0436
COLIN MAC INNES
forgotten that the founding father of anarchism, William Godwin, the
father-in-law of Shelley, was an Englishman, and that such anarchist
worthies as Kropotkin, Bakunin and Malatesta all visited our shores–
Peter Kropotkin for over thirty years.
Freedom,
the anarchist weekly,
founded
by
Kropotkin and the Fabians 70 years ago, still appears
buoyantly, and is remarkably uninhibited in its political commentaries
and revelations. For nearly two years a more thoughtful journal,
Anarchy,
has now come out monthly, and it seems to me to get nearer
to the core of many of our social ills than periodicals of far higher
circulation.
It
has also recruited an able cohort of well-informed and
vigorous young writers, though fuddy-duddies like myself occasionally
contribute to it (Freedom Press, 17A Maxwell Road, London S.W. 6).
Anarchism is, of course, profoundly opposed both to Communism
and to party democracy as we know it, since it deems both to be
authoritarian and state-worshipping, as opposed to the concept of
voluntary co-operative effort in all social and political spheres dear to
anarchist ideology. I expect that its appeal to the young arises from their
being disabused with all the classic political parties, and
to
its libertarian
and egalitarian moral climate. It is certainly the only party of the left
(sorry, not "party," for an "anarchist party" is a contradiction in terms
-one simply
becomes
an anarchist, one does not "join") which has
hit out in all directions, at one moment manifesting against Bombs
-Russian, American or British, the next invading that hallowed
ground of the Left, the Cuban embassy in London, and demonstrating
against the retention of political prisoners in Castro's jails.
This movement shows the disillusionment with orthodox politics
at the radical, or positive extreme. But in other ways, all the "affairs"
referred to in this letter denote, I think, a growing disenchantment of
all kinds of people with party government. Often, of course, this attitude
is cynical and irresponsible, and falls into the fatal fallacy of supposing
that the government are They, and the public We, and that neither is
responsible for the other. Certainly, the glee with which the British
nation has gobbled up all the muck that has been raked over in the
past few months is far from reassuring. For comment on these scandals
has suggested that the patient does not seem to have recognized
his own malady; and that many Englishmen and women see these
events as if they were happening not to ourselves, but to some imaginary
alien country.
Colin Macinnes
