1 Anarchism: Its Aims and Purposes Anarchism versus economic monopoly and state power; Forerunners of modern Anarchism; William Godwin and his work on Political Justice; P.J. Proudhon and his ideas of political and economic decentralisation; Max Stirner's work, The Ego and Its Own; M. Bakunin the Collectivist and founder of the Anarchist movement; P. Kropotkin the exponent of Anarchist Communism and the philosophy of Mutual Aid; Anarchism and revolution; Anarchism a synthesis of Socialism and Liberalism; Anarchism versus economic materialism and Dictatorship; Anarchism and the state; Anarchism a tendency of history; Freedom and culture. Anarchism is a definite intellectual current in the life of our times, whose adherents advocate the abolition of economic monopolies and of all political and social coercive institutions within society. In place of the present capitalistic economic order Anarchists would have a free association of all productive forces based upon co- operative labour, which would have as its sole purpose the satisfying of the necessary requirements of every member of society, and would no longer have in view the special interest of privileged minorities within the social union. In place of the present state organisation with their lifeless machinery of political and bureaucratic institutions Anarchists desire a federation of free communities which shall be bound to one another by their common economic and social interest and shall arrange their affairs by mutual agreement and free contract. Anyone who studies at all profoundly the economic and social development of the present social system will easily recognise that these objectives do not spring from the Utopian ideas of a few imaginative innovators, but that they are the logical outcome of a thorough examination of the present-day social maladjustments, which with every new phase of the existing social conditions manifest themselves more plainly and more unwholesomely. Modern onopoly, capitalism and the totalitarian state are merely the last terms in a development which could culminate in no other results. The portentous development of our present economic system, leading to a mighty accumulation of social wealth in the hands of privileged minorities and to a continuous impoverishment of the great masses of the people, prepared the way for the present political and social reaction. and befriended it in every way. It sacrificed the general interest of human society to the private interest of individuals, and thus systematically undermined the relationship between man and man. People forgot that industry is not an end in itself, but should only be a means to ensure to man his material subsistence and to make accessible to him the blessings of a higher intellectual culture. Where industry is everything and man is nothing begins the realm of a ruthless economic despotism whose workings are no less disastrous than those of any political despotism. The two mutually augment o ...

1. 1
Anarchism: Its Aims and Purposes
Anarchism versus economic monopoly and state power;
Forerunners of modern Anarchism; William Godwin and
his work on Political Justice; P.J. Proudhon and his ideas of
political and economic decentralisation; Max Stirner's
work, The Ego and Its Own; M. Bakunin the Collectivist and
founder of the Anarchist movement; P. Kropotkin the
exponent of Anarchist Communism and the philosophy of
Mutual Aid; Anarchism and revolution; Anarchism a
synthesis of Socialism and Liberalism; Anarchism versus
economic materialism and Dictatorship; Anarchism and
the state; Anarchism a tendency of history; Freedom and
culture.
Anarchism is a definite intellectual current in the life of our
times, whose adherents advocate the abolition of
economic monopolies and of all political and social coercive
institutions within society. In place of the present
capitalistic economic order Anarchists would have a free
association of all productive forces based upon co-
operative labour, which would have as its sole purpose the
satisfying of the necessary requirements of every
member of society, and would no longer have in view the
special interest of privileged minorities within the social
union. In place of the present state organisation with their
lifeless machinery of political and bureaucratic
institutions Anarchists desire a federation of free communities
which shall be bound to one another by their
common economic and social interest and shall arrange their

2. affairs by mutual agreement and free contract.
Anyone who studies at all profoundly the economic and social
development of the present social system will easily
recognise that these objectives do not spring from the Utopian
ideas of a few imaginative innovators, but that they
are the logical outcome of a thorough examination of the
present-day social maladjustments, which with every new
phase of the existing social conditions manifest themselves
more plainly and more unwholesomely. Modern
onopoly, capitalism and the totalitarian state are merely the last
terms in a development which could culminate in
no other results.
The portentous development of our present economic system,
leading to a mighty accumulation of social wealth in
the hands of privileged minorities and to a continuous
impoverishment of the great masses of the people, prepared
the way for the present political and social reaction. and
befriended it in every way. It sacrificed the general interest
of human society to the private interest of individuals, and thus
systematically undermined the relationship between
man and man. People forgot that industry is not an end in itself,
but should only be a means to ensure to man his
material subsistence and to make accessible to him the blessings
of a higher intellectual culture. Where industry is
everything and man is nothing begins the realm of a ruthless
economic despotism whose workings are no less
disastrous than those of any political despotism. The two
mutually augment one another, and they are fed from the
same source.
The economic dictatorship of the monopolies and the political
dictatorship of the totalitarian state are the outgrowth
of the same political objectives, and the directors of both have
the presumption to try to reduce all the countless

3. expressions of social life to the mechanical tempo of the
machine and to tune everything organic to the lifeless
machine of the political apparatus. Our modern social system
has split the social organism in every country into
hostile classes internally, and externally it has broken the
common cultural circle up into hostile nations; and both
classes and nations confront one another with open antagonism
and by their ceaseless warfare keep the communal
social life in continual convulsions. The late World War and its
terrible after effects, which are themselves only the
results of the present struggles for economic and political
power, are only the logical consequences of this
unendurable condition, which will inevitably lead us to a
universal catastrophe if social development does not take
a new course soon enough. The mere fact that most states are
obliged today to spend from fifty to seventy percent
of their annual income for so-called national defence and the
liquidation of old war debts is proof of the
untenability of the present status, and should make clear to
everybody that the alleged protection which the state
affords the individual is certainly purchased too dearly.
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The ever growing power of a soulless political bureaucracy
which supervises and safeguards the life of man from
the cradle to the grave is putting ever greater obstacles in the
way of the solidaric co-operation of human beings and
crushing out every possibility of new development. A system
which in every act of its life sacrifices the welfare of
large sections of the people, yes, of whole nations, to the selfish
lust for power and the economic interests of small

4. minorities must of necessity dissolve all social ties and lead to a
constant war of all against all. This system has
been merely the pacemaker for the great intellectual and social
reaction which finds its expression today in modern
Fascism, far surpassing the obsession for power of the absolute
monarchy of past centuries and seeking to bring
every sphere of human activity under the control of the state.
Just as for the various systems of religious theology,
God is everything and man nothing, so for this modern political
theology, the state is everything and the man
nothing. And just as behind the "will of God" there always lay
hidden the will of privileged minorities, so today
there hides behind the "will of the state" only the selfish
interest of those who feel called to interpret this will in
their own sense and to force it upon the people.
Anarchist ideas are to be found in every period of known
history, although there still remains a good deal of work
for historical work in this field. We encounter them in the
Chinese sage, Lao-Tse (The Course and The Right Way)
and in the later Greek philosophers, the Hedonists and Cynics
and other advocates of so-called "natural right," and
in particular in Zeno who, at the opposite pole from Plato,
founded the Stoic school. They found expression in the
teaching of the Gnostic, Karpocrates, in Alexandria, and had an
unmistakable influence on certain Christian sects of
the Middle Ages in France, Germany and Holland, almost all of
which fell victims to the most savage persecutions.
In the history of the Bohemian reformation they found a
powerful champion in Peter Chelcicky, who in his work,
"The Net of Faith," passed the same judgement on the church
and the state as Tolstoy did later. Among the great
humanists there was Rabelais, who in his description of the
happy Abbey of Thélème (Gargantua) presented a
picture of life freed from all authoritarian restraints. Of other
pioneers of libertarian thinking we will mention here

5. only La Boétie, Sylvan Maréchal, and, above all, Diderot, in
whose voluminous writings one finds thickly strewn
the utterances of a truly great mind which had rid itself of every
authoritarian prejudice.
Meanwhile, it was reserved for more recent history to give clear
form to the anarchist perception of life and to
connect it with the immediate processes of social evolution.
This was done for the first time in William Godwin's
splendidly conceived work, Concerning Political Justice and its
Influence upon General Virtue and Happiness,
London, 1793. Godwin's work was, we might say, the ripened
fruit of that long evolution of the concepts of
political and social radicalism in England which proceeds in a
continuous line from George Buchanan through
Richard Hooker, Gerard Winstanley, Algernon Sidney, John
Locke, Robert Wallace and John Bellers to Jeremy
Bentham, Joseph Priestley, Richard Price and Thomas Paine.
Godwin recognised very clearly that the cause of social evils is
to be sought, not in the form of the state, but in its
very existence. Just as the state presents only a caricature of a
genuine society, so also it makes of human beings
who are held under its eternal guardianship merely caricatures
of their real selves by constantly compelling them to
repress their natural inclinations and holding them to things that
are repugnant to their inner impulses. Only in this
way is it possible to mould human beings to the established
form of good subjects. A normal human being who was
not interfered with in his natural development would of himself
shape the environment that suits his inborn demand
for peace and freedom.
But Godwin also recognised that human beings can only live
together naturally and freely when the proper
economic conditions for this are given, and when the individual

