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Anarchy No. 33 —— Contents of No. 33 November 1963 ANARCHY 33 (Vol 3 No II) November 1 963 329 The Anarchism of Alex Comfort /<?/*« Ellerby 329 Sex, Kicks and Comfort Charles Radcliffe 340 Alex Comfort's Art and Scope Harold Drasdo 345 A Comfort Bibliography 357 A Disappointed Revolutionary Sid Parker 359 Cover by Rufus Segar Drawing on p. 329 by Frank Benier <0o Poem "Maturity" by Alex Comfort from Haste to the Wedding (Eyre and Spottiswoode 1962) The ANARCHISM of Other issues of ANARCHY 27. Talking about youth. 28. The future of anarchism. COMFORT 1. Sex-and-Violence; Galbraith; ALEX (out of print) 29. The Spies for Peace Story the New Wave, Education, 30. The community workshop. 31. Self-organising systems; 2. Workers' Control. beatniks; the state; practicability. 3. What does anarchism mean today?; 32. Crime. Africa; the Long Revolution; 4. De-institutionalisation; Conflicting Universities strains in anarchism. and Colleges ANARCHY can be obtained in term- 5. 1936: the Spanish Revolution. time from: (out of print) Oxford: Felix de Mendelssohn, J us i ai 1 1 r rut- WAR; two young writers on either side of the Atlantic 6. Anarchy and the Cinema. Oriel College. published collections of their wartime essays. Their books had a (out of print) Cambridge: Nicholas Bohm similar character, were of social as well as literary 7. Adventure Playgrounds. tone and both St. John's College. criticism, they even similar titles: Paul Goodman's was called (out of print) Birmingham: Anarchist Group. and had 8. Anarchists and Fabians; Action Sussex: Paul Littlewood, Art and Social Nature, Alex Comfort's was called Art and Social Anthropology; Eroding Capitalism; Students' Union. Responsibility. Goodman's was put together when "I was having a 9. Prison. disagreement with the Selective Service and was set to go to jail, though 10. Sillitoe's Key to the Door; American University Agents this was entirely against both my prudent principples and my wishes Maclnnes on Crime; Augustus ANARCHY can be obtained in term- . Comfort's John's Utopia; Committee of 100 time from: my philosophical and political position was Dodging." 11. Paul Goodman; Neill on Education; Columbia University, New York: was written when, according to his publisher, he had become known the Character-Builders. W. L. Goring, 928 Livingston Hall. as "an aggressive anti-militarist, having headed the agitation against 12. are the anarchists? Who or Jim Aaron 243 W. 107 St. indiscriminate bombing and himself refusing military service . "From 13. Direct Action. Roosevelt University, Chicago: now on," ho declared, "the deserter is every man's friend." (out of print) Bernard Marzalek, 14. Disobedience. 5838 South Claremont, Chicago 36. Neither book attracted much attention when published, but an 15. The work of David Wills interesting thing has happened since: in the last few years, both authors J 6. Ethics of anarchism; Africa; Subscribe to ANARCHY have frequently had the suggestion put to them that these long out-of- 17. Towards a lumpenproletariat: Single copies by post Is. 9d. (30c.) 18. Comprehensive Schools. print essays from obscure publishers and from a period of which little 12 issues 20s. ($3). 19. Theatre: anger and anarchy. of permanent value awaits resurrection should be reprinted. It is as and to FREEDOM 20. Non-violence as a reading of the anarchist weekly, which readers of though, after a new generation had grown up, people suddenly found history; Freud, anarchism and relevant, suddenly found that they "speak to our condition." Nor experiments in living. ANARCHY will find indispensable. A them 21. Secondary modern year's subscription to both journals is was it for the sake of their criticism of literature and the arts that the offered at 32s. 22 Cranston's Dialogue on anarchy ($5). requests for a reprint came, it was for those more "ephemeral" essays 23. Housing; Cheques, POs and Money Orders Squatters; which look the form of political manifestoes: in Goodman's case for Do it yourself. should be made out to 24. The Community of Scholars FREEDOM PRESS 25. Technology, science, anarchism. 17a Maxwell Road London SW6 England Frank Benier s drawing is reproduced by courtesy of the artist and the 26. CND; Salesmanship; Thoreau. Tel: RENown 3736 Daily Herald. i i : 330 331 the five essays which formed the part of his book called The May party or union decisions, (b) The groups must be small, because mutual Pamphlet, and in Comfort's for the essays Art and Social Responsibility aid is our common human nature mainly with respect to those with whom and The End of a War (October 1944), both of which had originally we deal face to face, (c) Our action must be aimed not, as Utopians, at millenarians, so to speak) at fraternal arrange- appeared in George Woodcock's magazine Now. a future establishment; but (as ments today, progressively incorporating more