Anarchism :

Definitions
Anarchism by Marshall S. Shatz

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Anarchism is an ideology that regards abolition of government as the
necessary precondition for a free and just society. The term itself
comes from the Greek words meaning "without a ruler." Anarchism
rejects all forms of hierarchical authority, social and economic as well
as political. What distinguishes it from other ideologies, however, is
the central importance it attaches to the state. To anarchists, the state
is a wholly artificial and illegitimate institution, the bastion of
privilege and exploitation in the modern world.

Anarchist Thought

Although the roots of anarchist thought can be traced at least as far

back as the 18th-century English writer William GODWIN, anarchism
as a revolutionary movement arose in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. Its immediate objective was annihilation of the state and of
all authority imposed "from above downward." Once liberated from
political oppression, society would spontaneously rebuild itself "from
below upward." A multitude of grass-roots organizations would spring
up to produce and distribute economic goods and to satisfy other
social needs. Where necessary, these primary associations would form
regional and even nation-wide federations. The state, with its
impersonal laws and coercive bureaucracies, would be supplanted by a
dense web of self-governing associations and free federations.

Like other radical ideologies of its time, anarchism intended to

complete the "unfinished business" of the French Revolution. It placed
special emphasis on the third of the values expressed in the rallying
cry "liberty, equality, and fraternity." Anarchists had an enduring faith
in the natural solidarity and social harmony of human beings. They
believed that the creation of the future society should be entrusted to
the free play of popular instincts, and any attempt by anarchists
themselves to offer more than technical assistance would impose a
new form of authority. They tended to concentrate, therefore, on the
task of demolishing the existing state order rather than on social
blueprints of the future.

While battling the established order, anarchists also battled the

alternatives proposed by liberalism and socialism. Like Marxism,

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anarchism was anticapitalist and scorned liberalism's dedication to
political liberty on the grounds that only the propertied classes could
afford to enjoy it. They rejected with equal vehemence, however, the
Marxist "dictatorship of the proletariat," the idea of capturing and
using the capitalist state to achieve a classless society. Political
institutions were seen as inherently corrupting, and even the most
selfless revolutionaries would inevitably succumb to the joys of power
and privilege. Instead of the state "withering away," as the Marxists
anticipated, it would simply perpetuate a new bureaucratic elite. This
disagreement led to a bitter conflict between Marx and the Russian
anarchist Michael BAKUNIN in the early 1870s, after which Marxism
and anarchism went their separate ways.

Anarchism in Practice

Anarchism attracted a following mainly in the countries of eastern and

southern Europe, where the state's repressiveness was especially
pronounced and communal traditions remained strong. There were
some exceptions: the ideas of the French anarchist Pierre-Joseph
PROUDHON left a permanent mark on the French industrial labor
movement, and Bakunin's views found adherents among the
watchmakers of Switzerland's Jura region. Anarchism had its greatest
impact in Russia, where numerous anarchist groups participated in the
revolutionary movement both before and during 1917. The two
outstanding anarchist theorists also were Russians: Bakunin, whose
advocacy of popular revolution had considerable influence, and Prince
Peter KROPOTKIN, whose writing spelled out some of the
constructive sides of the anarchist social vision. Spain and Italy also
had vigorous anarchist movements. In only two instances did
anarchists have a real opportunity to put their social ideals into
practice. During the Russian civil war of 1917-21, (see RUSSIAN
REVOLUTIONS OF 1917), the peasant partisan movement led by
Nestor Makhno in the Ukraine tried to implement anarchist principles,
and in the SPANISH CIVIL WAR of 1936-39 anarchism was a
significant force in the regions of Catalonia and Andalusia. The results
of these experiments were limited and inconclusive. In the United
States, anarchism's influence was confined largely to some of the
European immigrant communities, but it did produce a striking

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representative of American radicalism in the person of Emma
GOLDMAN.

Because anarchism regarded doctrinal and organizational discipline as

contradictions of its principles, it gave rise to a wide variety of
interpretations. Anarchist-communists shared many of the collectivist
principles of socialism but sought to realize them in autonomous local
communities. Anarcho-SYNDICALISM was an adaptation of
anarchist ideas to modern industrial conditions. It advocated the
running of factories by the workers themselves rather than by owners
or managers, with trade unions (in French, syndicats) forming the
building blocks of a regenerated society. The novelist Leo Tolstoi
formulated a kind of Christian anarchism that rejected the state on
religious grounds, and there were anarchist-individualists who
proclaimed the sovereignty of the individual personality.

Contrary to widespread belief, terrorism was never an integral part of

anarchist theory or practice. Some anarchists, however, did engage in
what they called "propaganda by the deed," acts of terror and
assassination against state officials and property owners.

Except in Spain, anarchism as an organized movement virtually

ceased to exist after the Russian Revolutions. Anarchist ideas,
however, have had a longer life. In the 1960s and 1970s, currents of
the New left rediscovered anarchist theory, particularly the writings of
Kropotkin, and drew from it inspiration for some of their
communitarian and antibureaucratic impulses. They also found new
merit in the anarchist critique of Marxian socialism. At least some
elements of the outlook proved to have a surprising vitality and
contemporary relevance.

Bibliography: Avrich, Paul, Anarchist Portraits (1988) and The

Russian Anarchists (1967; repr. 1980); Guillet de Monthoux, Pierre,
Action and Existence (1983); Joll, James, the Anarchists (1964);
Shatz, Marshall S., ed., The Essential Works of Anarchism (1971);
Woodcock, George, Anarchism (1962).

See also: NIHILISM; SYNDICALISM.

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Copyright 1995 by Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc.

Libertarian Socialism

(Please also see this web site: Anarchists Against Nationalism and
National Socialism)

Libertarian Socialism is a term essentially synonymous with the word

"Anarchism". Anarchy, strictly meaning "without rulers", leads one to
wonder what sort of system would exist in place of one without state
or capitalist masters... the answer being a radically democratic society
while preserving the maximal amount of individual liberty and
freedom possible.

Libertarian Socialism recognizes that the concept of "property"

(specifically, the means of production, factories, land used for profit,
rented space) is theft and that in a truly libertarian society, the
individual would be free of exploitation caused by the concentration
of all means of wealth-making into the hands of an elite minority of
capitalists.

Why "Libertarian"?

It is recognized that there are authoritarian systems and behavior,

distinct from libertarian, or non-authoritarian ones. Since capitalism's
early beginnings in Europe, and it's authoritarian trend of wage-
slavery for the majority of people (working class) by a smaller, elite
group (a ruling, or, capitalist class) who own the "means of
production": machines, land, factories, there was a liberatory
movement in response to capitalism known as "Socialism". In almost
every case, the socialist movement has been divided along
authoritarian, and libertarian lines. The anarchists on the libertarian
side, and the Jacobins, Marxists, Leninists, Stalinists, and reformist
state-socialists on the authoritarian side. (And liberals more or less
split down the middle.)

There was also a movement called "Propaganda by deed", around the

late 1800's to early 1900's, in which some anarchists (Such as the
Italian Anarchist Luigi Galleani (1861-1931)), believed that violence

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was the best strategy for opposing the state. This proved a disaster,
alienating anarchists from the general population and exposing them
to negative characterizations by the press... the "bomb-toting
anarchist" is for the most part a creation of the corporate media-
before this stigma anarchism was recognized as an anti-authoritarian
socialist movement.

Many anarchist groups and publications used the word "libertarian"

instead of "anarchist" to avoid state repression and the negative
association of the former term. Libertarian Socialism differentiates
itself from "Anarchy" as a movement only in that it specifically
focuses on working class organisation and education in order to
achieve human emancipation from the fetters of capitalism.

Why "Socialism"?

Socialism, in it's traditional and true definition, means "the workers

democratic ownership and/or control of the means of production".
Such a definition implies that rather than a government bureaucracy
for managing such means, there is a focus on highly democratic
organisation, education and awareness, and every individual is
encouraged to become an active, rather than passive participant in that
which effect their lives. Only the workers themselves bear the
knowledge of what their own freedom and liberty means, and only
they know what is best for themselves, ultimately. Advocates of the
state, be they on the left, or the right, have repeatedly defined the
meaning of "socialism" to mean arbitrary rule by a set of "leaders", or
a political con-game in which socialism is no more than capitalism
with a few token adjustments for bearability.

I've heard of "national socialism"... does that have anything to do

with "libertarian socialism"?

Definatly not. The National Socialist, or NAZI party controlled by

Adolf Hitler in Germany in the 1930's used the word "socialist" in
their party name because of the strong awareness workers there had of
class divisions and socialist theory at the time. The National Socialist
Party was actually a right-wing fascist movement that sought to win
over working class people from the left. Workers were basically

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tricked into believing that the NAZI party would solve their countries
economic problems by eliminating Jews and other minorities, and
expanding the country. The end result was mass murder of millions of
people and a totalitarian dictatorship. Some modern NAZIs and
"national anarchists" or "national libertarians" have claimed that there
was a "good" version of national socialism associated with Otto &
Gregor Strasser... but this national socialism was still racist and
exclusionary, and ultimatly led to a madman like Hitler taking power.
Now days there are people who call themselves "national socialists"
who attempt the same tactics of fooling people... hopefully they will
never succeed again. If a national socialist party ever came into power
it would be bitterly and ferociously opposed by libertarian socialists
all over the world.

What about the American "Libertarian Party"? Don't they

already use the word "libertarian"?

The word "libertarian" has been widely used in conjunction with the
word "anarchist" and anti-authoritarian strands of socialist
organisations, groups, and individuals since the turn of the century.
For example, in the US, Sam Dolgoff started the still-running
anarcho-syndicalist publication "Libertarian Labor Review" in the
late 1980's, and Noam Chomsky has repeatedly spoken about a
libertarian socialist solution to the oppression of workers worldwide.
In France (Paris, Nanterre, and Bretagne), Italy, Lebanon & Belgium
there are separate anarchist publications and/or groups all currently
using the name "Libertarian Alternative". In London, England the
Soliderity group published a series of periodicals since 1960, one of
the most recent entitled "Soliderity: A Journal of Libertarian
Socialism", and George Woodcock wrote "Anarchism: A History of
Libertarian Ideas and Movements" in 1962 (some 9 years before the
creation of the US Libertarian Party.) In Cuba in 1959 there existed an
anti-capitalist, anti-state organisation called the "Libertarian
Association of Cuba". In the 1950's George Fontenis published
"The Manifesto of Libertarian Communism". In New York City,
July 1954 Russell Blackwell, Esther and Sam Dolgoff formed the
Libertarian League, of which for a short time Murray Bookchin

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was a member. Erlier, in 1949, Gregory P. Maximoff initiated the
Libertarian Book Club just before he died in 1950.

During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) a coalition group called the
United Libertarian Organisations (ULO) was created with the
intent of spreading truthful information about the revolutionary
anarchist activities in Spain. The organisation consisted of groups
publishing Cultura Proletaria (Spanish), Il Martello (Italian), Delo
Truda (Russian anarchist), Il Proletario (Italian IWW), Freie Arbeiter
Stimme (Jewish Anarchist Federation), the American anarchist
publication, Vangaurd, as well as the Marine Transport Workers
Industrial Union and General Recruiting Union of the IWW, and the
Spanish Labor Press Bureau (administered by the CNT-FAI
representative in the United States and Canada, the Chicago anarchist
Maximilian Olay). The official organ of the ULO was called Spanish
Revolution (now available in facsimile from Greenwood Publishing
Corporation). Examples of articles are: Rural Collectives in Graus and
Imposta; Peasants Build a New Economy; Statistics on Industrial
Socialization in Catalonia; Organising the Textile Industry; Industrial
Democracy; Running a Department Store; Telephone System Run by
Workers; Peasant Communes in Aragon; etc. Anyone interested in
constructive economic and social achievements of the CNT-FAI in
revolutionary Spain should consult the pages of Spanish Revolution.

In Spain in 1932 Issac Puente wrote the pamphlet "Libertarian

Communism", and the CNT adopted libertarian communism as its
goal at the 1936 Saragossa conference on the eve of the Spanish
Revolution. In France in 1926 the Dielo Trouda group of anarchists
who had fled Russia wrote the hotly debated "Organisational
Platform of the Libertarian Communists".

"Sebastien Faure, who founded Le Libertaire in 1895, is often

credited with having invented the word 'libertarian' as a convenient
synonym for 'anarchist.' However, Joseph Dejacque's use of the word
as early as 1858 suggests that it may have had a long currency before
Faure adopted it."
[George Woodcock, Anarchism, p. 281 (footnote)]

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The term "libertarian" goes back at least to the 17th and 18th century
religious debates regarding free-will versus pre-destination, and was
used at that time to refer to persons who believed that individuals had
full liberty to act as they saw fit.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first known usage of

"libertarian" was in 1789 as part of "Belsham's Essays", in which he
appears to use the term in opposition to "necessitarian". It's hard to say
whether there was a direct connection with other uses of the term.

An early socialistic libertarian movement (in deeds if not in name) had

it's roots as far back as the French Revolution of 1789 in the poor serfs
who saw through the authoritarianism of the Jacobins (and the
bourgeoisie in general) who had used these serfs to overthrow the
monarchy. [Further information is available from Peter Kropotkin's
The Great French Revolution, 1789-1793 (pub: 1909)]

An earlier movement of "libertarian revolutionaries" were a

movement from the mid-1600's called "The Levellers". Though they
did not use the term "libertarian", they clearly had a libertarian
orientation. They had a socialistic and individualistic aspect like the
mutualists (mentioned below), and there was an even more socialistic
movement called "The Diggers" or "The True Levellers". (There was
also a group in San Francisco in the 1960's called The Diggers.)

It should be noted that there were two branches of libertarian socialists

in the nineteenth century... the communist libertarians, and the
mutualist libertarians. Both accepted the Labor Theory of Value, and
the worker's right to the wealth which he or she produces... but they
supported different means of achieving the goal of universal equality
and freedom for mankind. The mutualists included people such as
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Benjamin Tucker, and the like. There was
even a mutualist libertarian organisation (which came along still later
than the French and Spanish socialist's use of the term "libertarian")
called the Libertarian League in the 1920's. These people were
clearly "Social Revolutionaries" in that the interests of the "working
man" were of prime importance to them, though the more
communistic libertarians might have called the mutualists
"gradualist", they were still, at heart, socialist.

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There is ample proof from writings from the mid-1800s that indicate
that before the capitalists borrowed the term "libertarian", it was
already in use in a political context that one could loosely describe as
"pro-socialist". It was not until the 1950's that the capitalistic use of
the term came into vogue.

While a number of pro-capitalist "Libertarian" organisations and

publications tend to have recently appeared in the United States and a
few other countries, these entities serve the interests of small business
owners, landlords, investors and some upwardly-mobile professionals.
Essentially secular neo-conservative organisations, with strong
inspiration from the writings of the ultra-capitalist Ayn Rand,
economist Murray Rothbard, and science-fiction writer Robert
Heinlein. Typical of these advocates of the sacredcy of private
property is a distortion of the theories of the moral individualist
philosophers of the 19th century (Benjamin Tucker, Lysander
Spooner, Josiah Warren, Henry David Thoreau, etc.) who respected
the rights of the individual but were highly critical of the
concentrations of wealth and power which led to capitalism and
economic oppression since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Due
to the elite privilege for the few over the many inherent in a 'pure'
capitalist system, "libertarian" capitalism is un-democratic and anti-
libertarian. For more information see the essay "Libertarianism:
Bogus Anarchy", by Peter Sabatini, and a TV interview with Noam
Chomsky.

The Libertarian or sometimes-called "anarcho-" capitalist movement

was a reaction from the political right-wing against US president
FDR's sweeping social democratic laws passed as a response to a
powerful labor movement in the 1930's. The libertarian left had little
interest in nationalizations or state-social-programs, arguing that they
placed power into the hands of elite managers and not the workers
themselves. The destruction of the original libertarian movement in
the United States, (by mass deportations and imprisonment), as well as
in Europe (The Fascist victories in Spain, Italy and Germany) left a
vacuum in which was possible for one Dean Russell of the capitalist
"Foundation for Economic Education" to write an article in the FEE
publication, "Ideas on Liberty" of May, 1955 entitled "Who is a

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Libertarian?" which advocated that the right should "trademark and
reserve for our own use the good and honorable word 'libertarian.'" In
other cases, conservative Science Fiction writers such as Robert
Heinlein and Poul Anderson used the term in their writing to depict
fictionally virtuous forms of capitalism. It should be noted that these
writers and others like them (Ann MaCaffrey, Daniel F. Galouye,
Keith Laumer, etc.) supported the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam
War. For more information see the article "Starship Stormtroopers" by
Micheal Moorcock.

