Authors: Duhamel & Mény
Summary: Anarchism affirms the absolute liberty of the individual in all spheres of his existence, and proposes the elimination of power from all social relations. Anarchism is thus opposed to every form of constitution. The French thinker Proudhon has made the most determined effort to articulate anarchist principles, beginning with the seemingly paradoxical observation that "the highest degree of order in society is expressed in the highest degree of individual liberty." Anarchism, thus, is the logical end of society. Proudhon criticizes Rousseau for seeking to found the legitimacy of the state's power in the voluntary consent of individuals, but borrows from him the model of society as voluntary contract. His use of the contract model begins with relations between individuals, and moves to a federative association between groups that might unify a society in the absence a state.
Anarchism attacks modern constitutional theory for putting the artificial notion of the state over the living reality of society, and for masking the truth of political and economic domination. But anarchism, in its radical commitment to social democracy and in its attack on all extant forms of democracy, is a kind of politics that suggests the death of politics. By emphasizing the reality of conflict in society, but denying law any right to resolve conflicts, anarchism seems to leave violence as the only possible solution.