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AFTER A LONG calm spell, THE STORM! has returned for one more blast at authority. The purpose of THE STORM! has been from the beginning to explore and advocate anarchy — life without compulsory authority. In the execution of this purpose, we have criticised authority as it is embodied in the corporate-state and as it manifests within the various counter-movements of anarchism, libertarianism, and gay liberation. We have also looked back to those whose lives exemplified anarchy in action: Emma Goldman, John Henry Mackay, Thoreau, the European Egoists, and Voltairine de Cleyre.

IN THIS ISSUE we attack yet another bastion of authority: the socialization of children. Jim Kernochan, Harold Pickett, and G.S. Swan all present differing views of the question. We also present the ideas of the two anarchists who directly inspired the inaugeration of THE STORM!, Laurance Labadie and John Henry Mackay. And again we return to the past with Morqan Edwards in his excellent essay on "...Failure and Success in American Anarchism." Morgan, known to our readers as Robert Cooke, is critical of the dogmatic anarchism of the past as well as of the present. And, as if this isn't enough. Yours Freely makes one last attack on anarcho-fascism before exiting, stage left.

ERIC THORNDALE has informed me that in the context of Mackay's poem from DICHTUNGEN which he translated in issue #6 the last line should read: And drink - then drown full happily!

AS I CLOSE "THE EYE OF THE STORM!" once again I would like to thank the steadfast readers whose support has enabled-encouraged us to turnout yet another issue of our iconoclastic mag. I hope you find it worth the wait. Thanks are due to my co-editor/publisher and typist, Jim Kernochan, without whom this issue would not have seen the light of day; and to Tom McGonigle for his interest in our work,and his assistance in getting it done. Last, and certainly not least, I wish to acknowledge Danny Murphy: for his editing, his criticisms and his love.

07//WSP

A Journal for Free Spirits * * *

Jim Kernochan, Danny Murphy & Mark A. Sullivan

Editors & Publishers * * *

$1.00 per issue or $4/5 issues, (U.S.A. and Canada) $1.50 per issue or $6/5 issues, (overseas) (please send check payable to Mark A. Sullivan) Free To All Prisoners of The State Apt. 2E 227 Columbus Ave., New York, N.Y. 10023 (USA)

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rRRATUM: on page 3 line 2 of this issue's Supplement "superstitious" should read surreptitious".

Aiders rvi Tfie Stmvi/

Dear Jim and Mark:

YOU'VE SENT ME two copies of The Storm! (#6&7), and I'm sorry it has taken me this long to respond

— correspondence that is not a direct exchange of letters sometimes gets buried and forgotten. ^ But your recent issue prompts a tardy redress — at least an exchange, and perhaps some comments you might find of value.

I'M NOT QUITE sure why Black Bart finds its way to some anarchist mailing lists — possibly the piratical name promotes the image, I don't know. I do have anarcho-libertarian leanings, if one were to try to classify me, but there is something about anarchist rhetoric and fervor

— a certain "nineteenth- A^v century" limitation of con-sciousness which prevents me from feeling really a part of that crowd. So you will understand where my comments are ftf.T coming from.

I DO LIKE your stuff — mainly because of its freshly individualist leanings, and because of a certain touch of metaphysical awareness that I find in it —

— most strongly expressed (in the recent issue) in Mark's "Eye of the Storm" opening. But I . can't help feeling that this c awareness is not maintained in your full content. It's as though your vision falls victim to the heaviness of rhetoric, and before long you are burying it in words which come more out of anarchist tradition than on the higher level of insight where they seem to have begun.

I THINK THAT you are aware of this dichotomy, this mind-split, but are perhaps looking for a certain legitimacy in the historv and structure (an anomalous word, in this context!) of anarchism — trying to overlook the fact that anarchism arose in a social context that was fully dominated by a devotion to materialism at one or another level — forcing even the opposition necessary into a materialist format. I call anarchism materialist because it works toward an anti-materialism instead of moving simply to transcend it — something conceptually possible TODAY, but not a hundred years ago (apparently).

IF THE LEGITIMACY for a TRANSCENDANT view is necessary, it is more readily available in some of the eastern-isms. Any of these traditions (east or west) is useful, certainly, but I think one can be seriously limited by hanging too heavily on them. I most strongly identify with the cover words of Renzo Novatore — a very clear and beautiful statement of genuine anarchy, BUT — if you consider the full value and belief behind this statement, you cannot avoid the conclusion that Renzo would have had no more traffic with Anarchism than with any other -ism. This is the paradox of a TRUE anarchy, to my way of feeling. And this is the inevitable paradox of "A Journal For Free Spirits." You cannot avoid it, but perhaps you can move toward an explication of it in Your paqes.

* (March 1, 197$)

THANKS FOR YOUR latest issue's focus on Voltairine de Cleyre — she seems a happy exception to the rule. I appreciate your brinqina these more-or-less obscure older anarchists into view — they may yet change my mind!

(July 27, 1979)

Regards, Irv

Irv Edits and Publishes BLACK BART P.O. Box 48, Canyon, Ca. 94 516

Dear Irv,

I AGREK WITH you re. my "mind-split." One of the purposes of The Storm! is to synthesize classical anarcho-individualism with the current movements of self liberation (esp. feminism and gay liberation). The connecting theme is the need to transcend social conditioning in order to experience self-ownership, self-determination, self-actualization. In its recognition of the ultimate value of the subject, the self, individual anarchy transcends materialism.

FOR ME, THE self is that who experiences; not the content but the context, or space, in which all experience occurs. Thismay be New Age jargon, but Stirner put it this way 135 years ago "...the stone in the street IS, and my notion of it IS too. Both are only in diffeent SPACES, the former in airy space, the latter in my head, in ME; for I am space like the street." LBC < iition p. 341). By indentifying with the context, rather than the content, of our thoughts and experiences, we cease to indentify with out habitual reactions and the long-winded philosophies we create to rationalize them. This allows a larger context of mutual tolerance,of equal freedom, to xist between individuals. Individual anarchy becomes inter-individual ("social") anarchy.

HOWEVER, I THINK it a mistake to ignon the material obstacles that confront us — they are very real. To the degree that nature, exploitation, and ' ppression keep most human b.-inctr. concerned with physical lurviv.i11 only the privileged <-w will have the time and r Bo irr ; to develop thei Higher" natures. Anarchi

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aims to transform society so that the individual has the opportunity (as John Badcock put it 90 years ago) "to rise to the experience of the highest bliss of which his or her nature is capable."

ON THE OTHER hand, individual anarchy differs from social anarchism in its refusal to WAIT for a change in material conditions, or in "the masses" for its realization. Thia here-and-now orientation accounts for the "aristocratic" rhetoric of a Renzo Novatore, an Oscar Wilde, or an Emma Goldman.

IN THE FINAL analysis, I agree with Novatore and reject anarchism as an ideology; and embrace anarchy as a context in which no authority, including that of ideology, is created by the ego over its self.

-AAaaV.

Dear Mark f, Jim:

I.. .APPRECIATED THE latest issue of THE STORM!. It is excellent this issue except for one small/large item that I wish to comment on/ criticise you and Robert Cooke on. "Who Is An Anarchist?", by Robert Cooke I noticed is copyrighted, what kinda shit is a copyright to an anarchist? Property of such nature is bourgeois. I have the right to reprint any writing that I wish, but no right to claim it as my own or profit from it. The latter is disrespectful and a copyright doesn't need to be waved in my face especially in an anarchist journal. If something is not to be shared than don't release it from your hand or mind. Money spent on the copyright serves the State where it could have served the cause. Other than that dent in my brain pan I enjoyed the article, smile.

I REALLY GO off on THE PICKETT LINE article by Harold Pickett. Best article ever on the need to support legislative reform. Words out of my mouth, but it did

inspire the enclosed effort that I hope adds to it in some small manner. Pickett communicated the problem clearly and the solution without taking away from anarchism, but adding to it a valuable contribution of theory and practice. His "line" in this manner is very "correct" in our time and situation in America especially.

IN SUPPORT OF LEGISLATIVE REFORM:

IF WE CAN knock the State down inch by inch to a government that runs things and not people, if we can get the state to acknowledge in word and deed our human rights, we are halfway to our goal of total liberation and freedom from all governments.

THE MARXIST-LENINISTS seek to seize the State and then cause it to wither away, and that is absurd as their history shows. The withering away must begin now, and anything that takes away from the State helps that withering away. We cannot just be free now because of the conditions in and around us not to be. We must learn how to be free and practice at being free. Fighting for legislative reforms is one way to begin that learning.

ALL LEVELS OF struggle are mandatory in our struggle against the State, but we must not let our tactics become the priority over our strategy. Reforms are a way to decrease or expose State power. Suport all reforms that are in harmony with our end i.e., Justice, Equality, Peace, and Freedom.

BY DOING EVERYTHING possible to the best of our ability that causes the State to wither away as quickly as possible, if not immediately, we PRACTICE what we preach and begin the learning process that is necessary to be free. To reject reform struggles is to play into the hands of the State.

r^FjUJJ^B Love and Rage

fPv^^J Carl Harp

PSjj^l Wa. State Pen.

CS^HH (July 6, 1979)

THE AUTHOR'S ANSWER:

I AGREE WITH your general posit ion on legal copyright; I think it an unnatural monopoly created by the State (similar to what's done with patents). I only reluctant"y used the (c) mark and did not intend it to restrict in any way any reprinting of the article; neither did I mean to "profit" from it. (My RIGHT to profit from it is another natter, but in any case, profit is a laughably hopeless notion if you're writing or publishing anarchist material.)

THE COPYRIGHT MARK was included soley to protect my own right to reprint the article at a later date. As a friend pointed out to me, if it were not so marked, anyone could copyright it by reprinting and thus restrict or hamper my use of somethin" T wrote.

THE PRACTICE OF anarchists using copyright to protect their nqht in publications is not unusual --at present, there is simply no way to do so by co-operativ^ means. Just glancing at a few books on my shelves shows copyrights in the names of Karl Hess, Paul Goodman, Murray Boochin, Paul Avrich, James J. Martin, Rudolph Rocker and Benjamin Tucker. Even an early edition of Kropotkin's MUTUAL AID bears the notation, "all rights reserved" (Though to whom is admittedly unclear.) Lysander Spooner, of course, believed in perpetual copyright, but he was, among anarchists, eccentric (if consistent) in this.

THE MATTER OF reprinting is not academic or paranoid. I know of at least one bogus publishing house in New York that specializes in grabbing up unpublished or out of print titles on anarchism, free thought, radical and revisionary history, and related literature. The person who runs this operation recently attempted to obtain the U.S. copyright to a hitherto untranslated work by John Henry Mackay (anarchist author and poet); I am glad to report that he did not qet it. Although this publisher has a title from his "list" on nearly every page in BOOKS IN PRINT (at outrageous prices), he has apparently never actually published anything. The result of the efforts of this publishing house is to keep libertarian literature out of circulation and to raise the price of secondhand or rare material. Read into it what you will; I think there are nany ways to suppress dissident literature.

I DON T SEE how you can assert that one cannot claim a piece of writing as one's own. Do you leave your letters unsigned, so as not to "claim" them as yours? Would you reprint someone else's writing without crediting them? And if you did give credit where due, would you not be acknowledging their claim? Wouldn't using an author's work without giving credit be rather "disrespectful" and "Bourgeois?" One last point: We spent no money on copyright procedure The mark has the same legal effect as formal registration. MORGAN EDWARDS (ROBERT COOKE)

EDITOR'S REPLY:

SPEAKING FOR JIM, as well as myself, I tend to agree with Carl; a copyrighted (or patented) object is "bourgeois" (ie. capitalistic) property. You accumulate an income from capitalistic property by letting others use it for a fee — while never parting with the use of it yourself (banks do this with credit). As Morgan writes, this is a State-created privilege, a legal monopoly. I also agree that I have "no right" to profit from, or claim as my own, the writings (or ideas) of another. For an anarchist individual (or association) the only guide to action is to r.-spect the freedom of others as you wish them to respect yours. If you do not respect the freedom of others, don't expect them to respect yours -- and vice versa. AGAIN, I AGREE with Carl — if I orginate and communicate an idea to others, I cannot expect them (if they are intelligent and find my idea of value) to NOT use it! This would not be respecting the freedom of others as I wish my own to be. However, I would demand as my due the credit for originating the idea. Most of us resent it when an idea we propose to others is used, but credit is not given to us, or is claimed by someone else. Beyond credit of authorship, if an idea cost me (time, labor, property, etc.) to create and/or communicate, I would arrange to be paid what it cost me (including the cost of foregone income in other pursuits) before sharing it. And if an idea of mine brings material benefit to others, I would expect some share in this benefit made possible by me. Likewise, if I recieved benefit from someone's idea, I would want to show my thanks to the author in some material way. in the case of a book, I would purchase that edition personally commissioned by the author (ie. for which the author was paid ).

