Fair Use Blog

I spent most of the day booked with a consulting client and doing some house-cleaning, which was much-needed anyway but especially so in light of an impending family visit from Michigan and from Maine. Still, I had the time to catch up on some things I’ve been meaning to read. It all turned out to be PDFs I’d accumulated, but now that I have a Kindle (thanks to a Christmas present) it’s actually no longer excruciating for me to sit around reading PDFs. In any case:

• I got the chance to read The New Cult of Sex and Anarchy (!), Mildred Edie Brady’s shocking exposé of the emerging Northern California counter-culture — of 1947. (The article went into the April 1947 issue of Harpers. (Suggested by Jesse Walker.)

  This is, roughly, the intellectual and artistic milieu that the Beats would eventually emerge from, and monopolize in the public consciousness; but that particular coffeeklatsch was still 10 years away from their public breakthrough, and in 1947 there was a lot more attention on Henry Miller, California surrealism, and the occasional cameo by Man Ray and Kenneth Rexroth. I should say that the article is not as stupidly alarmist as the title that some editor no doubt inflicted on it; maybe the whole thing would have read like more of an awful calumny when the story was published, on the eve of the Great Sexual Backlash, when sexualism was something more hotly contested than it now is.

  Anyway the sex part in the article has to do with the author’s obsession with the bohemian mens’ obsession with Wilhelm Reich. The anarchy part refers, by turns, either to an artistic radical indifference to State and social authority; or, at times, to genuine intellectual anarchism. Anyway, I don’t know that the article will offer you any really deep insights, but it’s fun, and a nice time-piece, and also a rare glimpse (even if distinctly from the outside) of the anarchist/bohemian milieu, such as it was, in the now-rarely-discussed, now-mostly-forgotten years just after World War II. It also told me little about, but gave me the titles of, a number of new little publications to chase down. Anyway. Here’s some of the interesting, and some of the ugly, on the part of the subjects:

  Pacifica Views was openly anarchist and its influence was enhanced by the sympathetic representation of the [Conscientious Objector’s] position in the community. Its editor, George B. Reeves, successfully accomplished this not only through the magazine itself but also in the Human Events pamphlet Men Against the State. Even in Pacifica Views, however, the anarchism-sexualism tie was aired by several weeks’ discussion of Wilhelm Reich’s thesis and the magazine’s political position was embellished with a sure come-on for the young—sexual freedom for the adolescent and the deep political significance that lies in developing a healthy sexuality among the masses of the people who are endemically neurotic and sexually sick.

  ANARCHISM is, of course, nothing new to the West. There have been in both Seattle and San Francisco small anarchist groups ever since the first World War and before, and remnants of them have persisted. Some are hangovers from the days of the Wobblies. Others are made up of first and second generation European immigrants—like the San Francisco group, the Libertarians, which is largely Italian. All during the thirties these small groups existed without benefit of attention from young intellectuals who in those days were most apt to be thumping their typewriters on behalf of the United Front.

  Not long after December 7, 1941, however, the poet Kenneth Rexroth left the ranks of the Communists in San Francisco and turned both anarchist and pacifist. Around him, as around Miller, there collected a group of young intellectuals and writers who met weekly in self-education sessions, reading the journals of the English anarchists, studying the old-line anarchist philosophers like Kropotkin, and leavening the politics liberally with psychoanalytic interpretations from Reich. It was and is, however, a decidedly literary group in which politics is all but submerged by art, where poems, not polemics, are written, and where D. H. Lawrence outshines Bakunin—Lawrence the philosopher, of Fantasia and the Unconscious rather than Lawrence the novelist.

  Nevertheless, the anarchism of this group is taken seriously enough to call forth tokens to the political as well as the sexual; and at meetings of the Libertarians, today, you will be apt to find young intellectuals sprinkled among the moustachioed papas and bosomed mamas [sic! Really? —R.G.] who, until recently, had no such high-toned co-operation. In this particular group around Rexroth, the Henry Miller kind of anarchism is held to be irresponsible, for Miller goes so far on the lonely individualistic trail as to sneer at even anarchist organization.

  To the outside observer, however, the differences between the Miller adherents and the Rexroth followers are more than outweighed by their similarities. They both reject rationalism, espouse mysticism, and belong to the select few who are orgastically potent. And they both share in another attitude that sets them sharply apart from the bohemians of the twenties. They prefer their women subdued—verbally and intellectually.

  No budding Edna St. Vincent Millay or caustic Dorothy Parker appears at their parties. If the girls want to get along they learn, pretty generally, to keep their mouths shut, to play the role of the quiet and yielding vessel through which man finds the cosmos. Although there are a few women writers found now and then in Circle [a prominent literary magazine from the San Francisco scene] — Anais Nin is a favorite and Maude Phelps Hutchins (wife of Robert Hutchins, chancellor of the University of Chicago) has appeared—the accepted view of both the wome nand the men seems to be that woman steps out of her cosmic destiny when the goal of her endeavor shifts beyond bed and board. This doesn’t mean that the women are economically dependent, however. Most of the girls hold down jobs. But the job is significant only in that it contributes to a more satisfactory board.

  — Mildred Edie Brady (1947), The New Cult of Sex and Anarchy, Harper’s (April 1947).

  Well, nobody could say that revolooshunerry chauvinism is some kind of new problem in the scene; Manarchy abides.

• I also finished off Jarret Wollstein’s Society Without Coercion: A New Concept of Social Organization (1969), one of the first documents (to my knowledge) to advocate self-described, self-identified anarcho-capitalism. Wollstein was a dissident Objectivist (less dissident and more uniformly Objectivist-influenced than, say, Roy Childs). It’s been suggested that Wollstein was the first to coin the phrase anarcho-capitalism. I don’t know if that’s right or not, but in any case here’s some of his reasons for employing the term; in this one he mentions it as a term already floating around the circles he’s a part of.

  2.4 Naming A Free Society

  To name the social system of a free society is not as nominal a task as at first it may appear to be. It is not only the existence of complete social freedom which is absent from today’s world, but also the idea of such freedom. There is, in truth, probably no word in the English language which properly denotes and connotes the concept of the social system of a free society.

