Drawing the Line Once Again: Paul Goodman's Anarchist Writings

DRAWING THE LINE Goodman, Paul (Author). Drawing the Line Once Again : Paul Goodman's Anarchist Writings. Oakland, CA, U...

Author: Paul Goodman

175 downloads 746 Views 2MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

DRAWING THE LINE Goodman, Paul (Author). Drawing the Line Once Again : Paul Goodman's Anarchist Writings. Oakland, CA, USA: PM Press, 2009. p i. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/dominicanuc/Doc?id=10400624&ppg=1

ONCE AGAIN

PAUL GOODMAN'S ANARCHIST WRITINGS "The core of Goodman's politics was his definition of anarchism.. :look nOt to the State for solutions but discover them foryourselves... He mOSt passionately believed that man must not commit treason against himself, whatever the srate-capitalist, socialise, cr ai-commands."

-NAT HHNTOFF, niB Vil.LAGE VOICR

Goodman, Paul (Author). Drawing the Line Once Again : Paul Goodman's Anarchist Writings. Oakland, CA, USA: PM Press, 2009. p 1. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/dominicanuc/Doc?id=10400624&ppg=2

Drawing the Line Once Again Paul Goodman's Anarchist Writings Paul Goodman

Edited by Taylor Stoehr


Drawing The Line Once Again: Paul Goodman's Anarchist Writings Drawing The Line Once Again © 2010 by Sally Goodman Introduction Q 2010 by Taylor Stoehr This edition" 2010 by PM Press

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-60486-057-3

Library of Congni!EE Control Number: 2009901375 Cover: John Yates Interior design by briandesign

PM Press PO Box 23912 Oakland, CA 94623 www.pmpress.org Printed in the USA on recycled paper.

Contents

Preface by Taylor Stoehr Sources of Texts

19

The May Pamphlet

21

Reflections on the Anarchist Principle

55

Freedom and Autonomy

57

Anarchism and Revolution

60

Some Prima Facie Objections to Decentralism

75

The Black Flag of Anarchism

89

The Limits of Local Liberty

98

Civil Disobedience "Getting Into Power": The Ambiguities of Pacifist Politics Goodman, Paul (Author). Drawing the Line Once Again : Paul Goodman's Anarchist Writings. Oakland, CA, USA: PM Press, 2009. p 3. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/dominicanuc/Doc?id=10400624&ppg=4

5

104 114


Preface

hen I met Paul Goodman in 1950 I was eighteen, and he was thirty-nine.

W I was a callow youth from the Midwest, much in need of menroring, and he was a bohemian guru with a little band of disciples already following

him around, and the author of many books, some of them still to be in print half a century later. I saw Goodman only five or six times that spring before going back to Omaha, but for the next ten years he did guide me, at first in a few crucial letters of advice, then only through his writings, which I began to collect and study in a way that I studied nothing else. I say this to orient new readers of Goodman, some of whom I assume will be at the age I met him and perhaps as much in need of counsel as I was. Although it weighed heavily in my own case to have met him in the flesh, what ultimately counted most, both then and later in the 1960s when I reconnected with him, was not his physical presence but his lucidity and common sense. He used to say it was "the obvious" that people never seemed to notice, plain as the nose on your face. That was what was so irresistible about him. As if in


dialogue with Socrates, you felt you were in touch with your own wisdom, like a kind of memory, for the very first time. Our mutual friend George Dennison once said that he was "an angel of mind whose feats of memory and analysis seemed like familiar descriptions of a much-loved home." Goodman had no charisma, whether face-to-face or in front of a faceless audience. But you soon forgot about the figure he cut, because his words lit up your own mind, you listened and you were thinking those thoughts your self. They were rarely something you'd want to write down or memorize. For me and others who gathered round him in those days there was no lesson to

be learned and stored away, rather an attitude toward life and the world. You could get it into your own bones. And because writing is a way of thinking, and he was a writer to the core, you could get it by reading his books. I have met many other people who had the same experience, including not a few who never laid eyes on him. There are several avenues by which one might approach what I am calling Goodman's attitude. It was the primary tendency in the Gestalt therapy he was 5

PREFACE

just beginning to practice at the time I methim, and was also at the heart of the artist's life he had chosen for himself. For me, however, Goodman's anarchism best exemplifies this deep-going attitude. I have included two succinct sum maries of it in the pages that follow-"The Anarchist Principle" and "Freedom and Autonomy"-but to get the feel of this habit of mind, which he some times called "the habit of freedom," I suggest reading through the more expan sive essays printed here. As he believed, character is revealed in a writer's style, expressed in the very rhythms of speech, and of course character is the source of any deep-going attitude. Curiously, one finds in these longer selections a number of passages where Goodman repeats himself, not merely in idea or attitude but verbatim, quoting himself without quotation marks, as if it couldn't be said better than he had already said it-a trick he developed early in his career, along with footnotes referring readers to his other writings. In later years such cloning was helpful in meeting multiple demands on him from editors and publish ers, but it also highlights what I'm trying to get across here: once we are famil iar with his voice, everything Goodman says seems reminiscent of some other portion of his work. "Haven't I read this paragraph before?" Goodman's tone changed dramatically after 1960, once he was no longer writing only for his friends in the San Remo bar, but his "attitude" remained the same throughout the twenty-five years represented by these essays. Near the end of his life he said that he hadn't changed his political ideas "since I was a boy." This was true.


My own earliest encounter with the anarchist attitude came by reading "The May Pamphlet" side by side with its imagined spelling-out in The Dead

of Spring, an expressionist novel he published in 1950. When Goodman gave me a copy, hot off Dave Dellinger's Libertarian Press, I didn't realize what a providential act that was to be. I was a baffled teenager stumbling through the rites of adulthood in the U.S.A.-smoking, driving, drinking, punching a clock, matriculating, marrying, and wearing a uniform-for me, in that order. The hero of The Dead of Spring was working his way through different rites of passage, but in the end he arrived at the same crisis, what Goodman called The Dilemma, formulated by the Prosecuting Attorney at Horatio's trial for Treason Against the Sociolatry: You have tried to live as if our society, the society of almost all of the people, did not exist. . . . [Ojur society is the only society that there is-in what society can you move if not in our society? ... If one conforms to our society, he becomes sick in certain ways.... But ifhe does not conform, he becomes demented, because ours is the only society that there is. 6

PREFACE

In 1950, I was too naIve to truly comprehend what the opposite crime, treason against natural societies (as it was termed in "The May Pamphlet"), might mean for someone setting out on these paths, but what I did intuit, almost wordlessly, was that the world I was entering was founded on lies and hypoc risy. Much as I loved my home and the family friends, teachers, and neighbors I knew as a boy, I was aware that almost every adult I met was masked, and no matter how smiling a face might be put on it, their lives were venal and empty. In The Dead of Spring, Goodman had called their condition The Asphyxiation. I had gotten a strong whiff of that self-betrayal festering in my parents' genera tion and was afraid that I, too, was infected. Goodman amazed me because he did not live this way. As far as I could tell, he had no secrets, no reticence, no shame. Whatever scary implications such an open life might have for a shy and embarrassed young fellow like myself, it was better than suffocation in conformity and complacency. There was another way to live-one that presented something to believe in, pursuits to follow wholeheartedly, countering the fear that there was nothing worth doing. I began by paying attention to how he behaved in his family, among his friends, in public spaces, and face-to-face with me, but it was not until I had returned to the Midwest and read "The May Pamphlet" and The Dead ofSpring that I had any insight into what had bowled me over during our initial encoun ter. My misgivings about the adult world were embodied in what he called "treason againstnatural societies": "every one knows moments in which he con forms against his nature, in which he suppresses his best spontaneous impulse, and cowardly takes leave of his heart." It was precisely such moments of self


betrayal that had led to the great wars of the century, long prepared in the averted eyes and uneasy smiles of parents whose children would die in them. The steps [we] take to habituation and unconsciousness are crimes which entail every subsequent evil of enslavement and mass murder. . . . We conform to institutions that up to a certain point give great natural satisfactions, food, learning and fellowship-and then suddenly we find that terrible crimes are committed and we are somehow the agents. . . . It is said that the system is guilty, but the system is its members coerced into the system. It is also true that the system itself exercises this coercion. In 1950, I had little grasp of the overarching system he was talking about, but I knew what he meant about meaningless jobs or the smothering of sexual desire in the young, and I even had an inkling of how my own good-enough schooling stifled curiosity and killed the spirit. But I'm a slow learner and no matter how much you can take from good advice, you have to make your own 7

PREFACE

mistakes. I had gone back home and done all the things I admired him for refus ing to do, every one of the treasonous rites of passage I've listed above-even though I carried the truth along with me too, if not fully in consciousness yet alive in the books he had given me and continued to write. By the next time I saw him, ten years later, I had begun to understand. His voice had been ringing in my head as I read Communiws, Geswlt Therapy, The

Structure of Literature, and The Empire City. When I visited him in December 1959, Growing up Absurd was in page proofs on his dinner table, and when he came to visit me in Berkeley two months later, chapters of it were already being serialized in Commentary. A more receptive generation than my own, one that included his own son Mathew, was about to have its first taste of his anarchist attitude, focused now as the subtitle announced, on "problems of youth in the organized society." This would be the heyday of his influence. Of course there were other compelling voices-Co Wright Mills at the outset, then Herbert Marcuse, William Appleton Williams, Michael Harrington, to name some prominent authors who figure in histories of the '60s-but outside of the Civil Rights movement (another story entirely), Goodman was by far the most significant of these social critics, despite the fact that he has become just another name in the index of most books about the 1960s in recent years. As the landmark "Port Huron Statement" of the Students for a Democratic Society made clear as early as 1961, the first leaders of the youth movement were completely in tune with his anarchist attitude, not only his critique of the "organized system" but also his scorn for the value system that supported it, the "standard of living" and


the ''American Dream." Most of the other public intellectuals were still waving red flags and calling for an old-fashioned taking of power, whereas like most anarchists Goodman believed "getting into power" was a delusion of both the Marxist and the Liberal Left. The Berkeley Free Speech Movement that spread under other names to campuses across the country, climaxing with the giant antiwar demonstrations orchestrated by Dave Dellinger in April and October of 1967, was anarchist through and through. During these half dozen years Goodman poured forth a flood of books and articles, public speeches, radio broadcasts, and even TV talk shows. With an audience that at last wanted to hear what he had to say, he was ready to explain the anarchist attitude 'til he dropped: Oh the number of the speeches I have made is like the witch-grass in the garden and the press-conferences for peace have been almost as many as the wars. 8

PREFACE

It was near the end of his decade-long harangue when he wrote that exhausted poem about "the old grey goose" that died in the mill-pond, but at his peak in the early '60S he was indefatigable. In 1962 alone he published five books, among them a new edition of "The May Pamphlet," combined with more recent articles as Drawing the Line--critiquing Kennedy's "New Frontier" in Washington, commenting presciently on the epidemic "war spirit," calling the intellectuals to account, and endorsing the "Worldwide General Strike for Peace" for which he had written the broadside. Another of his books that year was titled Utopian Essays and Practical Proposals, where he described various ways that "The May Pamphlet" might be implemented in direct action if not official policy. Still another book insisted The So ciety I Live in Is Mine, gather ing letters to public officials and the media in which he showed how things might be done differently. The audience for all this analysis and exhortation was not only on the campuses. There were more anarchists in the U.S.A. than anyone had imag ined. When Goodman had joined A. J. Muste, Dave Dellinger, Bayard Rustin, and others on the editorial board of Liberation magazine in the late-fifties, it was a thin twenty-page anarchist monthly. By 1962 it had grown to twenty eight pages, by 1966 a robust forry-eight. A light breeze compared to the dust storms in the national press, but also a weather vane. When Goodman edited a Seeds oj Liberation anthology in 1964, he quite rightly pointed out that "the 'news' has been catching up to Liberation," that the editors, by dealing with "what they consider to be humanly important, . .. [what] they themselves get personally engaged in," had scooped all the big media by several years-their


intuitions had proved predictive of the issues that now made headlines. More and more Americans wanted not only to hear the truth but to take part in it, and the young who read Liberation, passing it from hand to hand, also bought Goodman's books-the way they bought the new albums from Bob Dylan and the Beatles, to help them make sense of their pell-mell world. •

Did I succeed in assimilating the anarchist attitude? I hope so. My own work these last fifteen years, aside from the teaching and writing I've been doing

since my first encounter with Goodman, has been an attempt to act on that attitude in the new conditions of life in the United States. My work has been with probationers in the criminal justice system, men who have been incarcer ated for felonies and are now trying to re-enter the society that has condemned them. I mention this work in order to indicate why I intend to tum my attention in this preface to Goodman's own concern with the problem of imprisonment in the organized system. Of course, there is a long history of the State's use 9

PREFACE

of jail as a means of repressing all sorts of political resistance to its authority, perhaps especially from anarchists.In his last years Goodman wrote prefaces (like this one) to books by famous anarchists, Peter Kropotkin and Alexander Berkman, who spent years in cells for their words and deeds. Berkman's con viction was for attempted murder, politically motivated, and such mixtures of criminal and political insults to State authority have been common in anar chist history, most notoriously the long imprisonment and eventual execu tion of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. to worldwide protest. These men and their stories loom in the background of Goodman's concern with the penal system-as well as my own-but the anarchist attitude toward crimi nal justice and punishment by incarceration that I want to explore here raises issues that, in my opinion, are even more crucial in his critique of the State and to his own practice as a citizen of the "natural society" he inhabited instead. When Goodman revised and reprinted his "May Pamphlet" in 1962, he introduced it by saying that "the endless drizzle of the Cold War has made my kind of anarchism and pacifism endlessly relevant to another generation." Today, almost a lifetime later, the Cold War is no longer our name for the per manent war economy, but the same cold drizzle persists. What Goodman orig inally wrote to give himself heart in 1945. when he feared he would be jailed for draft refusal, and then reprinted twenty years later to encourage young friends who would soon face the same threat. has now become of even more desperate relevance-though today's soldiers are "volunteering" and our enemies seem to rise up everywhere, even in our own midst. rather than in rival super-states on the other side of patrolled "walls" and "curtains" that were torn down two


decades ago. The war of "pacification" has shifted from Asia to the Middle East, but troop deployment is not what it was a generation ago because the battle lines can no longer be drawn. The new Great Wall of China, built in every major nation

to

protect loyal citizens from the barbarians, whether illegal immi

grants or the indigenous poor, is the modern Prison System, now significantly competing with military and schooling budgets in the U.S.A., where well over two million enemies of society are locked away for "correction," followed by the labeling and disabling known as the CORI report, the Criminal Offender Information Record that follows every felon for the rest of life.All the domestic "wars" we've declared for decades-on poverty. on drugs, on crime, etc.-have simply resulted in an ever-increasing population of prisoners of war. If Goodman were alive today. it would be this turning of state power against its own citizens that he would be decrying. In 1945, Goodman was asking the question Thoreau had asked a hundred years earlier: when is it one's responsibility to disobey the State and its statutes 10

PREFACE

for the sake of "higher laws"? Several of Goodman's friends were already in Danbury penitentiary for their answers to that question. When he revised "The May Pamphlet" in 1962. the issue was no longer whether to resist conscription for a war still raging. but how to live in its Cold War aftermath, a world in which most people found themselves doing what they knew was wrong-"what you must pretend not to notice"-the betrayal by which the next major war would come into being. Therefore he opened his manifesto with a different section. The first version had begun with "Reflections on Drawing the Line," but now "Treason Against Natural Societies" seemed more to the point. Here once again is his indictment: Not all commit Treason to our natural societies in the same degree; some are more the principals, some more the accomplices. But it is ridiculous to say that the crime cannot be imputed or that any one commits it without intent and in ignorance. For everyone knows the moments in which he conforms against his nature, in which he suppresses his best spontaneous impulse, and cowardly takes leave of his heart. The steps which he takes to habituation and unconsciousness are crimes which entail every subsequent evil of enslavement and mass-murder. The companion piece to "Treason Against Natural Societies" was a section titled "A Touchstone for the Libertarian Program," now third in the line-up of his pamphlet and originally published in the June 1945 issue of the anar chist magazine Why? Here Goodman asserted that the most reliable criterion


for anarchist agitation was "to advocate a large number of precisely those acts and words for which persons are in fact thrown into jail." Facetious as such a claim might sound, Goodman meant it seriously. In justifying his proposi tion he argued that the distinction between "political prisoners" and "common criminals" was false, because "in fact the 'common criminal' has, although usually by the failure of repression and rarely by reason. probably commit ted a political crime." In the October 1946 issue of Why? he took his argument further, stating that if all prisoners were freed, "there would, under the present moral and property relations. probably be more petty disturbances and fewer

pent-up big disturbances." To clinch his argument he added, "But this con jecture is absurd because the moral and property relations are unthinkable without the prison system." Goodman never changed this opinion, and the evidence for it in his own experience continued to mount. Occasions when the State found it expedient to exert its power in this way increased throughout the 1950S and '60S. From its very first issue in 1956 during the Montgomery bus boycott, the pages of 11

PREFACE

Liberation were full of stories of people jailed-for civil rights actions, war-tax resistance, refusal to take shelter during air-raid drills, trespass on government installations, on and on. Moreover, Goodman's personal connections with those in prison or in danger of imprisonment went far beyond these overtly political forms of civil disobedience. In ''A Touchstone for the Libertarian Program," he had claimed that "Many (I believe most) of the so-called crimes are really free acts whose repression causes our timidity; natural society has a far shorter list of crimes." A good example might be the fate of Goodman's psyc hoa naly tic guru at the time, Wilhelm Reich, who died of a heart attack in prison in 1957, after federal prosecution for refusing to answer an indictment aimed at suppressing his theories of orgone energy. Another example might be that of his friend and fellow editor on Liberation, Bayard Rustin, arrested in 1947 and sentenced to sixty days in a Los Angeles county j ail on a "morals charge," that is, homosexual behavior. These cases hit very close to home. In the early 1960s, when he was not delivering speeches on faraway campuses, Goodman could often be found with his young anarchist friends, practicing therapy without a license, playing handball in Lower Manhattan, or poker in a cheap flat in Hoboken, regularly attended by much younger Puerto Rican boys who were constantly in trouble with the law, thereby putting their older and only slightly more circumspect companions at risk. These and similar brushes with the law were recounted at length in his 1963 novel Making Do, but his sense of the precarious life he and his friends were living is also vivid in poems from the same period: My friends are ruined, I am in dismay, Goodman, Paul (Author). Drawing the Line Once Again : Paul Goodman's Anarchist Writings. Oakland, CA, USA: PM Press, 2009. p 12. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/dominicanuc/Doc?id=10400624&ppg=13

the blow will reach also to me;

fearful, desperate, and resourceless we are, and heavy is our loss already. Heaven help us therefore because our strength and prudence are unable to the traps and foes that men have strewn, and we arouse.

Goodman was never in the closet about his own bisexuality, and he cruised

the streets and gay bars openly for thirty years. He could have been arrested at any time during this period, for exactly the same behavior as Bayard Rustin-and that would have queered his career for sure, just as it had gotten Rustin bounced, first from A. J. Muste's Fellowship of Reconciliation, then later from Martin Luther King's official staff, and finally undermined his public role as the organizer of the famous 1963 March on Washington. But like Rustin, Goodman refused to conform, believing personal and political1ife were of a 12

PREFACE

piece, unwilling to commit treason against the natural society he insisted "is mine" because he lived in it. Jail and blows, being a coward, I dread, but I am inured to being misunderstood, because the common reason, God, communes with me. Let them refute the propositions I have put with nail and hammer on the door where people pass, upon the square. •

After Goodman's death in 1972, anarchist historian George Woodcock charac terized him as perhaps "the only truly seminal libertarian thinker in our gener ation." If we ask what made Goodman different from other twentieth-century anarchists in the West, it is helpful to begin with his resistance to identifying himself as a political person at all. He saw himself as an old-fashioned man of letters, and insisted that he was not political-not until outrageous conditions got him "by the throat," making it impossible to carry on his proper work. and forcing him to speak out as they did in 1945, then again and again in the 1960s. Among other things, this meant that concerns other than political ones often shaped his ideas in ways that took them out of the central current of anarchist polemics against the State. For example. his perennial interest in community planning (due in large part to his architect brother Percival Goodman) oriented


him toward practical arrangements of life, a heightened awareness of ecological issues, and the problems inherent in top-down "planning," even with the best intentions. His devotion to his own literary art gave him trust in the "creator spirit." Similarly, his practice as a Gestalt therapist put a psychological spin on everything, and his philosophical training provided a world-historical perspec tive. One finds all of these aspects of his thought merging in formulations like social inventions that liberate strength; mutual aid [that] is our common human nature mainly with respect to those with whom we deal face to face; the vulnerable point of the system [is] its failure to win human allegiance. There are many such expressions in his writings, all of them part of what young activists meant when they said that "the personal is political." The same atti tude informed the double-barreled challenge he presented to anarchist youth in "The May Pamphlet": to "draw the line" beyond which we cannot co-operate 13

PREFACE

in the circumstances of a mixed society of coercion and nature, and to live in that society "not in a utopian but a millenarian way," as though it already were the natural society-that is, "not to look forward to a future state of things which [we] try to bring about by suspect means; but . . . draw now, so far as [we] can, on the natural force . .. that is not different in kind from what it will be in a free society." Whether they got it out of Goodman or came to it on their own, young people on the campuses would soon be advocating and moving unilaterally toward small but significant changes that could immediately be put into effect rather than calling for sweeping changes that would takes years ,

to accomplish. This was the 1960s version of the traditionally anarchist direct action. Although one may dispute whether it was still productive when the movement began to provoke violent confrontations rather than experiment ing with creative alternatives, the millennial attitude makes sense as a psycho logical as well as a political tactic. Goodman's anarchist critique of the prison system could not be easily implemented by such means without a large price. The case of Attica in New York was a chilling example, but Massachusetts's Walpole prison was actually "run" by the inmates for a brief period in the mid-1970s. Although Goodman supported draft resisters who chose jail rather than expatriation during the American war in Vietnam, he warned them that jail was not an obviously pref erable "total institution," and he hoped his own son would choose Canada (Matty died before he had to make this choice). Nonetheless, during the 1960s going to jail itself had become a form of direct action in both the civil rights and the antiwar movements, though few activists asked the question Goodman


asked, why the prisons were allowed to exist at all. In our own day that question has become much more central to any cri tique of the organized system and its byproducts-war, racism, poverty, and social control. The prisons are largely reserved for those who for one reason or another will not conform to the coercive social order, a growing underclass determined by poverty, race, and institutional disabling. When Goodman questioned the usual distinction between political prisoners and "common criminals," he had pointed out that the State condones "moral vices that fit well into the commodity system," while one is jailed for advocating or exem plifying "pleasures outside the system of exchange or that undermine the social discipline ... thus, one may not steal, copulate in the park, or encourage the sexuality of children." His conclusion was that "We must proceed on the assumption that the coercive society knows well which acts are a threat to it and which are not." Although the volatility of the 1960s kept Goodman focused on moment by-moment issues rather than the perennial problem of incarceration, the 14

PREFACE

prisons remained on his mind to the very end. When he listed the three most urgent areas for "drastic cutbacks" in public spending in his last book of social criticism,

New Reformation (1970), they were the military industries,

the school system, and the penal system. And in his farewell credo, published posthumously as Little Prayers and Finite Experience, he devoted several pages to his continuing concern about the primacy of punishment as the end-prod uct of the American criminal justice system. His own attitude included great respect for the Anglo-American tradition of Common Law, but not for the pro liferation of legislated statutes and penalties, which was ultimately to result in current encroachments on judiciary autonomy such as mandated sentencing and differential punishments, both keyed to race. Goodman's anarchist attitude toward state power was at the core of his denial that incarceration was a socially justifiable outcome of criminal con viction. He liked to quote seventeenth-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes to the effect that when the State abrogated the social contract by imprisoning any individual, for any reason, then the prisoner had no remaining reciprocal obligations to the State, and was justified in attempting escape by any means possible-just as a caged animal is naturally right to free itself if it can. Of course, there are reasons why a society might want

to

protect itself

from criminal acts, and Goodman did not ignore these. Here is his last word on the subject, from

Little Prayers and Finite Experience:

I suppose the most sickening aspect of modern highly organized societies is the prisons and insane asylums, vast enclaves of the indigestible, that the rest live vaguely aware of, with low-grade anxiety. Goodman, Paul (Author). Drawing the Line Once Again : Paul Goodman's Anarchist Writings. Oakland, CA, USA: PM Press, 2009. p 15. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/dominicanuc/Doc?id=10400624&ppg=16

We have been getting rid of the stupid but at least human notions of punishment, revenge, "paying the debt," and so forth [he could say this in 1972, though not today]. But instead, there persists and grows the Godlike assumption of "correcting" and "rehabilitating" the deviant. There is no evidence that we know how; and in both prisons and asylums it comes to the same thing, trying to beat people into shape, treating the inmates like inferior animals, and finally just keeping the whole mess out of sight. The only rational motive for confining any one is to protect ourselves from injury that is likely to be repeated. In insane asylums, more than

90 percent are harmless and need not be confined. And

in prisons, what is the point of confining those-l don't know what percent, but it must be fairly large-who have committed one-time crimes, for example, most manslaughters and passional or family crimes, while they pay up or atone? People ought indeed to atone for 15

PREFACE

the harm they have done, to get over their gUilt and be "rehabilitated," but this is much more likely to occur by trying to accept them back into the community, rather than isolating and making them desperate. Certainly the old confession on the public square was a better idea. It is doubtful that punishing some deters others. Varying the penalties has no statistical effect on occurrence, but only measures the degree of abstract social disapproval. And it is obvious that the great majority who do not steal, bribe, forge, and so forth, do not do so because of their life-style, more subtle influences than gross legal risks; other cultures, and some of our own subcultures, have other styles and other habits-for example, the youth counterculture has much increased shoplifting and forging of official documents. The chief reason that so-called "moral legislation" has no influence in deterring vices is that temptation to the vices does not occur in the same psychological context as rational calculation of legal risks-unlike business fraud or risking a parking ticket. And it is likely that much authentic criminal behavior is compulsive in the same way. There are inveterate lawbreakers and "psychopathic personalities" who cannot be trusted not to commit the same or worse crimes. (I think they will exist with any social institutions whatever.) It is unrealistic to expect other people not to panic because of them, and so we feel we have to confine them, instead of lynching them. But our present theory of"correction" in fact leads to 70 percent recidivism, usually for more serious felonies; to a state of war and terrorism between prisoners and Goodman, Paul (Author). Drawing the Line Once Again : Paul Goodman's Anarchist Writings. Oakland, CA, USA: PM Press, 2009. p 16. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/dominicanuc/Doc?id=10400624&ppg=17

guards; and to increasing prison riots. Why not say honestly, "We're locking you up simply because we're afraid of you. It is not necessarily a reflection on you and we're sorry for it. Therefore, in your terms, how can we make your confinement as painless and profitable to you as we can? We will give you as many creature satisfactions as you wish and we can afford, not lock you in cells, let you live in your own style, find and pursue your own work-so long as we are safe from you. A persisting, and perhaps insoluble, problem is how you will protect yourselves from one another." It may be objected, of course, that many sober and hardworking citizens who aren't criminals are never given this much consideration by society, No, they aren't, and that is a pity, I've said, "If Goodman were alive today," but of course he isn't. (He'd be almost a hundred years ald.) Nonetheless, there is a way to surmise how he might view our present situation-that'S what it means to speak of acquiring his attitude. '6

PREFACE

Once you have it, you know how he would have approached problems he may never have faced himself. For instance, reading over the long passage I've just quoted, we can begin to revise and amplify his views in the light of changed circumstances. I've already offered in brackets an update on what one crimi nologist has dubbed "the culture of punishment." It's tempting to add other notes and emendations, not merely correcting for time-lapse but also carry ing forth the analysis to new applications. Consider, for instance, the "model prison" Goodman imagines for dangerous incorrigibles, and compare it with the idyllic Norwegian facility documented in the outtakes contained on the DVD version of Michael Moore's film Sicko. Given the criminal justice system in Norway, one of the most sensible and humane in the world, we might assume the prison population there to be some approximation of the incorrigi ble group Goodman had in mind for his utopian proposal-except for the fact that the Norwegian prisoners have hope of eventual release. These are people who have not been denied their personhood or caged like wild animals forever. This example raises another question that Goodman addresses, the issue of how prisoners are to deal with the guilt that now poisons their share of the social world that is their birthright. He contrasts modern resort to incarcera tion as "correction" or �rehabilitation" with older practices like �confession on the public square," as means for wrongdoers to "atone for the harm they have done, to get over their guilt, . . . and trying to accept them back in the commun ity." Whether offenders are ultimately released, as in Norway, or held in some permanently locked comfort zone, the same analysis of guilt and expiation applies. The underlying attitude implied here is recognition and respect for


the basic humanity of those who, for whatever reasons, have transgressed the law. To regard a person as no longer deserving of freedom or association with others is to destroy the possibility of ever repairing the social fabric that has been tom. Let us look further into this idea of guilt, atonement, and acceptance back into community, for it is a telling instance of how the anarchist attitude can shed light on seemingly intractable social dilemmas. During the thirty or forty

years since Goodman wrote his assessment, while prison populations have been ballooning and the experience of incarceration has become more and more cruel, it is also true-perhaps even as a result-that forms of alternative sentencing involving victim reparations and reconciliation have also become more visible, especially in other countries. One can read about such experi ments in many books, notably David Cayley's

1998 survey, The Expanding

Prison, a hopeful instance of how the anarchist attitude persists in some quar ters-not, of course, in any direct line of influence, but as a recurrent human impulse. Although not the "public square" Goodman reminded us of, other 17

PREFACE

kinds of offender/victim encounters have demonstrated the moral efficacy of such alternatives (or supplements) to ordinary sentencing and imprisonment. Even for offenders who have no hope of eventual release, it makes an enor mous difference if their gUilt can be laid to rest. Rather than festering in mean ingless torment, such persons can perhaps lead lives of worth and dedication, as Goodman said, if they are allowed "to atone for the harm they have done" in some more authentic way than simply by enduring their punishment. Such possibilities have proved difficult for most people to entertain,

whether criminal justice experts. legislative representatives, or ordinary cit izens, because the entire realm of crime and punishment has so long been accepted as the sole prerogative of the State and its apparatus. Worse yet, crime is treated as if committed against the State, not other persons or even the community. It is invariably the State that apprehends. prosecutes, sen tences, and punishes. I'm not suggesting vigilante law and order. But the administering of true justice requires that all parties be given a voice that is heard and weighed in face-to-face contact. In today's hectic criminal courts the victim has almost as little say as the offender, often not even testifying in court, while the community is "represented" by an array of state officials. The central roles are played by hired experts. the prosecuting attorney and the defendant's often state-appointed counsel, who also has an official role to play. Judge and jury listen to a drama in which the real character and history of all the important actors is almost totally unknown, and regarded as irrelevant. No one speaks for humanity. Go to any courtroom to see it in action. Everyone is costumed in the ordained regalia of suits and ties, uniforms, black robes, and


shackles. Each role and function is performed according to state-determined protocols, and any human expression of feeling is discouraged on all sides. Once the prisoner has been sentenced and removed, the State's inhumanity is bared in its true character at the doors of the prison house, as all who have gone through that passageway can testify. I hardly need add color or nuance to this picture. What I'm trying to convey is the black-and-white appropriateness of the anarchist attitude for a

true analysis and critique of this foundational exercise of state power, which too often treats persons as things rather than human beings, and punishes in the most degrading manner all who resist or cannot fit into the slots assigned them in the organized system. Other anarchists have said. pointedly, that "war is the health of the State." True enough. but in our own day it might be closer to the emerging truth to point to the Prison as its apotheosis.

