ABSTRACT
Critics of anarchism, indeed of any attempt to expand freedom, have repeatedly fallen back on the tired argument that it is against ‘human nature’. The conventional wisdom amongst historians of political thought is that anarchists have an optimistic view of human beings as being naturally good and that it is only the state that produces evil in people. Abolish the state, they believe anarchists assert, and society will achieve a condition of perfect harmony. Convinced of the need for political authority, they argue that in reality the opposite would occur; without the state, society would collapse into the Hobbesian nightmare of violent disorder and permanent war. To criticize anarchism, it becomes enough to assert that is just a ‘puerile Utopia’. 1 ‘Human nature’ is thus depicted as a nasty fellow blocking our path to a free society and any further improvement.
