Freedom

Abstract

In this chapter I survey the ways in which anarchists have understood the concept of freedom. I argue that anarchists have understood freedom in three ways, which often overlap and combine. Anarchists understand freedom negatively, as freedom from domination, positively, in terms of the enabling conditions of freedom, and freedom with or freedom in, or the necessary institutional parameters for freedom. This latter conception of freedom is arguably more central to the lived anarchist movement than many have recognized, pervading the major anarcho-syndicalist unions and most anarchist groups. I link it to negative and positive accounts of freedom in order to defend a wide and plural account of anarchist accounts of freedom. The institutional focus of the paper also enables an approach to freedom that takes inter-group freedoms seriously, and allows us to link anarchism more coherently to the dynamics of international relations. Each of these aspects of the problem of freedom in anarchist politics demands a reappraisal of the constitutionalizing practices of anarchist groups, and I conclude by pointing to some of the most recent research on this topic.