l^Ganaer Spoors

Uaardnce UabaJie mark A.Sullton

TETR STORM I is a journal exploring and advocating anarchy. 'Jhat is anarchy? Is it not chaoa? la it not, indeed, a raging atom? Yes, anarchy is this and much morel Utemologically, an-archy is derived from Greek, and means absence of rule, absence of government. The absence of government does not mean life without association, cooperation, friendship, and free exchange. Anarchy is more than an ideal state of society that has yet to come to pass; if anything, the philosophy of anarchy, that is anarchism, maintains that ideals are only subtle forms of authority which should be examined very carefully before they are accepted, if at all. Anarchy exists inthe mind of the individual who denies the authority (or deciding power) of other persons with their ideas and ideals (no matter how universally accepted) over his or her own life. Anarchy is the individual in rebellion against imposed authority over self and others. Anarchy exists in action whenever persons solve the problems of living without recourse to compulsory authority, that is as e<iuals. Direct confrontation, mutual aid, equal exchange, and non-hierarchical association are anarchic modes of social, that is personal, interaction.

Anarchy is not life without conflict. Lif* does not exist without the conflict of the individual organism with its environment, which includes other organisms. Unable, and unwilling, to do away with individual differences, anarchists would render any resultant conflicts hamless to those not involved by doing away with the privileges and powers of the few over the many, and the nany over the few - and especially the fountainhead of institutionalized power and privilege, the State, which exists in various forma on the planet,leaving no surface untouched or unclaimed. The battle against the states is the struggle to implement anarchic nodes of interpersonal relationship here and now in the midst of our authority-infested societies.

Individual and not society is the prime locus of anarchy It ia the ijH-ilual conscionaxeoo , the human ego, that accepts or rejects oatterns of thought and benavior that tend to stifle the will to be one's own sov-ereisn. Pressure to conform (respect the boss, stand for the national anthem, keep up with the fashions, love only members of the opposite sex) pervade far beyond the visible borders of state oower - but they are very real and compelling. In the perpetual struggle of the anarchist against authority, it is the Ego that is the Storm. The forcco of the "higher" powprs of Onetoa, church, and state surround the individual like whirling winds 3eeking to bend the individual to serve their own ends. But at the center of the Storm is the Eye, the area of calm reflection and f-ee choice, the realn of self-acceptance and honest dtsire, a olace to stand naked beiore the sun in the innocent affirmation of ⁿI ami"

Every individual is ultimately a law unto him-or-her-aelf; and it is this idea that THB STORMI, and this column, was concieved to express. Ralph 7/aldo Bnerson expressed it perfectly in hie "Self Reliance": Ho law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names readily transferable to this or that; the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong is what is against it.

"Emerson is far from the only individual whose spirit has given inspiration to the publication of THE STORM! The whole spectrum of anarchist-individualist opinion, old and new," will be represented in its pages. The author of the roem "Anarchy" which graces the front cover was

a Scottish-German poet whose writings in German of the turn of the century remain untranslated into English-with a few exceptions, most notably hie novel THE ANARCHISTS: A Picture of Civilization at the Close of the Nineteenth Century. As an extension of his anarchist activities, John Henry l!ackay fought for his sexual freedom by taking part in the early movement for the rights of homosexuals. Today, the revival of this struggle against church, state, and society has been due in part tothe intellectual and activist contributions of gay anarchists.

It was to the author of THE EGO AND HIS O'.VN, the -lid-nineteenth century (Joman radical and philosopher Max Stirner, that Llackay dedicated a collection of his poetry entitled STURM, that is- "Storm". Acknowledging this same intellectual debt to Stirrer, it would be hoped that Mackay,^ttthd first singer of Anarchy", would feel honored that this journal takes its title from his work.

i/uriri the litter days of America's great depression, another voice was raised in protest against t^vie social engineering of the day. Calling for individual liberty to experiment in all n-tters while not violating the similar¹ liberty of others, Laurance Labadie attacked the state and its exploitation of the m.uiy for the sake of a few land and money lords. He edited,and published? for a time, a review similar in many ways to this one, entitled DISCUS;ION. I was fortunate to call Larry "friend". Now that bis memory haunts the lonelier halls ©f my soul, it is apropos that THE -JTOIM! reprint from tine to time one of his many essays on anarchism, economics, and the follies of the human race. In honor of Larry Labadie, t>'is journal has adopted the subtitle of his DISCUSSION -"A Journal for j*ree Spirits."