IF COPYRIGHT IS a government privilege, it follows that in a truly anarchist society anyone may reprint the writings of another. So long as the author is acknowledged, and only those editions specifically commissioned by the author are designated "authorized," the publisher could not be accused of fraud and infringing upon the rights of the author. Consumers would thus be free to purchase the authorized editions in their desire to support their favorite authors. Only these authors who demanded or allowed their writings to be sold at exorbitant prices would lose the good will and support of the public. In this manner, no one is exploited, and everyone's freedom is equally respected. Coypright, as used in THE STORM! is to protect (not violate) this equal freedom — from those who will not voluntarily respect it. So long as one credits the author and the journal, and does not seek to monopolize what is found printed in THF STORM! one is free to reprint all material found in these pacres. _M(Vlk-

Today, in our society, children are the only human beinqs that can be held as slaves. Children do not own their bodies - they are the legal property of their parents or "guardians." And they can be held captive, freely beaten, and forced onto subserviance at the whim and fancy of their masters. Young people are not given the opportunity to think for themselves - their minds are molded like clay by authority figures who wish to churn out conventionality and respectability. And every social institution, backed by State interest, indoctrinates children with ideas that uphold the status quo. Children are not sove-riegn individuals - they are strapped in strait-jackets and denied the right to determine the destiny of their own lives. And the family, church, and State force the child, against his or her will, to live up to their narrow expectations. Children are politically, socially, and sexually oppressed. And children's liberation will be the litmus test for applying anarchist principles in everyday life.

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them into serving the State. Children, not completely socialized, are too much of a risk to be given the vote and therefore represent no constituancy. Legislators enact repressive laws without ever having to answer to the people their actions effect. As a result, the State ensures the child's dependence upon parents by forbidding child labor, children can not prosecute against rape without their parent's permission, and the young can be imprisoned in mental institutions against their will by parents for simply being different. Much like the black slave in nineteenth century America, it is even against the law for children to run away from their masters. Unfortunately,

I remember that as a child my political ideas were never taken seriously by adults. After all, I was "too young to understand worldwide events," "too inexperienced to know what was good for me," and "too uneducated to get involved in the political process" that had a direct bearing on my life. What was inferred was that my anti-racist, antiwar, and anti-statist ideas were too threatening to the adult authority structure. Young people have yet to create their own niche in the world, and thus have no vested interest in maintaining the present State power system. The "education" they now receive only socializes

there is no underground railroad to help the contemporary slave escape his or her bondage.

perhaps the most galling example of repressive State action directed against the young is the call for "National Service." If this evil bill passes Congress and the Senate, young people will be mandated to devote themselves to "conmunity service" at home, as well as serve military interests abroad. That is, all male and female Americans must register with the State within ten days of their seventeenth birthday and perform one year of civilian service with no benefits. Forcing people to work against their will - even under the guise of "community service - has obvious parrallels to Stalin's Gulags and Hitler's concentration camps. But not content with simple slavery, the State further wants to quench its military thirst for a superior American invasive force by reviving the draft. Our young will be conscripted and exported to every right-wing, pro-imperialist regime our war-monger government has an interest in defending. Hence, children are not their own sovereigns because their lives belong to the State.

In addition to being exploited by the political system, children are also socially oppressed. They are constantly lied to, humored, -ade fun of, stereotyped, and dehumanized. The phrase "children should be seen and not heard" is a pervasive idea anong adults. A child's purpose in society is to serve parents, teachers, and other power-craved adult authority figures. This servitude to "superiors," drawn up by mere tradition and social convention, only further guarantees an inferior caste status :oi children. Parents can dictate 3 child's social habits, decide who their friends should be, and control their leisure time. Acting as thought-police, adults expose the

child to only those ideas that are self-serving to established authority. And they psychologically terrorize their offspring by pressurizing him or her to live up to their own narrow moral standards.

Schools have failed to teach children to read and write. And yet, they have the distinction of being compulsory and therefore a prison. School wardens have the authority to define education, choose the curriculum, and even teach the "morals" that are supposed to be upheld. School officials further have the right to discipline children - often violently - in order to keep them in their "proper place." The child's education is subject to State regulations and parental peroga-tives. It is clear that young people have no right to choose the type of social environment they " wish to be reared in. The fact is that there is very little a child can do without permission from adult authority.

It is also popularly thought that strict disiplinarians are a good influence on the child's upbringing. Adults, needing some justification for their authoritarian behavior, rationalize their cruelty by thinking that in the long-run, harsh discipline is in the best interest of the child. Even though we hated strict discipline during our childhood, we have internali7ed the belief that such damnable treatment has actually been good for us.

This manifests itself into blind obediance to all forms of authority. Schools foster such horrid ideas as respecting elected "leaders," obedience to the police, and taking civic duties seriously. Obviously, one of the reasons school is compulsory is so that children will learn social concerns from a statist point of view. Church power, and its baptismal

indoctrination rites, induce the child with the supersititious idea that obedience to god's law take precedence over rational self-determination. Organized Religion further advocates a meek subser-viance to State-Hellism on earth all for a glorious life after death in heaven. Indeed, a steady diet of statist cultural values produces children hell-bent on perpetuating a strong interventionist government.

bation is a sin - don't touch your body! Pre-maritial sex is immoral

- don't touch your friend's body! Homosexuality is a mental illness

- procreation is the only reason for touching ANYbody! These and other impotent ideas stunt the child's sexual awareness during his or her formative years. The scarring of childhood sexuality further leads to inhibitions and misconceptions about sex when one becomes an adult.

Thus the final product of the social oppression of children is a diapered Americanism called NATIONALISM. This national obes-sion takes root in a total devotion to government and all its oppressive legislative forces. It is complimented by a god-fearing populace which leads its life by the outmoded teachings of a state-fetished church. Nationalism reeks of respectability and exhibits volatile hatred for non-conformity. The "my country right or wrong" philosophy leads to a blindness and insensitivity to the social ills of the world. Hence, nationalism hinders independence, dwarfs originality, fosters ignorance, and stifles self-assertion. And this is the depraved social framework children are being reared in today!

The political and social exploitation of children is fairly obvious to most anarchists. Using our principles to combat these oppressive forces may not even be a controversial idea. It is in the realm of sexual freedom where most people - even anarchists -have trouble advocating children's liberation. Young people easily pick up on the sexual attitudes of the adults around them. Considering that our puritanical tradition has brought us all up with the idea that sex is dirty, is it any wonder that children continue to be reared with lies and distortions about sexuality. Master-

The adult power structure not only preaches that sex is evil, but also sets up rigid gender roles they expect children to conform to. Society, and its network of nuclear families, has an inherent interest in perpetuating vested interest and thus maintaining a strict division of sex roles. The secret motive of this sex role conspiracy is a division of labor where men get the more powerful, prestigious, and profitable occupations. Therefore the American male is punished for expressing his natural range of emotions and coerced into being aggressive, arrogant, and a "breadwinner." The female counterpart, on the otherhand, is stigmatized for asserting her independence and socialized into being overly sensitive, submissive, and a housewife. Children are rarely encouraged to develop their own self-identity or plan the role they wish to play as adults. Instead, young people are molded into mindless robots who parrot the social constructs of what is popularly thought to be male or female. And the nuclear family will sacrifice its children's individualities to uphold these gender roles.

By encouraging rigid sex roles, adults make no attempt whatsoever in helping children develop their sexual capacity. It is a common misconception that the young don't experience sexual interests. Thus,

adults help their children realize natural functions as walking, talking, and learning, but ingnore and sometimes purposely hinder children's equally important capacity for sex. This neglect results in the young person being confused and misinformed about his or her sexuality; children are denied access to valuable information relating to sexuality. For example, adults dismiss children from the room when the subject of sex is discussed. A child is told stork stories in reply to questions about pregnancy. Furthermore, all parents assume their offspring are heterosexual, and thus "save" their children from non-heterocen-trist ideas about bi/homo/sexuality. In short, children are to know nothing of sex other than that it occurs between married adults in the missionary position. The same young people supposedly have no sexual capacity and are expected to repress all erotic desires until they are "mature enough to handle them." Meanwhile, the sexual guilt and repression exhibited by today's adults, will be the same frustration haunting the adults of tomorrow.

Children are indeed politically, socially, and sexually op-ressed. AS anarchists, we need to ask ourselves if we condone this oppression or are we ready to build a future where children can live in freedom and with individual liberty? I have no snappy solutions for how to arrive at such a "utopian" state of being. I merely raise the question in order to start some dialogue on the long ignored subject of children's liberation. And if we apply our libertarian principles to children, as we apply them to ourselves, young people will have nothing to lose but their chains, they will have a world to win

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Stmti' ^SijmoCS

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"Go away, kid—you bother me!"

-- W.C. Fields

Children's rights?

I would be a terrible parent. A child would be too much of a nuisance, too bothersome, always hanging around. It needs such attention, care, and total commitment that parenting constitutes a full-time job—a job that's in addition to earning an income.

Having a child is expensive, too. From first doctor visits and hospital bills to a college education, it costs a fortune. Even if the mother stays home and practices natural childbirth and the kid drops out of high school, there are the 1,001 things in between that you never think about until it's time to pay the bills.

I would resent devoting such a huge portion of my life, with personal limitations of time and money, to caring for a child or, worse, children. (Most people don't stop after one mistake.) There are so many things to do and experience, so many ways for self-expression, that to have my freedom severely limited by parenting would result in tremendous resentment. The child would receive the displaced resentment and suffer unfairly for simply existing.

Such resentment seems widespread in society, despite pretensions to the contrary. Child abuse, often an extreme expression of resentment at parenting, is rampant. It is probably increasing in recent years as society undergoes fundamental change. There may even be a subconscious prophetic recognition that parenting, as practiced today, is an outmoded concept, soon to go the way of the dinosaur.

Since the present social and economic structures do not appear to be on the verge of total revolutionary change, it seems premature to discuss children's rights. Nevertheless, it may be of benefit to discuss the context in which parenting now occurs.

Any discussion of children's rights must begin with the right not to be born I do not see that one has a natural right to abuse, misery, and deprivation,unless, of course, one freely chooses to enter a monestery. Children, though, are entitled to a loving, nurturing existence with a potential for living as fully realized human beings: healthv, intelligent, and capable of self-expression in the world at large. If the prerequisites for full human nurturing and development are not present, the child lias a right not to be born. A fetus is only animal matter; it should not be allowed to develop further if it is too likely to be born as a child condemned to an animal existence.

Parental love is a necessity for the child. Too often couples have children for a variety of reasons without really wanting the child for its own sake, and, as a result, parental love is lacking. It's almost certain that children's rights will never be supported by such parents. Parents must thoughtfully choose to have a child. It should be clear that marriage and children are two separate things. Every last remnant of the teaching of "sex for procreation" must be uprooted and eliminated from society. To this end, abortion, birth control and homosexuality are social components that help insure the rights of children by insuring they are born only when they are wanted for themselves, and can be properly supported.

Society does not reflect such a mature evaluation of sex and family. Conservative politicians and religion fight against abortion, birth control, and alternate expressions of sexuality.

Religion continues preaching its primitive desert theology as if it were realistic science. Ignorance turns to hatred as religion tries to control public society in order to control the private lives of its members. More children are needed to increase church membership and, later, to fill the collection plates on Sunday morning.

The state has traditionally been anxious to assist the church in encouraging population growth. More people equals more workers, at low wages, and more soldiers to waste in national battles.

Children continue to come off the reproduction lines of thoughtless breeders. Young men and women are taught to grow up, get a job, get married, and raise a family. Service to the state or to some religion

gives 'Waning" to these poor lives. Satisfaction means keeping ahead of the bills and obtaining material objects to make life more comfortable in its passing.

Such lives are pure imitation, devoid of imagination or choice. They focus primarily on the family in servitude to animal biology. While church and state affirm the meaning and value of "family", parents hold an identity that is merely an extension of their reproductive sysytems and which belies the real value of consciousness. Women are specifically taught they cannot live happy, fulfilled lives unless they birth a child. Under such social conditions, neither adults nor children have full human rights.

Young people are encouraged to have families and to live in imitation of their own parents. They have children because of family pressures to show their "maturity" and their "normality". They succumb to their parents neurotic demands for grandchildren. Sometimes minority groups also pressure parents into having children solely to perpetuate the group's own imagined superiority.

Having sacrificed time, money and personal interests to raise a new fairily, the parents eventually resort to vicariously living their unfulfilled lives through the lives of their children. The new generation is to reap the rewards of present toil.

In searching for some meaning in life, children are valued for continuing the tanuly name. They become a hedge acainst death. The deceased are thought t continue a mystical participation in life through living descendents. Children are the living testimonials to the fact that they once lived "productively" - producing children.

In daily reality, though, children are often nothing more than tools used in vain attempts to save a failing marriage. A! o, being powerless, they are easy to boss, punish, and force to obedience. An oppressed, frustrated worker can

1 powerful with a serfdom of children. It's imagined, often unrealistically, that a child will provide security by working to earn money for the family when the grow up and that they will take car of the parents in old age.

There are additional reasons for 1 ivlng a second child. Child psychologist Dr. lames Lieberman of the ,-J 7 9

• tlonal Institute of Mental Health ' ^

' at parents nay try to have a -

7A\

child of the opposite sex (after the myth that one sex is incomplete without the other), or they want to provide the first child with a companion. A second child also ensures parents of having an offspring in case the first one dies. Leiberman states, "The only valid reason to have a second child is because a couple truly wants one", which is the only valid reason for having a first child.