6. is no longer subject to exploitation by another, a
consideration which the representatives of mere political
radicalism almost completely overlooked. hence they were
later compelled to make consistently greater concessions to that
power of the state which they had wished to restrict
to a minimum. Godwin's idea of a stateless society assumed the
social ownership of all natural and social wealth,
and the carrying on of economic life by the free co-operation of
the producers; in this sense he was really the
founder of the later communist Anarchism.
Godwin's work had a very strong influence on advanced circles
of the English workers and the more enlightened
sections of the liberal intelligentsia. Most important of all, he
contributed to give to the young socialist movement
in England, which found its maturest exponents in Robert
Owen, John Gray and William Thompson, that
unmistakable libertarian character which it had for a long time,
and which it never assumed in Germany and many
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other countries.
But a far greater influence on the development of Anarchist
theory was that of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, one of the
most intellectually gifted and certainly the most many-sided
writer of whom modern socialism can boast. Proudhon
was completely rooted in the intellectual and social life of his
period, and these inspired his attitude upon every
question he dealt with. Therefore, he is not to be judged, as he
has been by even by many of his later followers, by

7. his special practical proposals, which were born of the needs of
the hour. Amongst the numerous socialist thinkers
of his time he was the one who understood most profoundly the
cause of social maladjustment, and possessed,
besides, the greatest breadth of vision. He was the outspoken
opponent of all systems, and saw in social evolution
the eternal urge to new and higher forms of intellectual and
social life, and it was his conviction that this evolution
could not be bound by any abstract general formulas.
Proudhon opposed the influence of the Jacobin tradition, which
dominated the thinking of the French democrats
and of most of the Socialists of that period with the same
determination as the interference of the central state and
economic policy in the natural processes of social advance. To
rid society of these two cancerous growths was for
him the great task of the nineteenth-century revolution.
Proudhon was no communist. He condemned property as
merely the privilege of exploitation, but he recognised the
ownership of the instruments of production by all, made
effective by industrial groups bound to one another by free
contract, so long as this right was not made to serve the
exploitation of others and as long as the full product of his
individual labour was assured to every human being.
This organisation based on reciprocity (mutualité) guarantees
the enjoyment of equal rights by each in exchange for
equal services. The average working time required for the
completion of any product becomes the measure of its
value and is the basis of mutual exchange. In this way capital is
deprived of its usurial power and is completely
bound up with the performance of work. By being made
available to all it ceases to be an instrument for
exploitation.
Such a form of economy makes an political coercive apparatus
superfluous. Society becomes a league of free

8. communities which arrange their affairs according to need, by
themselves or in association with others, and in
which man's freedom finds in the freedom of others not its
limitation, but its security and confirmation. "The freer,
the more independent and enterprising the individual is in a
society, the better for the society." This organisation of
Federalism in which Proudhon saw the immediate future sets no
definite limitations on further possibilities of
development, and offers the widest scope to every individual
and social activity. Starting out from this point of view
of the federation, Proudhon combated likewise the aspirations
for political activity of the awakening nationalism of
the time, and in particular that nationalism which found in
Mazzini, Garibaldi, Lelewel, and others, such strong
advocates. In this respect also he saw more clearly than most of
his contemporaries. Proudhon exerted a strong
influence on the development of socialism, which made itself
felt especially in the Latin countries. But the so-called
individual Anarchism, which found able exponents in America
in such men as Josiah Warren, Stephen Pearl
Andrews, William B. Greene, Lysander Spooner, Francis D.
Tandy, and most notably in Benjamin R. Tucker ran in
similar lines, though none of its representatives could approach
Proudhon's breadth of view.
Anarchism found a unique expression in Max Stirner's (Johann
Kaspar Schmidt's) book, Der Einzige und sein
Eigentum (The Ego and His Own), which, it is true, quickly
passed into oblivion and had no influence at all on the
Anarchist movement as such -- though it was to experience an
unexpected resurrection fifty years later. Stirner's
book is pre-eminently a philosophical work which traces man's
dependence on so-called higher powers through all
its devious ways, and is not timid about drawing inferences
from the knowledge gained by the survey. It is the book
of a conscious and deliberate insurgent, which reveals no

9. reverence for any authority, however exalted, and
therefore impels powerfully to independent thinking.
Anarchism found a virile champion of vigorous revolutionary
energy in Michael Bakunin, who took his stand upon
the teachings of Proudhon, but extended them on the economic
side when he, along with the collectivist wing of the
First International, came out for the collective ownership of the
land and of all other means of production, and
wished to restrict the right of private ownership to the full
product of individual labour. Bakunin also was an
opponent of Communism, which in his time had a thoroughly
authoritarian character, like that which it has again
assumed today in Bolshevism. In one of his four speeches at the
Congress of the League of Peace and Freedom in
Bern (1868), he said: "I am not a Communist because
Communism unites all forces of society in the state and
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becomes absorbed in it; because it inevitably leads to the
concentration of all property in the hands of the state,
while I seek the abolition of the state -- the complete
elimination of the principle of authority and governmental
guardianship, which under the pretence of making men moral
and civilising them, has up to now always enslaved,
oppressed, exploited and ruined them."
Bakunin was a determined revolutionary and did no believe in
an amicable adjustment of the existing class conflict.
He recognised that the ruling classes blindly and stubbornly
opposed even the slightest social reform, and

10. accordingly saw the only salvation in an international social
revolution, which should abolish all the ecclestical,
political, military, bureaucratic and judicial institutions of the
existing social system and introduce in their stead a
federation of free workers' associations to provide for the
requirements of daily life. Since he, like so many of his
contemporaries, believed in the close proximity of the
revolution, he directed all his vast energy to combine all the
genuinely revolutionary and libertarian elements within and
without the International to safeguard the coming
revolution against any dictatorship or retrogression to the old
conditions. Thus he became in a very special sense
the reator of the modern Anarchist movement.
Anarchism found a valuable advocate in Peter Kropotkin, who
set himself the task of making the achievements of
modern natural science available for the development of the
sociological concepts of Anarchism. In his ingenious
book Mutual Aid -- a Factor of Evolution, he entered the lists
against so-called Social Darwinism, whose exponents
tried to prove the inevitability of the existing social conditions
from the Darwinian theory of the struggle for
existence by raising the struggle of the strong against the weak
to the status of an iron law for all natural processes,
to which even man is subject. In reality this conception was
strongly influenced by the Malthusian doctrine that
life's table is not spread for all, and that the unneeded will just
have to reconcile themselves to this fact.
Kropotkin showed that this conception of nature as a field of
unrestricted warfare is only a caricature of real life,
and that along with the brutal struggle for existence, which is
fought out with tooth and claw, there exists in nature
another principle which is expressed in the social combination
of the weaker species and the maintenance of races
by the evolution of social instincts and mutual aid.

11. In this sense man is not the creator of society, but society is the
creator of man, for he inherited from the that
preceded him the social instinct which alone enabled him to
maintain himself in his first environment against the
physical superiority of other species, and to make sure of an
undreamed-of height of development. This second
tendency in the struggle for existence is far superior to the first,
as is shown by the steady retrogression of those
species which have no social life and are dependent merely
upon their physical strength. This view, which today is
meeting with consistently wider acceptance in the natural
sciences and in social research, opened wholly new vistas
to speculation concerning human evolution.
The fact is that even under the worst despotism most of man's
personal relations with his fellows are arranged by
free agreement and solidaric co-operations, without which
social life would not be possible at all. If this were not
the case even the strongest coercive arrangements of the state
would not be able to maintain the social order for a
single day. However, these natural forms of behaviour, which
arise from man's inmost nature, are today constantly
interfered with and crippled by the effects of economic
exploitation and governmental guardianship, which
represents in human society the brutal form of the struggle for
existence, which has to be overcome by the other
form of mutual aid and free co-operation. The consciousness of
personal responsibility and that other precious good
that has come down to man by inheritance from remote
antiquity: that capacity for sympathy with others in which
all social ethics, all ideas of social justice, have their origin,
develop best in freedom.
Like Bakunin, Kropotkin too was a revolutionary. But he, like
Élisée Reclus and others, saw in revolution only a

12. special phase of the evolutionary process, which appears when
new social aspirations are so restricted in their
natural development by authority that they have to shatter the
old shell by violence before they can function as new
factors in human life. In contrast to Proudhon and Bakunin,
Kropotkin advocated community ownership, not only
of the means of production, but of the products of labour as
well, as it was his opinion that in the present status of
technique no exact measure of the value of individual labour is
possible, but that, on the other hand, by a rational
direction of our modern methods of labour it will be possible to
assure comparative abundance to every human
being. Communist Anarchism, which before him had already
been urged by Joseph Dejacque, Élisée Reclus, Errico
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Malatesta, Carlo Cafiero, and others, and which is advocated by
the great majority of Anarchists today, found in
him one of its most brilliant exponents.
Mention must also be made here of Leo Tolstoy, who took from
primitive Christianity and, on the basis of the
ethical principles laid down in the gospels, arrived at the idea of
a society without rulership. 1
Common to all Anarchists is the desire to free society of all
political and social coercive institutions which stand in
the way of development of a free humanity. In this sense
Mutualism, Collectivism and Communism are not to be
regarded as closed systems permitting no further development,
but merely as economic assumptions as to the means

13. of safeguarding a free community. There will even probably be
in society of the future different forms of economic
co-operation operating side by side, since any social progress
must be associated with that free experiment and
practical testing out for which in a society of free communities
there will be afforded every opportunity.
The same holds true for the various methods of Anarchism.
Most Anarchists of our time are convinced that a social
transformation of society cannot be brought about without
violent revolutionary convulsions. The violence of these
convulsions, of course, depends upon the strength of the
resistance which the ruling classes will be able to oppose
to the realisation of the new ideas. The wider the circles which
are inspired with the idea of a reorganisation of
society in the spirit of freedom and Socialism, the easier will be
the birth pains of the coming social revolution.
In modern anarchism we have the confluence of the two great
currents which during and since the French
Revolution have found such characteristic expression in the
intellectual life of Europe: Socialism and Liberalism.
Modern Socialism developed when profound observers in social
life came to see more and more clearly that
political constitutions and changes in the form of government
could never get to the bottom of that great problem
that we call "the social question." Its supporters recognised that
a social equalising of human beings , despite the
loveliest of theoretical assumptions, is not possible so long as
people are separated into classes on the basis of their
owning or not owning property, classes whose mere existence
excludes in advance any thought of a genuine
community. And so there developed the recognition that only by
elimination of economic monopolies and common
ownership of the means of production, in a word, by a complete
transformation of all economic conditions and

