On Anarchism In An Unreal World: Kramnick's View of Godwin and the Anarchists

John P. Clark

American Political Science Review, 1975, vol. 69, issue 1, 162-167

Abstract: 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.

Date: 1975
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:69:y:1975:i:01:p:162-167_24

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in American Political Science Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().