  A number of persons who have recognized the fallacies in the advocacy of not just this or that government, but who have also recognized the inherent contradiction in government itself (such as Murray Rothbard and Karl Hess) have decided that since archy means rule, or the presence of government — which they are against — they will designate their sociological position as anarchy — no rule, or the total absence of government. This decision is unfortunate, to say the least, since it embodies several epistemological fallacies. Firstly, the term anarchy is a negative one; to say that one is for anarchy is only to say that one is against government. It is not to say what are the positive social forms which one advocates. This may be perfectly fine if one, in fact, advocates no positive social forms. However, if one advocates freedom and its economic expression laissez-faire capitalism, the designation anarchy or anarchism, of itself, will hardly suffice. Secondly, anarchy merely means no rule not no coercion. It is perfectly possible to have an anarchist society with coercion initiated by random individuals and robber gangs. So long as these persons do not claim legal sanction or create formal and enduring institutions, one would have a very coercive anarchist society. Further, it is possible for there to be an anarchist society in which no force was initiated, although due to the personal irrationality and mysticism of its occupants, no rational person would want to live in it. For example, imagine a society occupied exclusively by non-violent schizophrenics, or equivalently, by Zen Buddhists. [sic. Really? —RG]

  Less important, but also significant, is the fact that the term anarchy, in present usage, has come to mean not only no rule but also has come to imply social chaos and senseless violence. This is a corruption of the original meaning of the term, but nevertheless it makes the word anarchy an impediment rather than an implement to communicating the concept of a free society. When one wishes to defend in principle and implement in reality a free society, it is irrational to deliberately choose a term which one knows will alienate, at the outset, persons with whom one eventually intends to deal.

  Another term has been suggested by Robert LeFevre, advocate of the free market and founder of Ramparts College [sic—RG] in California. Mr. LeFevre rejects the term anarchy primarily because of its past close association with collectivism and, recognizing the fallacy of limited government, proposes in its stead the word autarchy, meaning self-rule. Again this term suffers several epistemological faults. It fails to state how one should rule oneself, and in fact says nothing about the nature of social order.

  Next we have the term voluntarism, also advocated by many proponents of the term anarchism. This expression is superior to the term anarchy in that it does exclude coercion from its subsumed concept of social order. It is therefore acceptable for this communicative purpose. However, several necessary differentia in the valid concept of a free society are still lacking. Conceivably one could have a voluntary collectivist society (at least for a while), in which individuals voluntarily become slaves, as well as a voluntary individualist society, in which the individual is his [sic —RG] own master. Consequently, this term is not fully satisfactory.

  A phrase in increasingly popular use which I advocate as the best presently available specification of the socio-economic position of persons advocating a society of consistent rational freedom is anarcho-capitalism. Here the prefix anarcho indicates the lack of coercive government, and the word capitalism indicates the positive presence of free trade based upon respect for man’s [sic] rights. This term is not ideal: the prefix anarcho has negative semantic value, and the term capitalism is intimately associated with the present American statist mixed economy. However, it would seem to be the best term which we now have, and consequently we will use it (and in more limited contexts voluntarism) in the remainder of this essay.

  — Jarret B. Wollstein (1969), Society Without Coercion: A New Concept of Social Organization. Society for Rational Individualism. 21-22.

  A bit further down there’s also some material on strategy. After rejecting retreatism, and purely theoretical education, Wollstein advocates counter-institutions. Sort of….

  4.1 Alternatives to Government Institutions

  How often have you presented a brilliantly stated, logically air-tight thesis to a collectivist only to have him [sic] say, That’s fine in theory, but in practice it wouldn’t work. THis of course is an absurdity, but it is next to impossible to convince most collectivists of this fact by purely forensic ability. Clearly, if we are to convince the great majority of American intellectuals, something more than logical theorizing is necessary.

  What I propose is the actual creation of alternatives to government institutions — initially schools, post offices, fire departments and charity; later, roads, police, courts and armed forces. Libertarians recognize that government services are hopelessly obsolete and inherently economically unsound. With the present system it is patently impossible to assess the costs of education and police investigations at all. Rather than trying to politically convince two hundred million Americans that this is so on the basis of rational economic theory, libertarians should instead demonstrate the fact by actually creating the far superior institutions of a free society. Fire departments, schools and post offices should immediately be set up by men and women who understand the free market and who are competent as businessmen [sic].

  One way to do this would be for rational businessmen [sic] to cooperate with libertarian students and theorists in order to establish such enterprises as franchise operations, using all of the skills of modern industry. Simultaneously, libertarians should act politically to free the market to facilitate these enterprises; meanwhile theoreticians should attempt to infiltrate the mass media, or start their own popular magazines and telecommunications facilities to emphasize to the American people that these institutions are working far better than their governmental equivalents; and then to explain why they are doing so. Such a dramatic demonstration of the efficacy of the free market might well accomplish what mere talk alone is unable to do: free America.

  How can the men and women of America fail to understand the value of freedom in all areas of human enterprise when private post offices, roads and police are actually providing far better services than government is capable of delivering?

  — Jarret B. Wollstein (1969), Society Without Coercion: A New Concept of Social Organization. Society for Rational Individualism. 40.

• Finally, I got a start on Dear Tucker: The Letters from John Henry Mackay to Benjamin R. Tucker, which run from 1905 to 1933 (ed. and trans. by Hubert Kennedy, 2002). I haven’t gotten deep enough in for any interesting pull-quotes from the text. But I did come across these rad portraits of Clarence Lee Swartz (a frequent contributor to Liberty and author of What Is Mutualism?) and Steven T. Byington (another frequent Liberty correspondent, founder of Liberty’s Anarchist Letter Writing Corps, and the translator of Stirner). Both photos are from the Labadie Collection.

  

  Clarence Lee Swartz (1868-1936)

  

  Steven T. Byington (1869-1957)

This is an unsigned editorial from the January 2009 issue of Philosophy (vol. 84, no. 327). Submitted for comment, without much commentary from my end. (Yet.)