It is projectud that eacl\ issue of THE STORM! will he addressed to a particular theme. This first issue delineates an Jndivldualist-anarchist critique of corporate-capitalist society. This insue only taps the surface of this thene with articles by the editor, Laurance Labadie, and Lysander Spoor.er - each generations apart fro 1 the other two, but each representing that "school" of anarchist thought which was most notably expounded ^ ^e page3 of Benja-iin H.Tucker's journal LIDERTY,between 1801 and 1908. It is the editor's opinion that the insights of this brand of philosophical anarchism Is sorely needed in a "movement" split between oo-called anarcho-capitalists and anarcho-co-cmnists. An examination and criticism of this split will be the theme of the second issue of THE STORM I Between the extremes of property and communism, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon located a third social alternative which he called possession, liberty, and anarchy-in opposition to institutionalized property, communism, and the state. This is the stand taken by THE STORM!, in hopes that it will serve to unite rather than further divide the present day anarchist movement. However, any position taken in this column will not he altered just for the sake of a fraudulent "solidarity". Party lines are good for exacting obedience, hence THE STORM! will perpetually critigueall demands for doctrinal purity within the movement. The freedom to differ is the most essential of all freedoms, and so should flourish in pre-revolution anarchism and in post-revolution anarchy -if such an event can ever happen, and if such a distinction can really be made. The revolution lay never come, b\it the insurrection is now. The battle against the states is the struggle to Implement anarchic modes of interpersonal relationship here and now in the midst of our authority-infested societies.

All those who wish to contribute to THE STORM! by means of essay, poem, short story, line drawing, or open letter are invited to do so. THE STORM! is offered at a price sufficient to cover the monetary costs of production and distribution (while not being denied to those who cannot afford it) in order to ensure its continued existence. In order to make the journal more readily available to more persons, the labor-cost of thinking, writing, and typing is not charged for. THE STORM! is also not copyrighted,as the editor does not believe in such statist ploys to gain income over and above the actual value of the service. All literary and artistic contributions to THE STORM! will be "paid" for in terms of free copies of the issue in which the contribution appears, at a rate of one free copy per one half page of donated material. Advertising maybe accepted (subject to this editor's approval) with a contribution of £1 per word or $JL»50 per qua±^rter paThis income will go to cover the losses incurred by the distribrrtion of copies below cost. Any advertisement or work of art (as mentioned above) not printed in THE STORM! will be returned as recieved_tif postage is included by the author for that purpose.

-sanple available on request with enclosed postage, -writers suxd sirliists \73n1i6d MARK A. SULLIVAN* APT. 2E»227 COLUMBUS AVE.*NEW YORK,NY 10023

0.8O available: WHAT IS MAN'S DESTINY? by Laurance Labadie, with a biographic-! introduction. or45e for first-class mailing.

Any philosophical view of society is based upon certain fioidaiental ideas about human nature and the human condition. Briefly sketched below are some basic observations underlying AN ANARCHIST CRITIQIT3 0? STATE-CA1 ITAIISM.

The human being is a living organism, and must meet certain biological needs in order to survive. However, the human being (or individual .person, woman or man)cannot produce food directly as a plant, nor seize it directly as do most animals, lacking the natural equipment for either process. (1)

To obtain food, shelter, and a comfortable existence, an individual employs tools,the result of a prior process of tool making, the result of a prior process of percieving and then conceptualizing the environment (by the same or other individual/s/). This total process irom the perception of the environment to the application of appropriate topis to extract values from nature can be called the productive process. The human being is thus a productive animal who acts on the environment to transform it into material that will support his or her life. (2)

i'urther, the only way an individual can survive, ultimately, is by employing the productive process (consider what would happen if alone on a desert*^ island, a person could not or would not da this). Whether we consider a single individual or the entire species- human welfare depends upon the development and use of human productive abilities. (3)

Since the process of applying one's thought and labor is the only way a person can survive, then it is the appropriate, natural, or riffrt way for a person to live. It follows that, accepting the impulse to survive as equally natural, every individual has a natural right derived from an inherent need to engage in productive action, and therefore to own and use the full fruits of such action. If a person cannot survive alone without producing, than it is self-undermining for a person to seek survival in society \Tithout producing. A man in society who consumes values without contributing any can only be considered an invader against other* s rights to,and need to,own and consume the value of their labor (a voluntarily supported person obviously contributes some value to his or her supporter).(4

