ABSTRACT
Anarchism was an ideology that was thriving in the late nineteenth century. A different series of overlapping criticisms of Tolstoyan anarchism can be evoked around the dangers posed by statelessness. Tolstoy sees any legislation enforced by the threat of violence as a form of enslavement. Violence or the threat of it is critical to the enforcement of law; indeed, ‘the essence of legislation is organised violence’; hence, ‘the whole order of our lives rests’ on violent coercion. Church theologians had different priorities, as did ruling authorities, and anarchists less hesitant to resort to different degrees of violence. Many states do administer some kind of health and social security system, yet their core business remains law-making and the management of powerful and pervasive mechanisms of coercion and violence. Where Tolstoy can invite more probing and less common reflection, however, is on the state-administered violence which is less perceptible than the visible instruments of war.