14. social institutions associated with them, does a condition of
social justice become thinkable, a status in which
society shall become a genuine community, and human labour
shall no longer serve the ends of exploitation, but
shall serve to assure abundance to everyone. But as soon as
Socialism began to assemble its forces and became a
movement, there at once came to light certain differences of
opinion due to the influence of the social environment
in different countries. It is a fact that every political concept
from theocracy to Cæsarism and dictatorship have
affected certain factions in the Socialist movement. meanwhile,
there have been two great currents in political
thought which have been of decisive significance for the
development of Socialistic ideals: Liberalism, which
powerfully stimulated advanced minds in the Anglo-Saxon
countries and Spain, in particular, and Democracy in the
later sense to which Rousseau gave expression in his Social
Contract, and which found its most influential
representatives in French Jacobinism. While liberation in its
social theorising started off from the individual and
wished to limit the state's activities to a minimum, Democracy
took its stand on an abstract collective concept,
Rousseau's "general will," which it sought to fix in the national
state.
Liberalism and Democracy were preeminently political
concepts, and since the great majority of the original
adherents of both maintained the right of ownership in the old
sense, these had to renounce them both when
economic development took a course which could not be
practically reconciled with the original principles of
Democracy, and still less with those of Liberalism. Democracy,
with its motto of "all citizens equal before the law,"
and Liberalism with its "right of man over his own person,"
both shipwrecked on the realities of the capitalist
economic form. So long as millions of human beings in every

15. country had to sell their labour-power to a small
minority of owners, and to sink into the most wretched misery if
they could find no buyers, the so-called "equality
before the law" remains merely a pious fraud, since the laws are
made by those who find themselves in possession
of the social wealth. But in the same way there can also be no
talk of a "right over one's own person," for that right
ends when one is compelled to submit to the economic dictation
of another if he does not want to starve.
Anarchism has in common with Liberalism the idea that the
happiness and prosperity of the individual must be the
standard of all social matters. And, in common with the great
representatives of Liberal thought, it has also the idea
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of limiting the functions of government to a minimum. Its
supporters have followed this thought to its ultimate
logical consequences, and wish to eliminate every institution of
political power from the life of society. When
Jefferson clothes the basic concept of Liberalism in the words:
"that government is best which governs least," then
Anarchists say with Thoreau: "That government is best which
governs not at all."
In common with the founders of socialism, Anarchists demand
the abolition of all economic monopolies and the
common ownership of the soil and all other means of
production, the use of which must be available for all without
distinction; for personal and social freedom is conceivable only
on the basis of equal economic advantages for

16. everybody. Within the socialist movement itself the Anarchists
represent the viewpoint that the war against
capitalism must be at the same time a war against all
institutions of political power, for in history economic
exploitation has always gone hand in hand with political and
social oppression. The exploitation of man by man and
the dominion of man over man are inseparable, and each is the
condition of the other.
As long as within society a possessing and a non-possessing
group of human beings face one another in enmity, the
state will be indispensable to the possessing minority for the
protection of its privileges. when this condition of
social injustice vanishes to give place to a higher order of
things, which shall recognise no special rights and shall
have as its basic assumption the community of social interests,
government over men must yield the field to the to
the administration of economic and social affairs, or to speak
with Saint-Simon: "The time will come when the art
of governing man will disappear. A new art will take its place,
the art of administering things."
And his disposes of the theory maintained by Marx and his
followers that the state, in the form of a proletarian
dictatorship, is a necessary transitional stage to a classless
society, in which the state after the elimination of all
class conflicts and then of classes themselves, will dissolve
itself and vanish from the canvas. This concept, which
completely mistakes the real nature of the state and the
significance in history of the factor of political power, is
only the logical outcome of so-called economic materialism,
which sees in all the phenomena of history merely the
inevitable effects of the methods of production of the time.
Under the influence of this theory people came to regard
the different forms of the state and all other social institutions
as a "juridical and political superstructure" on the

17. "economic edifice" of society, and thought that they had found
in that theory the key to every historical process. In
reality every section of history affords us thousands of
examples of the way in which the economic development of
a country has been set back for centuries and forced into
prescribed forms by particular struggles for political
power.
Before the rise of the ecclesiastical monarchy Spain was
industrially the most advanced country in Europe and held
the first place in economic production in almost every field. But
a century after the triumph of the Christian
monarchy most of its industries had disappeared. What was left
of then survived only in the most wretched
conditions. In most industries they had reverted to the most
primitive methods of production. Agriculture collapsed,
canals and waterways fell into ruin, and vast stretches of
country were transformed into deserts. Down to this day
Spain has never recovered from that setback. The aspirations of
a particular caste for political power had laid
economic development fallow for centuries.
Princely absolutism in Europe, with its silly "economic
ordinances" and "industrial legislation," which punished
severely any deviation from the prescribed methods of
production and permitted no new inventions, blocked
industrial progress in European countries for centuries, and
prevented its natural development. And were there not
considerations of political power which after the World War
constantly balked any escape from the universal
economic crisis and delivered the future of whole countries to
politics-playing generals and political adventurers?
Who will assert that modern Fascism was an inevitable result of
economic development?
In Russia, however, where the so-called "proletarian

18. dictatorship" has ripened into reality, the aspirations of a
particular party for political power have prevented any truly
socialistic reconstruction of economy and have forced
the country into the slavery of a grinding state-capitalism. The
"dictatorship of the proletariat," in which naive souls
wish to see merely a passing, but inevitable, transition stage to
real Socialism, has today grown into a frightful
despotism, which lags behind the tyranny of the Fascist states in
nothing.
The assertion that the state must continue to exist until class
conflicts, and classes with them, disappear, sounds, in
the light of all historical experience, almost like a bad joke.
Every type of political power presupposes some
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particular form of human slavery, for the maintenance of which
it is called into being. Just as outwardly, that is, in
relation to other states, the state has to create certain artificial
antagonisms in order to justify its existence, so also
internally the cleavage of society into castes, ranks, and classes
is an essential condition of its continuance. The
state is capable only of protecting old privileges and creating
new ones; in that its whole significance is exhausted.
A new state which has been brought into existence by a social
revolution can put an end to the privileges of the old
ruling classes, but it can do this only by immediately setting up
a new privileged class, which it will require for the
maintenance of its rulership. The development of the Bolshevist
bureaucracy in Russia under the alleged

19. dictatorship of the proletariat -- which has never been anything
but the dictatorship of a small clique over the
proletariat and the entire Russian people -- is merely a new
instance of an old historical experience which has
repeated itself uncountable times. This new ruling class, which
today is rapidly growing into a new aristocracy, is
set apart from the great masses of Russian peasants and workers
just as clearly as are the privileged castes and
classes in other countries from the mass of their peoples.
It could perhaps be objected that the new Russian commisar-
ocracy cannot be put up on the same footing as the
powerful financial and industrial oligarchies of capitalist states.
But the objection will not hold. It is not the size or
the extent of the privilege that matters, but its immediate effect
on the daily life of the average human being. An
American working man who, under moderately decent working
conditions, earns enough to feed, clothe and house
himself humanely and has enough left over to provide himself
with some cultured enjoyments, feels the possession
of millions by the Mellons and Morgans less than a man who
earns hardly enough to satisfy his most urgent
necessities [and who] feels the privileges of a little caste of
bureaucrats, even if these are not millionaires. People
who can scarcely get enough dry bread to satisfy their hunger,
who live in squalid rooms which they are often
obliged to share with strangers, and who, on top of this, are
compelled to work under an intensified speed-up
system which raises their productive capacity to the utmost, can
but feel the privileges of an upper class which lacks
nothing, much more keenly than their class comrades in
capitalist countries. And this situation becomes still more
unbearable when a despotic state denies to the lower classes the
right to complain of existing conditions, so that any
protest is made at the risk of their lives.

20. But even a far greater degree of economic equality than exists
in Russia would still be no guarantee against political
and social oppression. It is just this which Marxism and all the
other schools of authoritarian Socialism have never
understood. Even in prison, in the cloister or in the barracks one
finds a fairly high degree of economic equality, as
all the inmates are provided with the same dwelling, the same
food, the same uniform and the same tasks. The
ancient Inca state in Peru and the Jesuit state in Paraguay had
brought equal economic provision for every
inhabitant to a fixed system, but in spite of this the vilest
despotism prevailed there, and the human being was
merely the automaton of a higher will, on whose decisions he
had not the slightest influence. It was not without
reason that Proudhon saw in a "Socialism" without freedom the
worst from of slavery. The urge for social justice
can only develop properly and be effective when it grows out of
man's sense of personal freedom and is based on
that. In other words Socialism will be free or it will not be at
all. In its recognition of this lies the genuine and
profound justification for the existence of Anarchism.
Institutions serve the same purpose in the life of society as
bodily organs do in plants or animals: they are the
organs of the social body. Organs do not rise arbitrarily, but
because of the definite necessities of the physical and
social environment. the eye of a deep-sea fish is formed very
differently from that of an animal that lives on land,
because it has to satisfy quite different demands. Changed
conditions of life produce changed organs. but the organ
always performs the function it was evolved to perform, or a
related one. And it gradually disappears or becomes
rudimentary as soon as its function is no longer necessary to the
organism. But an organ never takes on a function
that does not accord with its proper purpose.

