Comments on: Icky Sticky Anarchy

By: Colin Ward R.I.P. | Austro-Athenian Empire

Colin Ward R.I.P. | Austro-Athenian Empire — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 05:50:54 +0000

[...] Jesse Walker has rightly called Ward’s Anarchy in Action the left-wing equivalent of The Machinery of Freedom. [...]

By: Joel Schlosberg

Joel Schlosberg — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 06:15:32 +0000

Plus, did you know that Hayek was opposed to all welfare legislation? And as for Marshall’s influence, y’think? Especially since the very short chapter on individualism refers to Marshall no less than *4* times! It’s somewhat odd, though, that Ward’s and Marshall’s accounts of anarcho-capitalism both have some big errors, but those errors don’t overlap; Marshall’s errors are described by Bryan Caplan at http://economics.gmu.edu/bcaplan/error.htm including listing yet *another* non-anarcho-capitalist as one, Ayn Rand (and there’s a corrected version that, bizarrely enough, retains the sentence about Rand being an anarcho-capitalist, but adds a sentence after the first one that contradictorily states that Rand is not an anarchist) — whereas Marshall describes Nozick as a minarchist at some length, and Wolff as distinct from the right-libertarians, in part due to “recommend[ing] extreme economic decentralization”, although having in common the desire “to retain private property and the market to co-ordinate human behavior”; and also explicitly states that Hayek “was ready to countenance a degree of welfare provision which cannot be adequately provided by the market”.

And it shouldn’t be surprising that a certain author praises the section at length in his review of the book, saying that it proves that not only are the right-libertarians evil, but that “[a]ny libertarian who considers the ‘libertarian’ right as friends or being related to anarchism really are ignorant of what both sides stand for and, moreover, a total liability to the movement.”
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/anarchism/writers/anarcho/reviews/wardonanarachism.html

So yeah, good book overall, but with a weak section on right-libertarianism. And I can’t resist pointing out that I complained about this exact issue almost 3 years ago:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LeftLibertarian/message/12139

By the way, I’d like to point out that Ward isn’t as totally unsympathetic to right-libertarianism as that excerpt suggests: in Talking Anarchy, when asked “But I have been wanting to ask you about right-wing libertarianism. Do you see it as entirely negative? Or does it have any positive features?”, he responds:

“Most of the right-wing libertarians that I have read about in the press, or heard on the radio, seem to have failed to notice that we live in a class-divided society where opportunities in life are immensely unequal. However, I must add that in 1995 I met David Green of the Institute of Economic Affairs (which is seen as a right-wing libertarian think-tank), I found that he was a critic, not a defender, of Thatcherism, and was, of course, like me, a critic too of the automatic assumptions of the political Left and of its faith in the state.”

He also mentions Green in at least a few other places, including a very similar description in Social Policy: An Anarchist Response. And maybe Ward’s sympathy to Green means that *Ward* is “a total liability to the movement”!

By: Jesse Walker

Jesse Walker — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 02:22:07 +0000

Anarchy in Action is one of the best, most practical-minded, and most appealing introductions to anarchism out there. Sort of the left-wing equivalent of The Machinery of Freedom.

By: Roderick

Roderick — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 02:54:28 +0000

But one would expect him to have heard of Nozick and Wolff even if he knew nothing about anarcho-capitalism; they’re both pretty widely known in academia, including by people who’ve never encountered anarcho-capitalism.

By: Dr. Q

Dr. Q — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:47:15 +0000

I think he said this in Anarchy In Action (the only Colin Ward book I’ve read), but there’s a good chance I’m misremembering.

It’s worth pointing out that Ward typically uses the term in “anarchy” in a fairly specific way. When he uses “anarchy,” he is usually referring to forms of social organization that are participatory and lack hierarchy.

By: Richard Garner

Richard Garner — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:56:16 +0000

I suspect that he did so because his only exposure to anarcho-capitalism is the chapter in Peter Marshall’s Demanding the Impossible.

By: Roderick

Roderick — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:15:38 +0000

Yeah, it’s good — though I have to gripe at his calling Robert Nozick and Robert Paul Wolff anarcho-capitalists.

By: Roderick

Roderick — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:14:38 +0000

I’ve read both of those, plus I searched the Amazon versions.

By: Bob

Bob — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 04:03:26 +0000

I read Ward’s A Very Short Introduction to Anarchism recently and don’t recall the line. Great book though.

By: Richard Garner

Richard Garner — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:42:03 +0000

Colin Ward is an anarchist communist, Glen, yes. He was the editor of Freedom for some time, a Newspaper co-founded by Peter Kropotkin whilst in exile in London.

However, Ward’s writings should probably be best thought of as non-denominational anarchist, and are excellent at demonstrating how people, when freed from the burden of externally imposed authority, organise their own affairs themselves, generally with better results. Since his examples are taken from the actual world around us, from housing co-operatives, friendly societies, building societies, neighbourhood watches, block associations, etc. etc., there is no reason to presume that they need be any the less examples in support of market anarchist possibilities than for anarchist communist arrangements.

In short, yes, he is “social anarchist” in precisely the same way as Paul Goodman was. And Goodman was embraced by anarcho-capitalists!

…and, sorry Roderick, I don’t know where the quote came from. Possible [i]Anarchy in Action[/i], or possibly the [i]A very Short Introduction to Anarchism[/i]. Or maybe it was just a poetical paraphrase or summary?!