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David E. ApterThe Old Anarchism and theNew- Some CommentsANARCHISMS A DOCTRINE H A S A PECULIAR FASCINATION FORscholars. It both repels and attracts. It attracts because it embodiesrage - the particular rage people have when they see man as anobstacle to his own humaneness. It is the ultimate statement of howoutrageous the human condition can be. But it is precisely becauseman does not live by rage alone, but must master it by discoveringproximate means to solving the ordinary problems of daily life, thatanarchism repels. It seem a romantic luxury at best - a cry of painfor the future, just as nostalgia is for the past and, like nostalgia,this cannot fail to be attractive.Perhaps because of this anarchism is not a mere reflection of angerbut also a contributing source. It is thus more than a lightningrod for the anger that exists. Anarchism is associated with unreasonand bombs, violence and irresponsibility. The ancestral cry of theanarchist in the 19th century is that the only good bourgeois is adead one. On this score the doctrine remains unregenerate. Butits attack is not limited to capitalism. The anarchist rejection ofsocialism and Marx because of their centralist contradictions isequally complete. Hence anarchism assigns itselfa position of extremevulnerability. Moreover none of the major social doctrines canabsorb anarchism because, where it is most fundamental, it is anti-political- hat is, i t does not really offer political solutions. Althoughthe language of todays anarchism is more psychologically sophisti-cated it remains a primitive doctrine which wants to convert astructural condition of hate into a sentiment of love, and by thesame token transform rage into peace.Some theorists of anarchism such as Kropotkin stressed the needfor rationality and theory. Others perhaps more persuasive becauseof their own personal vitalism urged the importance of violence, asdid Bakunin. The virtue of anarchism as a doctrine is that it employs397


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DAVID E. APTERa socialist critique of capitalism and a liberal critique of socialism.Because of this its doctrines remain important even when they leadit in the direction of terrorism and agitation, much qf it of the hit-and-run variety. This critique is one causefor i ts revival which comesas a surprise because anarchism had appeared to have run its coursein the early part of the 20th century. It was quaint, its leaders slightlycomical, and relegated to a shelf of antique doctrine which includedAnnie Besant and the Theosophist movement and the burned outengineers of Technocracy, Inc.

Clearly, anarchism has turned out to be like other antiques,capable of renewed significance in the social and aesthetic lives ofmany people. It has darkened with time. Some of its power is black.The black flag belongs now to black people as well as others. (Inthis respect anarchism is reaching out to people other than thebourgeois radicals who were its most ardent followers in the past.)In India the effects of Ruskins doctrines on Gandhi and in Japanthe more direct acquaintance with the writings of early anarchistsalso helped to give anarchism a more international flavour, and auniversality lacking in its earlier period when confined to WesternEurope, Russia and the USA. Anarchism today is a form of liberalismwhich rejects capitalism; as a doctrine of individualism divorcedfrom the classic western form it has relevance despite the flamboyanceand gesticulations of some of its practitioners. The latter should notdissuade us from recognizing that the ground covered by anarchismis as a normative antithesis to contemporary capitalism and socialism.Anarchism in this normative sense can be separated from its organi-zational characteristics and seen to stand on i ts own. Indeed, in thenature of the case organization could never be a strong point ofanarchists. As a moral phenomenon, no matter how much it waxesand wanes it has constant roots in the fundamentally offendingcharacter of organization qua organization.In this commentary, and it can be no more than that, I will con-sider four main aspects of anarchism as a normative force. First,compared with socialism or liberalism it can be seen as a discon-tinuous phenomenon. There has been no consistent accumulationof ideas and theories. This discontinuous quality of anarchism,however, is as we have suggested, likely to be confusing. Anarchismmay appear to be dead when it is dormant and exceptionally freshwhen it springs to life. Secondly, as a doctrine it differs from othersinsofar as it is concerned with meaning more as rejection but projectsno specific structural solution. Moreover, because anarchism leaves398


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THE OLD ANARCHISM AND THE NEW - SOME COMMENTSmeaning open its receptivity to violence or to use the contemporarylanguage, of each man doing histhing makes happenings into asubstitute solution for programmes. This aspect is particularly im-portant with respect to contemporary youth subcultures where theambiguity of meaning is greatest to start out with. As part of asubculture which has become both more structurally important andpowerful as time has gone on, anarchism has recently been able toenlarge its significance without any increase in organizational poweras such. It is a piggy-back normative doctrine able to join on, as itwere, to quite diverse groups. Indeed such normative power isalmost inverse in significance to its degree of organization. But it isby joining particular subcultures, with all the special conditionsthese encounter, that contemporary anarchism takes on a peculiarlypsychological dimension which in the past it lacked.Before going on to a discussion of these points, let us try toreview some of the main characteristics of anarchism as a doctrineboth in its older and newer forms. We seek that common core ofbelief which forms the substance of its own debate.