Editorial: Ignorance and Markets

It may not be true that no one predicted the recent crash in the financial world. But it is certainly true that most well-informed observers and participants, including most importantly those who believed they were actually running things, were caught unawares. If they had been aware, they would have been able to avoid the worst consequences, at least for themselves, and even profit from the situation.

The 2008 financial crash has been compared to the fall of the Berlin Wall, in that just as the one signalled the end of an uncritical belief in socialism, at least of a centralised sort, the other signals the end to an uncritical belief in markets.

Let us leave aside the point that the markets of 2008 were actually heavily regulated in all sorts of ways, and so hardly unfettered. There is in fact an interesting parallel between 1989 and 2008 in one significant respect. Both events were largely unforeseen.

In one sense this is encouraging. For all our knowledge and technology there is much, even in human affairs, which is unpredictable and uncontrollable. This is, in a sense, judgment on hubris. It can also be liberating, particularly for those who do not see themselves as masters of the universe.

But should 2008 be seen as a decisive moment as far as belief in markets is concerned? Much will depend on what is meant by a market, no easy question when, as already mentioned, no markets to-day are unfettered, and are not likely to be in the foreseeable future.

We should, though, not forget that for followers of Adam Smith, such as Hayek, one of the main philosophical arguments in favour of markets was precisely the unpredictability of human action and of events more generally. From this perspective markets are not seen as perfect predictors, which there cannot be. But in situations of uncertainty they are seen as the most efficient and least hazardous way of disseminating information in a society and of responding to what cannot be predicted. It would be somewhat paradoxical if a failure of prediction was in itself taken to be an argument against a system which takes unpredictability as its starting point.

— Philosophy 84 (2009), 1. Cambridge University Press.

Thoughts?

Over at the main Fair Use Repository site, there’s been some ongoing work on transcribing material from Liberty, availing ourselves of the fantastic resources that Shawn Wilbur has made available at Travelling in Liberty. (Travelling in Liberty is a complete online archive of PDF facsimiles of all 403 issues of Liberty, as well as the 7 issues of its German-language sister publication, Libertas.) One of the major ongoing projects over here at Fair Use is to transcribe the text available in these PDF facsimiles and make it available in readily-searchable, readily-readable, readily-citable HTML.

To-day, the ongoing Liberty transcriptions have given us a letter from the Michigan labor organizer, poet and individualist Anarchist agitator, Joseph A. (Jo) Labadie. The letter, framed as a response to a friend’s worries about the possibility of civil order under Anarchy (or, alternatively, about the legitimacy of using statist laws to establish civil order in a governed society), appeared in the February 23, 1895 issue of Liberty:

• Is Tyranny a Necessity?, by Joseph A. Labadie, in Liberty X.21, Whole No. 307 (February 23, 1895). 7.

Read, cite and enjoy!

Now available thanks to DFW ALL at DFW Alliance of the Libertarian Left:

Mikhail Bakunin (ca. 1860)

The State is nothing else but this domination and exploitation regularised and systemised. We shall attempt to demonstrate it by examining the consequence of the government of the masses of the people by a minority, at first as intelligent and as devoted as you like, in an ideal State, founded on a free contract.

Suppose the government to be confined only to the best citizens. At first these citizens are privileged not by right, but by fact. They have been elected by the people because they are the most intelligent, clever, wise, and courageous and devoted. Taken from the mass of the citizens, who are regarded as all equal, they do not yet form a class apart, but a group of men privileged only by nature and for that reason singled out for election by the people. Their number is necessarily very limited, for in all times and countries the number of men endowed with qualities so remarkable that they automatically command the unanimous respect of a nation is, as experience teaches us, very small. Therefore, under pain of making a bad choice, the people will always be forced to choose its rulers from amongst them.

Here, then, is society divided into two categories, if not yet to say two classes, of which one, composed of the immense majority of the citizens, submits freely to the government of its elected leaders, the other, formed of a small number of privileged natures, recognised and accepted as such by the people, and charged by them to govern them. Dependent on popular election, they are at first distinguished from the mass of the citizens only by the very qualities which recommended them to their choice and are naturally, the most devoted and useful of all. They do not yet ...

Read the whole thing at DFW Alliance of the Libertarian Left.

Here’s some more on mass-media reception of Anarchism during the early 20th century: a strange little piece from the Sunday New York Times magazine from May 8, 1910, on Anarchist Sunday schools in New York, focusing on the Ferrer Sunday School taught by Alexander Berkman. The Sunday schools were part of the large network of schools, cultural spaces and other institutions organized by Anarchists in large cities like New York during the early 20th century. (Like most Anarchistic educational projects, the Sundays were closely associated with the Modern School Movement and the thought of Francisco Ferrer). Either of the writer of the article, or his editor, couldn’t quite seem to decide whether they wanted this story to be a straight interview of Berkman and a description of how the Sunday Schools were operated, or whether they wanted another cookie-cutter Anarchist-menace scare story.

SUNDAY SCHOOLS THAT TEACH CHILDREN ANARCHY

A Thousand Young Persons Are Being Trained in New York to Be Successors of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman.

So quietly has the anarchistic propaganda been carried on in New York that it will, without doubt, send a chill of arctic iciness down the spines of the many people who profess to stand in holy horror of the theory to learn through this article that to-day anarchistic Sunday schools are in session here just as are Sunday schools for bringing up the young to follow Methodism, Baptism, or any other form of faith or creed.

There are easily a thousand children in these schools, children who will, beyond peradventure, grow up to be Alexander Berkmanns and Emma Goldmans, with perhaps a Ferrer or a Tolstoy appearing. They range in age from 6 years to 16. During the week they go to the public schools and sing their own part in the grand chorus of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” recite the lessons offered by the system of education there, and hurry home to help their parents in the tenements, just as do other children; but on Sunday they loom up as a little body of humanity isolated from the present sociological system requiring strict obedience and reverence for authority. They are to be the propagandists of anarchy in America when Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkmann have passed away, and old Ben Tucker over on Sixth Avenue has joined the dust.

