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“For a World Without Oppressors:” U.S. Anarchism from the Palmer

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“For a World Without Oppressors:” U.S. Anarchism from the Palmer “For a World Without Oppressors:” U.S. Anarchism from the Palmer Raids to the Sixties by Andrew Cornell A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Social and Cultural Analysis Program in American Studies New York University January, 2011 _______________________ Andrew Ross © Andrew Cornell All Rights Reserved, 2011 “I am undertaking something which may turn out to be a resume of the English speaking anarchist movement in America and I am appalled at the little I know about it after my twenty years of association with anarchists both here and abroad.” -W.S. Van Valkenburgh, Letter to Agnes Inglis, 1932 “The difficulty in finding perspective is related to the general American lack of a historical consciousness…Many young white activists still act as though they have nothing to learn from their sisters and brothers who struggled before them.” -George Lakey, Strategy for a Living Revolution, 1971 “From the start, anarchism was an open political philosophy, always transforming itself in theory and practice…Yet when people are introduced to anarchism today, that openness, combined with a cultural propensity to forget the past, can make it seem a recent invention—without an elastic tradition, filled with debates, lessons, and experiments to build on.” -Cindy Milstein, Anarchism and Its Aspirations, 2010 “Librarians have an ‘academic’ sense, and can’t bare to throw anything away! Even things they don’t approve of. They acquire a historic sense. At the time a hand-bill may be very ‘bad’! But the following day it becomes ‘historic.’” -Agnes Inglis, Letter to Highlander Folk School, 1944 “To keep on repeating the same attempts without an intelligent appraisal of all the numerous failures in the past is not to uphold the right to experiment, but to insist upon one’s right to escape the hard facts of social struggle into the world of wishful belief. We grant such a right to the weak, the infirm, to the tired radical, to the escapists. But we do deny such a right to the revolutionary whose main weapon is an unflagging will and an unblunted sense of reality.” -Vanguard: A Libertarian Communist Journal, 1934 DEDICATION To my mother, who introduced me to non-violent direct action at two years of age when we blocked the bulldozers attempting to demolish my daycare center. To my father who watched the MC5 play at the White Panther Party house, and waited until the dissertation was half complete to ask, “So when did Murray Bookchin get so into environmentalism? He sounded like an old fashioned socialist when I heard him lecture in ’69.” v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I had the privilege of working with a stellar dissertation committee. Each member—Lisa Duggan, Randy Martin, Nikhil Pal Singh, and Stephen Duncombe— encouraged and informed this project from the start. My advisor, Andrew Ross, has providing a towering example of a scholar-activist who writes prolifically and accessibly while also finding time for his family, students, and political commitments. The dissertation was also shaped by members of the American Studies Dissertation Writing Group: Kerwin Kaye, Miabi Chatterji, Dawn Peterson, Miles Grier, Rich Blint, and André Carrington. I deeply appreciate the friendship and ideas I’ve shared with many other members of the NYU Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, including Emma Kreyche, Zach Schwartz-Weinstein, Johanna Londoño, Dacia Mitchel, Rana Jaleel, Ariana Ochoa, Steve Fletcher, Neil Brenner, Alfonso Gonzales, Madala Hilliare, Betsy Brown, and Marty Correa. I also want to thank all the archivists that assisted me throughout the project, especially Julie Herrada. I’ve received ideas and other forms of assistance from a huge number of scholars, activists, and friends. I shared a number of archival resources with Ed D’Angelo, Spencer Sunshine, and Jesse Cohn; the project is better because of it. The Institute for Anarchist Studies provided me with a small grant that was hugely vi encouraging. I productively chewed on ideas with Chris Dixon, Harjit Gill, Cindy Milstein, Maia Ramnath, Joshua Stephens, Josh MacPhee, Dara Greenwald, Kristin Campbell, Malav Kanuga, Dana Burnett, the Left Turn crew, members of Organization for a Free Society, and many many more. A number of old friends have kept me sane throughout by encouraging me to do and think about things other than anarchism from time to time. Thanks especially to Adam Kuthe, Rich Miles, Dusty Morris, and Andrea Koch. My parents, Jo Wiley and Peter Cornell, and my sister, Kerstin Cornell, have provided love, funds, and a sounding board for ideas for years. Dan Berger has been my closest friend and thinking partner for many years, and has assisted and inspired me in countless ways. Finally, my life-partner Jessica Harbaugh has been an endless source of humor, support, and happiness. I love her dearly and thank her deeply. vii ABSTRACT In the past decade, anarchism has reemerged as an