RATIONALITY AND CREATIVITYThe primitive core of anarchism is not so very different fromChristianity. That is, it rests on the notion that man has a need, notjust a preference, to love. Love in its generic sense is the centralprinciple from which two other needs derive. One is rationality.The other is emotionality. Religious and political doctrines tend tocome down on one side or the other of these and make one servethe other. Emotionality may use rationality but it restricts its appro-priateness. Rationality may recognize the importance of emotionalitybut it tries to channel it into approved directions, destroying itsspontaneousnessFor anarchists the appropriate balance between the two is creativityCreativity emerges both from rational and emotional processes. Thelanguage used must reflect the blend. The pure doctrine may besaid to originate in love which in turn is expressed in emotionalityand rationality which in turn must be integrated in creativity. Sinceemotionality derives from action and rationality from reflection,maximizing creativity is a balance of action and reflection which inturn enlarges mans capacity for love.If contemporary anarchists are less rational they are also more399


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DAVID E. APTERpsychological. They combine the radical critique of society byMarx with the insights of Freud. What the early anarchists par-ticularly objected to was Darwinism, preferring mutual aid tomutual struggle.' Today's attack on capitalism is not only becauseof the injustices of capitalism but also includes a strong desire tocreate a new symbolic aesthetic designed to break through the manylayers of human consciousness which organized life restricts andstunts. While it is true that all radicalism tried to deal with thesematters, it is particularly the contemporary form of anarchism whichgives a high priority to the psychosexual and symbolic aspects.Hence the significance of the work of Erich Fromm, Wilhelm Reich,Herbert Marcuse, Paul Goodman, R. D. Laing and others who havehad a sudden (and in many cases belated) prosperity among moreradical students in particular.

THE ROLE OF THEORY IN ANARCHISMHaving tried to suggest some differences between the new emphasesin anarchism and the oid we can now suggest some differencesbetween ideologies and social movements which have had a con-tinuous organized existence for a long time and those which havenot. In the first instance we encounter the problems of orthodoxyand of the hardening of the doctrinal arteries. To some extent itbecomes a matter of retranslation and language whether or notchange is to be welcomed or fought. Debate centres about howmuch doctrine should each inheriting group absorb and in turnpass on as values or norms. How much that is embedded in the oldstructural forms of party and organization should be reaffirmed inorthodoxy lest the pristine quality or originating ideology of themovement be destroyed ? These concerns are irrelevant with ideolo-gies which come and go like rashes or epidemics. Orthodoxy is notat issue. As a result the ideology when it has subsided becomesdifficultto recapture. The singular quality of origin which gave itsignificance is lost. But such doctrines, when they do appear, capturethe quintessence of relevance.They define the hypocrisies of society.Their proponents lance the swollen, more fatuous phrases on whichall orthodoxies depend. It is precisely the lack of continuity ofmovements like anarchism which given them exceptional moral

See P. Kropotkin, Memoirs of a Revolutionist,New York, Doubleday, AnchorBooks, 1962,p. 299.


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T H E OLD ANARCHISM AND T H E NEW - SOME COMMENTSpower. They are released from the burdens of past error. Orthodoxyis not at issue with anarchism but substance, the substantiality ofthe doctrine. As a matter of sheer continuity the new anarchism canhave little in common with the old except in language.

This leads to another point. Anarchism stresses the role of theoryfar less than socialism for example. It is also less intellectual. Thecentral and institutionalizedvalues of socialist doctrine are theoretic-ally complex and ideologically elaborate. Within the ideology ofanarchism there is sufficient attraction to old concepts so that it ispossible to discover a fresh interpretation. Not requiring a rejectionof the revolutionary past this allows a look towards a radicallydifferent future. And that itself is a source of creativity. This is quitedifferent from conflicts between various forms of Marxism whichare more a function of theory p a heory.