21. The same is true of social institutions. They, too, do not rise
arbitrarily, but are called into being by special social
needs to serve definite purposes. In this way this modern state
was evolved after monopoly economy, and the class
divisions associated with them had begun to make themselves
more and more conspicuous in the framework of the
old social order. The newly arise possessing classes had need of
a political instrument of power to maintain their
economic and social privileges over the masses of their own
people, and to impose them from without on other
groups of human beings. Thus arose the appropriate social
conditions for the evolution of the modern state, as the
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organ of political power of privileged castes and classes for the
forcible subjugation and oppression of the non-
possessing classes. This task is the political lifework of the
state, the essential reason for it existing at all. And to
this task it has always remained faithful, must remain faithful,
for it cannot escape from its skin.
Its external forms have altered in the course of its historical
development, but its functions have always remained
the same. They have even been constantly broadened in just the
measure in which its supporters have succeeded in
making further fields of social activity subservient to their
needs. Whether the state be monarchy or republic,
whether historically it is anchored to autocracy or in a national
constitution, its function remains always the same.
And just as the functions of the bodily organs of plants and
animals cannot be arbitrarily altered, so that, for

22. example, one cannot at will hear with his eyes and see with his
ears, so also one cannot at pleasure transform an
organ of social oppression into an instrument for the liberation
of the oppressed. The state can only be what it is: the
defender of mass exploitation and social privileges, the creator
of privileged classes and castes and of new
monopolies. Who fails to recognise this function of the state
does not understand the real nature of the present
social order at all, and is incapable of pointing out to humanity
new outlooks for its social evolution.
Anarchism is no patent solution for all human problems, no
Utopia of a perfect social order, as it has so often been
called, since on principle it rejects all absolute schemes and
concepts. It does not believe in any absolute truth, or in
definite final goals for human development, but in an unlimited
perfectibility of social arrangements and human
living conditions, which are always straining after higher forms
of expression, and to which for this reason one can
assign no definite terminus nor set any fixed goal. The worst
crime of any type of state is just that it always tries to
force the rich diversity of social life into definite forms and
adjust it to one particular form, which allows for no
wider outlook and regards the previously exciting status as
finished. The stronger its supporters feel themselves, the
more completely they succeed in bringing every field of social
life into their service, the more crippling is their
influence on the operation of all creative cultural forces, the
more unwholesomely does it affect the intellectual and
social development of any particular epoch.
The so-called totalitarian state, which now rests like a
mountain-weight upon whole peoples and tries to mould
every expression of their intellectual and social life to the
lifeless pattern set by a political providence, suppresses
with ruthless and brutal force every effort at alteration of the

23. existing conditions. The totalitarian state is a dire
omen for our time, and shows with frightful clarity whither such
a return to the barbarity of past centuries must
lead. It is the triumph of the political machine over mind, the
rationalising of human thought, feeling and behaviour
according to the established rules of the officials. It is
consequently the end of all intellectual culture.
Anarchism recognises only the relative significance of ideas,
institutions and social forms. It is therefore not a
fixed, self-enclosed social system, but rather a definite trend in
the historic development of mankind, which, in
contrast with the intellectual guardianship of all clerical and
governmental institutions, strives for the free
unhindered unfolding of all the individual and social forces in
life. Even freedom is only a relative, not an absolute
concept, since it tends constantly to become broader and affect
wider circles in more manifold ways. For the
Anarchist, freedom is not an abstract philosophical concept, but
the vital concrete possibility for every human being
to bring to full development all the powers, capacities and
talents with which nature has endowed him, and turn
them to social account. The less this natural development of
man is influenced by ecclesiastical or political
guardianship, the more efficient and harmonious will human
personality become, the more will it become the
measure of the society in which it has grown.
This is the reason why all great culture periods in history have
been periods of political weakness. And that is quite
natural, for political systems are always set upon the
mechanising and not upon the organic development of social
forces. State and culture are in the depth of their being
irreconcilable opposites. Nietzsche recognised this very
clearly when he wrote:

24. "No one can finally spend more than he has. That holds good for
individuals; it holds good for peoples.
If one spends oneself for power, for high politics, for
husbandry, for commerce, parliamentarism,
military interests -- if one gives away that amount of reason,
earnestness, will, self-mastery, which
constitutes one's real self for one thing, he will not have it for
the other. Culture and the state -- let no
one be deceived about this -- are antagonists: the 'Culture State'
is merely a modern idea. The one lives
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on the other, the one prospers at the expense of the other. All
great periods of culture are periods of
political decline. Whatever is great in a cultured sense is non
political, is even anti-political."
A powerful state mechanism is the greatest hindrance to any
higher cultural development. Where the state has been
attacked by internal decay, where the influence of political
power on the creative forces of society is reduced to a
minimum, there culture thrives best, for political rulership
always strives for uniformity and tends to subject every
aspect of social life to its guardianship. And in this it finds
itself in inescapable contradiction to the creative
aspirations of cultural development, which is always on the
quest after new forms and fields of social activity, and
for which freedom of expression, the manysidedness and the
kaleidoscopic changes of things, are just as vitally
necessary as rigid forms, dead rules and the forcible
suppression of every manifestation of social life which are in

25. contradiction to it.
Every culture, if its natural development is not too much
affected by political restrictions, experiences a perpetual
renewal of the formative urge, and out of that comes an ever
growing diversity of creative activity. Every successful
piece of work stirs the desire for greater perfection and deeper
inspiration; each new form becomes the herald of
new possibilities of development. But the state creates no
culture, as is so often thoughtlessly asserted; it only tries
to keep things as they are, safely anchored to stereotypes. That
has been the reason for all revolutions in history.
Power operates only destructively, bent always on forcing every
manifestation of life into the straitjacket of its
laws. Its intellectual form of expression is dead dogma, its
physical form brute force. And this unintelligence of its
objectives sets its stamp on its supporters also and renders them
stupid and brutal, even when they were originally
endowed with the best of talents. One who is constantly striving
to force everything into a mechanical order at last
becomes a machine himself and loses all human feeling.
It was from the understanding of this that modern Anarchism
was born and now draws its moral force. Only
freedom can inspire men to great things and bring about social
and political transformations. The art of ruling men
has never been the art of educating men and inspiring them to a
new shaping of their lives. Dreary compulsion has
at its command only lifeless drill, which smothers any vital
initiative at its birth and can bring forth only subjects,
not free men. Freedom is the very essence of life, the impelling
force in all intellectual and social development, the
creator of every new outlook for the future of mankind. The
liberation of man from economic exploitation and from
intellectual and political oppression, which finds its finest

26. expression in the world-philosophy of Anarchism, is the
first prerequisite for the evolution of a higher social culture and
a new humanity.
Notes
1 The reader will find in the works of Max Nettlau listed in the
bibliography a very well informed hisory of
Anarchist doctrines and movements.
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LIBERALISM A N D
WORLD POLITICS
MICHAEL W. DOYLE
Johns Hopkins University
fuilding on a growing literature in international political
science, I
reexamine the traditional liberal claim that governments
founded on a respect for
individual liberty exercise "restraint" and "peaceful intentions"
in their foreign policy. I
look at three distinct theoretical traditions of liberalism,
attributable to three theorists:
Schumpeter, a democratic capitalist whose explanation of
liberal pacifism we often
invoke; Machiavelli, a classical republican whose glory is an

27. imperialism we often
practice; and Kant, a liberal republican whose theory of
internationalism best accounts
for what we are. Despite the contradictions of liberal pacifism
and liberal imperialism, I
find, with Kant and other democratic republicans, that
liberalism does leave a coherent
legacy on foreign affairs. Liberal states are different. They are
indeed peaceful. They are
also prone to make war. Liberal states have created a separate
peace, as Kant argued
they would, and have also discovered liberal reasons for
aggression, as he feared they
might. I conclude by arguing that the differences among liberal
pacifism, liberal
imperialism, and Kant's internationalism are not arbitrary. They
are rooted in differing
conceptions of the citizen and the state.
1 romoting freedom
will produce peace, we have often been
told. In a speech before the British Parlia-
ment in June of 1982, President Reagan
proclaimed that governments founded on
a respect for individual liberty exercise
"restraint" and "peaceful intentions" in
their foreign policy. He then announced a
"crusade for freedom" and a "campaign
for democratic development" (Reagan,
June 9, 1982).
In making these claims the president
joined a long list of liberal theorists (and
propagandists) and echoed an old argu-
ment: the aggressive instincts of
authoritarian leaders and totalitarian rul-

28. ing parties make for war. Liberal states,
founded on such individual rights as
equality before the law, free speech and
other civil liberties, private property, and
elected representation are fundamentally
against war this argument asserts. When
the citizens who bear the burdens of war
elect their governments, wars become im-
possible. Furthermore, citizens appreciate
that the benefits of trade can be enjoyed
only under conditions of peace. Thus the
very existence of liberal states, such as the
U.S., Japan, and our European allies,
makes for peace.
Building on a growing literature in in-
ternational political science, I reexamine
the liberal claim President Reagan re-
iterated for us. I look at three distinct
theoretical traditions of liberalism, at-
tributable to three theorists: Schumpeter,
a brilliant explicator of the liberal
pacifism the president invoked; Machia-
velli, a classical republican whose glory is
an imperialism we often practice; and
Kant.
Despite the contradictions of liberal
pacifism and liberal imperialism, I find,
with Kant and other liberal republicans,
that liberalism does leave a coherent
legacy on foreign affairs. Liberal states are
AMERICAN POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEW
VOL. 80 NO. 4 DECEMBER, 1986