To those with radical natures or inclinations, and who have had opportunity to observe, the earnestness of the Anarchist in the expounding of his doctrine is well known, but to the great mass of intelligent humanity, smugly and snugly satisfied with their lot, the picture of an Anarchist Sunday school secured for readers of The Sunday Times will prove something of a revelation.

To begin with, there is no God in the Anarchist Sunday school, and the tablet miraculously handed to Moses, with its ten Thou Shalt Nots, is no more in evidence there than is the latest revised code of the laws of the State of New York.

As the Anarchist preaches against the theory of submission to authority and law, the Sunday school teacher in the Anarchist class takes care that even with children he gives no impression that he himself is entitled to exert authority over them. If an Anarchist child does not agree with what teacher says he may arise in his little might of independence and say so. If he shows reasoning power in his expression of view he is a likely scholar, for it is the aim of the Anarchist to bring children up with absolute independence of the long-established restrictions on free thinking.

Occasionally rises a little one in one of these Sunday schools and asks with the directness and disregard of consequences peculiar to children:

How about God?

The teacher does not answer the question. He does not avoid it. He tells the children to figure out what reasons they have for believing that there is a God. The young minds attack the terrific question and fall back from it like baby moths that have winged swiftly against their first lampshade.

The largest of the Sunday schools is in Avenue A. It is called the Ferrer Sunday School, and was, until the killing of the Spanish philosopher, known as the Radical Sunday School. How the name was changed will prove a story that may stand out with striking novelty in the child life of New York to-day. It shall be told a little later in this article.

The Ferrer Sunday School is conducted by Alexander Berkmann. It has about eighty members and is in two classes. It meets on Sunday between 10 in the morning and noon. The youngest child is 7.

Berkmann has no laid-out system of teaching, depending on his comprehension of the psychology of the group at the time of the gathering. There are no rules. A song may be sung in chorus, a song dealing with freedom of mankind and hate for oppression. Some of the children may have learned by heart a poem or a fragment of an anarchistic argument and these provide recitations. The training of the mind anarchistically is then begun.

Berkmann, in a talk with a Times writer, in the office of Mother Earth, the Anarchist magazine, gave a sample of this teaching.

This was his talk to his Sunday school on Sabbath after the execution of Ferrer.

Once a single human being was swept from the sea to the shore of an island where there lived no human beings. There he found a great flock of sheep. He studied them and noticed that some of them were very powerfully built and finely fed. Some had even attained the strength and ferocity of wolves. But there were a great many of the sheep that were lean and worn. They were hungry and had been trampled down and hurt.

The man thought that he could so arrange it that these sheep, with little to eat and with bruises from being trampled, could be taught to care for themselves better and realize what the power of the strong and wolflike sheep had brought them to. He went among the sheep that suffered and began to point out to them what was the matter. The wolfish and strong ones heard of this and they turned upon the man and killed him.

When Berkmann finished this parable one of the children, a boy 18 years old, arose and said:

Why Mr. Berkmann, this story is just like the story of Ferrer’s death.

The children were so impressed with the parable and the discussion which followed that the name of the school was then changed from the Radical Sunday School to the Ferrer Sunday School.

In the classes, said Berkmann, we generally use current events as subjects for discussion and study. For instance, one of our lessons was produced by the Hudson-Fulton Celebration in New York. The children of the east side saw a great deal of the sailors from the many men-of-war in the harbor. They saw the sailors of different nationalities entering and leaving the cafés, the best of friends, their arms about each other and acting like human brothers. The question naturally followed. Why should they be thus fond of each other and thus brotherly on land, and on sea be commanded to kill each other? They are brothers, and love each other, and there can be no fair reason for their slaying each other.

A man who had been raised in one of the old credal beliefs with care but who had come to be an agnostic in middle life once told the writer than when he realized that his religion had gone from him he felt that what he called reason had stepped into a nursery, and, like a willful bully, had gathered up the toys of a child sitting there and had destroyed them because he considered them useless. He considered the change from belief to agnosticism the tragedy of his life. The figure may be applied to thinking grown-ups easily, but it is hard to think of applying it to a child. And yet in the Anarchist Sunday school the tragedy of the destroyed toys is not infrequently enacted.

The pupil of the Anarchist Sunday school is taught to reason. The teacher only serves to direct their attention to a problem.

One child, said Berkmann, wanted to know whether he should pray. My mothers wants me to pray, said this child, but my father says that it is not necessary.

Did you answer the problem? he was asked.

No, he said. I try to keep back my own views and develop the mentality of the children that they may form their own opinions and arrive at their own conclusions. The question was answered by a little girl, who said, Praying is good because it relieves the soul.

Another attempt of a Sunday school pupil along this line was made when a youngster requested to know if it was possible for people to know what God wants them to do.

These occasional inquiries as to the spiritual life have generally ended in the Anarchist Sunday schools with the proposition that some of the remarkable things in life can be understood and that there are questions which never can be settled. The mental attitude of the children might be put in this way: We are not certain whether there are grounds for the belief that we should pray.

That, of course, leaves the question well in the field of agnosticism. The teacher of anarchy does not, with the children, declare that there is no God. Nor does he say that there is a God. The Sunday school class goes frequently to the Museum of Natural History, to Central Park, to the Zoological Gardens, and other places where, with the teacher, nature is studied.

The Ferrer Sunday school is only one of about fifteen similar schools in the greater city. Wherever the local groups of Anarchists can handle their own Sunday schools, carrying on the propaganda with literature, letters, lectures, &c., they do so without asking aid of others. When they cannot the State group helps. There is no central or superior group. Each has its own autonomy, although they all work to develop their principles of solidarity and mutual aid.

There are frequently conventions of the Sunday school teachers. Those who have classes get together and exchange experiences and ideas. In this city the Anarchists know that the fulfillment of their vision is afar, and they are already sowing their seed in the young and new fields that a generation of their kind may take hold of the propaganda when the present generation has withered and fallen.

These little Anarchists are being trained to believe in no authority. As Mr. Berkmann put it, everything is being done for them to aid them in the development of their independence of laws, the strengthening of their mentalities and emotions so that they will become men and women stripped of the conventional prejudices.