What do we mean then when we say that anarchism ha s comeback, but in a new form? For one thing those who raise the blackflag are probably less serious than in the past and much less so thansocialists requiring theory and organization. For the latter, partymust be everything or there will be nothing. The memory ofMarxs attitude towards the classic figures like Bakunin and Kropot-kin is perhaps in point. But the latter were concerned with totalchange. In contrast there has been no call today for an organizedanarchistic movement such as a revival of the first international forexample. Contemporary radicals read anarchism along with Tarotcards. Thus if it has a resonance of its own it is also difficult to taketoo seriously. It is instead redolent of experiments in the simple life.

With such emphases anarchism can never have a permanentreputation. Whatever its prosperity at any moment, its origin liesin some important and continuing inadequacy of existing systems,qua system and extends as well to the standardized solutions. Wesay system because it is not the event that causes anarchism but aninterpretation of it which says that present arrangements areresponsible and not chance or some temporary considerations. Theingredients which make up the system whether real or concrete,whether theory or practice, need to produce the inadequacy. This isas true of a system of theory as of a system in practice. Both areirredeemable because their important conditions depend on organ-izational means.For this reason, even when a system is generally perceived as bad,anarchism is bound to appeal to a minority. For one thing people areafraid of changes which they cannot predict, which is the reason why401


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DAVID E. APTERtheory remains so important for radicals other than anarchists!Theories are a part of revolution. They are a means. By reducing theambiguity of change the translated and convenient ideologicalexpressions make projective sense about change and point in adesired direction. Anarchist theories do this only slightly at bestand in a relatively utopian manner. That is to say few offer detailedempirical analysis. What a contrast between say Bakunin and Marxfor whom radicalism was less a matter of disgruntlement thanprediction.

If anarchism is not very concerned with theory per se, anarchistscommonly assume that human affairs constitute a naturalistic orderwhich needs to be rendered uncontrived. Spontaneity and even acertain randomness can be seen to go together. Theory in the viewof anarchists should not be an intellectual contrivance because thiswill reduce freedom and clutter the will with tempering injunctions.The contrast is complete. For Lenin or Mao, theory is all important.It represents the basis for a new system, i.e. a different structuralorder based on particular norms, which endows behaviour with anelement of puritanism. Theory for them is important because itenables doctrine and action to go hand in hand.

How can one explain this continuous preference by anarchists forspontaneous association? Behind the appearance of anti-intellectual-ism there lies a presumptive belief in an ultimate rationality as thecommon and unifying property of all men if unfettered by aninappropriate system, a rationality which, moreover, will temperrelationships of people whose lives are based upon intimate andlocalized associations.

Such views are, of course, not too different from traditions ofevangelical radicalism based on personal vision, the denunciationof injustice and the regeneration of self as a continued approach tosocial betterment. To convert the group it is necessary to begin withthe self. With such views it is not surprising that anarchists tendedto be strong and independent characters.

Anarchism contrasts most sharply with socialism in the particularsubstance of ideas and attitudes about organization. The fear of apolitical infrastructure asserts above all the primacy of the individual.But if it emphasizes the tyranny of the collectivity, it lacks a clearpicture of what kind of social community is necessary to replacewhat we have. Anarchists may be closest to socialists in their com-mon critique of capitalist society, but they are diametrically opposedin the matter of solutions.402


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HAPPENINGS NOT PROGRAMMESWe said that anarchism lacks doctrinal continuity. It has no youngergeneration which arises explicitly out of the older one, as doesMarxism, or liberalism. In what sense does it have a new.relevanceif few are informed by its doctrines and live under its banner? Inone sense the answer is metaphorical. Students who proclaim com-munes, wave the black flag, and strike out against organization areanarchic or have anarchic tendencies. That is, in the contemporarysocial and moral gesticulation of the youth subcultures of manysocieties we find the equivalent to earlier anarchism.Todays anarchists in this respect are different from their earliercounterparts in ideas about the collectivity. They themselves areorganized differently. They are younger. If they canjoinwith variousmilitant bodies in the attack on capitalist society they also feel freeto collide with them. With their highly individualized styles theyconflict with other anarchists. They are Rorschach radicals. Oneneeds conflicts to obtain clues to the next concern. Each conflictin the context of youth is part theatre, most particularly the theatreof the absurd, in which public happenings are staged in order todemonstrate the falseness, the emptiness and the perfunctory qualityof the symbols of society, law, school, family, and church, i.e. of thestable institutions of the middle aged.