What these people did not know or chose to ignore was that at least
two US libertarian socialist organisations already existed, one formed
in July 1954 called the Libertarian League, started by Russell
Blackwell, and the other formed in 1949 and called the Libertarian
Book Club, an idea initiated by Gregory P. Maximoff, and formerly
established by a number of anarchists, including: Bill & Sarah Taback,
Joseph & Hannah Spivack, Joseph Aaronstam, Ida Pilot (a
professional translator) and her companion Valerio Isca, and Esther
and Sam Dolgoff. The Libertarian League of the 1920' was a
simmilarly socialistic organization, but no longer existed. The
Libertarian Book Club is based in New York City, and is still active
today.

(This information is from the book "Fragments: A Memoir", by Sam

Dolgoff, Pub. 1986 Refract Publications, Cambridge, England)

In Webster's New International Dictionary, the definition of

'Libertarian' is stated to be: "One who holds to the principle of free
will; also, one who upholds the principles of liberty, esp. individual
liberty of thought and action." Clearly, in comparison to the
authoritarian Soviet Union and Red China of the 1940's and 50's,
liberal capitalism could be made to appear more "libertarian" than
socialism if one were to accept that China and the USSR were the
definitive examples of "socialism". But, if one were to have listened to
the original socialistic libertarians (the anarchists) all along, it would
have been clear that both the "socialism" of so-called "Communist"

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countries, and the idea of a "libertarian (or anarcho-) capitalism" were
a farce.

Finaly, it should be noted that most of the modern pro-capitalist

"libertarian" writing suffers from a severe defect: they overlook the
fact that capitalism in every form ever tried throughout history is
inherently authoritarian (i.e the boss/worker relationship), and thus
incompatible with libertarianism in any form. However, if you ignore
and skip over those portions that talk about capitalist ideas, there are
some really eloquent arguments for individual rights, liberties, and
responsibilities in these writings.

Unlike right-wing Libertarians, Liberals and Social Democrats,

libertarian socialists reject participation in the mainstream
representative voting process. Libertarian socialism is, in effect, a
revolutionary theory and approach to political life. Libertarian
Socialism's anti-state stance might even give it the label "Laissez-fair
socialism"- if a politician (or capitalist) were to approach some
anarchist workers in France and ask them what it was he could do for
them, they would reply, "Laissez-nous faire."- essentially, "leave us
alone". Libertarian socialists understand that it is the workers who
create and maintain everything in the world, and they do not need
leaders to direct them in the affairs of their lives. What is the least a
government could do for workers? Keep the Government and
capitalists off their back-- but it is far better to avoid the need for
"politricksters" and capitalist rulers in the first place.

What about individual liberty?

Libertarian Socialism is an anti-authoritarian form of socialism and

the main principles are liberty, freedom, the right for workers to
fraternize and organise democratically, the absence of illegitimate
authority and the resistance against force. Libertarian Socialists hold
that the people can make the best judgments for themselves when
given enough information and therefore stress education rather than
regulation. In current society, the individual worker is separated from
her or his fellow workers and not permitted to organise against his or
her own exploitation... the state is the force which permits this lack of
freedom to continue.

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Libertarian Socialists see humankind divided in a struggle between
different social classes: the property-owning class, and the working
class. Libertarian socialists are against all forms of coercion, state and
capitalist, and do not seek to regulate human behaviors by way of the
state, including such issues as possession of firearms, drugs, sexual
conduct between consenting individuals, and related issues.

Libertarian Socialists see such things as gun control, "speech codes",

drug, alcohol, pornography and prostitution prohibition as a waste of
time, and an unnecessary violation of individual choice. Most of
humanities woes arise from the inherently coercive, undemocratic and
un-libertine capitalist and state systems which human society is
currently forced to follow. The answer is not regulation or limitation,
but organisation and education with a working-class emphasis.
Libertarian Socialists reject the "social democratic" solution of
keeping the state & military apparatus around but raising taxes to
support social programs. These are merely "band-aids" for problems
which under capitalism will never go away, and always threaten to get
worse. World problems will not be solved by "professionals", free-
market entrepreneurs, the ruling capitalist class, politicians or stateist
bureaucrats. Only the people, organised and educated, can solve their
own problems.

Libertarian socialists believe in a form of the free market - but a truly

free "market" (of ideas and aspirations, not money and wealth), not the
capitalist construct that exists today which is based on a minority
controlling the world's resources and the rest forced to work for them
or pay them rent. A free market where workers are free to organise
unions without fear of repression, and where exploitation of workers
through profits does not exist. People who run their own individual
businesses (or trades) without exploiting anyone would be left alone..
but large projects would be based on mutual free associations, which
would last for the duration of the project - where each member
affected would have an equal say in how the project is carried out and
what wages are paid. Instead of huge government or corporate
structures, individuals would truly have control over their lives when
working together, or alone. In a true free market, production facilities
would be owned and controlled by the workers themselves, not

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capitalist bosses or government bureaucrats. Libertarian communists
specificly wish to abolish money, the basis for the concentration of
power (wealth).

What do Libertarian Socialists feel about Racism, Sexism, and

Homophobia?

It has always been impossible for workers to challenge capitalism

effectively so long as divisions of people based on gender, skin color,
or sexual orientation have continued. Racism in particular has been
used from the start as a way of dividing workers along an arbitrary
basis and weakening any chances for solid organisation. So long as
there is always someone being looked down upon, someone forced to
accept lower wages because of their low status in society, wages in a
competitive system can always be pushed to what the lowest and most
desperate will accept. It should also go without saying that there is no
scientific proof of the existence of separate human "races" which are
truly incapable of getting along, nor is there scientific proof that
women are inherently physically weaker or less intellectually capable
than men. The issue of "hate speech" and pornography must always
take into account the importance of artistic freedom and the necessity
to criticize what one disagrees with. When it is clear that a conscious
effort is being made to denigrate or divide a group of people from
another, with some economic or political goal as it's motivation,
libertarian socialists would resist such actions on the basis that they
would divide and weaken any chance for eventual liberation from
capitalism. Finally, so long as any group is prejudiced against,
humanity will wage war against itself for irrational reasons, using
such divisions as a means to an end when seen fit. If people
understand that they too can be discriminated against, based on
ANYTHING about them, it should be obvious that such
discrimination, like any other human activity, has potential to be self-
destructive in it's consequences.

What libertarian socialist organisations exist?

Currently the most prominent organisations along

libertarian socialist lines are the International of
Anarchist Federations (IFA), and the syndicalist union

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known as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the anarcho-
syndicalist International Workers Association (IWA), and various
anarchist organisations & groups world-wide.

Are there any major libertarian socialist theorists?

Aside from the significant number of anarchist theorists such as

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin and
Alexander Berkman, some important contributors to libertarian
socialist theory and philosophy would be Noam Chomsky, Daniel
Guerin, and Murray Bookchin.

Defining Anarchism

Written by Jason Justice

NOTE: THIS ESSAY NEEDS TO BE UPDATED... IT HAS SEVERAL

ERRORS AND I AM IN CONTACT WITH THE AUTHOR (8/26/02)
Anarchism has been defined many ways by many different sources.
The word anarchism is taken from the word anarchy which is drawn
from dual sources in the Greek language. It is made up of the Greek
words av (meaning: absence of [and pronounced "an"] and apxn
(meaning: authority or government [and pronounced "arkhe"]). Today,
dictionary definitions still define anarchism as the absence of
government. These modern dictionary definitions of anarchism are
based on the writings and actions of anarchists of history and present.
Anarchists understand, as do historians of anarchism and good
dictionaries and encyclopedias, that the word anarchism represents a
positive theory. Exterior sources, however, such as the media, will
frequently misuse the word anarchism and, thus, breed
misunderstanding.

A leading modern dictionary, Webster's Third International

Dictionary, defines anarchism briefly but accurately as, "a political
theory opposed to all forms of government and governmental restraint
and advocating voluntary cooperation and free association of
individuals and groups in order to satisfy their needs." Other

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dictionaries describe anarchism with similar definitions. The
Britannica-Webster dictionary defines the word anarchism as, "a
political theory that holds all government authority to be unnecessary
and undesirable and advocates a society based on voluntary
cooperation of individuals and groups." Shorter dictionaries, such as
the New Webster Handy College Dictionary, define anarchism as, "the
political doctrine that all governments should be abolished."

These similar dictionary definitions of anarchism reflect the evolution

of the theory of anarchism made possible by anarchist intellectuals
and movements. As a result, dictionary definitions, although fair, only
reflect watered down definitions of the word anarchism. Professor
Noam Chomsky, in fact, has refuted the definition, as written in the
New American Webster Handy College Dictionary, describing
anarchism as a "political doctrine." According to Chomsky,
"...anarchism isn't a doctrine. It's at most a historical tendency, a
tendency of thought and action, which has many different ways of
developing and progressing and which, I would think, will continue as
a permanent strand of human history." Other modern definitions of
anarchism are thoroughly explained, not as a word, but as a history of
movements, people and ideas. The Encyclopedia of the American Left,
in fact, gives a three page history of anarchism, yet does not once
define the word.

Prior to the existence of the word anarchism people used the term
"Libertarian Socialism," which meant the same thing as anarchism.
Libertarian socialism was used largely by Mexican radicals in the
early eighteenth century [This is not true. The term "libertarian
socialism" was not used until the 20th century. The use of the term
"libertarian" as a substitute for "anarchist" started in France in the late
1800's. -Ed.].

William Godwin was the first proclaimed anarchist in history and the
first to write about anarchism. He was born in 1756 in Weisbech, the
capital of North Cambridgeshire. He later married feminist Mary
Wollstonecraft and had a daughter, Mary Shelley - author of
Frankenstein. Godwin published a book called Political Justice in
1793 which first introduced his ideas about anarchism, Godwin was

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forgotten about, however, and after his death Pierre Joseph
Proudhon became a leading anarchist figure in the world. His book
What is Property? incorporated greater meaning to the word
anarchism; anarchism became not only a rejection of established
authority but a theory opposing ownership of land and property as
well.

Anarchism fully blossomed as a defined theory when Russian

anarchists Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) and Peter Kropotkin
(1842-1921) started to write and speak. Bakunin had a major influence
in the world and introduced anarchism to many people. Kropotkin was
one of the many people inspired by Bakunin. Kropotkin wrote many
books on anarchism, including Muitual Aid, Fields Factories and
Workshops, and The Conquest of Bread, and greatly aided in the
evolution of the theory of anarchism. Kropotkin wrote the first adept
encyclopedia definition of anarchism in the eleventh edition of the
Encyclopedia Britannica in 1910. His definition was fifteen pages
long. He started the definition by introducing the word anarchism as:

the name given to a principle of theory of life and conduct under

which society is conceived without government - harmony in such a
society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to
any authority, but by free agreements concluded between various
groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of
production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite
variety of the needs and aspirations of a civilized being, In a society
developed on these lines, the voluntary associations which already
now begin to cover all fields of human activity would take a still
greater extension so as to substitute themselves for the state of its
functions.

Following Kropotkin, Leo Tolstoy furthered the ideas which make up

the meaning of the word anarchism. Tolstoy introduced Christian
anarchism (rejecting church authority but believing in God) and
broadened anarchism's meaning. Tolstoy, in favor of the growth of
anarchism, wrote "The anarchists are right in the assertion that,
without Authority, there could not be worse violence than that of
Authority under existing conditions."

17
As the 20th century emerged anarchism began to peak and the
definition of anarchism became concrete with the growth of new
anarchist writers and movements. The execution and imprisonment of
eight anarchists in Chicago in 1886 sparked anarchism's growth in the
United States. The "Haymarket Eight" flourished anarchists such as
Voltairine de Cleyre and Lucy Parsons. Parsons was born into
slavery and later became an anarchist and an ardent speaker and
working class rebel; the Chicago police labled Parsons, "...more
dangerous than a thousand rioters." Emma Goldman also became a
part of the anarchist movement due to the Chicago Martyrs.
Described as a "damn bitch of an anarchist," Goldman also broadened
the meaning of anarchism and introduced the greatest and most
important ideas of anarchist feminism in history which prevail, as a
result of Goldman, to this day.

Emma Goldman's life long comrade, Alexander Berkman, played a

major part in helping to define the word anarchism. He wrote a book
called ABC of Anarchism which defined and describes anarchism and
is still read today. Berkman wrote, "Anarchism means you should be
free; that no one should enslave you, boss you, rob you, or impose
upon you. It means you should be free to do the things you want to do;
and that you should not be compelled to do what you do not want to
do."

Anarchism was put into action by giant movements throughout history

which proved its definition was more than theoretical. The communal
efforts of anarchism were seen in the Paris Commune in the early
19th century, the revolutionary organizing of Mexican working class
rebels was proven possible by anarchists such as Ricardo Flores
Magon and revolutionaries like Emiliano Zapata, and the Spanish
Revolution of 1936-39 proved anarchists' capability of creating
anarchism within small sectors of the world. Certainly today we can
see anarchism in action in places like Mondragon, Spain, where
anarchists are working in collectives and trying to live free of
authority.

Although the word anarchism is understood by many in its classic

sense (that defined by dictionaries and by anarchists of history), the

18
word is often misused and misunderstood. Anarchism, because of the
threat it imposes upon established authority, has been historically, and
is still, misused by power holders as violence and chaos. As anarchist
historian George Woodcock put it, "Of the more frivolous is the idea
that the anarchist is a man who throws bombs and wishes to wreak
society by violence and terror. That this charge should be brought
against anarchists now, at a time when they are the few people who
are not throwing bombs or assisting bomb throwers, shows a curious
purblindness among its champions." The claim that anarchism is chaos
was refuted long ago by Alexander Berkman when he wrote:

I must tell you, first of all, what anarchism is not. It is not bombs,
disorder, or chaos. It is not robbery or murder. It is not a war of each
against all. It is not a return to barbarianism or to the wild state of
man. Anarchism is the very opposite of all that.

These refutations of stereotypes associated with anarchism are

sometimes trampled by the popular misuse of the word anarchism. It
is not uncommon for a Middle Eastern nation in the midst of U.S.-
imposed turmoil to be labeled by the media as "complete anarchy," a
phrase which undermines the true definition of the word anarchism
and all those who toiled, and who do toil, to make the word anarchism
mean what it does today.

Modern anarchists still work hard to help anarchism maintain its

validity and history. Anarchism today is being used to find solutions
to the problems of power; not just state power, but corporate power
and all immediate forms of domination among individuals and
organizations. Anarchists such as L. Susan Brown have introduced
ideas such as existential individualism, while other anarchists remain
loyal to anarcho-syndicalism and class struggle. Anarchism has also
been spread around the world through music and bands such as Crass,
introducing anarchism and anti-speciesism and urging self-sufficiency
among workers and community members. Other anarchists such as
Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, an ex-Black Panther, are introducing new
means of organizing and directly challenging racism. Furthermore,
anarchism has become integrated into ecological issues thanks in part
to eco-anarchist ideas and freethinking organizations such as Earth

19
First! Also, we see anarchists working to keep anarchism, in theory
and practice, alive and well around the world with anarchist
newspapers such as Love and Rage in Mexico and the United States,
anarchist book publishers such as AK Press in the U.S. and the U.K.,
and political prisoner support groups such as the Anarchist Black
Cross.

As documented, the word anarchism has a long history. Although the

word is simply derived from Greek tongue, the philosophy and actions
of anarchists in history and present give the word anarchism proper
definition. Dictionary definitions, as quoted, are sometimes fair to
anarchism, but far from complete. The misuse of the word anarchism
is unfortunate and has been a problem anarchists have had to deal with
for the last century. Because of the misuse of anarchism, the simple
dictionary definitions of anarchism, and the different interpretations of
anarchism the word can take on many meanings, but the truly accurate
meaning of the word anarchism can be found in anarchist history,
anarchist writings and anarchist practice.

THE NEXT MOVE IS YOURS

Written by Jason Justice

PLEASE REPRINT AND DISTRIBUTE

MISCONCEPTIONS OF ANARCHISM

(This talk discussed the main principles of constructive anarchism.)

Anarchism Is Not Absolute Anti-social Individualism

Anarchism does not connote absolute, irresponsible, anti-social

individual freedom which violates the rights of others and rejects
every form of organization and self-discipline. Absolute individual
freedom can be attained only in isolation- if at all: "What really takes
away liberty and makes initiative impossible is the isolation which

20
renders one powerless." (Errico Malatesta, Life and Ideas, Freedom
Press, p. 87)

Anarchism is synonymous with the term "free socialism" or "social

anarchism." As the term "social" itself implies, anarchism is the free
association of people living together and cooperating in free
communities. The abolition of capitalism and the state; workers' self-
management of industry; distribution according to needs; free
association; are principles which, for all socialist tendencies,
constitute the essence of socialism. To distinguish themselves from
fundamental differences about how and when these aims will be
realized, as well as from the anti-social individualists, Peter Kropotkin
and the other anarchist thinkers defined anarchism as the "left wing of
the socialist movement." The Russian anarchist Alexei Borovoi
declared that the proper basis for anarchism in a free society is the
equality of all members in a free organization. Social anarchism could
be defined as the equal right to be different.

