Anarchy No. 14
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: 97 Contents of No. 14 April 1962 Disobedience and the new pacifism Nicolas Walter 97 The state and society Colin Ward 115 Gandhi on the theory of voluntary servitude Gene Sharp 120 Cover by Rujus Segar Other issues of ANARCHY BroiidciMt on ANARCHISM 1. Sex-and-Violence; Galbrailh; BBC Home Service April 27lh 7.30 the New Wave, Education, Disobedience Opportunity, Equality. 2. Workers* Control. Coming soon in ANARCHY 3. What does anarchism mean today?; A symposium on the work of and the new pacifism Africa; the Long Revolution; David Wills Exceptional Children. Harold Drasdo on the Poetry NICOLAS WALTER 4. De-institutionalisation; Conflicting of Dissent Bob Green on the strains in anarchism. Ethics of Last month I examined the background of the unilateralist movement 5. 1936: the Spanish Revolution. Anarchism from the point of view of the theories of pacifism and anti-militarism 6. Anarchy and the Cinema. Dachine Rainer on happy children practices of non-violence and direct action, and suggested that 7. Adventure Playgrounds. Maurice Goldman on Anarchism and of the responsibility 8. Anarchists and Fabians; Action and the African the movement is a new pacifism which combines individual Maurine Blanck Anthropology; Eroding Capitalism; on Benevolent with collective resistance. Rather than recapitulate my argument, I will Bureaucracy Orwell. quote what Alex Comfort said just after the last war about the need 9. Prison. A symposium on comprehensive school* a pacifism 10. Sillitoe's Key to the Door; for new Maclnnes on Crime; Augustus The atomic bomb has brought home to increasing numbers of the evil than war, because war John's Utopia; Committee of 100 Universities and ANARCHY public at large that tyranny is not a greater is Industry. the largest scale . Objection not and Anarchy can be obtained in termtime itself is an instrument of tyranny on 11. Paul Goodman; Neill on Education; from: enough. The objector, particularly the religious objector, is politically safeguarding his own con- the Character-Builders. Oxford: Martin Small, Trinity College irrelevant because he is chiefly interested in 12. are the anarchists? aspect of state irresponsibility. You do not Who Cambridge: at University Labour Club scientious objection to one adopt every means short of A psychological and meetings or from Tim Oxton, want objection, you want resistance, ready to mechanism of conscription. sociological enquiry. Trinity Hall. violence to destroy and render useless the whole support of religious believers Direct Action What about Redbrick? It is not enough to secure the immunity and and a politically conscious minority. The opposition of the ordinary man to military service must be canalised. He will not stand up against the machinery ol governments and penalties, with the knowledge that his wife consciousness of that powerful, Subscribe to" ANARCHY and children arc hostages, unless he has the movements gave to the Single copies by post Is. 9d. (30c.) if invisible, support which the European resistance ( iermans. will defy conscription 12 issues 20s. ($3). unpolitical man in his opposition lo the Men and to FREEDOM in defence of their own lives and homes against military adventurers act out the anarchist weekly, which readers of // they know that there is someone to support them. They will sentiment ANARCHY will find indispensable. A of an intuitive and thoroughly unpatriotic love of freedom, the first place. The answer to con- year's subscription to both journals is which makes conscription necessary in the the world, is a resistance offered at 32s. ($5). scription, in England and in every country of Cheques, POs and Money Orders movement which ask^ few political credentials of its members ... It is by 1 should be made out to taking the offensive that pacifism will become politically relevant. FREEDOM PRESS This is where we came in. This month I want to examine the 17a Maxwell Road London SW6 England unilateralist again, this time from the Tel: RENown 3736 background of the movement 98 99 The Ego & His Own (1845) between revolution and insurrection; point of view of the theory of insurrection and of the practice of "Revolution aims at new arrangements—insurrection aims not at any disobedience. new arrangements of ourselves but at arrangements by ourselves." Exactly the same distinction, this time between revolution and rebellion, The Theory ot Insurrection is made by Albert Camus in The Rebel (1951): "The claim of rebellion the othei is unity, the claim of revolution is totality . One is creative, Disobedience* against the State is a much older human tradition is nihilist." The revolutionary goal may be liberty and equality, but than direct action against war. Men are authoritarian, obsessed by the revolutionary way leads straight to inequality and slavery. Only obedience and inequality and slavery. "No two men can be half an hour insurrection recognises that ends and means are in practice the same, together," declared Samuel Johnson, "but one shall acquire an evident that men can never surrender