disaster—at least for the anarchists and the cause of human freedom.
39 Dolgoff, Sam, ed., Bakunin On Anarchy (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), p. 196Google Scholar.
40 Baldwin, Roger, ed., Kropotkin's Revolutionary Pamphlets (New York: Dover, 1970), p. 185Google Scholar. The italics are Kropotkin's.
41 See Rocker, especially chap. 5, “The Methods of Anarcho-Syndicalism.”
42 See Political Justice, Book I, chap. IV, “The Characters of Men Originate in their External Circumstances,” in which Godwin establishes an epistemological basis for human equality.
43 A good statement of the anarchist anti-elitist criticism of Marxism, taken from Bakunin's Statism and Anarchy, can be found in Bakunin On Anarchy, pp. 326–333.
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