ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a minimal statement of the anarchist view of agency. First, anarchists tend to consider agency as intimately connected to a radical idea of freedom as self-determination. Second, most anarchists understand self-determination in a radically social sense. The anarchists discussed were all "fanatics of freedom" – yet most considered that the free exercise of human agency had necessary social determinants. In short, the classical anarchist idea of agency is a positive one. Third, and consequently, this understanding of radical social freedom is but an application of a theory of political agency, one grounded in the social dimension. Many classical anarchists were concerned not simply to criticise arbitrary state power, but also to locate the group best situated to bring about the overthrow of such power. Agency in the political sense is to this extent not a peripheral concept; rather, it is a necessary condition for freedom.