Contradictions are not always self-evident; thus there appears to b« not one but two ways for an individual to survive (acquire values necesaary-and not so necessary- to life) in the company of other individuals: the productive means of transforming the environment into useful values, and freely sharing or exchanging with other producers; and the redact!ye qeang of taking values from their creators by employing violence, deception, or the pressure of circumstances, and giving nothing of value in return, while perhaps pretending to do just that. (5)

In the long run the reductive means is self-defeating because the reducers could run out of victims, exhaust the producers, and be left helpless- not having developed any productive abilities in dealing with the environment. To the degree that the reductive meano ire employed in a society, it is caught up in internal conflicts between producers and reducers, and among the reducers, over the fruits of production. Productive energy is drained from ai1 combatants, impoverishing everyone, but some sooner or more than others - the strongest being but the last to die. (6)

Here is the paradox, here is the contradiction, here is the natural law of consequences made manifest. The exploiting non-producers, in seeking to escape the need to exert energy in producing, must eventually exert great a-mounta of energy in fighting off others who, perhaps seeing the immediate present gains of reductive processes, also take to robbing the producers and, as a result, competing for the dwindling output of a nov/ more heavily exploited class of producers (many of whom will in turn be forced to employ reductive means just to survive or defend themselves). The end result is the collapse of the economy under the impossible burden of reductive demands- or an uprising of the exploited against their exploiters. (7)

There is no escaping the demands of our own nature and the consequences of ignoring these demands. ,/hile it appears that there are two ways to preserve life in society, there is found to be only one- the way of production and equal exchange. The way of reduction,outright robbery or unequal exchange, destroys itself; it is by nature a contradiction and an impossibility. (8)

In his analysis of THE STATE, oociilogist Franz Oppenheimer labelled whatjis here called reduction the political means, because it is the method of survival adopted by the political institution, ie. the State. The methods of free production and exchange among social equals he labelled the economic meana, ~

The state is an organization of the political means. No state, therefore, can come into being until the economic means has created a definite number of objects for the satisfaction of needs, which objects may be taken away or appropriated by like robbery. (The State, pg.13) (9)

Whenever a society was able to produce a surplus above the basio necessities of subsistence (due to the development of tools and the division of labor, ie. the productive or economic mean»)i it was likely for a state or government to be created by some members of the sooiety in order to make decisions as to how the surplus would be distributed or used. As a sooiety evolved its economic means, it appears that at first the surplus was shared equally by all members of the tribe. The ohief. or ablest hunter, did not claim an extra portion of the yields from the hunt. (10)

Another major activity of government (besides intimidating its subjects) has been to initiate aggression against other societies in order to sieze their suj>-plusses and enslave their peoples, to appropriate more wealth or to supply the implements and manpower for further aggressions.(J2)

In order to motivate its subjects to support its rapacious ventures, in which the subjects would have nothing to gain, a state has to justify its aggression as a defense against an external and dehumanized "enemy*- in reality often smoother state preparing for its own aggression. Religion has also served well to legitimize sacrificing the stranger to the divine, as it has the sacrifice of the self. (13)

As the surplus increased, it allowed a few to leave the sphere of food production in order to communicate with the spirits of nature, to discover "the will of the gods". In such a manner were the religions born, and united to the function of ruling society, enabling its priests to claim the divine right to consume the surplus product of the laborers (the"high-er powers" have always demanded sacrifices from the people); the first states wwre theocracies.(11)

Philosophical anarchist Benjamin R.Tucker summarized the State as follows: Seeking, then, the elements common to all the institutions to whioh the name "State⁰ has been applied, they (anarchists) have found them two,In number: first, aggression; second, the assumption of sole authority Onprr a given area and all within it, exercised generally for the double yuryei of more complete oppression of its subjects and extension of its boundatri aries. (Instead of a Book, pg.22) C1*)

Today, we do not have theocracies, we have democracies and people's republics in which the will of the whole people- well, some of the people, anyway- is ipffda sacred so that "the People" beoomea the new god to which the sacrifices are offensdl, and to whioh every individual must totally submit. (15)

