New Glossary

Anarchy 101

A Return to the Question of the “Polity-Form”

March 2, 2025 Shawn P. Wilbur

The polity-form, then, in its simplest sense, is the form given to social collectivities when they are accounted for, explained, “realized” (in the language used by Louis Blanc in 1849-50), etc. by a transformation into political units. In this process, individuals — participants in the social relations that give rise to these social collectivities — are reimagined as citizens, subjects, members of the political unit, with rights, duties, privileges, etc. granted or imposed as a result. This governmental relation seems inescapably hierarchical — although in certain instances of extensive, stable consensus that hierarchy might be considered more or less “voluntary” (if only because there is no occasion for enforcement.) […]

Glossary

Polity-form (External constitution)

December 5, 2021 Shawn P. Wilbur

If we are to follow Proudhon’s an-archic account of social organization, we can expect the social collectivities that we encounter to be self-organizing associations of human beings, onto which some kind of governmental framework has been imposed from the outside. The authoritarian pretense is that society — human association in all its dynamic forms — has not really been established until the material relations of association have been seconded in some way by the establishment of an authority, sitting atop some kind of fundamentally political hierarchy. The anarchic response is that authority and hierarchy are inessential elements that we must learn to do without. […]

Glossary

Legal Order

November 28, 2021 Shawn P. Wilbur

In the anarchist context, it is common to approach the question of legal order by asking whether anarchists truly desire a society in which nothing is prohibited. This is, it seems to me, only half of the question that needs to be asked, as an anarchic society would also be one in which nothing is permitted. And it is probably this second aspect that is most helpful in evaluating the antinomian character of anarchy. […]