Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 The Euthanasia of Government: Classical Anarchism Reconsidered
- 2 Crowned Anarchy: Towards a Postanarchist Ontology
- 3 An Infantile Disorder: Anarchism and Marxism
- 4 The Horizon of Anarchy: Radical Politics in the Wake of Marx
- 5 Debating Postanarchism: Ontology, Ethics and Utopia
- 6 Conclusion: Postanarchism and Radical Politics Today
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - The Euthanasia of Government: Classical Anarchism Reconsidered
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- Introduction
- 1 The Euthanasia of Government: Classical Anarchism Reconsidered
- 2 Crowned Anarchy: Towards a Postanarchist Ontology
- 3 An Infantile Disorder: Anarchism and Marxism
- 4 The Horizon of Anarchy: Radical Politics in the Wake of Marx
- 5 Debating Postanarchism: Ontology, Ethics and Utopia
- 6 Conclusion: Postanarchism and Radical Politics Today
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In his seventeenth-century radical pamphlet, The New Law of Righteousness, Gerrard Winstanley declared war on the political and social arrangements of his time. In the name of an intransigent liberty and equality, he denounced the injustices of political authority, the iniquities of private property and their ideological support in the Church. Such pernicious institutions and mystifications must submit to a more fundamental and universal law – the law of equity – and would be swept away before a new communist vision of society:
When this universal law of equity rises up in every man and woman, then none shall lay claim to any creature and say, This is mine, and that is yours. This is my work and that is yours. But everyone shall put their hands to till the earth and bring up cattle, and the blessing of the earth shall be common to all; … There shall be none lords over others, but everyone shall be a lord over himself, subject to the law of righteousness, reason and equity, which shall dwell and rule in him, which is the Lord.
The law of righteousness was sanctioned by God, but would be implemented directly by the people. Real equality and liberty – each implicated in the other – would be realised in utopian experiments in common ownership and communal life and work, in which neither private property nor government authority would be recognised. It was only in such an environment that liberty could be imagined, that each could be lord over him- or herself.
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- Information
- The Politics of Postanarchism , pp. 16 - 45Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2010