Since todays anarchism is more a part of a youth culture than inthe past, anarchism is a contributing source of normative conflict.Youth, not the whole of it, but the counter-culture, serves as themain carrier of anarchist ideas. Anarchism today depends on thepower and position of youth as a counter-culture. In this it is verydifferent from the past when anarchism was more inter-generational.

This is perhaps another reason why anarchism remains so anti-theoretical. The simplicity of anarchism is in part a basis of itsgenerational appeal. Youth today is bored with the doctrinal com-plexity of alternative and competing ideologies. The early figuresassociated with anarchist movements in England, France, Switzer-land, Russia, Germany, and the United States recognized that theguide to action was a theory. This was as true of Proudhonsmutualist doctrines as it was of Tolstoys primitive Christianity.Even the pamphlets and memorials of Bakunin and Kropotkinshowed a concern to spell out the conditions necessary for an im-proved and different social condition. Theory was a part of life as403


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an enduring radical pre-occupation. But youth today reads verylittle such literature,Anarchism as a youth counter-culture is a genuinely different

structural phenomenon than in the past. The more so since althoughgenerational time shrinks, the period of youthfulness expands. Inthe days of the old anarchists, one went from childhood to manhoodvery quickly- overnight as it were. Today what we call youth refersto an extended period of role search, the trying on of differentidentities. Anarchism challenges this. It downgrades the roles andthe identities offered by society. In a very real way it denies whatyouth in general is for. That is, if youth can be defined as the periodof role search between childhood and working adulthood, then thenew anarchism is an attack on youth. The attack takes such anattractive form because more and more members of the youthsubculture find themselves repelled by the roles and identities whichsociety provides. The result is that anarchism as a counter-cultureprovides a double basis for rebellion, first against society as it is,and second, against the youth subculture as a preparatory period.It s relevance depends on how youth feels as a whole about societiesroles, i.e. whether they are reluctant to be recruited to them whensociety ordains that they should. Whether they basically do notreject such roles. Whether they reject them as a system. Anarchismdoes not mean mere rebellion, i.e. an unwillingness to make a com-mitment in the face of pressure to select roles and conform, a kind ofrebellion associated with a more generalized irresponsibility and adesire for a longer period of exemption. Anarchism means therejection of the roles themselves. Youth represents a period ofexemption granted to youth by society in order to provide a longerperiod of role search. Anarchism annihilates the roles. It is a doctrineof role rejection.

ROLELESSNESSA youth culture is part and parcel of the need for more time beforeaccepting societys roles, of sorting them out, and trying, with manyfalse starts, to adopt an appropriate set. This is essentially a methodof socializing individuals into the structure of existing social roles.Anarchism as a counter-culture may reject those roles but can itcreate new and alternative ones as could be done by making morecentral those activities which had been peripheral in the past? For404


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THE OL D ANARCHISM AND THE NEW - SOME COMMENTSexample, law students can change the role of lawyers from those ofpractitioners of the art of mediation into investigators of socialabuse. Teachers may be redefined outside the specific institutionalsetting of schools. Socialism and related doctrines do juse this. Theirproponents look for a redefinition of roles according to their variedideas of how the structure of society should be altered.