Laws make crutches, he said, and the legs become atrophied from long non-use. The character and mentality of human becomes atrophied when laws are framed to support them. We prefer not to use the crutches of authority but to walk of our own free will and independence, and we try to live so that there is no necessity for a law.

Another result helpful to anarchy has been attained by the establishment of the Sunday schools in the east side. The teachers have found that the little ones are making splendid missionaries and are proselyting among their parents and the grown ones in the family. Everything that is said and done in one of these little groups is told of at home to the old folks, many of whom have suffered bitterly under Russian oppression and who have revolution deep in their hearts. They write letters to the Anarchist teachers and get replies. They discuss the views expounded at home by their children and many of them become radicals and join the Anarchist groups.

The Anarchists also spread their propaganda by establishing little libraries which they make easily accessible to all who want to study the theory.

In the spreading of the propaganda among the children the littlest are not overlooked. There are some as young as six years of age who are getting kindergarten lessons in anarchy. One of these lessons is the lesson which preaches to a boy of health and strength at the age of six that he should not strike or abuse a boy who is not as strong as he is but should help him because he needs help. That is the very heart of the kindergarten lesson.

All of this work is done in what is called the Workmen’s Circle. The Circle is the general group and is known as the Arbeiter Ring. A little white enamel badge with the letters A. R. in the buttonhole will point out for you one of the men who dream of bringing to fulfillment the prophecy of Isaiah and hastening the time when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and there shall be no bruised or hungry sheep.

Anarchy is kept so well smothered in New York with a cloak of painted gauze upon which are the pictures of platoons of police that the average citizen of intelligence does not get a chance to be forewarned and forearmed if there is, really, any menace in the movement. For instance, the tenth National convention of the Workmen’s Circle has just closed in this city–closed yesterday, in fact. The delegates to this convention represented 450 branches or 65,000 active Anarchists. There were 550 delegates to the convention and they came from every city in the Union and many from Canada. The convention was held in the New Star Casino, at 115 East 107th Street.

In a practical way the Anarchist cause has made advances lately. It has bought its own cemetaries, has established a sanitarium for consumptive members at Liberty, N. Y., and partly supports another in Denver. It has provided money for hospitals and libraries for Anarchistic educational purposes. Everything that the Ring does must go back to the general body of Anarchists, for everything is done through the referendum. There is no President or executive officer. The Anarchists believe only in the solidarity of mankind and recognize no authority.

The Arbeiter Ring in this country is, of course, a branch of the International Circle, and Berkmann is a delegate to that body, which spreads anarchy in every country.

It is all newspaper talk about our being beset by Secret Service men and police, he said with a smile. Anarchists do not advocate violence. We advocate peace. Last Sunday our children–1,000 of them–gave an entertainment at Murray Hill Lyceum. They played War and Peace. The little boys with swords and guns and trappings argued for war and the little girls argued against it with smiles and flowers. The girls won and the boys changed their uniforms to the jackets and overalls of workmen, put down their swords and guns, and picked up scythes and tools for labor.

There could not have been anything dangerous about that, could there? he asked.

There was nothing sinister about the man who served his term in prison for shooting Frick, the steel millionaire, during the Homestead strike. He looks like a college professor, has a pleasant voice, finely intelligent eyes, and a high forehead. He makes his living by tutoring pupils for the regent examinations, giving lessons night and day in the east side.

The little flat high up and in the rear of 210 East Thirteenth Street, where he and Emma Goldman live and edit Mother Earth, is the apartment of poor people. But the living room is snug and homey. Pictures of famous anarchistic thinkers are on the wall. Through an open window came Caruso’s voice in the great aria from Tosca, ground out by a phonograph, as Berkmann talked with the Times man. It was a warm combination, but the night was warm, and we were glad for the breeze that swept the little place however burdened it might be.

We teach no ism, he said, harking back to the Sunday schools. Our aim is to develop character and mentality in the child. We try to make them think, criticise, and feel.

We want their emotional and intellectual natures developed. We want to make them men and women absolutely free of the old restrictions. We hope that they will grow up with the spirit of solidarity and co-operation in them. We try to teach them that in and out of school.

We try to teach them ethical right and reason. Our Radical Boys’ Literary Club, boys about 13 or 14 years old, hold meetings after school, and they run their organization just as the grown people do. They have advanced to where they need no help from their elders.

Among the grown Anarchists the cause is kept warm by fervid preachings in their publications. These are the weekly paper Frei Arbiter Stimme, with a circulation of 12,000; Mother Earth, with a circulation of 6,000; Freiheit, with 5,000 circulation, and Voine Listy, a Bohemian paper, with a circulation of 4,500.

There are nine large groups of the grown Anarchists in New York. These have regular meetings, and conduct the propaganda with lectures, debates, &c.

In the district from Fourteenth Street to the Battery east of Broadway are 850,000 people living. Here beats the heart of anarchy. Nearly all of these people are foreign born, the native born element being insignificant in its percentage.

Forsyth Street, Chrystie, Cannon, Pitt, Columbia, Second Streets all have buildings in which are tiny halls that may be rented for a dollar or two for a wedding, a banquet, a lodge meeting, or a group meeting of Anarchists.

The man who lives awhile in this teeming corner of Manhattan does not take long to find out where he can go and hear all the anarchy he wants expounded. The writer once met in one of these little halls S. Yanofsky, the editor of the Frei Arbiter Stimme. A man with dreamy eyes, pointed beard, and nervous energy, he seemed to be looked up to as little short of a god by a clump of young men and women who were wating for him.

Yanofsky and Berkmann were both rounded up by the police after the Silverstein bomb explosion in Union Square in 1908, and as there was nothing against either of them nothing came of the call to Police Headquarters. Yanofsky, when asked by the writer what he thought of Silverstein’s act, replied:

The man who commits a violent deed, if he is not mad, is desperate. Violence never did any good for anarchy. All government is a form of violence. Suppose Silverstein had suffered personally–and his act was that of an impatient and ignorant man–what did he accomplish? He only made himself dead and gave the chance to the enemies of anarchy to spread their calumnies. He only helped them to kill of the chances of gaining liberty.