In the capitalist democracies the money-value of surplus labor is taxed in order to build and protect the now multinational military-industrial establishment. This establishment ie nothing more nor less than government-created aonopolies of private or "public" ownership of the resources essential to the production of economic values: natural, financial, and technical resources which are withheld from the workers until they agJraAtto surrender their future surplusses to the monopolists, to the capitalists, in the forms of yent on *

land, interest an credit, and wa^es below the exchange-value of their services and produotsCbecause they cannot afford to obtain land or credit and do without the capitalists)'. In the capitalist democracies pressure-group warfare sets people against each other in a scramble to gain, or recover, manias taken in direct taxation of the produowa/workers and the reducera/oapitalists (who invariably are the victors as political pull, ie. money invested in politicians, ultimately decides the conflict^.(16)

In public sohools children are taught that the government is their protector, the flag is sacred, society*s rules are not to be questioned, and "God is on our side". Such persons usually grow up as good victims- to be taxed, put into debt, drafted, produoe more obedient young slaves for the system, and finally die of overwork, poisoned air, water, and food, or a broken will to enjoy life. (17)

If our capitalist democracy was truly based on the free consent of sovereign individuals (and not ftattieldated spirits) we would be free to not pay taxes on our labor; not to fight a conflict against those white we have no grievance

with.} not to patronizegovernment schools and social services; not to pay hard—eyeried money for theTprivilige" of luarlng the space to live and work in (rent)i not to pay for the innate ability to monetize our labor-power( inter* estlj and not to work on someone elses terms (wages) when we could freely settle on unoccupied land, obtain credit, purchase tools not monopolized by government patents, and sell in a market where the inability to monopolize would keep prices determined by the low costs of productionv/and not the manipulation of needs and scarcities. The powers-that-be will not voluntarily demystify A disarm themselves - hence the need for anarchist criticism with Which to inform anarchist aotivian. This critique is only a small step in that direction. (T8"5

Further installments of ANARCHISM AS POLITICO-ECONOMIC CRITICISM will follow in future issues of i^tb STDEMI The theme is parried over, in this issue, into the two short pieces which follow. ECONOMICS OP LIBERT! by Laurance Labadie (DISCU5SIDH,vol 1, /5» 1957) is a now classic outline of the forms of capitalist exploitation and an individualist alternative. Labadie criticizes those privileges which the present day "anorcho-capitalist" defends. Unlike the latter, the anarchist individual1st does not propose to substitute private agencies to protect the capitalist privileges now supported by government agencies. AGAINST FINANCE CAPITALISM is a footnote (yes, footnote!) from Lysander Spooner* n POVERTT:ITS ILLEGAL CAUSES AND LEGAL CURE (1846). Spooner means by "legal" in conformity with the natural law that to the laborer belongs the complete product of labor. To achieve this end Spooner advocated free banking in order to allow as many laborers as possible the opportunity to become their own employers rather than sources of capital accumulation for the rich. Spooner realized early on that monopoly ownership of the means of production enabled the employer to exploit the worker by not paying back in wages the full value of the product, thus getting something for nothing. Spooner's emphasis upon the flnanoe monopoly is seen, today,to be justified.

The following purports to be a clear and concise outline of libertarian economic theory. LIBERTY means to be free from as well as free to do. To be free from means to be independent - not forced interdependence. Independence implies exclusion, hence a libertarian economy will involve property rights. Free exchange may be made by barter, with money, or through credit. A free economy, then, due to the inconveniences of barter, will almost necessarily be a money economy, undoubtedly a credit-noney economy.

1.THEOREM: If every individual, either alone or voluntarily organized int6 a group, has an equal opportunity to produce what he wishes and how he vteh.es, and to trade when, where, and on whatever terms he chooses, products and services will exchange virtually in proportion to the araoumess

2.PROOF: For as water seeks its level, competition compels one to charge for his services and products no more than what others are willing to do

fair. Men gravitate to those activities giving the greatest return, and competition is normally most keen in the more remunerative industries thus always tending toward equilibrium and equity which, as they are approached, causes competition to become less intense or at least balanced among all productive influences.

