Anarchism: war, violence and scapegoating

• Published in: Contemporary political theory 2024-06
• Main Authors: Stevens, Simon, Kinna, Ruth
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1470-8914; 1476-9336
• DOI: 10.1057/s41296-024-00704-1

This article gives an anarchist account of politics as war to theorise an anarchist Realpolitik . Mikhail Vereshchagin’s killing in War and Peace provides the springboard to review the claim that sovereign power secures peace and to explore the merit of scapegoating. We elaborate the anarchist account of politics as war by juxtaposing Foucault’s and Proudhon’s interpretations of Hobbes’ sovereign and adopt the term ‘reverse ethics’ to describe the proposal that citizens retain the philosophical right to forcefully disrupt the state’s supposed peace. The anarchist embrace of war conflicts with the common view that anarchism’s alignment of the means and ends of political action commits anarchists to reject violence. To meet this objection, we discuss Frazer and Hutchings’ theorisation of anarchist ambivalence. We argue that reverse ethics complicates tensions between the presumption of non-violence and the critique of state violence. To consider the use of force in liberal democracy, we connect reverse ethics to Hyams’ anarchist defence of upward scapegoating and targeted assassination. Considering applications in contemporary politics, we argue that reverse ethics constructively redirects attention from the need to justify political violence to the demand to hold sovereign power to its contractual obligation. This is anarchist Realpolitik .