and more of the social Goodman's May Pamphlet has been reprinted, together with some functions into our free society. recent essays, in a paperback Drawing the Line (New York: Random His programme, condensed rather crudely, is as follows: House 1962); Comfort's essays have not, partly because he is conscious L Satisfactory work, industrial decentralisation, workers' control. of having said the same things again since, and partly because his own 2. Standard of living to be based on subsistance and humane well-being programme of work is so full that he hasn't time to make those instead of exploitative institutions and coercive advertising. revisions which after a lapse of almost twenty years, he feels are '}. Provide opportunity for "the sexual gratification of adolescents. necessary. (Salient passages have, however, been plentifully scattered This is essential in order to prevent the pattern of coercion and about Anarchy over the last two-and-a-half years). Young friends of authority from re-emerging no matter what the political change Goodman assure him that his May Pamphlet makes more sense today has hceif. than when he wrote it, and Nicolas Walter (in Anarchy 14) referring A. In small groups we must exercise direct initiative in community to Comfort as "the true voice of nuclear disarmament, much more problems of personal concern to ourselves (housing, community than that of Bertrand Russell or anyone else" remarks that "At the plan, schooling, etc.). The constructive decisions of intimate end of the last war he wrote its obituary and drew its moral. What concern to us cannot be delegated to representative government he said is as valid and valuable today as it was then, when he was anil bureaucracy. a very young man who kept his head when all around were losing V Group psychotherapy so that "living in the midst of an alienated theirs, and 1 can think of nothing better to say to very young people way o\' life . we no longer regard as guilty or conspiratorial who are trying to do the thing same eighteen years later." sue 1 1 illegal acts as spring from common human nature . On Comfort and Goodman are characters of a very different kind, the other hand, we must see that many acts commonly regarded as but their preoccupations are similar. Both bridge the so-called two legal and even meritorious are treason against our natural society, 1" 1 l involve in situations cease to have personal cultures, both are novelists and poets, while Goodman is a teacher hey us where we turned psychotherapist and Comfort is a physician turned biologist. responsibility and concern for the consequences." Each has evolved a distinctive anarchism of his own in which resistance 0. "Wo must progressively abstain from whatever is connected with to war and war preparation is combined with the search for alternatives I he war ... If we are to have peace, it is necessary to wage the peace. Otherwise, their war comes, must also hold to authoritarian and coercive social institutions. This is the reason when we why they have become relevant for a generation which, after the smug ourselves responsible for it." nineteen-fifties, became for the first time involved in public affairs ( omfoiT s programme (in Authority and Delinquency in the Modern through the campaign for nuclear disarmament, and found that the Statr) is followed by the observation that campaign against the bomb was inevitably a campaign against the Diicct pressure through the mechanism of parliamentary parties does state, and then that a campaign against the state became a campaign i ml [itfuiv in this list of aims. There are those who will feel that such for different kinds of social and economic institutions based on partici- in i omission is perverse. On the other hand, it is doubtful, on the grounds which have been set out in this book, whether progress through the pation and co-operation rather than coercion and competition. The institutional pattern is worth attempting, and whether a more revolutionary kind of war resistance which these two anarchists called for years ago, .ippioaih is not valuable in itself, as a means of bring home our point. and have not to ceased advocate since, is precisely the kind which has His programme, again condensed, is as follows: continually seemed about to grow from the radical wing of the campaign 1. Measures to increase public awareness of the state of society and against the bomb. The philosophy which Comfort set out in October of i ho results of research into human social psychology. The focus 1944, is precisely that of the Committee of 100. hero is educational, through the explanation of the mechanics of specific problems such as war or social neurosis . Two writers and their programmes 2. I* inula mental experiments in communal living and control of Both these writers have at one time or another felt impelled to resources.
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