3. The PRICE SYSTEM means that one must pay for what he recieves. Operating under free competition, the price system (free enterprise and free market) -

b. permits experiment and innovation but only at the cost of the experimenters and innovators, except in case of fruitful results when costs of experimentation and entrepreneur risk becomes a temporary element of prloe,

i. abolishes exploitation by making price equal tost of production, j. is the most democratic method of cooperation known and the only

4. OBSTACLES to production and exchange are of two kinds: natural, and law-created or artificial.

2. Objective, due to difficulty of extraction, cultivation, or man-n-Pno-hirp.- sometimes because of locality, climate - natural forces to

b) Ifcnopolistic control (lack of free competition) of the issue of money and credit.

5. To understand the nature of human exploitation (as practiced today) one should know that remuneration for removing the obstacles to production is equivalent to the "value" or soolal estimate of the importance of such service.

B. The other way is for privileged persons to permit the use of facilities whioh the i— has enacted as special rights. Examples:

4. permission to trade for TARIFF REVHfOE (also causing PROFIT through high prices).

5. the above mentioned legal frauds sanctioned and upheld by the STATE and supported by the forcible collection of TAXES.

(N.B.) all these methods of getting wealtit without working are caused by arbitrary restrictions of opportunity and denials of competition, and the result - abject poverty on the one hand, superfluous riches on the other, concentration of control, and depressions or industrial stagnation.

6. ECONOMIC LIBERT! demands the removal or disregarding of the privileges causing artificial hindrances to production and exchange. This means

2. It would become a psychological improbability that a nan would even desire lore than his needs when insecurity is obviated by making economic opportunity free and equitable.

B. Only a fool or an incompetent would remain in need when opportunity to produce were open to him.

(Editor's Note: taking the last sentence seriously, minor changes in granmer were made,such as the capitalization of what I considered to be key concepts in the presentation - M.A.S.)

One of the greatest - probably the greatest - cf all the evils resulting from the existing system of privileged corporations for banking purposes, is that these incorporations ama3s, or bring together, ;uid place under the control of a single directory, the loanable capital that v/as previously scattered over the country, in s^all amounts, in the hands of a large number of separate owners. Tf this capital had been suffered to remain thus scattered, it would hr.ve been loaned by the separate owners, in snail sums, to p large number of persons; each of whom would thus have been supplied with capital sufficient to employ his own hands upon, with the means of controlling his own labor, and thereby of securing to himself all the fruits of his labor, cxcept what he should pay as interest. But when all this scattered capital is collected into one heap, and placed under the control of a singlp rli— rectory, It is usually loaned in large suns, to a few individuals -generally to the directors themselves and a few other favorites. It probably is not loaned to one tenth, one twentieth, or one fiftieth as many different persons, as it would have been if it had been rruf-fered to remain in its original state, and had been loaned by its separate owners. Ihdividiials,instead of borrowing one, two, three, or five hundred dollars to employ their own hands upon, as vrould be the case but for these incorporations of capital, now borrow fives, tens, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, upon which to eiiploy the labor of others. This process of concentration, monopoly, and incorporation, by means of which one man, a director, or a favorite of a bank, is enabled to borrow capital enough to employ the labor of ten, twenty, or an hundred men, of course deprives ten, twenty, or an hundred other men

the ability to borrow even capital enough to employ their own hands upon. Of consequence it compels then to sell their labor to him who lias monopolized the capital. And they must sell their labor to him at r. price that will give him a profit - generally a large profit. That is, they must sell it for much less than the amount of wealth it produces. In this way ten, twenty, or an hundred men are literally robbed of an important portion of the fruits of their labor, solely that a single monopolist may be gorged with wealth. It is thus that the legiilAtiap, which creates these large incorporations of privileged bankers, operates to plunder the many of the fruits of their labor, and pamper the few with the spoils.

FREE money

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io long is the superstition that there is any ought or duty by which conduct should bf: regulated, has a hold over the rinds of ncn and vfomen, so long will those peonle bp incapable of appreciating the full value of existance; and the,r living powers will run to wa3te while they .-rovol in t '<-. altmiotio nire of self-denial. Only when that superstition is O'andoned is the mind really emancipated. Only then is the individual fre-? to rise to the highest, bliss of which his or her nat'tro is '-a">a'')ie.

TKB JTO ; ! is a journal exploring and advocating anarcliy- life without coapulsory authority. The battle against such authority begins in the mirr¹ of the infiivi'<>ol. tead abortl it in THE J3T0FQ!!