All the social pressures and reasons we've discussed for having children are not valid. They result in oppressive experiences for both parents and children. The prevailing context of parenting does not truly appreciate and value the child in and for itself and without this needed base, there is little hope for advancing children's rights. Thus, we must continue discussing and developing alternate lifestyles for adults and parents if children are to have any rights. What these rights are, and become, will depend on the values that we find in our own lives.

HCUvixC VLCkCtt

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Twiocks fm*9i Mocfa

THE MACKAY SOCIETY (Mackay Gesellschaft) has kept individualist-anarchist thought alive in the German language. It has published all the major works of John Henry Mackay, his homosexual as well as anarchist works, as well as material by other authors. Now the Mackay Society is preparing English translations of two of its most important books: THE MANIFESTO OF PEACE AND FREEDOM by K.H.Z. Solneman, and Mackay's THE FREEDOMSEEKER (DER FREIHEITSUCHER).

RATHER THAN REVIEW these two works, I've decided to reprint The Mackay Society's introductory material to THE MANIFESTO, and to exerpt a few of my favorite paragraphs from THE FREEDOMSEEKER. Let me add that, at the time of this writing, the Society was in search of publishers willing and able to undertake the two projects. Anyone seriously interested in this venture should write to the secretary, Kurt Zube at: MACKAY GESELLSCHAFT, Auwaldstrasse 7, D-7800 Freiburg/Br., Germany

vn'Tfic Nmfafo tf TrmfcwtmL cPm&)>

This work begins with a clarification of confused concepts and an attack upon prevalent but dangerous stereotyped ways of thought, i.e. with regard to the State, communism, democrnc)' whereby surprising numbers and facts are presented. Thereupon follow - within a plentitude of new thought-processes - four sensational (but thoroughly thought-through) suggestions, the realisation of which touches everyone in the foundation of his existence - and that in a most positive way:

Equal acccss to the natural ressources and agricultural means of production for everyone and distribution of the land-rent (especially too in the city) to everyone. Freedom of the means of exchange and cheap-credit in their meaning and

consequences.

Open Associations of Management (and the absurdity of unemployment). Autonomous Legal and Social Communities (for everyone the state of his dreams).

But here above all is offered that which already Albert Einstein demanded in order

to evade a catastrophe: a new way of thinking.

The fruitful seed of a new basis of relationships among men, of a new social measure which begins with thus a general agreement instead of ideologies and on the bases of which a general agreement has thus for the first time become possible. This leads 10 the unavoidable alternative of a "having to decide" (and this openly without the prevailing so popular dissimilations) either for the law of the sword end aggressive force or for non-domination !

The M AC K AY-SOC1ETY , undogmatic, anti-ideological has elaborated the program of an undominating socieiv that is concrete in all essential details and has also pointed out a real path to this society. It appeals to all to examine without prejudice the presented numbers and facts as well as their arguments. But it appeals also to a'l to work with it through discussion, criticism , additional suggestions or counterproposals, for it is at all times ready to correct its own point of view towards founded arguments.

KfnrW i rwjtw . ■'

jwJ'jJk frecdcmseeker

jfic 'Psychdcyy pf a <DcvcCcj>menC

DURING THESE YEARS IT BECAME MORE AND MORE CLEAR TO HIM that all social awareness must stem from the mind of the Individual - the Ego - if it was to be founded on realities and to lead to tangible results instead of to such abstract ideas as "Community", "Nation" and "The People.'' Although no Ego was the centre of the World, nevertheless every Ego was the centre of its own World, and there was one instinct in it stronger than all others - that of self-preservation.

Every Ego was a World in itself, an organic being set on Earth to live out its life until its time was fulfilled. To stand firmly upon one's own feet, to assert oneself, in fact to live, this was the mainspring of all activity and the reason for every manifestation of Life. It was this instinct for self-preservation, this egoism, which sustained the life of the Individual.

To deny egoism, therefore, was to deny Life. Everybody was an Egoist. Everybody, whether consciously or unconsciously, instinctively or calculatedly acted, without exception, by one maxim - "Every act of mine must gain for me the greatest possible measure of fortune." Wherever they sought this fortune, whether in themselves or in others, in self-agrandisement or in self-degradation, in self-sacrifice or in sacrificing others, in serving or in ruling or in none of these things, they were, and remained, "Egoists."

People do not act as they want to but as they must. They do what they must and they leave undone what they must because they are unable to do otherwise. They are driven by the demands of their natures and they must bow down to what these dictate.

Sin" is only an idea which exists in their heads like a ghost which dissolves in the light of reality and there can be no "Salvation" from it because it does not exist.

We have no other choice but to set ourselves in harmony with ourselves and our life runs its course between the demands of this innermost wish, or discontent, and its fulfilment, or satisfaction, he fault was not that people were Egoists - everybody was - but that they would not admit it.

"here was no such thing as "boundless Egoism". Every Egoism is bounded by the Egoism of others and can only do what others allow it to do. The true Egoist prospered because he had recognized that his happiness lay in that of others and because he did not try to build it upon the unhappiness of others.

The only thing that matters is that we do not allow the will to work, which is the will to live, to be bent or broken. For as long as this will remains with us, the Force which can overcome, equally, hatred and indifference, we shall remain young - even without Youth!"- I have written this somewhere. It was written in a good hour, and I have never written anything more true.

:he will to live is the will to be Free. The Love of Freedom is a long-lasting Love - it dies only when Life dies, because it is Life itself.

/aaculatc Origins

themes of jaiCwrc & success iru atwruwv

ANARCHISM, THOUGH A political philosophy, is not a doctrine. Sone anarchists have been doctrinaire, even dogmatic, but none of their doctrines or schools have encompassed more than a part of anarchis Each anarchist thinker and actor has contributed and passed on. As a result, anarchism is a melange of ideas and practices, some elaborate, some incomplete, some half-baked.

ANARCHIST IDEAS SURFACE periodically in many or even most societies (although they may not bear the label "anarchist"). Wherever people create an anarchistic culture — that is, whenever they live free of, or resist, all authority and express in words their ideals and way of life, the philosophy of anarchism appears.

IT IS THUS as difficult to point tp a single origin for anarchist thought as it is to isolate a small spring and say, "There begins the river". No one brook high in the mountains is uniquely the river in the valley; each tributary adds its substance, though one may be larger than another.

FINALLY, ANARCHIST IDEAS have not grown in ivory towers, but in social conflict. Few intellectual institutions have allowed serious discussion of, or influence by, anarchism; its development has taken place outside the respectable cloisters of the elite. Hence, anarchism has not become a "pure ideology" — to borrow Murray Rothbard's term — and remains wild and free, undomesticated and disreputable. It contains multitudes, and if it is inconsistent at times, that inconsistency allows endless space for growth. It is the maculate philosophy.

ILLUSTRATING THESE POINTS are two of the best volumes of anarchist history I have yet seen: Hal Sears' THE SEX RADICALS: FREE LOVE IN HIGH VICTORIAN AMERICA (Regents Press, 1977) and Lewis Perry's RADICAL ABOLITIONISM: ANARCHY AND THE GOVERNMENT OF GOD IN ANTISLAVERY THOUGHT (Cornelll University Press, 1973). Both of these are sophisticated works, in terms both of the research performed by their authors and of the treatment of the material. In addition to the very thorough research that Sears undertook for his book, a great virtue of THE SEX RADICALS is his demonstration of how interwined were the various radicalism of late-19th Century America. Sears chose to focus on the "free love" movement of this period, notably Moses Harman and the group surrounding his anarchist journal, LUCIFER; but he shows also how inseparable from other, themes was sexual freedom. Speaking of feminism, spiritualism and free love — the latter two began in the same general area and time (in New York State, about 184 8, a vintage year for radicals), feminism earlier in the 1830's — Sears writes:

"These three enthusiasms mutually supported one another; a true social radical of the time often works simultaneously for all three causes and, perhaps, leavened the mixture with abolition, phrenology and hydropathy." 1

r^,ffHASIS °N1the r°le °f A*>litionism in ante-bellum show^ »^i1! mlsplaced' hoWever- AS Perry's RADICAL ABOLITIONISM Z! ' tionism was the heated crucible in which were formed

st^tchLrascal ements. ^ influence Qf fche abol itionists

first der^p nf L in indirectly, from the 18 30's through the

20th CenturY- from the abolitionist circles came anarchists, feminists, free-lovers, spiritualists and colonizers.

sm.

LUCIFER: ITS MEANING AND PURPOSE.

LUCIFER—The planet Venus; so called from Its I r fitness-Webster'a Dictionary.

LUCIFER0U3—Giving light: •.Hording light or lbs - ■ * of 41.-. cot* nr.—Sams.

LUC1FIC—Producing light -Bare*

LUCIFORM—Having the form ol light-Sxme

Tbc r.xme Luorer meant Light-Bringing or Light-Urnli t '<•' " ' paper that has adopted thla nam* stands for lJght ag.iit -t ' •

-for Ileason against Suieratlllon—for 6clente against n lltl i-f-r investigation and Enlightenment against Credulity sr.d !;r. Aj -for Llt-crty against Slavery—for Justice against Fir. i

Till: L 1 U II T ■ U L i 11 E II .

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Concuss shell ium so ejiw msi-eciinc an i - isuklm or uxicio>", cut rcoiiuiti.no the mi lxllcise iiiuih , on sum. i.Nfl tui ntxraoi or srtEcii, or. or tui phess; t* Tut ei ui or tiie rEorLf mitmi to asseudlz, asd to petition tue ujvusbim roa a ujirtss or gkievakces.—>'irj I j mtHdment to Ike Com i n»-tkn of Hit VntcJ Stain.

THE LINES OF Radical development are complex and often indirect or even superstitious. Abolitionism itself grew out of the general social background of the 1830's as much as from any person, group of idea. From a hostile reaction to the black colonization schemes of a previous generation (schemes characterized as racist and un-Christian); from the millenarian perfectionism" of John Humphrey Noyes (and others) and from other revivalist, evangelical religious movements; from renewed familiarity with the writings of Godwin and earlier dissenting radicals; from Quakerism; from these and from many other sources arose the anti-slavery movement of the 1830's, which endured until the Civil War. Abolitionism actually was the first anarchist movement; it led to the post-war anarchism (Tucker, et al.) that is more familiar to us. The organized feminist movement also began in abolitionism, among the women who worked in Wiliam Lloyd Garrison's "nonresistant" circle in Boston.

A PARALLEL GENEOLOGY of radical descent was drawn by the aforementioned Noyes; this line, while Utopian and communitarian like Noyes' Oneida Colony, was generally rationalist. Robert Owen "beaat New Harmony; New Harmony (by reaction) begat Individual Sovereiqntv / of Josiah Warren/; Individual Sovereignty beqat Modern Times-Modern Times was the mother of Free Love, the Grand Pantarchy /Steven Pearl Andrews7, and the American branch of French positivism." 2 (Noyes lineage is cited by both Perry and Sears.)

POST-WAR ANARCHISM and sex radicalism emerged from the ruins of the older abolitionist movement; its rise, transformation and disintegration as an indeology are ably and exhaustively chronicled in RADICAL ABOLITIONISM. As I can just touch here on the varieaated ideas, personalities and conflicts of the abolitionist movement, I will emphasize chiefly the connections with a later radicalism.

I

"By the Century's end, Tolstoy was frustrated to discover that scarcely an American remembered that any abolitionists had been anarchists." 3

YET, SO THEY had been; as early at 1836, anti slavery agent Henry C. Wright could say, "Human government is just as necessary as sin:

n„ mnrp I reqard all Human Government as usurpations of God's

^ Man." 4 This was in the early days of Garrisonian "nonresistance" -- proto-Ghandian nonviolence. Nonresistance, unlike Ghandianism, never developed a coherent strategy or even consistent tactics; in the 1850's, frustrated by their inability to translate principle into long-range action, many nonresistants came to support, tacitly or openly, violent measures against slavery. While individual exceptions to this occurred, and some anti-slavery activists opposed the Civil War, most gradually abandoned their anarchism to endorse that most final of statist solutions to social woes.

THE IDEA OF slavery as a metaphor for existence under any government or human rule came easily to mind for the nonresistant abolitionists and later anarchists. One of Tolstoy's most anarchistic works was called THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES; the European anarchists, Stirner and Proudhon on, though unacquainted personally with chattel slavery, also equated subjection to the state with slavery. For some abolitionists, this metaphor expressed literal truth; the black slaves were not the only ones who lacked their freedom.

"The movement offered liberation to the abolitionists who joined it...in seeking to save themselves from the slavery of this world, they were apt to journey very close to anarchism." 5

PERRY DESCRIBED WHY he believes that certain abolitionists were anarchists and suggests three elements indentifying anarchists as such: the belief that government, being based on violence and coercion, is evil; the belief that government is also unnecessary (not a necessary evil, as many have argued); and an anitpathy to law — that is, the coercive law of human government. (Abolitionists like Henry Wright believed they acted in accordance with God's law — human law was either wrong or superfluous.) Proudhon's theories, continues Perry, suggest another set of descriptive defintions of anarchism: it seeks the abolition of human government specifically and the authority principle in general; it "urges the creation of new and uncoercive social arrangments;" 6 it looks for its justification to an alternative to established state law — this may be natural law, or, as it was for many abolitionists, divine law. (Or, as for Kropotkin, science; for Tucker and the egoists, self-interest.) Clearly, by these definitions, Wright and other abolitionists were anarchists. (None of them called themselves that, of course ~ Proudhon only adopted the term for himself in 1840; it was slow to catch on.)