Taylor Stoehr

'8

Sources of Texts

"The May Pamphlet": first published in Art and Social Nature, 1946; present revised version from Drawing the Line: A Pamphlet (New York: Random House, 1962), 1-51. "Reflections on the Anarchist Principle": from Anarchy 62 {April 1966),

115-116. "Freedom and Autonomy": published as "Just an Old Fashioned Love Song,"

WIN 8 (February 1972), 20-21. (Extracts from Little Prayers and Finite Experience, 1972, along with new material.) "Anarchism and Revolution": in The Great Ideas a/Today, ed. Robert Hutchins and Mortimer Adler (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1970), 44-65. "Some Prima Facie Objections to Decentralism": Liberation 9 (December 1964), 5-11. (Early version of opening chapter of People or Personnel, 1965.) "The Black Flag of Anarchism": New York Times Magazine (July 14, 1968), 10-1!. "The Limits of Local Liberty": New Generation 51 (Summer 1969), 13-17. "Civil Disobedience": published as "Reflections on Civil Disobedience,"


Liberation 13 (July/August 1968), 11-15. (Originally prepared for a conference on civil disobedience at Kenyon College, this essay is an early version of material in New Reformarion, 1970.) "Getting into Power": Liberation 7 (October 1962), 4-8.

19


The May Pamphlet

On Treason Against Natural Societies We speak of Society, with a capital 5, as "against the interests of Society," as though it were a unitary thing, more than the loose confederation of lesser soci eties which also admittedly exist. The unanimity of behavior in the industrial, economic, military, educational, and mass-entertained Society certainly justi fies the usage. Some philosophers call Society "inorganic," meaning that many of the mores, e.g. traffic congestion, are too remote from biological functions and impede them. But in the classical sense of organism, namely that the least parts mutually cause each other, our Society is more organic than societies have ever been; every action. especially the absurd ones, can be shown to have social causes and to be a social necessity. Disease is no less organic than health. Yet in some of the strongest meanings of social unity, Society is almost chaotic. One such chaos is the confusion of moral judgments in the most important personal issues. Thus, ought a girl to be a virgin at marriage? Is there a single standard for husband and wife? Is theft within the law permissible?


Is patriotism ridiculous? It would be possible to collect millions of votes on either side of such questions. I have made a practice of asking various persons what would be their attitude to receiving an incestuous brother and sister as overnight guests, and on this issue got many diverse replies. Of course the universal confusion and toleration in such matters is itself a sign of social unanimity: namely, that people have agreed to divorce (and disre gard) intimate personal concerns and opinions from the public ritual that exerts

social pressure. The resulting uniformity of dress, behavior, desire is at the same time intense and bloodless; there is no longer such a thing as earnest speech, Now with regard to the legal penalty for crimes, like theft, bigamy, addic tion, treason, and murder, no such confusion and toleration exists. Once the case is brought to court, there is little diversity of judgment and punishment. One is appalled at the wooden morality that one meets in courts. Yet obvi ously the lack of social pressure keeps many cases out of court, for there is no scandal; adultery, for example, is a crime that is never brought to court. Does not this put the criminal law in an extraordinary position, and reduce the 21

DRAWING THE LINE ONCE A G A I N

work of juries-which ought to express the strength of social opinion-to the merely logical function of judging evidence, which a judge could do better? But the discrepancy between the moral and legal judgment of crime is deeply revealing. On the one hand the people, distracted by their timetables and their commodities, are increasingly less disturbed by the passional temptations that lead to crime; these are condoned, sophisticatedly understood rather than felt, partially abreacted by press and movies; they do not seem diabolic; the easy toleration of the idea goes with trivializing the wish. But on the other hand, the brute existence of any society whatever always in fact depends on the personal behavior of each soul; and a coercive society depends on instinctual repression. Therefore the Law is inflexible and unsophisticated. It is as though Society knows

the repressions that make irs existence possible, but

w

the members of Society

this knowledge has become unconscious. In this way is achieved the maximum of coercion by the easiest means. The separation of personal and political and of moral and legal is a sign that to be coerced has become second nature. Thus it is that people are "protected from the cradle to the grave"! Many

(I believe most) of the so-called crimes are really free acts whose

repression causes our timidity; natural society has a far shorter list of crimes. But on the contrary, there is now an important class of acts that are really crimes and yet are judged indifferent or with approval by law and morals both. Acrs which lead to unconcerned behavior are crimes. The separation of natural concern and institutional behavior is not only the sign of coercion, but is posi tively destructive of natural societies. Let me give an obvious example. Describing a bombed area and a horror hospital in Germany, a sergeant


writes: "In modern war there are crimes, not criminals. In modern society there is evil, but there is no devil. Murder has been mechanized and rendered impersonal. The foul deed of bloody hands belongs to a bygone era when man could commit his own sins . . . Here, as in many cases, the gUilt belonged to the machine. Somewhere in the apparatus of bureaucracy, memoranda, and clean efficient directives, a crime has been committed." These have become familiar observations: the lofty bombardier is not a killer, just as the capitalist trapped in the market does not willingly deal slow death, etc. The system and now the machine itself are gUilty Shall we bring into court the tn-motor airplane? .

The most blessed thing in the world is to live by faith without imputation of guilt: having the Kingdom within. Lo, these persons have no imputation of guilt, and have they the Kingdom within?-riders, as Hawthorne said, of the Celestial Railway! The crime that these persons-we all, in our degree-are committing happens to be the most heinous in jurisprudence: it is a crime worse than murder. It is Treason. Treason against our natural societies so far as they exist. 22

THE MAY PAMPHLET

Not all commit Treason to our natural societies in the same degree; some are more the principals, some more the accomplices. But it is ridiculous to say that the crime cannot be imputed, or that any one commits it without intent and in ignorance. For ever y one knows moments in which he conforms against his nature, in which he suppresses his best spontaneous impulse, and cowardly takes leave of his heart. The steps which he takes to habitua tion and unconsciousness are crimes which entail every subsequent evil of enslavement and mass murder. The murder cannot be directly imputed, the sergeant is right; but the continuing treason must be imputed. (Why is he still a sergeant?) Let us look a little at the horrible working out of this principle of impu tation, which must nevertheless be declared just. We are bred into a society of mixed coercion and nature. The strongest natural influences-parental concern, childish imitation; adolescent desire to stand among one's brothers and be independent; an artisan's ability to produce something and a citizen's duty-all of these are unnaturally exerted to make us renounce and forget our natures. We conform to institutions that up to a certain point give great natural satisfactions, food, learning, and fellowship-then suddenly we find that ter rible crimes are committed and we are somehow the agents. And some of us can even remember when it was that we compromised, were unwisely prudent, dismissed to another time a deeper satisfaction than convenient, and obeyed against our better judgment. It is said the system is guilty, but the system is its members coerced into the system. It is also true that the system itself exercises the coercion.


Thus: a man works in a vast factory with an elaborate division of labor. He performs a repetitive operation in itself senseless. Naturally this work is irksome and he has many impulses to "go fishing," not to get up when the alarm clock rings, to find a more interesting job, to join with some other machin ists in starting a small machine shop and try out certain ideas, to live in the country, etc. But against these impulses he meets in the factory itself and from his fellow workers (quite apart from home pressures) the following plausible

arguments: that they must band together in that factory and as that factory, and in that industry and as that industry, to fight for "better working condi tions," which mean more pay, shorter hours, fringe benefits; and the more mil itant organizers used even to demonstrate that by this means they could ulti mately get control of all industry and smash the profit system. None of this quite answers the original irk of the work itself; but good! A workman commits himself to this program. Now, however, since no one has native wit enough to decide for a vast factory and industry, and all industry, what to demand and when to demand it, and what means are effective, our 23


man must look to others for direction concerning his own felt dissatisfac tion. He fights for more pay when perhaps he does not primarily care about improving his standard of living but wants to accomplish something of his own between the cradle and the grave; he fights for seniority, when in fact he does not want the job, etc., etc. The issues of the fight are now determined by vast, distant forces; the union itself is a vast structure and it is tied to the whole existing Society. Next he finds that he is committed not to strike at all, but to help manufacture machines of war. The machines are then "guilty"! True, the impulses of such a man are vague. romantic, and what is called adolescent; even if realizable they would not lead to full satisfaction. Nevertheless their essence is deep and natural. A program is a crime that does not meet the essence of the industrial irk, the unsatisfactory job, but shunts across it. The worker who does a job by coercion (e.g., to eat) is a traitor. When he is sidetracked into a good but irrelevant program, he is a traitor. I have chosen a hard example that will rouse opposition. Let me choose a harder that will rouse even more. A very young adolescent, as is usual enough, has sexual relations with his playfellows, partly satisfying their dreams of the girls, partly drawing on true homosexual desires that go back to earlier narcissism and mother-identifica tions of childhood. But because of what they have been taught in their paro chial school, and the common words of insult whose meaning they now first grasp, all these boys are ashamed of their acts; their pleasures are suppressed and in their stead appear fist fights and violence. The youth grows up, soon marries. Now there is conscription for a far-off war, whose issues are dubious


and certainly not part of his immediate awareness and reaction. But his natural desire to oppose the conscription is met by the strong attractiveness of getting away from the wife he is a little tired of, back to the free company of the boys in camp; away from the fatherly role of too great responsibility, back

to the dependence on a paternal sergeant. The camp life, drawing always on a repressed but finally thinly disguised sexuality, cements the strongest bonds of fellowship amongst the soldiers. Yet any overt sexual satisfaction among them

is out of the question. Instead the pairs of buddies pick up prostitutes together, copulate with them in the same room, and exchange boasts of prowess, Next this violent homosexuality, so near the surface but always repressed and thereby gathering tension, turns into a violent sadism against the enemy: it is all knives and guns and bayonets, and raining bombs on towns, and driving home one's lust in the guise of anger to fuck the Japs. It is a hard thing to impute the crime of treason against natural society to these men who do not even consciously know what their impulse is. They know as boys; shall we blame boys? And even the adults, priests, and teach24

THE MAY PAMPHLET

ers who invidiously prevent the boys' antics do it out of unconscious envy and resentment. But they at least could know better, or why are they teachers? It is horrifying, though not useless, to impute treason to the particular persons and to trace the institutional crimes, which are but symptoms and results, back to the incidents of coercion and resignation . The guilty ones turn out to be little children and dear parents, earnest radicals, teachers unconscious of their intent, and even ancestors who are dead. Thank God we do not need to think of punishments, for we know-following Socrates of old-that the pun ishment of injustice is to be what one is. The persons who separate themselves from nature have to live every minute of their lives without the power, joy, and freedom of nature. And we, who apparently suffer grave sanctions from such persons, betray on our faces that we are drawing on forces of nature. But in fact the case is like the distinction in theology between the Old Law and the New. In the Old Law all are guilty, in the New they may easily be saved. We see that in fact everybody who still has life and energy is continually mani festing some natural force and is today facing an unnatural coercion. And now, in some apparently trivial issue that nevertheless is a key, he draws the line! The next step for him to take is not obscure or difficult, it presents itself at once; it is even forcibly presented by Society! Modern society does not let one be-it is too total-it forces one's hand.

May 1945 Reflections on Drawing the Line


A free society cannot be the substitution of a "new order" for the old order; it is the extension of spheres of free action until they make up most of the social life. (That such liberation is step by step does not mean that it can occur without revolutionary disruption, for in many spheres-e.g., war, economics, sexual education-any genuine liberation whatsoever involves a total change.) In any present society, though much and even an increasing amount is coercive, nevertheless much is also free. If it were not so, it would be impos sible for a conscientious libertarian to co-operate or live there at all; but in fact we are constantly drawing the line beyond which we refuse to co-operate. In

creative work. in passion and sentiment. in spontaneous recreation. there are healthy spheres of nature and freedom: it is the spirit of these that we most often extrapolate to all acts of utopian free society, to making a living, to civil life and law. But indeed, even the most corrupt and coercive functions of the present society draw on good natural power-the pity of it-otherwise the society could not survive for one moment; for free natural power is the only source of existence. Thus. people are fed. though the means, the cost, and the 25


productive relations are coercive; and the total war would be the end of us all were it not for the bravery and endurance of mankind.

Free action is to live in present society as though it were a natural society. This maxim has three consequences, three moments: (1) In the spheres which are in fact free and natural, we exercise personal excellence and give mutual aid. (2) In many spheres which seem to be uncoerced, we have neverthe less been trapped into unnatural ways by the coercion that has formed us; for example, we have become habituated to the American timetable and the standard of living, though these are unnatural and coercive through and through. Here the maxim demands that we first correct ourselves. (3) Finally, there are those natural acts or abstentions which clash openly with the coercive laws: these are the "crimes" which it is beholden on a free man to commit, as his reasonable desire demands and as the occasion arises. (See below, "A Touchstone . . .") The free spirit is rather millenarian than utopian. A man does not look forward

to

a future state of things which he tries to bring about by suspect

means; but he draws now, 50 far

as

he can, on the natural force in him that is

no different in kind from what it will be in a free society, except that there it will have more scope and be persistently reinforced by mutual aid and fraternal con flict. Merely by continuing to exist and act in nature andjreedom, ajree man wins

the victory, establishes the society; it is not necessary for him to be the victor over any one.When he creates, he wins; when he corrects his prejudices and habits he wins; when he resists and suffers, he wins. I say it this way in order to tell


honest persons not to despond when it seems that their earnest and honest work is without "influence." The free man does not seek to influence groups but to

act in the natural groups essential to him-for most human action is the action of groups. Consider if a million persons, quite apart from any "political" inten tion, did only natural work and did the best they could. The system of exploita tion would disperse like fog in a hot wind. But of what use is the action, born of resentment, that is bent on correcting abuses yet never does a stroke of nature? The action drawing on the most natural force will in fact establish itself. Might is right: but do not let the violent and the cowed imagine for a moment that their brutality is might.What great things have they accomplished, in prac tice, art, or theory? Their violence is fear hidden from themselves by conceit, and nothing comes from it. ii

Now I have been liberally using the terms "nature," "natural," and their con traries to attribute value and disvalue, as "natural and unnatural institutions." 26

THE MAY PAMPHLET

Do not these terms in this use lead to self-contradiction? For obviously the bad institutions as well as the good have come to be by natural process. A bad con vention exists by natural causes; how are we to call it unnatural? Let us consider the example of a language like English, and I want to dis tinguish three notions: physical and social nature, natural convention, and unnatural convention. It is physically and socially natural for people to speak: they have speech organs; they communicate with these; children express their feelings with determinate cries and imitate their parents' speech behavior. But any speech is some language or other. Speech organs, need to communi cate, the expression of feelings, the desire to imitate and identify: these give the potentiality of speaking some language or other; historical circumstances make the language in fact English. It is usual to call the historical language conventional, but it is a "natural convention," in that the convention of English is a means of making the power of speech into a living act. Here we have the

an unnatural con vention is one that prevents a human powerfrom becoming a living acr. Thus,

clue to how we can speak of an "unnatural convention":

English is becoming unnatural because of its use in advertising. The technique of advertising is to establish an automatic reflex response, an immediate con nection between certain words and the behavior of paying out money: thus it debauches the words so that they no longer express felt need, nor communi cate a likeness of affection between persons, continuous with the imitation of parents and peers, nor correspond to the desire for objects really experienced. These functions of honest speech are shunted over by a successful advertise ment. But these functions are the strongest and the creative power in speech.


Therefore we can say that the abuse of English prevents the power of speech from becoming a living act; it is unnatural. But it is objected that automatic response is also natural: it is physically and socially necessary for life, as consider the words "Look out!" or "Fire!" But let us patiently consider the order and ratio of such alarm words to the rest of speech. If they are too numerous, their emergency is blunted, just as indis criminate profanity has no expletive force. What is the natural order of emer

gency and non-emergency situations, so that the strongest powers of health, safety, and pleasure may not be prevented from becoming living acts? The sense of emergency, natural in itself, still inhibits vegetation, memory, reflec tion. (It likewise inhibits, by the way, the religious, eschatological sense of emergency.) Taken at face value, the techniques of advertising and automatic political slogans express a state of chronic alarm! Yet to be sure, as we consider it deeper, this

is the historical situation;

there is nothing conventional about such techniques; and our poor English, like a faithful servant, is sacrificed to urgent need. The society that needs to 27


buy up the products of its industry is in a state of chronic alarm: what time has it for vegetation, memory, reflection? And the "high" standard of living thus purchased exists in emergency conditions that are preventive of any natural standard of living whatever, for there is no vegetative pleasure and reflection, and no emptiness in which inventions can flower. In haste and alarm, hearing and buying, a man cannot get his bearings, he is swept along, falls into debt and is open to still further coercion. No one can even quit a job. But we do not need to go thus roundabout through the analysis of linguistic usage to know that our way of life is compulsive. We can see it by direct observation on the street. People are both frightened and deadened. It is a poor kind of democracy in which nobody stands out instead of everybody standing out. (Instead there are, pathetically, "celebrities.") Those who constrain strong natural power are always themselves under constraint. The prison guard is himself in jail, yes even the Warden. But in any great collaboration, in art or theory or practice, the signature of each collaborator is apparent in the outcome. The plaid has the bright color of its threads.

iii What is natural coercion and what is unnatural coercion? I doubt that I can answer this hard question to my own satisfaction, but sufficiently for the gross facts that we are concerned with. Education has always elements of natural coercion, but government by state or society is unnatural.


Natural coercion seems to go with natural dependency. An infant is dependent, he is part of his mother's field. A growing child is more voluntar ily dependent; he is secure in the grownups' care and attention, and he grows in independence partly by imitation and partly by withdrawal from those in whom he is secure. A child grows teeth as he ceases to suckle, and he begins to walk when he is big enough to begin to walk away-into independence, for it is something positive. Yet coercion and violence inevitably occur, for the child

grows in the predetermined culture of the adults and among the anger of the adults being themselves, To a child this must seem like any other reality-the part that doesn't make sense-but intensely interesting. At least he learns to keep out of the way. (In my opinion this is all he learns, for beautiful new truths are not communicated by a clout on the head.) A pupil depends on a teacher who exercises authority and sets up the lessons. There is probably more of this than is necessary, but again the progress of the pupil and the aim of the teacher is the independence of the pupil from the teacher. If a person has maintained his trust through the previous storms 28

THE MAY PAMPHLET

of Ufe, he can learn from teachers. A person who cannot surrender to archaic attitudes of dependency is probably not truly docile. But if previous childish dependency has been too frightened or cowed, a young person both will not trust his teachers and cannot grow to become their peer. He is prevented from drawing on the knowledge and power embodied in them. By this sign, there fore, we can say that the parental coercion was violent and unnatural. The discouragement of childish sexuality leads to later anxiety; toilet training leads to "ruliness"; etc. So these must be called unnatural coercion. In general, when strong drives are frustrated and punished and a child begins to inhibit himself, to fill the vacuum of his life he identifies with precisely those who frustrate him: they are wise, they are authorities. The child has now lost both his desires and his power of initiation. What is unique about human nature, however, is its long dependency. This is a great opportunity, for education, bur it has also proved to be a great disaster. To the child, it seems to me, the danger is not generally that his ego will fail to crystallize, a case of psychosis, but that it will crystallize too rapidly, in too closed a system, against the inner and outer world from which in the end we must draw the forces of life. This has been especially noted with regard to the sexual drives, against which the ego sets itself. becoming erotized in turn-for when you can't love anything else you have to love yourself. But not enough has been said about the uncanny ignorance, stupidity, incuriosity, lack of perception and observation that characterize us, and which must also be attributed to inhibition by the too narrow, shut-in, and conceited ego. And so we fall into the opposite disaster, that the grownups have never learned to


cope with the environment. They are dependent on governments. Education is the furnishing by adults of imitable patterns of interpreta tion and attitude, not to train the child, but on the contrary so that the child, by relying on them and trying them, can take his time and not have to stand too quickly alone as sole authority. Adults provide and decide where chil dren cannot yet provide and decide. This is coercion, always partly corporal, putting the child in the way of experience and out of the way of automobiles and poison. We can define natural coercion as a knowledgeable decision that preserves for the child his greatest inner and outer power to work up into expe

rience and art. But I do not think there is any use of docility to government, for it has not much to teach. Of the simple goods, food, shelter, safety, over which great con stituted bodies like governments and economic systems claim authority, there is not a single one that the average adult person ought not to be competent to decide about. Every one knows he is hungry and wants food, or knows enough to come in out of the rain. If he has not developed to this point, it is that he 29


has been maimed by unnatural coercion. But it is the way of authority to maim initiative and then prove that people have no initiative, and to pre-empt the means of livelihood and then show that people do not have the means to cope. There is plenty of rhetoric, and the use of force, to persuade people to con tinue as we do; but there is absolutely no public discussion and reasoning to consider whether the way we do anything-produce goods, run the schools, communicate ideas, elect officers-is the most efficient and sensible. Yet this is supposed to be an experimenting animal.

At present, of course, almost every man considers himself incompetent to provide the simplest goods. The State and other established institutions do decide for him. People are stupefied largely because they have so few interest ing problems to work on; and finally they cannot decide whether they are cold, hurt, lonely, or even bored. They are not sure of anything. They are in a chronic state of alarm. Under these circumstances, orators easily pose as fathers and leaders. And this is called progressive, it is a New Deal. The "conservatives," on the other hand, want to stay with the oppressions of

1910 or perhaps Prince

Metternich. It is only the anarchists who are really conservative, for they want

to conserve sun and space, animal nature, primary community, experiment ing inquiry.

iv A man is dependent on his mother Earth. We are forever dependent in the uni verse, but not on princes. It is false that social relationships are primarily interpersonal. The strong


est bonds in natural groups are continuous with passions and impulses previ ous to the organization of the egos of the members. These are love and fra ternity. How different is the juridical equality of the social psychologists of "interpersonal relationships" from the creative unanimity and rivalry of revo lutionary fraternity! Brothers vie to excel individually, but catching fire from each other they achieve what none of them had it in him to do alone. It is not our social nature to go it alone. It does not follow that one must

conform to Society. It is enough to find-and-make a band, two hundred, of the like-minded, to know that oneself is sane though the rest of the city is batty. The free man manifests the nature in him much more vehemently than we who have been trained to uniformity. His voice, gestures, and countenance express the great range of experience from child to sage. When he hears the hypocrite orator use words that arouse disgust, he vomits in the crowd. We can conceive of a man whose ego takes far longer to crystallize than ours; whose ego still is forming out of vast systems of inner and outer expe rience, and works with forces beyond those that we have settled for. Such a 30

THE MAY PAMPHLET

vast ego belongs to Christ or Buddha; we may confidently predict that it will perform miracles. To him they are matter-of-fact. In the mixed society of coercion and nature, our characteristic act is Drawing the Line, beyond which we cannot co-operate. All the heart-searching and purgatorial anxiety concerns this question,

Where to draw the line? I'll say

it bluntly: the anxiety goes far beyond reason. Since the extreme positions are clear black and white, and they exist plain to suffer and enjoy, and since it can be shown that one step leads to another in either direction: in the in-between murk

any apparently arbitrary line is good enough. And one's potential friends

among the people, to whom one wants to set an example, are moved by the challenging action, not the little details of consistency. No particular drawn line will ever be defensible logically. But the right way from any line will prove itself more clearly step by step and blow by blow. Yet to each person it seems to make all the difference where he draws the line! This is because just these details are the symbolic key to his repressed powers-and with each repression, guilt for the acceptance of it. Thus one man will speak in their court but will not pay a tax; another will write a letter but will not move his feet; another is nauseated by innocent bread and fasts. Why are the drawn lines so odd and logically inconsistent? why are they maintained with such irrational stubbornness-precisely by free people who are usually so amiable and easy-smiling? The actions of nature are by no means incon sistent; they are sequences of even rather simple causes; following the prob abilities does not lead one astray but to see one's way more clearly. But the fact is that each of us has been unconsciously coerced by our training and accept


ance; the inner conflicts now begin to appear, in the inconsistency of drawing the line, and all the fear, guilt, and rage. Let us draw our lines and have this out! A free man would have no such problems; he would not have finally to draw a line in their absurd conditions which he has disdained from the very beginning. The truth is that he would regard coercive sanctions as no differ ent from the other destructive forces of brute nature, to be prudently avoided. A free man, so long as he creates and goes by his clear and distinct ideas,

can easily maintain in his soul many apparent contradictions; he is sure they will iron out; a loose system is the best system. But woe if at the same time he is persuaded into prejudices and coerced into conforming: then one day he will have the agony of drawing the line. Well! there is a boyish joke I like to tell. Tom says to Jerry: "Do you want to fight? Cross that line!" and Jerry does. "Now," cries Tom, "you're on

my side!"

We draw the line in their conditions; we proceed on our conditions.

May 1945 31


A Touchstone for the Libertarian Program The "political" program of libertarians is usually negative, for positive goods are achieved by other forces than (coercive) political institutions. But a program of opposition varies with the oppressions and restrictions. Libertarians must not fall into the trap of wasting force by still opposing what authority no longer proposes, while failing to see new kinds of exploitation. The mass press and radio of the democracies are masters at stealing liberal thunder; what are the words and acts that can expose this verbiage, which is often indeed well

meant? Thus, industrial authority does not exercise the same forms of oppres sion when there is a technology of surplus as it used when there was a technol ogy of scarcity. In scarcity, the chief means of profit for the exploiters consisted in the depression of the workers' standard of living to reproductive subsist ence; in surplus, the problem is sometimes rather to compel and control an artificial "high" standard of living that will clear the shelves. This is again pure authoritarian compulsion, but exercised especially by psychological means, advertising, mis-education, and rousing the spirit of emulation. The result is that men insensibly find themselves even more enslaved in their time, choice, invention, spontaneity, and culture than in the black days of want, when at least a man's misery was uncontaminated and might produce a natural reac tion. Given a surplus of goods and mass media of misinformation, it is possible for authority to cushion all crises and allow "freedom of expression" (or even encourage it as a safety valve) to a small eccentric press.

