In the previous chapter, anarchism was described as a revolutionary antipolitics that rejects political, social and economic domination and hierarchy in the name of an unconditional principle of equalliberty. However, this position presupposed a certain organic vision of social relations and a notion of rational enlightenment, which served as the moral pivot against the distortions, obfuscations and injustices of political power. Anarchism, therefore, bases its critique of political authority on moral and rational foundations that derive from a social essence or being which is objectively understood. Whether this is understood in terms of the individual's progressive enlightenment, or the determination of material forces by historical laws and dialectical processes, or the discovery of man's innate sociality through the principle of mutual aid – there is the idea of a moral and rational basis to social relations, a natural foundation that is obscured by the workings of power and religion, yet which can be revealed through scientific enquiry.

Classical anarchism is, therefore, a political philosophy that is framed within an Enlightenment rationalist-humanist discourse. Central to anarchism is the idea of rational progress, the unfolding of an immanent social logic, and the emancipation of the subject from external constraints and oppressions – motifs which are incorporated also into liberalism and Marxism, albeit in different ways and with different emphases. While anarchism, as I have suggested, is the most radical of these political philosophies – and in its treatment of political power certainly the most sophisticated – it nevertheless shares with them an indebtedness to Enlightenment thought.