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35. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055400185041
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American Political Science Review Vol. 80
different. They are indeed peaceful, yet
they are also prone to make war, as the
U.S. and our "freedom fighters" are now
doing, not so covertly, against Nicaragua.
Liberal states have created a separate
peace, as Kant argued they would, and
have also discovered liberal reasons for
aggression, as he feared they might. I con-
clude by arguing that the differences
among liberal pacifism, liberal im-
perialism, and Kant's liberal interna-
tionalism are not arbitrary but rooted in
differing conceptions of the citizen and
the state.
Liberal Pacifism
There is no canonical description of
liberalism. What we tend to call liberal
resembles a family portrait of principles
and institutions, recognizable by certain
characteristics—for example, individual
freedom, political participation, private
property, and equality of opportunity—
that most liberal states share, although
none has perfected them all. Joseph
Schumpeter clearly fits within this family
when he considers the international ef-

36. fects of capitalism and democracy.
Schumpeter's "Sociology of Im-
perialisms," published in 1919, made a
coherent and sustained argument con-
cerning the pacifying (in the sense of
nonaggressive) effects of liberal institu-
tions and principles (Schumpeter, 1955;
see also Doyle, 1986, pp. 155-59). Unlike
some of the earlier liberal theorists who
focused on a single feature such as trade
(Montesquieu, 1949, vol. 1, bk. 20, chap.
1) or failed to examine critically the
arguments they were advancing,
Schumpeter saw the interaction of
capitalism and democracy as the founda-
tion of liberal pacifism, and he tested his
arguments in a sociology of historical
imperialisms.
He defines imperialism as "an objectless
disposition on the part of a state
to unlimited forcible expansion"
(Schumpeter, 1955, p. 6). Excluding im-
perialisms that were mere "catchwords"
and those that were "object-ful" (e.g.,
defensive imperialism), he traces the roots
of objectless imperialism to three sources,
each an atavism. Modern imperialism,
according to Schumpeter, resulted from
the combined impact of a "war machine,"
w a r l i k e i n s t i n c t s , a n d export
monopolism.
Once necessary, the war machine later

37. developed a life of its own and took con-
trol of a state's foreign policy: "Created
by the wars that required it, the machine
now created the wars it required"
(Schumpeter, 1955, p. 25). Thus,
Schumpeter tells us that the army of an-
cient Egypt, created to drive the Hyksos
out of Egypt, took over the state and pur-
sued militaristic imperialism. Like the
later armies of the courts of absolutist
Europe, it fought wars for the sake of
glory and booty, for the sake of warriors
and monarchs—wars gratia warriors.
A warlike disposition, elsewhere called
"instinctual elements of bloody
primitivism," is the natural ideology of a
war machine. It also exists independently;
the Persians, says Schumpeter (1955, pp.
25-32), were a warrior nation from the
outset.
Under modern capitalism, export
monopolists, the third source of modern
imperialism, push for imperialist expan-
sion as a way to expand their closed
markets. The absolute monarchies were
the last clear-cut imperialisms.
Nineteenth-century imperialisms merely
represent the vestiges of the imperialisms
created by Louis XIV and Catherine the
Great. Thus, the export monopolists are
an atavism of the absolute monarchies,
for they depend completely on the tariffs
imposed by the monarchs and their
militaristic successors for revenue

38. (Schumpeter, 1955, p. 82-83). Without
tariffs, monopolies would be eliminated
by foreign competition.
Modern (nineteenth century) imperi-
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1986 Liberalism and World Politics
alism, therefore, rests on an atavistic war
machine, militaristic attitudes left over
from the days of monarchical wars, and
export monopolism, which is nothing
more than the economic residue of
monarchical finance. In the modern era,
imperialists gratify their private interests.
From the national perspective, their im-
perialistic wars are objectless.
Schumpeter's theme now emerges.
Capitalism and democracy are forces for
peace. Indeed, they are antithetical to im-
perialism. For Schumpeter, the further
development of capitalism and democ-
racy means that imperialism will inev-
itably disappear. He maintains that
capitalism produces an unwarlike disposi-
tion; its populace is "democratized, in-
dividualized, rationalized" (Schumpeter,
1955, p. 68). The people's energies are

45. daily absorbed in production. The
disciplines of industry and the market
train people in "economic rationalism";
the instability of industrial life
necessitates calculation. Capitalism also
"individualizes"; "subjective oppor-
tunities" replace the "immutable factors"
of traditional, hierarchical society. Ra-
tional individuals demand democratic
governance.
Democratic capitalism leads to peace.
As evidence, Schumpeter claims that
throughout the capitalist world an op-
position has arisen to "war, expansion,
cabinet diplomacy"; that contemporary
capitalism is associated with peace par-
ties; and that the industrial worker of
capitalism is "vigorously anti-imperialist."
In addition, he points out that the capital-
ist world has developed means of prevent-
ing war, such as the Hague Court and that
the least feudal, most capitalist society—
the United States—has demonstrated the
least imperialistic tendencies (Schumpeter,
1955, pp. 95-96). An example of the lack
of imperialistic tendencies in the U.S.,
Schumpeter thought, was our leaving
over half of Mexico unconquered in the
war of 1846-48.
Schumpeter's explanation for liberal
pacifism is quite simple: Only war profi-
teers and military aristocrats gain from
wars. No democracy would pursue a
minority interest and tolerate the high

46. costs of imperialism. When free trade
prevails, "no class" gains from forcible
expansion because
foreign raw materials and food stuffs are as
accessible to each nation as though they were in
its own territory. Where the cultural backward-
ness of a region makes normal economic inter-
course dependent on colonization it does not
matter, assuming free trade, which of the
"civilized" nations undertakes the task of coloni-
zation. (Schumpeter, 1955, pp. 75-76)
Schumpeter's arguments are difficult to
evaluate. In partial tests of quasi-
Schumpeterian propositions, Michael
Haas (1974, pp. 464-65) discovered a
cluster that associates democracy,
development, and sustained moderniza-
tion with peaceful conditions. However,
M. Small and J. D. Singer (1976) have
discovered that there is no clearly
negative correlation between democracy
and war in the period 1816-1965—the
period that would be central to
Schumpeter's argument (see also
Wilkenfeld, 1968, Wright, 1942, p. 841).
Later in his career, in Capitalism,
Socialism, and Democracy, Schumpeter,
(1950, pp. 127-28) acknowledged that
"almost purely bourgeois common-
wealths were often aggressive when it
seemed to pay—like the Athenian or the
Venetian commonwealths." Yet he stuck
to his pacifistic guns, restating the view

47. that capitalist democracy "steadily tells
. . . against the use of military force and
for peaceful arrangements, even when the
balance of pecuniary advantage is clearly
on the side of war which, under modern
circumstances, is not in general very like-
ly" (Schumpeter, 1950, p. 128).* A recent
study by R. J. Rummel (1983) of "liber-
tarianism" and international violence is
the closest test Schumpeterian pacifism
has received. "Free" states (those enjoying
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American Political Science Review Vol. 80
political and economic freedom) were
shown to have considerably less conflict
at or above the level of economic sanc-
tions than "nonfree" states. The free
states, the partly free states (including the
democratic socialist countries such as
Sweden), and the nonfree states ac-
counted for 24%, 26%, and 61%, respec-
tively, of the international violence
during the period examined.
These effects are impressive but not
conclusive for the Schumpeterian thesis.
The data are limited, in this test, to the
period 1976 to 1980. It includes, for ex-

54. ample, the Russo-Afghan War, the Viet-
namese invasion of Cambodia, China's
invasion of Vietnam, and Tanzania's in-
vasion of Uganda but just misses the U.S.,
quasi-covert intervention in Angola
(1975) and our not so covert war against
Nicaragua (1981-). More importantly, it
excludes the cold war period, with its
numerous interventions, and the long
history of colonial wars (the Boer War,
the Spanish-American War, the Mexican
Intervention, etc.) that marked the
history of liberal, including democratic
capitalist, states (Doyle, 1983b; Chan,
1984; Weede, 1984).
The discrepancy between the warlike
history of liberal states and Schumpeter's
pacifistic expectations highlights three ex-
treme assumptions. First, his "material-
istic monism" leaves little room for
noneconomic objectives, whether es-
poused by states or individuals. Neither
glory, nor prestige, nor ideological
justification, nor the pure power of ruling
shapes policy. These nonmaterial goals
leave little room for positive-sum gains,
such as the comparative advantages of
trade. Second, and relatedly, the same is
true for his states. The political life of
individuals seems to have been homogen-
ized at the same time as the individuals
were "rationalized, individualized, and
democratized." Citizens—capitalists and
workers, rural and urban—seek material
welfare. Schumpeter seems to presume

55. that ruling makes no difference. He also
presumes that no one is prepared to take
those measures (such as stirring up foreign
quarrels to preserve a domestic ruling
coalition) that enhance one's political
power, despite deterimental effects on
mass welfare. Third, like domestic
politics, world politics are homogenized.
Materially monistic and democratically
capitalist, all states evolve toward free
trade and liberty together. Countries dif-
ferently constituted seem to disappear
from Schumpeter's analysis. "Civilized"
nations govern "culturally backward"
regions. These assumptions are not shared
by Machiavelli's theory of liberalism.
Liberal Imperialism
Machiavelli argues, not only that
republics are not pacifistic, but that they
are the best form of state for imperial
expansion. Establishing a republic fit for
imperial expansion is, moreover, the best
way to guarantee the survival of a state.
Machiavelli's republic is a classical
mixed republic. It is not a democracy—
which he thought would quickly degen-
erate into a tyranny—but is characterized
by social equality, popular liberty, and
political participation (Machiavelli, 1950,
bk. 1, chap. 2, p. 112; see also Huliung,
1983, chap. 2; Mansfield, 1970; Pocock,
1975, pp. 198-99; Skinner, 1981, chap. 3).