I should like to suggest a kind oftouchstone forthe right libertarian program in a period like the present when the corporate integration of the economy,


morals, tastes, and information of the society is so tight: I mean when the press, the movies, etc., themselves commodities, generate an increasing flow of com

does our program involve a large number of precisely those acts and wordsfor which persons are infact thrown into jail?We

modities. The touchstone is this:

must proceed on the assumption that the coercive society knows well which acts are a threat to it and which are not; acts which in fact rouse a coercive reac tion have libertarian force; those which, though once coerced, are now tolerated,

are likely to be stolen thunder that is not neutral but in fact coercive in its effects. Thus, it is no longer the case that the man who publicly speaks for the organized bargaining power of labor is jailed; on the contrary, he is approved. But this is not merely because organized labor has grown so strong as to compel its toleration (if it were this strong it could compel much more). It is because the organization of labor is a means of social control; higher wages are a means of profit-espe cially when by price controls the public market is becoming a company store; and it is increasingly convenient for labor to regard itself as a participant in the general corporation of production and consumption. On the contrary, the man 32

THE MAY PAMPHLET

who advocates a wildcat strike is thrown into jail, but not merely because the demands are dangerous to profits, but that he disrupts the ordered system, the due process. Again: the man who advocates (advertises or displays) moral vices that fit well into the commodity system is an agent of society; but the man who advocates (exemplifies) pleasures outside the system of exchange or that under mine the social discipline, is frowned on and jailed-thus, one may not steal, copulate in the park, or encourage the sexuality of children. Concerning the "crimes" that are actually punished, a free man must ask

himself: which of these are detrimental to any society including even a more ,

natural non-coercive society in which discipline is somewhat but not so deeply and widely grounded in (reasonable) successful repression and deliberate inhibition; which "crimes," on the contrary, are precisely the acts that would undermine the present coercive structure? I think that the list of the former would be small indeed-an obvious instance is murder. (Let me recommend William Morris' News!rom Nowhere.) But with regard to the latter, many beau tiful opportunities could be found for libertarian action. What I urge is not that the libertarian at once bestir himself to commit such "crimes"-l do not think, by the way, that our small numbers would inconveniently crowd the jails; but that he proceed to loosen his own "discipline" and prejudice against these acts. For most of us do not realize how broadly and deeply the coercive relations in which we have been born and bred have disciplined us to the continuation of these coercive relations. Once his judgment is freed, then with regard to such "crimes" the libertarian must act as he should in every case whatsoever: if something seems true to his nature, important and necessary for himself


and his fellows at the present moment, let him do it with moral good will and joy. Let him avoid the coercive consequences with natural prudence, not by frustration and timid denial of what is the case; for our acts of liberty are our strongest propaganda. Unfortunately, as people are, anxious and vulnerable, the immediate effect of an exercise of free power may be disturbing and some times disastrous-e.g., the schoolgirl who commits suicide because her room mate has sex with a boy friend. Certainly one must temper the wind to the

shorn lamb, till she grows a fleece. But we must also calculate the long-range and universal effects of the spite, sadism, coldness, timidity that are produced by our present ways: how the boy who was always "such a good boy" blows up anyway and shoots his mother and father and four neighbors. It is often cited as an example of the barbarity of America that here no distinction is made between "political prisoners" and "common criminals," that the political prisoner is degraded to the level of the criminal; yet in fact the "common criminal" has, although usually by the failure of repression and rarely by reason, probably committed a political crime. 33


Returning now to the starting point, the need to change the libertarian program with the change of the coercive circumstances, I should like to make a criticism of the continued use of one of the darling words of anarchist lit erature, the word "personal," as in "personal freedom," "personal expression," etc. The fact is that at present it is exactly the aim of all the organs of publicity, entertainment, and education so to form the personality that a man performs by his subjective personal choice just what is objectively advantageous for the coercive corporation, of which further he feels himself to be a part. Because of their use of the terms "free personality," "personal spontaneity," "personal participation," the hogwash of psychologists like Fromm and Horney has won the praise of even such an excellent anarchist as Herbert Read; yetit is not hard to show that their psychology has as its aim to produce a unanimity of spirit in the perfected form of the present social system, with its monster factories, streamlined satisfactions, and distant representative government. This kind of subjective personality is an effect of coercion, acting in the unconscious; it is not a causal principle of freedom. Going back to Rousseau, let me suggest the substitution of the word "natural," meaning those drives and forces, on both the animal and human level, which at present act themselves out in defiance of the conventions that we and our friends all agree to be outmoded and no longer "natural conventions," but which in a free society will be the motors of individual excellence and mutual aid. To sum up: very many actswhichare now called crimes are nature. It is often the very fact of treating natural acts as crimes that makes them become enormi ties, because of fear and the stupidity engendered by panic. Even libertarians


acquiesce in these prejudices because their "free personalities" have been coer cively fonned and are subject to unconscious coercion. The internal repression of spontaneous natural forces is today more than ever, in our era of timetables and standardized pleasure, the chief means of despiritment and coercion. Let us work to express not our "selves" but the nature in us. Let us not participate in coercive or merely conventional groups, symbols, and behavior. The freedom of the individual is the expression ofthe natural animal and social groups to which

he in fact belongs. Re-examine the "crimes" which seem proper to yourself and see which are indeed not crimes but the natural behavior of natural groups

,

Ayoungwoman friendwas to appear in court (seeking custody ofher child), and a dozen of us offered ourselves at her lawyer's office to be briefed as char acter witnesses. We were, in my opinion, sober and useful citizens; but when the lawyer questioned us, his face fell as he had to rule out one after another as entirely unpresentable. One excellent mother of three was not legally wed; a good father was known to be bisexual; an old friend was-a Negress; a bril liant and self-supporting man had no definable job; another looked like some34

THE MAY PAMPHLET

thing the cat dragged in; another had been in and out of jail for various kinds of civil disobedience. It was hilarious-we stared at one another in dismay. It certainly wasn't our scene. Bur the question is, how many lively and pro ductive persons could appear in that court, against a clever lawyer, without putting up a false front? I don't mean that Society as a whole is as unviable as a court of law, but it does pay to lie low. Yet if one lies low, how to make use of the social means and have sounding speech? There is the dilemma.

May 1945 Natural Violence I have reached middle age and have not attended, nor even seen, a man dying or a baby being born. As things are arranged in our city, it is impossible to come close to a violent or noisome disease, unless professionally. What one meets in our city is a kind of health, usually mildly ailing, and a vigor youthful enough to ambulate. Decrepit age is confined to its rooms. One is faced with plenty of neurotics but rarely a maniac. In rural places there is as yet much more dying and being born socially, of both men and animals; but the ten dency is not otherwise than with us. Again, the bourgeoisie (and my own class, the lumpen bourgeoisie) is more protected against such experience than the proletariat; but giant strides have been made toward extending protection to all. In general, women in childbirth necessarily are unprotected, but it is the practice to anodyze this experience as much as possible. Men protect themselves from the major conditions of life. I do not say the major concerns, but surely the value of our concerns, such as they are, is


problematical when they are not potentially, in ready memory and anticipa tion, related to their major conditions. Infants and children, it seems to me, are universally less protected; they have a closer acquaintance with their crea ture-anxiety,

Angst der Kreatur. We others now successfully repress creature

anxiety from recall. (Primitive people, of course, attempt to repress it, but they have nor the means. In theory their art should therefore be more powerful than ours, and

their neuroses, unless they have lucky institutions, more widespread. They are more alive than we and crazier than we.) The facts of war revive the lost anxiety in a terrible way, but they are value less for a natural culture. They are the breakdown of Society, but the exposed sufferer does not then have other feelings and habits to help him use these terri ble truths for inventive life. The mentally broken soldiers who return from fiery fronts do not readjust to unnatural conventions, but they rarely create natural conventions-individual symptoms are not valuable social conventions-for the most part they are really ill as well as ill in the eyes of the community. 35


An example of childish invention comes to mind: One morning at our country school some men butchered a cow and strung it up and flayed it. It was the hour of recess for the smallest children and they ran and stood in a circle round the bloody sight and drank it in with lewd eyes, afterwards manifesting extreme fright, excitement, and nausea when meat was served them. But they invented a ritual game of flaying a cow, in which one of their number would put on a coat and the others strip it off. Can we imagine a society that would have a better expression of its major conditions than ritual games? I myself have been so disciplined that I cannot spontaneously and from my own experience see a way through our dilemma, yet it presents a crucial problem for us. Contrast the rational medical approach to birth, disease, decrepitude and death, with the rational efficient approach to industrial pro duction. Wherever so-called efficiency in production leads to stultified and one-sided habits of the worker, we confidently say that the efficiency is ineffi cient in the long run because the means destroy the end. But medical efficiency e.g., hospital technique or the therapeutic attitude-seems primafacie useful for our lives altogether, therefore for our full lives. On the other hand, the nec essary isolation of the sick leads to a sterilization of general social experience that conceivably itself makes life flat and increases the flight into illness. It was better when illness was eerie, the province of the Asclepiads. One is baffled and saddened by the spectacle of doctors straining their art to heal the soldiers hurt in the battle in which they themselves take part. They must, they are willing to heal the wounds of both sides at the same time as they


fan the rage of one side. This is an heroic dedication, but there is something unnatural about it. Their medical training and practice have isolated some meanings from other meanings. Certainly we others, unused to the primary facts of birth, life, and death, are easily coerced by the threat of them-we panic and are vulnerable to Terror-until the moment we recklessly plunge into disaster of our own making, and beyond what is necessary. We thus "control" it and avoid panic.

Strange as the phrase may seem, we must speak of "natural violence," just as previously we defined "natural coercion," although all violence is precisely

Natural violence is the destruction of habits or second natures in the interests of regaining the primary experiences of birth, infantile anxiety, grief and mourning for death, simple sexuality, etc. I think this is the virtue of the "extreme situations" of the the destruction, inhibition, or forcing of natural motions.

existentialists. Such natural violence can be demonstrated in many ordinary actions. An obvious example is the violence sought by and done to a virginal or sexually timid person who cannot, by character, will his or her own joy. The 36

THE MAY PAMPHLET

hand of the physician is gentle but is firm. Deeper than their fears, civilized people yearn for and welcome natural catastrophes like fires and hurricanes, that will strip them of their possessions and touch routine to the quick. The "nonviolence" of doctrinal pacifists is unnatural and even somewhat wicked, unless it is, as Gandhi meant, a positive outpouring oflove that burns away one's anger, and of understanding that gives light. To my mind, what generally passes for "non-violence" is a spiteful stalling to exacerbate guilt. Anger is at least contactful; and it seems false not to let anger follow through and strike. It is interesting to see how usually, among reasonable people, the one blow, or the one exchange of blows, is the last; for it has re-established contact. But so men also plunge recklessly into war, where there is no object to contact and there is no end to it. They rely on each other for mass hypnosis and social approval of their illusion, so they may keep striking with a good conscience. We must believe that they are not dreaming of their death, a psy chological impossibility, but of putting the established ego in peril in order to bring it back into openness to the instincts. But the war destroys not only their conventions but their lives altogether; for those who survive, there is provided not new, more natural habits but social isolation and nervous breakdown; and for society as a whole, the war does not liberate natural associations and release social inventiveness, but on the contrary reinforces the coercive and authoritarian establishment. War is unnatural violence. The people of the Middle Ages, as Huizinga has pointed out, lived in a welter of natural and unnatural violence. With us there is progressively less


of natural violence; the unnatural violence is pent up until it bursts forth, as a great corporate institution, in these world wars. In the state of nature no positive effect springs from a negative cause. Yet the free man is forever clearing the decks and seems to exert political pressure only by negation. This is natural violence. If he employs nonviolent "passive resistance," it is in order nor [0 complicate further, by material weapons and authoritative organizations, the situation, which is already too encumbered.

He sets up the vacuum in our learned follies, so that original forces can operate to our advantage, Resistance-patience-firmness-duty: these are not negative nor even passive virtues; they are not the restraint of force; they are action of the more elemental forces of primary nature; of time and clinging to one's place. The anarchist apparently seeks to create a political vacuum; but it is the fertile vacuum of Tao, where heavy masses fall of their own weight and the invisible seeds germinate. He speaks a word that

heals as it violates. May-June 1945 37


Revolution, Sociolatry, and War i.

A Miscalculation in the Marxian Dynamics of Revolution

According to Marx and Engels, the dynamism of the people's revolution into socialism rises from the interaction of two psychological attitudes: (a) the spiritual alienation of the proletariat, because of extreme division of labor and capitalist productive relations, from man's original concern with produc tion and from natural social co-operation; (b) the brute reaction to intolerable deprivation brought on by the falling rate of profit and the capitalist crisis. To expand these points somewhat: (a) To Marx and Engels the specific properties of humanity are the ability to produce things and to give mutual aid in production. But the subdivision of labor and the capitalist use of machine technology dehumanize production: a man makes only a part of a commodity sold on a distant market, and performing an automatic operation he employs only a modicum of his powers. Further, the conditions of bourgeois competition and wage slavery isolate men from each other and destroy mutuality, family life, comradeship. There is therefore nothing in the capitalist institutions to engage the deep interest or keep the loyalty of the proletariat. They are made into fractional people and these fractions of men are indifferent to the bourgeois mores and society. (b) On the other hand they are not indifferent to starvation, disease, sexual deprivation, infant mortality, and death in war; but these are the results of the wage cuts, imperialism, unemployment, and fluctuation inherent in the bour geois need to counteract the falling rate of profit and to reinvest. At the level of


resentment and frustration and animal reaction to pain, there is concern for a violent change, there is latent rebellion. From these attitudes, the revolutionary idea emerges somewhat as follows: driven by need to consult their safety, and with understanding given by usually middle-class teachers who explain the causes of their hurt, and with their original human aspirations recalled from forgetfulness and already ful filled somewhat by comradely unity, the proletariat turns toward a new order,

new foundations, a socialism immeasurably improved yet in its main features not unlike original human nature. By contrast to this idea, the life of the bour geoisie itself seems worthless. And being increased in numbers and with their hands on the productive machinery of all society, the proletarians know that they can make the idea a reality. Psychologically-and

even

anthropologically

and

ethically-this

Marxian formula has great power, if indeed all its elements exist as prescribed. But on the contrary, if any of the elements are missing the formula is disas trous and takes us as far from fraternal socialism as can be. Now there is no 38

THE MAY PAMPHLET

question that point (b) is missing: that by and large over the last century in the advanced industrial countries the real wages of the working class as a whole have not lingered at the margin of physical subsistence and reproduction; they have advanced to a point where even revolutionary writers agitate for a "socio logical standard of living." (The reasons, of course, are the astounding increase in productivity, the high rate of technical improvement, the need for domes tic markets, and such gross profits that the rate of profit has lost paramount importance.) What has been the result? The spiritual alienation of point (a) has gone even further, I suppose, than Marx envisaged. He followed the dehumanization of production to the last subdivision of labor into an automatic gesture, but I doubt whether he (being sane) could have foreseen that thousands of adult persons could work day in and day out and not know what they were making. He did not foresee the dehumanization of consumption in the universal domestic use of streamlined conveniences whose operation the consumer does not begin to understand; the destruction of even the free choices in the marketplace by mass advertis ing and monopolistic controls; the segregation among experts in hospitals of all primary experience of birth, pain, and death, etc., etc. Yet now these fractional persons, alienated from their natures, are not brought sharply to look out for themselves by intolerable deprivation. On the contrary, they are even tricked, by the increase in commodities, into finding an imitation satisfaction in their "standard of living"; and the kind of psychologi cal drive that moves them is-emulation! The demand of the organized prole tariat for a living wage and tolerable working conditions, a demand that in the


beginning was necessarily political and revolutionary in its consequences, now becomes a demand for a standard of living and for leisure to enjoy the goods,

accepting rhe mores ofrhe dominanr class. (What are we to say of "leisure" as a goodfor an animal whose specific humanity is to be productive?) Then if these persons have gone over to the ideals of another class, it is foolish to call them any longer "proletarians" ("producers of offspring," as Marx nobly and bitterly characterized the workers) ; but given the apparently satisfied alienation from

concern in production-and where do we see anything else?-it is also unjust to call them workers, Marx saw wonderfully the emptiness of life in the modern system; but he failed to utter the warning that this emptiness could proceed so far that, without the spur of starvation, it could make a man satisfied to be a traitor to his original nature. What he relied on to be a dynamic motor of revolution has become the cause of treason. Lastly, the scientific teachers of the masses are no longer concerned to recall us to our original creative natures, to destroy the inhuman subdivision 39


oflabor, to look to the bands of comrades for the initiation of direct action. On the contrary, their interest has become the health and smooth functioning of the industrial machine itself: they are economists of full employment, soci ologists of belonging, psychologists of vocational guidance, and politicians of administrative bureaus. So far the psychology of the masses. But in the psychology of the bour geoisie there is a correlated difference from what Marx envisaged. The Marxian bourgeois has the following characteristics: (a) Preoccupied with exchange value, with money, which is featureless, he is alienated from all natural per sonal or social interests; this makes allthe easier his ruthless career of accumu lation, reinvestment, exploitation, and war.

(b) On the other hand, he embod

ies a fierce lust, real even though manic, for wealth and power. The conditions of his role are given by the economy, but he plays the role with all his heart; he is an individual, if not quite a man. The spur of a falling rate of profit or of closed markets, therefore, drives him on to desperate adventures. By and large I do not think that this type is now very evident. Partly, to be sure, it is that the owning classes adopt a democratic camouflage for their protection; but the fact that they are willing to do this already shows that they are different men. Other factors seem to me important: (1) In absentee ownership there is an emasculation of the drive for maximum exploitation of the labor and the machine; the owner does not have the inspiration of his daily supervision; he is not approached by inventors and foremen, etc.; but the salaried manager is usually concerned with stability rather than change.

(2) But even if the drive to improve the exploitation is strong, the individual


capitalist is disheartened by the corporate structure in which most vast enter prises are now imbedded; he is embarrassed by prudent or timid confreres. (Government regulation is the last stage of this corporative timidity.) (3) Not least, it now seems that even in peacetime there is a limit to the falling rate of profit; technical improvement alone guarantees an annual increment of more than 2 percent; by deficit spending the State can subsidize a low but stable rate of profit on all investment; there is apparently no limit to the amount

of nonsense that people can be made to want to buy on the installment plan, mortgaging their future labor. And in fact we see, to our astonishment, that a large proportion, almost a majority, of the bourgeoisie are even now ready to settle for Plans that guarantee a low but stable profit. Or by collusion, a high and stable rate of profit. Shall we continue to call them bourgeois? They are

rentiers. The more dynamic wolf, on the other hand, is no longer a private enter priser, but increasingly becomes a manager and administrator of the industrial machine as a whole: he is in the Government. He bares his teeth abroad. 40

THE MAY PAMPHLET

Ii.

Sociolatry

With the conclusions so far reached, we can attempt a formal definition of the mass attitude that we call Sociolatry (after Comte). Sociolatry is the concern felt by masses alienated from their deep natures for the smooth functioning of the industrial machine from which they believe they can get a higher standard ofliving and enjoy it in security. The revolution ary tension of the people is absorbed and sublimated by the interesting stand ard of living; but this standard is not physiological (which would be poten tially revolutionary), nor is it principally economic. a standard of comfort and lUxury (which would slow down the machine by breeding idleness, dilettant ism, and eccentricity); it is a sociological standard energized by emulation and advertising, and cementing a sense of unanimity among the alienated. All men have-not the same human nature-but the same commodities. Thus, barring war, such an attitude of alienated concern could have a long duration. I say "barring war"-but we must ask below whether the war is not essentially related to the attitude. On the part of the political elite: sociolatry is the agreement of the major ity ofthebourgeoisie to become remiers ofthe industrial corporation in whose working they do not interfere; and the promotion of the more dynamic bour geoisie to high-salaried, prestigious, and powerful places at the controls of the machine. Sociolatry is therefore the psychology of state capitalism and state socialism.


iii.

What Must Be the Revolutionary Program?

Still barring from consideration the threat of war, we must now ask: what is a revolutionary program in the sociolatry? (By "revolutionary" I here refer to the heirs of Rousseau and the French Revolution: the conviction that man is born free and is in institutional chains; that fraternity is the deepest political force and the fountain of social invention; and that socialism implies the absence of state or other coercive power.) For if indeed. with the steady expansion of technical productivity, the attitude of the masses has for a century moved toward soc:iolatry and the atti tude of the bourgeoisie toward accepting a low but stable rate of profit, then the Marxian program is not only bankrupt but reactionary. The Marxian eco nomic demands (for wages and conditions) cement the sociolatry; the Marxian political demands (for expropriation of the expropriators by seizing power) lead to state socialism. It is with diffidence that I dissent from the social psychology of Karl Marx. When I was young, being possessed of an independent spirit I refused to 41


embrace the social science of Marx, but proceeded, as an artist and a human being, to make my own judgments of the social behavior I saw about. And then I found, again and again, that the conclusions I slowly and imperfectly arrived at were already fully and demonstrably (and I may say, beautifully) expressed by Karl Marx. So I too was a Marxist! I decided with pleasure, for it is excel lent to belong to a tradition and have wise friends. This was Marx as a social psychologist. But as regards political action, on the other hand, I did not see, it never seemed to me, that the slogans of the Marxians, nor even of Marx, lead toward fraternal socialism; rather they lead away from it. Bakunin was better. Kropotkin I agree with. Now (still barring the war!) there is a great advantage for the revolutionist in the existence of sociolatry and of even a tyrannical welfare state. The stand ard of living and the present use of the machinery of production may rouse our disgust, but it is an ethical disgust; it is not the fierce need to act roused by general biological misery. We may therefore act in a more piecemeal, edu cational, and thoroughgoing way. The results of such action will also be lasting and worthwhile if we have grown into our freedom rather than driven each other into it. Our attack on the industrial system can be many sided and often indirect, to make it crash of its own weight rather than by frontal attack. Nor is it the case that the absence of tension and despair makes it impos sible to awaken revolutionary feeling. For we know that the society we want is universally present in the heart, though now generally submerged: it can be brought into existence piecemeal. power by power, everywhere: and as soon as it appears in act, the sociolatry becomes worthless, ridiculous, disgusting


by comparison. There is no doubt that, once awakened, the natural powers of men are immeasurably stronger than these alien institutions (which are indeed only the pale sublimations of natural powers). On the one hand, the kind of critique that my friends and I express: a selective attitude toward the technology, not without peasant features, is itself a product of our surplus technology; on the other hand, we touch precisely the vulnerable point of the system, its failure to win human allegiance. Then, as opposed to the radical programs that already presuppose the great state and corporative structure, and the present social institutions in the perfected form of the sociolatry, we must-insmall groups-draw the line and try action more directly satisfactory to our deep nature. (a) It is essential that our program can, with courage and mutual encouragement and mutual aid, be put into effect by our own effort, to a degree at once and progressively more and more, without recourse to distant party or union decisions. (b) The groups must be small, because mutual aid is our common human nature mainly with respect to those with whom we deal face to face. (c) Our action must be aimed 42

THE MAY PAMPHLET

not, as utopians, at a future establishment; but (as millenarians, so to speak) at fraternal arrangements today, progressively incorporating more and more of the social functions into our free society.

(1) It is treasonable to free society not to work at a job that realizes our human powers and transcends an unthinking and unchoosing subdivision of labor. It is a matter of guilt-this is a harsh saying-to exhaust our time of day in the usual work in office and factories, merely for wages. The aim of economy is not the efficient production of commodities, but co-operative jobs them selves worth doing, with the workers, full understanding of the machines and processes, releasing the industrial inventiveness that very many have. (Nor is it the case,

if we have regard to the whole output oj social labor, that modern

technical efficiency requires, or is indeed compatible with, the huge present concentrations of machinety beyond the understanding and control of small groups of workers. )

(2) We must reassess our standard of living and see what parts are really useful for subsistence and humane well-being, and which are slavery to the emulation, emotional security, and inferiority roused by exploitative institu tions and coercive advertising. The question is not one of the quantity of goods (the fact that we swamp ourselves with household furnishings is likely due to psychic causes too deep for us willfully to alter), but that the goods that make up the "standard of living" are stamped with alien values.

(3) We must allow, and encourage, the sexual satisfaction of the young, both adolescents and small children, in order to free them from anxious sub missiveness to authority. It is probably impossible to prevent our own neurotic


prejudices from influencing children, but we can at least make opportunity for the sexual gratification of adolescents. This is essential in order to prevent the patterns of coercion and authority from re-emerging no matter what the polit ical change has been.

(4) In small groups we must exercise direct initiative in community prob lems of personal concern to ourselves (housing, community plan, school ing, etc.). The constructive decisions of intimate concern to us cannot be del

egated to representative government and bureaucracy. Further, even if the Government really represented the interests of the constituents, it is still the case that political initiative is itself the noble and integrating act of every man. In government, as in economic production, what is superficially efficient is not efficient in the long run.

(5) Living in the midst of an alienated way oftife, we must mutually analyze and purge our souls until we no longer regard as gUilty or conspiratorial such illegal acts as spring from common human nature. (Group psychotherapy is identical with contactful neighbor-love that pays attention and comes across.) 43


With regard to committing such "crimes" we must exercise prudence not of inhi bitions but such prudence as a sane man exercises in a madhouse. On the other hand, we must see that many acts commonly regarded as legal and even meri torious are treason against our natural society, if they involve us in situations

where we cease to have personal responsibility and concern/or the consequences. (6) We must progressively abstain from whatever is connected with the war. I am sensible that this program seems to demand very great initiative, courage, effort, and social invention; yet if once, looking about at our situa tion whatever it is, we draw a line (wherever we draw it!), can we not at once proceed? Those of us who have already been living in a more reasonable way do not find these minimal points too difficult; can those who have all their lives taken on the habits (if not the ideas) of the alienated society, expect not to make drastic changes? If we are to have peace, it is necessary to wage the peace. Otherwise, when their war comes, we also must hold ourselves respon sible for it. iv.

The War

The emergency that faces sociolatry and state socialism is War, and we know that this catastrophe of theirs must overwhelm us all. Is it a necessity of their system? Must one not assume, and can one not observe, that beneath their acceptance and mechanical, unspontaneous pleasure in the current social sat isfactions, there is a deep hatred for these satisfactions that makes men willing to rush off to armies and to toy with the idea of loosing explosive bombs?


(To put this another way: In a famous passage Freud pathetically justifies competitive capitalism as a means of releasing aggression without physical destruction. Now if, under improved economic arrangements of full employ ment and noncompetitive profits, this means of release is thwarted, how will the general aggression find an outlet-if the aggression itself is not moderated by small-scale fraternal competition, mutual aid, and instinctual gratification?) We have defined a mass alienated from deep natural concerns, but occu pying the conscious and preconscious with every manner of excitement, news, popular culture, sport, emulation, expenditure, and mechanical manipulation.

Now let us draw from the individual psychology what seems to be an analogy, but is more than an analogy. When an ego system is set up against the id drives, rather than as the inter preter, guide, purveyor, and agent of those drives, then this ego is basically weak and "tends to destroy itself." Further, the more elaborate the distrac tions sought by the ego, the tighter is the defense and rationalization against the instincts, the greater the tension, the more suggestive and hypnotic the 44

THE MAY PAMPHLET

daily unawareness, and the more inevitable the self-destruction. During the last years of his life, largely in order to explain the phenomena of war, Freud introduced into his theory the primordial death wish. But whether or not such a drive is really primitive (in general a hunch of Freud is bener than the clini cal evidence of a lesser man)-nevertheless, to explain the tendency to self destruction that we are here considering, no such primitive drive is required. On the contrary, the rebellion of the instincts against the superficial distrac tions of the ego is a healthy reaction: it is a healthy kind of violence calculated not to destroy the organism but to liberate it from inanity. By the ego, however, this desire to "burst" (Wilhelm Reich) might be interpreted as the desire for suicide-and if the ego can indeed control the movements of the body and the imagination, that is in fact the end of the organism. Let us return to the real social context (for all individual psychology is an abstraction): we see on all sides an ill-concealed-concealed only to those who are expressing it-hatred for the social satisfactions. The most refined champions of our civilized arena, namely the technicians and practical scien tists, seem almost the most inspired to feverish co-operative activity if once it has in it the promise of violence. Further, the people as a whole can the more cheerfully rush to the destruction of what they have and what they are, because, inspired to it en masse and suggesting it to one another, they release one another from the gUilty restraint that each would feel by himself. The behavior of the Americans during the last interbellum was terribly significant. On the one hand, people were almost unanimously opposed to the coming war; there was even a certain amount of successful pacifist agi


tation (such as the barring of military training from many colleges). On the other hand, one economic and political action after another was commined that led directly to a worldwide war; and these acts were acquiesced in by the people despite the clear, demonstrative, and thousand-times-reiterated warn ings from many quarters that the acts were heading toward a general war. It is absurd to claim that such warnings did nor get a hearing, for the point is: why did they not? To me it seems that the public behavior was exactly that of a person in the face of a danger that he consciously wants to flee, but who is paralyzed because unconsciously he wants to embrace it: thus he waits and will not think of it. But alas! this social violence that wants, not to destroy mankind, but only to get back to natural institutions, cannot be healrhy, because it will in fact destroy us. We others had better wage our peace and bring them quickly into our camp.

October 1945 45


Unanimity

In the mixed society of coercion and nature, positive political action is always dialectically good and evil. But nature underlies and coercion is imposed. Then we must act so as [0 avoid the isolation of a particular issue and the freezing of the coercive foreground, but always to submit the issue to the dynamism of the common natural powers that nobody disputes. The defining property of free political action is potential unanimity, drawing on common nature and undercutting the conflict of interests. Our political action is the emergence of unanimity from natural conflict. Many conflicts are wholly theirs and may profitably be disregarded. In others, such as the class struggle, where there is a direct attack on obvious goods such as sustenance or time of life, the issue is clearly enough drawn and we lend all force to freedom, justice, and nature. But where there is a natural conflict, between natural forces, the free man must not subscribe [0 a compromise but must invent a program, for natural conflict is solved only by invention, that introduces something new into the issue. If he cannot invent, it is likely that the conflict is internal in himself and inhibits his invention; then he must withdraw to the sure ground previous to the conflict where in fact he can invent. i.

