Thoreau's "Anarchism"

How can we characterize Thoreau's political stance — not only his vision, but his entire reflective and affective disposition towards political life?

Richard Drinnon, in his essay “Thoreau’s Politics of the Upright Man,” claims that given the influences of works like Sophocles’ Antigone and Emerson’s “Politics” on the young man from Concord, “the kernel of Thoreau’s politics was his belief in a natural or higher law” (367). Moreover, “the doctrine of higher law…logically leads to philosophical anarchism” (368). If people were committed to the principles of the higher moral order inscribed in nature and therefore in human nature, they would self-regulate according to the mandates of conscience and moral sense and would not need any external arche, principle, or law to regulate them. Thus, an-arche. But to reach this in practice, individual action is required: “Belief in a higher law plus practice of individual direct action equal anarchism” (369).

So regarding Thoreau’s political stance, Drinnon asks: “Was Thoreau really an individualist, an anarchist, or both, or neither?” (369).  

To answer the question, he adopts Emma Goldman’s characterization of anarchism as “the philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law” (369).

He proceeds to argue that for Thoreau the anarchical is not identical with the anti-social (372). Rather, in “Resistance to Civil Government” Thoreau says that he desires to be a good neighbor in his community but a bad (resistant) subject to an unjust state. In Thoreau’s vision,

If men lived simply and as neighbors, informal patterns of voluntary agreement would be established, there would be no need for police and military protection, since ‘thieving and robbery would be unknown,’ and there would be freedom and leisure to turn to the things that matter. Thoreau’s community consciousness was the essential, dialectical other of his individuality. (371)

Thus, Thoreau was both an individualist and an anarchist. With regard to the centralized state, detached and above the lives of neighborhoods and communities, he was an anarchist in principle. With regard to the community, he thought that conscientious individual action was required for good neighborliness and for keeping the sharpness of everyone’s moral sense and commitment. I think this is one way to understand Thoreau’s experiment in living at Walden Pond always in dialogue and relation, tense but committed, to his neighbors in Concord.

Drinnon concludes that under Goldman’s definition, “Thoreau was always an anarchist in matters of conscience, an ultimate anarchist for a time ‘when men are prepared for it,’ and in the meanwhile an anarchical decentralist” (372).

This stance appeals to me in so far as the principles of one’s moral sense, when properly and critically cultivated, are higher than the principles of man-made law, mores, and social conventions. One ought to be an anarchist with regards to external principles that contradict critical moral sense. The current U.S. government, for example, may try to unjustly deport millions of immigrants under the guise of written law, but one must conscientiously resist. 

Logically, perhaps, an ultimate social anarchism would be possible if all people were to respond to the summons of critical moral sense, though I think that more than individual moral sense is required for ethical life— namely, loving care and communal critical inquiry into justice. 

In the meanwhile, I think that “democratic individualism” is more practicable and admirable than “anarchical decentralism.” I already envision and, to some extent practice, some experiments in living transnationally across several democracies in the Americas —for example, as a Latin American philosopher with bonds in Brooklyn, Costa Rica and Brazil. And I see an increasing transnationalism as more appealing than a local communitarianism. Small communities can breed tight bonds but also oppressive mores. Transnational democratic societies may increase our possibilities for solidarity, cooperation, and creative experiments in living. 

Reference: Richard Drinnon, “Thoreau’s Politics of the Upright Man,” in Henry David Thoreau, Walden and Resistance to Civil Government, Second Edition, Ed. William Rossi (New York: Norton, 1992), p. 366-377.