their responsibility. Revolution uses superiority over the other" and he will do his best to keep it. But — dissent at one moment, only to enforce rigid assent at the next—revo- are also libertarian, obsessed by disobedience and equality and men lutionary disobedience today prepares for even sterner revolutionary of of the revolt of the liberty. The myths Prometheus and Lucifer, obedience tomorrow. Revolution overturns the structure of the State; lesser against the greater, are among the oldest of all; Adam's first insurrection overthrows it. Insurrection is the libertarian revolution,, disobey creator. Nor is action (even before he "knew" Eve) was to his undiluted and uninterrupted disobedience, refusing obedience to superiors, mythological disobedience mere nihilism. Prometheus brought fire to without seeking it from inferiors, the Utopia without any topia. earth, Lucifer brought light Adam ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge — This is the disobedience of the individual against society as well as of and evil, and he did not die, as had threatened, but instead good God of the subject against the State, and this individualism lies at the centre his eyes were opened. The State's motto is Befehl ist Befehl. The of what Alex Comfort, writing in the middle of the last war, called the individual's motto is Nan serviam. "Wherever there is a man who 2 "ideology of romanticism" —an ideology based on the conviction "that exercises authority", said Oscar Wilde, "there is a man who resists the common enemy of man is death, that the common tie of man is authority." victimhood, and that anyone who in attempting to escape the realisation The Communist Manifesto (1848) stated that "the history of all of that victimhood in himself increases its incidence upon others, is a hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles"—of inequality traitor to humanity and an ally of death." Thus "the romantic has only being maintained by the haves and equality being claimed by the two basic certainties—the certainty of irresoluble conflict which cannot there exists between have-nots. But there are two confusing factors . One is that many be won but must be continued, and the certainty that have-nots accept inequality (here is the fact of "voluntary servitude"), all human beings who are involved in this conflict an indefeasible death, and many haves reject it. Marx and Engels themselves were haves who responsibility to one another . The romantic has two enemies, turned their coats, and the same is true of most radical and revolutionary and the obedient who by conformity to power and irresponsibility ally leaders; neither Prometheus nor Lucifer was a man—one was a Titan themselves with death." This means that "the romantic recognises a . the and the other was an Angel. The motives of disobedience are com perpetual struggle upon two levels, the fight against death . and pilicated; so are its intentions. The other confusing factor is that the struggle against those men and institutions who ally themselves with revolt against a present inequality usually intends not just to destroy death against humanity, the struggle against barbarism." it but to replace it by a future inequality based on a different principle The ideology of the new pacifism is precisely this ideology of —to expropriate the expropriators—and even without the intention the romanticism, which explains how the new pacifists manage to combine result is usually the same. Every revolution is 'betrayed', even if it individual responsibility with collective resistance. We are not protozoa, has no Eighteenth Brumaire, simply because power tends to corrupt who exist in isolation, nor metazoa, who exist in organic structures, but and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Commonwealth of 1649 parazoa- who can pass from one stale to the other, thousands of is followed by the Protectorate of 1653, the Declaration of Rights by individuals combining and dividing in response to their environment. the Reign, of Terror—the classless society never comes, the State nevei The new pacifism rests upon shared personal responsibility. In Politics withers away. "Revolution is the most authoritarian thing imaginable," as a Vocation (1918), Max Weber distinguished between the "ethic of said Engels; and Landauer said that every Utopia leads to a new topia. ultimate ends" and the "ethic of responsibility". The ideology of insists that the dilemma jut as the old topia led to Utopia in the first place. Plus ca change . romanticism denies any such distinction and is imaginary. We say the way and the goal are one—that "he who would This is why Alex Comfort turned Marx on his head: "The wai good to another," as Blake put it, "must do it in minute particulars" is not between classes. The war is at root between individuals and do in the shadow of the Bomb there is nothing more irresponsible barbarian society." (If this is bourgeois idealism, then vive la bour- —that than the so-called "responsible" people who make, test and use it, and geoisie ! ) The war for freedom is the war against society .