Anarchism Is Not Unlimited Liberty Nor the Negation of

Responsibility

In social relations between people certain voluntary social norms will

have to be accepted, namely, the obligation to fulfill a freely accepted
agreement. Anarchism is not no government. Anarchism is self-
government (or its equivalent, self-administration). Self-government
means self-discipline. The alternative to self-discipline is enforced
obedience imposed by rulers over their subjects. To avoid this, the
members of every association freely make the rules of their
association and agree to abide by the rules they themselves make.
Those who refuse to live up to their responsibility to honor a voluntary
agreement shall be deprived of its benefits.

The Right to Secede

Punishment for violation of agreements is balanced by the inalienable

right to secede. The right of groups and individuals to choose their
own forms of association is, according to Bakunin, the most important
of all political rights. The abrogation of this right leads to the
reintroduction of tyranny. You cannot secede from a jail. Secession

21
will not paralyze the association. People with strong, overriding
common interests will cooperate. Those who stand more to lose by
seceding will compromise their differences. Those who have little or
nothing in common with the collectivity will not hurt the association
by seceding, but will, on the contrary, eliminate a source of friction,
thereby promoting general harmony.

Essential Difference Between Anarchism and the State

The vast difference between the anarchist concept of freely accepted

authority in the exchange of services which is the administration of
things, differs fundamentally from the authority of the state, which is
the rule over its subjects, the people. For example, repairing my
television: the authority of the expert mechanic ends when the repairs
are made. The same applies when I agree to paint the mechanic's
room. The reciprocal exchange of goods and services is a limited, not
a personal, cooperative relationship which automatically excludes
dictatorship. But the state, on the contrary, is an all-pervading
apparatus governing every aspect of my life from conception to death,
whose every decree I am compelled to obey or suffer harrassment,
abrogation of rights, imprisonment and even death.

People can freely secede from a group or association, even organize

one of their own. But they cannot escape the jurisdiction of the state.
If they finally do succeed in escaping from one state to another they
are immediately subjected to the jurisdiction of the new state.

Replacing the State

Anarchist concepts are not artificially concocted by anarchists. They

are derived from tendencies already at work. Kropotkin, who
formulated the sociology of anarchism, insisted that the anarchist
conception of the free society is based on "those data which are
already supplied by the observation of life at the present time." The
anarchist theoreticians limited themselves to suggest the utilization of
all the useful organisms in the old society in order to construct a new
one. That the "elements of the new society are already developing in
the collapsing bourgeois society" (Marx) is a fundamental principle
shared by all tendencies in the socialist movement. The anarchist

22
writer, Colin Ward, sums up this point admirably: "If you want to
build the new society, all the materials are already at hand."

Anarchists seek to replace the state, not with chaos, but with the
natural, spontaneous forms of organization that emerged wherever
mutual aid and common interests through coordination and self-
government became necessary. It springs from the ineluctable
interdependence of mankind and the will to harmony. This form of
organization is federalism. Society without order (as the term
"society" implies) is inconceivable. But the organization of order is
not the exclusive monopoly of the state. Federalism is a form of order
which preceded the usurpation of society by the state and will survive
it.

There is barely a single form of organization which, before it was

usurped by the state, was not originally federalist in character. To this
day only the listing of the vast network of local, provincial, national
and international federations and confederations embracing the totality
of social life would easily fill volumes. The federated form of
organization makes it practical for all groups and federations to reap
the benefits of unity and coordination while exercising autonomy
within their own spheres, thus expanding the range of their own
freedom. Federalism - synonym for free agreement - is the
organization of freedom. As Proudhon put it, "He who says freedom
without saying federalism, says nothing."

After the Revolution

Society is a vast interlocking network of cooperative labor, and all the

deeply rooted institutions now usefully functioning will in some form
continue to function for the simple reason that the very existence of
mankind depends upon this inner cohesion. This has never been
questioned by anyone. What Is needed is emancipation from
authoritarian institutions over society and authoritarianism within the
organizations themselves. Above all, they must be infused with
revolutionary spirit and confidence in the creative capacity of the
people. Kropotkin, in working out the sociology of anarchism, has
opened an area of fruitful research which had been largely neglected
by social scientists busily mapping out new areas for state control.

23
The anarchists were primarily concerned with the immediate problems
of social transformation that will have to be faced in any country after
a revolution. It was for this reason that the anarchists tried to work out
measures to meet the pressing problems most likely to emerge during
what the anarchist writer-revolutionary Errico Malatesta called "the
period of reorganization and transition." A summary of Malatesta's
discussion of some of the more important questions follows.

Crucial problems cannot be avoided by postponing them to the distant

future - perhaps a century or more - when anarchism will have been
fully realized and the masses will have finally become convinced and
dedicated anarcho-communists. We anarchists must have our own
solution if we are not to play the role of "useless and impotent
grumblers," while the more realistic and unscrupulous authoritarians
seize power. Anarchy or no anarchy, the people must eat and be
provided with the necessities of life. The cities must be provisioned
and vital services cannot be disrupted. Even if poorly served the
people in their own interests would not allow anyone to disrupt these
services unless and until they are reorganized in a better way, and this
cannot be achieved in a day.

The organization of the anarchist-communist society on a wide scale

can only be achieved gradually as material conditions permit, and the
masses convince themselves of the benefits to be gained and as they
gradually become psychologically accustomed to radical alterations in
their way of life. Since free and voluntary communism (Malatesta's
synonym for anarchism) cannot be imposed, Malatesta stressed the
necessity for the coexistence of various economic forms - collectivist,
mutualist, individualist - on condition that there will be no
exploitation of others. Malatesta was confident that the convincing
example of successful libertarian collectives will

attract others into the orbit of the collectivity . . . for my part, I do not
believe that there is "one" solution to the social problem, but a
thousand different and changing solutions, in the same way as social
existence is different in time and space. [Errico Malatesta, Life and
Ideas, edited by Vernon Richards, Freedom Press, London, pp. 36,
100, 99, 103-4, 101, 151, 159]

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"Pure" Anarchism Is a Utopia

"Pure" anarchism is defined by the anarchist writer George Woodcock

as "the loose and flexible affinity group which needs no formal
organization and carries on anarchist propaganda through an invisible
network of personal contacts and intellectual influences." Woodcock
argues that "pure" anarchism is incompatible with mass movements
like anarcho-syndicalism because they need
stable organizations precisely because it moves in a world that is only
partially governed by anarchist ideals . . . and make compromises with
day-to-day situations . . . [anarcho-syndicalism] has to maintain the
allegiance of masses of [workers] who are only remotely conscious of
the final aim of anarchism. [Anarchism, pp. 273-4]
If these statements are true, anarchism is a Utopia, because there will
never be a time when everybody will be a "pure" anarchist and
because humanity will forever have to make "compromises with the
day-to-day situation." This is not to say that anarchism excludes
"affinity groups." Indeed, it is precisely because the infinite variety of
voluntary organizations which are formed, dissolved and
reconstructed according to the fluctuating whims and fancies of
individual adherents reflect individual preferences that they constitute
the indispensable condition for the free society.

But the anarchists insist that production, distribution, communication

exchange and the other indispensable which must be coordinated on a
world-wide scale in our modern interdependent world must be
supplied without fail by "stable" organizations and cannot be left to
the fluctuating whims of individuals. They are social obligations
which every able-bodied individual must fulfill if he or she expects to
enjoy the benefits of collective labor. It should be axiomatic that such
indispensable "stable" associations, anarchistically organized, are not
a deviation. They constitute the essence of anarchism as a viable
social order.

Charting the Road to Freedom

Anarchists are not so naive as to expect the installation of the perfect

society composed of perfect individuals who would miraculously shed
their ingrown prejudices and outworn habits on the "day after the

25
revolution." We are not concerned with guessing how society will
look in the remote future when heaven on earth will at last be attained.
But we are above everything else, concerned with the direction of
human development. There is no "pure" anarchism. There is only the
application of anarchist principles to the realities of social living. The
one and only aim of anarchism is to propel society in an anarchist
direction.

Thus viewed, anarchism is a believable, practical guide to social

organization. It is otherwise doomed to Utopian dreams, nor a living
force.

From "Fragments: A Memoir", by Sam Dolgoff (Refract Publications,

1986)

Anarchism

from The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1910.

Written by Peter Kropotkin

ANARCHISM, the name given to a principle or theory of life and

conduct under which society is conceived without government -
harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law,
or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded
between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely
constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the
satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a
civilized being. In a society developed on these lines, the voluntary
associations which already now begin to cover all the fields of human
activity would take a still greater extension so as to substitute
themselves for the state in all its functions. They would represent an
interwoven network, composed of an infinite variety of groups and
federations of all sizes and degrees, local, regional, national and
international temporary or more or less permanent - for all possible
purposes: production, consumption and exchange, communications,
sanitary arrangements, education, mutual protection, defence of the
territory, and so on; and, on the other side, for the satisfaction of an
ever-increasing number of scientific, artistic, literary and sociable

26
needs. Moreover, such a society would represent nothing immutable.
On the contrary - as is seen in organic life at large - harmony would (it
is contended) result from an ever-changing adjustment and
readjustment of equilibrium between the multitudes of forces and
influences, and this adjustment would be the easier to obtain as none
of the forces would enjoy a special protection from the state.

If, it is contended, society were organized on these principles, man

would not be limited in the free exercise of his powers in productive
work by a capitalist monopoly, maintained by the state; nor would he
be limited in the exercise of his will by a fear of punishment, or by
obedience towards individuals or metaphysical entities, which both
lead to depression of initiative and servility of mind. He would be
guided in his actions by his own understanding, which necessarily
would bear the impression of a free action and reaction between his
own self and the ethical conceptions of his surroundings. Man would
thus be enabled to obtain the full development of all his faculties,
intellectual, artistic and moral, without being hampered by overwork
for the monopolists, or by the servility and inertia of mind of the great
number. He would thus be able to reach full individualization, which
is not possible either under the present system of individualism, or
under any system of state socialism in the so-called Volkstaat (popular
state).

The anarchist writers consider, moreover, that their conception is not a

utopia, constructed on the a priori method, after a few desiderata have
been taken as postulates. It is derived, they maintain, from an analysis
of tendencies that are at work already, even though state socialism
may find a temporary favour with the reformers. The progress of
modern technics, which wonderfully simplifies the production of all
the necessaries of life; the growing spirit of independence, and the
rapid spread of &ee initiative and free understanding in all branches of
activity - including those which formerly were considered as the
proper attribution of church and state - are steadily reinforcing the no-
government tendency.

As to their economical conceptions, the anarchists, in common with

all socialists, of whom they constitute the left wing, maintain that the

27
now prevailing system of private ownership in land, and our capitalist
production for the sake of profits, represent a monopoly which runs
against both the principles of justice and the dictates of utility. They
are the main obstacle which prevents the successes of modern technics
from being brought into the service of all, so as to produce general
well-being. The anarchists consider the wage-system and capitalist
production altogether as an obstacle to progress. But they point out
also that the state was, and continues to be, the chief instrument for
permitting the few to monopolize the land, and the capitalists to
appropriate for themselves a quite disproportionate share of the yearly
accumulated surplus of production. Consequently, while combating
the present monopolization of land, and capitalism altogether, the
anarchists combat with the same energy the state, as the main support
of that system. Not this or that special form, but the state altogether,
whether it be a monarchy or even a republic governed by means of the
referendum.

The state organization, having always been, both in ancient and

modern history (Macedonian Empire, Roman Empire, modern
European states grown up on the ruins of the autonomous cities), the
instrument for establishing monopolies in favour of the ruling
minorities, cannot be made to work for the destruction of these
monopolies. The anarchists consider, therefore, that to hand over to
the state all the main sources of economical life - the land, the mines,
the railways, banking, insurance, and so on - as also the management
of all the main branches of industry, in addition to all the functions
already accumulated in its hands (education, state-supported religions,
defence of the territory, etc.), would mean to create a new instrument
of tyranny. State capitalism would only increase the powers of
bureaucracy and capitalism. True progress lies in the direction of
decentralization, both territorial and functional, in the development of
the spirit of local and personal initiative, and of free federation from
the simple to the compound, in lieu of the present hierarchy from the
centre to the periphery.

In common with most socialists, the anarchists recognize that, like all
evolution in nature, the slow evolution of society is followed from
time to time by periods of accelerated evolution which are called

28
revolutions; and they think that the era of revolutions is not yet closed.
Periods of rapid changes will follow the periods of slow evolution,
and these periods must be taken advantage of - not for increasing and
widening the powers of the state, but for reducing them, through the
organization in every township or commune of the local groups of
producers and consumers, as also the regional, and eventually the
international, federations of these groups.

In virtue of the above principles the anarchists refuse to be party to the

present state organization and to support it by infusing fresh blood
into it. They do not seek to constitute, and invite the working men not
to constitute, political parties in the parliaments. Accordingly, since
the foundation of the International Working Men's Association in
1864-1866, they have endeavoured to promote their ideas directly
amongst the labour organizations and to induce those unions to a
direct struggle against capital, without placing their faith in
parliamentary legislation.

The historical development of Anarchism

The conception of society just sketched, and the tendency which is its
dynamic expression, have always existed in mankind, in opposition to
the governing hierarchic conception and tendency - now the one and
now the other taking the upper hand at different periods of history. To
the former tendency we owe the evolution, by the masses themselves,
of those institutions - the clan, the village community, the guild, the
free medieval city - by means of which the masses resisted the
encroachments of the conquerors and the power-seeking minorities.
The same tendency asserted itself with great energy in the great
religious movements of medieval times, especially in the early
movements of the reform and its forerunners. At the same time it
evidently found its expression in the writings of some thinkers, since
the times of Lao-tsze, although, owing to its non-scholastic and
popular origin, it obviously found less sympathy among the scholars
than the opposed tendency.

As has been pointed out by Prof. Adler in his Geschichte des

Sozialismus und Kommunismus, Aristippus (b. c. 430 BC), one of the
founders of the Cyrenaic school, already taught that the wise must not

29
give up their liberty to the state, and in reply to a question by Socrates
he said that he did not desire to belong either to the governing or the
governed class. Such an attitude, however, seems to have been
dictated merely by an Epicurean attitude towards the life of the
masses.

The best exponent of anarchist philosophy in ancient Greece was Zeno

(342-267 or 270 BC), from Crete, the founder of the Stoic philosophy,
who distinctly opposed his conception of a free community without
government to the state-utopia of Plato. He repudiated the
omnipotence of the state, its intervention and regimentation, and
proclaimed the sovereignty of the moral law of the individual -
remarking already that, while the necessary instinct of self-
preservation leads man to egotism, nature has supplied a corrective to
it by providing man with another instinct - that of sociability. When
men are reasonable enough to follow their natural instincts, they will
unite across the frontiers and constitute the cosmos. They will have no
need of law-courts or police, will have no temples and no public
worship, and use no money - free gifts taking the place of the
exchanges. Unfortunately, the writings of Zeno have not reached us
and are only known through fragmentary quotations. However, the
fact that his very wording is similar to the wording now in use, shows
how deeply is laid the tendency of human nature of which he was the
mouthpiece.

In medieval times we find the same views on the state expressed by

the illustrious bishop of Alba, Marco Girolamo Vida, in his first
dialogue De dignitate reipublicae (Ferd. Cavalli, in Mem. dell'Istituto
Veneto, xiii.; Dr E. Nys, Researches in the History of Economics). But
it is especially in several early Christian movements, beginning with
the ninth century in Armenia, and in the preachings of the early
Hussites, particularly Chojecki, and the early Anabaptists, especially
Hans Denk (cf. Keller, Ein Apostel der Wiedertaufer), that one finds
the same ideas forcibly expressed - special stress being laid of course
on their moral aspects.

Rabelais and Fenelon, in their utopias, have also expressed similar

ideas, and they were also current in the eighteenth century amongst

30
the French Encyclopaedists, as may be concluded from separate
expressions occasionally met with in the writings of Rousseau, from
Diderot's Preface to the Voyage of Bougainville, and so on. However,
in all probability such ideas could not be developed then, owing to the
rigorous censorship of the Roman Catholic Church.

These ideas found their expression later during the great French
Revolution. While the Jacobins did all in their power to centralize
everything in the hands of the government, it appears now, from
recently published documents, that the masses of the people, in their
municipalities and 'sections', accomplished a considerable constructive
work. They appropriated for themselves the election of the judges, the
organization of supplies and equipment for the army, as also for the
large cities, work for the unemployed, the management of charities,
and so on. They even tried to establish a direct correspondence
between the 36,000 communes of France through the intermediary of
a special board, outside the National Assembly (cf. Sigismund
Lacroix, Actes de la commune de Paris).