WE FIND IN this early anarchist-abolitionist movement quarrels concerning means and ends that have resurfaced in later libertarian movements. Immediate abolitionists first broke away from the old time colonizers to form the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. »»L 4 1 J uroup to° was rent disagreement. Nonresistants, Si-2 ■ anarchists< formed the New England Anti-Slavery

Society in 1833. Others, finding even the original American Tarlv Society tainted with nonresistance, formed the Liberty

h t (Strlfe between the anarchist Garrisonians

scene thereafter^" "" * ™9Ular feature the ""-slavery

ANARCHISM, FOR SOME abolitionists, proceeded logically from their religious and political antinomianism. The religious sources were varied; Unitarians, Quakers, New York Revivalists, early Puritans, all to some degree argued the worthlessness of mediators — institutions -- between God and humanity. As foes of antinomianism had long realized, the threat always existed of including human government among the intermediaries to be eliminated.

THE POLITICAL ANTINOMIANS followed lines established to some extent by Quakerism. Civil disobedience, that of first the Quakers and then of the abolitionists, stood opposed —then as today — to republican government, which ruled by the right of the majority to establish and maintain the social contract. Immediatism in anti-slavery — aboltionism — had to rethink the basis of society, since the majority clearly either supported slavery or would not seriously oppose its continued existence. Hence, the social contract had to become "an association voluntarily reformed by individuals from day to day.../Abolitionists/ believed that legitimate government, at any given moment, comprised those laws to which conscientious men could adhere." 7 Some came to recognize no government.

THE RELIGIOUS ATMOSPHERE usually present in abolitionist anarchism distinguished it from the post Civil War anarchist community; Perry points to one further dissimilarity: "Anti-slavery radicals seldom proceeded to demand sweeping economic reforms." Rather than following Proudhon's slogan that "property is theft", as they were sometimes accused of doing, and attacking the property relationship aspect of slavery, abolitionists regarded slavery as a form of government that violated divine commandment. Abolitionists "tended to denounce human government, not property, and to champion the government of God." 8

TO DESCRIBE THE foes of slavery as a novement is to be misleading; certainly, there was no political monolith of anti-slavery. Although agreeing on the basic necessity of eliminating black chattel slavery in America, anti-slavery forces disputed endlessly — often vituperatively — their philosophical and tactical differences. In this fray, William Lloyd Garrison and his periodical, THE LIBERATOR, played a focal role somewhat analagous to that of Benjamin Tucker and LIBERTY in post-war anarchism. Garrison was the best known leader of the immediate abolitionists — or simply, abolitionists, as they came to be known; they opposed on this issue numerous anti-slavery workers who believed that emancipation could and should come gradually, or at least without unduly disturbing other institutions. Political abolitionists, as they were called, had after 1840, a platform in the Liberty Party. The 1850's saw the rise of revolutionary abolitionists, who came to believe that slavery could only be overthrown by recourse to arms. Most of the abolitionists — whether formerly pacifistic and nonresistant, politicals, or gradualists — supported this position to some extent after John Brown's raid on the Harper's Ferry arsenal in 1859. Another argument centered on the Constitution — which Garrison named a "convenant with death and an agreement with Hell" — and its alleged pro or anti-slavery content. The most formidable defense of the Constitution as an anti-slavery document -- THF UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF SLAVERY (1845046) — came from an abolitionist Boston lawyer, Lysander Spooner, later to be the philosopher-emeritus of the post-war anarchists. (Spooner repudiated the

constitution and the state altogether in his NO TREASON: THE mStITUTIOM OF NO AUTHORITY, in 1862.) The foremost anti-ronstitution writer, Wendell Phillips, replied in his REVIEW OF LYSANDER SPOONER'S THE UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF SLAVERY (1847). Many nonresistants also became disunionists, favoring the sundering of the United States by the secession of the free states. No clear division existed between many of these positions; contradictory views might be held by the same individual, logic notwithstanding.

A FASCINATION WITH violence came, in the 1850's, to claim the minds of many abolitionists. For the nonresistants, especially, this was a sharp reversal of Christian nonviolence; they seemed to have turned from the God of love of the New Testament to the Lord of vengeance and war of the Old. Perry sees this as the result, not of a fundamental change of philosophy, but rather of a reasonable extension of elements of the nonresistant attitude. As slavery came to be seen more and more as a sectional issue and as years passed with no peaceful solution apparent, many abolitionists argued that violence against slave holders and a proslavery government was either self defense (on the part of the slaves) or legitimate assistance to the slaves. If "resistance to tyranny was obedience to God", and God's will could be perceived by each individual conscience, then might not a person be acting in accordance with God's will when he or she took up arms? Thus did many come to understand the problem "Bleeding Kansas —" the bitter strife in the early 1850's that adumbrated the Civil War — led many former nonresistants to support a martial antislavery; John Brown's raid in 1859 brought forth an outpouring of sentiment glorifying the solution by trial by arms. The list of apostates by 1859 included most of the one-time nonresistant leaders and sympathizers: Garrison, Henry C. Wright, Frederick Douglas, Steven S. Foster. Even Bronson Alcott, the only person to combine nonresistance and transcendentalism, who held to "active nonresistance" all through the 1850's while others fell away, wavered. "Even Alcott," writes Perry, "when he met John Brown, wrote ominously in his journal: "This is the man to do the Deed.'" As Wright put it: "The sin of this nation...is to be taken away, not by Christ, but by John Brown." Perry concludes that the nonresistants "stretched their doctrine until it imposed a categorical obligation on those who believed in violence to fight immediately against the slave holders.., The criticism was /now7 directed at those who did not live up to standards of violence that nonresistants imputed to them." On the problems of war and violence, then, the first anarchist movement in America foundered9

SOME STOUT REMNANTS persisted, however, as Perry points out in his chapter "Survivals and REconstructions". Of the well known radical abolitionist organizers, only Adin Ballou remained faithful to nonresistance; but he ceased publishirg his newspaper in 1860 and took little active part in events thereafter. However, the

younger generation of nonresistants at Hopedale /a prototype, p-anned, Christian-abolitionist community/. . .were not won over to the war and yet were not lost in bleak resignation." Among the members of this "Progressive Group" were Brian J. Butts, its leader, and Harriet N. Greene (who married Butts "without surrender of name ); their magazine, originally entitled THE RADICAL SPIRITUALIST, looked more anarchistic than anything by Ballou." 10

ironically, in a period when former anarchists like Henry Wright

embraced the war and the Union, one-time Constitutionalist Lysander Spooner rejected war, Union, and Constitution in favor of anarchism. Spooner's constitutionalism had always been restricted, however; he had consistently and explicitly refused support to abolitionist political parties (e.g. the Liberty Party) and his form of antislavery had never supported expanded state power. "At most, concluded Perry, "Reconstruction taught him to retract this concession to the right of private judgment." Spooner merely "tightened up his philosophy so that it was at least consistent with itself."

EZRA HEYWOOD WAS another anti-war dissident and a leading post-war anarchist. (Hal Sears describes Heywood's free love career in THE SEX RADICALS.) "Heywood's role in antislavery has largely been overlooked. He was, in fact, a direct link between

Garrisonism and post-war radicalism.../and7 other antebellum traditions." 13 Among these were this connections with Josiah Warren, individualist anarchist and founder of Modern Times. (Warren himself had no truck with the war. He was not an abolitionist, feeling that the abolitionist' critique was not sufficiently radical and encompassing.) Dyer D. Lum, prominent in late 19th Century anarchism, was a descendent of the Tappan family, notable early abolitionists. One of the foremost individualist anarchists and free love proponents of post-Civil War America, Stephen Pearl Andrews, worked in the first instance in the abolitionist movement. Even Benjamin Tucker, though born in 1854, emphasized the anti-slavery background of his boyhood in New Bedford, "a community long noted for the important part that it played in the long struggle for the abolition of slavery." 13

II

ir/n \ ii

HEY WOOD

HAL SEARS' THE SEX RADICALS continues the history of radical culture, this time in the era between the Civil War and World War II; the focus of Sears' work is on the "free love" and Liberation feminist movements of the late 19th Century, especially on Moses Harman and his great, eclectic, anarchist journal, LUCIFER.

AS ALLUDED TO earlier, anarchism and social radicalism in general usually included a complex of issues, some of which often went beyond the bounds kept to by reformers of conservative sensibilities. Free low, spiritualism (for a time), feminism and free speech were one such set of questions, and Sears discusses their origins in antebellum American society.

"Christians, free thinkers, Mormons, and infidels — all announced new dispensations of love and

MtMaaaMNV

matiImany• Communitarian experiment* following the doctrines of Robert nwen or Charles Four let nought rational suxuaI aI Ignmenth , while the perfwctionista of Onei<ln turned radical Christianity Into a radical sociology that ab lured Bexual exclu*iveness md an joined the 11, .. commerce of love among the heavenly host who yet dwelled on earth, near Oneida Creek.., The found*i of th<- Oneida Community, John Humphn>y Noyea, believed that thl* Interest in the ao-called free love question had been •pawned in th«» religious revivalism of his own 'burned ovur district' Ol Now York Statu... /T7he spiritualist movement, with it* emphasis on personal revelation and 'spiritual affinities' Noun became a bastion ol marital experiment." 14

wiiii.i "i-'Hit love did not characterize the abolition movement", free love advocates "did tend to be abolitionist*". 15 Quito a few were followers, like Stephen Pearl AndrewB, of Joaiah Warron'B doctrine ol iniliviilual Sovereignty and became Individualist anarohiats.

PREl LOVE IN the 19th Century was not, as contemporary critics and modern advocates might make it seem identical with "unbridled license;" freo love meant only love choBen freely, without the coercion ol church or state or society. Although Warton hlmsell WAM distressed by the publicity given to freo lovern, spiritualists, and othei less conventional Idealists At Modern Times, tho froe love advocates, at least, saw themselves as only carrying the logic ol Individual Sovereignty into the amative arena.

ALTHOUGH Till: SEX RADICALS portrays the wild profusion of ideas and p ra c t ice In the lealmot free love anil free thought, it In ■•specially ■i hiBtory oi Moses Herman, LUCIFER, and the people In the LUCIFER circle from its inception In 1881 to its termination at Harmon's de.it h in 1910. (After 190? as Till AMFRI CAN JOURNAL OF EUGENICS.) Hi. cast surrounding LUCIFER varied greatly — except for llarman himself -- over nearly 30 years. Among Mobos' early supporterB were his two children, l.lllina anil George; Edwin C. Walker, a well l nown ridical journalist and freo thinker who also contributed lo the TRUTH SEBKIR .mil LIBERTY wan Harman's first co-editor. Later •o-oditors -- during Harman's terms in prison for violating the '.mstock Act -- included Loia Wainbrooke. and Lillian D. White, both noted libertarian feminists.

MUSI::; HARMAN, HORN In Virginia in IfilO, grew up In the back woods ■>1 southern Miasouri. By the age of ?0, however, 1 iconHed to l .each for the Methodist Church (Soutn), and aoon after converted

■ Universal Ism and made his living by teaching school. After a I'W years III Indiana, llarman returned to Missouri In 1060. lie was,

"" abolitionist and pro-Union — a dangerous thing to bo m that border .tat., during the Civil War. lie married after the war (interestingly, l„. and Susan Scheuck agreed to "a personal yn .an that pledged certain voluntary standards ol conduct based on ove ra he, i han duty" if, nnd had two children, George and I 'M an In June, 187'), two years after Susar. dle.l in childbirth,

......«»<l MM..in "it i v i ■ 11 ,n V .11 11 • y I ,i I 1m, Kansas. ........

i i i ■ t li ,h" 'hap.or nf.he National Liberal Loauuo, a major

reethought organization of the „ra (his cousin, Noah, was the

Q

chapter's first pjosiddnt). The group i**uod its own monthly, THI VALLEY FALLS LIBERAL* beginning In August, IHHOj SearB write* that "Herman and another school teachei, A.J. Near le.,.direetod the omly Issues," 17 from that platform anil other* a**ailing dogmatic

religion ami othui superstitions.

MOSES WAS SOON nolo editor. The journal was sucassful undei hi* direction} in Sfptenfljer, 1B81, It became the KANSAS LIBERAL, the otgati of the Kansas Liberal Union, and endured a short, difficult stay In Lawrence, Kansas, before returning to Valley Falls, Moses "leaned emphatically toward the libertarian" 18 on subjects besides sexual i*au«IB. On August .'4, 188 1, the KANSA.'. LIBERAL became LUCIFER, THE LIGHT BEARER. Of the change, Benjamin Tucker remarked in LIBERTYi "A very happy thought I Quite the beat name wo know of, after Liberty I 19 During this transition period, largely under Walker's Influence, Harman's editorial poslllmwas I no r < as I ill 1 y oriented to Individualist anarchism.

