Number 54 50 pence or one dollar June 2008 Beer And Revolution Beer And Revolution: The German Anarchist It doesn’t seem to occur to Goyens that all sorts of Movement in New York City, 1880•1914 by Tom nationalities, occupations, political persuasions were Goyens capable of organising their own social networks, I wanted to like this book but after page 4 I couldn’t be outings, and beer hall besides the German anarchists. bothered. Goyens writes “with the exception of Alexan• Its as if he’s discovered working class people are der Berkman no anarchist inspired acts of deliberate capable of self organisation and wants to race the news violence have been committed by a self identified back to his academic peers. “Do you know, up North anarchist in the US”. I reached for the first page of they run their own clubs, they run pigeon races, and another recent book “Buda’s Wagon” by Mike Davis: charabanc outings… Its all about the reconquest of “A few months after the arrest of his comrades Sacco autonomous space.” and Vanzetti, a vengeful Italian immigrant anarchist Where’s my pint! I need a drink! Or is that a Mario Buda parked his horse drawn wagon on Wall metaphor? Street. Buda’s wagon. It blew up leaving 40 dead”. Ian Bone Buda wasn’t alone in being a veteran supporter of Luigi Galleani, the anarchist apostle of violence. I City Of Quartz by Mike Davis turned to the index of Beer and Revolution. Hadn’t the This is a history of Los Angeles and its environs. It is anarchist Leon Czolgosz assassinated President not the sort of history you associate with America – McKinley. Goyens writes “McKinley was shot by a Davis does not exclude the Anarchists, Socialists, deranged American of Polish descent, Leon Czolgosz, company towns and class struggles that lie hidden, who claimed to be an anarchist”. So what’s going on deep in the void of US folklore. Where it touches upon here – anyone who commits violence has their anarchist the history of ‘great men’, it is one where they are credentials called into question. Deranged? In fact shown, warts and all. Czolgosz had perfectly good reasons for shooting City of Quartz is not necessarily a straightforward McKinley. book for the non•American reader. Davis never misses In this book Goyens’ aim is to eschew all portrayal an opportunity to go into detail, and that means cover• of anarchists as violent. Johann Most’s violent rhetoric ing many places and individuals that will be utterly “was often tongue in cheek and not dissimilar to 1970’s unfamiliar to European readers. punk culture”. You fucking what! Johann Most as Sid The issues, even when they appear unique to LA are Vicious! however all too often universal – in particular Davis The bulk of the book is a well researched descrip• concentrates on a city choking on its waste, and an area tion of anarchist beer halls, picnics, and social outings deeply damaged by the contradictions of capitalism – of German anarchists in New York 1880•1914. Goyens the over•production, greed, social stratification, gentri• seems to find it noteworthy enough to run to 250 pages fication, political chicanery, religious revivalism and of such description overlaid with a sub Hakim ignorance of the environment. If LA is a glimpse of our Bey/Paul Goodman analysis of autonomous space. own futures, you don’t want to go there. Chapters have such guff headlines as “A Radical Davis’ sense of humour, and cutting attitude to the Geography: The Social Space for a Dissident Subcul• well•heeled, peeks through. LA appears to have been a ture”. So up his own academic arse is he with his trailblazer of homeowner associations and all manner analysis that when some anarchists throw some police• of NIMBY groups. Of one such body he comments man over a fence at a picnic we are told it is not really “When it comes to solving major urban problems, a fence at all… the policeman has in fact been thrown moreover, the Valley homesteaders are about as over a “metaphor” for autonomous space. Everything patient and constructive as Sendero Luminoso”. that points to nice warm hearted anarchists is included, A sorry picture emerges in particular of black everything violent is excluded – including poor Leon working class Los Angeles squeezed from all sides – Czolgosz. left behind by de•industrialisation and under•priced by Latino labour, the 1980s found [continues over] Inside: Book Review Special “Bash the Rich” Ian Bone, Bash the Rich: True•life confessions of The autobiography shares many of the same an Anarchist in the UK brilliant features of the early editions ofClass War, as This highly readable autobiography outlines some of well as many of the faults. It is hugely entertaining, the adventures and misadventures one of Britain’s easy to read and deliberately provocative. It is also highest profile and most influential anarchists. From slightly chaotic, and