56. The consuls serve as "kings," the senate as
an aristocracy managing the state, and the
people in the assembly as the source of
strength.
Liberty results from "disunion"—the
competition and necessity for com-
promise required by the division of
powers among senate, consuls, and
tribunes (the last representing the com-
mon people). Liberty also results from the
popular veto. The powerful few threaten
the rest with tyranny, Machiavelli says,
because they seek to dominate. The mass
demands not to be dominated, and their
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veto thus preserves the liberties of the
state (Machiavelli, 1950, bk. 1, chap. 5, p.
122). However, since the people and the
rulers have different social characters, the
people need to be "managed" by the few
to avoid having their recklessness over-
turn or their fecklessness undermine
the ability of the state to expand
(Machiavelli, 1950, bk. 1, chap. 53, pp.
249-50). Thus the senate and the consuls
plan expansion, consult oracles, and

63. employ religion to manage the resources
that the energy of the people supplies.
Strength, and then imperial expansion,
results from the way liberty encourages
increased population and property, which
grow when the citizens know their lives
and goods are secure from arbitrary
seizure. Free citizens equip large armies
and provide soldiers who fight for public
glory and the common good because these
are, in fact, their own (Machiavelli, 1950,
bk. 2, chap. 2, pp. 287-90). If you seek
the honor of having your state expand,
Machiavelli advises, you should organize
it as a free and popular republic like
Rome, rather than as an aristocratic
republic like Sparta or Venice. Expansion
thus calls for a free republic.
"Necessity"—political survival—calls
for expansion. If a stable aristocratic
republic is forced by foreign conflict "to
extend her territory, in such a case we
shall see her foundations give way and
herself quickly brought to ruin"; if, on the
other hand, domestic security prevails,
"the continued tranquility would enervate
her, or provoke internal disensions,
which together, or either of them
seperately, will apt to prove her ruin"
(Machiavelli, 1950, bk. 1, chap. 6, p.
129). Machiavelli therefore believes it is
necessary to take the constitution of
Rome, rather than that of Sparta or
Venice, as our model.

64. Hence, this belief leads to liberal im-
perialism. We are lovers of glory,
Machiavelli announces. We seek to rule
or, at least, to avoid being oppressed. In
either case, we want more for ourselves
and our states than just material welfare
(materialistic monism). Because other
states with similar aims thereby threaten
us, we prepare ourselves for expansion.
Because our fellow citizens threaten us if
we do not allow them either to satisfy
their ambition or to release their political
energies through imperial expansion, we
expand.
There is considerable historical
evidence for liberal imperialism.
Machiavelli's (Polybius's) Rome and
Thucydides' Athens both were imperial
republics in the Machiavellian sense
(Thucydides, 1954, bk. 6). The historical
record of numerous U.S. interventions in
the postwar period supports Machiavelli's
argument (Aron, 1973, chaps. 3-4;
Barnet, 1968, chap. 11), but the current
record of liberal pacifism, weak as it is,
calls some of his insights into question. To
the extent that the modern populace ac-
tually controls (and thus unbalances) the
mixed republic, its diffidence may out-
weigh elite ("senatorial") aggressiveness.
We can conclude either that (1) liberal
pacifism has at least taken over with the

65. further development of capitalist
democracy, as Schumpeter predicted it
would or that (2) the mixed record of
liberalism—pacifism and imperialism—
indicates that some liberal states are
Schumpeterian democracies while others
are Machiavellian republics. Before we
accept either conclusion, however, we
must consider a third apparent regularity
of modern world politics.
Liberal Internationalism
Modern liberalism carries with it two
legacies. They do not affect liberal states
separately, according to whether they are
pacifistic or imperialistic, but simul-
taneously.
The first of these legacies is the pacifica-
tion of foreign relations among liberal
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American Political Science Review Vol. 80
states.2 During the nineteenth century, the
United States and Great Britain engaged
in nearly continual strife; however, after
the Reform Act of 1832 defined actual
representation as the formal source of the

72. sovereignty of the British parliament,
Britain and the United States negotiated
their disputes. They negotiated despite,
for example, British grievances during the
Civil War against the North's blockade of
the South, with which Britain had close
economic ties. Despite severe Anglo-
French colonial rivalry, liberal France and
liberal Britain formed an entente against
illiberal Germany before World War I.
And from 1914 to 1915, Italy, the liberal
member of the Triple Alliance with Ger-
many and Austria, chose not to fulfill its
obligations under that treaty to support
its allies. Instead, Italy joined in an alli-
ance with Britain and France, which pre-
vented it from having to fight other liberal
states and then declared war on Germany
and Austria. Despite generations of
Anglo-American tension and Britain's
wartime restrictions on American trade
with Germany, the United States leaned
toward Britain and France from 1914 to
1917 before entering World War I on their
side.
Beginning in the eighteenth century and
slowly growing since then, a zone of
peace, which Kant called the "pacific
federation" or "pacific union," has begun
to be established among liberal societies.
More than 40 liberal states currently make
up the union. Most are in Europe and
North America, but they can be found on
every continent, as Appendix 1 indicates.

73. Here the predictions of liberal pacifists
(and President Reagan) are borne out:
liberal states do exercise peaceful
restraint, and a separate peace exists
among them. This separate peace pro-
vides a solid foundation for the United
States' crucial alliances with the liberal
powers, e.g., the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization and our Japanese alliance.
This foundation appears to be impervious
to the quarrels with our allies that be-
deviled the Carter and Reagan adminis-
trations. It also offers the promise of a
continuing peace among liberal states,
and as the number of liberal states in-
creases, it announces the possibility of
global peace this side of the grave or
world conquest.
Of course, the probability of the out-
break of war in any given year between
any two given states is low. The occur-
rence of a war between any two adjacent
states, considered over a long period of
time, would be more probable. The ap-
parent absence of war between liberal
states, whether adjacent or not, for
almost 200 years thus may have sig-
nificance. Similar claims cannot be made
for feudal, fascist, communist, au-
thoritarian, or totalitarian forms of rule
(Doyle, 1983a, pp. 222), nor for plural-
istic or merely similar societies. More
significant perhaps is that when states are
forced to decide on which side of an im-

74. pending world war they will fight, liberal
states all wind up on the same side de-
spite the complexity of the paths that take
them there. These characteristics do not
prove that the peace among liberals is
statistically significant nor that liberalism
is the sole valid explanation for the
peace.3 They do suggest that we consider
the possibility that liberals have indeed
established a separate peace—but only
among themselves.
Liberalism also carries with it a second
legacy: international "imprudence"
(Hume, 1963, pp. 346-47). Peaceful
restraint only seems to work in liberals'
relations with other liberals. Liberal states
have fought numerous wars with non-
liberal states. (For a list of international
wars since 1816 see Appendix 2.)
Many of these wars have been defen-
sive and thus prudent by necessity.
Liberal states have been attacked and
threatened by nonliberal states that do
not exercise any special restraint in their
dealings with the liberal states.
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e
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o
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1986 Liberalism and World Politics

81. Authoritarian rulers both stimulate and
respond to an international political en-
vironment in which conflicts of prestige,
interest, and pure fear of what other states
might do all lead states toward war. War
and conquest have thus characterized the
careers of many authoritarian rulers and
ruling parties, from Louis XIV and
Napoleon to Mussolini's fascists, Hitler's
Nazis, and Stalin's communists.
Yet we cannot simply blame warfare on
the authoritarians or totalitarians, as
many of our more enthusiastic politicians
would have us do.4 Most wars arise out of
calculations and miscalculations of in-
terest, misunderstandings, and mutual
suspicions, such as those that char-
acterized the origins of World War I.
However, aggression by the liberal state
has also characterized a large number of
wars. Both France and Britain fought ex-
pansionist colonial wars throughout the
nineteenth century. The United States
fought a similar war with Mexico from
1846 to 1848, waged a war of annihilation
against the American Indians, and in-
tervened militarily against sovereign
states many times before and after World
War II. Liberal states invade weak
nonliberal states and display striking
distrust in dealings with powerful
nonliberal states (Doyle, 1983b).
Neither realist (statist) nor Marxist