inspirational tradition and a set of guiding principles for social justice activists throughout the world. Yet the history of anarchist ideas and movements since the early 20th century remains woefully under-researched. In this dissertation, I draw on radical periodicals, memoirs, archival collections, and oral history interviews to analyze changes in the political theory, strategies, and demographics of anarchist movements in the United States between WWI and the end of the Vietnam War. Whereas previous accounts have suggested that anarchism was all but stamped out in 1919 and only reemerged at the tail end of the 1960s, I demonstrate that an unbroken line of anarchist publications, organizations, and activities existed throughout those years. Though the suppression of anarchist-oriented labor unions and the deportation of skilled propagandists took their toll, racializing representations of radicals during the Red Scare helped secure new immigration restrictions which reshuffled the U.S. working-class, racially and ideologically, in a manner to which anarchists were unprepared to respond. During the inter-war years, domestic organizing challenges were compounded by the priority that U.S. anarchists placed on supporting European comrades threatened by fascists and communists. However, a new generation of anarchists, of mixed class origins, cohered around commitments to pacifism, poetry, and prefigurative strategies during the Second World War. Later, anarchist-pacifists viii supplied tactics and organizing principles to the civil rights movement while black freedom struggles pushed them to abandon theories narrowly focused on class struggle. Meanwhile, anarchists of the Beat Generation synthesized European avant- garde traditions with the hip culture and urban insurrectional activity of African- Americans to infuse the 1960s counter-culture with an eclectic doctrine of anti- authoritarian politics. By tracing these developments, I explain how anarchism experienced upward mobility—evolving from an ideology of the immigrant working class to one that today appeals primarily to middle class youth. In doing so, I demonstrate that anarchism has been a deeply trans-national, cultural and political project. Internally variegated, it has both shaped and been shaped by major events and social movements of the 20th century, always in pursuit of a world free from social domination. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATON v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vi ABSTRACT viii LIST OF FIGURES xi LIST OF TABLES xii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: Surviving the Black and Red Scare, 1917-1920 30 CHAPTER 2: “A Movement of Emergency, of Defense”: Regrouping While Encircled, 1921-1932 143 CHAPTER 3: The Unpopular Front: Insurrectionist and Mass Anarchism during the Great Depression, 1932-1939 247 CHAPTER 4: “Daily Acts of Life”: Pacifism, Poetry, and the New Anarchism, 1940-1954 320 CHAPTER 5: Libertarian Socialism, Civil Rights, and National Liberation, 1954-1965 409 CHAPTER 6: “White Skin, Black Masks”: Beats, Anarchists, and the New Left, 1955-1970 501 CONCLUSION 589 APPENDIX: U.S. Anarchism in the 19th Century: An Historical Note 603 BIBLIOGRAPY 622 x LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: M. Steimer, A. Berkman, E. Eckstein, M. Rocker, and R. Rocker 37 Figure 2: Genealogy Chart 1 45 Figure 3: Ellis Island Weekly 129 Figure 4: Rose Pesotta 198 Figure 5: Free Society Group of Chicago 212 Figure 6: Lecture Advertisement, The Road to Freedom 224 Figure 7: Cronaca Sovversiva and Man! Mastheads 254 Figure 8: Author at Sunrise Farm 275 Figure 9: Anarchist-Communism vs. Anarcho-Syndicalism Chart 288 Figure 10: Spanish Revolution Event leaflet 303 Figure 11: Genealogy Chart 2 323 Figure 12: David Wieck 492 Figure 13: Anti-Conscription Event leaflet 422 Figure 14: Black Mask 545 Figure 15: Peter Werbe, Pun and Genie Plamondon, Jerry Rubin 565 xi LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Anarchist Births and Death 597 xii INTRODUCTION Dennis Danver’s 2002 novel The Watch opens with Peter Kropotkin, perhaps the best known anarchist of the 19th century, languishing on his death bed. Time stops for a moment, and a man claiming to be from the future appears and makes Kropotkin an offer: “By scientific means, I’ll restore your body to what it was in younger and healthier days, then transport you to a different time and place, where you may live out the balance of a new life.”1 Kropotkin takes a chance and suddenly finds himself on an airplane bound for Richmond, Virginia, in 1999. After gaining his bearings, the old Russian rebel—now inhabiting the body of a 30 year-old—is invited to dinner by a group of pierced and tattooed young people living collectively near the local university. Kropotkin learns that his new friends are vegans who garden in their back yard when they aren’t playing in political punk bands or creating agit-prop theatre about the human costs of “free trade.” Following a quick meeting using a consensus- based decision-making process, Kropotkin is invited to join the housing cooperative.
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