The Autonomous Individual, the Enemy of the State, Rejects Society's Right of Command

The ‘foreign right’ of society – of ‘the people’ or ‘the nation’ – is expressed in law. Law represents the authority of society, its right to command (via the state): ‘People are at pains to distinguish law from arbitrary orders, from an ordinance: the former comes from a duly entitled authority.’ The autonomous individual – this ‘enemy’ of the state – simply rejects this right of command, this authority, maintaining that ‘no one has any business to command my actions, to say what course I shall pursue and set up a code to govern it’. Such a desecrator of the sacred word of law is inevitably designated a criminal, a subject for punishment.

--Paul McLaughlin, Anarchism and Authority: A Philosophical Introduction to Classical Anarchism, Ashgate New Critical Thinking in Philosophy (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2007), 146-147.