Anarchists for Big Government
By David Beito • Friday April 2, 2010 8:39 AM PDT • 13 Comments
When I saw that an anarchist website was urging its members to “crash” the tea party movement, my first thought was that they might perform a worthy service. The anarchists would be in an excellent position, for example, to expose the statist orientation of many tea partiers on war and immigration. Unfortunately, the main complaint of the “anarchists” is that the tea partiers are too anti-government! In its call to arms, the website warns:
If the tea party movement takes over this country they will really hurt poor people by getting rid of social programs like food stamps, unemployment benefits, disability benefits, student aid, free health care, etc.
Tags: Budget and Tax Policy, Social Security, Taxation, The State, War, Welfare 
These anarchists clearly are not Rothbard-style libertarian anarchists. The website you linked to is subtitled “Kill capitalism before it kills you” and says on another page, “We stress that this opposition to hierarchy is, for anarchists, not limited to just the state or government. It includes all authoritarian economic and social relationships as well as political ones, particularly those associated with capitalist property and wage labour.”
In that context the quotation you posted is not so surprising.
Randall Holcombe | Apr 2, 2010 | Reply
“We stress that this opposition to hierarchy is, for anarchists, not limited to just the state or government. It includes all authoritarian economic and social relationships as well as political ones, particularly those associated with capitalist property and wage labour.”
So how could we fund and maintain “social programs like food stamps, unemployment benefits, disability benefits, student aid, free health care, etc.” without some form of hierarchy and/or collection agency which was backed by the threat force, i.e. government?
RickC | Apr 2, 2010 | Reply
I always thought Republicans for small government was a joke, but anarchists for big government is twilight zone material. What’s next, atheists for Jesus or pacifists for war?
Tom Blanton | Apr 2, 2010 | Reply
Even left-anarchists should oppose the welfare state. The better among them do.
Anthony Gregory | Apr 2, 2010 | Reply
One person is correct here. “Rothbard-style libertarians” are an internet fiction. If one paid the slightest bit of attention to anarchist organizing and movements here or globally one would know they are anti-capitalist and anti-market. Now anarchists, particularly the anarchists who frequent Infoshop, are against the welfare state; however, we also realize that attacking the most desperate people in a society is not a desirable avenue for social change. Why would one focus on abolishing unemployment and health benefits, and ignore the military, police, courts, banks, businesses, prisons, and so forth? Furthermore, to struggle for the immediate dismantling of these pitiful services, that are really a huge amount of peoples’ only leg for survival, is hardly an ideal way towards social revolution. Rather anarchists tend to focus on the most obnoxious institutions rather than the feeble ones.
Readymade | Apr 2, 2010 | Reply
I’d like to meet a left anarchist who opposes the welfare state. Perhaps they exist but, if so, they are are either a tiny minority among anarchists or a nearly silent one. During the 19th century, it was a different story when many anarchists championed the non-statist alternative of mutual aid and cooperatives.
David T. Beito | Apr 2, 2010 | Reply
We oppose the welfare state in the long run, but if it was eliminated today with no alternative then tens of millions of people would suffer.
RanDomino | Apr 2, 2010 | Reply
You say that the anarchists are against the welfare state. I am curious. What reasons do they give for opposing the welfare state? Do you have citations so I can read their critique?
Are they are in the tradition of Bakunin and Kropotkin on this issue? If so, do they assert that the welfare state undermines self-help and mutual aid and makes the poor helpless supplicants of the state? If they do, IMHO, they would regard the welfare state as a key, rather than feeble, means of oppression agains the poor.
As was confirmed again to me while researching my book, From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, the welfare AND regulatory state (eminent domain, zoning, licensing, etc.) have done more to destroy poor neighborhoods than any other single factor.
You are right to note the selective nature of tea party opposition to big government. Indeed, that was one of the main points of my post.
For this reason, the anarchists would be on far stronger strategic ground if they emphasized the willingness of so many (but not all) tea partiers to ignore statist oppression on war and immigration. Those points, however, seem to be nearly absent from the critique on the website.
After all, if they really hope to win over tea parties, this would be their best hope. Instead, by their silence on these issues, the modern anarchists come across as apologists for the welfare AND warfare/regulatory state.
David T. Beito | Apr 4, 2010 | Reply
Real anarchists favor the total abolition of all government. The so-called “anarchists” referred to in the story, and most places around the world seem to favor a strong state, totally contrary to the goal of real anarchists. It seems the so-called “anarchists” are in reality totalitarians, not anarchists.
Robert | Apr 5, 2010 | Reply
This is clearly some new definition of “anarchist.”
GaryM | Apr 5, 2010 | Reply
We would fund them, if at all, through voluntary arrangements rather than coercion through taxation
Aron Martens | Apr 5, 2010 | Reply
Thank-you Robert and GaryM for stating the obvious that everyone else appears to be missing... as I read through the posts, I kept wondering “am I missing something?” This story, and most of the posts above, have zero to do with anarchism. Anarchism is the total absence of government.
joe4liberty | Apr 12, 2010 | Reply
This is a way in which you could provide welfare without relying on big government. Enrolled citizens are valuers of the positive or negative contributions that organisations of any size or type—public, private or voluntary—make to society. Participants log in to a public website to submit their verdicts on the organisations they believe are making particularly good or poor use of resources, either in terms of their objectives or execution. A back-end process periodically accumulates the verdicts recorded against each organisation into an overall plus or minus score. This converts at a set rate of exchange into money—an additional stream of income or expense that fluctuates according to the organisation’s evaluated performance over time. The overall level of economic activity is unaffected, but re-arranged in accordance with citizens’ wishes, redistributing resources in the form of automatically generated direct debits and credits away from previously over-funded organisations towards those that were under-funded, in a continuous journey towards an ideal equilibrium state where the return to the community as a whole on each dollar spent throughout the economy is seen to be equivalent. The aggregate free choice of all citizens rather than any central administration sets the pattern of redistribution. The role of government is to legitimize the system as a whole and to determine how slowly or fast the new pattern evolves, by controlling the exchange rate at which a recorded verdict converts into money. This starts low and gradually increases as confidence in the distributed wisdom of the population develops.
c anderson | Apr 26, 2010 | Reply