It was Godwin, in his Enquiry concerning Political Justice (2 vols.,

1793), who was the first to formulate the political and economical
conceptions of anarchism, even though he did not give that name to
the ideas developed in his remarkable work. Laws, he wrote, are not a
product of the wisdom of our ancestors: they are the product of their
passions, their timidity, their jealousies and their ambition. The
remedy they offer is worse than the evils they pretend to cure. If and
only if all laws and courts were abolished, and the decisions in the
arising contests were left to reasonable men chosen for that purpose,
real justice would gradually be evolved. As to the state, Godwin
frankly claimed its abolition. A society, he wrote, can perfectly well
exist without any government: only the communities should be small
and perfectly autonomous. Speaking of property, he stated that the
rights of every one 'to every substance capable of contributing to the
benefit of a human being' must be regulated by justice alone: the
substance must go 'to him who most wants it'. His conclusion was
communism. Godwin, however, had not the courage to maintain his
opinions. He entirely rewrote later on his chapter on property and

31
mitigated his communist views in the second edition of Political
Justice (8vo, 1796).

Proudhon was the first to use, in 1840 (Qu'est-ce que la propriete? first
memoir), the name of anarchy with application to the no government
state of society. The name of 'anarchists' had been freely applied
during the French Revolution by the Girondists to those
revolutionaries who did not consider that the task of the Revolution
was accomplished with the overthrow of Louis XVI, and insisted upon
a series of economical measures being taken (the abolition of feudal
rights without redemption, the return to the village communities of the
communal lands enclosed since 1669, the limitation of landed
property to 120 acres, progressive income-tax, the national
organization of exchanges on a just value basis, which already
received a beginning of practical realization, and so on).

Now Proudhon advocated a society without government, and used the

word anarchy to describe it. Proudhon repudiated, as is known, all
schemes of communism, according to which mankind would be driven
into communistic monasteries or barracks, as also all the schemes of
state or state-aided socialism which were advocated by Louis Blanc
and the collectivists. When he proclaimed in his first memoir on
property that 'Property is theft', he meant only property in its present,
Roman-law, sense of 'right of use and abuse'; in property-rights, on the
other hand, understood in the limited sense of possession, he saw the
best protection against the encroachments of the state. At the same
time he did not want violently to dispossess the present owners of
land, dwelling-houses, mines, factories and so on. He preferred to
attain the same end by rendering capital incapable of earning interest;
and this he proposed to obtain by means of a national bank, based on
the mutual confidence of all those who are engaged in production,
who would agree to exchange among themselves their produces at
cost-value, by means of labour cheques representing the hours of
labour required to produce every given commodity. Under such a
system, which Proudhon described as 'Mutuellisme', all the exchanges
of services would be strictly equivalent. Besides, such a bank would
be enabled to lend money without interest, levying only something
like I per cent, or even less, for covering the cost of administration.

32
Everyone being thus enabled to borrow the money that would be
required to buy a house, nobody would agree to pay any more a yearly
rent for the use of it. A general 'social liquidation' would thus be
rendered easy, without violent expropriation. The same applied to
mines, railways, factories and so on.

In a society of this type the state would be useless. The chief relations
between citizens would be based on free agreement and regulated by
mere account keeping. The contests might be settled by arbitration. A
penetrating criticism of the state and all possible forms of government,
and a deep insight into all economic problems, were well-known
characteristics of Proudhon's work.

It is worth noticing that French mutualism had its precursor in

England, in William Thompson, who began by mutualism before he
became a communist, and in his followers John Gray (A Lecture on
Human Happiness, 1825; The Social System, 1831) and J. F. Bray
(Labour's Wrongs and Labour's Remedy, 1839). It had also its
precursor in America. Josiah Warren, who was born in 1798 (cf. W.
Bailie, Josiah Warren, the First American Anarchist, Boston, 1900),
and belonged to Owen's 'New Harmony', considered that the failure of
this enterprise was chiefly due to the suppression of individuality and
the lack of initiative and responsibility. These defects, he taught, were
inherent to every scheme based upon authority and the community of
goods. He advocated, therefore, complete individual liberty. In 1827
he opened in Cincinnati a little country store which was the first
'equity store', and which the people called 'time store', because it was
based on labour being exchanged hour for hour in all sorts of produce.
'Cost - the limit of price', and consequently 'no interest', was the motto
of his store, and later on of his 'equity village', near New York, which
was still in existence in 1865. Mr Keith's 'House of Equity' at Boston,
founded in 1855, is also worthy of notice.

While the economical, and especially the mutual-banking, ideas of

Proudhon found supporters and even a practical application in the
United States, his political conception of anarchy found but little echo
in France, where the Christian socialism of Lamennais and the
Fourierists, and the state socialism of Louis Blanc and the followers of

33
Saint-Simon, were dominating. These ideas found, however, some
temporary support among the left-wing Hegelians in Germany, Moses
Hess in 1843, and Karl Grun in 1845, who advocated anarchism.
Besides, the authoritarian communism of Wilhelm Weitling having
given origin to opposition amongst the Swiss working men, Wilhelm
Marr gave expression to it in the 1840S.

On the other side, individualist anarchism found, also in Germany, its

fullest expression in Max Stirner (Kaspar Schmidt), whose remarkable
works (Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum and articles contributed to the
Rheinische Zeitung) remained quite overlooked until they were
brought into prominence by John Henry Mackay.

Prof. V. Basch, in a very able introduction to his interesting book,

L'lndividualisme anarchiste: Max Stirner (1904), has shown how the
development of the German philosophy from Kant to Hegel, and 'the
absolute' of Schelling and the Geist of Hegel, necessarily provoked,
when the anti-Hegelian revolt began, the preaching of the same
'absolute' in the camp of the rebels. This was done by Stirner, who
advocated, not only a complete revolt against the state and against the
servitude which authoritarian communism would impose upon men,
but also the full liberation of the individual from all social and moral
bonds - the rehabilitation of the 'I', the supremacy of the individual,
complete 'amoralism', and the 'association of the egotists'. The final
conclusion of that sort of individual anarchism has been indicated by
Prof. Basch. It maintains that the aim of all superior civilization is, not
to permit all members of the community to develop in a normal way,
but to permit certain better endowed individuals 'fully to develop',
even at the cost of the happiness and the very existence of the mass of
mankind. It is thus a return towards the most common individual ism,
advocated by all the would-be superior minorities, to which indeed
man owes in his history precisely the state and the rest, which these
individualists combat. Their individualism goes so far as to end in a
negation of their own starting-point - to say nothing of the
impossibility for the individual to attain a really full development in
the conditions of oppression of the masses by the 'beautiful
aristocracies'. His development would remain unilateral. This is why
this direction of thought, notwithstanding its undoubtedly correct and

34
useful advocacy of the full development of each individuality, finds a
hearing only in limited artistic and literary circles.

Anarchism in the International Working Men's Association

A general depression in the propaganda of all fractions of socialism

followed, as is known, after the defeat of the uprising of the Paris
working men in June 1848 and the fall of the Republic. All the
socialist press was gagged during the reaction period, which lasted
fully twenty years. Nevertheless, even anarchist thought began to
make some progress, namely in the writings of Bellegarrique
(Caeurderoy), and especially Joseph Dejacque (Les Lazareacute'ennes,
L 'Humanisph=E8re, an anarchist-communist utopia, lately discovered
and reprinted). The socialist movement revived only after 1864, when
some French working men, all 'mutualists', meeting in London during
the Universal Exhibition with English followers of Robert Owen,
founded the International Working Men's Association. This
association developed very rapidly and adopted a policy of direct
economical struggle against capitalism, without interfering in the
political parliamentary agitation, and this policy was followed until
1871. However, after the Franco-German War, when the Inter national
Association was prohibited in France after the uprising of the
Commune, the German working men, who had received man hood
suffrage for elections to the newly constituted imperial parliament,
insisted upon modifying the tactics of the International, and began to
build up a Social Democratic political party. This soon led to a
division in the Working Men's Association, and the Latin federations,
Spanish, Italian, Belgian and Jurassic (France could not be
represented), constituted among themselves a Federal union which
broke entirely with the Marxist general council of the Inter national.
Within these federations developed now what may be described as
modern anarchism. After the names of 'Federalists' and 'Anti-
authoritarians' had been used for some time by these federations the
name of 'anarchists', which their adversaries insisted upon applying to
them, prevailed, and finally it was revindicated.

Bakunin (q.v.) soon became the leading spirit among these Latin
federations for the development of the principles of anarchism, which

35
he did in a number of writings, pamphlets and letters. He demanded
the complete abolition of the state, which - he wrote is a product of
religion, belongs to a lower state of civilization, represents the
negation of liberty, and spoils even that which it undertakes to do for
the sake of general well-being. The state was an historically necessary
evil, but its complete extinction will be, sooner or later, equally
necessary. Repudiating all legislation, even when issuing from
universal suffrage, Bakunin claimed for each nation, each region and
each commune, full autonomy, so long as it is not a menace to its
neighbours, and full independence for the individual, adding that one
becomes really free only when, and in proportion as, all others are
free. Free federations of the communes would constitute free nations.

As to his economical conceptions, Bakunin described himself, in

common with his Federalist comrades of the International (Cesar De
Paepe, James Guillaume, Schwitzguebel), a 'collectivist anarchist' -
not in the sense of Vidal and Pecqueur in the 1840s, or of their
modern Social Democratic followers, but to express a state of things
in which all necessaries for production are owned in common by the
labour groups and the free communes, while the ways of retribution of
labour, communist or otherwise, would be settled by each group for
itself. Social revolution, the near approach of which was foretold at
that time by all socialists, would be the means of bringing into life the
new conditions.

The Jurassic, the Spanish and the Italian federations and sections of
the International Working Men's Association, as also the French, the
German and the American anarchist groups, were for the next years
the chief centres of anarchist thought and propaganda. They refrained
from any participation in parliamentary politics, and always kept in
close contact with the labour organizations. However, in the second
half of the 'eighties and the early 'nineties of the nineteenth century,
when the influence of the anarchists began to be felt in strikes, in the
1st of May demonstrations, where they promoted the idea of a general
strike for an eight hours' day, and in the anti-militarist propaganda in
the army, violent prosecutions were directed against them, especially
in the Latin countries (including physical torture in the Barcelona
Castle) and the United States (the execution of five Chicago anarchists

36
in 1887). Against these prosecutions the anarchists retaliated by acts
of violence which in their turn were followed by more executions
from above, and new acts of revenge from below. This created in the
general public the impression that violence is the substance of
anarchism, a view repudiated by its supporters, who hold that in
reality violence is resorted to by all parties in proportion as their open
action is obstructed by repression, and exceptional laws render them
outlaws. (Cf. Anarchism and Outrage, by C. M. Wilson, and Report of
the Spanish Atrocities Committee, in 'Freedom Pamphlets'; A Concise
History of the Great Trial of the Chicago Anarchists, by Dyer Lum
(New York, 1886); The Chicago Martyrs: Speeches, etc.).

Anarchism continued to develop, partly in the direction of

Proudhonian 'mutuellisme', but chiefly as communist-anarchism, to
which a third direction, Christian-anarchism, was added by Leo
Tolstoy, and a fourth, which might be ascribed as literary-anarchism,
began amongst some prominent modern writers.

The ideas of Proudhon, especially as regards mutual banking,

corresponding with those of Josiah Warren, found a considerable
following in the United States, creating quite a school, of which the
main writers are Stephen Pearl Andrews, William Grene, Lysander
Spooner (who began to write in 1850, and whose unfinished work,
Natural Law, was full of promise), and several others, whose names
will be found in Dr Nettlau's Bibliographie de l'anarchie.

A prominent position among the individualist anarchists in America

has been occupied by Benjamin R. Tucker, whose journal Liberty was
started in 1881 and whose conceptions are a combination of those of
Proudhon with those of Herbert Spencer. Starting from the statement
that anarchists are egotists, strictly speaking, and that every group of
individuals, be it a secret league of a few persons, or the Congress of
the United States, has the right to oppress all mankind, provided it has
the power to do so, that equal liberty for all and absolute equality
ought to be the law, and 'mind every one your own business' is the
unique moral law of anarchism, Tucker goes on to prove that a general
and thorough application of these principles would be beneficial and
would offer no danger, because the powers of every individual would

37
be limited by the exercise of the equal rights of all others. He further
indicated (following H. Spencer) the difference which exists between
the encroachment on somebody's rights and resistance to such an
encroachment; between domination and defence: the former being
equally condemnable, whether it be encroachment of a criminal upon
an individual, or the encroachment of one upon all others, or of all
others upon one; while resistance to encroachment is defensible and
necessary. For their self-defence, both the citizen and the group have
the right to any violence, including capital punishment. Violence is
also justified for enforcing the duty of keeping an agreement. Tucker
thus follows Spencer, and, like him, opens (in the present writer's
opinion) the way for reconstituting under the heading of 'defence' all
the functions of the state. His criticism of the present state is very
searching, and his defence of the rights of the individual very
powerful. As regards his economical views B. R. Tucker follows
Proudhon.

The individualist anarchism of the American Proudhonians finds,

however, but little sympathy amongst the working masses. Those who
profess it - they are chiefly 'intellectuals' - soon realize that the
individualization they so highly praise is not attainable by individual
efforts, and either abandon the ranks of the anarchists, and are driven
into the liberal individualism of the classical economist or they retire
into a sort of Epicurean amoralism, or superman theory, similar to that
of Stirner and Nietzsche. The great bulk of the anarchist working men
prefer the anarchist-communist ideas which have gradually evolved
out of the anarchist collectivism of the International Working Men's
Association. To this direction belong - to name only the better known
exponents of anarchism Elisee Reclus, Jean Grave, Sebastien Faure,
Emile Pouget in France; Errico Malatesta and Covelli in Italy; R.
Mella, A. Lorenzo, and the mostly unknown authors of many
excellent manifestos in Spain; John Most amongst the Germans;
Spies, Parsons and their followers in the United States, and so on;
while Domela Nieuwenhuis occupies an intermediate position in
Holland. The chief anarchist papers which have been published since
1880 also belong to that direction; while a number of anarchists of this
direction have joined the so-called syndicalist movement- the French
name for the non-political labour movement, devoted to direct

38
struggle with capitalism, which has lately become so prominent in
Europe.

As one of the anarchist-communist direction, the present writer for

many years endeavoured to develop the following ideas: to show the
intimate, logical connection which exists between the modern
philosophy of natural sciences and anarchism; to put anarchism on a
scientific basis by the study of the tendencies that are apparent now in
society and may indicate its further evolution; and to work out the
basis of anarchist ethics. As regards the substance of anarchism itself,
it was Kropotkin's aim to prove that communism at least partial - has
more chances of being established than collectivism, especially in
communes taking the lead, and that free, or anarchist-communism is
the only form of communism that has any chance of being accepted in
civilized societies; communism and anarchy are therefore two terms
of evolution which complete each other, the one rendering the other
possible and acceptable. He has tried, moreover, to indicate how,
during a revolutionary period, a large city - if its inhabitants have
accepted the idea could organize itself on the lines of free
communism; the city guaranteeing to every inhabitant dwelling, food
and clothing to an extent corresponding to the comfort now available
to the middle classes only, in exchange for a half-day's, or five-hours'
work; and how all those things which would be considered as luxuries
might be obtained by everyone if he joins for the other half of the day
all sorts of free associations pursuing all possible aims - educational,
literary, scientific, artistic, sports and so on. In order to prove the first
of these assertions he has analysed the possibilities of agriculture and
industrial work, both being combined with brain work. And in order to
elucidate the main factors of human evolution, he has analysed the
part played in history by the popular constructive agencies of mutual
aid and the historical role of the state.

Without naming himself an anarchist, Leo Tolstoy, like his

predecessors in the popular religious movements of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, Chojecki, Denk and many others, took the
anarchist position as regards the state and property rights, deducing
his conclusions from the general spirit of the teachings of the Christ
and from the necessary dictates of reason. With all the might of his

39
talent he made (especially in The Kingdom of God in Yourselves) a
powerful criticism of the church, the state and law altogether, and
especially of the present property laws. He describes the state as the
domination of the wicked ones, supported by brutal force. Robbers, he
says, are far less dangerous than a well-organized government. He
makes a searching criticism of the prejudices which are current now
concerning the benefits conferred upon men by the church, the state
and the existing distribution of property, and from the teachings of the
Christ he deduces the rule of non-resistance and the absolute
condemnation of all wars. His religious arguments are, however, so
well combined with arguments borrowed from a dispassionate
observation of the present evils, that the anarchist portions of his
works appeal to the religious and the non-religious reader alike.

