Un contrôle anarchiste : quelques exemples suggestifs tirés de la fiction spéculative

Abstract

Anarchists of the 19th and early 20th centuries assumed that crime was a symptom of the capitalist order and expected it to wither away along with other social pathologies. Yet, regardless of how much scarcity is eliminated and how different the economy becomes, wouldn’t there still be anti-social behavior and crime? Drawing upon insights from utopian (and dystopian) fiction, I make a distinction between the use of coercive power that appeals to philosophical claims for its justification, and coercion that is justified by the facts of a past event. Thus, I argue that we can imagine some form of routine policing in an anarchist society grounded by factual necessity rather than policing that masks the violence of a political or social system’s ideology. By considering the form of coercion and policing acceptable to an anarchist society, we gain some insight into the moral limitations of growing “security” efforts in our very real society.