Till: total OBLIVION into which LUCIFER lias fallen even In libertarian circles is somewhat ol a puzzle. I von .James ,1. Martin, in hi* classic study of the Individualist anarchists, MEN AGAINST Till STATE, al lords only two brief merit lone and a footnote of to Herman and LOCIFER, although conceding that "much material of Importance to the individualist propaganda first appeared under Its Imprint." 10 Although the culture of anarchy Is generally ignored by tin- ofiicial slat ist histories, for LUCIFER to have boon so completely forgotten is yet remarkable. In its time both editor and paper were held In high esteem ( and gnat notoriety) by many well known non - mi rch i h t s (G.B. Shaw, for one). Benjamin Tucker, editor of LIBERTY (Itself described by anarchist scholar Dr Paul Avrich as "the beat English language anarchist newspaper" /'I heaped encomiums upon LUCIFER in Its early days; addressing editors llarman and Walker, Tucker wrotei

"I wish you wouldn't make absolutely every number of your paper so good and true and live and keen and consistently radical... .Since youi advent, you have kept me In a stale of perpetual doubt and anxiety lost LIBERTY'S light be dimmed by LUCIFER'a"

AIs< in LIBERTY, the editor of the KANSAS CITY SUN remarked tolllnglyi "LIBERTY attacks the state, the TRUTH SEEKER attacks the church,

THE WORD /Ezra lleywood's Boston-baaed I..... lovo perlodlcal/at tack*

Madame Grundv, but LUCIFER Is not content, In its own wav , without attacking all three." 21 Lastly, for a radical journal, LUCIFER'* circulation was impressive; although circulation in 188r> amounted to only six or seven hundred (a little more than LIBBRY'* maximum) this figure soon more than doubled.

BUT LUCIFER SUFFERED at least two defects, In comparison with LIBERTY, that may have cost It posterity's recol lect (,on. Although Tucket referred to anarchists as "untorrifled Jofferaonlan*", In at least one respect his description was certainly Inaccurate; while jefferaonian virtue resided In the farmer especially, the emphasis of late 19th Century anarchism was on the cities. LIBERTY, printed In Boston and Now York, scorned the Utopian colonizers, who "Skulk away Into North Carolina, Colorado, or lower California," as "Now Jerusalem IrtventorB." 24 since that time, Idea* and events not of the city's civilization (particularly of the last), have boon too often labeled "provincial" and thereafter disregarded.

Published for all of its career (save for a short term in Chicago) out of Kansas, LUCIFER has undoubtedly been overlooked partly through this prejudice.

PARTLY, THOUGH, THE difficulty lay in the paper itself, or at least in Moses Harman's editorship. During the period of imprisonment, Harman convinced Lilly D. white, "one of the keenest minds of the time on the woman question," to oversee LUCIFER. (She succeeded in this post another notable feminist, Loise Waisbrooker.) "White's career as editor of LUCIFER lasted seven months. Perhaps if White had stayed on after Harman returned from prison, LUCIFER could have become a journal of direct national importance to more than a few. As it was, the journal lapsed into the free-lovers free-for-all that it always had been under Harman." Sears concludes that LUCIFER "in its best moments... of fered a revelation of the outer limits of social experimentation, but these moments came more by chance than plan. At its worst the journal listed in the uneven seas of its readers' whimsand prejudices, guided by Moses Harman's visions of martyrdom.../Harman's/ belief in liberty was virtually unlimited, but the man himself was limited imaginatively and intellectually to a few ideas." 25

TUCKER'S VISION---from which he never swerved — of an anarchist papei

contrasted radically with Harman's. Tucker wrote, in LIBERTY'S first issue:

"/Libert^7 will be edited to suit its editor, not its readers...no subscriber...wil1 be allowed to govern his course, dictate his policy, or prescribe his message. LIBERTY is published for the very definite purpose of spreading certain ideas /and will not/ waste its limited space." on opposing positions. Tucker accepted "short, serious, and well-considered objections to our views" notinq that "we are not afraid of discussion." 26

NOTWITHSTANDING ANY DIFFICIENCY of vision, Harman and LUCIFER led a long, exciting and, to foes like obscenity-chaser-in-general Anthony Comstock, notorious career. In one regard, at least, Harman never wavered; in his determination to print the truth when others dared not, he had no superior and scarcely any peers. He printed numerous articles and letters containing explicit discussions of sexual matters, early extending this treatment even to oragenitialism, then an utterly taboo subject. For this temerity, he served a series of short terms in prison, totalling two years, in the 1890's. In 1905, then 75 years old, Harman was sentenced to a year at hard labor (he had been convicted of obscenity for two articles apparently chosen at random by a federal grand jury). This last "outrage to political decency," as George Bernard Shaw described it, excited widespread protest both in America and abroad.

free IPV£, its pratice and propaganda, and feminism were the awful issues for which Harman spent so much of his time in trouble. While free lovers were considered immoral sensualists by society at large, neither their own self image nor the facts sunport that view. Free lovers saw themselves as profoundly moral; they might, as with the Oenida residents, support communal marriaae, but few glorified the pleasures of the flesh. Typically, they raged against male "brute lust" as exemplified in legal marriage and

10

virtually enshrined the supposedly finer and purer nature of the female. This image of sexual moral polarity was typically Victorian-what distinguished the sex radicals was their dogged insistance that abuses could only be cured by unlimited free discussion and morally purposeful action. Two programs debated at tires in LUCIFER'S columns were the sexually ascetic doctrines of Alphaism and Dianaism; Alphaism prohibited erotic expression entirely save for reproductive purposes, while Dianaism similarly restricted coitus but permitted some other forms of eroticism. On the literary side, after Harman promised in the spring of 1886 not to alter for publication any correspondence or letters because of their choice of language, letters appeared in LUCIFER protesting "legal rape" in marriage and the unavailability of contraceptives. These letters earned the staff of LUCIFER indictments on 270 counts of obscenity in early 1887.

OTHERS BESIDES THE Lucifereans contributed to the sex radical cause. Stephen Pearl Andrews, the brillant, erratic individualist who helped found Modern Times and thereafter spread the ideas of Individual Sovereignty, was an early advocate of radical marriage reform. Lois Waisbrooker, for a time editor of LUCIFER in Harman's enforced absence (she succeeded in short order in getting the periodical banned from the mails), published numerous books and pamphlets and a journal called CLOTHED WITH THE SUN. Edward Bliss Foote and Edward Bond Foote, father and son, were both doctors of an unusual sort; through their publications and practices, both hugely successful, they spread a democratic therapeutics — similar to the preventative self-treatment becoming popular again today — and sharply opposed the already gathering elitism of the medical establishment. Using the physician's privlege to discuss taboo subjects, they filled works such as the perenially popular MEDICAL COMMON SENSE with hard-to-obtain information about sex for the layperson. Both the elder and youger Foote spent much of their fortune opposing Comstock and his work, and bankrolling, in unspectacular but continuous fashion, radical publications from LUCIFER, to Emma Goldman's MOTHER EARTH BULLETIN.

MOST INTRIGUING OF all were the Heywoods, Ezra and Angela, publishers of a Massachusetts journal of free love, THE WORD, from 1872 to 1893. Ezra Heywood, like Harman, was a former abolitionist, who saw his work against sex slavery to be only an extension of his former struggle against black slavery. During the Civil War, Heywood had been one of the few nonresistants who adhered to their original principles; he had been perhaps the fiercest opponent in America of the war and conscription. Heywood helped form the New England Labor Reform League in 1873. Most of their work thereafter was a joint effort. Their first feminist tract, UNCIVIL LIBERTY, was published in 1873; their COUP DE MAIN, CUPID's YOKES, first saw print in January, 1876. Angela Heywood was a romantic visionary, who apparently provided much of the team's energy. An extreme feminist, she was also one of the very few even among sex radicals to speak cpenly about the importance of the physical enjoyment of sex. Both she and Ezra were undaunted by the use of blunt language and characteristically employed humor and satire in their assaults upon Victorian propriety.

Thus "in an 1889 issue of THE WORD there appeared

...a fantastic allegory by Ezra concerning something

he half-seriously called the Fucking Trust. 27 Like Harmon, Heywood served a prison sentence in old age (at 66) for an obscentity conviction — two years at hard labor — and left prison in extremely poor health. He died a year later in 1893; Angela did not continue THE WORD afterwards.

LUCIFER'S OWN FREE speech campaign met a few snags, alienating not only conventional society, but radicals as well. Both LIBERTY and the freethought journal THE TRUTH SEEKER, while defending Harman's freedom of speech, denounced his language tactics in harsh terms. Harman's co-editor Walker resigned from LUCIFER and began his own paper, FAIR PLAY, there attacking Harman's

langU"Wal^er1did not care to acknowledge the libertarian issues raised by Harman's test of freedom of the press. Walker seemed to be increasingly influenced by Benjamin Tucker of LIBERTY, who not only spent a great deal of verbiage to view social change as largely a matter of polemics rather than of action. Walker saw the radical journal as the platform for abstractions about a coming revolution while Harman ...seemed to view the medium itself as the revolution. 28

Vice Society — nad Back

Si&C't

SEARS ARGUES THAT by 1890 Tucker (and his then associate, Victor Yarros) — who had once openly defied Comstock and the crusadina Vice Society — "had backed off from the free speech issue, urging

that there be no more defiance of Comstock. This led to "Ezra Heywood's claim that LIBERTY had become a reactionary force in the struggle for sexual expression...Heywood

_ _ tagged Tucker and Yarros 'mental eunuchs

ujt who call themselves anarchists.'" Concludes

Sears: Tucker and Yarros favored the arena

1 I 1 KXTOK liU l»TV*D*Y »IUI«T •

of theoretical anarchism...the two did not like the practical, sometimes foolhardy, tactics of the sex radicals nor the sticky questions that their actions raised." Sears implies greater timidity on Tucker's part than I think existed, however; what was for Harman, Heywood, Lilly White and other sex radicals a matter of principle seems to have been for Tucker a question only of tactics. 29

0»» Onjj

t

jDJ

COMPARISONS OF LUCIFER with LIBERTY are inevitable, the two papers having been almost exactly contemparaneous; it is certainly no denigration of LIBERTY to suggest that LUCIFFR's role in American anarchism has not been appreciated until

__... now. "LUCIFER sought to present the best

rfflEMHE'^J^"1"'" * informed sex thought of the time.../it7

disseminated important writinqs like those

k"1"" ___ of the feminist economist Charlotte

Perkins Stetson Gilman; it published extracts from the American edition of Frederic Engel's THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY 1 ' ' before it appeared in book form;.../and7

Mary Wollstonecraft." As one woman

correspondent put it, LUCIFER was "the mouthpiece, almost the only mouthpiece in the world, of every poor, suffering, defrauded, subjugated woman."

AS WELL, THROUGH LUCIFER and its supporters, "late Victorian sex radicalism...sought association with such trends as free thought, anarchism. Social Purity, eugenics, and the emerging social sciences." 30 LUCIFER, in a creative sense, was provincial; it spoke in the manner of 19th-century village scepticism, and for the radical social and intellectual interests of the rural provinces.

Ill

SOME OF THE standards used by the authors of these books, fair-minded though they are, to judge the various anarchist projects ate themselves worthy of criticism. Hal Sears, for example, criticizes Moses Harman for the eclecticism that supposedly prevented LUCIFER from having a greater, national impact that it did. I wonder, however, if this kind of criticism can be valid. Tucker's LIBERTY was certainly an instance of a well-focused, even single-minded journal; LUCIFER and LIBERTY had comparable life spans, however: 24 years and 27 years, respectively. LUCIFER's circulation at its height was greater than LIBERTY'S, and though Sears does not show this conclusively, LUCIFFR was possibly as well known as LIBERTY. As for their relative influence — this is hard to determine, but LUCIFER certainly had a significant effect on radicals of its day. If it lacked focus, so what? Moses Harman wanted to provide a platform for those who would otherwise have had none; in this he succeeded so well that the state needed to silence him by harassment and imprisonment. That LUCIFER was uniquely Harman's vision is shown by its failure (then appearinq as the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EUGENICS) with his death in Los Angeles in 1910.

LEWIS PERRY STRIKES deeper with his observations on radical traditions and the dilemmas of anarchist action. Abolitionism, while itself the fruit of many religions and political traditions, "left almost no legacy to the generations that followed...little of the anarchist tendency to champion the government of God and denounce all human coercion can be followed beyond Harpers' Ferry." Perry concludes: "Although we can find partial analogies between anti-slavery radicalism and certain controversial aspects of the new left in the 1960's, I doubt that we can speak of a legacy or tradition. There is no evidence tnat anarchistic beliefs were handed down from one generation to the next; and there is little evidence of modern anarchists seeking to recover a legitimate, anarchistic tradition in the history of abolitionism." 31

HOWEVER, BOTH PERRY's and Sears' books refute to a certain extent Perry's own assertion that anarchists have passed on no "legacy or tradition" to subsequent generations. Our own generation of anarchists is only recently discovering (or rediscoverying) many of our intellectual ancestors, and the aboltionists have had to await their turn. Why 19th Century libertarians, like Tucker, Henry Bool and Voltairine de Cleyre (to take three mentioned in this context by Perry) felt they had to refer as far back as the American Revolution for legitimate antecedents to their own anarchism is is another matter: one that is well worth someone's time to investigate.