It would be impossible to represent here, in a short sketch, the

penetration, on the one hand, of anarchist ideas into modern literature,
and the influence, on the other hand, which the libertarian ideas of the
best contemporary writers have exercised upon the development of
anarchism. One ought to consult the ten big volumes of the
Supplement Litteraire to the paper La Revolte and later the Temps
Nouveaux, which contain reproductions from the works of hundreds
of modern authors expressing anarchist ideas, in order to realize how
closely anarchism is connected with all the intellectual movement of
our own times. J. S. Mill's Liberty, Spencer's Individual versus the
State, Marc Guyau's Morality without Obligation or Sanction, and
Fouillee's La Morale, I'art et la religion, the works of Multatuli (E.
Douwes Dekker), Richard Wagner's Art and Revolution, the works of
Nietzsche, Emerson, W. Lloyd Garrison, Thoreau, Alexander Herzen,
Edward Carpenter and so on; and in the domain of fiction, the dramas
of Ibsen, the poetry of Walt Whitman, Tolstoy's War and Peace, Zola's
Paris and Le Travail, the latest works of Merezhkovsky, and an
infinity of works of less known authors, are full of ideas which show
how closely anarchism is interwoven with the work that is going on in
modern thought in the same direction of enfranchisement of man from
the bonds of the state as well as from those of capitalism.

40
 Anarchism: A Matter of Words

(Where the words "Anarchism" and "Libertarian" come from)

From Chapter 1, part 1 of the book "Anarchism", by Daniel Guerin

The word anarchy is as old as the world. It is derived from to ancient

Greek words, "an", "arkhe^", and means something like the absence of
authority or government. However, for millennia the presumption has
been accepted that man cannot dispense with one or the other, and
anarchy has been understood in a pejorative sense, as a synonym for
disorder, chaos, and disorganization.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was famous for his quips (such as "property is

theft") and took to himself the word anarchy. As if his purpose were to
shock as much as possible, in 1840 he engaged in the following
dialogue with the "Philistine".

"You are a republican."

"Republican, yes; but that means nothing. Res publica is 'the State.'
Kings, too, are republicans."
"Ah well! You are a democrat?"
"No."
"What! Perhaps you are a monarchist?"
"No."
"Constitutionalist then?"
"God forbid."
"Then you are an aristocrat?"
"Not at all!"
"You want a mixed form of government?"
"Even less."
"Then what are you?"
"An Anarchist."
He sometimes made the concession of spelling anarchy "an-archy" to
put the packs of adversaries off the scent. By this term he understood
anything but disorder. Appearances notwithstanding, he was more
constructive than destructive, as we shall see. He held government

41
responsible for disorder and believed that only a society without
government could restore the natural order and re-create social
harmony. He argued that the language could furnish no other term and
chose to restore to the old word anarchy its strict etymological
meaning. In the heat of his polemics, however, he obstinately and
paradoxically also used the word anarchy in its pejorative sense of
disorder, thus making confusion worse confounded. His disciple
Mikhail Bakunin followed him in this respect.

Proudhon and Bakunin carried this even further, taking malicious

pleasure in playing with the confusion created by the use of the two
opposite meanings of the word: for them, anarchy was both the most
colossal disorder, the most complete disorganization of society and,
beyond this gigantic revolutionary change, the construction of a new,
stable, and rational order based on freedom and solidarity. The
immediate followers of the two fathers of anarchy hesitated to use a
word so deplorably elastic, conveying a negative idea to the un-
initiated, and lending itself to ambiguities which could be annoying to
say the least. Even Proudhon became more cautious toward the end of
his brief career and was happy to call himself a "federalist." His petty-
bourgeois descendants preferred the term mutuellisme to anarchisme
and the socialist line adopted collectivisme, soon to be displaced by
communisme. At the end of the century in France, Sebastien Faure
took up a word originated in 1858 by one Joseph Dejacque to make it
the title of a journal, Le Liberataire. Today the terms "anarchist" and
"libertarian" have become interchangeable.

Most of these terms have a major disadvantage: they fail to express

the basic characteristics of the doctrines they are supposed to describe.
Anarchism is really a synonym for socialism. The anarchist is
primarily a socialist whose aim is to abolish the exploitation of man
by man. Anarchism is only one of the streams of socialist thought, that
stream whose main components are concern for liberty and haste to
abolish the State. Adolph Fischer, one of the Chicago martyrs, (1)
claimed that "every anarchist is a socialist, but every socialist is not
necessarily an anarchist."

42
Some anarchists consider themselves to be the best and most logical
socialists but they have adopted a label also attached to the terrorists,
or have allowed others to hang it around their necks. This has often
caused them to be mistaken for a sort of "foreign body" in the socialist
family and has led to a long string of misunderstandings and verbal
battles-- usually quite purposeless. Some contemporary anarchists
have tried to clear up the misunderstanding by adopting a more
explicit term: they align themselves with libertarian socialism or
communism.

Notes

[1] In 1883 an active nucleus of revolutionary socialists founded an

International Working Men's Association in the United States. They
were under the influence of the International Anarchist Congress, held
in London in 1881, and also of Johann Most, a social democrat turned
anarchist, who reached America in 1882. Albert R. Parsons and
Adolph Fischer were the moving spirits in the association, which took
the lead in a huge mass movement concentrated on winning an eight-
hour day. The campaign for this was launched by the trade unions and
the Knights of Labor, and May 1, 1886, was fixed as the deadline for
bringing the eight-hour day into force. During the first half of May, a
nationwide strike involved 190,000 workers, of whom 80,000 were in
Chicago. Impressive mass demonstrations occurred in that city on
May 1 and for several days thereafter. Panic-stricken and terrified by
this wave of rebellion, the bourgeoisie resolved to crush the
movement at its source, resorting to a bloody provocation if need be.
During a street meeting on May 4, 1885, in Haymarket Square, a
bomb thrown at the legs of the police in an unexplained manner
provided the necessary pretext. Eight leaders of the revolutionary and
libertarian socialist movement were arrested, seven of them sentenced
to death, and four subsequently hanged (a fifth committed suicide in
his cell the day before the execution). Since then the Chicago martyrs-
- Parsons, Fischer, Engel, Spies, and Lingg-- have belonged to the
international proletariat, and the universal celebration of May Day

43
(May 1) still commemorates the atrocious crime committed in the
United States.

What is Anarcism

Anarchists are against chaos

When you hear about anarchists you are led to believe that we are mad
bombers. Every other group that lets off a bomb is immediately
labelled 'anarchist' whether they be nationalists, socialists or even
fascists. The myth is created that we believe in violence for the sake of
it. The other myth is that anarchism is chaos It is claimed by
politicians, bosses and their hacks in the media that if there was no
government there would be chaos. But did you ever wonder about
society today and come to the conclusion that perhaps we are already
living in chaos. At the moment thousands of builders are on the dole
yet homeless people need housing to live in. The price of butter is
scandalously dear yet every year the EC has to deal with a butter
mountain. Thousands of people are dying of starvation around the
world yet millions of pounds are spent every day on nuclear arms
which have the potential for wiping us and the world out.

You might ask why is this so? We say that there is one big reason -
PROFIT! At the moment we live in a society in which there are two
major classes - the bosses and the workers. The bosses own the
factories, banks, shops, etc. Workers don't. All they have is their
labour which they use to make a living. Workers are compelled to sell
their labour to the boss for a wage. The boss is interested in squeezing
as much work out of the worker for as little wages as possible so that
he/she can maintain high profits. Thus the more wages workers get the
less profits the bosses make. Their interests are in total opposition to
each other.

Production is not based on the needs of ordinary people. Production is

for profit. Therefore although there is enough food in the world to

44
feed everyone, people starve because profits come first. This is
capitalism.

What is the State?

There are other classes in society such as the self- employed and small
farmers but fundamentally there are workers and bosses whose
interests are in opposition to each other. For workers needs to be fully
met we must get rid of the bosses. But this is no easy task. The bosses
are organised. They have the media on their side. They also have the
State and the force of the army and police that go with it. We only
have to look at the 1984 miners strike in Britain to see how the forces
of the state can be used against the working class.

The state (i.e. governments, armies, courts, police, etc.) is a direct

result of the fact that we live in a class society. A society where only
7% of the people own 84% of the wealth. (Irish figures c. 1984)

The state is there to protect the interests of this minority, if not by

persuasion then by force. Laws are made not to protect us but to
protect those who own the property.

Compare this with the treatment handed out to the multi-nationals who
were able to take 500m in profits out of the country tax free without
the government even knowing about it. If you think that the state is
there to protect you, think about the fact that workers pay 88% of all
income taxes while the rest - farmers, self-employed ,and multi-
nationals pay only 12% between them. (Irish figures c. 1984)

Elections: Putting numbers on a piece of paper

We are led to believe that the state is run in our interests. Don't we
have elections to ensure that any government not behaving itself can
be brought to task? Democracy is about putting numbers on a piece of
paper every four years. We are given a choice all right but between
parties who all agree with the system of a tiny minority ruling the
country.

45
People often say that if we really want to change things we should run
in elections. Take a good look at this idea and it becomes clear that it
cannot be done if we are to remain true to our anarchism.

Electioneering inevitably leads to revolutionaries forsaking their

revolutionary principles. Look at the so-called Labour Party. First of
all they do not go to the people with a clear socialist message. They go
for whatever is popular and will ensure that they get elected. This
becomes more important to them than educating people about the
meaning of socialism. It also means that they look on the mass of
voters as mere spectators. People are seen as voters, not as people who
can be actually involved in politics and bringing socialism about. We
do not accept that we should hand over the running of our lives to 160
odd people who are not accountable and can basically do whatever
they like.

Can socialism come through Parliament

There is another reason why we do not stand for election. Socialism

cannot come through Parliament. If we look at a country like Chile we
can see why. In 1973 the people elected a moderate socialist
government led by President Allende. This democratically elected
government was toppled by a CIA backed military coup. Repression
followed in which the workers movement was smashed and thousands
of militants lost their lives.

This happened for two reasons. The Chilean socialists did not
understand that real power is not in the parliament but in the
boardrooms of the multinationals. It is those who have the money who
hold real power. Socialism does not come through electing socialists
to Parliament but through the direct action of workers taking control
of the factories and land. For us socialism can only come from below,
not from the top.

This point is not understood by the so called socialist parties of

Europe which are in government at the moment. In the 80's in France,
Spain and Greece 'socialist' governments are pushed working class
peoples living standards down because international banks want loans
repaid and multinationals want to maintain profits.

46
The second reason is that the Chileans did not smash the state but tried
to capture it peacefully. We must understand that the army and police
are against us. They are there to protect the wealth of the ruling class.
To make a revolution it will be necessary to use violence, not because
we believe in violence for the sake of it, but because we recognise that
the ruling class will not give up its wealth without a fight. Allende
refused to arm the workers and so made the job of the military much
easier.

How ideas change

From the moment we are born we are taught that we must give up
control of our lives to those more capable of running things - that we
must put our faith and loyalty in government to organise our lives. In
school, in the papers and on television the working class are portrayed
as sheep who need to be led and governed over. Even in the unions,
the organisation of the working class, workers are discouraged from
taking any initiative by themselves. Instead they are treated by the
union bureaucracy supposedly on the workers' behalf.

However, capitalists in their mad rush for profits are forced to keep
workers' pay and conditions at the lowest possible level. In times of
recession competition between capitalists increases, and if profits are
to be maintained capitalists argue that workers must accept cuts in
their pay and conditions. It is when workers are forced into conflict
with their bosses, when they go on strike, that they realise their own
strength.

Without labour all production grinds to a halt. The bosses simply

cannot run the factories by themselves. Workers who go on strike
begin to rely on their own collective strength, they realise that if they
are going to win they must stick together. They become more aware of
what they can achieve and they become open to more ideas, new
ideas. This was seen in the 1984/5 British miners strike. Before the
strike most miners believed womens' role was in the home minding
the children. But as the strike began, women took the initiative and set
up support groups to aid the strike. Women actively took part in
picketing as well as fund-raising. Faced with this many miners
changed their sexist ideas. Their ideas about the police and the courts

47
also changed. In conflict, they realised the main purpose of the police
and courts was to protect the bosses and smash the strike.

This is not to say that workers going on strike set out with socialist
goals in mind. However when workers win on `bread and butter'
issues, their confidence increases and so does their faith in their own
ability to organise themselves. That is one of the reasons for anarchists
being involved in supporting strikes - to build the links between
workers' day-to-day struggles and our aim of a truly equal society.

Socialism from Below

Central to our politics is the belief that ordinary people must make the
revolution. Every member of the working class (workers,
unemployed, housewives, etc.) has a role to play. Only by this
participation can we ensure that anarchism is made real. We believe in
a revolution that comes from the bottom up and is based on factory
and community councils. Freedom cannot be given, it has to be taken.

This is where we disagree with what is called the "revolutionary left".

While they say that they agree with all this they still hold to a belief
that a party is necessary to make the revolution for the people. Most of
them base their ideas on Lenin who believed that workers were only
capable of achieving what he called "trade union consciousness".
According to him they needed a party of professional revolutionaries
to make the revolution for them. The result of this thinking is to be
clearly seen in the Eastern Europe of today. What we see in Russia has
nothing to do with socialism. Power rests in the hands of a tiny party
elite. The state is the boss and the workers are still exploited and told
what to do. This is state capitalism. Workers do not control their
workplaces. All power is held by the bureaucracy. A workers
revolution will be necessary to overthrow this bureaucratic elite and
bring in true freedom.

So we say it is up to ordinary people. Some ask is this possible?

Would it not be chaotic? Of course not. At the moment capitalism
would collapse without the support of the working class. We make
everything, we produce all the wealth. It is possible to organise
production so that the needs of all are met. It is also possible to create

48
structures that allow everyone to participate in making the decisions
that affect them.

Democracy and Freedom

As already stated society would be based on factory and community

councils. These would federate with each other so that decisions could
be made covering large areas. Delegates could be sent from each area
and workplace. They would be recallable, i.e. if those who voted them
in are not happy with their behaviour they can immediately replace
them with someone else. With the new technology it will be much
easier to involve lots of people in making quick decisions.

Within this society there would be genuine individual freedom.

Individuals would have to contribute to society but would be free to
the extent that they do not interfere with the freedom of others.
Fundamentally we believe that people are good and if they won
freedom would not easily give it up or destroy it.

So where do anarchist's fit into all this? We don't set ourselves up as

"the leaders who know it all". We believe that our ideas are good and
are worth trying out. We believe it is necessary for those agreeing
with them to organise together so that our ideas will spread and be
understood by a lot more people. To us it is important that those
revolutionaries active in different areas are brought together so that
experiences can be shared and learned from. We believe that in day-
today struggles or in campaigns it is important that the message is
driven home that only a revolution made by the working class can
give us the freedom to run society so that all our needs are met. We
see our role as encouraging the initiative of working people and
arguing for structures which allow people to take part in local or
workplace activities.

We do not believe that the revolution is around the corner. We believe

that making it is a slow process during which there may be huge
jumps forward. Overall though it is a slow process of spreading ideas
and building peoples confidence to bring about change. We accept
that winning reforms and short term demands are all part of this

49
process. Below we set out some of our ideas in relation to society
today.

The Trade Unions

Unions are defence organs of the working class. They are not
revolutionary organisations. Today the majority of unions have
become conservative institutions with a lot of emphasis being placed
on the role of the full time officials as problem solvers and
negotiators. Whole sections of the trade union bureaucracy have
become outright defenders of the status quo. This is typified by the
use of the two-tier picket (where groups of workers from another
union in the same job are encouraged to pass pickets). Within the
unions decision making has shifted from the shopfloor to the
bureaucrats. With this the rank and file have become more isolated
from control of their unions and thus more apathetic.

For us the unions have to be made into real fighting organisations

which are run and controlled by workers on the shopfloor. We do not
think you can change the unions by capturing the full-time jobs at the
top. Our role is to encourage the self-activity of as many workers as
possible. The bureaucracy itself has to be torn down.

We believe in building a rank and file movement which would

embrace workers from different workplaces and areas of work. Its
main function would be to encourage solidarity between all workers.
It would support all strikes, fight for the election of all full-time
officials so that they are responsible to the workers, fight for equal
rights for women and ultimately resist any attempts by the bosses to
make us pay for their crisis.

We see the organised labour movement as an essential area of activity

for revolutionaries. Politics have to be brought into the workplaces
and unions as it is here that we have strength and can inflict real
damage on the bosses.

Unemployment

50
Unemployment is always a direct effect of living under capitalism, it
is used by the bosses to depress wages "there are plenty of people out
there who work for less money than you" is a common threat as is
"behave yourselves or I'll close down". The chaotic nature of also
leads to regular crisis which cause massive unemployment

Unemployment will not be stopped while the capitalist system exists

but there are immediate demands that can be put forward. Any
workplace threatened with closure should be occupied. The workers
should demand continued employment whether it be under a new
owner or by nationalisation. We believe it makes little difference
because, for us, nationalisation is not a cure-all. It is no guarantee of
better wages or job security and it does not bring us any nearer to
socialism. There is no essential difference between a boss who is a
civil servant and one who is a private employer. We also call for a
shorter working week, an end to systematic overtime and double
jobbing and an end to all productivity deals. Basic wages should be
high enough so that workers do not need to work excess hours.

