Lesson · 4 min Stretch
Is Any State Legitimate?
In one line Kropotkin says cooperation needs no ruler; Wolff says obedience surrenders judgment; the reply is that fair rules can use it.
Anarchism is the view that no state has the authority it claims. Peter Kropotkin, in Mutual Aid (1902), argued from nature and history. Animals that cooperate survive better than lone fighters, and villages, guilds and unions ran much of life without a ruler. Cooperation is natural; the state is a late arrival.
Robert Paul Wolff made a sharper argument in 1970. Each person has a duty to act on their own judgment. A state claims the right to be obeyed because it says so, which asks you to set judgment aside. So no state is legitimate, however good its laws.
The strongest reply accepts the premise and questions the step. Judgment can see that some problems need rules no one can bend. A fair rule you could help change is not a master. Following it can use judgment, not surrender it. Whether that answers Wolff is still argued.
Go deeper
Not every anarchist wants the state torn down tomorrow. A. John Simmons and others hold what is called philosophical anarchism: no state has a right to be obeyed. Yet people may still have good reasons to follow most laws. The laws forbid things that were wrong anyway, and they keep an order everyone needs. On this view the state is not legitimate, but it is not to be fought either. Critics ask what the conclusion then changes. Defenders answer that it shifts the burden of proof. A law has to earn obedience by its content; “because we say so” does not count.
The allotments
The allotments on Jasper’s street ran for years on mutual aid: shared tools, a rota for the water, help for anyone who fell ill. Then a dispute over a boundary split the plots, and the bigger plot holder kept winning by waiting.
Jasper proposed written rules and an elected committee. Freya objected that she had not joined to be governed. He said the rules were theirs, and that she could change them or leave. She joined the committee, still unsure whether that was an answer.
Try this today List three things in your day that run on cooperation with no one in charge, and one that needs a rule someone enforces.
Cite or share this lesson
A plain reference you can paste into notes or an essay:
Quest2Reason. “Is Any State Legitimate?.” https://quest2reason.com/learn/lesson/is-any-state-legitimate. Accessed 13 November 2026.
Sources
- Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902) — The full text: cooperation among animals, in villages and guilds, and “amongst ourselves.”
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Anarchism” — Philosophical anarchism, Wolff’s argument from autonomy, and the social anarchist tradition Kropotkin belongs to.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Political Obligation” — Wolff’s autonomy argument and the main replies: consent, fair play and the natural duty of justice.