occasionally a little cliquey, there his upbringing as the son of a socialist butler, to his are often huge rafts of names, with little fleshing out first tentative engagement with anarchist groups, to of who they are – so there is a slight sense of exclu• his passionate involvement in the student protests, sion if you, like me, aren’t amongst Bone’s coterie. anti•apartheid direct actions, and punk movements, to There are also a number of surprises. Bone and his most infamous production – the ‘unruly tabloid’ Class War’s image was largely unapologetic and anti• Class War, Ian Bone has never lacked in imagination intellectual. However the autobiography indicates that or guts. The book gives the impression that wherever there were occasional moments of regret, although Bone goes, a riotous good time seems to follow. So it even those are tinged with a malicious humour. One was an endearing, almost reassuring, feature of example is the mistimed disruption of a middle class Bone’s autobiography to read him lamenting that he CND rally in which rather than the pompous leader of too felt that the action always seemed to be elsewhere. her majesty’s loyal opposition, Neil Kinnock, being Indeed he abandoned the highly successful local bottled off stage, the elderly historian (and a hero of newssheet Alarm based in Swansea, whose campaign• Ian’s) E. P. Thompson was accidentally targeted ing style not only lead to corrupt councillors serving instead (139). He also indicates a highly sophisticated time, but helped produce a lively anarchic subculture political brain (rejecting the elitist division between (66•70), to come to London to set up Class War the ‘intellectual’ and ‘non•intellectual’ by no means because he was frustrated that the South Wales city requires endorsing ignorance instead). There are criti• had failed to rise up during the ‘81 riots (271). cal appraisals of the different factions within Class War, and unexpectedly, Bone suggests that an autono• City Of Quartz… mist version of the paper, which had been side•lined south central LA surrounded by a hostile police for being too theoretical, should have been given more force and a corrupt political system where even attention, and could have helped shape future Class so•called 1960s radicals had long since given up on War tactics (151). black youth. However, as America was to see in the The problem – which Bone and his various propa• 1992 riots, the one thing the youth of Los Angeles ganda tools such as Alarm and Class War and the had not done, was give up. bands Page Three and The Living Legends attempted Davis inadvertently raises hard questions for to counterbalance – was that within the anarchist radicals. Whilst we can no doubt all agree that the movement dry anonymous theorising often took prece• environment cannot survive if every American dence over practical action and personal fulfilment. As businessman who wants to build a new development Bone rightly notes: ‘If you where to build a revolu• in the desert does so, can everyone who wants to tionary movement people want to relate to real, living, live in California do so, and continue doing so? vibrant, exciting human beings not anonymous It is one thing to believe in “No Borders” – balaclava wearers or people too scared to give their another to see it implemented solely by capitalism’s views a public hearing’ (176). This lively first volume need for mass migrant labour. Those issues, and the of his autobiography presents just such an efferves• one’s thrown up by the creation of an increasingly cent, personable and anti•elitist account of anarchism. Spanish speaking and Catholic California, are There should be should be more books like this, and unlikely to go away. more activists like Bone (but not, perhaps, too many). Davis’ narrative stops in 1990, and whilst this Benjamin Franks, March, 2008 book claims to be a ‘new edition’ it is in fact the old Bash the Rich: True•life confessions of an one, but with a new 14 page preface. Given that, if Anarchist in the UK by Ian Bone (Bath: Tangent, you bought this first time round, there is probably 2006) ISBN: 0954417771 £9.99 little point in rushing out to get the 2006 remix. That should not take away from the importance This issue of KSL: Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley of City of Quartz. If like me, this is your first book Library produced June 2008. Hope you like it. by Davis, it is unlikely to be your last. This is a guy Kate Sharpley Library: who knows what he is talking about. BM Hurricane, London, WC1N 3XX and PMB 820, Paul Stott 2425 Channing Way, Berkeley CA 94704, USA City Of Quartz by Mike Davis www.katesharpleylibrary.net Verso, 2006 £10.99 Bulletin of the Kate Sharpley Library www.katesharpleylibrary.net Page 2 Angry Fictions / Library News Angry fictions: “My Revolutions” by Hari Kunzru wicked city.