One reason as to why Anarchists feel that the state is both evil and unnecessary is that they believe the state is oppressive and represents the few who seek to oppress the many. This is close to the Marxist view, which describes the state as the ‘management committee’ of the ruling class in any age. Historically, the ruling class was the aristocracy and landed gentry; in the modern age, it is seen as the forces of capitalism, which exploit workers and peasant in less economically developed countries, and consumers everywhere.
Another reason why Anarchists feel this way is that they believe the state removes freedom. They think the state subjects us to laws and controls that are artificial, offending the basic principle of individual sovereignty. Like liberals, the anarchists see an incompatibility between the power of the state and the freedom of the individual. Furthermore, the liberal Lord Acton summed up their view when he famously declared, ‘Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’.
Thirdly, Anarchists again think this way about the state as they believe it is corrupting. In common with many liberals, anarchists believe that the act of governing is in itself corrupting. Those who come into government may do so with good motives, but inevitably lose their idealism and become exploiters themselves. This view is supported by Mikhail Bukunin, who in 1870 claimed the best of men who take a position of commanding will inevitably be corrupted and they can never fail to produce ‘contempt for the masses, and for the man in power, an exaggerated sense of his own worth’.
Finally, Anarchists particularly believe the state is unnecessary as the state itself is unnatural and an artificial form of society. The Anarchist view is either that humankind should be free to from voluntary, natural communities or that the individual should be free to withdraw altogether from any political organisation. The political state denies this freedom and creates an unnatural community. For this reason, anarchists oppose nationalism, since the nation, although arguably a natural organism, is usually expressed through statehood and so becomes unnatural. If we freely choose to enter a community and support its accepted norms of behaviour, we do not need any compulsion to conform. 1