Saving Anarchy from the Anarchists

This magazine has always managed to gather its share of off-the-wall criticisms from a whole range of self-appointed arbiters of anarchist orthodoxy. Readers from around the world have rarely refrained from advising us whenever weoverstep their exceptionally narrow bounds of good taste, idealogical conformity, or puritanical values.

Lately, however, Anarchy magazine, its editors and some of its most prominent contributors have been even more viciously and repeatedly attacked by anarchists who identify with various disparate strands of the milieu. Some of the most vocal and persistent attacks have emanated from the creator and reigning dean of Social Ecology (and its corollary, Libertarian Municipalism), Murray Bookchin. But thay have also come from other sources, including Bookchin’s partener and sycophantic sidekick, Janet Biehl; the long-time editor and publisher of The Match, Fred Woodworth (see pages 75-76 of Anarchy #47); a small number of of anarcho-syndicalists; and, in this issue’s letter’s pages, anarchist activist Peter Kalberer (pp. 64-65 same issue) and pacifist Ed Stamm(p. 74); among others.

There doesn’t seem to be any consistent, rational perspective perspective behind these attacks. For Bookchin Anarchy and its sister magazine, Alternative Press Review are examples of “decadent,” “lifestylist” magazines. For Woodworth they just have to be funded by the CIA or FBI to be so successful. For Kalberer Anarchy is just “hot air over non-issues.” While Stamm offers a bribe to get Anarchy to change its name and never use “the words ‘anarchy,’ ‘anarchism,’ or ‘anarchist’ in the subtitle, or to “describe your point of view” because it disturbs ‘those of us with a more traditional anarchist orientation.”

What does seem consistent in these disparaging assaults is a general sense that not only are the myriad directions currently being explored within the anarchist milieu beyond these critics’ comprehension and control, ut that this magazine is one of the leading voices advocating a generalized renewal and reinvention of the anarchist tradition. And, further, the reactions of htese fairly incoherent critics indicate that we are doing a pretty good job of making them feel insecure and vulnerable as the old ideological ground (which was never all that stable to begin with) increasingly shifts beneath their feet.

In Anarchy after Leftism and “Withered Anarchism,” Bob Black has characterized some of these attacks as symptomatic of a more general conflict between the dominant 19th and 20th century threads of left-anarchism and the creative, still-emerging post-leftist anarchist movement. Although there have been anarchists and anti-state insurrectionaries throughouthistory who have never fit within the leftist mold, until recently their memory has been largely submerged within the worldwide decline of leftism, these previous undercurrents are resurfacing and threatening to overwhelm those fragmenting currents of anarcho-leftism that have yet to dissapate.

Over the last few post-’60s decades, as leftism has ebbed, anarchists have increasingly explored new directions in theory, history and practice. These explorations have sometimes led people to dead ends, sometimes to confusion or incoherence, and occasionally right out of the anarchist milieu. But many have led to a broadening and deepening of anarchist critique, and some to the ongoing liberation of anarchiic praxi from stale leftist roles and conventions. The most important of these explorations have included:

the critique of technology as a totalitarian system

the critique of civilization as the primary form of social alienation (prior to capitalism, which is only one possible institutional form of civilization)

the critique of work and production (and thus of unioniism)

the re-examination and re-evaluation of “primitive” anarchy and communism

the critique of ideology and cumpulsory morality

the critique of rationalism and scientism as untenable foundations for anarchist theory and practice.

A reappraisal of the entire insurrectionary projects is required, and this reappraisal has only just begun. But possibly the biggest obstacle has so far proven to be a minority of anarchists clinging to their hard-won, now comfortable niches in the anarchist milieu. They seem to be hoping that they can avoid eclipse if they can just make enough nasty charges, call their chosen enemies enough dirty names, and portray themselves as virtuous victims of a vast, fundamentally evil post-leftist conspiracy.

The challenge for those of us ready to move on is saving anarchy from these anarchists.