Here anarchism is not very helpful. Since it seeks not alternativeroles but their obliteration, this may, when pushed to extremes, endin the obliteration of self instead of its liberation. Rolelessness is thesocial equivalent of randomness. A random universe cannot definefreedom. When the self is obliterated as a social person, the resultis withdrawal from action rather than intensified action, or violencefor the sake of violence. One sees the pathological aspect in the useof drugs, the emergence of what perhaps can best be called the cultof solipsism, and the alternation of extreme passivity with extremeviolence and anxiety.True the anti-role is not rolelessness. It is a role, too, and onedirectly involved with other roles. Perhaps we need to distinguishbetween the anti-role which produces a fierce and continuous con-troversy over the terms of group action and sheer rolelessness.Moreover, there are advantages to anti-roles as distinct fromrolelessness. The anti-role sets itself against socially validated roles.But it has a place in history. The history may not be very edifying.But that does not matter, even if history in this sense replaceseconomics as the dismal science with system ts contemporaryvoice.The anti-roles generate the rebirth of innocence. In order to beinnocent (and pure) it is necessary to take an anti-role. Each personthen does his thing but dares not have a theory about it. (Theorywould be a source of weakness not of strength.) The contemporaryanarchists most commonly accused of anti-intellectualism are in thissense being misunderstood. Contemporary critics fail to recognizethat innocence is itself the goal, the source of redemption, the meansand the end. The search for directness and simplicity is preciselywhat is wanted as the ultimate answer to complexity and com-promise.This brings us to the key question. The relationship betweeninnocence and violence. If our assumptions are correct, violence,because it becomes a total non-answer (which is no answer) is thekey to innocence. Here the modern anarchists can relate the theatreof the absurd to the existential quality of death. To prove innocenceand protect it is to smash society and turn against confounding406


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DAVID E. APTERtheoretical constructions. Out of the first, the smashing of society, thehope is that something new will emerge since from the violence itselfwill come a more purified image of man. This is where anarchism isperhaps closest to i ts traditional form. But today, insofar as suchviews are primarily the preoccupation of youth subculture and mostparticularly that part which denies itself roles and identity, thenviolence has quite a different cause than in the traditional anarchistmovement, namely violence is both a function and a cause of identitysmashing. If this is true then today's youth culture anarchism actsfirst on itself. It smashed its own identity. But the resulting inno-cence is behaviourally not supportable without violence. This con-trasts with the old anarchism where violence was a tactic or a weapon.In short, when the property of a youth subculture, violence is apsychological necessity.

IN SEARCH OF LIBERATIONIf this is the case then what are we to make of anarchism in its presentform? At its best, it has its liberating side. It represents a form ofsocial criticism against capitalism as a system and socialism as a formof bureacratic tyranny. At the worst extreme, it liberates individualsfrom society only in order to help them destroy themselves as indi-viduals. But what about the larger intermediate group attracted tothe doctrines of anarchism? Here the history of doctrine providesits own answers. Future anarchism like the past will prove to beepisodic, providing those engaged in role searching with the chanceto create some new roles which are partly inside the system andpartly not (particularly in the arts). That at least is for the moregifted.For others, perhaps, it will mean a search for some patternedirregularity in their lives particularly in the alteration of those rolesembodied in the sacred social institutions of family, church, schooland court. Anarchists may modify the family through communes orother types of association, create new holy days, chants and festivals,alter the quality and the form of education, and redefine both griev-ances and their redress. In this respect the most important contribu-tion which the new anarchists can make is indirect. Anarchism if itcan be anything is likely to be a social doctrine for more personalizedliving, a recipe for the homespun, and not a political solution for theworld's problems. It is more a matter of lifestyle than explicit408


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T H E O L D A N A R C HI SM A N D T H E NEW - SOME COMMENTSrevolution. But perhaps there is nothing more revolutionary thanthat.

From a doctrinal standpoint we have said that anarchism representsthe most libertarian of socialist ideologies. It begins in the view thatmen as individuals are, given half a chance, better than the societiesin which they live. But to change society is not enough. Individualsneed to see in their own salvation a new way to live together. Akind of rational ecclesiasticism pervades traditional anarchistthought.

