Appendix: Why Anarchists and Communists Produced the Strongest Critiques of Enlightenment Liberalism
The most powerful and incisive critiques of Enlightenment political philosophy did not come from liberal reformers, conservative thinkers, or establishment academics. They came from the radical margins: the anarchists, the communists, and the revolutionary socialists—Proudhon, Marx, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman, Luxemburg, and others. These thinkers saw contradictions in Enlightenment liberalism that its own architects never recognized and that mainstream political theory still struggles to address.
Contrary to the assumption that these radicals were given disproportionate attention, the opposite is true. They were censored, marginalized, imprisoned, exiled, and largely excluded from academic respectability. And yet, despite this suppression, their critiques stand today as the strongest and most conceptually complete refutations of Enlightenment liberalism.
Why? Because these thinkers developed—and fully embraced—the intellectual tools that the Enlightenment entirely lacked: a theory of power dynamics.
- They Were Marginalized, Not Overexposed
Far from enjoying excessive attention, the radical critics of liberalism were suppressed by:
governments
universities
publishers
police forces
religious institutions
mainstream intellectuals
Proudhon was demonized; Marx was banned in multiple countries; Bakunin was hunted; Goldman deported; Kropotkin dismissed as utopian; Luxemburg murdered.
Their ideas did not shape institutions, curricula, or constitutions. They were treated as threats, not authorities.
Yet these were the thinkers who dismantled liberal theory with precision that its mainstream defenders never approached.
- They Identified the Missing Variable: Power Dynamics
Enlightenment philosophy could not see power because:
inequality was taken as natural
hierarchy was assumed
patriarchy was unexamined
colonial structures were normalized
property relations were sacrosanct
the state was unquestioned
The Enlightenment lacked sociological insight. It lacked structural analysis. It had no concept of ideology, no theory of institutions, no understanding of systemic coercion.
Anarchists and communists invented these tools.
Marx gave us class analysis and ideology critique.
Bakunin gave us a theory of state power.
Proudhon gave us a theory of property as domination.
Kropotkin gave us mutual aid and decentralization.
Goldman gave us psychological and cultural freedom theory.
These thinkers recognized that:
Freedom is impossible where structural power is unchecked.
This single insight exposed the core contradictions of liberalism.
- They Had No Stake in Preserving the Enlightenment Narrative
Mainstream liberal thinkers, from the 19th century to today, have a vested interest in preserving the legitimacy of Enlightenment political theory because:
modern states are built on it
universities are funded by states
political elites depend on it
constitutional structures presume it
mainstream philosophy canonizes it
To critique Enlightenment liberalism fundamentally is to destabilize the legitimacy of the modern Western state. Most academics simply won’t go that far.
Radical thinkers had no such incentives. They could follow the logic to its conclusion.
- Their Critiques Were Methodologically Superior
This is crucial:
Anarchists and communists had analytical tools that no Enlightenment thinker had.
These include:
class analysis
power theory
structural coercion
sociology
political economy
psychology of conformity
feminist theory
colonial critique
historical materialism
decentralized models of social organization
The Enlightenment had none of these. Liberalism was incomplete by construction.
Thus, the radicals weren’t just morally outraged — they were methodologically advanced.
They possessed conceptual tools refined over a century of social development, industrial capitalism, and political struggle.
- They Exposed Contradictions Liberalism Could Never Resolve
Because they understood power, radicals easily identified failures that liberalism still can’t explain:
Why “consent of the governed” is impossible under inequality
Why the state is inherently coercive
Why property always generates hierarchy
Why economic freedom undermines political freedom
Why central authority cannot produce autonomy
Why representation neutralizes, not expresses, popular will
Why law codifies elite interests
Why “rights” mean little without material autonomy
Liberal thinkers either denied these problems or attempted to manage them superficially. Radical thinkers addressed them at the structural root.
- Their Critiques Hold Up Better Today
Even today, when we analyze:
policing
the carceral state
workplace domination
global capitalism
institutional racism
gender hierarchy
ideological conditioning
state surveillance
economic inequality
electoral dysfunction
we find that the thinkers whose frameworks best explain these systems are not Locke, Rousseau, or Montesquieu—they are Marx, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman, and contemporaries like Foucault and Graeber.
Modern political science repeatedly confirms:
The Enlightenment built elegant theories of freedom that could never be realized, because those theories ignored power.
The radicals exposed this failure.
Conclusion: The Strongest Critics Were the Ones the System Ignored
History shows the irony:
The thinkers with the strongest critiques of Enlightenment liberalism
were not the ones elevated to canonical status,
but the ones most vehemently suppressed.
This is not because their critiques were wrong — it is because they were too accurate. Exposing the contradictions of Enlightenment thought meant threatening the legitimacy of the modern state, capitalism, and established hierarchy.
The radicals told the truth too early, with too much clarity.
And yet, it is precisely because they confronted the Enlightenment’s blind spot — power dynamics — that their critiques endure as the most penetrating and theoretically complete analyses of liberalism ever produced.
If you’d like, I can now produce the final essay: “How These Enlightenment Contradictions Manifest and Persist Today.”