3.3.2.4 - Anarchism - Named Thinkers and Essay Tensions

Thinkers As Arguments

For AQA anarchism, named thinkers are not five biographies to memorise. They are evidence for arguments about anarchism itself. A strong essay uses each thinker to answer a bigger question:

Key vocabulary:

The five named thinkers can be mapped like this:

Active reading: Why is it weak to write one paragraph of biography on each anarchist thinker?

Stirner And Proudhon

Stirner and Proudhon help students understand the individualist and mutualist pressure within anarchism. They both reject the state, but they do not do so in the same way.

Stirner is the clearest AQA route into individualist anarchism. His starting point is the unique individual. The state claims a right to command obedience, but Stirner denies that this claim can bind the self. He also distrusts abstract ideals such as nation, church, humanity or society when they become demands for obedience. In an essay, this makes him useful for arguing that anarchism is first of all about autonomy.

For Stirner, freedom is not just having legal rights. Legal rights still depend on the state, so the state remains the source of permission. Individualist anarchism pushes further: no external authority should stand above the person. This is why Stirner gives anarchism its most radical anti-obligation argument.

Proudhon moves the discussion from self-rule to social order. He is famous for attacking property, but his point is more precise than "no one can use anything". He attacks property when it means ownership that lets one person exploit another person's labour. He distinguishes this from possession: control over what a person or group actually uses.

That distinction matters because it links the economy to autonomy. If a landlord, capitalist or absentee owner can extract rent or profit from others' work, property becomes domination. If workers directly possess and control their tools, land or workplace, possession can support independence.

Proudhon also answers the common criticism that anarchy means disorder. AQA links him with anarchy, order without power, workers' associations and co-operatives. His argument is that order can arise through mutual agreement and economic association rather than through government command.

Proudhon's route:
critique exploitative property -> defend possession and mutuality -> build workers' associations -> federate co-operatives -> create order without government

Together, they create a useful judgement. Stirner gives anarchism its purest account of autonomy, but Proudhon gives a more developed account of social and economic order. This means an essay can argue that individualist anarchism is powerful as a critique of the state, but mutualism gives it a more practical answer to society without government.

Bakunin And Kropotkin

Bakunin and Kropotkin show the collectivist side of anarchism. Collectivist anarchists argue that freedom is social. A person is not genuinely autonomous if they are poor, exploited, isolated or dependent on a boss. This is why collectivist anarchism opposes capitalism as well as the state.

Bakunin is the clearest AQA thinker for collectivist anarchism and syndicalism. His anti-statism is aimed not only at monarchy or dictatorship, but also at state socialism. He fears that if revolutionaries capture the state in the name of workers, they will become a new ruling minority. The problem is not just bad rulers; it is the structure of state power itself.

This gives Bakunin a distinctive argument:

capitalism creates economic domination -> workers organise and revolt -> the state must be abolished, not captured -> federated worker control replaces central command

Syndicalism fits this logic because it gives workers a route from resistance to self-government. Unions are not merely pressure groups asking for higher wages. In the syndicalist argument, organised workers can challenge capitalism and then run workplaces themselves.

Kropotkin gives collectivist anarchism a different kind of support. Where Bakunin stresses revolt, Kropotkin stresses mutual aid. His claim is not that human beings are perfect. It is that co-operation is a real feature of human and social life, and institutions can either strengthen it or suppress it.

This is important for AQA because it links human nature to society and the economy. If people are capable of mutual aid, then a society without government is not automatically chaos. Communes, federations and voluntary associations can organise production and distribution. Kropotkin's anarchist communism rejects both capitalist markets and state socialism: common resources should be managed through co-operation and need.

Bakunin and Kropotkin are therefore useful together. Bakunin explains how coercive power might be overthrown and why state socialism is dangerous. Kropotkin explains how stateless order might work once coercive institutions have been removed.

Active reading: Why do Bakunin and Kropotkin reject both capitalism and state socialism?

Goldman Freedom And Violence

Emma Goldman is useful because she prevents anarchism from becoming only an institutional argument about the state. AQA links her to freedom and self-expression, and to the tactical use of violence in revolutionary struggle. Both points must be connected carefully.