HOWEVER, TO SOME extent Perry's remarks on current interests — the

lack of it, rather — among anarchists (to which I amend, and Libertarians) in the abolitionists as anarchists, does bear coS ?hiug!I published in 1973, RADICAL ABOLITIONISM has apparently spurred little or no discussion and no attempt by others to follow the lines suggested by Perry. To my knowledge only Laissez Faire Books in New York City, of all the anarchist or libertarian aqencies of any kind, carries the Perry title — and Laissez Faire sells very few copies.)

THESE TWO BOOKS apparently reflect a recurrent theme of enervation and'or failure in anarchist creation: the nonresisitants abandoning their anarchistic nonviolence and succumbing to the glorification of violence as purgative; and Moses Harman and LUCIFER never achieving a consistent vision. Yet the Garrisonian abolitionists did leave a legacy of moral fervor to later anarchists, and LUCIFER in its time gave the oppressed a voice.

THE FAILURES OF these radicals were as ambiguous as were their successes. Part of the ambiguity lies in the implicit standards of success and failure to which libertarians ar^ held by the mass society (and sometimes even by other libertarians). One must build a thousand-year empire — or at least set the world aflame. One must receive a certain percentage of the votes in a presidential election or, minimally, be fiscally sound. If one does not in some measure triumph in the "Great Game" of empire, then one has, by definition, failed. Not even to partake in the Game is, of course, not even to have lived. Even libertarian people come finally to accept this and deny any radicalism beyond third-party politics. And so, looking for victories in a game set out by the statist bourgeoisie (or the state socialists — no matter) , libertarians lose both their origins and their goals. By indentifying themselves only as a political movement, they are unable to tap their real strength except by accident.

THE STRENGTH OF anarchy lies in the realms of the cultural and moral, not in party politics and electioneering. Perry suggests that "American culture has generally been fertile ground for anarchistic styles of radicalism," 32 and he gives his reasons for this suggestion. Certainly anarchism is not, as is often charged, alien to American soil. But this is beside the point- anarchism is not merely the result of individualistic and Jeffersonian "tendencies" in American society, but rather the product of the upheavals of conflicting cultures. If the state were to vanish overnight, the society that supports it today would probably recreate it on the morrow; likewise, the culture of anarchy recreates anarchism and free institutions whenever possible. (The tenacity of voluntary, cooperative efforts is nothing less than astounding — see, for example, Kropotkin's MUTUAL AID.)

WHAT THE NONRFSISTANT abolitionists and the Lucifereans held in common as anarchists was their insistance on the immediacy of morals and the need to judge present actions. What was just, was just NOW; and human action today could not be justified in terms of later advantage. As Paul Goodman wrote:

"The libertarian is rather a millenarian than a Utopian. He does not look forward to a future state of things which he tries to bring about by suspect meais ; but he draws now, as far as he can, on the natural force in him...MERELY BY CONTINUING TO EXIST AND ACT IN NATURE

AND PREFDOM, THI LIBFRTARIAN WINS THF VICTORY, ESTABLISHES THF SOCIETY, it is not necessary for him to be the victor OVER anyone. When he creates he wins; when he corrects his prejudices and habits, he wins; when he resists and suffers, he wins," 33 /All emphasis in the original7

ANARCHISTS MUST HAVI integrity enouqh to resist accepting the standards of statist society in adjudginci our achievements and those of our predecessors. No matter how well-meant 01 how innocent such judgments may be, they have nothinci to do with creating a free society. Chattel slavery havinq been eliminated in the South (one may say, with the South) by the Civil War rrost histories regard the war to some extent as the triumph of ' abolitionism. In any case, the war was waqed to crush the South not to free the slaves; however, only by abandoninq their earlier principles of nonviolence and anarchism could the abolitionists support the organized violence of war. The abolitionists themselv by the 1850's, thought this move necessary, when they could see no wide spread response to their moral challenge to slavery Her* is where they went wrong. "The libertarian does not seek to influence groups, but to act in the natural groups essential to him/77 34 Heeding the election returns, as the Supreme Court is said to do, has nothing to do with being an anarchist. Anarchist victories, if we will but see them, do not come at the pells- thev cone in the act of creating free lives and free culture The importance of works like tteones discussed in this article lies not only in what they tell of the actions of other anarchists but also in how we come to understand and appreciate the meanino of those actions.

FOOTNOTES

1. Hal Sears. The Sex Radicals: Free Love in High Victorian America, page 7. Regents Press of Kanas, 1977.

2. John Humphrey Noyes. History of American Socialism, page 94. Hillary House Publishers, edition, 1961. Originally published 187(

3. Lewis Perry. Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government

of God in Antislavery Thought, page 301. Cornell University Press, 1973.

4. ibid., page 19.

5. ibid., page 17.

6. ibid,, 22.

7. Staughton Lynd. Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism,

page 101. Vintage Books, 1969. Originally published by Pantheon Books in 196 8.

8. Perry, op. cit., pages 32-33.

9. ibid., pages 253-261.

10. ibid., pages 275-276.

11. ibid., page 285.

12.

ibid.

, page 288

13.

ibid.

, page 291

14.

Sears

, op.cit.,

15.

ibid.

, page 5.

16.

ibid.

, page 32.

17.

ibid.,

, page 33.

18.

ibid.,

, page, 47.

19.

Liberty, Bo. II

20.

James

J. Martin

Allen Associates, DeKalb, Illinois, 1953.

21. Paul Avrich,"New Light on Benjamin Tucker." Lecture at Center

for Libertarian Studies, New York City. February 4, 1977. from notes by another - lecture also on tape at CLS.

22. Liberty, Vol. Ill, No. 3. November 22, 1884.

23. Liberty, January 22, 1887. cited in Sears, op.cit., page 64.

24. Liberty, Bol. Ill, No. 2. November 8, 1884.

25. Sears, op. cit., pages 245-268.

26. Liberty, Vol I, No. 1, August 6, 1881.

27. Sears, op. cit., page 178.

28. ibid., page 108.

29. ibid., pages 250-251.

30. ibid., pages 268-269.

31. Perry, op. cit., pages 301-302.

32. ibid., page 302.

33. Paul Goodman. "Reflections on Drawinq the Line," page 2.

in Art and Social Nature. Vinco Publishing Co., 1946. reprinted in Drawina the Line: the Political Essays of Paul Goodman, Free Life Editions. 1977.

34. Goodman, op. cit., page 2.

Published as a supplement to THF STORM! A Journal for Free Spirits

*9/10, 1980. Jim Kernochan & Mark Sullivan, Editors and Publishers

Danny Murphy, Copy Editor Apt. 2E 227 Columbus Ave

(c) Morgan Edwards New York, N.Y. 10023 (USA)

ZzrdXtywccd C'teumicc fyMc*

tw (tf&rMm Emrtsutes reviewed ^^slSfci)

pprhaDS the most interestinq publishinq venture in the recent hist-individualist "movement" has been THF LIBERTARIAN BROADSIDES SilES published by Ralph Myles and edited by James J. Martin. This a series of (to date) eight booklets by classic individualist and narchist authors including Max Stirner, John Badcock Jr., James L. walker Benjamin R. Tucker, Lysander Spooner, & Etienne de la Boetie. The latest additions to the series are SELECTED ESSAYS by Laurance Labadie, and UNCIVIL LIBERTY by Ezra H. Heywood.*

UNCIVIL LIBERTY is essentially of historical interest, Subtitled AN ESSAY TO SHOW THE INJUSTICE AND IMPOLICY OF RULING WOMAN WITHOUT HER CONSENT, it is an 1873 pamphlet arguing for women's suffrage. In contrast to the anarchist "purist" attack on all , and thus women's suffrage; Heywood was in favor of giving the vote to women.

But civil law being merely the creature of man, and binding only as it enacts right, those who presume to legislate for citizens... of either sex or any race without power of attorney, or other definite commission, are guilty of fraudulent usurpation, and their acts morally void. "Taxation without representation, is tyranny" was a potent rallying cry in the struggle for a male independence, which compels women to pay for the support of governments they had no voice in creating." (pg. 9)

"Whether suffrage is a right or a privilege,natural or conventional, its denial to woman is equally indefensible. Minors become of age, slaves are emancipated, lunatics regain reason, idiots are endowed with intelligence, criminals are pardoned, traitors amnestied, disfranchised males of every class shed their disabilities and are restored to liberty; but the fact of sex — the crime of womanhood — dooms one to perpetual vassalage!" (pg 12)

Heywood considered the vote a weapon of emancipation for women: a means of their husbands and the male class in general. For example, he attacked the male privileges of wning wives and children (whose natural guardians were their mothers). Since women had no voice in framing the marriage contract, they were not morally bound by it. This alone justified the fight for women's suffrage; and Heywood was highly critical of those women who opposed itT

The struggle for the vote was a struggle against the sexual and economic exploitation of women as Heywood asserted in his melodramatic style.

'The seventy years one-eightieth part of the American people ruled out States with the iron rod of property in man; that form of

SiI^k0?! robbery is now broken, but, through subtler methods, fiavenolders survive, and North and South get the earnings of labor

Pwe%SU£°eSSfully than ever; working women, because physically the

(page27) "9 their most deePly defrauded and helpless victims."

iS^J1'5!' Heywood 51.00; from Ralph Myles Publisher, Inc. PO Box Colorado Springs, Colo. 80901.

Heywood knew that women's suffrage would not automatically eliminate sexist oppression. If alive today, he would be in the forefront with those opposed to the eoncomic descnminat ion and in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment.

"Judged by the records of legislation thus far, men are made of the 'queerest dregs of chaos ever churned up' into sentient forp The fact that for centuries they have had representative rulers of some kind, proves that mere voting will not enact order."

However, by the time women had won the vote, the anarcho-mutualist movement Heywood had helped to launch had run aground. Benj. R. Tucker had given up the fight and settled down in Europe. Seeing only a tiny hope that anarchist ideas would, in some distant future, inform political or revolutionary action, Tucker had no enthusiasm for state socialism — and rightly so. The ills begotton by capitalist imperialism have sparked statist reactions (socialist and fascist) which have only contributed to the forces that now threaten to annihilate us.

LAURANCE LABADIE was heir to Tucker's pessimistic disposition, while stressing that maximum individual liberty was necessary for true social progress, he saw liberty slowly and sadly dissolve in an acidic brew of economic crisis, depression and militarism.

"SELECTED ESSAYS" reveals the development of Labadie's thinking. In the 1930's and '<10's he was a "plumb-line" Tuckerite, attacking the monopolization of money (interest) , land (rent) , production (patents), and trade (tariffs). The first of the four sections includes three of Labadie's best essays on eoncomics.

In the 1950s, Laurance was associated with the School of Living founded by Mildred Loomis and Ralph Borsodi. In the second section of SELECTED ESSAYS, editor James J. Martin has chosen three essays which reveal Labadie as a thinker, critic, and cynic in his own right. Arguing against Borsodi's "fragmentalized and compartmentalized" approach to education, Laurance advocated liberty instead.

"Liberty... is a DYNAMIC METHOD, not only by which adequate norms may be ascertained, but also furnishes the PROCESS by which progressive betterment may be assured. It is one thing to proclain WHAT should be taught; it is quite another to maintain that the method of determining WHAT is by complete freedom of all opinions to operate."

Labadie here reveals his affinity to such libertarian "educationists" as Paul Goodman and Ivan Illich, who proposed de-schooling society.

"Discussions about education blandly assume the necessay existence of buildings, classrooms, teachers, pupils, and a curriculum. But education in fact is something which everyone acquires every day and hour in life. Everything we experience educates us in some way. That is to say, something impinges itself upon us, and there is an impression made which evokes some kind of reaction, with appropriate consequences, and the whole episode is recorded upon something we call our memory (whether conscious or subconscious), and probably is correlated with other impressions we have received. It appears to be an exceedingly complicated and mysterious phenomenon — education."

• nation has gone so far as to erase versatility. Most "SpeCl« esmen, or motormen, or executives, or nut-tightener 0f us are s^^ anthing else. Few of us stop to consider what's and not aucn o ^ are doing and I suspect that at least three-the sensepeopie are engaqed in doesn't really amount to

quarters o _ isn.t doWnright pernicious."

anything»

u . have a suspicion that if formal education were abolished, Id irise in its place forums where people would get together there wou thin to inaugurate laboratories to experiment with and t0 discu ideas or theories which occurred tc them, to

test some ^ efcc AU in all a voluntary spontaneous developing

Tfhollaht wouldVise to supplant much of that formal, dull,

ialized caricature which is called the school system today. And wh^knows, maybe even teachers would get to know something themselves.

Labadie's concern with education led him to investigate "Man's Concern with Truth" in 1958. Here, Laurance's view that much of hunan action is "downright pernicious" is fully developed. The pessimism of the elder Tucker had a most eloquent spokesman in the latter-day Labadie. Eschewing mutualist optimism, he asserted that society is not equivalent to a free association of individuals. Rather it corrupts, oppresses, and destroys any real inter-individual integrity.

"The truth will make you free. The hell it will. Most likely it will make you the dupe of others and may land you in the hoosegow, or the gibbet, as has happened to too many who have spoken their piece — while liars and rascals have risen to be the cream of society They are the ones who have been grovelling in the gutters.