We believe that the unemployed should accept no responsibility for

the situation. Dole payments should be increased substantially. Where
possible, the unemployed should organise themselves to defend their
rights and link up with the broader trade union movement.

Women's Freedom

We believe that women are oppressed as a sex. They are denied equal
rights, such as the right to control their own fertility and the right to
work, and thus cannot fully participate in society. They have been
assigned the role of cooks and child minders, their place is in the
home.

We believe that the root of women's oppression lies in the division of

society into classes, and the economic and social relationships that
created. We thus believe that for women to be really free we have to
smash capitalism and build a society based on anarchism. We disagree
with those feminists who think that all you have to do is for women to
become bosses and politicians to achieve equality. We want to destroy
the existing power structures. We also disagree with those who think

51
that men are the cause of women's oppression. We do not deny that
men gain from this but we identify the source of this oppression as the
class system, not individual men.

Women's oppression is not purely a struggle for women as it is a class

issue but we hold that women have the right to organise separately
because it is they who suffer the oppression. We do believe, though,
that the priorities of the woman's movement have reflected the fact
that it largely consists of middle class women. We believe that it must
become more relevant to working class women. Our priorities are
those issues which immediately effect thousands of working class
women e.g. work, childcare, housing, etc.

We believe in the right of women to control their own fertility.

Women must be free to decide to have children or not, how many and
when. Thus we believe in the right to free contraception and abortion
on demand.

For these demands to won as many working class women as possible

must be brought together to build confidence and defeat the isolation
that comes from being in the home. Thus in campaigns to win these
demands our emphasis is on building in workplaces and on the estates
where women are directly affected.

Anarchism in Action

You probably agree that what you have read so far are mostly good
ideas. You probably accept that the wealth of society should be
distributed equally and also that ordinary people should have more say
in the running of their lives.

Like most people who hear about Anarchism you probably believe
that it is a good set of ideas but unfortunately it would never work.
People are naturally greedy and selfish, if there was no government to
look after our interests there would be complete chaos".

It has already been stated that we believe capitalism is chaos. It does

not and never can meet the needs of ordinary people. On the other
hand, a society run by those who actually produce can. This kind of

52
society is not myth we have dreamed up. At various stages of our
history it has become a reality. Working people have taken their
destinies into their own hands and made a success of it. Far from
being naturally greedy and selfish these experiences actually show
that given the right conditions people can co-operate and act in a spirit
of mutual aid.

In the Beginning

As Anarchists we trace our tradition back to the first International

Working Mens [sic] Association where the Anarchists formed a
distinct tendency influenced mainly by the ideas of Michael Bakunin.
Since then Anarchism has always been deeply rooted in the working
class. Contrary to popular belief Anarchists do not spend their time
plotting in back rooms. For most their activity means bringing their
politics into the daily struggles of the factories, the offices and the
communities. Anarchists have been involved in all major modern
revolutions They have been there arguing and fighting for the right
and necessity of working people running society as opposed to any so-
called "socialist party" or bureaucratic elite.

Russia

"We say to the Russian workers, peasants, soldiers, revolutionists:

above all continue the revolution. Continue to organise yourselves
solidly and unite your new organisations: your communes, your
committees, your soviets. Continue, with firmness and perseverance,
always and everywhere to participate more extensively and more and
more effectively in the economic life of the country, continue to take
into your hands, that is into the hands of your organisations, all the
raw materials and all the instruments indispensable to your labour.
Continue the revolution. Do not hesitate to face the solution of the
burning questions of the present. Create everywhere the necessary
organisations to achieve these solutions. Peasants, take the land and
put it at the disposal of your committees. Workers, proceed to put in
the hands of and at the disposal of your own social organisations -
everywhere on the spot - the mines and the subsoil, the enterprises and
the establishments of all sorts, the works and the factories, the

53
workshops and the machines". Golos Truda Russian Anarchist-
Syndicalist paper August 25th 1917

The Russian Revolution was truly a turning point in modern history.

For the first time workers took control and asserted their right to run
society. At the time of the revolution there were about 10,000 active
Anarchists in Russia, not including the movement in the Ukraine led
by Nestor Makhno. There were at least four Anarchists on the
Bolshevik dominated Military Revolutionary Committee which
engineered the seizure of power in October. More importantly,
Anarchists were involved in the Factory Committees which had
sprung up after the February Revolution. These were based in
workplaces, elected by mass assemblies of the workers and given the
role of overseeing the running of the factory and co-ordinating with
other workplaces in the same industry or region.

Anarchists were particularly influential among the miners, dockers,

postal workers, bakers and played an important part in the All-Russian
Conference of Factory Committees which met in Petrograd on the eve
of the October Revolution.

It was to these factory committees that the Anarchists looked as the

basis for a new self-- management which would be ushered in after the
revolution. They resisted all efforts to undermine the Committees and
take away their power.

The Anarchists had co-operated with the Bolsheviks in seizing power

from the ruling class, believing that once captured power could be
diffused. It was not long before they saw that the real intention of the
Bolsheviks was to take power and keep it. Their concept of socialism
did not allow them to trust in the ability of ordinary people to run
society in their own interests. Power was wrested away from the
Factory Committees and placed in the hands of bodies controlled by
the Bolsheviks. Firstly they were subjected to control by Bolshevik
dominated trade unions. These unions were then put under the thumb
of the state, which was totally dominated by the Bolsheviks. Once the
Anarchists' usefulness to them had ended the Bolsheviks ensured they
were suppressed. Their papers were closed down and many of the
activists arrested.

54
Ukraine

Anarchist influence here was dominant right up to 1921. An insurgent

army led by Nestor Makhno played a central role in defeating the local
counter- revolutionary forces and the numerous armies of foreign
intervention. The Red Army led by Trotsky signed a treaty of co-
operation and Lenin talked of giving the Ukraine over as an
experiment in building an anarchist society. The Makhnovists were
hailed as heroes of the revolution by the Bolshevik press.

However as soon as the threat of invasion had been overcome the

Bolshevik leadership tore up the treaty and declared war on the
Anarchists as if they were an army of reaction. This stab in the back
led to the destruction of the Makhnovist forces at the hands of the
same Red Army which attacked the naval base at Kronstadt and
murdered the revolutionaries who had been in the forefront of the
struggle against the Tsar and the Provisional Government. Their
"crime" was to resist the new elite and demand workers power and
freedom for all revolutionary organisations.

Collectivisation

The achievements of the Makhnovists were not only military. As their

army moved through the Ukraine they encouraged and helped the
setting up of collectives among the peasantry and farm labourers.
Often this had to take second place to the need to fight and defeat the
varied foreign armies of occupation. What was important was that it
was proved, even in the conditions of war and invasion, that
production could be organised to benefit all rather than to line the
pockets of a few.

The Russian experience also shows that the fake socialists and their
parties cannot be trusted. If socialism is to triumph power must stay
with those who produce society's wealth. No party, no matter how
well intentioned, can deliver socialism on a plate. Workers must take
power and build the new order themselves.

Spain

55
Of all the western countries Spain is where the Anarchist influence
predominated. Introduced in the last century it rapidly spread
throughout the country. This led to the formation of the Anarchist
Union C.N.T. (National Confederation of Labour) in 1911. In the
years up to the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 the CNT
had over two million members. It was the major union in the most
industrialised areas, especially Catalonia and its capital Barcelona. It
also had a large base among day labourers and small peasants in most
provinces.

The CNT was a revolutionary union of workers (usually described as

Syndicalist or anarcho-syndicalist). Its role was twofold. Firstly to
fight to improve conditions for workers and secondly to organise for
the overthrow of capitalism. Its beliefs were translated into action at
every opportunity and this militant tradition attracted workers in their
hundreds of thousands.

The CNT organised itself from the place of work. Each workplace
joined in a federation with other workplaces in their region to form a
regional committee. These regional committees were then federated
on a national basis and formed a national committee. Within each
particular industry there was also a regional and national federation.

Assemblies of workers were the core of the CNT. These made the
decisions and elected delegates to regional and national level. All
delegates could be recalled and replaced by the assembly if the
members were not satisfied with their conduct. Thus no decisions
could be made without consulting the rank and file membership.
There were no full-time union bureaucrats beyond the control of the
workers.

The number of full-time officials was minimal. They were elected for
specified periods after which they had to stand down and return to
their previous job. At all times they were subject to control by the rank
and file. The experience and organisation of the CNT shows that
contrary to popular belief Anarchists are not anti-organisation. In
reality Anarchism is highly organised and allows for the participation
of all. Nor are we against centralisation. What is important is that

56
those at the centre are recallable and directly responsible to those they
are elected to represent.

The Civil War

The Civil War started with an attempted fascist coup following the
victory of the Popular Front (an alliance of liberal, republic, socialist,
and Stalinist parties) in the 1936 elections. In response to the coup the
workers mobilised to defeat fascism. popular militias were formed by
the unions and workers seized factories. Peasants took over land
which had been abandoned by the landlords. This marked the
beginning of the revolution for the Anarchists. They believed that the
Civil War had to be not just a fight against fascism but also against the
capitalist system which had spawned fascism in the first place. Thus
they set about seizing factories and ranches and turning them over to
workers control.

In the zones controlled by the Anarchists workers self-management

became a reality. In Catalonia there were at least 2,000 industrial and
commercial collectives. At least 60% of "republican" Spain's
agriculture (that part controlled by anti-fascist forces including the
Anarchists) was collectivised.

In the workplaces councils or "comite" elected by assemblies of

workers and representing all sectors of the enterprise, were given the
task of administering the collectivised factory. Collectivised
enterprises in each sector of industry were represented in an Economic
Federation. This in turn was topped by a General Industrial Council
which would closely control the whole industry.

Here is a description of the organisation of gas, electricity and water

in Barcelona. "Each type of job (e.g. fitters )set up a section consisting
of at least fifteen workers Where they were not the numbers to do this
workers from different trades got together to constitute a general
section . Each section nominates two delegates which are chosen by
assemblies of the workers. One of the delegates will be of a technical
calibre and will participate in the "comite" of the workplace. The other
will be entrusted with the management of work in the section.

57
The "comite" of the building or plant comes next. It is nominated by
the delegates of the sections and consists of a technician, a manual
worker and an administrator. The manual worker has to solve
difficulties which might arise between different sections. He or she
receives suggestions from workers in the different trades and the
sections give him or her daily reports on the progress of work.
Periodically the delegate calls the sections to general meetings. At
these proposals and initiatives which are likely to improve production
and productivity are studied as well as ones to improve the workers'
situation. A copy of the deliberation is sent to the Council for Industry

The delegates with administrative functions supervises the arrival and

warehousing of materials, records requirements details with book-
keeping for supplies and reserves, and keeps an eye on the state of
income and expenditure. S/He also deals with correspondence and it is
his/her responsibility to see that balance sheets and reports addressed
to the Council for Industry are prepared.

The delegate with technical functions supervises the activities of his

section, and uses every endeavour to increase productivity. to lighten
the workers' burden by introducing new methods. S/He checks on
production at the power stations, the state of the network, prepares
statistics and charts indicating how production is developing. At the
summit there are the Councils of Industry. One each for gas,
electricity and water, Each is composed of eight delegates, four from
the U. G. T. (the socialist trade union) and four from the C.N.T. These
are capped by the General Council of the three industries, which is
also made up by eight delegates drawn equally from the two unions.

This Council co-ordinates activities of the three industries; attunes the

production and distribution of raw materials from a regional, national
and international point of view; modifies prices; organises general
administration; indeed takes and uses all initiatives useful to
production and the workers' needs. Meanwhile it is obliged at all times
to submit its' activities to the scrutiny of local and regional union
assemblies"

This account is taken from "Collectives in the Spanish Revolution" by

Gaston Leval.

58
On the Trams

The achievements of collectivisation in Barcelona were many. Take

for example the tramways. Out of the 7,000 workers 6,500 were
members of the CNT. Because of the street battles all transport had
been brought to a halt. The transport syndicate (as unions of the CNT
were known) appointed a commission of seven to occupy the
administrative offices while others inspected the tracks and drew up a
plan of repair work that needed to be done. Five days after the fighting
stopped 700 tramcars, instead of the usual 600, all painted in the black
and red colours of the CNT, were operating on the streets of
Barcelona.

With the profit motive gone, the trams had belonged to a Belgian
company before the workers took over, safety became more important
and the number of accidents was reduced. Fares were lowered and
services improved. In 1936, 183,543,516 passengers were carried. In
1937 this had gone up by 50 million. The trams were running so
efficiently that the workers were able to give money to other sections
of urban transport. Wages were equalised for all workers and
increased over the previous rates. For the first time free medical care
was provided for the workforce.

As well as giving a more efficient service the workers found time to

produce rockets and howitzers for the war effort. They worked
overtime and Sundays to do their share for the anti-fascist struggle. To
further underline the fact that getting rid of the bosses and rulers
would not lead to a breakdown of order it can be pointed out that in
the three years of collectivisation there were only six cases of workers
stealing from the workshops.

On the Land

The countryside also saw collectivisation. In Aragon which was near

the war front-line collectivisation took root and spread like wildfire. In
February 1937 there were 275 collectives totalling 80,000 members.
Three months later there were 450 collectives with 180,000 members.
Often the peasants and farm labourers went further than their
counterparts in the towns and cities. Not only was production

59
collectivised but in rural areas consumption too. In many of these
areas money was abolished.

Large estates were taken over by landless labourers, small holders put
their land together so that it could be worked more efficiently by the
use of machinery. Collectives were based around the villages and
federated on a regional basis.

Usually the decision to collectivise was made at an assembly (a

meeting of all the village). It meant handing over land, livestock,
tools, seed, stocks of wheat and other produce. The land was then
divided into sectors, each of which was assigned to a work group of
about a dozen who elected their own delegate. Produce went into the
"pile" for communal consumption. Each would produce according to
their ability, each would consume according to their needs.

Collectivisation did not only apply to the land. In the villages

workshops were set up where all the local trades people would
produce tools, furniture, etc. for the village and also carry out repairs
to the collectivists houses. Bakers, butchers, barbers and so on were
also collectivised.

The lot of rural workers and peasants was improved by the

introduction of machinery. Living standards rose, in the words of one
collectivist "those who had less now ate more and better - no one went
short". Education became a central concern and young children who
had never been to school were given the education denied to them by
the landlords and their system.

Women's' Action

Gains were also made by women. In relation to their role during the
Civil War observers have pointed out that they played a full part in the
anti- fascist resistance. They were present everywhere - on
committees, in the militias, in the front line. In the early battles of the
war women fought alongside men as a matter of course. It was not
merely a case of women filling in for men who were away at the front.
(Which is usually the case in wartime. When the war is over and

60
women are no longer needed in the labour force, they are pushed back
into the home).

They were in the militias and fought alongside the men as equals.
They were organising the collectives and taking up the fight for
against the sexist attitudes of the past which have no place in any real
revolution.

The Anarchist women's organisation, Mujeres Libres (Free Women),

had 30,000 members. It had been active before the Civil War
organising women workers and distributing information on
contraception. During the war abortion was legalised in the
"republican zone". Centres were opened for women, including
unmarried mothers and prostitutes.

From all accounts there truly were changes in attitudes towards

women. One woman participant in the Civil War has said "It was like
being brothers and sisters. It had always annoyed me that men in this
country didn't consider women as beings with full human rights. But
now there was this big change. I believe it arose spontaneously out of
the revolutionary movement" Margorita Balaguer quoted in "Blood of
Spain" ed. Ronald Fraser. page 287

This sort of thing is common to most revolutionary situations. When

people begin to throw off the old ideas and start creating a new society
their views on many things change. This is not inevitable though and
does not negate the need for propaganda and activity against sexism,
not only in society as a whole but also within the revolutionary
movement itself.

Not all Roses

This account of the collectivisation is, of necessity, brief. The main

point is that given the right conditions mutual aid and co-operation
will flourish - Problems did arise in Spain as is inevitable. The
Anarchists made mistakes. In our opinion they hesitated in carrying
out their programme - Instead of seizing power and making a direct
appeal to the workers to take control of economic and social affairs,

61
they collaborated with the Popular Front and ended up joining the
government.

They were also attacked by the Communist party who preferred defeat
by the fascists then the victory of anarchism. The Communists were
tied to the needs of Stalin's foreign policy which meant not upsetting
the Western powers. To them the restoration of the capitalist order
was preferable to seeing the working class take power. And that
should come as no surprise as the Stalinist system in Russia is no
more than another form of capitalism.

Lessons

History is not neutral. What we learn in school is the necessity for

government, rulers and capitalism. What we do not learn is that many
times it has been shown that this government is not necessary. People
are not inherently bad. Given the right conditions a spirit of mutual aid
and co-operation can grow. People are not naturally evil and greedy.