Berkmann was a little clearer on the matter of violence and anarchy.

If a Republican or Democrat should throw a bomb or kill another, he said, the Republican Party or the Democratic Party would not be blamed for it. When an Anarchist does a thing like that we frankly say that anarchy did not inspire it, but that conditions of inequality and injustice caused the crime. To stop the crime, stop the cause. Anarchy is for justice and freedom. It cannot be blamed for individual acts of violence.

Among the favorite east side speakers for anarchy, besides Yanofsky and Berkmann, is Dr. Ben Reitman, whose method is to stir up the hearers with fiery sentences depicting the wrongs resulting from the present order of things. He with the others believes that anarchy is gathering strength, and will continue to gather it and will prove a living force in the slow movement of society through the ages.

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All anarchists share a desire to abolish government; that is the definition of anarchism. Starting with Bakunin, anarchism has been explicitly anti-statist, anti-capitalist, and anti-authoritarian; no serious anarchist seeks to alter that. Leftists have consistently supported and promoted the functions of the State, have an ambiguous relationship to capitalist development, and are all interested in maintaining hierarchical relationships. In addition, historically they have either tacitly ignored or actively suppressed the desires of individuals and groups for autonomy and self-organization, further eroding any credible solidarity between themselves and anarchists. On a purely definitional level, then, there should be an automatic distinction between leftists and anarchists, regardless of how things have appeared in history.

Despite these differences, many anarchists have thought of themselves as extreme leftists — and continue to do so — because they share many of the same analyses and interests (a distaste for capitalism, the necessity of revolution, for example) as leftists; many revolutionary leftists have also considered anarchists to be their (naïve) comrades — except in moments when the leftists gain some power; then the anarchists are either co-opted, jailed, or executed. The possibility for an extreme leftist to be anti-statist may be high, but is certainly not guaranteed, as any analysis history will show.

Left anarchists retain some kind of allegiance to 19th century LH&R and socialist philosophers, preferring the broad, generalized (and therefore extremely vague) category of socialism/anti-capitalism and the strategy of mass political struggles based on coalitions with other leftists, all the while showing little (if any) interest in promoting individual and group autonomy. From these premises, they can quite easily fall prey to the centralizing tendencies and leadership functions that dominate the tactics of leftists. They are quick to quote Bakunin (maybe Kropotkin too) and advocate organizational forms that might have been appropriate in ...

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Here’s a passage from The Dial: A Semi-Monthly Journal of Literary Criticism, Discussion, and Information. The passage is from the regular Casual Comment feature; this one taking notice of the death of the American scientist and industrialist Alexander Emanuel Agassiz (d. March 27, 1910).

The passing of a noted naturalist and a distinguished contributor to the literature of natural science is noted with regret in the sudden death, March 28, of Professor Alexander Agassiz, at the age of seventy-five. Gifted son of a gifted father, he shone not only as an original investigator in that father’s domain of science, but also as a mining engineer and a remarkably able man of business. His work at Harvard, where he stepped into Louis Agassiz’s shoes without getting lost in them, and where he built up a great museum of comparative zoölogy and made the university his pecuniary debtor to the extent of a half a million dollars, is well known. His success as superintendent and then president of the Calumet and Hecla mines is to be read in the astonishing rise of Calumet and Hecla stock from next to nothing until it is now quoted at six hundred dollars a share. The elder Agassiz used to declare, when invited to turn his scientific knowledge to his own and others’ pecuniary account, that he had no time to waste in money-making. The son found time to make moeny and to spend it beneficently, besides continuing his special researches in his favorite branches of science. His original and unostentatious ways of giving were in marked contrast with the methods pursued by some other public benefactors. When, six years ago, he was offered $75,000 for conducting some deep-sea soundings in the Pacific, on condition that the enterprise should be known as the Carnegie-Agassiz Expedition, he promptly declined the offer and found money elsewhere — chiefly in his own pocket. The life of such a man is full of inspiration to others; and it is to be hoped that a worthy biography of Alexander Agassiz may in due time be forthcoming.

–From Casual Comment, The Dial, April 16, 1910, p. 264

We’ve been spending some time lately gathering material on C. L. James (1846-1911), the prolific but reclusive Anarchist pamphleteer and song-writer of Eau Claire, Wisconsin. James was something of an intellectual heavy in his day, and maintained frequent correspondence with (among others) The Alarm, Liberty, Free Society and Mother Earth, but he has since been almost entirely forgotten. Well, if the Fair Use Repository is good for anything, hopefully it is providing a platform for some diligent un-forgetting.

Along with a steady stream of pamphlets and articles, James wrote a book-length History of the French Revolution; for to-day’s post, we have a very mildly positive review of the book that ran in the New York Times, of all places, on April 25, 1903. Well, it’s certainly a kinder review than some he got in the Anarchist press. In any case, here we are.

The French Revolution

New York Times, April 25, 1903

History of the French Revolution. By C. L. James. Pp. 343. Cloth 8vo. Chicago: Abe Isaac, Jr.

A sketch of the French Revolution by a theoretical Anarchist is likely to have whatever interest attaches to a peculiar point of view. Mr. James seems to be a theoretic Anarchist, and his book has the special interest that might be expected of such a work. It is, in fact, a readable essay, for the most part moderate in expression, usually distinguished by lucidity of style, and apparently based on wide reading. After that the book is a piece of special pleading. Mr. James’s method is not to exult over the bloodshed and madness of the Revolution, rarely to defned, though often to excuse, the atrocities of the time.

The Reign of Terror he regards as a dreadful period, and the Government of that time one of the worst that the world has known, but one of the strongest. He thinks the idyllic time of the revolution was the period of a year or more before the execution of the King, when France bordered close upon true anarchy, being almost without government. This opinion, as might be expected of an Anarchist, Mr. James is fond of repeating. He also declares that the influential men of the Revolution were not Socialists or Communists. Even while he condemns the government of the Jacobins, and many of their tyrannical measures, as a consistent Anarchist must, he is anxious to find acts of theirs to praise, and he is not often struck with the absurdities of the time. But perhaps Mr. James with all his keenness is a little defective in the sense of humor.