82. theory accounts well for these two
legacies. While they can account for
aspects of certain periods of international
stability (Aron, 1968, pp. 151-54;
Russett, 1985), neither the logic of the
balance of power nor the logic of interna-
tional hegemony explains the separate
peace maintained for more than 150 years
among states sharing one particular form
of governance—liberal principles and in-
stitutions. Balance-of-power theory ex-
pects—indeed is premised upon—flexible
arrangements of geostrategic rivalry that
include preventive war. Hegemonies wax
and wane, but the liberal peace holds.
Marxist "ultra-imperialists" expect a form
of peaceful rivalry among capitalists, but
only liberal capitalists maintain peace.
Leninists expect liberal capitalists to be
aggressive toward nonliberal states, but
they also (and especially) expect them to
be imperialistic toward fellow liberal
capitalists.
Kant's theory of liberal interna-
tionalism helps us understand these two
legacies. The importance of Immanuel
Kant as a theorist of international ethics
has been well appreciated (Armstrong,
1931; Friedrich, 1948; Gallie, 1978, chap.
1; Galston, 1975; Hassner, 1972; Hinsley,
1967, chap. 4; Hoffmann, 1965; Waltz,
1962; Williams, 1983), but Kant also has
an important analytical theory of interna-
tional politics. Perpetual Peace, written in

83. 1795 (Kant, 1970, pp. 93-130), helps us
understand the interactive nature of inter-
national relations. Kant tries to teach us
methodologically that we can study
neither the systemic relations of states nor
the varieties of state behavior in isolation
from each other. Substantively, he antic-
ipates for us the ever-widening pacifica-
tion of a liberal pacific union, explains
this pacification, and at the same time
suggests why liberal states are not pacific
in their relations with nonliberal states.
Kant argues that perpetual peace will be
guaranteed by the ever-widening accept-
ance of three "definitive articles" of peace.
When all nations have accepted the
definitive articles in a metaphorical
"treaty" of perpetual peace he asks them
to sign, perpetual peace will have been
established.
The First Definitive Article requires the
civil constitution of the state to be
republican. By republican Kant means a
political society that has solved the prob-
lem of combining moral autonomy, in-
dividualism, and social order. A private
property and market-oriented economy
partially addressed that dilemma in the
private sphere. The public, or political,
sphere was more troubling. His answer
was a republic that preserved juridical
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90. https://www.cambridge.org/core
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American Political Science Review Vol. 80
freedom—the legal equality of citizens as
subjects—on the basis of a representative
government with a separation of powers.
Juridical freedom is preserved because the
morally autonomous individual is by
means of representation a self-legislator
making laws that apply to all citizens
equally, including himself or herself.
Tyranny is avoided because the in-
dividual is subject to laws he or she does
not also administer (Kant, PP, pp. 99-
102; Riley, 1985, chap. 5).5
Liberal republics will progressively
establish peace among themselves by
means of the pacific federation, or union
(foedus pacificum), described in Kant's
Second Definitive Article. The pacific
union will establish peace within a federa-
tion of free states and securely maintain
the rights of each state. The world will not
have achieved the "perpetual peace" that
provides the ultimate guarantor of repub-
lican freedom until "a late stage and after
many unsuccessful attempts" (Kant, UH,
p. 47). At that time, all nations will have
learned the lessons of peace through right
conceptions of the appropriate constitu-
tion, great and sad experience, and good
will. Only then will individuals enjoy

91. perfect republican rights or the full
guarantee of a global and just peace. In
the meantime, the "pacific federation" of
liberal republics—"an enduring and grad-
ually expanding federation likely to pre-
vent war"—brings within it more and
more republics—despite republican col-
lapses, backsliding, and disastrous wars—
creating an ever-expanding separate peace
(Kant, PP, p. 105).' Kant emphasizes that
it can be shown that this idea of federalism, ex-
tending gradually to encompass all states and
thus leading to perpetual peace, is practicable
and has objective reality. For if by good fortune
one powerful and enlightened nation can form a
republic (which is by nature inclined to seek
peace), this will provide a focal point for federal
association among other states. These will join
up with the first one, thus securing the freedom
of each state in accordance with the idea of inter-
national right, and the whole will gradually
spread further and further by a series of alliances
of this kind. (Kant, PP p. 104)
The pacific union is not a single peace
treaty ending one war, a world state, nor
a state of nations. Kant finds the first in-
sufficient. The second and third are im-
possible or potentially tyrannical. Na-
tional sovereignty precludes reliable
subservience to a state of nations; a world
state destroys the civic freedom on which
the development of human capacities rests
(Kant, UH, p. 50). Although Kant ob-

92. liquely refers to various classical
interstate confederations and modern
diplomatic congresses, he develops no
systematic organizational embodiment of
this treaty and presumably does not find
institutionalization necessary (Riley,
1983, chap. 5; Schwarz, 1962, p. 77). He
appears to have in mind a mutual non-
aggression pact, perhaps a collective
security agreement, and the cosmopolitan
law set forth in the Third Definitive
Article.7
The Third Definitive Article establishes
a cosmopolitan law to operate in conjunc-
tion with the pacific union. The cosmo-
politan law "shall be limited to conditions
of universal hospitality." In this Kant calls
for the recognition of the "right of a for-
eigner not to be treated with hostility
when he arrives on someone else's terri-
tory." This "does not extend beyond those
conditions which make it possible for
them [foreigners] to attempt to enter into
relations [commerce] with the native in-
habitants" (Kant, PP, p. 106). Hospitality
does not require extending to foreigners
either the right to citizenship or the right
to settlement, unless the foreign visitors
would perish if they were expelled. For-
eign conquest and plunder also find no
justification under this right. Hospitality
does appear to include the right of access
and the obligation of maintaining the
opportunity for citizens to exchange
goods and ideas without imposing the

93. obligation to trade (a voluntary act in all
cases under liberal constitutions).
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a
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1986 Liberalism and World Politics
Perpetual peace, for Kant, is an epi-
stemology, a condition for ethical action,
and, most importantly, an explanation of
how the "mechanical process of nature
visibly exhibits the purposive plan of pro-
ducing concord among men, even against
their will and indeed by means of their
very discord" (Kant, PP, p. 108; UH, pp.
44-45). Understanding history requires an
epistemological foundation, for without a
teleology, such as the promise of per-
petual peace, the complexity of history
would overwhelm human understanding
(Kant, UH, pp. 51-53). Perpetual peace,
however, is not merely a heuristic device
with which to interpret history. It is
guaranteed, Kant explains in the "First
Addition" to Perpetual Peace ("On the
Guarantee of Perpetual Peace"), to result
from men fulfilling their ethical duty or,
failing that, from a hidden plan.8 Peace is
an ethical duty because it is only under
conditions of peace that all men can treat
each other as ends, rather than means to

100. an end (Kant, UH, p. 50; Murphy, 1970,
chap. 3). In order for this duty to be prac-
tical, Kant needs, of course, to show that
peace is in fact possible. The widespread
sentiment of approbation that he saw
aroused by the early success of the French
revolutionaries showed him that we can
indeed be moved by ethical sentiments
with a cosmopolitan reach (Kant, CF, pp.
181-82; Yovel, 1980, pp. 153-54). This
does not mean, however, that perpetual
peace is certain ("prophesiable"). Even the
scientifically regular course of the planets
could be changed by a wayward comet
striking them out of orbit. Human
freedom requires that we allow for much
greater reversals in the course of history.
We must, in fact, anticipate the possibility
of backsliding and destructive wars—
though these will serve to educate nations
to the importance of peace (Kant, UH, pp.
47-48).
In the end, however, our guarantee of
perpetual peace does not rest on ethical
conduct. As Kant emphasizes,
we now come to the essential question regarding
the prospect of perpetual peace. What does
nature do in relation to the end which man's own
reason prescribes to him as a duty, i.e. how does
nature help to promote his moral purpose? And
how does nature guarantee that what man ought
to do by the laws of his freedom (but does not
do) will in fact be done through nature's compul-
sion, without prejudice to the free agency of

101. man? . . . This does not mean that nature im-
poses on us a duty to do it, for duties can only be
imposed by practical reason. On the contrary,
nature does it herself, whether we are willing or
not: facta volentem ducunt, nolentem tradunt.
(PP. p. 112)
The guarantee thus rests, Kant argues, not
on the probable behavior of moral angels,
but on that of "devils, so long as they
possess understanding" (PP, p. 112). In
explaining the sources of each of the three
definitive articles of the perpetual peace,
Kant then tells us how we (as free and in-
telligent devils) could be motivated by
fear, force, and calculated advantage to
undertake a course of action whose out-
come we could reasonably anticipate to
be perpetual peace. Yet while it is possible
to conceive of the Kantian road to peace
in these terms, Kant himself recognizes
and argues that social evolution also
makes the conditions of moral behavior
less onerous and hence more likely (CF,
pp. 187-89; Kelly, 1969, pp. 106-13). In
tracing the effects of both political and
moral development, he builds an account
of why liberal states do maintain peace
among themselves and of how it will (by
implication, has) come about that the
pacific union will expand. He also ex-
plains how these republics would engage
in wars with nonrepublics and therefore
suffer the "sad experience" of wars that an
ethical policy might have avoided.