Dialectics of Positive Action

It is unprofitable to strive, in coercive conditions, for a relative advantage in a situation that, even if the victory is won, is coercive. Thus, to demand a just trial when the law to be executed is unjust; or to exercise civil rights within the framework ofthe State. To demand higher pay when the standard of living that


can be bought for money is unsatisfactory. To cry for military democracy when the war is unnatural violence. This is wasting one's strength and obscuring the true issues; it results in being frozen and trapped. On the other hand, since the strength and the continuance of any society must depend on the naturalness of its conventions, it is profitable to defend the natural conventions even with scrupulosity-though scrupulosity is most often avoided by the wise. Thus, we appeal in the court as our court and enjoy the civil powers that were liberated by our own great men; we bargain because the marketplace has free choices; we demand a voice not for the soldier but the

man. (Yes! and the next step is for the man to say "I quit.") This is essential to show that we are not alienated from society-if not this society, what society do we have?-but on the contrary, Society is alienated from itself. The ordinary man is baffled by social dilemmas; the free man must make social inventions that liberate strength. Nothing is more disheartening than to see an honest party or press, unwilling to lend itself to bad alternatives, that does not also continually produce a stream of good natural solutions. If a man 46

THE MAY PAMPHLET

cannot in fact invent a way out, what right has such a man to be libertarian on the issue at all? His negative criticism insults and disheartens the rest. Further, it is not sufficient to proffer as a solution a state of society and of institutions which is precisely not attainable by a man's present powers of action; he must invent an action which can be performed today. But indeed, those who draw

on natural powers find it easy to be inventive on natural issues; a man who finds himselfusually constrained merely to veto all the presented alternatives is almost surely coerced by unconscious resistance to some possible solution. In natural ethics there is no such principle as the choice of the lesser of two evils. Such a principle is self-contradictory, for any free action or abstention must draw on natural power and cannot depend on a negation. When a social issue has come to the pass of a choice between evils (as, conscripting an army to resist a tyrant), then we know that the citizens have long neglected their welfare; the free actions that we can then invent are all attended with great suf fering. They must involve withdrawing utterly from the area of guilt, a painful sacrifice-and more and more painful till all the consequences work them selves out. The lesser evil is a sign that an interest has been allowed to develop in isolation until it now threatens even our lives. It is the isolation of the issue

from its causes that restricts the choice to the lesser evil. Those who break the spell and again draw on all their forces will find other choices. Thus, to resist the greater evil it is usual for well-intentioned men not to embrace the lesser evil but to form a "united front" with it; in the feeblest case, such a united front is called "critical support"; in the strongest case it is based on a program of "minimum demands," presumably relevant to the causes of


the crisis. Now, in principle a united front is nothing but mutual aid itself; but in practice it is often the inhibition of precisely the natural forces whose exer cise would overcome the evil lesser and greater both. The formula of critical support usually comes to be simple acceptance. Therefore Gandhi said that by nature he was co-operative but he could not acquiesce to conditions that made it impossible to co-operate. The formula of the "minimum program" is in principle the same as Drawing the Line: relax coercion at this point and we will co-operate, the pre sumption being that then the issue is no longer isolated and our action is not necessarily evil. But in practice this often comes to freezing the situation into a new coercive compromise and inhibiting the dynamism of the next step (but drawing the line is inseparable from the dynamism of the next step). The very granting of the minimum demands proves to be the form of the new coer cion-otherwise it would not have been granted; as, social legislation prepares the corporate state. But social invention is impossible when the situation is frozen. Thus, with the aim of doing justice to the untouchables, Gandhi fasted 47


against what seemed to be the reasonable minimum program of granting them a large number of sure constituencies in the Congress ("separate electorates"), because this would freeze their status as separate from the community. In general, right action with regard to the lesser evil and the united front is part of what can be called "aggressive noncommitment" and "limited commitment": Obviously a man cannot act rightly with regard to bad alternatives by simply not committing himself at all, for then he is in fact supporting which ever bad alternative happens to be the stronger. But the free man can often occupy an aggressive position outside either alternative, which undercuts the situation and draws on neglected forces; so that even after the issue has been decided between the alternatives, the issue is still alive: new forces have been marshaled that challenge the decision, except that now the challenger is not a bad alternative but an inventive solution. This is the right action when the pre sented alternatives are frozen fast in the coercive structure. On the other hand, when the situation is somewhat fluid or confused, the free man, "co-operative by nature," can make a limited commitment to a presented alternative, if (a) he can work to clarify the issue and (b) he can, if the issue crystallizes badly, with draw still leaving the issue in doubt. He must retain considerable freedom of action; any free action, so long as it is exercised, will generate increasing power. The aggressively noncommittal man and the man who retains freedom of action when he commits himself to a limited extent will surely be effective and exert influence among those who are coerced, inhibited, and committed against their best nature.


But best of all is to act in situations where there is a natural unanimity and no need for either withdrawal or limitation, for such action inspires a man beyond his best judgment. ii.

Unanimity

Fraternal unanimity is the social resolution of a natural conflict better than the ability, desire, or judgment of the separate conflicting persons. For the most part unanimity is found not by relaxing but by sharpening the conflict, risking natural coercion, until the emergence of a new idea.

(I think it is preferable thus to define unanimity in terms of conflict and invention rather than in terms of the harmony of egos which, as I have argued against the revisionist Freudians, is narcissism and not a social relation at all.) When the two parties to a conflict are in fact concerned for the common good, it is impossible that they should ever, unless for a temporary conven ience, come to an electoral division and seek the majority. Each side will rather eagerly welcome rational opposition in order to perfect its own judgment. The 48

THE MAY PAMPHLET

conflict will generate a common solution, and the assent will be unanimous. This is ofcourse a commonplace among bands offriends. When they are forced to a division and a vote, it is a sign that moral standards are at play, which are outside the dynamism of the friendship. To be sure, in friendly groups many decisions become unanimous by default, when some of the friends are not sufficiently concerned to press their claim; but it is reasonable that those most concerned should win the decision. Primitively the rule of the majority was, I suppose (without evidence), a tacit agreement not to fight the armed battle that the majority would win anyway. As such it is an obvious coercion that soon, moreover, becomes unconscious under the cover of an illusion of justice, fair play, etc. Some phil osophical color of justice could be given the majority by the utilitarian calcu lus, that the satisfaction of many is better than the satisfaction of few, if only it were the case that the majority opinion generally turned out to their own sat isfaction; but on the contrary, often the smaller the minority the more deeply considered its opinion. It is impossible that other things should ever be so equal that there is more wisdom in six heads than in five. Luckily most of the coercive conflicts that come to a vote are so nicely weighted with evils against each other that tossing a coin would also give a just decision. In practice, of course, the few are most concerned-either about the issue or just getting elected-and they have their way; the many default but regard themselves as uncoerced because they say Aye. The general notion of a division and a vote would be ultimately justifiable only if there could in fact be irreconcilable natural forces or interests (then


the agreed coercion would be better than the death struggle). But no such thing exists in psychology, and in social ethics it is a self-contradiction, for any free society springs from common humanity, and any natural interest is not accidentally but essentially related to this common basis. And what free man would rest easy if he thought that his friend had a value that he absolutely could not share, at least in sympathy? Nevertheless, there are dilemmas in the human condition as such, because there are a number of "ultimate criteria" of right behavior which are incommensurable, and which in any given instance might cause an intellectu

ally insoluble conflict. We say, "Let Justice be done though the heavens fall," even though justice makes no sense when the heavens have fallen and there is no society. A scientist is justified to explore further no matter what the con sequences. Even a mountain-climber perishes in glory. An artist has an abso lute mandate to finish his work even though his loved ones starve. And strong animal convictions, like love, friendship, loyalty, give a warrant for any excess. For any of these a man might blamelessly sacrifice his own life and jeopardize 49


the rest of us; our humanity will applaud him. This is itself a wonderful prop erty of common humanity. "But," it is objected, "even if we agree that there cannot be any ultimately irreconcilable natural conflict, in practice there is always a temporary irrecon cilable conflict: therefore we have de facto an irreconcilable conflict and consult the majority rather than the force of arms." Where such de facto conflict really exists, then certainly the conclusion follows. But in fact it rarely exists; almost always an inventive solution is at hand or close at hand. It is an illusion that in the kind of issues that arise in practical communal problems a

long time,

more than a few weeks or months, is required to hit on an inventive solution rather than a compromise or a bad powerful alternative (as if these were spir itual problems in which the soul must be tried before it comes to know); but it is precisely because the majority knows that it will have its way that it inhibits invention and will not wait a single day. Was it the case, for instance, that in

1775 the Parliament did not have an inventive solution at hand? Of unanimity itself, there is the natural and the coercive. Coercive una nimity is a political evil especially of modern times, though it has always had religious and military manifestations: it is the coercion of habits and uncon scious forces so that the judgment of the ego comes as if spontaneously to assent. The classical instance is the hundred deep thinkers who explain in identical irate language that socialism would destroy their individualities. Natural unanimity relies also on unconscious ties-the creative power of fra ternity goes beyond the abilities of individuals; they see their work come to be by surprise (and then they can explain it well enough). Bursts of uncontrolled


social enthusiasm are also salutary, purgative and inspiring, and approximate the relaxation of the total orgasm; but-Lord!-not the settled and monoto nous hypnosis, that both sustains and is sustained by many of our institutions of industry and entertainment-and often indeed without a personal hypno tist, so that coerced and coercer walk in one trance! iii.

Positive Political Action

We have been speaking of positive political action. Yet at least the word "poli tics" is anathema in anarchist writing. "Politics" is equated with coercion by the State apparatus and as the business of the group that is both the executive committee of the economic exploiters and practices exploitation on its own. This restriction of the term is unwise. For the fact is that throughout history, especially the best ages and many of the best men have spoken of themselves as political, and politics along with art and theory has been the noble activity of free men. Let us try to define politics as a free act, therefore belonging to free societies. 50

THE MAY PAMPHLET

Anarchist writers often speak of "politics," the coercive functions of the State and the struggle for perquisites, as degenerating in free societies to mere "administrative functions." But in the first place, we can see today that it is precisely through administrative functions that the most poisonous features of state coercion come to express themselves. Secondly, it is false that such

Any measure of social ini tiation whatever, that is not routine and thatfaces initial opposition and must win its way to acceptance, is political. Precisely a free man in a free society will often initiate new policies, enter into conflict with his fellows, and coerce degeneration would occur or would be desirable.

them; but this is natural coercion. It is best to define politics in the ancient way, as the constitutional relations among the functioning interests in a commonwealth. Then power springs from, and is limited by, function. The more modern notion of sovereignty, abstract power, is in principle illimitable, and in fact impedes function. It is imposed by pirates who are really outside the commonwealth; it is agreed to by neurotics who do not function of themselves and therefore have no counterforce. A property of free political action is to be

positive, in the legal sense of

imposing a new convention. Here too the anarchists, true to their false intui tion, condone only negative or abstaining political action, and they are justi fied by the centuries of unnatural coercive conventions. But it is not the case that out of day-to-day economic and domestic existence there arises any great thing without the imposition of a positive, yes even aggressive, idea. Consider the Zionist movement-to take an example from our coercive society; great cities have sprung up (some of them stupidly located), gardens have bloomed


in deserts, and tribes of men have been set at rifle point; and all this is the effect of a mere idea in the mind of a journalist, working on prepared potentialities. A free positive idea could be said naturally to coerce social forces into action-this is natural politics. A coercive positive idea will invariably inhibit or destroy natural forces-this is unnatural politics. The alternative to natural politics is not no politics but coercive politics, for men will not cease to innovate positive social action. On the contrary, just

the sentiment of routine and "administrative functions" invites bad innova tions, Therefore we must speak of "waging the peace," just as we say "waging the war." The sense in which a free artist can speak of"arts ofpeace"-who knows what manner of peace one has with one's art! Let me quote the great sentence of Michelet: "Initiation-educa tion-government: these are three synonymous words." To its initiator a positive idea seems at first coercive; then he recognizes it, perhaps only by acting it out, as the expression of his deeper powers, or 51


sometimes of forces too deep to be properly called his own at all. If it is an idea that requires social co-operation, his fellows in turn will regard it as coer cive. lfthen, as happens most often, the idea is erroneous-it is perhaps pecu liar to his own nature or situation-their free judgment will safely resist him, especially since there are other positive ideas in the field. But if indeed he has a better reason, they must perforce again be naturally coerced; they are his pupils. Civil liberty must mean the opponunity to initiate a policy, enterprise, or idea-this was how Milton or the early bourgeois meant it. It cannot mean merely freedom from restraint, as Mill seems to say, fighting a losing battle. Such libertywill not be preserved, except in form. IV.

A Wrong Notion of Unanimity

Just as there are terms unwisely rejected by our authors, so there are philoso phers. (In principle it is unwise to reject philosophers, for what they say comes to pass anyway.) And the most rejected is Nietzsche. Nevertheless it is just the notion of Nietzsche that we are a bridge for who is better that can give salt to our concept of mutual aid. If freedom is the exercise of natural power we

cannot avoid coming to speak of natural aristocracy;

to

do so would be pre

cisely envy, fear, and, as Nietzsche would have said, resentment. Therefore we must say, "mutual aid and individual excellence"-and a moment's reflection will show that this is the same as saying "'waging the peace." Our fraternity that has more than its share of eccentrics! And what a pity if free societies failed to transmute strong eccentricity into exemplarity, but


instead absorbed it. This would be the wrong kind of unanimity. Strong eccentricity is the result in a coercive society of exercising any simple power too strong to be repressed. Since the system of coercion is organic and oppresses his power at every turn, hypocritically bringing it into "irreconcilable conflict" with other natural interests, the eccentric soon comes to deny that even plain goods are good. Thus we see that the gift of fearless speech, or strong animal lust, or common sense, all make eccentrics. But in free society the strong power finds its relation to other forces; it tries to impose on them its positive idea; and it becomes exemplary of its own

character. When the peace is waged, when there is individual excellence and mutual aid, the result is exemplarity: models of achievement. v.

Another Wrong Notion of Unanimity

A favorite saying of mutual aiders is "Happy is the people that has no history"-no wars, no dynasties, no need to rebel; and what is there in the round of sensible human existence, always springing from the same needs, to 52

THE MAY PAMPHLET

make a theme for history? Yet I should like to question this saying and distin guish coercive history from free history. If we have regard only to the potentialities of human beings, it could be argued even that there has been no history, coercive or mherwise. In the thou sands of years there is no sensory, scientific, ethical, or even technical capabil ity that has evolved or been lost. It is always a common human nature. (Indeed, the existence of a common unchanging human nature is an a

priori principle of historical research-it is the true analogue, sought by Henry Adams, of the principle of the conservation of energy; it is by this regu lative principle that the historian is confident that when he consults the docu ments they will prove explicable. If there had been changes in human nature, he would not recognize them anyway, except by lacunae in his understanding; but the justification of the principle is that in fact very few records turn up that defy some explanation or other in our terms, and further and more important, that the more faithful the historian is to the letter of the records, and the more he renounces "modern" preconceptions, the more recognizable the ancients become. By the same principle we also recognize our kinship to the lions and the bears.) But now if we turn on the anarchist saying that the people is happy, etc., supposing we ask: what is this natural existence, what are these human powers, needs, and satisfactions that free society fosters? Then we see that we know them, in their fullness, only through history. History is the actual ity of the human powers, and we infer the power from the act. It is Homer and Sophocles that demonstrate that we can be poets. From the peculiar character


of an epoch we infer that certain powers, elsewhere actually expressed, were inhibited by the institutions. The university teaches where the creator spirit shone. In the end, it is only free positive action that makes history, revealing the depths of our common powers. (So Marx, restricting himself to the consid eration of man in class bondage, declared that history had not yet begun.) For in all the empires, systems of exploitation, and first, second, third world wars that make up coercive history, there is a deadly sameness: everywhere the inhibition of most of the forces of life and always the expression of the same trivial force. It is startling-and therefore their wars possess a melan choly interest-that even the Greeks, those inventors and sons of the morning, could not improvise anything better than this. But proofs, poems, heroic and saintly deeds, though there be many thousands of each, and thousands of each species of each, have all a difference and inventiveness. Polity, too, is a free positive action, expediting, perhaps ennobling, the functioning of society. But it is dangerous; even without piracy, it soon 53


hardens into abstract power. In the eighteenth-century American documents, of Jefferson and Madison, Adams and even Hamilton, it is remarkable how the authors speak as citizens, who embody [he polity and are creating it as an exis tential act of their natures. But twenty years later, already in Jefferson's admin istration and disastrously by the time of Monroe and Jackson, [he rhetoric is about "free" individuals patriotic to an abstract State that is not themselves.


June 1945

54

Reflections on the Anarch ist Princip le narchism is grounded in a rather definite proposition: that valuable

A behavior occurs only by the free and direct response of individuals or voluntary groups to the conditions presented by the historical environment. It

claims that in most human affairs, whether political. economic, military, reli gious, moral, pedagogic, or cultural, more harm than good results from coer cion, top-down direction, central aU[hority. bureaucracy, jails, conscription, states, pre-ordained standardization, excessive planning. etc. Anarchists want to increase intrinsic functioning and diminish extrinsic power. This is a social psychological hypothesis with obvious political implications. Depending on varying historical conditions that present various threats to the anarchist principle, anarchists have laid their emphasis in varying places: sometimes agrarian, sometimes free-city and guild-oriented; sometimes tech nological, sometimes anti-technological; sometimes Communist, sometimes affirming property; sometimes individualist, sometimes collective; sometimes speaking of Liberty as almost an absolute good, sometimes relying on custom


and "nature." Nevertheless, despite these differences, anarchists seldom fail to recognize one another, and they do not consider the differences to be incom patibilities. Consider a crucial modem problem, violence. Guerilla fighting has been a classical anarchist technique; yet where, especially in modem condi tions, any violent means tends to reinforce centralism and authoritarianism, anarchists have tended to see the beauty of nonviolence. Now the anarchist principle is by and large true.' And far from being "utopian" or a "glorious failure," it has proved itself and won out in many spec tacular historical crises. In the period of mercantilism and patents royal, free

enterprise by joint stock companies was anarchist. The Jeffersonian bill of rights and independent judiciary were anarchist. Congregational churches • I, and other anarchists, would except certain states of temporary emergency, if we can

be confident that the emergency is temporary. We might except cenain simple logistic arrangements, like ticketing or metric standards or tax-collection, if we can be confident that the administration, the "secretariat," will not begin to run the show. And we might except certain "natural monopolies, " like epidemic control, water-supply, etc. 55


were anarchist. Progressive education was anarchist. The free cities and cor porate law in the feudal system were anarchist. At present, the civil rights movement in the United States has been almost classically decentralist and anarchist. And so forth, down to details like free access in public libraries. Of course, to later historians these things do not seem to be anarchist. but in their own time they were all regarded as such and often literally called such. with the usual dire threats of chaos. But this relativity of the anarchist principle to the actual situation is of the essence of anarchism. There cannot be a history of anarchism in the sense of establishing a permanent state of things called "anarchist." It is always a continual coping with the next situation, and a vigi lance to make sure that past freedoms are not lost and do not turn into the opposite, as free enterprise turned into wage-slavery and monopoly capital ism, or the independent judiciary turned into a monopoly of courts, cops, and


lawyers, or free education turned into School Systems.

56

Freedom and Autonomy

any anarchist philosophers start from a lust for freedom. Where freedom

M is a metaphysical concept or a moral imperative, it leaves me cold-[ cannot think in abstractions. But most often the freedom of anarchists is a deep animal cry or a religious plea like the hymn of the prisoners in Fidelio. They feel themselves imprisoned, existentially by the nature of things or by God; or because they have seen or suffered roo much economic slavery; or they have been deprived of their liberties; or internally colonized by imperialists. To become human they must shake off restraint. Since, by and large, my experience is roomy enough for me, I do not lust for freedom, any more than I want to "expand consciousness." I might feel dif ferently, however, if I were subjected to literary censorship, like Solzhenitsyn. My usual gripe has been not that I am imprisoned, but that I am in exile or was born on the wrong planet; recently, that I am bedridden. My real trouble is that the world is impractical for me, and I understand that my stupidity and cow ardice make it even less practical than it could be.


To be sure, there are outrages that take me by the throat, like anybody else, and I lust to be free of them. Insults to humanity and the beauty of the world that keep me indignant. An atmosphere of lies, triviality, and vulgarity that suddenly makes me sick. The powers-that-be do not know the meaning of magnanimity, and often they are simply officious and spiteful; as Malatesta used to say, you just try [0 do your thing and they prevent you, and then you are to blame for the fight that ensues. Worst of all, the earth-destroying actions of power are demented; and as in ancient tragedies and histories we read how arrogant men committed sacrilege and brought down doom on themselves

and those associated with them, so I sometimes am superstitiously afraid to belong to the same tribe and walk the same ground as our statesmen. But no. Men have a right to be crazy, stupid, and arrogant. It's our special thing. Our mistake is to arm anybody with collective power. Anarchy is the only safe polity. It is a common misconception that anarchists believe that "human nature is good" and so men can be trusted to rule themselves. In fact we tend to take 57


the pessimistic view; people are not be trusted, so prevent the concentration of power. Men in authority are especially likely to be stupid because they are out of touch with concrete finite experience and instead keep interfering with other people's initiative and making them stupid and anxious. And imagine what being deified like Mao Tse-Tung or Kim II Sung must do to a man's char acter. Or habitually thinking about the unthinkable, like the masters of the Pentagon. To me, the chief principle of anarchism is not freedom but autonomy. Since to initiate and to do it my way, and be an artist with concrete matter, is the kind of experience I like, I am restive about being given orders by external authorities, who don't concretely know the problem or the available means. Mostly, behavior is more graceful, forceful, and discriminating without the intervention of top-down authorities, whether State, collective, democracy, corporate bureaucracy, prison wardens, deans, pre-arranged curricula, or central planning. These may be necessary in certain emergencies, but it is at a cost to vitality. This is an empirical proposition in social psychology and I think the evidence is heavily in its favor. By and large, the use of power to do a job is inefficient in the fairly short run. Extrinsic power inhibits intrinsic func tion. As Aristotle said, "Soul is self-moving." In his recent book Beyond Freedom and Dignity, B. F. Skinner holds that these are defensive prejudices that interfere with the operant conditioning of people toward their desired goals of happiness and harmony. (It is odd these days to read a cracker-barrel restatement of Bentham's utilitarianism.) He misses the point.


What is objectionable about operant conditioning is not that it violates freedom, but that the consequent behavior is graceless and low-grade as well as labile-it is not assimilated as second nature. He is so impressed by the fact that an animal's behavior can be shaped at all to perform according to the trainer's goal, that he does not compare the performance with the inventive, flexible and maturing behavior of the animal initiating and responding in its natural field. And incidentally, dignity is not a specifically human prejudice, as he thinks, but the ordinary bearing of any animal, angrily defended when its organic integrity or own space is insulted, To lust for freedom is certainly a motive of political change stronger than autonomy. (I doubt that it is as stubborn, however. People who do their job their own way can usually find means other than revolt to keep doing it, including plenty of passive resistance to interference.) To make an anarchist revolution, Bakunin wanted, in his early period, to rely precisely on the outcast, delinquents, prostitutes, convicts, displaced peasants, lumpen proletarians, those who had nothing to lose, not even their chains, but who felt oppressed. 58

FREEDOM A N D AUTONOMY

There were enough troops of this kind in the grim heyday of industrialism and urbanization. But naturally, people who have nothing are hard to organize and consolidate for a long effort, and they are easily seduced by a fascist who can offer guns, revenge, and a moment's flush of power. The pathos of oppressed people lusting for freedom is that, if they break free, they don't know what to do. Not having been autonomous, they do not know how to go about it, and before they learn it is usually too late. New man agers have taken over, who may or may not be benevolent and imbued with the revolution, but who have never been in a hurry to abdicate. The oppressed hope for too much from the New Society, instead of being stubbornly vigilant to do their own things. The only achieved liberation move ment that I can think of was the American Revolution, made largely by arti sans, fanners, merchants, and professionals who had going concerns to begin with and wanted to get rid of interference, and afterwards enjoyed a prosper ous quasi-anarchy for nearly thirty years-nobody cared much about the new government. They were protected by three thousand miles of ocean. The Catalonian revolution during the Spanish Civil War could have gone well, for the same reasons, but the Fascists and Communists did them in. Anarchy requires competence and self-confidence, the sentiment that the world is for one. It does not thrive among the exploited, oppressed, and colonized. Thus, unfortunately, it lacks a powerful drive toward revolution ary change. Yet in the affluent liberal societies of Europe and America there is a hopeful possibility of the following kind: Fairly autonomous people, among the middle class, the young, craftsmen, and professionals, cannot help but


see that they cannot continue so in the present institutions. They cannot do honest and useful work or practice a profession nobly; arts and sciences are corrupted; modest enterprise must be blown out of all proportion to survive; the young cannot find vocations; it is hard to raise children; talent is strangled by credentials; the natural environment is being destroyed; health is imper iled; community life is inane; neighborhoods are ugly and unsafe; public serv ices do not work; taxes are squandered on war, schoolteachers, and politicians. Then they may make changes, to extend the areas of freedom from encroachment, Such changes might be piecemeal and not dramatic, but they must be fundamental; for many of the present institutions cannot be recast and the tendency of the system as a whole is disastrous. I like the Marxist term "withering away of the State," but it must begin now, not afterwards; the goal is not a New Society, but a tolerable society in which life can go on.

59

Anarch ism and Revolut ion

n anarchist theory, the word revolution means the process by which the grip

I of authority is loosed, so that the functions of life can regulate themselves, without top-down direction or external hindrance. The idea is that, except for emergencies and a few special cases, free functioning will find its own right structures and co-ordination. An anarchist description of a revolutionary period thus consists of many accounts of how localities, factories, tradesmen, schools, professional groups, and communes go about managing their own affairs, defending themselves against the central "system," and making whatever federal arrangements among themselves that are necessary to weave the fabric of society. An anar chist history of the French Revolution is not much concerned about Paris and the stormy assembly but concentrates on what went on in Lyons-how the bakers carried on the production and distribution of bread though everything seemed to be in chaos, how legal documents were burned up, and how a hastily assembled militia fought off an invader. And of course general history is con


cerned, not with kings, statesmen, warriors, and politics, but with molecular social conditions, cultural and technical innovation, and the long-range devel opment of religious attitudes and social "movements." From this point of view, western history has had some pretty good anar chist successes; anarchy is not merely utopian dreams and a few bloody fail ures. Winning civil liberties, from Runnymede to the Jeffersonian Bill of Rights; the escape of the townsmen from feudal lords and establishing guild democ racy; the liberation of conscience and congregations since the Reformation; the abolition of serfdom, chattel slavery. and some bonds of wage slavery; the

freeing of trade and enterprise from mercantilism; the freedom of nations from dynasties and of some nations from imperialists; the development of progressive education and the freeing of sexuality-these bread-and-butter topics of European history are never called "anarchist," but they are. The anar chist victory was won by human suffering and often at the cost of blood; it has somewhat persisted; and it must be vigilantly defended and extended. Any new political revolution, even if it calls itself liberation, cannot be relied on to 60

ANARCHISM A N D REVOLUTION

care for these ancient things. In fact, we see that some liberators impatiently brush them aside-civil liberties go overboard, labor unions are castrated, schooling becomes regimentation, and so forth. But even this is not so annoy ing as to hear defenders of the present status quo with its freedoms call those who want to extend freedom aimless anarchists. With regard to freedoms, even "eternal vigilance" is not enough. Unless freedoms are extended, they are whittled away, for those in power always have the advantage of organization and state resources, while ordinary people become tired of battle and fragmented. We may vigilantly defend constitu tional limitations and privileges that we have won, but new conditions arise that circumvent them. For instance, new technology like wiretapping and new organizations like computerized Interpol must be offset by new immunities, public defenders, etc.; otherwise the adversary system of Runnymede is nulli fied. Labor leaders become bureaucrats and are co-opted, and union members do not attend meetings, unless new demands revitalize the labor move ments-in my opinion, the labor movement can at present only be revitalized by turning to the idea of workers' management. Triumphant science, having won the battles of Galileo and Darwin, has become the new orthodoxy. We see that ecological threats have created a brand new freedom to fight for-the right to have an environment. On the positive side, the spirit of freedom is indivisible and quick to revive. A good fight on one issue has a tonic effect on all society. In totali


tarian countries it is very difficult to control "thaw," and we have seen how contagious populist protest has been in recent years in the United States. In Czechoslovakia an entire generation was apparently totally controlled since 1948 but-whether because of native human wildness or the spirit of Hus, Comenius and Masaryk-youth acted in 1968 as if there were no such control. And in the United States, twenty-five years of affluent consumerism and Organization mentality have not seemed to dampen the youth of the present decade. Anarchists rely on the inventiveness, courage, and drive to freedom of human nature, as opposed to the proletarian industrialized mentality of Scientific Socialism, which takes it for granted that people are essentially and totally socialized by their historical conditions. But anarchist philosophers disagree sharply on the conditions that encourage freedom. (Characteristically, disagreements among anarchists are taken by them as "aspects" of some common position, rather than as "factions" in a power struggle, leading to internecine strife.) Bakunin, for instance, relies on the unemployed, the alien ated, the outcasts, the criminal, the uprooted intelligentsia-those who have nothing to lose, not even their chains. But Kropotkin, by contrast, relies on 61


the competent and independent, the highly skilled-small farmers with their peasant community traditions, miners, artists, explorers, architects and edu cators. Student anarchism at present tends to be Bakuninist because. in my opinion, the students are inaurhentically students; they are exploited and lumpen in principle-kept on ice. "Students are niggers." But hopefully the Movement is now beginning

to

have a more Kropotkinian tendency, with

authentic young professionals in law. medicine, and ecology. The March 4

(1969) movement of the young scientists at MIT is symbolic of the new trend. Revolution and Counter-Revolution In ordinary usage, of course, including both liberal and Marxist usage. the word revolution has meant, not that controls cease to operate and hinder func tion, but that a new regime establishes itself and reorganizes the institutions according to its own ideas and interests. (To anarchists this is precisely the counterrevolution, because there is again a centralizing authority to oppose. The counterrevolution occurred with Robespierre, not during Thermidor or with Napoleon.) Liberal historians describe the abuses of the tyrant that made the old regime illegitimate and unviable, and they show how the new regime instituted necessary reforms. Marxists show how in changed technological and social conditions, the class conflict between the dominant and exploited classes erupts: the old dominant group is no longer competent to maintain its power and ideology, the system of belief that gave it legitimacy. Then the new regime establishes institutions to cope with the new conditions, and from these develop a "superstructure" ofbeliefthat provides stability and legitimacy.


Agitational Marxism, Leninism, works to

make the old regime unable to cope,

to make it illegitimate and to hasten its fall; it is then likely to take power as a minority vanguard party which must educate the masses to their own inter ests. In this stringent activity, any efforts at piecemeal improvement or pro tecting traditional freedoms are regarded as mere reformism or tinkering, and they are called "objectively counterrevolutionary." After the takeover by the new regime, there must be a strong and repressive administration to prevent

reaction; during this period (indefinitely prolonged) anarchists fare badly. Of the political thought of the past century, only Anarchism or, better, anarcho-pacifism-the philosophy of institutions without the State and cen trally organized violence-has consistently foreseen the gross dangers of present advanced societies, their police, bureaucracy, excessive centraliza tion of decision making, social engineering. processing. schooling, and inev itable militarization-"War is the health of the State," as Randolph Bourne put it. The bourgeois State of the early nineteenth century may well have been merely the instrument of the dominant economic class, as Marx said, but in its 62


further development its gigantic statism has become more important than its exploitation for profit. It and the socialist alternatives have not developed very differently. All have tended toward fascism-statism, pure and simple. In the corporate liberal societies, the Bismarckian welfare state, immensely extended, does less and less well by its poor and outcast. In socialist societies, free com munism does not come to be, labor is regimented, surplus value is mulcted and reinvested, and there is also a Power Elite. In both types, the alarming con sequences of big-scale technology and massive urbanization, directed by the State or by baronial corporations, make it doubtful that central authority is a workable structure. It could be said that most of the national states, once they had organized the excessive fragmentation of the later Middle Ages, outlived their usefulness by the seventeenth century. Their subsequent career has been largely their own aggrandizement. They have impeded, rather than helped, the advancing functions of civilization. And evidently in our times they cannot be allowed to go on. Perhaps we could be saved by the organization of a still more powerful supra-nation; but the present powers being what they are, this would require the very war that would do us in. And since present central powers are dan gerous and dehumanizing, why trust superpower and a central international organization? The anarchist alternative is more logical-try to decentralize and weaken top-down authority in the nation states, and come to interna tional organization by piecemeal functional and regional arrangements from below, in trade, travel. development. science, communications, health, etc. Thus, forobjective reasons, it is now quite respectable to argue for anarchy,


pacifism, or both, whereas even a generation ago such ideas were considered odd, absurd, utopian, or wicked. I do not mean that anarchy answers all ques tions. Rather, we have the dilemma; it seems that modern economies, technol ogies, urbanism, communications, and diplomacy demand ever tighter cen tralized control; yet this method of organization patently does not work. Or even worse: to cope with increasingly recurrent emergencies, we need unified information, central power, massive resources, repression, crash programs, hot lines; but just these things produce and heighten the emergencies. There

is real confusion here, shared by myself

.