Economic conditions determine peoples' behaviour. How we act is

related to the structure of society and the dominant value system
within it. When structures are changed and oppression and
exploitation is done away with the "goodness" that is in most of us
come through and flourishes as it did when the workers held the reigns
in Russia and Spain. The experience of self-management is not limited
to these countries but is something that has been seen in most
countries at some stage.

What Anarchists are saying are not just' `nice ideas. History shows us
that these ideas can work. A new society can be created with the
workers in control. But it won't happen spontaneously - We must
organise for it.

That is why we need revolutionary organisation. An organisation that

draws together all those fighting for workers control. An organisation
that gives us the chance to exchange ideas and experiences, and to
learn from the lessons of history. An organisation that allows us to
struggle together for a new society.

62
We do not need a group of leaders and their passive followers. We do
need an organisation working towards mobilising the mass of ordinary
people in the process of making the revolution. If you like what you
have just read, you should start working to build just such an
organisation.

Based on the text of the pamphlet Anarchism and Ireland published by

Workers Solidarity Movement, PO Box 1528, Dublin 8, Ireland.

======================
``Notes on Anarchism''
in
For Reasons of State
======================
Noam Chomsky, 1970
======================

Transcribed by rael@ll.mit.edu (Bill Lear)

A French writer, sympathetic to anarchism, wrote in the 1890s that

``anarchism has a broad back, like paper it endures anything''---
including, he noted those whose acts are such that ``a mortal enemy of
anarchism could not have done better.''[1] There have been many
styles of thought and action that have been referred to as ``anarchist.''
It would be hopeless to try to encompass all of these conflicting
tendencies in some general theory or ideology. And even if we
proceed to extract from the history of libertarian thought a living,
evolving tradition, as Daniel Guérin does in Anarchism, it remains
difficult to formulate its doctrines as a specific and determinate theory
of society and social change. The anarchist historian Rudolph Rocker,
who presents a systematic conception of the development of anarchist
thought towards anarchosyndicalism, along lines that bear comparison
to Guérins work, puts the matter well when he writes that anarchism is
not

63
a fixed, self-enclosed social system but rather a definite trend in the
historic development of mankind, which, in contrast with the
intellectual guardianship of all clerical and governmental institutions,
strives for the free unhindered unfolding of all the individual and
social forces in life. Even freedom is only a relative, not an absolute
concept, since it tends constantly to become broader and to affect
wider circles in more manifold ways. For the anarchist, freedom is not
an abstract philosophical concept, but the vital concrete possibility for
every human being to bring to full development all the powers,
capacities, and talents with which nature has endowed him, and turn
them to social account. The less this natural development of man is
influenced by ecclesiastical or political guardianship, the more
efficient and harmonious will human personality become, the more
will it become the measure of the intellectual culture of the society in
which it has grown.[2]
One might ask what value there is in studying a ``definite trend in the
historic development of mankind'' that does not articulate a specific
and detailed social theory. Indeed, many commentators dismiss
anarchism as utopian, formless, primitive, or otherwise incompatible
with the realities of a complex society. One might, however, argue
rather differently: that at every stage of history our concern must be to
dismantle those forms of authority and oppression that survive from
an era when they might have been justified in terms of the need for
security or survival or economic development, but that now contribute
to---rather than alleviate---material and cultural deficit. If so, there
will be no doctrine of social change fixed for the present and future,
nor even, necessarily, a specific and unchanging concept of the goals
towards which social change should tend. Surely our understanding of
the nature of man or of the range of viable social forms is so
rudimentary that any far-reaching doctrine must be treated with great
skepticism, just as skepticism is in order when we hear that ``human
nature'' or ``the demands of efficiency'' or ``the complexity of modern
life'' requires this or that form of oppression and autocratic rule.

Nevertheless, at a particular time there is every reason to develop,

insofar as our understanding permits, a specific realization of this
definite trend in the historic development of mankind, appropriate to
the tasks of the moment. For Rocker, ``the problem that is set for our

64
time is that of freeing man from the curse of economic exploitation
and political and social enslavement''; and the method is not the
conquest and exercise of state power, nor stultifying
parliamentarianism, but rather ``to reconstruct the economic life of the
peoples from the ground up and build it up in the spirit of Socialism.''

But only the producers themselves are fitted for this task, since they
are the only value-creating element in society out of which a new
future can arise. Theirs must be the task of freeing labor from all the
fetters which economic exploitation has fastened on it, of freeing
society from all the institutions and procedure of political power, and
of opening the way to an alliance of free groups of men and women
based on co-operative labor and a planned administration of things in
the interest of the community. To prepare the toiling masses in the city
and country for this great goal and to bind them together as a militant
force is the objective of modern Anarcho-syndicalism, and in this its
whole purpose is exhausted. [P. 108]
As a socialist, Rocker would take for granted ``that the serious, final,
complete liberation of the workers is possible only upon one
condition: that of the appropriation of capital, that is, of raw material
and all the tools of labor, including land, by the whole body of the
workers.''[3] As an anarchosyndicalist, he insists, further, that the
workers' organizations create ``not only the ideas, but also the facts of
the future itself'' in the prerevolutionary period, that they embody in
themselves the structure of the future society---and he looks forward
to a social revolution that will dismantle the state apparatus as well as
expropriate the expropriators. ``What we put in place of the
government is industrial organization.''
Anarcho-syndicalists are convinced that a Socialist economic order
cannot be created by the decrees and statutes of a government, but
only by the solidaric collaboration of the workers with hand and brain
in each special branch of production; that is, through the taking over
of the management of all plants by the producers themselves under
such form that the separate groups, plants, and branches of industry
are independent members of the general economic organism and
systematically carry on production and the distribution of the products
in the interest of the community on the basis of free mutual
agreements. [p. 94]

65
Rocker was writing at a moment when such ideas had been put into
practice in a dramatic way in the Spanish Revolution. Just prior to the
outbreak of the revolution, the anarchosyndicalist economist Diego
Abad de Santillan had written:
...in facing the problem of social transformation, the Revolution
cannot consider the state as a medium, but must depend on the
organization of producers.

We have followed this norm and we find no need for the hypothesis of
a superior power to organized labor, in order to establish a new order
of things. We would thank anyone to point out to us what function, if
any, the State can have in an economic organization, where private
property has been abolished and in which parasitism and special
privilege have no place. The suppression of the State cannot be a
languid affair; it must be the task of the Revolution to finish with the
State. Either the Revolution gives social wealth to the producers in
which case the producers organize themselves for due collective
distribution and the State has nothing to do; or the Revolution does not
give social wealth to the producers, in which case the Revolution has
been a lie and the State would continue.

Our federal council of economy is not a political power but an

economic and administrative regulating power. It receives its
orientation from below and operates in accordance with the
resolutions of the regional and national assemblies. It is a liaison corps
and nothing else.[4]
Engels, in a letter of 1883, expressed his disagreement with this
conception as follows:
The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the
proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political
organization of the state....But to destroy it at such a moment would be
to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious
proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its
capitalist adversaries, and carry out that economic revolution of
society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and
a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris
commune.[5]

66
In contrast, the anarchists---most eloquently Bakunin---warned of the
dangers of the ``red bureaucracy,'' which would prove to be ``the most
vile and terrible lie that our century has created.''[6] The
anarchosyndicalist Fernand Pelloutier asked: ``Must even the
transitory state to which we have to submit necessarily and fatally be a
collectivist jail? Can't it consist in a free organization limited
exclusively by the needs of production and consumption, all political
institutions having disappeared?''[7]

I do not pretend to know the answers to this question. But it seems

clear that unless there is, in some form, a positive answer, the chances
for a truly democratic revolution that will achieve the humanistic
ideals of the left are not great. Martin Buber put the problem
succinctly when he wrote: ``One cannot in the nature of things expect
a little tree that has been turned into a club to put forth leaves.''[8] The
question of conquest or destruction of state power is what Bakunin
regarded as the primary issue dividing him from Marx.[9] In one form
or another, the problem has arisen repeatedly in the century since,
dividing ``libertarian'' from ``authoritarian'' socialists.

Despite Bakunin's warnings about the red bureaucracy, and their

fulfillment under Stalin's dictatorship, it would obviously be a gross
error in interpreting the debates of a century ago to rely on the claims
of contemporary social movements as to their historical origins. In
particular, it is perverse to regard Bolshevism as ``Marxism in
practice.'' Rather, the left-wing critique of Bolshevism, taking account
of the historical circumstances surrounding the Russian Revolution, is
far more to the point.[10]

The anti-Bolshevik, left-wing labor movement opposed the Leninists

because they did not go far enough in exploiting the Russian
upheavals for strictly proletarian ends. They became prisoners of their
environment and used the international radical movement to satisfy
specifically Russian needs, which soon became synonymous with the
needs of the Bolshevik Party-State. The ``bourgeois'' aspects of the
Russian Revolution were now discovered in Bolshevism itself:
Leninism was adjudged a part of international social-democracy,
differing from the latter only on tactical issues.[11]

67
If one were to seek a single leading idea within the anarchist tradition,
it should, I believe, be that expressed by Bakunin when, in writing on
the Paris Commune, he identified himself as follows:
I am a fanatic lover of liberty, considering it as the unique condition
under which intelligence, dignity and human happiness can develop
and grow; not the purely formal liberty conceded, measured out and
regulated by the State, an eternal lie which in reality represents
nothing more than the privilege of some founded on the slavery of the
rest; not the individualistic, egoistic, shabby, and fictitious liberty
extolled by the School of J.-J. Rousseau and other schools of
bourgeois liberalism, which considers the would-be rights of all men,
represented by the State which limits the rights of each---an idea that
leads inevitably to the reduction of the rights of each to zero. No, I
mean the only kind of liberty that is worthy of the name, liberty that
consists in the full development of all the material, intellectual and
moral powers that are latent in each person; liberty that recognizes no
restrictions other than those determined by the laws of our own
individual nature, which cannot properly be regarded as restrictions
since these laws are not imposed by any outside legislator beside or
above us, but are immanent and inherent, forming the very basis of
our material, intellectual and moral being---they do not limit us but are
the real and immediate conditions of our freedom.[12]
These ideas grew out of the Enlightenment; their roots are in
Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality, Humboldt's Limits of State
Action, Kant's insistence, in his defense of the French Revolution, that
freedom is the precondition for acquiring the maturity for freedom,
not a gift to be granted when such maturity is achieved. With the
development of industrial capitalism, a new and unanticipated system
of injustice, it is libertarian socialism that has preserved and extended
the radical humanist message of the Enlightenment and the classical
liberal ideals that were perverted into an ideology to sustain the
emerging social order. In fact, on the very same assumptions that led
classical liberalism to oppose the intervention of the state in social
life, capitalist social relations are also intolerable. This is clear, for
example, from the classic work of Humboldt, The Limits of State
Action, which anticipated and perhaps inspired Mill. This classic of
liberal thought, completed in 1792, is in its essence profoundly,

68
though prematurely, anticapitalist. Its ideas must be attenuated beyond
recognition to be transmuted into an ideology of industrial capitalism.

Humboldt's vision of a society in which social fetters are replaced by

social bonds and labor is freely undertaken suggests the early Marx.,
with his discussion of the ``alienation of labor when work is external
to the worker...not part of his nature...[so that] he does not fulfill
himself in his work but denies himself...[and is] physically exhausted
and mentally debased,'' alienated labor that ``casts some of the
workers back into a barbarous kind of work and turns others into
machines,'' thus depriving man of his ``species character'' of ``free
conscious activity'' and ``productive life.'' Similarly, Marx conceives
of ``a new type of human being who needs his fellow men....[The
workers' association becomes] the real constructive effort to create the
social texture of future human relations.''[13] It is true that classical
libertarian thought is opposed to state intervention in social life, as a
consequence of deeper assumptions about the human need for liberty,
diversity, and free association. On the same assumptions, capitalist
relations of production, wage labor, competitiveness, the ideology of
``possessive individualism''---all must be regarded as fundamentally
antihuman. Libertarian socialism is properly to be regarded as the
inheritor of the liberal ideals of the Enlightenment.

Rudolf Rocker describes modern anarchism as ``the confluence of the

two great currents which during and since the French revolution have
found such characteristic expression in the intellectual life of Europe:
Socialism and Liberalism.'' The classical liberal ideals, he argues,
were wrecked on the realities of capitalist economic forms. Anarchism
is necessarily anticapitalist in that it ``opposes the exploitation of man
by man.'' But anarchism also opposes ``the dominion of man over
man.'' It insists that ``socialism will be free or it will not be at all. In
its recognition of this lies the genuine and profound justification for
the existence of anarchism.''[14] From this point of view, anarchism
may be regarded as the libertarian wing of socialism. It is in this spirit
that Daniel Guérin has approached the study of anarchism in
Anarchism and other works.[15] Guérin quotes Adolph Fischer, who
said that ``every anarchist is a socialist but not every socialist is
necessarily an anarchist.'' Similarly Bakunin, in his ``anarchist

69
manifesto'' of 1865, the program of his projected international
revolutionary fraternity, laid down the principle that each member
must be, to begin with, a socialist.

A consistent anarchist must oppose private ownership of the means of

production and the wage slavery which is a component of this system,
as incompatible with the principle that labor must be freely undertaken
and under the control of the producer. As Marx put it, socialists look
forward to a society in which labor will ``become not only a means of
life, but also the highest want in life,''[16] an impossibility when the
worker is driven by external authority or need rather than inner
impulse: ``no form of wage-labor, even though one may be less
obnoxious that another, can do away with the misery of wage-labor
itself.''[17] A consistent anarchist must oppose not only alienated
labor but also the stupefying specialization of labor that takes place
when the means for developing production mutilate the worker into a
fragment of a human being, degrade him to become a mere
appurtenance of the machine, make his work such a torment that its
essential meaning is destroyed; estrange from him the intellectual
potentialities of the labor process in very proportion to the extent to
which science is incorporated into it as an independent power...[18]

Marx saw this not as an inevitable concomitant of industrialization,

but rather as a feature of capitalist relations of production. The society
of the future must be concerned to ``replace the detail-worker of
today...reduced to a mere fragment of a man, by the fully developed
individual, fit for a variety of labours...to whom the different social
functions...are but so many modes of giving free scope to his own
natural powers.''[19] The prerequisite is the abolition of capital and
wage labor as social categories (not to speak of the industrial armies
of the ``labor state'' or the various modern forms of totalitarianism
since capitalism). The reduction of man to an appurtenance of the
machine, a specialized tool of production, might in principle be
overcome, rather than enhanced, with the proper development and use
of technology, but not under the conditions of autocratic control of
production by those who make man an instrument to serve their ends,
overlooking his individual purposes, in Humboldt's phrase.

70
Anarchosyndicalists sought, even under capitalism, to create ``free
associations of free producers'' that would engage in militant struggle
and prepare to take over the organization of production on a
democratic basis. These associations would serve as ``a practical
school of anarchism.''[20] If private ownership of the means of
production is, in Proudhon's often quoted phrase, merely a form of
``theft''---``the exploitation of the weak by the strong''[21]---control of
production by a state bureaucracy, no matter how benevolent its
intentions, also does not create the conditions under which labor,
manual and intellectual, can become the highest want in life. Both,
then, must be overcome.

In his attack on the right of private or bureaucratic control over the

means of production,, the anarchist takes his stand with those who
struggle to bring about ``the third and last emancipatory phase of
history,'' the first having made serfs out of slaves, the second having
made wage earners out of serfs, and the third which abolishes the
proletariat in a final act of liberation that places control over the
economy in the hands of free and voluntary associations of producers
(Fourier, 1848).[22] The imminent danger to ``civilization'' was noted
by de Tocqueville, also in 1848:

As long as the right of property was the origin and groundwork of

many other rights, it was easily defended---or rather it was not
attacked; it was then the citadel of society while all the other rights
were its outworks; it did not bear the brunt of attack and, indeed, there
was no serious attempt to assail it. but today, when the right of
property is regarded as the last undestroyed remnant of the aristocratic
world, when it alone is left standing, the sole privilege in an equalized
society, it is a different matter. Consider what is happening in the
hearts of the working-classes, although I admit they are quiet as yet. It
is true that they are less inflamed than formerly by political passions
properly speaking; but do you not see that their passions, far from
being political, have become social? Do you not see that, little by
little, ideas and opinions are spreading amongst them which aim not
merely at removing such and such laws, such a ministry or such a
government, but at breaking up the very foundations of society
itself?[23]

71
The workers of Paris, in 1871, broke the silence, and proceeded
to abolish property, the basis of all civilization! Yes, gentlemen, the
Commune intended to abolish that class property which makes the
labor of the many the wealth of the few. It aimed at the expropriation
of the expropriators. It wanted to make individual property a truth by
transforming the means of production, land and capital, now chiefly
the means of enslaving and exploiting labor, into mere instruments of
free and associated labor.[24]
The Commune, of course, was drowned in blood. The nature of the
``civilization'' that the workers of Paris sought to overcome in their
attack on ``the very foundations of society itself'' was revealed, once
again, when the troops of the Versailles government reconquered Paris
from its population. As Marx wrote, bitterly but accurately:
The civilization and justice of bourgeois order comes out in its lurid
light whenever the slaves and drudges of that order rise against their
masters. Then this civilization and justice stand forth as undisguised
savagery and lawless revenge...the infernal deeds of the soldiery
reflect the innate spirit of that civilization of which they are the
mercenary vindicators....The bourgeoisie of the whole world, which
looks complacently upon the wholesale massacre after the battle, is
convulsed by horror at the destruction of brick and mortar. [Ibid., pp.
74, 77]
Despite the violent destruction of the Commune, Bakunin wrote that
Paris opens a new era, ``that of the definitive and complete
emancipation of the popular masses and their future true solidarity,
across and despite state boundaries...the next revolution of man,
international in solidarity, will be the resurrection of Paris''---a
revolution that the world still awaits.

