Coming to the end of my three year LLB it can be easy to believe that all sides of law have been studied. Kent Law School itself proclaims that it offers a ‘pioneering critical approach to the study of law’ and yet there is another view, notably overlooked, but voiced by those who do not support Law; the Anarchist.

The anarchist’s view of the state

Philosophical arguments against the state and by extension law are not a new phenomena. Bao Jingyan proclaimed that there should be ‘Neither Lord Nor Subject’ in 300BC. The French judge Étienne de La Boétie wrote his famous essay The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude in the 16th century, asking ‘why do we subjugate ourselves so willingly to oppression of the law and the state?.Famed author Leo Tolstoy himself also asserted this view at the start of the last century, proclaiming that Government is Violence, and you should not serve it. From Chomsky to Godwin, people from a wide background have purported the virtue of Anarchism, but why? What is it about the state, and by extension law that so many have found so abhorrent? To have a clearer understanding, we must understand what is meant by the Anarchist.

In many ways Pierre-Joseph Proudhon is widely regarded as the first self proclaimed Anarchist. In his seminal work Property, Proudhon speaks with refreshing honesty. ‘What are you then? I am an Anarchist’. For Proudhon the state is an institution of utter dominance and oppression, a place where men are ‘trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance…repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed…That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality’. Therefore for the Anarchist the state is not the enforcer of justice, rather the ultimate oppressor, and as such should be challenged. However it is important to recognise that the term Anarchism is a broad church, and thus it is exceedingly hard to pin down its exact meaning. There exists a vast array of views from Anarcho-Capitalism to Anarcho-Syndicalism, but at the route of all of these is the notion of anarchos, the route word of anarchism, meaning without rulers. The Anarchist simply seeks to live ‘without a government’. In the words of Stephan Molyneux ‘It simply means a way of interacting with others without threatening them with violence if they do not obey’. This of course is the exact opposite of law. However while this notion may seem impossible, it is also equally valid to recognise the Anarchist assertion that ‘we live the vast majority of our actual lives in complete and total anarchy’. From love to family to careers to finances we make our decisions in the absence of direct coercion, and cherish the ability to do so.

Law is state endorsed violence

What the Anarchist does understand clearly is that at the heart of the state, is law. While it is often asserted that law is used to regulate society, conversely it also enslaves it. If money is what facilitates the state to function, then it is through taxation that the state acquires its wealth. It goes without saying that taxation is not voluntary, and is enforced by law. But what is law? Yes it may well be about rules, morality, codification, deviance, and all manner of things, but at its simplest, for those who are found to be violating it, it is about force; or violence in other words.

As Shakespeare said, “no legacy is so rich as honesty”, therefore let us at least start our careers honestly before being exposed to the influences of the legal system. A career in law is one in which we accept that we are working in a system that simply attempts to correct proclaimed wrongs with the threat of violence. Now while this may be right or wrong, at least let us attempt to be morally coherent in our own lives and career choices. While we may or may not agree with all that the Anarchist has to say about law, and its morality, on this they have a point, that law is simply violence. In the words of Hannah Arendt ‘Violence can be justifiable, but it never will be legitimate’.

Mattew Pettersson is in the third year of a Law LLB.