Anarchism and the Young

In any case, now hundreds of thousands of young people, perhaps millions, call themselves anarchists-more so in Europe, of course, where there has been a continuing tradition of anarchist thought. It is hard to know how to assay this. There are isolated phrases with an anarchist resonance: "Do your thing!" "Participatory democracy," "I scoff at all national flags" (Daniel Cohn63


Bendit). These do not get us far, but certain attitudes and actions are more sig nificant. The young are severely uninterested in Great Power politics and deter rence "strategy." They disregard passport regulations and obviously want to do without frontiers. Since they are willing to let the Systems fall apart, they are not moved by appeals to Law and Order. They believe in local power, commun ity development, rural reconstruction, decentralist organization, town-meet ing decision making. They prefer a simpler standard of living and try to free themselves from the complex network of present economic relations. They balk at IBM cards in the school system. Though their protests generate vio lence, most tend to nonviolence. But they do not trust the due processes of administrators, either, and are quick to resort to direct action and civil disobe dience. All this adds up to the community anarchism of Kropotkin, the resist ance anarchism of Malatesta, the agitational anarchism of Bakunin, the anar chist progressive education of Ferrer, the guild socialism of William Morris, and the personalist politics of Thoreau. Yet in the United States at least, except for Thoreau (required reading in Freshman English), these thinkers are virtu ally unknown. The problematic character of youthful anarchism at present comes from the fact that the young are alienated; have no world for them. Among revo lutionary political philosophies, anarchism and pacifism alone do not thrive on alienation-unlike e.g., Leninism or fascism. They require a nature of things to give order, and a trust in other people not to be excessively violent; they cannot rely on imposed discipline to give the movement strength, nor on organized power to avert technological and social chaos. Thus, historically,


anarchism has been the revolutionary politics of skilled artisans (watchmak ers or printers) and of farmers-workers who do not need a boss; of workmen in dangerous occupations (miners and lumbermen) who learn to trust one another; of aristocrats who know the inside story and can economically afford to be idealistic; of artists and explorers who venture into the unknown and are

self-reliant; among professionals, progressive educators and architects have been anarchist. We would expect many students to be anarchist, because of their lack of ties, their commitment to the Republic of Letters and Science, and their

camaraderie; and so it was, among many European students of the classical type-just as others were drawn to elitist fascism. But contemporary students, under the conditions of mass education, are in their schedule very much like factory proletariat, and they are not authentically involved in their studies. Yet their camaraderie is strong, and in some respects they are like aristocrats en

masse. The effects are contradictory. They are daring in direct action, and they resist party discipline; they form communities, but they are mesmerized by 64


the charisma of administration and Power, and since they only know going to school, they are not ready to manage much. In both Europe and America, the confusion of alienated youth shows up in their self-contradictory amalgam of anarchist and Leninist thoughts and tactics, often within the same group and in the same action. In my biased opinion, their frank and clear insight and their spontaneous gut feeling are anarchist. They do not lose the woods for the trees, they feel where the shoe pinches, they have a quick and naive indignation and nausea, and they want freedom. What they really hate is not their countries, neither repressive com munism nor piggish capitalism, but how Modem Times have gone awry, the ubiquitous abuse of technology and administration, and the hypocritical dis tortion of great ideals. But their alienation is Leninist, bent on seizing Power. Having little world for themselves, they have no patience for growth; inevita bly frustrated, they get quickly angry; they want their turn on top in the Power structure, which is all they know; they think of using their youthful solidarity and fun-and-games ingenuity to make a putsch. As anarchists, they should be internationalist (and regionalist) and create an international youth movement; but in the United States, at least, their alienation betrays them into the stupidity of simply fighting the Cold War in reverse, "smashing capitalism" and "building socialism." Of course, this does not ally them with the Soviet Union, which in obvious ways looks uncomfortably like their own country and worse; about Russia, they tend to say nothing at all. They say they are allied with the underdeveloped socialist countries-China, Cuba, North Korea, North Vietnam-and all anticolonial


liberation movements. This is a generous impulse, and it provides them a rele vant activity that they can work at, trying to thwart American imperialist inter vention. But it is irrelevant in terms of providing models or theory for their own problems in the United States. I am afraid that an advantage of the "Third World" is that it is exotic, as well as starving; one does not need to know the inner workings. Certainly their (verbal) alliance with it has given the Leninist militants some dubious bedfellows-Nkrumah, Nasser, Kim II Sung, Sukarno, Che Guevara in Bolivia, etc. In the more actual situation of the Vietnam War protest, where young militants might have had some influence on American public opinion, I have always found it impossible to have a serious discussion with them whether it was to the advantage of the South Vietnamese farmers to have a collective Communist regime or just to get rid of the Americans and aim at a system of small landowners and co-operatives, as the radical Buddhists seemed to favor. To the Leninists it was more satisfactory to chant "Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh, the NLF is going to win"; but anarchists might prefer the Buddhist solution, since, as Marxists scornfully point out, "Anarchism is a peasant ide65


ology," and pacifists cannot help but see the usual consequences of war, the same old story for ten thousand years. His[Orically, the possibility of an anarchist revolution-decentralist, anti police, anti-parry, anti-bureaucracy, organized by voluntary association, and putting a premium on grassroots spontaneity-has always been anathema to Marxist Communists and has been ruthlessly suppressed. Marx expelled the anarchist unions from the International Workingmen's Association. Having used them to consolidate their own minority power, Lenin and Trotsky slaugh tered the anarchists in the Ukraine and at Kronstadr. Stalin murdered them in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War. Castro has jailed them in Cuba, and Gomulka in Poland. In the western press, anarchy is the term for chaotic riot and aimless defiance of authority; in official Marxist statements, it appears in the stereotype "bourgeois revisionists, infantile leftists, and anarchists." They are bourgeois revisionists because they want civil liberties, a less restricted economy, and a better break for fanners. They are infantile leftists because they want workers' management, less bureaucracy, and less class distinction. Youth and Power

The American youth are not really interested in political economy. Their "socialism" is a symbolic slogan, authentic in expressing disgust at the afflu ent standard of living and indignation at the existence of so many poor people. Historically, anarchists have been noncommittal or various about socialism, in the sense of collective ownership and management. Corporate capitalism, State capitalism, and State communism have all been unacceptable to anar


chists, because they trap people and push them around; there can easily be too much central planning. But pure communism, the pie-in-the-sky future of Marxists, connoting voluntary labor and free appropriation operating by community spirit, is an anarchist ideal. Yet Adam Smith's free enterprise, in its pure form of companies of active owner-managers competing in a free market, without monopoly, is also congenial [0 anarchists and was called anarchic in Smith's own time. There is an anarchist ring to Jefferson's agrarian notion that a man needs enough control of his subsistence, or tenure in his work, to be free of irresistible political pressure. Small community control-kib

butzim, workers' management in factories, producers' and consumers' co operatives-is congenial to anarchism. Underlying all anarchist thought is a hankering for peasant independence, craft guild self-management, and the democracy of the village meeting or of medieval Free Cities. ltis a question how all this can be achieved in modern technical and urban conditions, but in my opinion we could go a lot farther than we think if we set our sights on decency and freedom rather than on delusory greatness and suburban affluence. 66


If young Americans really consulted their economic interests, instead of their power propaganda or their generous sentiments, I think they would opt for the so-called Scandinavian or mixed economy, of big and small capitalism, producers' and consumers' co-operatives, independem farming, and State and municipal socialism, each with a strong influence. To this I would add a sector of pure communism, free appropriation adequate for decem poverty for those who do not want to make money or are too busy with nonpaying pursuits to make money (until society gets around to overwhelming them with the coin of the realm). Such a sector of pure communism would cost about 1 percent of our Gross National Product and would make our world both more livable and more productive. The advantage of a mixed system of this kind for the young is that it increases the opportunities for each one to find the milieu and style that suits him, whereas both the present American cash nexus and socialism necessarily process them and channel them. Despite their slogans of "Student Power" and "Power to the People," I do not think that the young want "power," but just to be taken into account and to be able to do their thing-just as, despite the bloodthirsty rhetoric, the most militant seem to be pacifist: with meticulous planning, they blow up a huge Selective Service headquarters and meticulously see to it that nobody is injured. (The slogan "Black Power" has more substance, since it means getting absentee landlords and foreign social workers, cops, and schoolteachers off the backs of the black communities; but here again, despite the bloodthirsty rhetoric, there has been little personal violence, except that instigated by the police.)


The young indeed want a revolutionary change, but not by the route of "taking over." So except for a while, on particular occasions, they simply cannot be manipulated to be the shock troops of a Leninist coup. If a large number of young people go along with actions organized by Trotskyites orthe Progressive Labor party or with some of the delusions of the various splinters of Students for a Democratic Society, it is because, in their judgment, the resulting disrup tion does more good than harm. And let me say that, compared with the arro gance, cold violence, and occasional insanity of our established institutions, the arrogance, hot-headedness, and all too human folly of the young are venial SlOS.

My real bother with the neD-Leninist wing of the New Left is that its abor tive manipulation of lively energy and moral fervor for a political revolution that will not be, and ought not to be, confuses the piecemeal social and cul tural change that is brightly possible. This puts me off, but of course it is their problem, and they have to do it in their own way. In my opinion, it is inauthen tic to do community development in order to "politicize" people, or to use a 67


good do-it-yourself project as a means of "bringing people into the Movement." Good things should be done for their own sake and will then generate their own appropriate momentum. The amazing courage of sticking to one's convic tions in the face of the police is insulted when it is manipulated as a means of "radicalizing." The loyalty of youth to one another is extraordinary, but it can turn to disillusionment if they perceive that they are being had. Many of the best youths went through this in the thirties, and it was a bad scene. In an important sense, the present bandying about of the word revolu tion, in its usual connotations, as in the present symposium, is counterrevolu tionary. It is too political. It seems to assume that there could be such a thing as a Good Society or Body Politic, whereas, in my judgment, the best that is to be hoped for is a tolerable society that allows the important activities of life to proceed-friends, sex, a11s and sciences, faith, the growing up of children with bright eyes, and the air and water clean. I myself have a conservative, maybe timid, disposition; yet I trust that the present regime in America will get a lot more roughing up than it has: from the young who resent being processed: from the blacks who have been left out; from housewives and others who buy real goods with hard money at inflation ary prices, hiked by expense accounts and government subsidies; from profes sionals demanding the right to practice their professions rather than be treated as personnel of the front office; not to speak of every live person in jeopardy because of the bombs and chemical-biological warfare. Our system can stand, and profit by, plenty of interruption of business as usual. It is not such a deli cate Swiss watch as all that. The danger is not in the loosening of the machine


but in its tightening up by panic repression. It is true that because of massive urbanization and interlocking technolo gies, advanced countries are vulnerable to catastrophic disruption, and this creates intense anxiety. But there is far more likelihood of breakdown from the respectable ambitions of Eastern Air Lines and Consolidated Edison than from the sabotage of revolutionaries or the moral collapse of hippies. In a modern massive complex society, it is said, any rapid global "revo lutionary" or "utopian" change can be incalculably destructive. I agree. But I wish people would remember that we have continually introduced big rapid changes that have in fact produced incalculable shock. Consider, in the past generation: the TV, mass higher schooling, the complex of cars, roads, and sub urbanization, mass air travel, the complex of plantations, government subsi dies to big planters, chain grocers, and forced urbanization, not to speak of the meteoric rise of the military industries. In all these there has been a big factor of willful decision; these have not been natural processes or inevitable catas trophes. And we have not yet begun to compound with the problems caused 68


by these utopian changes. Rather, in what seems an amazingly brief time, we have come to a political, cultural, and religious crisis, and talk of "revolution." All because of a few willful fools. A decade ago it was claimed that there was an end to ideology, for the problems of modem society have to be coped with pragmatically, function ally, piecemeal. This seems to have been a poor prediction, considering the deafening revival of Marxist-Leninist rhetoric and Law and Order rhetoric. Yet it was true, though not in the sense in which it was offered. The ideologi cal rhetoric is pretty irrelevant; but the pragmatic, functional, and piecemeal approach has not, as was expected, consigned our problems to the expertise of administrators and engineers but has thrown them to the dissenters. Relevant new thought has not been administrative and technological, but existential ist, ethical. and tacticaL Pragmatism has come to be interpreted to include the character of the agents as part of the problem to be solved; it is psychoana lytic; there is stress on engagement. (Incidentally, it is good Jamesian pragma tism.) Functionalism has come to mean criticizing the program and the func tion itself, asking who wants to do it and why, and is it humanly worth doing, is it ecologically sound. Piecemeal issues have gotten entangled with the political action of people affected by them. Instead of becoming more administrative as expected, every problem becomes politicaL The premises of expert planning are called into question. The credentials of the board of trustees are scruti nized. Professional and discipline have become dirty words. Terms like com


mitment, dialogue, confrontation, community, and do your thing are indeed anti-ideological-and sometimes they do not connote much other thought, either-but they are surely not what The End of Ideology had in mind. The Crisis of Authority

Our revolutionary situation is not a political one, and yet there is a crisis of authority. This is peculiar. There is a System and a Power Elite. But Americans do not identify with the ruling oligarchy, which is foreign to our tradition. A major part of it-the military-industrial, and the CIA, and FBI-even constitute a "hidden gov ernment" that does not thrive on public exposure. The daily scandals in the press seem to indicate that the hidden government is coming apart at the seams. Politicians carefully cajole the people's sensibilities and respect their freedom, so long as these remain private. And we have hit upon the follow ing accommodation: in high matters of State, War, and Empire, the oligarchy presents faits accomplis; in more local matters, people resent being pushed around. Until 1969, budgets in the billions were not debated, but small sums are debated. From a small center of decision, it has been possible to spend a 69


trillion dollars for arms, employ scores of millions of people, transform the universities, distort the future of science without public murmur; but where a regional plan might be useful-e.g., for depollurion or bener distribution of population-it fails because of a maze of jurisdictions and private complaints. In such a case, what is the real constitution? The social compact becomes acquiescence to the social machine, and citizenship consists in playing appro priate roles as producers, functionaries, and consumers. The machine is productive; the roles, to such as have them, are rewarding. In the galloping economy, the annual tax bite, which ordinarily strikes home to citizens eve rywhere, has been tolerable. (Only the draft of the young hits home, but this was noticed by few until the young themselves led the protest.) Then, human nature being what it is, the Americans have accepted the void of authentic sov ereignty by developing a new kind of allegiance to the rich and high-techno logical style itself, which provides the norm of correct behavior for workmen, inspires the supermarkets, and is used to recruit soldiers. A typical and ever-important class is the new professionals. Being essen tial to tend the engine and steer it, they are high-salaried and prestigious. An expensive system of schooling has been devised to prepare the young for these roles. At the same time, these professionals are mere personnel. There is no place for the autonomy, ethics and guild liberty that used to characterize pro fessionals as persons and citizens. Mutatis mutandis, the same can be said of the working class. It reminds one of the development of the Roman Empire, when personal rights were extended under the jus gentium, but the whole world became one prison.


On the other hand, large groups ofthe population are allowed to drop out as socially useless-farmers, racial minorities, the incompetent and deviant, the old, many of the young. When these are not altogether neglected, they are treated as objects of social engineering and are also lost as citizens. This too is like Rome. In an apolitical situation like this, it is hard for good observers to distin guish between riot and riotous protest, between a juvenile delinquent, a rebel without a cause, an inarticulate guerrilla, a protestant for legitimacy. Student protest may be adolescent identity crisis, alienation, or politics. On a poll, to say "I don't know" might mean one is judicious, a moron, or a cynic about the questions or the options. Conversely, good behavior may be rational assent, apathy, obsessional neurosis, or a dangerous pre-psychosis about to murder father, mother, and four siblings. With this background, we can understand the rash of "civil disobedience," "lawlessness," and the general crisis of authority. What happens politically in a country like the United States when the government steers a disastrous 70


course? There is free speech and assembly and a strong tradition of democ racy; it is false that these do not exist, and-with some grim exceptions-they have been pretty well protected. But the traditional structures of remedy have fallen into desuetude or become phony, or are terribly rusty. Critical profes sionals, bourgeois reformers, organizations of farmers and industrial workers, and political machines of the urban poor have been largely co-opted. Then, inevitably, protest appears at a more primitive or inchoate level. "Civil disobedients" are nostalgic patriots without available political means. The new "lawless" are the oppressed, without political means. Instead of having a program or party, protesters have to try, as Mario Savio said, to "throw themselves on the gears and levers to stop the machine." Scholars think up ways to stop traffic. Professionals form groups to nullify a law. Middle-class women go by trainloads to Washington to badger senators and are hauled off to jail for disorderly conduct. The physically oppressed burn down their own neighborhoods. The promising aspect of it is the revival of populism-sovereignty revert ing to the people. One can sense it infallibly during the big rallies, the March on Washington in '63 or the peace rallies in New York and at the Pentagon in '67 and in Washington in '69. Except among a few Leninists, the mood is euphoric, the heady feeling of the sovereign people invincible-for a couple of hours. The draft-card burners are proud. The children of Birmingham attacked by dogs look just like Christians. Physicians who support Dr. Levy feel Hippocratic, and professors who protest classified research feel academic right back to Abelard. On the other hand, the government with the mightiest


military power in the history of the world does not hasten to alter its course because of so much sweet determination. The police of the cities have pre pared arsenals of anti-riot weapons. Organized workmen beat up peace dem onstrators. Judge Hoffman does not allow relevant evidence to be heard in court. Tear gas is dropped on the Berkeley campus because some people have planted trees. I do not think this conflict is much the result of evil motives, though there are some mighty stupid people around. There are few "pigs" as well as few "subversives" and plenty of patriots on both sides, And I have not heard of any institutional changes that would indeed solve the inherent dilemmas of Modern Times. The crisis of legitimacy is a historical one. Perhaps "social con tract," "sovereignty," and "law" in any American sense are outmoded concepts. The Crisis of Belief

Among the young especially, the crisis is a religious one, deeper than politics. The young have ceased to "believe" in something, and the disbelief occurs at 71


progressively earlier years. What is at stake is not the legitimacy of American authority but of any authority_ The professions, the disciplines, reasoning about the nature of things-and even if there is a nature of things-these are all distrusted. Thus, for instance, the dissenting scientists and professors of MIT and Harvard, who want to change the direction of research and alter the priorities of technology, do not seem to me to understand the profound change in popular feeling. (They often seem just to be griping that the budget for Basic Research has been reduced.) Put it this way: modern societies have been operating as if religion were a minor and moribund part of the scheme of things. But this is unlikely. Men do not do without a system of meanings that everyone puts their hopes in, even if, or especially if, he doesn't know anything about it-what Freud called a "shared psychosis," meaningful simply because shared, and with the power that resides in dream. In advanced countries it is science and tech nology themselves that have gradually and finally triumphantly become the system of mass faith, not disputed by various political ideologies and national isms that have also been religious. Marxism called itself "scientific socialism," as against moral and utopian socialisms, and this has helped it succeed. For three hundred years, science and scientific technology had an unblemished and justified reputation as a wonderful adventure, pouring out practical benefits and liberating the spirit from the errors of superstition and traditional faith. During the twentieth century, science and technology have been the only generally credited system of explanation and problem-solving. Yet in our generation they have come to seem to many, and to very many of the


best ofthe young, as essentially inhuman, abstract, regimenting, hand in glove with Power, and even diabolical. Young people say that science is anti-life, it is a Calvinist obsession, it has been a weapon of white Europe to subjugate colored races, and manifestly-in view of recent scientific technology-people who think scientifically become insane. The immediate reasons for this shattering reversal of values are fairly obvious-Hitler's ovens and his other experiments in eugenics, the first atom bombs and their frenzied subsequent developments, the deterioration of the physical environment and the destruction of the biosphere, the catastrophes impending over the cities because of technological failures and psychologi cal stress, the prospect of a brainwashed and drugged 1984. Innovations yield diminishing returns in enhancing life. And instead of rejoicing, there is now widespread conviction that beautiful advances in genetics, surgery, computers, rocketry, or atomic energy will surely only increase human woe. In such a crisis, it is not sufficient to ban the military from the universi ties, and it will not even be sufficient, as liberal statesmen and many of the big 72


corporations envisage, to beat the swords into plowshares and tum to solving problems of transportation, desalinization, urban renewal, garbage disposal, cleaning up the air and water, and perfecting a contraceptive. If the present dif ficulty is religious and historical, it will be necessary to alter the entire relation ship of science, technology, and human needs, both in fact and in men's minds. I do not personally think that we will turn away from science. In spite of the fantasies of hippies, we are going to continue to live in a technological world; the question is, is that viable? The closest analogy I can think of is the Protestant Reformation, a change of moral allegiance: not giving up the faith, but liberation from the Whore of Babylon and a return to the faith purified. Science, the chief orthodoxy of modern times, has certainly been badly corrupted, but the deepest flaw of the affluent societies that has alienated the young is not, finally, imperialism, economic injustice, or racism (bad as these are) but the nauseating phoniness, triviality, and wastefulness, the cultural and moral scandal that Luther found when he went to Rome in 1510. And precisely science, which should have been the wind of truth to clear the air, has polluted the air, helped to brainwash, and provided weapons for war. I doubt that most young people today have even heard of the ideal of the dedicated researcher, truculent and incorruptible, and not getting any grants-the "German scien tist" that Sinclair Lewis described in Arrowsmith. Such a figure is no longer believable. I don't mean, of course, that he doesn't exist; there must be thou sands of him, just as there were good priests in 1510. The analogy to the Reformation is even more exact if we consider the


school system, from educational toys and Head Start up through the univer sities. This system is manned by the biggest horde of monks since the time of Henry VIII. It is the biggest industry in the country. It is mostly hocus-pocus. And the abbots of this system are the chiefs of Science-e.g., the National Science Foundation-who talk about reform but work to expand the school budgets, step up the curriculum, inspire the endless catechism of tests, and increase the requirements for mandarin credentials. These abuses are international, as the faith is. For instance, there is no essential difference between the military-industrial systems, or the school systems, of the Soviet Union and the United States. There are important dif ferences in way of life and standard of living, but the abuses of technology are very similar-pollution, excessive urbanization, destruction of the biosphere, weaponry, disastrous foreign aid. Our protesters naturally single out our own country, and the United States is the most powerful country, but the corrup tion we are speaking of is not specifically American nor capitalist; it is a disease of modern times. 73


But the analogy is to the Reformation; it is not to primitive Christianity or some other primitivism, the abandonment of technological civilization. There is indeed much talk about the doom of western civilization, young people cast horoscopes, and a few Adamites actually do retire into the hills. But for the great mass of mankind, that's not where it's at. Despite all the movements for National Liberation, there is not the slightest interruption to the universaliz ing of western civilization. including most of its delusions. into the so-called Third World. Needless to say. the prospect of a new Reformation is a terrifying one. Given the intransigence and duplicity of established Power on the one hand, and the fanaticism of the protesters on the other, we may be headed for a


Thirty Years' War.

74

Some Prima Facie O bjections to Decentralism hroughout our society, a centralizing style of organizing has been pushed

T so far as to become ineffective and wasteful, humanly stultifying, and ruinous to democracy. It is so in industries, government, labor unions, schools and science, culture and agriculture. And the tight interlocking of these central organizations has created, in my opinion, a critical situation. Modest, direct, or independent action has become extremely difficult in almost every function of society_ We need at present a strong admixture of decentralism; the problem is where, how much, and how to get it. In a centralized system, the function to be performed is the goal of the organization rather than of any persons (except as they identify with the organization). The persons are personnel. Authority is top-down. Information is gathered from below in the field, is processed to be usable by those above. Decisions are made in headquarters, and policy, schedule, and standard pro cedure are transmitted downward by chain of command. The enterprise as a whole is divided into departments of operation to which personnel are


assigned with distinct roles, to give standard performance. This is the system in Mr. Goldwater's department store, in the Federal government and in the State governments, in most elementary and higher education, in the CIO, in hospitals, in neighborhood renewal, in network broadcasting, and in the deals that chain grocers make with farmers. The system was designed for disciplin ing armies, for bureaucratic record-keeping and tax-collection, and for certain kinds of mass-production. It has now pervaded every field. The principle of decentralism is that people are engaged in the function they perform; the organization is how they co-operate. Authority is delegated away

from the top as much as possible and there are many centers of decision and policy-making. Information is conveyed and discussed in face-to-face contacts between field and headquarters. And each person becomes aware of the whole operation. He works at it in his own way according to his capacities. Groups arrange their own schedules. Historically, this system of voluntary association has yielded most of the values of civilization, but it is thought to be entirely unworkable under modern conditions and the very sound of it is strange. 75


Now if, lecturing at a college, I happen to mention that some function of society which is highly centralized could be much decentralized without loss of efficiency or perhaps with a gain in efficiency, at once the students want to talk about nothing else. This insistence of theirs used to surprise me, and

I

tested it experimentally by slipping in a decentralist remark during lectures on entirely different subjects. The students unerringly latched onto the remark. In their questions, for twenty minutes they might pursue the main theme-e.g. nuclear pacifism or even the sexual revolution-but they returned to decen tralization for many hours, attacking me with skepticism, hot objections, or hard puzzlers. From their tone, it is clear that something is at stake for their existence. They feel trapped in the present system of society that allows them so little say or initiative, and that indeed is like the schooling that they have been enduring for twelve to sixteen years. The querulousness and biting sarcasm mean that, if decentralization

is possible, they have become needlessly resigned; they hotly

defend the second best that they have opted for instead. But the seriousness and hard questions are asked with a tone of skeptical wistfulness that [will be able to resolve all difficulties. If I confess at some point that

I don't know the

answer, at once the students invent answers for me, to prove that decentraliza tion

is possible after all. Naturally at each college we go over the same ground. The very sameness

of the discussion is disheartening evidence that the centralist style exists as a mass-superstition, never before questioned in the students' minds. If I point to some commonplace defect of any centralized system, and that leaps to the eye


in the organization of their own college, I am regarded as a daring sage. They have taken for granted that there can be no other method of organization. So let me here discuss these usual preliminary objections. Decentralization is not lack oforderorplanning, buta kind ofco-ordination thatrelies on different motives for integration and cohesiveness than top-down direction, standard rules, and extrinsic rewards like salary and status. It is not "anarchy." (But of course most Anarchists, like the anarcho-syndicalists or the community-anarchists, have not been "anarchists" either, but decentralists.)

The Example of Science As an example of decentralist co-ordination, the anarchist Prince Kropotkin, who was a geographer, used to point spectacularly to the history of western science from the heroic age of Vesalius, Copernicus, and Galileo up to his own time of Pasteur, Curie, Kelvin, and J. J. Thomson. The progress of science, in all branches, was exquisitely co-ordinated. There were voluntary associations, publications, regional and international conferences. The PhD system guar76

SOME P R I M A FACIE OBJECTIONS TO DECENTRALISM

anteed that new research would be speedily disseminated to several hundred university libraries. There was continual private correspondence, even across warring boundaries. Yet in this vast common enterprise, so amazingly produc tive, there was no central direction whatever. The chief bond of cohesion, of course, was that all scientists had the common aim of exploring Nature, as well as their personal or clique rivalries. The delicate integration of effort occurred because they followed the new data or worked with the frontier theories. It was almost uniquely rare-so far as we know: the case of Mendel is famous-that important work dropped out of the dialogue. Most other big objective values, like beauty or compassion, have also thrived by voluntary association and independent solitude (although the tech nique of theological salvation has tended to be centralist). Almost by defini tion, the progress of social justice has been by voluntary association, since the central authority is what is rebelled against. And of course, to preserve liberty, the American political system was deliberately designed as a polarity of cen tralist and decentralist organizations, limiting the power of the Sovereign and with built-in checks and balances at every level. But we must also remember that in its early period, celebrated by Adam Smith, the free enterprise system of partnerships and vigilant joint stockhold ers was, in theory, a model of decentralized co-ordination, as opposed to the centralized system of mercantilism and royal patents and monopolies that it replaced. It placed an absolute reliance on the voluntary association and on the cohesive influence of natural forces: Economic Man and the Laws of the


Market. Pretty soon, however, the stockholders stopped attending to business and became absentee investors or even gamblers on the Stock Exchange. And almost from the beginning in this country, notably in the bank and the tariff, there was a revival of State monopolies.

Some Criteria for Decentralization A student asks, "But how can you decentralize air traffic control?"

