Volume 13, 2005 No.1

According to the tradition, only three pure regimes - monarchy, aristocracy and democracy - are said to be capable under certain conditions of ensuring the 'common good'. This article argues that a complete typology of political regimes must include 'anarchy' not as a deviant form of democracy, but rather as an ideal type of pure regime. The new typology shall include monarchy (the rule of one), aristocracy (the rule of a minority), democracy (the rule of the majority) and anarchy (the self-government of all, through consensus). Finally, it is necessary to remind that political life is not limited to the State, and that anarchy can incarnate itself - here and now - within local and small communities and political groups. Therefore, the blanket rejection of anarchy by philosophers arguing that its political realisation is impossible in our modern world is misleading and necessarily impoverishes our philosophical thinking.

'Nowhere at Home', Not Even In Theory: Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Political Theory

Jim Jose
School of Policy, University of Newcastle, Australia. jim.jose@newcastle.edu.au

In the history of political thought there has been a reluctance to accord Emma Goldman the status of a serious political thinker. Even within the anarchist tradition she is rarely acknowledged as a political theorist. However, Goldman’s contribution to political thought was both original and pivotal. Three specific areas of her thought are examined (a) her view of emancipation, (b) her critique of patriarchy and insight that personal relations were power relations, and (c) her analysis of political violence. In each Goldman contributed to our political understanding and therefore should be regarded as a political theorist in her own right.

Proudhon, From Aesthetics to Politics

Ali Nematollahy
Baruch College, New York

Recent debates on anarchist aesthetics have focused on the historical relations between anarchism and modernism, in particular during the birth of modern literature and art in the early 1890s in France. The nature of this relation, however, is the subject of much disagreement. A careful study of the aesthetic theories of Proudhon in their historical and literary contexts contributes to a better understanding of the contradictions that have plagued a coherent anarchist theory of art and literature. Proudhon’s writings on aesthetics can be situated at the intersection of several aspects of his thought, as well as mutations in the field of literature during the Second Empire that shifted the role of the writer and his place in society, and transformed the nature of writing and language. Though not directly engaged with these problems, Proudhon’s final book on Courbet forced him to think them through and partly overcome the influences that his childhood readings of conservative and Catholic writers had left on him. Furthermore, his implicit recognition of the historical mutation of language and writing, as well as the shift in the idea of le peuple, introduce a new framework for his thought on the historical role of the working class, that can be found in his last work De la capacité politique de la classe ouvrière.

The Torture Show - Reflections on Iraq and the West

Sharif Gemie, Sureyya Evran, Alan Antliff and Marcus Milwright