If it is necessary to break through the shell of society by means ofviolence, then anarchism has on the whole accepted the principle ofviolent means. In some of its earlier varieties, at least, it embodied adevotion to discipline and asceticism which at times took narrowforms. Violence might be necessary to free the human spirit from itscontainment within an unsatisfactory social environment. Butonce this freedom has been attained it was up to the individual,indeed his obligation, to direct it into constructive and sociallyuseful channels. Whatever it was, anarchism was not a doctrine forthe lazy. Quite the contrary, it made exceptional demands on itsadherents.Too many demands, one might argue. This has perhaps been oneof the causes of its uneveness. Anarchism is in perpetual danger, notleast because of the hammer blows of Marxism and the new organ-ized left. It remains a doctrine of the absurd. Even today when itsresonance is stronger than ever before its proponents, from Kropot-kin to Malatesta seem botlffe. Witness Malatesta, I am an anarchistbecause it seems to me that anarchy would correspond better thanany other way of social life, to my desire for the good of all, to myaspirations towards a society which reconciles the liberty of every-one with co-operation and love among men, and not because anarch-ism is a scientific truth and a natural law. It is enough for me that itshould not contradict any known law of nature to consider it possibleand to struggle to win the support needed to achieve it.2 One canhear the snorts of derision from the Marxists. For it is a fundamentalpoint, whether or not a revolution is based upon a scientific under-standing of certain developmental laws, or the more uncertainreliance on an attitude of mind and a sense of solidarity. For theMarxist it is the first which makes revolution necessary. For theanarchist, it is the second which makes revolution desirable.

a See Errico Malatesta, Lift and Ideas, V. Richards, ed., London, FreedomPress, 1965, p. 25.407


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DAVID E. APTERFor all that, both Marxism and anarchism have been right in the

special sense that the weaknesses and ills of each have become theaccurate prediction of the other. Marxists see the absurd in anarch-ism, its lack of a programme, the vagueness of its grand design.Anarchists see the implications of statism in Marxism, and the mag-nified control granted by the apparatus of industrial power. Theyfind bureaucracy and control under socialism no more appetizingthan under capitalism.

Perhaps, however, as issues are raised and morality speaks fromimpromptu pulpits in the socialist societies as well as in capitalist,anarchism is a language useful for identifying the more grotesqueanomalies of these systems. It is a doctrine for the young in theiranti-roles instead of being nursed along in dark and obscure placesby the immigrant Italian printers in Buenos Aires or New Yorkwho carried the faded memories of their anarchist days carefullywrapped in the old newspapers of their minds. They had no hope,only regrets. Old anarchists have a better sense of tragedy thanyoung ones.

Todays anarchism is fresh because its innocence grows out ofthe degenerate sophistication of the past, like the flower on thedungheap. Indeed that is precisely how it began, with flowerchildren and happenings. It is as if a new entrance to the corridorof the human mind had been suddenly exposed and an importantpart of a whole generation has dashed down it expecting it to leadto unexpected but exciting outcomes. Todays anarchism random-izing the universe and hoping that by keeping it unpredictable, itwill be possible to generate freedom, is a far cry from the rationalisticanarchism of the 19th century. It is no wonder that the elders ofsociety shake their heads in disbelief. What they see and fear arethe wonders of indiscipline, the medicines of hallucination, thephysicalism which produces an erogenous solidarity, alternatingperiods of self withdrawal and intense social living, the privacy oftotal self pre-occupation with the giving and sharing of the com-mune.Certainly one message is clear. That is the growing importanceof the fringe or the margin of society for the whole. For the firsttime, the margin of the society has the capacity to define the moralityof the whole. What begins in societys moral rejection of somebecomes the moral rejection of society itself. Anarchism is an im-portant doctrine for this and it remains on the whole imbued withthe moral. It also lacks humour, although it may embody sweetness.408


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THE OLD ANARCHISM AND THE NEW - SOME COMMENTSIt has already shown great power to define caricature and assault.And it is not an accident that its first contemp orary arena of actionhas been the universities for it is here that human promise seems tobe sliced and packaged m ore systematically than in any o ther institu-tion, and done with a more incredible piety. Th e universities are theinstruments with the g reatest singular significance in highly in -dustrial societies because they create knowledge, define validity,establish priorities, and screen individuals accordingly. They thusrepresent all the inherited wisdom of the past which can then beused as a form of authority for th e present. In this sense the centralsignificance of the university as an arbiter of ideas and roles makes itthe natural focus of attack, Moreover, precisely because the uni-versity provides the place of congregation, creates the groups andits facilities, much o f th e contem porary anarchist activity takes placein the un iversity setting. Ex-students and non-studentsy ive aroundthe university creating youth subcultures. But the focus is shifting.Groups of anarchists as well as individuals have become wan derers.They may be found in Nepal as well as on the left bank. They askfor little. They are willing to pay with their health. Violence andself-destruction are forms of existentially necessary penance. Everyman is his own Christ.

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