You can't. Many functions are central by their nature. Let me quickly enu merate some of the chief kinds. (The process and use of centralizing is in itself a fascinating subject, but this article is about the shortcomings of centraliza tion, not its virtues.) Central authority is necessary where there are no district limits and some thing positive must be done, as in epidemic control or smog control, or when an arbitrary decision is required and there is not time for reflection, or when we have to set arbitrary standards for a whole field, but the particular stand ards are indifferent, e.g. weights and measures or money. 77


Centralization is temporarily necessary when an emergency requires the concentration of all powers in a concerted effort. (Here the decentralist alter native would be to scatter or go underground.) But history has shown that emergency centralization can be fateful, for the centralized organization tends to outlive the emergency, and then its very existence creates a chronic emer gency; people soon become helpless without its direction. Central authority is convenient to perform routine or "merely" adminis trative functions when we have more important things to do. This is the Marxist

theory of the withering away of the State to "mere" administration. But this too can be fateful, for administration soon encroaches on everything else. It is thus that the "executive secretary" of an organization ends up running the show. Central organization is the most rational when the logistics of a situation outweighs consideration of the particulars involved. These are all the cases of ticketing and tax-collecting, where one person is like another; or the mass production and distribution of a standard item that is good enough and that everybody needs. Besides, there are monopolies that must be regulated and licensed by central authority (or nationalized). Some monopolies are natural or become so by circumstances, like urban water supply. Some enterprises become monopolistic because they are so heavily capitalized that competition is prohibitively risky or wasteful. They grow until they become the inevitable nature of things, and then must be so treated. For instance, the railroads of Europe were decentrally planned and constructed, with voluntary agreement on gauges and schedules; but eventually, as monopolies, they were national ized and partly internationalized.


My bias is decentralist, yet in some functions

I think we need more cen

tralization than we have. For instance, there ought to be uniform modular standards in building materials and fixtures. Building is a typical example of how we do things backwards: where there ought to be decentralization, in the design which requires artistry, and in the decision of each neighborhood on how it wants to live, we get bureaucratic or routine design and the standards of absentee sociologists or the profits of a promoter; but where there could

be important savings, in materials and the process of construction, e.g. mass producing a standard bathroom, we do not standardize, Similarly, there ought to be standardization of machine parts and design. especially for domestic machinery and cars, to make repairs easier. Again, it is certainly absurd for the expensive enterprise of space exploration to be internationally competi tive, instead of centrally planning and departmentalizing the work, with crews and honors shared. Finally, automatic and computer technology is by nature highly central izing, in its style and in its applications, and this is a massive phenomenon of 7.


the present and immediate future. Where it is relevant, this technology should be maximized as quickly as possible and many such plants should be treated as monopolies. But perhaps the profoundest problem thatfaces modern society is to decide in whatfunctions the automatic and computer style is not relevant, and there sharply to curtail it or eliminate it. A Marxist student objects that blurring the division of labor, local option, face-to-face communication, and other decentralist positions are relics of a peasant ideology, provincial and illiberal. In fact, there have always been two strands to decentralist thinking. Some authors, e.g. Lao-tse or Tolstoy, make a conservative peasant critique of cen tralized court and town as inorganic, verbal, and ritualistic. But other authors, e.g. Proudhon or Kropotkin, make a democratic-urban critique of centralized

bureaucracy and power, including feudal-industrial power, as exploiting, inef ficient and discouraging initiative. In our present era of state socialism, cor porate feudalism, regimented schooling, brainwashing mass communications, and urban anomie, both kinds of critique make sense. We need to revive both peasant self-reliance and the democratic power of professional and technical guilds. Any decentralization that could occur at present would inevitably be post urban and post-centralist; it could not be provincial. There is no American who has not been formed by national TV, and no region that has not been homoge nized by the roads and chain stores. A model of present-day decentralization is the Israeli kibbutz. Some would say that such a voluntary community is fanati cal, but no one would deny that it is cosmopolitan and rationalistic; it is post


centralist and post-urban. Decentralizing has its risks. Suppose that the school system of a north ern city were radically decentralized, given over to the parents and teachers of each school. Without doubt some of the schools would be Birchite and some would be badly neglected. Yet it is hard to imagine that many schools would be worse than the present least-common-denominator. There would certainly be more experimentation. There would be meaningful other choices to move to, and it could be arranged that all the schools would exist in a framework of general standards that they would have to achieve, or suffer the consequences. "States Rights"

Invariably some student argues that without the intervention of the federal government the Negroes in the South will never get their civil rights. This mayor may not be so, but certainly most progress toward civil rights has come from local action that has embarrassed and put pressure on Washington. And the Negro organizations themselves have been decentrally co-ordinated; as 79


Dr. King has pointed out, the "leadership" is continually following the locali ties. But the basic error of this student is to think that the "States Rights" of the segregationists is decentralist (although an authentic regionalism would be decentralist). If each locality indeed had its option, the counties where the Negroes are in a majority would have very different rules! And again, there would be a meaningful choice for other Negroes to move to. The relation of decentralization to physical and social mobility is an important topic; let us stay with it for another page. As the example of science has shown, it is possible to have decentralist community without territorial community. Yet decentralist philosophies have prized stability, "rootedness," subtle awareness of environment, as a means to the integration of the domes tic, technical, economic, political, and cultural functions of life, and to provide a physical community in which the young can grow up. Americans have always been quick to form voluntary associa tions-Tocqueville mentions the trait with admiration; yet, Americans have always been mobile, usually going away, individuals and families leaving com munities that did not offer enough opportunity, in order to try new territory known only by hearsay. Historically, the country was open at the margins, because of either the geographical frontier or new jobs that attracted immi grants. When people settled, they again formed voluntary associations. Thus, to a degree, voluntary mobility favored decentralization. On the other hand, the new ties and settlements tended to become more homogenous and national. At present, however, the country is closed at the margins, yet the physical


(and social) mobility is even greater. Negroes migrate north because the share cropping has failed and they are barred from the factories; Northern middle class whites move to the suburbs to escape the Negroes; farm families have dwindled to 8 percent. Unfortunately, none of these groups is moving to any thing. And much moving is ordered by the central organization itself; national corporations send their employees and families to this or that branch; univer sities raid one another for staff; promoters and bureaucrats dislocate tenants for urban redevelopment. The Hope of Community

Neglected, such conditions must end up in total anomie, lack of meaning ful relation to the environment and society. There seem to be two alternative remedies. One was proposed forty years ago by Le Corbusier: to centralize and homogenize completely, so that one dwelling place is exactly like another, with identical furniture, services, and surroundings. When all live in identical hotel rooms, mobility does not involve much dislocation. The other alternative is to 80


build communities where meaningful voluntary association is again possible; that is, to decentralize. This has, of course, been the wistful aim of suburban ism, and it continually appears in the real estate advertisements. But a suburb is not a decentralist community; its purposes, way of life, and decisions are determined by business headquarters, the national standard of living, and the bureau of highways. The hope of community is in people deciding important matters for themselves. Then a student raises a related objection: decentralism is for small towns; it cannot work with big dense populations. But this objection has no merit. Decentralism is a kind of social organization; it does not involve geographical isolation, but a particular sociological use of geography. In important respects, a city of five million can be decentrally organized as many scores of unique communities in the framework of a busy metropolis. Usually in modern urban administration, the various municipal func tion-school, job-induction, post office, social work, health, police and court for misdemeanors, housing and rent control, election district, etc.-are divided into units only for the administrative convenience of City Hall. The districts do not coincide with one another nor with neighborhoods. A citizen with business or complaint must seek out the district office of each depart ment, or perhaps go to City Hall. And correspondingly, there is no possible forum to discuss the co-ordination of the various functions except at the very top, with the mayor or before the council. Decentralist organization would rather follow the actuality ofliving in an urban community, where housing, schooling, shopping, policing, social serv


ices, politics are integrally related. Each neighborhood should have a local City Hall. Such arrondissements could have considerable autonomy within the municipal administration that controls transit, sanitation, museums, etc., whatever is necessarily or conveniently centralized. Taxes could be collected centrally and much of the take divided among the neighborhoods to be budg eted locally. For the average citizen, the convergence of all kinds of related businesses in one local center is not only convenient but must lead to more acquaintance ship and involvement. Poor people especially do not know their way around, are stymied by forms to fill out, and have no professional help; they are defeated by fighting City Hall and soon give up. Besides, each neighborhood has interlock ing problems peculiar to itself. These can be reasonably confronted by citizens and local officials, but they are lost in the inner politics of central bureaucra cies that have quite different axes to grind. A neighborhood should certainly police itself, according to its own mores, and avoid the present police brutality inevitable in trying to impose an unworkable city-wide conformity. 81


Urbanism A neighborhood so constituted might learn to decide on its own redevelop

ment. In programs for urban renewal, the federal government follows the traditional formula of balancing centralism and decentralism and asks for approval of plans by the local community. Cities therefore set up local "plan ning boards." But this works out as follows: occasionally, middle-class resi dential neighborhoods can organize themselves to prevent any change what ever; poor people are entirely passive to the powers that be; usually, the boards are rubber stamps for City Hall and promoters. The say of a neighborhood in its destiny can be meaningful only if the neighborhood has begun to be con scious of itself as a community. For this, mere "consent" or "participation" is not enough; there must be a measure of real initiating and deciding, grounded in acquaintance and trust. However, the question is not whether decentralization can work in dense urban populations, but how [0 make it work, for it is imperative. The increase of urban social disease and urban mental disease is fundamentally due to pow erlessness, resignation, and withdrawal. People's only way to assert vitality is to develop symptoms. The central authorities try to cope as stern or hygienic

caretakers; the citizens respond by becoming "community-dependent"-in jail, in the hospital, on relief; that is, they become chronic patients. With many, this has gone on for two or three generations. Yet something further needs to be said about big dense populations. In my opinion, there is a limit of urban density and urban sprawl beyond which no form of social organization, centralist or decentralist, can cope. Urban crowd


ing creates a peculiar climate of both too many social relations and a kind of sensory and emotional deprivation. Instead of contact and communication, there is noise and withdrawal. It is no different than among John Calhoun's overcrowded rodents who become confused and die. E.g. the population density in Central Harlem, sixty-seven thousand persons per square mile, is nearly three times that of New York City as a whole. Even apart from the other unfavorable conditions of the Negroes, such crowding itself is pathological, overstimulating yet culturally impoverishing, destructive of solitude, exces sively and brutally policed, Our degree of urbanization is beyond reason. In this country we have the symptoms of a "population explosion" at the same time that vast and beau tiful rural regions have become depopulated. In the present set-up, only big operators with migrant labor can make a go of farming, and the farm subsi dies work almost entirely in favor of this group alone. Except for a few earnest but powerless voices, there is general agreement to let farming-as-a-way-of life die out. Yet no effort whatever is made to find urban substitutes for the 82


independence, multifarious skills, community spirit, and extended family that were rural values. During the Great Depression, the Roosevelt administration made some effort to support subsistence farming, as a factor of social stability and to relieve both rural and urban misery. But with the return of prosperity, nothing further came of it. (Let me say that there was a shaggy decentralism in many parts of the early New Deal.)

Decentralism and "Human Nature" A student hotly objects that decentralism is humanly unrealistic, it "puts too much faith in human nature" by relying on intrinsic motives like interest in the job and voluntary association. Another student mentions Rousseau, who is still academically out of fashion since his debunking by Professor Babbitt a generation ago. (Jefferson, too, is now getting his lumps.) This objection is remarkably off-base. My experience is that most decen tralists are crotchety and skeptical and tend rather to follow Aristotle than Rousseau. We must avoid concentration of power precisely because we fallible;

quis cuswdier cuswdes? Democracy,

are

Aristotle says, is to be preferred

because it is the "least evil" form of government, since it divides power among many. I think the student states the moral issue upside down. The moral ques tion is not whether men are "good enough" for a type of social organization, but whether the type of organization is useful to develop the potentialities of intelligence. grace, and freedom in men. More deeply, of course, the distrust of "human nature" is anxious con


formism. One must save face, not make a mistake in any detail; so one clings to an assigned role. But unfortunately, the bigger the organization. the more face to save. For instance, we shall see that the government Peace Corps is many times as expensive as similar less official operations largely because an errant twenty-year-old well-digger might become an International Incident, so one cannot be too careful in selecting him. Convenience of supervision overrides performance. And the more "objective" the better: if the punch-card approves,

no one is gUilty. A fatal hallmark of decentralist enterprises is their variety in procedure and persons; how can one

know, with a percentage validity, that

these methods and persons are right? Morally, all styles of social organization are self-proving. for people understand the rightness of what everybody in fact does. But different styles have different norms. The centralizing style makes for both petty conforming and admiration for bigness. The more routine and powerless people are, the more they are mesmerized by extrinsic proofs of production and power. An enterprise that is designed on a small scale for a particular need of particular 83


people comes to be regarded as though it were nothing at all. To win attention and support, it must call itself a Pilot Project, promising mighty applications. Nevertheless, still deeper than these neurotic confusions, there is, in my opinion, an authentic confusion in the face of unprecedented conditions of modern times, that makes for rigidity and fear of social experiment. A student says, "We could afford to experiment if it were not for the Chinese, the Cubans, the crime rate, the unemployment, the space race, the population explosion." The leap in technology, the galloping urbanization, nuclear weapons, the breakdown of the colonial system-all involve threats and dilemmas. The inevitable response of people is to rally to the style of strict control by experts. In emergencies, centralized organization seems to make sense and often does make sense. It is also comfortingly dictatorial. Finally the moral objection is stated also the opposite way: decentraliz ,

ing is impossible not because people are incapable, but because the powers that-be won't allow it. (This student is an Angry Young Man.) Granting that, in some areas, decentralization is workable, how could it possibly be brought about? We cannot expect central powers to delegate autonomy any more than we can expect the Nation-States to give up any of their sovereignty and gran deur. Indeed. the tendency is entirely in the other direction: toward bigger cor porations, combinations and tie-ins, toward tighter scheduling and grading in education, toward increased standardization and the application of automatic and computer technology in every field, and of course toward the increase of power in Washington to become the greatest landlord. the greatest sponsor of research and the greatest policeman.


All this is undeniable. Yet the situation is not so black and white. There are also forces in the other direction. I must assume, for instance, that it is not a social accident that I am writing a book on the subject of decentralization. Voluntary Associations

In principle, there are two ways in which an overcentralized system can become more mixed. Either voluntary associations form spontaneously because of pressing needs to which the central system is irrelevant or antipathetic, or the central authority itself chooses, or is forced, to build in decentral parts because

its method simply is not working. Certainly there are major social trends toward spontaneous do-it-yourself associations. We have already noticed the spontaneity. localism. and decen tralist federation of the Negro civil rights movement. as opposed to the more conventional maneuvering of the Urban League and the older NAACP. But this is part of a general spread of paralegal demonstrating, boycotting, and show of power that clearly express dissent with formal procedures that are not effec84


tive. Nonviolent activism is peculiarly epidemic; it immediately provides some thing to do rather than being merely balked-a beautiful feature of it, perhaps, is to balk the authorities-yet it does not require forming political parries or organizing private armies. (When the nonviolence is authentic, indeed, its very action is decentralizing; it restores the opposition to being persons rather than personnel. Violence has the contrary effect.) Do-It-Yourself can be para-institutional. if not overtly paralegal. Beat youth withdraw from the economy, Off-Broadway withdraws from Broadway. Students quit famous universities because they decide they are not being edu cated; then they form, for instance, the Northern Student Movement in order to tutor backward urban children; but then the Northern Student Movement decides that the public school curriculum is inadequate too, and the tutors will teach according to their own lights. Freedom Now sets up what amounts to a "para-party" in Mississippi. But there is a similar tone within the political framework. Contrasted with older "reform" movements, which were devoted to purging the bosses and grafters, the new urban reform movements rapidly constitute themselves

ad hoc for a concrete purpose, usually to block outrageous encroachments of governments or big institutions. Unfortunately, they usually do not then have a counter-program; they stop with exercising a veto, lose steam, and eventu ally lose the issue anyway. All this kind of ferment is what Arthur Waskow calls "creative disorder." But also, in my opinion, the startling strength of know-nothing move ments in the country is importantly due to justified dissatisfaction with the


centralization, exactly as they claim when they reiterate the slogan "govern ment must not do what people can do for themselves." By "people" our reac tionary friends seem mainly to mean corporations, which are not people, yet I do not think that liberals and progressives pay attention to the under lying gripe, the loss of self-determination. The liberals glibly repeat that the complex problems of modem times do not allow of simplistic solutions; but what is the use of solutions about which one has no say, and which finally are not the solutions of one's own problems? I do not notice any significant disposition of central powers to decen

tralize themselves. Rather, their disposition, when the organization begins to creak, is to enlarge it further by adding new centralized bureaus and overseers, to stall by appointing committees without power, to disregard difficulties and hope that they will go away, to call hard cases "deviant" and put them out of circulation. Nevertheless, there are actual examples to show how decentralization can be built in. 85


The management of a giant corporation-General Motors is the classical example-can shrewdly decide to delegate a measure of autonomy to its cor porate pans, because more flexible enterprising is more profitable in the long run. Or a huge physical plant can be geographically dispersed and somewhat decentralized, to save on labor costs and get better tax breaks. Naturally these motives do nothing at all for the great majority of subordinates. More interesting for our purposes is the multifarious application of indus trial psychology. For the most part, the psychologists are decentralist and have taught the opposite wisdom to "scientific business management." Rather than subdividing the workman further, they have urged the efficiency of allow ing more choice and leeway, asking for suggestions from below, increasing "belonging." To give a typical example: it has been found to be more productive in the long run for half-a-dozen workmen to assemble a big lathe from begin ning to end and have the satisfaction of seeing it carried away, than to subdi vide the operation on a line. Needless to say, our industrial psychologists cannot pursue their instincts to the logical conclusion of workers' management. But questions of degree are

not trivial. Consider the following example. In some areas of England it is tra ditional to work by a Gang or collective contract. (This has been studied by Professor Melman of Columbia University.) A group of workmen agree to com plete in a certain period a certain quantity of piece-work for which they are paid a sum of money divided equally. The capitalist provides the machinery and materials, but everything else-work rules, methods, schedule, hiring-is left to group decision. This arrangement has proved feasible in highly skilled


work like building and in semi-skilled work on automobile assembly lines. The group may be half-a-dozen or a couple of thousand. Humanly, the arrange ment has extraordinary advantages. Men exchange jobs and acquire many skills; they adjust the schedule to their convenience (or pleasures); they bring in and train apprentices; they invent labor-saving devices, since it is to their own advantage to increase efficiency; they cover for one another when sick or for special vacations. Obviously such a system, so amazingly at variance with our top-down regulation, time-clock discipline, labor union details and com petitive spirit, is hard to build into most of our industry, Yet it would suit a lot

of it and make a profound difference. Where would it suit? How could it be tailored? An attempt to build in decentralization is at present occurring in the New York school system. Because of a combination of near-riots in poor neighbor hoods, some spectacular run-of-the-mill scandals, and the post-Sputnik spot light on upgrading, a new and pretty good Board has been appointed. Deciding that the system is over-centralized, these gentlemen have resuscitated twenty86


five local districts-averaging forty thousand children each!-and appointed local Boards with rather indefinite powers, to serve as liaison to the neigh borhoods. But unlike the case of urban renewal planning boards mentioned above the intention is to delegate positive powers; and anyway, the remarkably strong-minded body of people who have been appointed to the local school boards have no intention of being rubber stamps. At present, there is a jock eying for position and power. The local boards are empowered to hold budget hearings and "suggest" allocation of money. What does this mean? Could they suggest to eliminate some of the curriculum and services and substitute others? Some local board members want to decentralize radically, making the field superintendents and the local boards nearly autonomous within the big system, as is reasonable, since the different neighborhoods have different con ditions and therefore have different curricular, staff and service needs. One of the Manhattan boards, curious to know what its sister-boards were doing, convened a meeting of the five Manhattan boards, and they agreed to exchange minutes. At once the central board protested and forbade such attempts at federation. "If you issue joint statements," they pointed out, "people will think that you speak for the school system." "What can you do about it?" asked the locals; "since you have called us into existence, we exist, and since we exist, we intend to act." I mention this incident not because it is important in itself, but because it is at the heart of the constitutional problem of centralization and decentralization. These. then are prima facie objections raised by college students. Decentralization is disorderly and "anarchic." You cannot decentralize air


traffic-control and public health. What about automation? Decentralization is a peasant ideology. It makes for "States Rights" injustice. It is unworkable with big dense populations. It implies an unrealistic faith that human nature is good. It is impossible to go against the overwhelming trend toward bigness and power. Discouragingly in such discussions. the students keep referring to "your system" or "the decentralist system." But I am not proposing a "system." It is hard to convince college students that it is improbable that there could be a single appropriate style of organization or economy to fit all the functions of society, any more than there could be a single mode of education ("going to school") that suits almost everybody, or that there is a "normal" behavior that is healthy for almost everybody. It seems to me as follows: we are in a period of excess centralization. It is demonstrable that in many functions this style is economically inefficient, technologically unnecessary and humanly damaging. Therefore we ought to adopt a political maxim: to decentralize where, how and how much is expe87


dient. But where, how, and how much are empirical questions; they require research and experiment. In the existing over-centralized climate of opinion, it is just this research and experiment that we are not getting. Among all the departments, agencies and commissions in Washington, I have not heard of one that deals with the organizational style of municipalities, social work, manufacturing, merchan dizing, or education, in terms of their technical and economic efficiency and their effects on persons. Therefore, I urge students who are going on to gradu


ate work to choose their theses in this field.

88

The Black Flag of Anarchism

he wave of student protest in the advanced countries overrides national

T boundaries, racial differences, the ideological distinctions of fascism, cor porate liberalism and communism. Needless to say, officials of the capitalist countries say that the agitators are Communists, and Communists say they are bourgeois revisionists. In my opinion, there is a totally different political phi losophy underlying-it is anarchism. The actual "issues" are local and often seem triviaL The troubles are usually spontaneous, though there is sometimes a group bent on picking a fight in the brooding unrest. A play is banned, a teacher is fired, a student publication is censored, university courses are not practical or facilities are inadequate, the administration is too rigid, there are restrictions on economic mobility or there is technocratic mandarinism, the poor are treated arrogantly, students are drafted for an unjust war-any of these, anywhere in the world, may set off a major explosion, ending with police and broken heads. The spon taneity, the concreteness of the issues, and the tactics of direct action are


themselves characteristic of anarchism. Historically, anarchism has been the revolutionary politics of skilled arti sans and farmers who do not need a boss; of workmen in dangerous occupa tions, e.g., miners and lumbermen, who learn to trust one another, and of aris tocrats who can economically afford to be idealistic. It springs up when the system of society is not moral, free or fraternal enough. Students are likely to be anarchists but, in the immense expansion of schooling everywhere, they are new as a mass and they are confused about their position. Political anarchism is rarely mentioned and never spelled out in the press

and TV. West and East, journalists speak of "anarchy" to mean chaotic riot and aimless defiance of authority; or, they lump together "Communists and anar chists" and "bourgeois revisionists, infantile leftists and anarchists." Reporting the troubles in France, they have had to distinguish Communists and anar chists because the Communist labor unions promptly disowned the anarchist students, but no proposition of the anarchists has been mentioned except for Daniel Cohn-Bendit's vaunting statement, "I scoff at all national flags!" 89


The possibility of an anarchist revolution-decentralist, anti-police, anti-party, anti-bureaucratic, organized by voluntary association, and putting a premium on grassroots spomaneity-has always been anathema [0 Marxist Communists and has been ruthlessly suppressed. Marx expelled the anar chist unions from the International Workingmen's Association; Lenin and Trotsky slaughtered the anarchists in the Ukraine and at Kronstadt; Stalin murdered them during the Spanish Civil War; Castro has jailed them in Cuba, and Gomulka in Poland. Nor is anarchism necessarily socialist, in the sense of espousing common ownership. That would depend. Corporate capitalism, state capitalism and state communism are all unacceptable, because they trap people, exploit them and push them around. Pure communism, meaning volun tary labor and free appropriation, is congenial to anarchists. But Adam Smith's economics, in its pure form, is also anarchist, and was so called in his time; and there is an anarchist ring to Jefferson's agrarian notion that a man needs enough comrol of his subsistence to be free of irresistible pressure. Underlying all anarchist thought is a hankering for peasant independence, craft guild self management and the democracy of medieval Free Cities. Naturally it is a ques tion how all can be achieved in modern technical and urban conditions. In my opinion, we could go a lot further than we think if we set our sights on decency and freedom rather than delusory "greatness" and suburban "affluence." In this country, where we have no continuing anarchist tradition, the young hardly know their tendency at all. I have seen the black flag of anarchy at only a single demonstration, when 165 students burned their draft cards on the Sheep Meadow in New York, in April, 1967-naturally, the press noticed


only the pretentiously displayed Vietcong flags that had no connection with the draft-card burners. Recemly at Columbia, it was the red flag that waved from the roof. The American young are usually ignorant of political history. The generation gap, their alienation from tradition, is so profound that they cannot remember the correct name for what they in fact do. This ignorance has unfortunate consequences for their movement and lands them in wild contradictions. In the United States, the New Left has agreed to regard itself as Marxist and speaks of "seizing power" and "building socialism," although it is strongly opposed to centralized power and it has no

economic theory whatever for a society and technology like ours. It is painful to hear students who bitterly protest being treated like IBM cards, neverthe less defending Chairman Mao's little red book; and Carl Davidson, editor of

New Left Notes, has gone so far as to speak of "bourgeois civil liberties." In the Communist bloc, unlike the Latin countries, the tradition is also wiped out. For instance, in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Yugoslavia, students who want civil liberties and more economic freedom are called bourgeois, although in fact 90

THE BLACK FLAG OF ANARCHISM

they are disgusted by the materialism of their own regimes and they aspire to workers' management, rural reconstruction, the withering away of the State, the very anarchism that Marx promised as "pie in the sky." Worst of all, not recognizing what they are, the students do not find one another as an international movement, though they have a common style, tactics and culture. Yet there are vital goals, which in my opinion, can be achieved only by the immense potential power of youth acting internationally. Certainly, as a first order of business, they ought to be acting in concert to ban the nuclear bombs of France, China, Russia, and the United States; otherwise they will not live out their lives. The protesting students are anarchist because they are in a historical situ ation to which anarchism is their only possible response. During all their life time the Great Powers have been in the deadlock of the Cold War, stockpiling nuclear weapons. Vast military-industrial complexes have developed, tech nology has been abused, science and the universities have been corrupted. Education has turned into processing, for longer years and at a faster pace. Centralized social engineering is creating the world forecast in Orwell's 1984. Manipulated for national goals they cannot believe in, the young are alienated. On every continent there is excessive urbanization and the world is heading for ecological disaster. Under these conditions, the young reject authority, for it is not only immoral but functionally incompetent, which is unforgivable. They think they can do better themselves. They want to abolish national frontiers. They do not believe in Great Power. Since they are willing to let the Systems fall apart, they


are not moved by appeals to law and order. They believe in local power, com munity development, rural reconstruction, decentralist organization, so that they can have a say. They prefer a simpler standard of living. Though their pro tests generate violence, they themselves tend to nonviolence and are interna tionally pacifist. But they do not trust the due process of administrators and are quick to resort to direct action and civil disobedience. All this adds up to the community anarchism of Kropotkin, the resistance anarchism of Malatesta, the agitational anarchism of Bakunin, the Guild Socialism of William Morris, the personalist politics of Thoreau. The confused tangle of anarchist and authoritarian ideas was well illus trated by the actions of Students for a Democratic Society in leading the protest at Columbia. The two original issues, to purge the university of the military and to give local power to the Harlem community, were anarchist in spirit-though, of course, they could be supported by liberals and Marxists as well. The direct action, of nonviolently occupying the buildings, was classically anarchist. 91


The issues were not strictly bona fide, however, for the SOS chapter was carrying out a national plan to embarrass many schools during the spring, using any convenient pretexts, in order to attack the System. In itself, this was not unjustifiable, since the big universities, including Columbia, are certainly an important part of our military operations, which ought to be stopped. But the 50S formulation was not acceptable: "Since we cannot yet take over the whole society, let us begin by taking Columbia." I doubt that most of the stu dents who participated wanted to "take over" anything, and I am sure they would have been as restive if ruled by the 50S leadership as by the president and trustees of Columbia. When the faculty came to life and the students' justified demands began to be taken seriously-in the normal course of events, as has happened on several other campuses, the students would have gone unpunished or been suspended for forty-five minutes-50S suddenly revealed a deeper purpose, to "politicize" the students and "radicalize" professors by forcing a "confronta tion" with the police: if the police had to be called, people would see the System naked. Therefore the leadership raised the ante and made negotiation impos sible. The administration was not big-souled enough to take it whence it came, nor patient enough to sit it out; it called the police and there was a shambles. To have a shambles is not necessarily unjustifiable, on the hypothesis that total disruption is the only way to change a totally corrupt society. But the concept of "radicalizing" is a rather presumptuous manipulation of people for their own good. It is anarchist for people to act on principle and learn, the hard way. that the powers-that-be are brutal and unjust, but it is authoritarian for


people to be expended for the cause on somebody's strategy. (In my experience, a professional really becomes radical when he tries to pursue his profession with integrity and courage; this is what he knows and cares about, and he soon finds that many things must be changed. In student disturbances, professors have not been "radicalized" to the jejune program of New Left Nares, but they

have recalled to mind what it means to be a professor at all.) Ultimately, when four leaders were suspended and students again occu pied a building in their support, the SOS tendency toward authority became frankly dictatorial. A majority of the students voted to leave on their own steam before the police came, since there was no sense in being beaten up and arrested again; but the leadership brushed aside the vote because it did not represent the correct position, and the others-I suppose out of animal loyalty-stayed and were again busted. Nevertheless, the Columbia action was also a model of anarchism, and the same SOS leaders deserve much of the credit. In the first place, it seems to have halted the university's displacement of poor people, whereas for years 92


citizenly protests (including mine) had accomplished nothing. When, because of police brutality, there was a successful strike and sessions of the college and some of the graduate schools were terminated for the semester, the stu dents rapidly and efficiently made new arrangements with favorable profes sors for work to go on. They organized a "free university" and brought a host of distinguished outsiders to the campus. A group, Students for a Restructured University, amicably split from SDS

to

devote itself to the arts of peace and

work out livable relations with the administration. For a while, until the police came back, the atmosphere on the campus was pastoral. Faculty and students talked to one another. Like Berkeley after its troubles, Columbia was a much better place. In anarchist theory, "revolution" means the moment when the structure of authority is loosed, so that free functioning can occur. The aim is to open areas of freedom and defend them. In complicated modern societies it is prob ably safest to work at this piecemeal, avoiding chaos, which tends to produce dictatorship. To Marxists, on the other hand, "revolution" means the moment in which a new state apparatus takes power and runs things its own way. From the anar chist point of view, this is "counterrevolution," since there is a new authority to oppose. But Marxists insist that piecemeal change is mere reformism, and one has to seize power and have a strong administration in order to prevent reaction. At Columbia, the administration and the authoritarians in SDS seem to have engaged in an almost deliberate conspiracy to escalate their conflict and


make the Marxist theory true. The administration was deaf to just grievances, it did not have to call the police when it did, and it did not have to suspend the students. It has been pigheaded and vindictive. Worse, it has been petty. For instance, during the strike the sprinklers were ordered to be kept going all day, ruining the grass, in order to prevent the students from holding "free university" sessions on the lawn. When a speaker addressed a rally, a sweeper had been instructed to move a noisy vacuum cleaner to the spot to drown him out. William J. Whiteside, the director of buildings and grounds, explained to a