The consistent anarchist, then, should be a socialist, but a socialist of a

particular sort. He will not only oppose alienated and specialized labor
and look forward to the appropriation of capital by the whole body of
workers, but he will also insist that this appropriation be direct, not
exercised by some elite force acting in the name of the proletariat. He
will, in short, oppose

the organization of production by the Government. It means State-

socialism, the command of the State officials over production and the

72
command of managers, scientists, shop-officials in the shop....The
goal of the working class is liberation from exploitation. This goal is
not reached and cannot be reached by a new directing and governing
class substituting itself for the bourgeoisie. It is only realized by the
workers themselves being master over production.
These remarks are taken from ``Five Theses on the Class Struggle'' by
the left-wing Marxist Anton Pannekoek, one of the outstanding left
theorists of the council communist movement. And in fact, radical
Marxism merges with anarchist currents.

As a further illustration, consider the following characterization of

``revolutionary Socialism'':

The revolutionary Socialist denies that State ownership can end in

anything other than a bureaucratic despotism. We have seen why the
State cannot democratically control industry. Industry can only be
democratically owned and controlled by the workers electing directly
from their own ranks industrial administrative committees. Socialism
will be fundamentally an industrial system; its constituencies will be
of an industrial character. Thus those carrying on the social activities
and industries of society will be directly represented in the local and
central councils of social administration. In this way the powers of
such delegates will flow upwards from those carrying on the work and
conversant with the needs of the community. When the central
administrative industrial committee meets it will represent every phase
of social activity. Hence the capitalist political or geographical state
will be replaced by the industrial administrative committee of
Socialism. The transition from the one social system to the other will
be the social revolution. The political State throughout history has
meant the government of men by ruling classes; the Republic of
Socialism will be the government of industry administered on behalf
of the whole community. The former meant the economic and
political subjection of the many; the latter will mean the economic
freedom of all---it will be, therefore, a true democracy.
This programmatic statement appears in William Paul's The State, its
Origins and Functions, written in early 1917---shortly before Lenin's
State and Revolution, perhaps his most libertarian work (see note 9).
Paul was a member of the Marxist-De Leonist Socialist Labor Party

73
and later one of the founders of the British Communist Party.[25] His
critique of state socialism resembles the libertarian doctrine of the
anarchists in its principle that since state ownership and management
will lead to bureaucratic despotism, the social revolution must replace
it by the industrial organization of society with direct workers' control.
Many similar statements can be cited.

What is far more important is that these ideas have been realized in
spontaneous revolutionary action, for example in Germany and Italy
after World War I and in Spain (not only in the agricultural
countryside, but also in industrial Barcelona) in 1936. One might
argue that some form of council communism is the natural form of
revolutionary socialism in an industrial society. It reflects the intuitive
understanding that democracy is severely limited when the industrial
system is controlled by any form of autocratic elite, whether of
owners, managers and technocrats, a ``vanguard'' party, or a state
bureaucracy. Under these conditions of authoritarian domination the
classical libertarian ideals developed further by Marx and Bakunin
and all true revolutionaries cannot be realized; man will not be free to
develop his own potentialities to their fullest, and the producer will
remain ``a fragment of a human being,'' degraded, a tool in the
productive process directed from above.

The phrase ``spontaneous revolutionary action'' can be misleading.

The anarchosyndicalists, at least, took very seriously Bakunin's
remark that the workers' organizations must create ``not only the ideas
but also the facts of the future itself'' in the prerevolutionary period.
The accomplishments of the popular revolution in Spain, in particular,
were based on the patient work of many years of organization and
education, one component of a long tradition of commitment and
militancy. The resolutions of the Madrid Congress of June 1931 and
the Saragossa Congress in May 1936 foreshadowed in many ways the
acts of the revolution, as did the somewhat different ideas sketched by
Santillan (see note 4) in his fairly specific account of the social and
economic organization to be instituted by the revolution. Guérin
writes ``The Spanish revolution was relatively mature in the minds of
libertarian thinkers, as in the popular consciousness.'' And workers'
organizations existed with the structure, the experience, and the

74
understanding to undertake the task of social reconstruction when,
with the Franco coup, the turmoil of early 1936 exploded into social
revolution. In his introduction to a collection of documents on
collectivization in Spain, the anarchist Augustin Souchy writes:

For many years, the anarchists and the syndicalists of Spain

considered their supreme task to be the social transformation of the
society. In their assemblies of Syndicates and groups, in their journals,
their brochures and books, the problem of the social revolution was
discussed incessantly and in a systematic fashion.[26]
All of this lies behind the spontaneous achievements, the constructive
work of the Spanish Revolution.

The ideas of libertarian socialism, in the sense described, have been

submerged in the industrial societies of the past half-century. The
dominant ideologies have been those of state socialism or state
capitalism (of increasingly militarized character in the United States,
for reasons that are not obscure).[27] But there has been a rekindling
of interest in the past few years. The theses I quoted by Anton
Pannekoek were taken from a recent pamphlet of a radical French
workers' group (Informations Correspondance Ouvrière). The
remarks by William Paul on revolutionary socialism are cited in a
paper by Walter Kendall given at the National Conference on
Workers' Control in Sheffield, England, in March 1969. The workers'
control movement has become a significant force in England in the
past few years. It has organized several conferences and has produced
a substantial pamphlet literature, and counts among its active
adherents representatives of some of the most important trade unions.
The Amalgamated Engineering and Foundryworkers' Union, for
example, has adopted, as official policy, the program of
nationalization of basic industries under ``workers' control at all
levels.''[28] On the Continent, there are similar developments. May
1968 of course accelerated the growing interest in council
communism and related ideas in France and Germany, as it did in
England.

Given the highly conservative cast of our highly ideological society, it

is not too surprising that the United States has been relatively

75
untouched by these developments. But that too may change. The
erosion of cold-war mythology at least makes it possible to raise these
questions in fairly broad circles. If the present wave of repression can
be beaten back, if the left can overcome its more suicidal tendencies
and build upon what has been accomplished in the past decade, then
the problem of how to organize industrial society on truly democratic
lines, with democratic control in the workplace and in the community,
should become a dominant intellectual issue for those who are alive to
the problems of contemporary society, and, as a mass movement for
libertarian socialism develops, speculation should proceed to action.

In his manifesto of 1865, Bakunin predicted that one element in the

social revolution will be ``that intelligent and truly noble part of youth
which, though belonging by birth to the privileged classes, in its
generous convictions and ardent aspirations, adopts the cause of the
people.'' Perhaps in the rise of the student movement of the 1960s one
sees steps towards a fulfillment of this prophecy.

Daniel Guérin has undertaken what he has described as a ``process of

rehabilitation'' of anarchism. He argues, convincingly I believe, that
``the constructive ideas of anarchism retain their vitality, that they
may, when re-examined and sifted, assist contemporary socialist
thought to undertake a new departure...[and] contribute to enriching
Marxism.''[29] >From the ``broad back'' of anarchism he has selected
for more intensive scrutiny those ideas and actions that can be
described as libertarian socialist. This is natural and proper. This
framework accommodates the major anarchist spokesmen as well as
the mass actions that have been animated by anarchist sentiments and
ideals. Guérin is concerned not only with anarchist thought but also
with the spontaneous actions of popular revolutionary struggle. He is
concerned with social as well as intellectual creativity. Furthermore,
he attempts to draw from the constructive achievements of the past
lessons that will enrich the theory of social liberation. For those who
wish not only to understand the world, but also to change it, this is the
proper way to study the history of anarchism.

Guérin describes the anarchism of the nineteenth century as

essentially doctrinal, while the twentieth century, for the anarchists,

76
has been a time of ``revolutionary practice.''[30] Anarchism reflects
that judgment. His interpretation of anarchism consciously points
toward the future. Arthur Rosenberg once pointed out that popular
revolutions characteristically seek to replace ``a feudal or centralized
authority ruling by force'' with some form of communal system which
``implies the destruction and disappearance of the old form of State.''
Such a system will be either socialist or an ``extreme form of
democracy...[which is] the preliminary condition for Socialism
inasmuch as Socialism can only be realized in a world enjoying the
highest possible measure of individual freedom.'' This ideal, he notes,
was common to Marx and the anarchists.[31] This natural struggle for
liberation runs counter to the prevailing tendency towards
centralization in economic and political life.

A century ago Marx wrote that the workers of Paris ``felt there was
but one alternative---the Commune, or the empire---under whatever
name it might reappear.''

The empire had ruined them economically by the havoc it made of

public wealth, by the wholesale financial swindling it fostered, by the
props it lent to the artificially accelerated centralization of capital, and
the concomitant expropriation of their own ranks. It had suppressed
them politically, it had shocked them morally by its orgies, it had
insulted their Voltairianism by handing over the education of their
children to the frères Ignorantins, it had revolted their national feeling
as Frenchmen by precipitating them headlong into a war which left
only one equivalent for the ruins it made---the disappearance of the
empire.[32]
The miserable Second Empire ``was the only form of government
possible at a time when the bourgeoisie had already lost, and the
working class had not yet acquired, the faculty of ruling the nation.''

It is not very difficult to rephrase these remarks so that they become

appropriate to the imperial systems of 1970. The problem of ``freeing
man >from the curse of economic exploitation and political and social
enslavement'' remains the problem of our time. As long as this is so,
the doctrines and the revolutionary practice of libertarian socialism
will serve as an inspiration and guide.

77
**********************************NOTES********
****************************

This essay is a revised version of

the introduction to Daniel
Guérin's Anarchism: From Theory to
Practice. In a slightly
different version, it appeared in the New
York Review of Books, May
21, 1970.

[1] Octave Mirbeau, quoted in James

Joll, The Anarchists, pp.
145--6.

[2] Rudolf Rocker, Anarchosyndicalism, p. 31.

[3] Cited by Rocker, ibid., p. 77. This

quotation and that in the
next sentence are from Michael
Bakunin, ``The Program of the
Alliance,'' in Sam Dolgoff, ed. and
trans., Bakunin on Anarchy, p.
255.

[4] Diego Abad de Santillan, After the

Revolution, p. 86. In the
last chapter, written several months
after the revolution had begun,
he expresses his dissatisfaction with
what had so far been achieved
along these lines. On the accomplishments
of the social revolution in
Spain, see my American Power and the
New Mandarins, chap. 1, and
references cited there; the important
study by Broué and Témime

78
 has since been translated into
English. Several other important
studies have appeared since, in
particular: Frank Mintz,
L'Autogestion dans l'Espagne
révolutionaire (Paris: Editions
Bélibaste, 1971); César M. Lorenzo, Les
Anarchistes espagnols et
le pouvoir, 1868--1969 (Paris:
Editions du Seuil, 1969); Gaston
Leval, Espagne libertaire, 1936--1939:
L'Oeuvre constructive de la
Révolution espagnole (Paris: Editions
du Cercle, 1971). See also
Vernon Richards, Lessons of the Spanish
Revolution, enlarged 1972
edition.

[5] Cited by Robert C. Tucker, The

Marxian Revolutionary Idea, in
his discussion of Marxism and anarchism.

[6] Bakunin, in a letter to Herzen and

Ogareff, 1866. Cited by Daniel
Guérin, Jeunesse du socialisme
libertaire, p. 119.

[7] Fernand Pelloutier, cited in Joll,

Anarchists. The source is
``L'Anarchisme et les syndicats
ouvriers,'' Les Temps nouveaux,
1895. The full text appears in Daniel
Guérin, ed., Ni Dieu, ni
Maître, an excellent historical anthology
of anarchism.

[8] Martin Buber, Paths in Utopia, p. 127.

79
[9] ``No state, however democratic,''
Bakunin wrote, ``not even the
reddest republic---can ever give the
people what they really want,
i.e., the free self-organization and
administration of their own
affairs from the bottom upward, without
any interference or violence
from above, because every state,
even the pseudo-People's State
concocted by Mr. Marx, is in essence only
a machine ruling the masses
from above, from a privileged minority
of conceited intellectuals,
who imagine that they know what the
people need and want better than
do the people themselves....'' ``But
the people will feel no better
if the stick with which they are
being beaten is labeled `the
people's stick' '' (Statism and
Anarchy [1873], in Dolgoff,
Bakunin on Anarchy, p. 338)---``the
people's stick'' being the
democratic Republic.

Marx, of course, saw the matter

differently.

For discussion of the impact of

the Paris Commune on this
dispute, see Daniel Guérin's comments
in Ni Dieu, ni Maître;
these also appear, slightly extended,
in his Pour un marxisme
libertaire. See also note 24.

80
[10] On Lenin's ``intellectual deviation''
to the left during 1917,
see Robert Vincent Daniels, ``The State
and Revolution: a Case Study
in the Genesis and Transformation of
Communist Ideology,'' American
Slavic and East European Review, vol. 12,
no. 1 (1953).

[11] Paul Mattick, Marx and Keynes, p. 295.

[12] Michael Bakunin, ``La Commune de

Paris et la notion de
l'état,'' reprinted in Guérin, Ni Dieu,
ni Maître. Bakunin's
final remark on the laws of
individual nature as the condition of
freedom can be compared to the
creative thought developed in the
rationalist and romantic traditions.
See my Cartesian Linguistics
and Language and Mind.

[13] Shlomo Avineri, The Social and

Political Thought of Karl Marx,
p. 142, referring to comments in The
Holy Family. Avineri states
that within the socialist movement
only the Israeli kibbutzim
``have perceived that the modes and
forms of present social
organization will determine the
structure of future society.'' This,
however, was a characteristic
position of anarchosyndicalism, as
noted earlier.

[14] Rocker, Anarchosyndicalism, p. 28.

81
[15] See Guérin's works cited earlier.

[16] Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha

Programme.

[17] Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der

Politischen Ökonomie,
cited by Mattick, Marx and Keynes, p.
306. In this connection, see
also Mattick's essay ``Workers'
Control,'' in Priscilla Long, ed.,
The New Left; and Avineri, Social and
Political Thought of Marx.

[18] Karl Marx, Capital, quoted by

Robert Tucker, who rightly
emphasizes that Marx sees the
revolutionary more as a ``frustrated
producer'' than a ``dissatisfied
consumer'' (The Marxian
Revolutionary Idea). This more
radical critique of capitalist
relations of production is a direct
outgrowth of the libertarian
thought of the Enlightenment.

[19] Marx, Capital, cited by Avineri,

Social and Political Thought
of Marx, p. 83.

[20] Pelloutier, ``L'Anarchisme.''

[21] ``Qu'est-ce que la propriété?'' The

phrase ``property is
theft'' displeased Marx, who saw in its
use a logical problem, theft

82
 presupposing the legitimate existence
of property. See Avineri,
Social and Political Thought of Marx.

[22] Cited in Buber's Paths in Utopia, p. 19.

[23] Cited in J. Hampden Jackson,

Marx, Proudhon and European
Socialism, p. 60.

[24] Karl Marx, The Civil War in France,

p. 24. Avineri observes
that this and other comments of
Marx about the Commune refer
pointedly to intentions and plans. As
Marx made plain elsewhere, his
considered assessment was more critical
than in this address.

[25] For some background, see Walter

Kendall, The Revolutionary
Movement in Britain.

[26] Collectivisations: L'Oeuvre

constructive de la Révolution
espagnole, p. 8.

[27] For discussion, see Mattick, Marx

and Keynes, and Michael
Kidron, Western Capitalism Since the
War. See also discussion and
references cited in my At War With Asia,
chap. 1, pp. 23--6.

[28] See Hugh Scanlon, The Way

Forward for Workers' Control.
Scanlon is the president of the AEF,
one of Britain's largest trade

83
 unions.

The institute was established

as a result of the sixth
Conference on Workers' Control, March
1968, and serves as a center
for disseminating information and
encouraging research.

[29] Guérin, Ni Dieu, ni Maître, introduction.

[30] Ibid.

[31] Arthur Rosenberg, A History of Bolshevism,

p. 88.

[32] Marx, Civil War in France, pp. 62--3.

84