The Politics of Individualism: Liberalism, Liberal Feminism and Anarchism

Eric L. Swanick is the New Brunswick Legislative librarian and the
author of Hardiness, Perseverance and Faith: New Brunswick Library
History.

Anarchism, according to the author, is “a way of organizing society to
best allow for the free expression of individuals.” For Brown, the
true nature of the human individual will never be known until that
individual lives in freedom. Liberalism and anarchism share a commitment
to individualism. Brown defines two branches of individualism:
“existential” individualism, or the belief (as expressed in
anarchist political philosophy) in free and responsible individuals
“fit to determine their own development”; and “instrumental”
individualism, or the belief that the individual is a competitive owner
of private property, “both in terms of real property and in terms of
owning ‘properly in the person.’” This aspect of liberal
philosophy (i.e., instrumental individualism) leans not to freedom, but
to relationships of domination and subordination.

Brown quotes copiously from Emma Goldman, Catharine MacKinnon, Betty
Friedan, C.B. MacPherson, and others. In discussing the limits of
liberalism with regard to feminism, she relies heavily at the outset on
the writings of John Stuart Mill, whom she considers deficient in the
area of instrumental individualism. For Brown, even a contemporary
feminist figure like Friedan falls short in the areas of employment,
education, marriage and the family, and governmental politics: simply
put, she relies too heavily on state power. The author concludes that
the feminist movement lacks an “inherent critique of power and
domination.” Feminists have done the research; now, to attain freedom,
they must move to anarchism.

Although some of the more extensive quotations might have been better
integrated into the text, this is a well-argued and highly readable
volume.