"The whole complex of civilization is a fabric of truth and lies, quite a pattern, with the Church, the State, law and justice, raedicine men and psychologists, advertising and selling, marriage, education, and all the rest Qf it nicely woven into the tapestry. To be a success in this world one needs to 'use one's wits.' The profession of politics consists in fooling the public; and the purpose of a diplomat is outwit his compeers of other countries."

"Brutual parents insist that their children tell the truth, under dire threats of what will happen to them if they are caught telling a lie. Since they cannot win the love, respect, and confidence because of their own unlovely characters, they resort to coercion, too stupid to realize that by their threats they are promoting the very untruthfulness which they desire to avoid. A loving and honest parent does not have to preach truthfulness to his children; they learn it by example and by being treated honestly and fairly. But to deny the child the opportunity to defend himself by telling an untruth, is to disarm him in his battle for life. An overprotected child or terrified chilf is going to have tough going in his relations with others. Grown-ups are the greatest liars, and to not a few their very professions depend on trickery of some sort of another. If your child tells you a lie, fault lf there be any is yours, not his.

Am I preaching deception? Not at all. I am merely stating tacts; facts that anyone with both feet on the ground should be

°f if he doesn't want to be an unwitting promoter of the very duping process which is crucifying all of us."

di_ .T? read "Selected Essays" is to observe the progessive "Soriii °f Laurance Labadie. In the third section on

realist Polltical Psychology," we see Labadie as a confirmed and nihilist, stripped of any hope for an anarchist world

-hr-ict-ians believers in tne most monstrous conglomeration of nonsense have been most active in this nefarious enterprise. But don't be gulled; they are only the forerunners of the military an economic exploiter. History gives no evidence otherwise...Your reformer and zealot who presumes to love everybody, does not hesitate a whit to slaughter anyone who disagrees with him."

Grounded in Froudhon's idea of social contradiction, informed his observation of the 20th Century, Labadie went on the develop his concept of "the self-aggravating system."

"It is from the stresses arising from the resultant built-in conflicts of interest derived from the master-slave relationships of Statism that myriads of evils are affected, for the alleviation of which various groups of specialists form themselves into professions which presume to cure. These groups or professions thereafter have an entrenched interest in the very existence of the evils the threating of which forms the source of their incomes, and which thus appear to be necessary and tantamount to their very survival. Thus becomes inaugurated a self-aggravating system within the coercively-maintained social body the self-alleviating features of which become increasingly atrophied. The inexorable end of this process is the increasing tendency to resort to the theory that the State is responsible for the health, education, and welfare of its subjects or victims."

The self-aggravating system is, by definition, self-perpetuating. It is ignorance and habit that continually reproduces the system — not evil intentions.

"Man merely wants to live, and if in his ignorance he allowed to be established Church and State to be the authorities ruling over him bamboozlement and violence, he is unfortunately the victim of his own stupidity, but not of his malice. Why man does not now get rid of these thoroughly vicious insitutions that are crucifying him can only be laid to the force of habit, and to the fact that now these institutions have him in almost inextricable thralldom."

In the final group of essays, Labadie contemplates the origins of the State, war, and the subjection of women. As a final summation of Labadie's thought we have the last essay he wrote, "What Is Man's Destiny?" Here, Laurance sketches the origins of the master-slave relationship that arose with the State. This relationship is disquised by the veneer of civil rights and rationality that the State pretends to uphold.

, • venom with which he attacks the

or - Si

human scent ^ ^ infant is an unfeeling

» we learn from on the make and who cares not a

ifieh brat ostensiDiy " remains such until he

beast, a selfxshhbr his sustenance.^ that ,f ^

whit from wner elders. «» f win ^ .ca ht,

15 ind°f disguise his Predatory nstinct His teachers, puppets of does not disg ainst by his P iotism, l0ve of country

carefUie^s-Sat-be, naturally teiach p masters, church and State, the powers tn him up f r use oy worth. . .-Stop to consider, and God,to sor it him for all " deliberately enslaves

nf°allthe animals man ^ the ^eason. You will find

^rsr-^ nefarlous enterprise-

by

Echoing Max Stirner, Labadie lashes out at our

The threat of nuclear war looms over Laurance's later Unfi The development of military overkill capacity has made the sllf 9S' aggravating system a deadly threat to the human race. Basing human interaction upon you-or-me survival rather than you-and-me freS and cooperation, no longer serves the original purpose of survival -for anybody!

•Humans are neither good nor bad, but are corrupted by intrinsically inadvisable and bad insitutions. They are inadvertent victims of their blunders, especially the blunders of perpetuatino actions which may have been life-promoting in a given historical happenstance but which today have become anti-life to such a dearee as the threaten all life with annihilation... it is no longer a question of 'choosing' a good or better SYSTEM, but a question of whether life on earth will continue."

In today's world, run by religious fanatics on the one hand, and nuclear-technology worshippers on the other, Labadie has correctly indentified the question. " r^-

It was his pessimism that prevented Laurance from taking much active part in any organized struggle against the State (he disliked •professional libertarians") . And his honest, prophetic voice crying in the wilderness warns us, too, against naive optimism. The rhetoric of optimism is often used by those seeking power: •follow MY plan, and victory is assured." Labadie had no strategy to offer — that is something that develops in the course of the struggle.

"Selected Essays" is just that — selected — from a collection that could fill volumes. Yet, it is essential reading for anyone concerned with the meaning of and prosepects for human liberty. In addition to the essays, fifteen in all, editor Martin has added excellent reminiscences of both Laurance Labadie and their friend Agnes Ingles (long-time curator of the Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan) . These contribute much to the already qreat value of the essays. Six photographs of Labadie from different Feriods completes this Libertarian Broadside — perhaps the finest in the series.

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Jim Kernochan (The Storm! #8) confuses abortionist demands with anarchist principles. But abortion contradicts at least Bakuninist anarchism; third party members of society may as a matter of justice guard unborn children from parents who would assert dominion over their prenatal children inconsistent with the prenatal children's development.

As no less important a philosopher of anarchism than the great revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin explained in March 1871:

Children do not consititute anyone's property; they are not the property of their parents nor even of society. They belong only to their own future freedom.

But in children this freedom is not yet real. It is only potential; for real freedom, that is, the full awareness and the realization thereof in every individual, pre-eminently based upon the feeling of one's dignity and upon genuine respect for the freedom and dignity of others, that is, upon justice — such freedom can develop ir children only by virtue of the rational development of their minds, character, and rational will.

Hence it follows that society, the whole future of which depends upon the adequate education and upbringing of children, and which therefore has not only the right but also the duty to watch over them, is the only natural guardian of children of both sexes. And since, as a result of the forthcoming abolition of the right of inheritance, society is to become the only heir, it will then deem it as one of its primary duties to furnish all the necessary means for the upkeep, upbringing, and education of children of both sexes, irrespective of their origin and of their parents.

The rights of the parents shall reduce themselves to loving their children and exercising over them the only authority compatible with that, inasmuch as such authority does not run counter to their morality, their mental development, and their future freedom.

It is unmistakeable from the foregoing that each child belongs only to her or to his own future freedom. Society has the duty to watch over them as their guardian. Parents may exercise no claim over their children contrary to the children's development, or to the children's future freedom, s—

-hp 1871 material actually reiterates the anarchist principles Hrh'JLcunin already had delineated in 1866:

Children belong neither to their parents nor society but to themselves and their future liberty. Frotn infancy to coming of age they are

lv potentially free, and must therefore find themselves under the aegis of AUTHORITY. It is ►rue that their parents are their natural protectors, but the LEGAL AND ULTIMATE PROTECTOR IS SOCIETY, which has the right and duty to tend 'them because its own future depends on the intellectual and moral guidance they receive. Society can only give liberty to adults provided it supervises the upbringing of minors (Bakunin's emphasis)

The scientific advances (e.g., embryology and genetics) of the century since Bakunin's death in 1876 have taught us that our -iorn sisters and brothers do not constitute some type of "other," jlien to our own mode of postnatal life; rather, their prenatal -e is as a very real, practical matter on a continuum with our (This is obvious in view of today's prenatal blood transitions, measurement of the unborn baby's brainwaves, and the saving of prematurely-born babies at ever-earlier stages of their rotation.) Hence the Bakunin logic as to nineteenth-century postnatal children applies on the eve of the twenty-first century more and core certainly to prenatal offspring as well.

Moreover, the 1866 manuscript itself forthrightly adds: "From the Booent of conception until her child is born, a woman is entitled to a social subvention paid not for her benefit but for her child's. Any Dother wishing to feed and rear her children will also receive all the costs of their maintenance and care from society." Society as a natter of justice plays a role in benefiting each "child — froB the roment of conception."

Also, the protection of our unborn sisters and brothers, far fror being an exclusively altruistic policy, is self-enhancing, toortionists who depersonalize, dehumanize, and objectify the unborn ty their deed and discourse ("blob of protoplasm"; "product of conception") thereby — as a matter of logical consistency — compro-nise their own sovereign dignity. Bakunin pointed out this superior/ inferior relationship in THE KNOUTO-GERMANIC EMPIRE:

I myself am human and free only to the extent that I acknowledge (he humanity and liberty of all ®y fellows. It is only by respecting their human character that I respect my own. When a cannibal treats his prisoner like an animal, he himself is not a man but an animal. A slavemaster is not a man but a caster. By ignoring his slave's humanity he ignores his own. The whole of ancient society demonstrates that the Greeks and Romans did not feel free as human teings and in terms of human rights; they thought themselves privileged as Greeks or Romans, in terms of

their own society, and only as long as it continued to be independent and unconquered and in fact to conquer other countries, through the soe^ial protection of their national Gods, so t-hat when they themselves were conquered they felt no surprise and no right or duty to rebel ' if they the-selves relapsed into slavery.

Abortionists in 1980 slaughter their unborn victims as -arelessly as though the victims WERE animals; indeed, animals "n packinghouses are slaughtered more mercifully. In treating the inborn as oroperty ("part of the mother's body") abortionists reduce unborn human beings to slave status.

In fact, the thinking of the passage from THE KNOUTO—GERMANIC EMPIRE mutually reinforces the reaching of Bakunin in the 1871 document quoted above: "...the freedom of everyone is the result of universal solidarity. But if we recognize this solidarity as the basis and condition of every individual freedom, it becomes evident that a man living among slaves, even in the capacity of their master, will necessarily become the slave of that state of slavery, and that only by emancipating himself from such slavery will he become free himself." Freedor being a social relationship, curbs upon the rights of the oppressed necessarily constrict the liberty even of seemingly-unaffected outsiders. The freedom in solidarity of third-party "outsiders" is indirectly but genuinely diminshed by the enslavement or killing of each direct victim; the third-party is thereby cut off forever from any interaction with the victim as his equal.

It is time that attention be paid to what both solidarity and "kid's lib" entail. The choice, as a matter of principle consistently applied, is between the abortionists and the anarchists. Abortion and anarchism are mutally exclusive.

IThe first and last of the quotations provided above are from G.P. Maximoff, ed., THE POLITICAL PHIOLOSOPHY OF BAKUNIN at pages 343-44, and 340-41 respectively. The middle three are from A. Lehning, ed., MICHAEL BAKUNIN: SELECTED WRITINGS at pages 84, 83, and 147 respectively.)

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GEORGE SWAN is wrong on several accounts. First of which is that the veritably non-defined entity called "society" never has the right to intervene with the private lives of real individuals. If such a practice took place in an anarchist environment, the individual liberties guaranteed by statelessness would quickly erode away. Bakunin was wrong for advocating a dicator-ship by "society." Mr. Swan is wrong for using the principle to oppose abortion.

SECONDLY, I whole heartedly agree that children — rational human beings — are not the property of another. My major difference in opinion with Mr. Swan is that he considers the fetus human — I do not. I maintain that the fetus may have the potential to become human, but the fetus is, by definition, not in full possession of all cognitive abilities that define the human person. The idea that one becomes human at the moment of conception is rooted in a religious theology that Mr. Swan is free to believe. Yet, he does not have the right to impose this viewpoint on women. And in an anarchist environment, he would not have the power.

' '-uardians." And they can be •i'i captive, freely beaten, and -'i-ad onto subserviance at the whim i-i fancy of their masters. Young acple are not given the opportunity L~ tiiink themselves - their - ids are molded like clay by aut--crity figures who wish to churn out conventionality and respectability. Sud every social institution, backed by State interest, indoctrinates children with ideas that uphold the status quo. Children are not so verier individuals - they are strapped hi strait-jackets and denied the right to determine the destiny of tieir own lives. And the family, church, and State force the child, against his or her will, to live up to their narrow expectations. Children are politically, socially, and serially oppressed. And children's liberation will be the litmus test for applying anarchist principles in everyday life.

