Are Postanarchists Right to Call Classical Anarchisms ‘Humanist’?

Abstract

The core feature of the postanarchist critique of older anarchisms is the claim that they subscribe to a position which assumes the existence of a specific human nature. Saul Newman (who I will take as representative of postanarchism) writes (2001: 38): ‘Anarchism is based on a specific notion of human essence. For anarchists there is a human nature with essential characteristics.’ In this chapter, I aim to develop a framework within which this claim can be assessed. Postanarchism has come under criticism for what many regard an ill-informed view of classical anarchisms. Authors such as Jesse Cohn (2002), Shaun Wilbur (with Cohn, 2003) and Benjamin Franks (2007) argue that classical anarchisms incorporate a more complicated picture of the human individual which rejects the essentialism encountered in the one-dimensional image the postanarchists accuse it of. Indeed, as Sasha Villon (2003) writes, ‘Newman constructs this essentialist “anarchism” as a straw man in order to knock it down and to put his postanarchism in its place.’ However, many of the attempts to reassert the relevance of classical anarchisms in the wake of the postanarchist attack have been based on selecting quotations from classical anarchist writers that display non-humanist leanings, in a similar manner that postanarchists selectively quote the same writers to highlight the humanist content of classical anarchisms.