Times reporter that "these bullhorn congregations lead to an awful lot oflitter, so we have to get out there and clean it up." This from a university founded in 1754. Consider two key terms in New Left rhetoric, "participatory democracy" and "cadres." I think these concepts are incompatible, yet both are continually used by the same youth. Participatory democracy was the chief idea in the Port Huron Statement, the founding charter of Students for a Democratic Society. It is a cry for a say in 93


the decisions that shape our lives, against top-down direction, social engineer ing, corporate and political centralization, absentee owners, brainwashing by mass media. In its connotations, it encompasses no taxation without repre sentation, grass-roots populism, the town meeting, congregationalism, feder alism, Student Power, Black Power, workers' management, soldiers' democracy, guerrilla organization. It is, of course, the essence of anarchist social order, the voluntary federation of self-managed enterprises. Participatory democracy is grounded in the following social-psychologi cal hypotheses: People who actually perform a function usually best know how it should be done. By and large, their free decision will be efficient, inventive, graceful, and forceful. Being active and self-confident, they will co-operate with other groups with a minimum of envy, anxiety, irrational violence or the need to dominate. And, as Jefferson pointed out, only such an organization of society is self improving; we learn by doing, and the only way to educate co-operative citi zens is to give power to people as they are. Except in unusual circumstances, there is not much need for dictators, deans, police, pre-arranged curricula, imposed schedules, conscription, coercive laws. Free people easily agree among themselves on plausible working rules; they listen to expert direction when necessary; they wisely choose pro tern leaders. Remove authority, and there will be self-regulation, not chaos. And radical student activity has in fact followed this line. Opposing the bureaucratic system of welfare, students have devoted themselves to commu nity development, serving not as leaders or experts but as catalysts to bring


poor people together, so they can become aware of and solve their own prob lems. In politics, the radical students usually do not consider it worth the trouble and expense to try to elect distant representatives; it is better to organ ize local groups to fight for their own interests. In the students' own protest actions, like the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley, there were no "leaders"-except in the TV coverage-or rather there were dozens of pro tern leaders; yet FSM and other such actions have moved with considerable efficiency. Even in immense rallies, with tens of thou sands gathering from a thousand miles, as in New York in April 1967, or at the

Pentagon in October 1967, the unvarying rule has been to exclude no groups on "principle," no matter how incompatible their tendencies; despite dire warn ings, each group has done its own thing and the whole has been well enough. When it has been necessary to make immediate arrangements, as in organ izing the occupied buildings at Columbia or devising new relations with the professors, spontaneous democracy has worked beautifully. In the civil rights movement in the South, Martin Luther King used to point out, each locality 94


planned and carried out its own campaign and the national leadership just gave what financial or legal help it could. Turn now to "cadres." In the past few years, this term from the vocabu lary of military regimentation has become overwhelmingly prevalent in New Left rhetoric, as it was among the various Communist sects in the thirties. (My hunch is that it was the Trotskyists who gave it political currency. Trotsky had been the commander of the Red Army.) A cadre or squad is the primary admin istrative or tactical unit by which small groups of human beings are trans formed into sociological entities, to execute the unitary will of the organization, whether army, political party, work force, labor union, agitation or propaganda machine. In Marxian terms, it is the unit of alienation from human nature, and young Marx would certainly have disapproved. "Cadre" connotes the breaking down of ordinary human relations and transcending personal motives, in order to channel energy for the cause. For purposes of agitation, it is the Jesuit idea of indoctrinating and training a small band who then go forth and multiply themselves. The officers, discipline and tactics of military cadres are determined in headquarters; this is the oppo site of guerrilla organization, for guerrillas are self-reliant, devise their own tactics, and are bound by personal or feudal loyalty, so it is puzzling to hear the admirers of Che Guevara use the word "cadres." As a revolutionary political method, cadre-formation connotes the development of a tightly knit conspira torial party which will eventually seize the system of institutions and exercise a dictatorship until it transforms the majority to its own doctrine and behavior. Etymologically, "cadre" and "squad" come from (Latin) quadrus, a square, with


the sense of fitting people into a framework. Obviously, these connotations are entirely repugnant to the actual motives and spirit of the young at present, everywhere in the world. In my opinion, the leaders who use this language are suffering from a romantic delu sion. The young are not conspiratorial but devastatingly open. For instance, when youth of the draft resistance movement are summoned to a grand jury, it is very difficult for their Civil Liberties lawyers to get them to plead the Fifth Amendment. They will sacrifice themselves and get their heads broken, but it has to be according to their personal judgment. They insist on wearing their own garb even if it is bad for Public Relations. Their ethics are even embarrass ingly Kantian, so that ordinary prudence and reasonable casuistry are called finking. And I do not think they want "power" but just to be taken into account, to be able to do their thing, and to be let alone. They indeed want a revolution ary change, but not by this route. Except for a while, on particular occasions, they simply cannot be manipulated to be the shock troops of a Leninist coup. (I 95


have never found that I could teach them anything else either.} If the young go along with actions organized by the Trotskyists or the Progressive Labor Party or some of the delusions of SDS, it is because, in their judgment, the resulting disruption does more good than harm. Compared with the arrogance, cold vio lence and inhumanity of our established institutions, the arrogance, hothead edness and all-too-human folly of the young are venial. The trouble with the neo-Leninist wing of the New Left is a different one. It is that the abortive manipulation oflively energy and moral fervor for a polit ical revolution that will not be, and ought not to be, confuses the piecemeal social revolution that is brightly possible. This puts me off-but of course they have to do it their own way. It is inauthentic to do community development in order to "politicize" people, or to use a good do-it-yourself project as a means of "Bringing people into the Movement." Everything should be done for its own sake. The amazing courage of sticking to one's convictions in the face of the police is insulted when it is manipulated as a means of "radicalizing." The loyalty and trust in one another of youth is extraordinary, but it can turn to disillusionment if they perceive that they are being had. Many of the best of the young went through this in the thirties. But at least there is no Moscow gold around, though there seems to be plenty of CIA money both at home and abroad. Finally, in this account of confused anarchism, we must mention the con flict between the activists and the hippies. The activists complain that the dropouts are not political and will not change anything. Instead, they are seducers who drastically interfere with


the formation of cadres. (We are back to "Religion is the opium of the people" or perhaps "LSD is the opium of the people.") Of course, there is something in this, but in my opinion the bitterness of the New Left polemic against the hippies can only be explained by saying that the activists are defensive against their own repressed impulses. In fact, the dropouts are not unpolitical. When there is an important dem onstration, they are out in force and get beaten up with the rest-though they are not "radicalized." With their flowers and their slogan "Make Love Not War," they provide all of the color and much of the deep meaning. One hippie group, the Diggers, has a full-blown economic system, has set up free stores and has tried to farm, in order to be independent of the System, while it engages in community development. The Yippies, the Youth International Party (would that it were!), devote themselves to undermining the System; they are the ones who showered dollar bills on the floor of the Stock Exchange, tied up Grand Central Station and tried to exorcise the Pentagon with incantations. And the Dutch Provos, 96


the "provotariat," who are less drug-befuddled than the Yippies, improvise ingenious improvements to make society better as a means of tearing it down; they even won an election in Amsterdam. On their side, the hippies claim that the New Left has gotten neatly caught in the bag of the System. To make a frontal attack is to play according to the enemy's rules, where one doesn't have a chance, and victory would be a drag anyway. The thing is to use jujitsu, ridicule, Schweikism, nonviolent resistance, by-passing, infuriating, tripping up, seducing by offering happy alternatives. A

complex society is hopelessly vulnerable. and the fourteen-year-olds run away and join the gypsies. This criticism of the New Left is sound. A new politics demands a new style, a new personality and a new way of life. To form cadres and try to take power is the same old runaround. The anarchism of the dropouts is often quite self-conscious. It is remarkable, for instance, to hear Emmet Grogan, the spokesman of the Diggers, make up the theories of Prince Kropotkin right out of his own experiences in Haight-Ashbury, the Lower East Side, and riot-torn Newark. But I think the dropouts are unrealistic in their own terms. Living among the poor, they up the rents. Trying to live freely, they offend the people they want to help. Sometimes blacks and Spanish-Americans have turned on them savagely. In my observation, the "communication" that they get with drugs is illusory, and to rely on chemicals in our technological age is certainly to be in a bag. Because the standard of living is corrupt, they opt for voluntary poverty, but there are also many useful goods that they have a right to, and needlessly


forgo. And they are often plain silly. The more sophisticated Provos have fallen for a disastrous vision of the future, New Babylon, a society in which all will sing and make love and do their own thing, while the world's work is done by automatic machines. They do not realize that in such a society, power will be wielded by the technocrats, and they themselves will be colonized like Indians on a reservation. In general, I doubt that it is possible to be free, to have a say, and to live a

coherent life, without doing worthwhile work, pursuing the arts and sciences, practicing the professions, bringing up children, engaging in politics. Play and personal relations are a necessary background; they are not what men live for. But maybe I am old-fashioned, Calvinistic.

97

The Limits of Local L i berty

t is now a common fear that the cities are ungovernable, or, in other words,

I that this nation of cities is ungovernable. Certainly a major underlying cause

of the trouble is our military imperialism, with its grotesque priorities, as part of the power stmcture of the world misdirecting our financial resources. But I think there are two chief problems specific to the cities themselves. (1) There


are not enough citizens-people who feel that the city is theirs and care for it.

(2) Urban areas may now be both too extensive and too dense to be technically and fiscally workable. Gross results of the lack of citizenship are the flight to the suburbs and the insularity of the well-to-do, and, on the other hand, the anomie, vandal ism and riots of the poor, especially the young. The lack of technical viability of urban areas shows up, after a certain extent and density, in the sudden dis proportionate rise in costs for city services and the increase of congestion, pol lution. noise and social complexity beyond tolerable levels. These two kinds of trouble aggravate each other. The flight of the middle class diminishes the tax base as well as the number of those who have the levers of influence to make improvements. The anomie of the poor increases the costs for policing. welfare, remedial schooling. etc. Conversely, deteriorat ing environments and rising costs drive away those who can afford to leave, and further alienate and madden those who must stay. The political remedy that has been, correctly, proposed for the lack of citi zens is traditional Jeffersonianism: to "give," or gracefully surrender, power to the people themselves in their neighborhoods to initiate, decide and execute the affairs that concern them closely. (Let me recommend a fine restatement of

the Jeffersonian idea in present urban conditions. Neighborhood Government by Milton Kotler.) The affairs that concern people closely are (1) local functions, like policing. housing, schooling. welfare. neighborhood services-primarily, the areas in which family life occurs; and (2) the jobs and professions in which people are engaged. There are also, of course, close national concerns, like the draft and the April 15 federal taxes, but it is local life and occupations that make up the city. And in these matters, according to the Jeffersonian theory, 98

THE LIMITS OF LOCAL LIBERTY

people know the score and are competent to govern themselves directly, or could soon become so with practice. In our system, citizenship springs from liberty and so must start from local and occupational liberty. The drive for local-territorial liberty is the strongest revolutionary political movement of our times, both in this country and internationally. It is a protest against galloping centralization, oligarchic representative government, politi cal and cultural imperialism, bureaucracy, administration, establishment, ille gitimate authority. It has used the slogans of decentralization, participatory democracy, community control, community development, black power, student power, national liberation, neighborhood city halls, maximum feasible partici pation. In all these, the essence is self-determination of people's own place. By and large, however, in both theory and practice, the liberty of occu pation and function has been neglected. There has been little mention of workers' management and the kind of education and apprenticeship of the young that are necessary for this. Professional and guild autonomy has been readily sacrificed for narrow economic advantage. Producers' and consum ers' co-operatives are in eclipse. Few talk about rural reconstruction and rural culture. All over the world there are brave movements of national liberation, but these movements have been very unimpressive, in my opinion, in provid ing alternatives to the centralizing style in economic and industrial planning, technology, social engineering, mandarinism, regional planning and excessive urbanization. Perhaps the neglect of occupational liberty has been inevitable. The movement for self-determination has been led by the colonized and alien


ated, the blacks, Spanish-speaking Americans and the young. (The groups that have been occupationally hurt, like the small farmers and the technologically unemployed whites in non-urban areas, seem to have been simply demoral ized by the forces against them.) Stripped of economic power and even civil rights, and living in a culture of poverty, or a youth subculture, which is very similar, the alienated have no resources other than their mere political exist ence-protest, demonstrations, riots, physical fighting. On the other hand, professionals, small businessmen, industrial workers and middle-class citi zens, who have other resources with which to assert power, have too much of a stake in money and status in the affluent system to mobilize for their funda mental liberties. (Movements like Wallace's are sentimental in regard to liberty, but repressive in regard to institutional structure.) Led by the out-caste and the young, political action has consisted mainly of physical activism to attain power-and this process is also conceived as the source of political goals: the organization of demonstrations and confronta tions leads to a structure of power that will then discover its uses. (There has 99


been little functional direct action of the genre of Danilo Doici, e.g., putting the unemployed to work on something that is socially needed but is not being done, and then demanding recognition and pay.) The activist theory, whether that of Saul Alinsky, black power militants or youthful organizers in univer sities and poor neighborhoods, stresses conflict and solidarity rather than program, utility or final satisfaction. The "issues" are whatever is convenient to radicalize people and to win. According to this theory, when people control the neighborhood or campus or the budget for schools and welfare, they will know what to do for their further advantage. I think this is probably true for policing, welfare, city services, parietal rules, improvement of housing and perhaps small business. At the very least it is a way of getting rid of intolerable abuses that prevent any functioning at alL But I doubt that this kind of activism and power provides a sufficient basis for many other functions. For instance, primary education will not be greatly better unless the community itself surrenders power to the children and teachers in individual schools, but local neighborhoods are as unlikely to do this as central administrators. Student power in high schools and colleges is, in my opinion, irrelevant (except on extracurricular issues) because most of the "students" are not bona fide: they ought not to be in academic institu tions; their proper enemy is the system of credentials (the unrealistic practices of hiring and licensing) and the draft that oppress them. The relevant model of the past-labor union activism-led to important gains, but not to workers' management. Solutions to the problems of traffic, the glut of garbage, pollution, density,


renewal, zoning, and the use of technology are crucial to make cities livable, bur they require a kind of professional thought and political action different from activism. We cannot finally have good and free cities unless the out-caste groups, the professionals, the middle class and the industrial workers all have more liberty and begin to co-operate with each other. I don't know how to bring this about, bur I'm sure the truculence and disdain of the New Left do not help. Indeed, the chief obstacles in the way of radical decentralization and local 1iberty are not those that are always mentioned: the size of populations,

the complexity of society and technology, putative economies of scale, the national economy. In my opinion, free citizens could cope with such problems by subdividing administration simplifying where complexity has too many disadvantages, federating where that is worthwhile, and controlling necessary bureaucracies from below. And in many of the functions we are concerned with, enormous gains can be made in efficiency and reducing cost just by oper ating on a smaller scale. (I have tried to show this in People or Personnel.) lOa


Rather, the difficulties are as follows: first, many of the young activists who are spearheading the movement for local power are so alienated in spirit that they are not really interested in program, function and final satisfaction. They seem to be more interested in seizing power, or at least in creating disrup tion, than in running their own lives in livable neighborhoods. The offspring of black immigrants from rural regions have endured a terribly uprooted ado lescence in ugly ghettos, but why is it that many of the young white radicals from middle-class suburbs also seem unable to believe in such things as family, autonomous professions, honest business, useful jobs and civic responsibil ity? A good deal of the activism for power, liberation and democracy looks like a compound of resentment, one-upping and spiritual striving for meaning in a meaningless world, rather than a struggle for the political freedom to function. But perhaps I just don't dig. Secondly, the neglect of liberation of jobs and professions makes local liberty untenable. Centralized corporations today displace families at will, those of both retrained workingmen and junior executives from middle-class neigh borhoods. The constant mobility that results is fatal to neighborhood govern ment. On the other hand, if poor people were to politically entrench themselves on their turf, their neighborhoods could become mere enclaves, like Indian res ervations, well or badly funded, but not free, because they are not important. The remedy for the other chief trouble of our cities-their unworkability because of sheer size and density-is obvious: some dispersal of the popu lation. This issue is at present much less politically alive than neighborhood government; it will seem important only when a series of major technical


catastrophes and fiscal bankruptcies have occurred. The thinking is still over whelmingly in the other direction. All official planning is founded on horren dously increased estimates of urban population in the 1980s and 1990S. The planners extrapolate from recent and continuing trends as if these were laws of nature rather than patently the result of bad policy. For example, in the past thirty-five years, because of technological "improvements" that were profit able to a few corporations but entirely disregarded social costs-l,lOO,OOO blacks and 800,000 Puerto Ricans came to New York because they could not make a living where they were, And this excessive urbanization is worldwide. It occurs most of all in the poor countries that desperately cannot afford to lose their rural population and food supply. (In the United States, indeed, the flight to the city has finally slowed down. A 5 percent rural population seems to be the minimum. We shall now see, as has been predicted, the chain grocers and their plantations milk the consumers without fear of reviving competition from small producers. Quality has already sharply deteriorated.) 101


I speak of "some dispersal" because even a modest thrust in this direction, especially combined with "some" rural reconstruction, would have great value for our overburdened cities. To begin with, the difference between tolerable and intolerable crowding in many city functions is often a matter of only a few percentage points, for instance, in traffic, mass transit, hospital beds, class size in schools, availability of empty housing, drain on water and power, waiting in line for services. And to repeat, it is only after a certain point that it becomes dis proportionately costly to add facilities to ease the situation. With many of our gravest problems, instead oflooking for global panaceas, we would do better to rely on solutions consisting of3 percent of this, 6 percent of that, and 2 percent of the other. A small percentage of dispersal would often be a great help. More important, the use of the countryside to help solve urban prob lems gives a mind-stretching opportunity to poor people whose life in the city now provides no significant alternatives. There is strong evidence that many black and Spanish-speaking immigrants wish they had not come to the north ern cities-a thousand Puerto Ricans a week leave New York to try again back home. But of course the children of these immigrants have no such psycholog ical alternative. The majority oftoday's slum children reach the age of thirteen without having ventured outside their few square blocks. Dispersal can be physically accomplished by building New Towns. This is the thinking of the planners, and a couple have actually been built. But I would argue for rural reconstruction as another important alternative, for the following traditional reasons. A livable city is the city of its region. City and country use each other precisely because of their differences. At present,


while the cities swell and fester, beautiful rural regions are being depopulated. If, however, it were made financially possible, thousands now on city welfare would choose to live in the country and get more for their money, perhaps also doing some subsistence farming. (This was, of course, tried during the Great Depression.) The country could provide a better life for many of the lonely aged, and for most of the harmless "insane" who are really just incompetent to cope with urban complexity. City children would profit immensely by spend ing a year or so in underpopulated country schools, living with farmers. The old-fashioned vacation on the farm, instead of at the "resort," could be revived. In such ways, the city could spend its money to better advantage for itself, and the country could get needed cash, as well as rejoin the mainstream of social utility. I think this concept of city-country interchange is a better basis for rural reconstruction than other aesthetic and philosophical motives that with draw from the urban mainstream. Instead of being symbiotic, present urbanization is destructive of city and country both. The in-growing urban area becomes socially and physically 102


too complex and the costs mount. The countryside is stripped of purpose and people. The city invades the country with city-controlled resorts, superhigh ways, colleges, supermarkets, and inflationary prices. Instead of profiting by providing useful services in its own style and with its own management, the country is further impoverished and colonized. Instead of diversity. simplic


ity and do-it-yourself, we get uniformity, complexity, and staggering expense.

103

Civil D isobedience

Law and Legitimacy

During the early thirties students got a thorough extracurricular education in the political economy. They experienced the Depression, the labor movement, the New Deal, the subtle infighting of leftist sects; and Marxian, Keynesian, managerial and technocratic theories provided adequate terms for discus sion. Present-day students are hopelessly ill-informed, and uninterested, in these matters. But they have had other experiences. Sitting-in and being jailed, demonstrating, resisting the draft, defying authority in the schools and on the streets have confronted them with the fundamental problems of political science. the premises of allegiance and legitimacy by which political societies operate at all. For a teacher it is thrilling, if poignant, to see how real these abstractions have become. But the theoretical framework for discussion has been astonishingly meager. Learning by doing, the young have rediscovered a kind of populism and "participatory democracy"; they have been seduced by theories of moun


tain guerrilla warfare and putschism, and some ofthem like to quote Chairman Mao that political power comes from the barrel of a gun. But 1 have heard little analysis of what Sovereignty and Law really are in modern industrial and urban societies, though it is about these that there is evidently a profound conflict in this period. In the vacuum of historical knowledge and philosophi cal criticism, the dissenters are too ready to concede (or boast) that they are lawless and civilly disobedient. And the powers that be, police, school admin istrators, and the Texan President, are able to sound off, and practice, cliches about Law and Order that are certainly not American political science. So it

is useful to make some academic remarks about elementary topics. Alas, it is even necessary, to rehearse our case-I am writing in the spring of 1968, and some of us are under indictment. Administrators talk about Law and Order and Respect for Authority as if these things had an absolute sanction: without them there can be no negotia tion, whether the situation is a riot, a strike of municipal employees, a student protest against Dow Chemical, or burning draft cards. The tone is curiously 104

C I V I L DISOBEDIENCE

theocratic, as if the government existed by divine right. Law and Order sounds like the doctrine of the authoritarian personality, where the Sovereign has been internalized from childhood and has a non-rational charisma. But although this psychology does exist, by and large the Americans are not conformist in this way. Indeed, they have become increasingly skeptical, or cynical, of their moral rigidity, at the same time as they resort more readily to violent suppres sion of deviation or infringement. The "reasons," given in editorials, are that we must have safe streets; in a democracy, there is a due process for changing the laws; violation is con tagious and we are tending toward "anarchy." But do safe streets depend on strictly enforcing the law? Every editorial also points out that sociologically the means of keeping the peace is to diminish tension, and economically and politically it is to give the disaffected a stake and a say. And in the history of American cities, of course, peace has often been best preserved by bribery, deals under the table, patronage of local bosses, blinking or negligent enforce ment. In the complex circumstances of civil disorder, the extralegal is likely to give rough justice, whereas strict enforcement, for instance, when the reform minded Daily News makes the police close Eighth Avenue bars, is sure to cause unnecessary suffering. Even when it is not substantively unjust, Law and Order is a cultural style of those who know the ropes, have access to lawyers, and are not habitually on the verge of animal despair; such a high style, however convenient for society, cannot be taught by tanks and mace. But what is most dismaying is that a well-intentioned group like the Commission on Civil Disorders regards


Order and Due Process as a neutral platform to discuss substantive remedies; it cannot see that to an oppressed group just these things are the usual intoler able hang-up of White Power: theft, repression and run-around. I do not think there is empirical evidence that all violation is contagious. The sociological probability, and what little evidence there is, is the other way: those who break the law for political reasons, articulate or inarticulate, are less likely to commit delinquencies or crimes, since there is less anomie; they have a stake and a say if only by being able to act at all. And Jefferson, of course, argued just the opposite of punctilious law: since laws are bound to be defied, he said,

it is better to have as few as possible, rather than to try for stricter enforcement. When a disaffected group indeed has power, nobody takes absolutism seriously. The organized teachers and garbage collectors of New York dis regarded the Condon-Wadlin and Taylor laws against strikes by municipal employees, and got their way-nor did the Republic fall in ruins. Only the New

York Times, not Governor Rockefeller or Mayor Lindsay, bothered to mention the threat to Law and Order. 105


I suppose the climax of divine-right theory in American history has been the creation of a law which makes draft-card burning a felony, punishable by five years in prison, a $10,000 fine, or both. Since draft-card burning does not help a youth avoid the draft, what is this felony? It is lese majeste, injury to the sacred sovereignty of Law embodied in a piece of paper. Yet congress enacted this law almost unanimously. Certainly the disobedient do notfeel that the law is sacred. If it were, any deliberate infringement-whether by Dr. Spock, a Black Power agitator, a garbage collector or a driver risking a parking ticket-would involve a tragic conflict genre of Corneille: Love vs. Duty. Among infringers, I see a good deal of calculation of consequences, and on the part of Dr. Spock, Dr. King, etc., an admirable courage and patriotism, but I do not see the signs of inner tragic conflict. The Authority of Law is Limited

If we tum, now, to the more tonic American conception that the sanction of law is the social compact of the sovereign people, we see that it is rarely nec essary, in the kinds of cases we are concerned with, to speak of "civil diso bedience" or "lawlessness." What social promises do people actually consider "binding"? There are drastic limitations. Let me list half a dozen that are rel evant to present problems. (Of course, few believe in the mythical hypothesis of compact, or in any other single explanation, to account for the real force of law. We must include custom, inertia, pre-rational community ties, good-natured mutual regard, fear


of the police, a residue of infantile awe of the overwhelming, and the energy bound up in belonging to any institution whatever. Yet compact is not a mere fiction. Communities do come to such agreements. Immigrants sometimes choose one system oflaws over another; negatively, there are times when men consciously ask themselves, "What have I bargained for? Do I want to live with these people in this arrangement?") Since an underlying purpose of the compact is security of life and liberty, it is broken if the sovereign jails you or threatens your life; you have a (natural) duty to try to escape, In our society, this point of Hobbes' is important. There is a formidable number of persons in jail, or certified as insane, or in juvenile reformatories; there is an increasing number of middle-class youth who have been "radicalized," returned to a state of nature, by incarceration. Likewise, the more brutal the police, the less the allegiance of the citizens. In large areas of personal and animal life, as in the case of vices that are harmless to others, high-spirited persons have a definite understanding that law is irrelevant and should be simply disregarded. Almost all "moral" legis106


lation-on gambling, sex, alcohol, drugs, obscenity-is increasingly likely to be nullified by massive non-publicized disobedience. Not that these areas are "private" or trivial, but one does nor make a social contract about them. The medievals more realistically declared that they were subject to canon law, not to the king. For better or worse, we do not have courts of conscience, but it is a human disaster for their functions to be taken over by policemen and night magistrates. The sovereign cannot intervene in professional prerogatives, as by a law against teaching evolution. Every teacher is duty-bound to defy it. A physician will not inform against a patient, a lawyer a client, a teacher a student, a jour nalist an informant. At present, there is bound to be a case where a scientist publishes his government-classified or company-owned research, because sci entists have an obligation to publish. (By and large, however, for narrow eco nomic reasons, professionals have been playing the dangerous game of giving more and more prerogative in licensing to the State. By deciding who practices, the State will finally determine what is practiced.) By the Bill of Rights, speech, religion, and political acts like assemblage and petition are beyond the reach of the law. As I have argued elsewhere, it is a mistake

to

interpret these "rights" as a compact; rather they state areas

of anarchy in which people cannot make contracts in a free society, any more than to sell themselves into slavery. Obviously the compact is broken if the law goes berserk, for example, if the government prepares for nuclear war. Therefore we refused the nuclear shelter drills.


The law cannot command what is immoral or dehumanizing, whether co operation with the Vietnam War or paying rent where conditions are unlivable. In such cases, it is unnecessary to talk about allegiance to a "higher law" or about conflict with the judgments of Nuremberg (though these might be legally convenient in a court), for a man cannot be responsible for what demor alizes and degrades him from being a responsible agent altogether. And note that all these classes of cases have nothing to do with the usual question: "Is every individual supposed to decide what laws he will obey?"-for it is the social contract itself that is irrelevant or self-contradictory,

Finally the bindingness of promises is subject to essential change of cir cumstances. Due process, electing new representatives to make new laws, is supposed to meet this need, and roughly does; bur due process is itself part of the social agreement, and in times of crises, of course, it is always a live question as to whether it is adequate or whether sovereignty reverts closer to the people, seeking the General Will by other means. The vague concept that sovereignty resides in the People is usually meaningless, but precisely at crit107


ical moments it begins to have a vague meaning. American political history consists spectacularly of illegal actions that become legal, belatedly confirmed by the lawmakers. Civil rights trespassers, unions defying injunctions, suffra gettes and agrarians being violent, abolitionists aiding runaway slaves, and back to the Boston Tea Party-were these people practicing "civil disobedi ence" or were they "insurrectionary"? I think neither. Rather, in urgent haste they were exercising their sovereignty, practicing direct democracy, disregard ing the apparent law and sure of the emerging law. And by the time many cases went through a long, often deliberately protracted, course of appeals, the law breakers were no longer guilty, for their acts were no longer crimes. Hopefully, the current Vietnam protest is following the same schedule. To be sure, this direct political process is not always benign; the Ku Klux Klan also created law by populist means. Thus, if we stick to a literal social contract, asking what is it that men really mean to promise, the authority of law is limited indeed. It is often justi fiable to break a law on the grounds that it is unwarranted, and reasonable to test it if it is unconstitutional or outdated. By this analysis it is almost never necessary, except for cases of individual conscience, to invoke a fancy concept like "civil disobedience," which concedes the warrant of the law but must for extraordinary reasons defy it. The Function of Law and Order

Clearly, law has more authority than this among the Americans. We are not nearly so rational and libertarian. We do not believe in divine right but we do


not have a social contract either. What would be a more realistic theory, more approximate to the gross present facts? I am afraid that it is something like the following: There is an immense social advantage in having any regular code that everybody abides by without question, even if it is quite unreasonable and sometimes outrageous. This confirms people's expectations and permits them to act out their social roles. If the code is violated, people become so anxious about their roles that they want government to exert brute force to main tain Law and Order-this is part of government's role in the division of labor.