102. The first source of the three definitive
articles derives from a political evolu-
tion—from a constitutional law. Nature
(providence) has seen to it that human be-
ings can live in all the regions where they
have been driven to settle by wars. (Kant,
who once taught geography, reports on
the Lapps, the Samoyeds, the Pescheras.)
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"Asocial sociability" draws men together
to fulfill needs for security and material
welfare as it drives them into conflicts
over the distribution and control of social
products (Kant, UH, p. 44-45; PP, pp.
110-11). This violent natural evolution
tends towards the liberal peace because
"asocial sociability" inevitably leads
toward republican governments, and re-
publican governments are a source of the
liberal peace.
Republican representation and separa-
tion of powers are produced because they
are the means by which the state is
"organized well" to prepare for and meet
foreign threats (by unity) and to tame the
ambitions of selfish and aggressive in-

109. dividuals (by authority derived from
representation, by general laws, and by
nondespotic administration) (Kant, PP,
pp. 112-13). States that are not organized
in this fashion fail. Monarchs thus en-
courage commerce and private property
in order to increase national wealth. They
cede rights of representation to their sub-
jects in order to strengthen their political
support or to obtain willing grants of tax
revenue (Hassner, 1972, pp. 583-86).
Kant shows how republics, once estab-
lished, lead to peaceful relations, he
argues that once the aggressive interests of
absolutist monarchies are tamed and the
habit of respect for individual rights
engrained by republican government,
wars would appear as the disaster to the
people's welfare that he and the other
liberals thought them to be. The funda-
mental reason is this:
If, as is inevitability the case under this constitu-
tion, the consent of the citizens is required to
decide whether or not war should be declared, it
is very natural that they will have a great hesita-
tion in embarking on so dangerous an enterprise.
For this would mean calling down on themselves
all the miseries of war, such as doing the fighting
themselves, supplying the costs of the war from
their own resources, painfully making good the
ensuing devastation, and, as the crowning evil,
having to take upon themselves a burden of
debts which will embitter peace itself and which
can never be paid off on account of the constant

110. threat of new wars. But under a constitution
where the subject is not a citizen, and which is
therefore not republican, it is the simplest thing
in the world to go to war. For the head of state is
not a fellow citizen, but the owner of the state,
and war will not force him to make the slightest
sacrifice so far as his banquets, hunts, pleasure
palaces and court festivals are concerned. He can
thus decide on war, without any significant
reason, as a kind of amusement, and uncon-
cernedly leave it to the diplomatic corps (who are
always ready for such pruposes) to justify the
war for the sake of propriety. (Kant, PP, p. 100)
Yet these domestic republican restraints
do not end war. If they did, liberal states
would not be warlike, which is far from
the case. They do introduce republican
caution—Kant's "hesitation"—in place of
monarchical caprice. Liberal wars are
only fought for popular, liberal purposes.
The historical liberal legacy is laden with
popular wars fought to promote freedom,
to protect private property, or to support
liberal allies against nonliberal enemies.
Kant's position is ambiguous. He regards
these wars as unjust and warns liberals of
their susceptibility to them (Kant, PP, p.
106). At the same time, Kant argues that
each nation "can and ought to" demand
that its neighboring nations enter into the
pacific union of liberal states (PP, p. 102).
Thus to see how the pacific union re-
moves the occasion of wars among liberal
states and not wars between liberal and

111. nonliberal states, we need to shift our
attention from constitutional law to inter-
national law, Kant's second source.
Complementing the constitutional
guarantee of caution, international law
adds a second source for the definitive
articles: a guarantee of respect. The
separation of nations that asocial socia-
bility encourages is reinforced by the
development of separate languages and
religions. These further guarantee a world
of separate states—an essential condition
needed to avoid a "global, soul-less
despotism." Yet, at the same time, they
also morally integrate liberal states: "as
culture grows and men gradually move
towards greater agreement over their
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1986 Liberalism and World Politics
principles, they lead to mutual under-
standing and peace" (Kant, PP, p. 114).
As republics emerge (the first source) and
as culture progresses, an understanding of
the legitimate rights of all citizens and of
all republics comes into play; and this,
now that caution characterizes policy,
sets up the moral foundations for the

118. liberal peace. Correspondingly, interna-
tional law highlights the importance of
Kantian publicity. Domestically, pub-
licity helps ensure that the officials of
republics act according to the principles
they profess to hold just and according to
the interests of the electors they claim to
represent. Internationally, free speech and
the effective communication of accurate
conceptions of the political life of foreign
peoples is essential to establishing and
preserving the understanding on which
the guarantee of respect depends. Domes-
tically just republics, which rest on con-
sent, then presume foreign republics also
to be consensual, just, and therefore
deserving of accommodation. The experi-
ence of cooperation helps engender fur-
ther cooperative behavior when the con-
sequences of state policy are unclear but
(potentially) mutually beneficial. At the
same time, liberal states assume that
nonliberal states, which do not rest on
free consent, are not just. Because
nonliberal governments are in a state of
aggression with their own people, their
foreign relations become for liberal
governments deeply suspect. In short,
fellow liberals benefit from a presumption
of amity; nonliberals suffer from a
presumption of enmity. Both presump-
tions may be accurate; each, however,
may also be self-confirming.
Lastly, cosmopolitan law adds material
incentives to moral commitments. The

119. cosmopolitan right to hospitality permits
the "spirit of commerce" sooner or later to
take hold of every nation, thus impelling
states to promote peace and to try to avert
war. Liberal economic theory holds that
these cosmopolitan ties derive from a
cooperative international division of
labor and free trade according to com-
parative advantage. Each economy is said
to be better off than it would have been
under autarky; each thus acquires an in-
centive to avoid policies that would lead
the other to break these economic ties.
Because keeping open markets rests upon
the assumption that the next set of trans-
actions will also be determined by prices
rather than coercion, a sense of mutual
security is vital to avoid security-
motivated searches for economic autarky.
Thus, avoiding a challenge to another
liberal state's security or even enhancing
each other's security by means of alliance
naturally follows economic interde-
pendence.
A further cosmopolitan source of lib-
eral peace is the international market's
removal of difficult decisions of produc-
tion and distribution from the direct
sphere of state policy. A foreign state thus
does not appear directly responsible for
these outcomes, and states can stand aside
from, and to some degree above, these
contentious market rivalries and be ready
to step in to resolve crises. The inter-

120. dependence of commerce and the interna-
tional contacts of state officials help
create crosscutting transnational ties that
serve as lobbies for mutual accommoda-
tion. According to modern liberal
scholars, international financiers and
transnational and transgovernmental or-
ganizations create interests in favor of
accommodation. Moreover, their variety
has ensured that no single conflict sours
an entire relationship by setting off a
spiral of reciprocated retaliation (Brzezin-
ski and Huntington, 1963, chap. 9; Keo-
hane and Nye, 1977, chap. 7; Neustadt,
1970; Polanyi, 1944, chaps. 1-2). Con-
versely, a sense of suspicion, such as that
characterizing relations between liberal
and nonliberal governments, can lead to
restrictions on the range of contacts be-
tween societies, and this can increase the
prospect that a single conflict will deter-
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American Political Science Review Vol. 80
mine an entire relationship.
No single constitutional, international,
or cosmopolitan source is alone sufficient,
but together (and only together) they

127. plausibly connect the characteristics of
liberal polities and economies with sus-
tained liberal peace. Alliances founded on
mutual strategic interest among liberal
and nonliberal states have been broken;
economic ties between liberal and non-
liberal states have proven fragile; but the
political bonds of liberal rights and inter-
ests have proven a remarkably firm foun-
dation for mutual nonaggression. A
separate peace exists among liberal states.
In their relations with nonliberal states,
however, liberal states have not escaped
from the insecurity caused by anarchy in
the world political system considered as a
whole. Moreover, the very constitutional
restraint, international respect for in-
dividual rights, and shared commercial
interests that establish grounds for peace
among liberal states establish grounds for
additional conflict in relations between
liberal and nonliberal societies.
Conclusion
Kant's liberal internationalism,
Machiavelli's liberal imperialism, and
Schumpeter's liberal pacifism rest on fun-
damentally different views of the nature
of the human being, the state, and inter-
national relations.9 Schumpeter's humans
are rationalized, individualized, and
democratized. They are also homoge-
nized, pursuing material interests "monis-
tically." Because their material interests

128. lie in peaceful trade, they and the demo-
cratic state that these fellow citizens con-
trol are pacifistic. Machiavelli's citizens
are splendidly diverse in their goals but
fundamentally unequal in them as well,
seeking to rule or fearing being domi-
nated. Extending the rule of the dominant
elite or avoiding the political collapse of
their state, each calls for imperial
expansion.
Kant's citizens, too, are diverse in their
goals and individualized and rationalized,
but most importantly, they are capable of
appreciating the moral equality of all in-
dividuals and of treating other individuals
as ends rather than as means. The Kantian
state thus is governed publicly according
to law, as a republic. Kant's is the state
that solves the problem of governing in-
dividualized equals, whether they are the
"rational devils" he says we often find
ourselves to be or the ethical agents we
can and should become. Republics tell us
that
in order to organize a group of rational beings
who together require universal laws for their sur-
vival, but of whom each separate individual is
secretly inclined to exempt himself from them,
the constitution must be so designed so that,
although the citizens are opposed to one another
in their private attitudes, these opposing views
may inhibit one another in such a way that the
public conduct of the citizens will be the same as
if they did not have such evil attitudes. (Kant,

129. PP. p. 113)
Unlike Machiavelli's republics, Kant's
republics are capable of achieving peace
among themselves because they exercise
democratic caution and are capable of ap-
preciating the international rights of
foreign republics. These international
rights of republics derive from the
representation of foreign individuals,
who are our moral equals. Unlike Schum-
peter's capitalist democracies, Kant's
republics—including our own—remain in
a state of war with nonrepublics. Liberal
republics see themselves as threatened by
aggression from nonrepublics that are not
constrained by representation. Even
though wars often cost more than the
economic return they generate, liberal
republics also are prepared to protect and
promote—sometimes forcibly—democ-
racy, private property, and the rights of
individuals overseas against nonrepub-
lics, which, because they do not authen-
tically represent the rights of individuals,
have no rights to noninterference. These
wars may liberate oppressed individuals
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