The attitude of the author is best illustrated by concrete examples. He appreciates the virtues of Louis XVI., and thinks imprisonment would have been better than death in his case, but believing him to have been guilty of the crimes of which he was convicted, is not struck with the travesty of justice implied in a trial by Judges who were constantly under the eyes and influence of an outspoken populace bitterly hostile to the accused. The Queen he thinks to have been guilty also of treason, but he is moved to generous disgust at the revolting charges of Hébert. Nevertheless he hardly permits himself one expression of pity for her fate, though he thinks her death a political mistake. The September massacres, the atrocities of Lyons and of Nantes he does not defend, but impliedly excuses by citing parallels in the doings of settled governments. This last is his favorite method of excuse, and it is sometimes effective. He pities the Girondists, but thinks they brought upon themselves their hard fate. Of Danton’s end he says: Thus died, in the noblest of causes, the best champion of freedom whom the crisis of his time produced. Robespierre he does not defend so earnestly as do some recent students of the period, possibly because he cannot forgive Robespierre’s ambition to be dictator. Marat’s demand for 200,000 heads, though repeated in open convention, Mr. James thinks hardly more than a piece of insincere bravado. He pronounces the terrible doctor of the sewers the most misrepresented man in the revolution.

This book is well worth reading, if only that one may see how hard it is for the historian, however intelligent, to do much more than make ex parte statement of his case. It is well, however, that we should have such a statement from the revolutionary side, for the larger part of what has been written on the subject in English deals with it from the very opposite point of view.

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Lucy Parsons

To my mind, the struggle for liberty is too great and the few steps we have gained have been won at too great a sacrifice, for the great mass of the people of this 20th century to consent to turn over to any political party the management of our social and industrial affairs. For all who are at all familiar with history know that men will abuse power when they possess it, for these and other reasons, I, after careful study, and not through sentiment, turned from a sincere, earnest, political Socialist to the non-political phase of Socialism, Anarchism, because in its philosophy I believe I can find the proper conditions for the fullest development of the individual units in society, which can never be the case under government restrictions.

The philosophy of anarchism is included in the word “Liberty”; yet it is comprehensive enough to include all things else that are conducive to progress. No barriers whatever to human progression, to thought, or investigation are placed by anarchism; nothing is considered so true or so certain, that future discoveries may not prove it false; therefore, it has but one infallible, unchangeable motto, “Freedom.” Freedom to discover any truth, freedom to develop, to live naturally and fully. Other schools of thought are composed of crystallized ideas-principles that are caught and impaled between the planks of long platforms, and considered too sacred to be disturbed by a close investigation. In all other “issues” there is always a limit; some imaginary boundary line beyond which the searching mind dare not penetrate, lest some pet idea melt into a myth. But anarchism is the usher of science-the master of ceremonies to all forms of truth. It would remove all barriers between the human being and natural development. From the natural ...

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Some of our recent items (“Emma Goldman Now Alien”, “To Drive Anarchists Out of the Country”) have focused on the anti-immigrant, anti-Anarchist panic of the 19-aughts. There have been a couple of stories from the establishment media of the time; to-day, we have a piece from the Anarchist press, in which Voltairine de Cleyre discusses the Philadelphia D.A.’s disastrous attempts to convict her, and fellow Anarchist Hyman Weinberg, for “inciting to riot,” based on speeches that they gave at a meeting of unemployed workers shortly before the “riot” (or police attack) in Philadelphia on February 20, 1908. This article was published in Mother Earth, Vol. III., No. 5 (July 1908), and is transcribed from the version reprinted in Peter Glassgold’s Anarchy! An Anthology of Emma Goldman’s MOTHER EARTH (2000), pp.246-252.

The Philadelphia Farce

Voltairine de Cleyre, Mother Earth III.5 (July 1908)

After the lapse of nearly four months from the riot of last February, the case of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs. Hyman Weinberg and Voltairine de Cleyre was called for trial on the 17th of June, the trial Judge being Mayer Sulzberger, a gentleman having a reputation of being somewhat more inclined to weigh the rights of citizens as against the attacks of the police than some other judges.

On the morning of the 17th, Weinberg and myself, the witnesses for the defense, and our respective lawyers were all ready in the court room. The State, however, was not ready; one of the arresting officers was not present.

Some very animated wrangling then took place between the Judge and the lawyers, in which the Judge, so far from upholding the dignity of office, presented, to me at least, the curious appearance of a scolding old woman; the effect was no doubt heightened by the black and somewhat out-of-date dress he wears. Under the regular rules of criminal court procedures, the case would then have gone over to the next term of court, but the result of the wrangling was that the case was continued to the next day. Accordingly, we appeared on the morning of June 18. The officer was now present, but the chief witness, in fact the only witness, was absent. The Prosecuting Attorney asked for a continuance of the case to search for the witness. The Judge ordered that the witness be called. The crier of the court holloed John Ká-ret, John Ka-rét. No response. Another crier went down the hall and out into the corridor calling John Ka-rét. John Karet did not appear.

The Judge asked if the State had Karet’s sworn testimony at the hearing in the Magistrate’s court. Upon the affidavit being produced, the Judge elected to read it himself because it was easier. Having done so, he doubled the paper up with a rather disgusted face, remarking, If that is all your evidence, we will submit the bill to the jury.

A motion of our lawyers to dismiss the case (or some legal phraseology to that effect) was denied by the Judge; the prosecution said it had other witnesses.

At this point Attorney Nelson asked the Court to appoint a stenographer, which was refused by the Judge with the remark: This Court is not here for the purpose of furnishing campaign literature to anybody.

We then engaged a stenographer on our own account; what follows is the verbatim report of the trial.

Commonwealth vs. Hyman Weinberg and Voltairine de Cleyre

}

Court of Quarter Sessions. March Sessions, 1908 No. 18.

Before Honorable Mayer Sulzberger, P. J., and a Jury.

Philadelphia, June 18, 1908.

