ARGUMENTS
ANARCHISM LEFT AND RIGHT
There has recently been a modest upsurge of interest in
Anarchism. Several excellent volumes have appeared on the movement
in the last few years/ and a fledgling group known as the New York
Federation of Anarchists has formed (true to Anarchist principles, it
has a "spokesman" rather than a leader, and refers to itself as a "dis–
cussion group," not an organization). But as yet interest in Anarchism
is minimal, which to my mind is unfortunate, for Anarchism has, I believe,
remarkable relevance for certain contemporary problems and particularly
for those pointed to by the emerging "New Left."2
The blanket term "Anarchism" does not do justice to the varied
movements and personalities usually subsumed under its label. The more
1.
Since
1962
we have had two histories of the Anarchists and two anthologies
of their writings. George Woodcock's
Anarchism
(Meridian,
196,2)
is a brilliant
volume, written with the special insight and eloquence of an adherent, while
James Jol1's
The Anarchists
(Eyre
&
Spottiswoode,
1964)
is a sophisticated,
though less compelling and comprehensive analysis. The anthology edited by
Irving L. Horowitz,
The Anarchists
(Dell,
1964)
concentrates on the "classics"
of Anarchist literature, while Leonard Krimerman and Lewis Perry in
Patterns
of Anarchy
(Anchor Books,
1966)
have collected less familiar writings and have
excerpted and introduced them with so much skill as to give us a fully realized
portrait of the movement, one true to its complexities. There had already existed
a considerable library on Anarchism-for example, the works of Max Nettlau,
G.D.H. Cole and Rudolph Rocker-but the four new volumes, authoritative and
fluent, make the ideas and events of the movement more accessible than they
have been.
2. In using the term "New Left" I exclude certain groups frequently admitted
under that title-the Progressive Labor Party and the DuBois Clubs-which are
more correctly seen as continuations of the old Marxist Left, disciplined, bureau–
cratic, ideological, anti-Bohemian. By "New Left" I mean especially SNCC and
SDS, but also more localized groupings like the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley
(FSM) and the Mississippi Free Democratic Party (MFDP).
