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only by rephrasing earlier problems in a new discourse that is unmistakably modern in its premises and sensibilities; even where the answers are old, the questions that produced them have been phrased in the problematic of a new historical situation. The problem was especially acute for the first generation of intellec- Anarchism in the Chinese tuals to become conscious of this new historical situation, who, Revolution as products of a received ethos, had to remake themselves in the very process of reconstituting the problematic of Chinese thought. Anarchism, as we shall see, was a product of this situation. The answers it offered to this new problematic were not just social Arif Dirlik and political but sought to confront in novel ways its demands in their existential totality. At the same time, especially in the case of the first generation of anarchists, these answers were couched in a moral language that rephrased received ethical concepts in a new discourse of modernity. Although this new intellectual problematique is not to be reduced to the problem of national consciousness, that problem was important in its formulation, in two ways. First, essential to the new problematic is the question of China’s place in the world and its relationship to the past, which found expression most concretely in problems created by the new national consciousness. Second, national consciousness raised questions about social relationships, ultimately at the level of the relationship between the individual and society, which were to provide the framework for, and in some ways also contained, the redefinition of even existential questions. For the universalistically oriented among Chinese intellectuals, consciousness of the nation created some discomfort, which was to serve as a source of existential problems as well as of an urge to transcend the limitations imposed by national consciousness. I will also argue that nationalism itself pointed to a new kind of universalism that pushed against the boundaries imposed by a national reorganization of society. In either case, this new consciousness provided the premise even of 1991 its own negation. This was true as well of the anarchists whotook 72 the nation) presented, that we must seek for clues to why anar- chism, despite its basic contradiction of nationalist goals, acquired a significant place in intellectual discourse. This new consciousness was to play a crucial part in the articu- lation, in the words of Thomas Metzger, of a modern Chinese intel- lectual problematique.2 This is not to suggest that modern Chinese thought is but an account of the problems presented by national consciousness, or that all problems of Chinese thought from this point on must be referred back to a national consciousness and the political questions it raised. In his recent study of Chinese intellec- tuals at the turn of the century, Chang Hao has argued plausibly against the limitations of an exclusively political formulation of the problems that faced Chinese intellectuals, which were not just po- litical, social, or even broadly cultural but ethical and existential as well.3 Metzger shares Chang Hao’s view in his identification as a central concern of modern Chinese thought the establishment of a moral language with which to envisage the good society.4 At its broadest, this problematic entailed the reconstitution of both self and society in a discourse of modernity, which called forth questions not only of social and political form but, ultimately, of the meaning and ends of individual existence. The intellectual and ethical postulates of modernity, which forced themselves on the consciousness of Chinese intellectuals in the encounter with the West, were to provoke a rethinking of received traditions in their totality in the new possibilities they suggested. While Chinese intellectuals have continued over the years to draw upon these traditions as a source for an autonomous critique of Euro-American modernism, they have been able to do so 2 Thomas A. Metzger, Developmental Criteria and Indigenously Conceived Options: A Normative Approach to China’s Modernization in Recent Times, Is- sues and Studies (February 1987), 72. 3 Chang Hao, Chinese Intellectuals in Crisis: Search for Order and Meaning (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1987). Introduction. 4 Metzger, Developmental Criteria, 72. 71 to the country’s existence in a new world where the competition for power of expansive nation-states promised to consume those societies unable to emulate their example. The urgent questions of the day were what to do with the alien Manchu dynasty that continued to rule the majority Han people that constituted China Contents and seemed to be less concerned with the nation’s welfare than with its own; how to transform the political system so as to extend political participation to larger numbers of Chinese in order Back Matter .......................... 7 to secure the people’s loyalty to the state; and how to develop Author’s Note ........................ 7 the country economically to establish a material foundation for Dedication .......................... 8 national strength—and the conditions for political sovereignty in Acknowledgments ...................... 8 a world where national political power seemed to be contingent upon the control of global economic resources. The pursuit of Chapter One national wealth and power seemed to rule the world. The static Introduction: society of China must be dynamized by this same pursuit if it was Anarchism and Revolutionary Discourse 10 to survive—and reassert the glory to which it was entitled by a The Anarchist Presence in the Chinese Revolutionary glorious past.1 Building a nation was essential to this end. Movement ....................... 21 The very presence of anarchism in Chinese thought might be The Anarchist Contribution to Radical Ideology . 43 taken as evidence that these concerns were not shared as widely Anarchism and Revolutionary Discourse . 50 as they first appear to bewere it not for the fact that anarchists Chapter Two themselves were intimately involved with the revolutionary move- Nationalism, Utopianism, and Revolutionary ment nationalism spawned, and anarchist ideas first made their ap- Politics: pearance within a new discourse that took as its point of departure Anarchist Themes in the Early Chinese Revolution- China’s reconstitution as a nation. Rather, the anarchist presence ary Movement. 69 suggests that this discourse is not reducible to a one-dimensional Nationalism and Revolution: Global Consciousness and defensive or parochial search for wealth and power, that it was the Reconceptualization of Political Space . 73 multidimensional in the possibilities it produced—including, ulti- Initial Reception of Anarchism . 90 mately, the negation of the premise that lay at its origins—which Anarchist Themes in the Early Revolutionary Movement 107 made it authentically revolutionary. It is not in the immediate polit- ical concerns of Chinese nationalism, but rather in the intellectual problematic the new national consciousness (or, consciousness of 1 Benjamin Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964). 70 3 Chapter Three Science, Morality, and Revolution: Anarchism and the Origins of Social Revolutionary Thought in China 110 Anarchism and Social Revolution . 112 Chapter Two The Place of Anarchism in Late Qing Politics . 116 The Paris Anarchists . 122 Nationalism, Utopianism, and The Tokyo Anarchists . 140 Vision and Revolution . 152 Revolutionary Politics: Chapter Four Anarchist Themes in the Early Anarchists against Socialists in Early Republican China 160 Chinese Revolutionary Anarchist Currents in the Early Republic . 162 Shifu and Guangzhou Anarchism . 171 Movement. Anarchism Against Socialism . 182 Conclusion . 199 Anarchism appeared in China at a moment of national crisis. In 19067 Chinese intellectuals abroad established two societies, Chapter Five within months of each other, devoted to the propagation of Radical Culture and Cultural Revolution: anarchism, one in Paris, the other in Tokyo. At a time when a Anarchism in the May Fourth Movement 202 revolutionary discourse was taking shape, with origins in a new Contemporary Witnesses . 205 national consciousness, the anarchism these societies promoted The New Culture Movement and Anarchism . 213 introduced into the discourse dissonant themes that would have a Anarchist Activity After 1915 . 227 lasting effect. In spite of their basic conflict with nationalist goals, The October Revolution and Anarchism . 239 these themes would display a remarkable staying power in the The Dialectics of Revolution: Social Revolution and Eth- revolutionary discourse fueled by the pursuit of political forms to ical Transformation . 244 give coherence to a nation in the making. Their echoes are audible Anarchism and Cultural Radicalism in the May Fourth to this day as the pursuit continues. Period . 259 The receptivity to anarchism at a moment of nascent national consciousness seems anomalous. Mainstream Chinese political Chapter Six thinking during the first decade of the century revolved around The Anarchist Alternative in Chinese Socialism, the question of how to make China into a nation, to forge a 1921–1927 267 cohesive political system out of the loosely organized power Anarchists and Marxists: Collaboration and Split . 270 structure of a bureaucratic monarchy, and to ward off the threat 4 69 culture as social discourse), it has moved

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