Law and Order in this sense does not need moral authority; it is equivalent to saying. "Shape up; don't bother us; we're busy." The sanction is avoidance of anxiety. This explains the tone of absolutism, without the tradition, religion or moral and ritual imperatives that humanized ancient theocracies. Gripped by anxiety, people can commit enormities of injustice and stupidity just in order to keep things under control. For instance, we enact draconian penalties for drugs, though our reasoned opinion is 108


increasingly permissive. Minority groups that do not or cannot shape up must be squelched and kept out of sight, though everybody now concedes that they have just grievances and that suppression doesn't work anyway. The polls vme for stepping-up the Vietnam War just when information, in the press and on television, is that the war is more and more evil and also militarily dubious. Squeamishness and stubbornness can go as far as using nuclear weapons, a massacre on the streets, and concentration camps for dissenters. Conversely, the strategy of those who protest-the "civil disobedients," the "guerrilla fighters," the "rioters"-ceases to be justice and reconstruction, and becomes simply to prevent business as usuaL Lively young people, d.istin guished scholars, and the most talented leaders of the poor spend their time thinking up ways to make trouble. Our ideal aim is certainly to get the politi cally degenerate Americans back to libetty, law and the business of the com monwealth, but sometimes the purpose gets lost in the shuffle. The Regime Itself is I l legitimate

The rising tide of "civil disobedience" and "lawlessness" is not defiance of law and order; it is a challenge that the regime itself is illegitimate. Maybe it asks a question: Can the modern society which we've described be a political society at all? In my opinion, even the rising rate of crime is due mainly to anomie: confusion about norms, and therefore lack of allegiance, rather than to any increase in criminal types (though that probably also exists under modern urban conditions). "Civil disobedience" especially is a misnomer. According to this concept


the law expresses the social sovereignty that we have ourselves conceded, and therefore we logically accept the penalties if we disobey, though we may have to disobey nevertheless. But in the interesting and massive cases, the warrant of the law is not conceded and its penalties are not agreed to. Indeed, I doubt that people en masse ever disobey what they agree to be roughly fair and just, even if it violates conscience. Thus, Gandhi's major campaigns were carried on under the slogan Swaraj, self-rule for the Indians; the British Raj who was disobeyed had no legitimate sovereignty at all, It was a war of national liberation, The reasons for the non violence, which was what the "civil disobedience" amounted to, were twofold: Materially, Gandhi thought, probably correctly, that such a tactic would be ultimately less destructive of the country and people. (The Vietcong have judged otherwise, probably incorrectly.) Spiritually, Gandhi knew that such a means-of disciplined personal confrontation-would elevate people rather than brutalize them, and ease the transition to a necessary future community with the British. 109


The campaigns led by Dr. King in the South illustrate the drive against ille gitimacy even more clearly. Segregation and denial of civil rights are illegitimate on the face of them; no human being would freely enter into such a degrading contract. Besides, King was able to rely on the contradiction between the ille gitimate laws and a larger legitimate tradition of Christianity, the Declaration of Independence and the federal Constitution. Once the blacks made the chal lenge, the white Southerners could not maintain their inner confusion, and the federal government, though late and gracelessly, has had to confirm the protest. Now, in resistance to the draft, Dr. Spock and Dr. Coffin declare that they are committing "civil disobedience" and are "willing and ready" to go to jail if convicted. No doubt they have a theory of what they are doing. Most of the co conspirators, however, including myself, regard the present regime as fright eningly illegitimate. especially in military and imperial affairs; and we are not "willing" to accept the penalties for our actions, though we may have to pay them willy-nilly. The regime is illegitimate because it is dominated by a subsi dized military-industrial group that cannot be democratically changed. There is a "hidden government" of CIA and FBI. The regime has continually lied and withheld information to deceive the American people; and with a federal budget of $425 million for public relations, democratic choice becomes almost impossible. Even so, the President deliberately violated the overwhelming electoral mandate of 1964; it transpires that he planned to violate it even while he was running. The regime presents us withfaits accomplis; the Senate balks with talk but in fact rubber-stamps thefaits accomplis; it has become an image like the Roman senate in the first century.


Many have resigned from the government, but they then do not "come clean" but continue to behave as members of the oligarchy. Disregarding the protests of millions and defying the opinion of mankind. the regime esca lates an unjust war, uses horrible means, is destroying a culture and a people. Pursuing this berserk adventure. it neglects our own national welfare. Etc., etc. Then we judge that the government is a usurper and the Republic is in danger. On our present course, we will soon end up like the Romans, or

1984,

or not

survive at all.

Naturally, if the government is illegitimate, then at a public trial we ought to win. If the Americans are still a political community, we will-but of course, that is the question. Let me make another point. The methods of protest we are using are posi tively good in themselves, as well as for trying to stop the Vietnam War. They characterize the kind of America I want, one with much more direct democ racy, decentralized decision-making, a system of checks and balances that works, less streamlined elections. Our system should condone civil disobedi110


ence vigilant of authority, crowds on the street and riots when the provoca tion is grave. I am a Jeffersonian because it seems to me that only a libertarian, populist and pluralist political structure can make citizens at all in the modern world. This brings me back to the main subject of this essay: the social, tech nological and psychological conditions that underlie the present crisis of sov ereignty and law. The Sense of Sovereignty Lost

In highly organized countries, each in its own way, most of the major social functions, the economy, technology, education, communications, welfare, warfare and government, form a centrally-organized system directed by an oli garchy. I do not think this structure is necessary for industrialization or high technology; it is not even especially efficient, certainly not for many functions. But is has been inevitable because of the present drives to power, reinvestment, armament and national aggrandizement. The effects on citizenship have been variously compelling. Where the tra dition was authoritarian to begin with and the national ideology is centraliz ing, as in Fascist Germany or Communist Russia, citizens have given allegiance to the industrial sovereign not much differently than to older despotisms, but with less leeway for private life, local custom or religion. In Communist China, where the new ideology is centralizing but the tradition was radically decen tralist, there is a turbulence and struggle of allegiances. But in the United States, where both ideology and tradition have been decentralist and demo cratic, in the new dispensation citizenship and allegiance have simply tended


to lapse. Since they can no longer effectually make important decisions about their destiny, Americans lose the sense of sovereignty altogether and retreat to privatism. Politics becomes just another profession, unusually phony, with its own professional personnel. Our situation is a peculiar one. Americans do not identify with the ruling oligarchy. which is foreign to their tradition; a major part of it-the military industrial and the CIA and the FBI-is even a "hidden government." The poli ticians carefully cajole the people's sensibilities and respect their freedom, so long as these remain private. And we have hit on the following accommoda tion: in high matters of State, War and Empire, the oligarchy presents faits

accomplis; in more local matters, people resent being pushed around. Budgets in the billions are not debated; small sums are debated. The Constitution is what I described above: the social compact is acqui escence to the social machine, and citizenship consists in playing appropriate roles as producers, functionaries and consumers. The machine is productive; the roles, to such as have them, are rewarding. And human nature being what 111


it is, there develops a new kind of allegiance, to the rich and streamlined style. This provides the norm of correct behavior for workmen, inspires the super markets, and emboldens soldiers at the front. A typical and very important class is the new professionals. Being essen tial to tend the engine and steer, they are well paid in salary and prestige. An expensive system of education has been devised to prepare the young for these roles. At the same time, the professionals become mere personnel. There is no place for the autonomy, ethics, and guild spirit that used to characterized them as people and citizens. Mutatis mutandis, the same can be said of the working class. On the other hand, large groups of the population are allowed to drop out as socially useless, for instance, farmers, racial minorities, the incompetent, the old, many of the young. These are then treated as objects of social engi neering and are also lost as citizens. In an apolitical situation like this, it is hard for good observers to distin guish between riot and riotous protest, or between a juvenile delinquent, a rebel without a cause and an inarticulate guerrilla. On a poll,

to

say "I don't

know," might mean one is judicious, a moron, or a cynic about the question or the options. Student protest may be political or adolescent crisis or alien ation. Conversely, there is evidence that good behavior may be dangerous apathy or obsessional neurosis. According to a recent study, a selection by schoolteachers of well-rounded "all-American" boys proves to consist heavily of pre-psychotics. With this background, we can understand "civil disobedience" and "law


lessness." What happens politically in the United States when the system steers a disastrous course? There is free speech and assembly and a strong tradition of democracy, but the traditional structures of remedy have fallen into desuetude or become phony. Bourgeois reformers, critical professionals, organizations of farmers and workmen, political machines of the poor have mainly been co-opted. Inevitably protest reappears at a more primitive or inchoate level. The "civil disobedients" are nostalgic patriots without available political means. The new "lawless" are the oppressed without political means. Instead

of having a program or a party, the protesters try, as Mario Savio said, to "throw themselves on the gears and the levers to stop the machine." Students think up ways to stop traffic; professionals form groups simply to nullify the law; citi zens mount continual demonstrations and jump up and down with signs; the physically oppressed burn down their own neighborhoods. I think few of these people regard themselves as subversive. They know, with varying degrees of consciousness, that they are legitimate, the regime is not. 112


A promising aspect of it is the revival of populism, sovereignty revert ing to the people. One can sense it infallibly during the big rallies, the March on Washington in '63 or the peace rallies in New York and at the Pentagon in April and October '67. Except among a few Leninists, the mood is euphoric, the heady feeling of the sovereign people invincible-for a couple of hours. The draft-card burners are proud. The elders who abet them feel like Americans. The young who invest the Pentagon sing The Star-Spangled Banner. The children of Birmingham attacked by dogs look like Christians. Physicians who support Dr. Levy feel Hippocratic, and professors who protest classified research feel academic. On the other hand, the government with the mightiest military power in the history of the world does not alter its course because of so much sweetness and light. The police of the cities are preparing an arsenal of anti-riot weapons. Organized workmen beat up peace picketers. We look forward apprehensively to August in Chicago. Bur I am oversimplifying. In this romantic picture of the American people rising to confront the usurper, we must notice that Lyndon Johnson, the Pentagon and the majority of Americans are also Americans. And they and the new populists are equally trapped in modern times. Even if we survive our present troubles with safety and honor, can anything like the social contract exist again in contemporary managerial and technological conditions? Perhaps "sovereignty" and "law," in any American sense, are outmoded concepts . . .


This is the furthest I can take these reflections until we see more history.

113

"Getting Into Power" The Ambiguit ies of Pacifist Politics "

w ar is the health ofthe State"-modem history teaches no otherlesson, whether we think of the weird personal, fanatic, and dynastic wars

of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries or the economic and geopolitical wars of recent generations. The sovereign national States have lived and grown by preparing for war and waging war; and as the Powers have aggrandized themselves, they have become more crashingly destructive. l do not mean that men have not used also simpler social organizations, feudal, tribal, free city, in order to kill one another en masse, but centralized sovereign power, radiating from baroque capitals, has proved to be the ideal executive of murderous will. In our own nation at present, it would be impossible to describe the economy without regarding war-making as a crucial factor; the foreign relations of the United States are carried on entirely in terms of bellicose power-blocs, and either to expand "influence" or to hang onto it; and to mention my own field where I can speak at first hand, our primary education and heavily State subsidized higher education have become regimented to apprentice-training


for war, more directly if less sickeningly than the psychological national regi mentation endemic in French and German schooling. (The Russians go in for both the technological and psychological aspects.) This solidifying of national sovereign bellicosity is at present all the more irrational, and of course all the more necessary if the sovereigns are to main tain themselves, since the cultural, technological, economic, and communica tions relations of the world are now overwhelmingly supra-national. (What a pity that, partly to combat colonialism and partly out of the emulative stupid ity and cupidity of their western-trained leaders, peoples of Africa and Asia

are adopting the same fatal and outmoded style.) The only possible pacifist conclusion from these facts is the anarchist one, to get rid of the sovereignties and to diminish, among people, the motivations of power and grandiosity. This means, regionally, to decentralize or central ize directly in terms ofHfe-functions, empirically examined. My own bias is to decentralize and localize wherever it is feasible, because this makes for alter natives and more vivid and intimate life. It multiplies initiative. And it is safer. 114

"GETTING INTO POWER"

On the basis of this weakening of the powers, and of the substitution of func tion for power, it would be possible also to organize the world community, as by the functional agencies of the United Nations, UNICEF, WHO, somewhat UNESCO; and to provide ad hoc co-operation like the geophysical Year, explor ing space, or feeding the Chinese. Rigidly applied, this logic would seem to make pacifist State poli tics absurd. It is not in the nature of sovereign power to decree itself out of existence. (Thus, it is absurd for picketers of the White House to petition Mr. Kennedy as the President, rather than to sermonize him as a man or lecture


him as a boy.) Also, such politics confuses the basic issue, that pacifism is nec

essarily revolutionary. A moment's recollection of the defection of the French and German socialist deputies from their pacifism in 1914 will show that this confusion is not trivial. Nevertheless, the attitude of the General Strike for Peace is as follows: in November we shall urge people actively and explicitly to refuse to vote, to strike against voting, except for candidates who are unam biguously committed to immediate action to relax the Cold War, for instance Stuart Hughes or Robert Kastenmeier. Our reasoning is that, in our increas ingly monolithic society and economy, any antiwar activity is likely to exert a revolutionary influence willy-nilly. And secondly, as Professor Hughes himself has said, the machinery of an electoral campaign can be a powerful means of education, especially by compelling mention of what the mass media ordinar ily refuse to mention. We wish to co-operate with pacifist activity of every kind, whether SANE, Quaker, Third Party politics, or Committee for Nonviolent Action, because although "objectively" we are in a revolutionary situation in that the Powers-that-be are certainly bent on destroying themselves and everything else, nevertheless people do not take this seriously and there is an almost total lack of practical will to make the necessary reorganization of society. To say it grimly, unlike 1914, people do not even have political repre sentatives to betray them. The spirited candidacy of Stuart Hughes for Senator-like an actualiza tion of Leo Szilard's courageous plan to finance and organize a national party for peace-makes it useful to review the ambiguities involved in this kind of politics. Personally, what I enjoy about Professor Hughes' campaign is that often, when the students were out getting signatures to put him on the ballot, people would say, "Do you mean he is neither a Democrat nor a Republican? Then give me the pen!" (It is said, by people from Massachusetts, that this response is peculiarly appropriate to the ordinary local politics of Massachusetts; but I take this as local boasting.) In the deadly routine that the Americans have sunk into, the mere possibility of an alternative is a glorious thing. Especially ifthere 115


is the framework of a permanent organization. Also such a campaign must be a remarkable experience for Hughes himself, to confront many people who do not at all have the same assumptions. And it gives some concrete activity to his phalanx, the New England professors of the Council of Correspondence. The students of Brandeis, Harvard, etc., are also busy with it: but for them this kind of political involvement might be, in my opinion, more ambiguous, and that is why I am writing this essay. For let me turn to an issue much deeper and more fateful for pacifism than these questions of strategy and tactics This is the assumption, now .

appallingly unanimous among the ordinary electorate, professional poli ticians, most radicals, and even political scientists who should know better, that politics is essentially a matter of "geuing into power," and then "deciding," directing, controlling, and coercing, the activities of society. The model seems to be taken from corporations with top-management, and there is something prestigious about being a "decision-maker." (Even C. Wright Mills was mes merized by this image; but, as I tried to show recently in Commenrary, in such a set-up less and less of human value is really decided by any responsible person, though plenty of disvalue is ground out by the set-up itself.) It is taken for granted that a man wants "power" of this kind, and it is quite acceptable for people like Joseph Kennedy and his sons to work toward it, even though this is directly contrary to the political ideal that the office and its duties seek the man rather than the man the office. It is axiomatic that a Party's primary purpose is to get into power, although this was not the original idea of "fac tions," in Madison's sense, which were functional but divisive interest groups.


More dangerously still, it is taken for granted that a nation wants to be a Great Power, and maintain itself so at any cost, even though this may be disadvanta geous to its culture and most of its citizens. And following the popular Leviathan like a jolly-boat, the political-soci ologists devote their researches to the analysis and simulation of power strug gles, as if this were their only possible subject; and as advisers, they take pan in the power struggles, rather than helping to solve problems. Unfortunately, the thinking of Hughes and Szilard seems to share some of this assump tion about the paramountcy of "getting into power"-just as Dave Riesman is always hounding people who are in "power." And frankly, when I question such a universal consensus, I wonder if I am on the right planet. Nevertheless, these persons are deluded. They are taking a base and impractical, and indeed neurotic, state of affairs as if it were right and inevitable. The state of affairs is impractical because, finally, no good can come of it; though of course, since it is the state of affairs, it must be transiently coped with and changed. Unless

we remember much more clearly than we seem to, what this "power" is, our 116


behavior in the madhouse cannot be prudent and therapeutic. So with chagrin I find myself forced to review elementary political theory and history. Living functions, biological, psycho-sociological, or social, have very little to do with abstract, preconceived "power" that manages and coerces from outside the specific functions themselves. Indeed, it is a commonplace that abstract power-in the form of "will power," "training," "discipline," "bureaucracy," "reform-schooling," "scientific management," etc.-uniformly

thwarts normal functioning and debases the persons involved. (It has a natural use, in emergencies, when not high-grade but minimal low-grade behavior is required.) Normal activities do not need extrinsic motivations, they have their own intrinsic energies and ends-in-view; and decisions are continually made by the on-going functions themselves, adjusting to the environment and one another. We may then define the subject of normal politics. It is the constitu tional relations of functional interests and interest groups in the community in which they transact. This is the bread-and-butter of ancient political theory and obviously has nothing to do with sovereignty or even power-for the ancients the existence of Power implies unconstitutionality, tyranny_ But even modern authors who move in a theory of "sovereignty," like Spinoza, Locke, Adam Smith, Jefferson, or Madison, understand that the commonwealth is strongest when the functional interests can seek their own level and there is the weakest exercise of "power." E.g. Spinoza tries to play power like a fish, Jefferson to de-energize it, Madison to balance it out. Let us now quickly sketch the meaning of the recent transcendent impor


tance of "power" and "getting into power," as if otherwise communities could not function. First, and least important, there is the innocuous, nonviolent, and rather natural development of a kind ofabstract power in an indigenous (non-invaded) society. The functions of civilization include production, trade and travel, the bringing up of the young in the mores; also subtle but essential polarities like experimentation and stability; also irrational and superstitious fantasies like exacting revenge for crime and protecting the taboos. Different interests in the whole will continually conflict, as individuals or as interest groups; yet, since all require the commonwealth, there is also a strong functional interest in adjudi cation and peace, in harmonizing social invention or at least compromise. It is plausible that, in the interests of armistice and adjudication, there should arise a kind of abstract institution above the conflict, to settle them or to obviate them by plans and laws; this would certainly be Power. (This derivation is plausible but I doubt that it is historical, for in fact it is just this kind of thing that lively primitive communities accomplish by quick intuition, tone of voice, exchange 117


of a glance. and suddenly there is unanimity, to the anthropologist's astonish ment.) Much more likely, and we know historically, abstract power is invented in simple societies in emergencies of danger, of enemy attack or divine wrath. But such "dictatorship" is ad hoc and surprisingly lapses. Surprisingly, consid ering that power corrupts; yet it makes psychological sense, for emergency is a negative function, to meet a threat to the pre-conditions of the interesting functions of life; once the danger is past, the "power" has no energy of function, no foreground interest, to maintain it. To give a very late example: it seemed remarkable to the Europeans, but not to the Americans, that Washington, like Cincinnatus, went home to his farm; and even the Continental Congress lan guished. There were no conditions for "power." (Indeed-and this is why I have chosen the example-in the last decades of the eighteenth century, in many respects the Americans lived in a kind of peaceful community anarchy, spiced by mutinies that were hardly punished. The Constitution, as Richard Lee pointed om, was foisted on them by trickery, the work of very special interest groups; it would have been quite sufficient simply to amend the Articles.) Altogether different from this idyll is the universal history of most of the world, civilized or barbarian. Everywhere is invasion, conquest, and domina tion, involving for the victors the necessity to keep and exercise power, and for the others the necessity to strive for power, in order to escape suffering and exploitation. This too is entirely functional. The conqueror is originally a pirate; he and his band do not share in the commonwealth, they have interests apart from the community preyed on. Subsequently, however, piracy becomes


government, the process of getting people to perform by extrinsic motivations, of penalty and blackmail, and later bribery and training. But it is only the sem blance of a commonwealth, for activity is directed. Necessarily, such directed and extrinsically motivated performance is not so strong, efficient, spontane ous, inventive, well structured, or lovely as the normal functioning of a free community of interests. Very soon society becomes lifeless. The means of community action, initiative, decision, have been preempted by the power ful. But the slaveholder, exploiters, and governors share in that same society and are themselves vitiated, Yet they never learn to get down off the people's

back and relinquish their power. So some are holding on to an increasingly empty power; others are striving to achieve it; and most are sunk in resigna tion. Inevitably, as people become stupider and more careless, administration increases in size and power; and conversely. By and large, the cultures that we study in the melancholy pages of history are pathetic mixtures, with the ingre dients often still discernible: there is a certain amount of normal function sur viving or reviving-bread is baked, arts and sciences are pursued by a few, etc.; 118


mostly we see the abortions of lively social functioning saddled, exploited, pre vented, perverted, drained dry, patemalized by an imposed system of power and management that preempts the means and makes decisions ab extra. And the damnable thing is that, of course, everybody believes that except in this pattern, nothing could possibly be accomplished: if there were no marriage license and no tax, none could properly mate and no children be born and raised; if there were no tolls there would be no bridges; if there were no uni versity charters, there would be no higher learning; if there were no usury and no Iron Law of Wages, there would be no capital; if there were no mark-up of drug prices, there would be no scientific research. Once a society has this style of thought, that every activity requires licensing, underwriting, deciding by abstract power, it becomes inevitably desirable for an ambitious man to seek power and for a vigorous nation to try to be a Great Power. The more that have the power-drive, the more it seems to be necessary to the others to compete, or submit, just in order to survive. (And importantly they are right.) Many are ruthless and most live in fear. Even so, this is not the final development of the belief in "power." For that occurs when to get into power, to be prestigious and in a position to make decisions. is taken to be the social good itself, apart from any functions that it is thought to make possible. The pattern of dominance-and-submission has then been internalized and, by its clinch, fills up the whole of experience. If a man is not continually proving his potency, his mastery of others and of himself, he becomes prey to a panic of being defeated and victimized. Every vital function must therefore be used as a means of proving or it is felt as a


symptom of weakness. Simply to enjoy, produce, learn, give or take, love or be angry (rather than cool), is to be vulnerable. This is different, and has dif ferent consequences, from the previous merely external domination and sub mission. A people that has life but thwarted functions will rebel when it can, against feudal dues, clogs to trade, suppression of thought and speech, taxa tion without representation, insulting privilege, the iron law of wages, coloni alism. But our people do not rebel against poisoning, genetic deformation, and imminent total destruction. Rather, people aspire to be top-managers no matter what the goods or services produced. One is a promoter, period; or a celebrity, period. The Gross National Product must increase without consideration of the standard of life. There is no natural limit, so the only security is in deterrence. The environ ment is rife with projected enemies. There is a huddling together and con forming to avoid the vulnerability of any idiosyncrasy, at the same time as each one has to be one-up among his identical similars. Next, there is excitement in identifying with the "really" powerful, the leaders, the Great Nations, the 119


decision-makers, dramatized on the front page. But these leaders, of course, feel equally powerless in the face of the Great Events. For it is characteristic of the syndrome that as soon as there is occasion for any practical activity, toward happiness, value, spirit, or even simple safety, everyone suffers from the feeling of utter powerlessness; the internalized submissiveness now has its innings. Modern technology is too complex; there is a population explo sion; the computer will work out the proper war-game for us; they've got your number, don't stick your neck out; "fall-out is a physical fact of our nuclear age, it can be faced like any other fact" (Manual of Civil Defense); I'm strong, I can ''

take sex or leave it" (eighteen-year-old third-offender for felonious assault). ln brief, the under-side of the psychology of power is that Nothing Can Be Done; and the resolution of the stalemate is to explode. This is the Cold War. I have frequently explored this psychology of proving, resignation. and

catastrophic explosion (Wilhelm Reich's "primary masochism"), and I shall not pursue it again. It is filling the void of vital function by identifying with the agent that has frustrated it; with, subsequently, a strongly defended conceit, but panic when any occasion calls for initiative, originality, or even animal response. Here I have simply tried to relate this psychology to the uncritical unanimous acceptance of the idea of "getting into power in order to . . . " or just "getting into power" as an end in itself. There is a vicious circle, for (except in emergencies) the very exercise of abstract power, managing and coercing, itself tends to stand in the way and alienate, to thwart function and diminish energy, and so to increase the psychology of power. But of course the conse quence of the process is to put us in fact in a continual emergency, so power


creates its own need. l have tried to show how, historically, the psychology has been exacerbated by the miserable system of extrinsic motivation by incen tives and punishments (including profits, wages, unemployment), reducing people to low-grade organisms no different than Professor Skinner's pigeons; whereas normal function is intrinsically motivated toward specific ends-in view, and leads to growth in inventiveness and freedom. Where people are not directly in feeling contact with what is to be done, nothing is done well and on time; they are always behind and the emergency becomes chronic. Even with good intentions, a few managers do not have enough mind for the needs of society-not even if their computers gallop through the calculations like lightning. l conclude that the consensus of recent political scientists that polit ical theory is essentially the study of power-maneuvers, is itself a neurotic ide ology. Normal politics has to do with the relations of specific functions in a community; and such a study would often result in practical political inven

tions that would solve problems-it would not merely predict elections and solve nothing, or play war-games and destroy mankind. 120


Let me sum up these remarks in one homely and not newsy proposition: throughout the world, it is bad domestic politics that creates the deadly inter national politics. Conversely, pacifism is revolutionary: we will not have peace unless there is a profound change in social strucwre, including gening rid of national sovereign power. Concretely, our system of government at present comprises the military industrial complex, the secret paramilitary agencies, the scientific war-corpo rations, the blimps, the horse's asses, the police, the administrative bureaucracy, the career diplomats, the lobbies, the corporations that contribute Party funds, the underwriters and real-estate promoters that banen on Urban Renewal, the official press and the official opposition press, the sounding-off and jockeying for the next election, the National Unity, etc., etc. All this machine is grinding along by the momentum of the power and profit motives and style long since built into it; it cannot make decisions of a kind radically different than it does. Even if an excellent man happens to be elected to office, he will find that it is no longer a possible instrument for social change on any major issues of war and peace or the way of life of the Americans. Indeed, as the members of the Liberal Project have complained, office does not give even a good public forum, for the press does not report inconvenient speeches. So we must look, finally, not to this kind of politics, but to direct function ing in what concerns us closely, in order to dispel the mesmerism of abstract power altogether. This has, of course, been the thinking of radical pacifism. The civil disobedience of the Committee for Nonviolent Action is the direct expression of each person's conscience of what it is impossible for him to live


with. The studied withdrawal and boyconing advocated by the General Strike for Peace is a direct countering ofthe social drift toward catastrophe that occurs just because we co-operate with it. (The same holds for refusal in what is one's "private" important business, like the Women's Strike against poisoned milk or young men's refusing the draft.) Best of all, in principle, is the policy that Dave Dellinger espouses and tries to live by, to live communally and without authority, to work usefully and feel friendly, and so positively to replace an

area of power with peacefulfunctioning. (Interestingly, even a critical and pur gative group like The Realist is coming around to this point of view-with a hard row to hoe among urban poor people.) Similar is to work in foreign lands as a citizen of humanity, trying to avoid the Power blocs and their aims; e.g. the Friends Service. The merit of all these activities is that they produce a dif ferent kind of human relations and look to a different quality of life. This is a global and perhaps impossibly difficult task. But think. There is no history of mankind without these wars, which now have come to the maximum: can we have any hope except in a different kind of human relations? 121


It will be said that there is no time. Yes, probably. But let me cite a remark ofTocqueville. In his last work, L'Ancien Regime, he notes "with terror," as he says, how throughout the eighteenth century writer after writer and expert after expert pointed out that this and that detail of the Old Regime was unvi able and could not possibly survive; added uP. they proved that the entire Old Regime was doomed and must soon collapse; and yet there was nor a single


man whoforetold that there would be a mighty revolution.

122

Drawing the Line Once Again: Paul Goodman's Anarchist Writings

Once Again

Once Again

Drawing the Line

Line Drawing Interpretation

Line Drawing Interpretation

Love Once Again

Once and Again

Once and Again

Love Once Again

Never Again Once More

Once and Again

Once and Again

Calculus, once again

Never Again Once More

Goodmans Hotel

Goodmans Hotel

Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writings

Anarchist

The Accumulation of Freedom: Writings on Anarchist Economics

The Anarchist Cookbook

The Anarchist Cookbook

An Anarchist

The Anarchist Cookbook

The Anarchist Cookbook

Drawing the Line: Public and Private in America

The Anarchist Cookbook

Selected Prose: The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre Vol. 2

Again

Again

Housing an Anarchist Approach

Drawing the Line Once Again: Paul Goodman's Anarchist Writings

Once Again

Once Again

Drawing the Line

Line Drawing Interpretation

Line Drawing Interpretation

Love Once Again

Once and Again

Once and Again

Love Once Again

Never Again Once More

Once and Again

Once and Again

Calculus, once again

Never Again Once More

Goodmans Hotel

Goodmans Hotel

Jean-Paul Sartre: Basic Writings

Anarchist

The Accumulation of Freedom: Writings on Anarchist Economics

The Anarchist Cookbook

The Anarchist Cookbook

An Anarchist

The Anarchist Cookbook

The Anarchist Cookbook

Drawing the Line: Public and Private in America

The Anarchist Cookbook

Selected Prose: The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre Vol. 2

Again

Again

Housing an Anarchist Approach

Recommend Documents