Present, of counsel:

• Morris Wolf, Esq., Asst. District Attorney, for the Prosecution; and
• Henry John Nelson, Esq., and Henry N. Wessel, Esq., for the Defendants.

---

COMMONWEALTH’S EVIDENCE.

Ralph Gold, called by Commonwealth, sworn.

By Mr. Wolf:

Q. You are a special officer of the 33rd District?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. You arrested those defendants?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. When?

A. February 20th.

Q. 1908. Where?

A. I arrested Mr. Weinberg at Fifth and Lombard, in a restaurant, and also Mrs. de Cleyre at her home.

Q. Under what circumstances did you make the arrest?

By The Court:

Q. What do you know about them?

A. In fact, we know nothing; only the warrant sworn out by this Karat.

Q. What do you know about the case?

A. Nothing.

Q. Did they confess anything to you?

A. Nothing.

Q. Did they say anything to you?

A. Nothing at all.

By Mr. Wolf:

Q. What did they say at the time you arrested them?

A. Nothing at all. I only placed them under arrest and said what it was for.

Q. They said nothing?

A. They said nothing; no, sir.

Q. Your first information was when this man Karat came to you?

A. He came to us and said these people were speaking.

Q. He said nothing in your presence?

A. Only at the hearing.

Q. You know nothing more about it?

A. No, sir.

(No cross-examination.)

---

Joseph Vignola, called by Commonwealth, sworn.

By Mr. Wolf:

Q. You are a special officer?

A. Yes, sir; of the 33rd District.

Q. Did you participate in the arrest of these defendants?

A. No, sir.

Q. What do you know about this case?

A. I don’t know anything about the case at all. I don’t know how my name comes on the bill.

(No cross-examination.)

---

John J. Fox, called by Commonwealth, sworn.

By Mr. Wolf:

Q. You are a special officer of the 2nd District?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. What do you know about the case?

A. All I know is information received from John Karat, who swore out the warrant for Voltairine de Cleyre, and we arrested her.

Q. Were you present at the meeting at which the statements were said to have been made?

A. No, sir.

Q. Did you have a conversation with either of the defendants?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. What did they say about it?

A. They didn’t have anything to say.

Q. Did you have any conversation with Karat in the presence of the defendants?

A. Only at the hearing–that is, the hearing room.

Q. Do you know where Karat is now?

A. No, sir.

(No cross-examination.)

---

Charles Palma, called by Commonwealth, sworn.

By Mr. Wolf:

Q. Do you know anything about the case?

A. I don’t know anything about this case.

Q. Nothing at all?

A. Nothing at all.

Q. Nor about the defendants?

A. I don’t know anything about them.

Q. Nor about Karat?

A. Not a thing.

(No cross-examination.)

---

Louis Green, called by Commonwealth, sworn.

By Mr. Wolf:

Q. You are a guard at City Hall?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Do you know anything about the facts of this case?

A. No, sir; nothing about the case.

Q. Or about the defendants?

A. No, sir.

Q. Or about Karat?

A. No, sir.

Q. Do you know how your name got on the bill?

A. At the time the arrest was made they brought me in to the hearing at Central Station. There was a couple of letters that was written in Yiddish that they give me, that I should read through a few lines–

Q. You translated them?

A. Yes.

Q. To whom were those letters addressed?

A. They were addressed to a little town in the State of New Jersey.

Q. I mean to what person?

A. It doesn’t state. It doesn’t state any person.

Q. Who gave you the letters?

A. The Assistant District Attorney, Mr. Rogers.

Q. Have you them now or did he take them back?

A. He took them with him.

(No cross-examination.)

---

Jean H. Beniakoff, called by Commonwealth, sworn.

By Mr. Wolf:

Q. You are an official interpreter in the Courts of Philadelphia.

A. I am; yes, sir.

Q. There were given to you certain letters.

A. Yes.

Q. Purporting to be addressed to whom?

A. To Mr. Weinberg.

Q. By whom were they given to you?

A. By Mr. Rogers, of the District Attorney’s office.

Q. Did you translate those letters?

A. I read the letters.

Q. In what language are they?

A. In Yiddish.

Q. Have you them with you now?

A. I gave them to you a while ago.

Q. You showed them to me. I didn’t know what they were. How many are there?

A. Ten letters. You have them.

Q. You say that you read them all?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Is there anything in these letters which could be considered as at all inciting to Anarchy?

A. No, sir.

Q. Will you state what the substance of these letters was?

(Objected to by defendants.)

Q. Did Voltairine de Cleyre write them?

Mr. Wessels: No. They were written to Weinberg and were found in his possession. I object to the letters.

---

(Commonwealth rests.)

The Court: Gentlemen of the Jury: Under the evidence produced by the Commonwealth, which is no evidence at all against the defendants, you are, of course, to find a verdict of not guilty.

Comment is unnecessary.

The court officers began hustling us out; but presently we were recalled. Mr. Wessel, attorney for Weinberg, was asking that the police return Mr. Weinberg’s watch and letters which had been kept ever since the arrest. The Judge was endeavoring to be witty. What! said he to the police officer, is there any law in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania which says that because a man makes a fool of himself, the police should therefore take away his watch? All the sycophants laughed. Personally, I think it was a gratuitous insult, since the Judge had no evidence whatever to suppose Weinberg had made a fool of himself, and had just been saying he had not. Mr. Wessel arose with a smile, But, your Honor, what we want now is the watch!

Oh give the man his watch, protested the Judge.

And the letters.

More talk about the letters, and then the Judge, forgetting his former two-edged cut at the police and at Weinberg, remarked with judicial dignity, When a man is put under arrest, he is searched, and his property taken charge of for his own protection! …

And so, for his own protection, the police have been holding Weinberg’s watch for four months, while he was out on bail! This is the limit.

I wish to thank all contributors to our defense and to say that we have still work to do. Four men are in prison, under most rigorous and unjust sentences. We wish to do what can be done towards freeing these men or supporting their families till they are free.

Those who wish to assist in the work may communicate with Joseph Cohen, 859 N. 7th St., Philadelphia.