I remember that as a child my political ideas were never taken seriously by adults. After all, I was "too young to understand worldwide events," "too inexperienced to gov what was good for me," and "too ^educated to get involved in the political process" that had a direct Rearing on my life. What was inferred was that my anti-racist, antiwar, and anti-statist ideas were too threatening to the adult authority structure. Young people have yet '-0 create their own niche in the world, and thus have no vested interest in maintaining the present state power system. The "education" ttey now receive only socializes them into serving the State. Children, not completely socialized, are too much of a risk to be given the vote and therefore represent no constituancy. Legislators enact repressive laws without ever having to answer to the people their actions effect. As a result, the State ensures the child's dependence upon parents by forbidding child labor, children can not prosecute against rape without their parent's permission, and the young can be imprisoned in mental institutions against their will by parents for simply being different. Much like the black slave in nineteenth century America, it is even against the law for children to run away from their masters. Unfortunately,

'OafteSufrjectm <f Cmfren/

Today, in our society, child-... Ire the only human beings tnat ^ held as slaves. Children

own their bodies - they are e legal property of their parents

there is no underground railroad to help the contemporary slave escape his or her bondage.

Perhaps the most galling example of repressive State action directed against the young is the call for "National Service." If this evil bill passes Congress and the Senate, young people will be mandated to devote themselves to "community service" at home, as well as serve military interests abroad. That is, all male and female Americans must register with the State within ten days of their seventeenth birthday and perform one year of civilian service with no benefits. Forcing people to work against their will - even under the guise of "community service - has obvious parrallels to Stalin's Gulags and Hitler's concentration camps. But not content with simple slavery, the State further wants to quench its military thirst for a superior American invasive force by reviving the draft. Our young will be conscripted and exported to every right-wing, pro-imperialist regime our war-monger government has an interest in defending. Hence, children are not their own sovereigns because their lives belong to the State.

In addition to being exploited by the political system, children are also socially oppressed. They are constantly lied to, humored, made fun of, stereotyped, and dehumanized. The phrase "children should be seen and not heard" is a pervasive idea among adults. A child's purpose in society is to serve parents, teachers, and other power-craved adult authority figures. This servitude to "superiors," drawn up by mere tradition and social convention, only further guarantees an inferior caste status for children. Parents can dictate a child's social habits, decide who their friends should be, and control their leisure time. Acting as thought-police, adults expose the

&

child to only those ideas that , self-serving to established honty. And they psychologicL terrorize their offspring _ sunzing him or her to live US ?! their own narrow moral standards

Schools have failed to teach children to read and write And yet, they have the distinction of being compulsory and therefore a prison. School wardens have the authority to define education, choose the curriculum, and even teach the "morals" that are supposed to be upheld. School officials further have the right to discipline children - often violently - in order to keep them in their "proper place." The child's education is subject to State regulations and parental peroga-tives. It is clear that young people have no right to choose the type of social environment they ' wish to be reared in. The fact is that there is very little a child can do without permission from adult authority.

It is also popularly thought that strict disiplinarians are a good influence on the child's upbringing. Adults, needing some justification for their authoritarian behavior, rationalize their cruelty by thinking that in the long-run, harsh discipline is in the best interest of the child. Even though we hated strict discipline during our childhood, we have internalized the belief that such damnable treatment has actually been good for us.

This manifests itself into blind obediance to all forms of authority. Schools foster such horrid ideas as respecting elected "leaders," obedience to the police, and taking civic duties seriously. Obviously, one of the reasons school is compulsory is so that children will learn social concerns from a statist point of view. Church power, and its baptismal

The 1871 material actually reiterates the anarchist princioles -h Bakunin already had delineated in 1866: principles

Children belong neither to their parents nor t0 society but to themselves and their future liberty. From infancy to coming of age they are only potentially free, and must therefore find themselves under the aegis of AUTHORITY. It is true that their parents are their natural protectors, but the LEGAL AND ULTIMATE PROTECTOR IS SOCIETY, which has the right and duty to tend them because its own future depends on the intellectual and moral guidance they receive. Society can only give liberty to adults provided it supervises the upbringing of minors (Bakunin* s emphasis)

The scientific advances (e.q., embryology and genetics) of' the century since Bakunin's death in 1876 have taught us that our inborn sisters and brothers do not constitute some type of "other," alien to our own mode of postnatal life; rather, their prenatal life is as a very real, practical matter on a continuum with our own. (This is obvious in view of today's prenatal blood transfusions, measurement of the unborn baby's brainwaves,, and the saving of prematurely-born babies at ever-earlier stages of their gestation.) Hence the Bakunin logic as to nineteenth-century post--stsl children applies on the eve of the twenty-first century more and core certainly to prenatal offspring as well.

Moreover, the 1866 manuscript itself forthrightly adds: "From the roment of conception until her child is born, a woman is entitled to a social subvexition paid not for her benefit but for her child's. Any raother wishing to feed and rear her children will also receive all the costs of their maintenance and care from society." Society as a matter of justice plays a role in benefiting each "child — from the moment of conception."

Also, the protection of our unborn sisters and brothers, far froa being an exclusively altruistic policy, is self-enhancing. Abortionists who depersonalize, dehumanize, and objectify the unborn by their deed and discourse ("blob of protoplasm"; "product of conception") thereby — as a matter of logical consistency — compro-aise their own sovereign dignity. Bakunin pointed out this superior/ inferior relationship in THE KNOUTO-GERMANIC EMPIRE:

I myself am human and free only to the extent that I acknowledge (he humanity and liberty of all my fellows. It is only by respecting their human character that I respect my own. when a cannibal treats his prisoner like an animal, he himself is not a man but an animal. A slavemaster is not a man but a raster. By ignoring his slave's humanity he ignores his own. The whole of ancient society demonstrates that the Greeks and Romans did not feel free as human beings and in terms of human rights; they thought themselves privileged as Greeks or Romans, in terms of

their own society, and only as long as it continued to be independent and unconquered and in fact to conquer other countries, through the special protection of their national Gods, so that when they themselves were conquered they felt no surprise and no right or duty to rebel if they themselves relapsed into slavery.

Abortionists in 1980 slaughter their unborn victims as carelessly as though the victims WERE animals; indeed, animals in packinghouses are slaughtered more mercifully. in treatinq the unborn as property ("part of the mother's body") abortionists 6 reduce unborn human beings to slave status.

In fact, the thinking of the passage from THE KNOUTO-GERMANIC EMPIRE mutually reinforces the reaching of Bakunin in the 1871 document quoted above: "...the freedom of everyone is the result of universal solidarity. But if we recognize this solidarity as the basis and condition of every individual freedom, it becomes evident that a man living among slaves, even in the capacity of their master, will necessarily become the slave of that state of slavery, and that only by emancipating himself from such slavery will he become free himself." Freedom being a social relationship, curbs upon the rights of the oppressed necessarily constrict the liberty even of seemingly-unaffected outsiders. The freedom in solidarity of third-party "outsiders" is indirectly but genuinely diminshed by the enslavement or killing of each direct victim; the third-party is thereby cut off forever from any interaction with the victim as his equal.

It is time that attention be paid to what both solidarity and "kid's lib" entail. The choice, as a matter of principle consistently applied, is between the abortionists and the anarchists. Abortion and anarchism are mutally exclusive.

(The first and last of the quotations provided above are from G.P. Maximoff, ed., THE POLITICAL PHIOLOSOPHY OF BAKUNIN at pages 343-44, and 340-41 respectively. The middle three are from A. Lehning, ed., MICHAEL BAKUNIN: SELECTED WRITINGS at pages 84, 83, and 147 respectively.)

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GEORGE SWAN is wrong on several accounts. First of which is that the veritably non-defined entity called "society" never has the right to intervene with the private lives of real individuals. If such a practice took place in an anarchist environment, the individual liberties guaranteed by statelessness would quickly erode away. Bakunin was wrong for advocating a dicator-ship by "society." Mr. Swan is wrong for using the principle to oppose abortion.

SECONDLY, I whole heartedly agree that children — rational human beings — are not the property of another. My major difference in opinion with Mr. Swan is that he considers the fetus human — I do not. I maintain that the fetus may have the potential to become human, but the fetus is, by definition, not in full possession of all cognitive abilities that define the human person. The idea that one becomes human at the moment of conception is rooted in a religious theology that Mr. Swan is free to believe. Yet, he does not have the right to impose this viewpoint on women. And in an anarchist environment, he would not have the power.

inCE REMOVING the fetus (non-human) is not murder, I support a woman's right to abortion because I believe ,n being able to control one's own ^y. Statists have always tried l0 enforce their morals on others fcv violating this basic libertarian orinciple- The anti-abortion crusaders, fmancied by organized religion, are just another moralist •jrpaign to outlaw something thought

• FTRTHFR advocate the riqht to ^{-determination. This means ■at anti-abortionists are free become parents — even overrate the world — without i.jte interference. But it also •eludes the right of a woman to xt bear children, despite the jtriarchial wishes of men and

ssciety." For as feminist Ellen tillis says: "Those who would force s to use my body for breeding -eposes against my will are reducing me to subhuman status as surely as if they were to buy and sell pe in the marketplace."

PLANNED PARENTHOOD reports that one-out-of-five couples give birth, even thouqh thev use birth control. Pro-choice advocates would give these couples the option to terminate the pregnancy. Meanwhile, those alleqing to be "pro-life" would use the State and "society" to force couples to carry on with their pregnancies. They would do this despite the fact that being an unwanted child is an emotionally harrowing experience. Despite the abuse, neglect, and rurder of the children of frustrated parents. Despite the fact that if abortion were illegal, countless womerr would die at the hands of backroom butchei Despite the anti-life consequences of anti-abortion policies, their proponents insist on labeling their movement "pro-life!" (Pro-life, Mr.

Swan? Talk about perversions of a word.)

An Association Of Libertarian Feminist Discussion Paper,"The Riaht to Abortion: A Libertarian Defense," can be bought for 50C bv writinq to ALF, 41 Union Sq. W, New York, N.Y. 10003, Suite 1428.

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1979 marks the centennial of PROGRESS AND POVERTY, the famous book r;=enry George that has outsold all others save the Bible.

file question of private property in land has long been included in Ja larger ones of individual freedom and social justice. While social-its advocate the social ownership of all the means of production; and capitalists their private ownership; Georgists advocate private ownership of labor and capital, and public ownership of land and land rent. Since lad (the natural universe) is not produced by labor, neither land nor oE income derived from its possession can be privately owned. While iIsbcr justifiably owns its product (ideally), land values and economic "-tare caused by the community's demand for land — no private landlord as the right to pocket this fund which should be used , instead, to oefit the entire community in the form of public services and/or equal 2res redistributed to all. Thus, in my understanding, spoke Henry

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The appeal George has to me, os an anarchist, is his attack upon land monopoly, and his desire to establish equal opportunity on the basis of a truly free market. Whether or not his resort to government collection of land values as the means of reform is consistent with the ends is th< question uppermost in my mind. To clarify this issue, Oscar Johannsen of New York's Henry George School has graciously consented to replv to these questions on Georgism.

Q: Georgist say that the product of labor riqhtly belonqs to labor; while the product of the community, land value, riqhtly belongs to the community? But IS land value produced by the community? Unowned land has no exchange (sale or rent) value until someone removes it, by labor, from the "state of nature." In this case, the land was stolen from no one; the land value thus created by labor ought to go to labor,to the homesteader as his or her property.

A rise in the site value of land represents an increase in aggregate demand by SOME people for the land occupied by another. Supposing the occupant to be the original, or heir to the original, homesteader! why does the land value not go to the occupant but to the community? And WHO constitutes the community? WHO decides who belongs and does not belong to the community?

A: It is true that many students of Henry George arque that land value is produced by the community and therefore belongs to the community. But this is based on an objective interpretation of "value". However, as the Austrian School of Economists has shown quite clearly, "value" is subjective. As such it is in people's minds. Value thus is not intrinsic as an objective theory of value implies, so to state that land value belongs to the community is equivalent to saying that something existing in people's minds belongs to the community. This, of course, is nonsense.

The economic rent of land belongs to the community because the community owns the land. The assumption that the community "owns" the land is predicated on the rationale that land is a free gift of Nature to all humanity. The community, as a practical matter, consists of all the people living in a certain area of land. This division of these areas of land is an arbitrary one which the people in a nation decide upon. Ideally, the area of land should be small enough so all residing it it can know it.

Q: Georgists claim that community collection of land values (economic rent) will force occupants to either put theland to its most productive use — or abandon it to those who will. But is economic efficiency always in the interest of justice or freedom?

Suppose our occupant does not want to sell or rent his/her land to a big-busi ness concern. Under private ownership, the occupant cannot be legally forced to sell or lease. Under Georgism, the community will charge a rental tax equal to the highest bid, thus LEGALLY FORCING the occupant off the land. How is the occupant to be compensated for the legal theft of house and home, a product of labor to which the community, even according to George, has no right? Does not Georgism favor the development of land by large capitalist concerns at the expense of small farm' rs and businesses, the residential homeowner, and urban lower class tenant? How does this promote individual liberty or equal access to the land?

A: For the community to collect the full economic rent of LnH

1A actually tend to reBult in the matching of abili WU ies ^d in the center of , great metropolis JeD e^ . °PP°r-^ !unity t o produce. Only those with t he ^^ J Zitc it to Its maximum and they would be the ones who would o? 1 S Jay the highest rent Those with lesser skills would tend to"o k

I land whose opportunities were less. A great opera singer winds Jn

Lincoln Center, a lesser onCin the Ozarks. Both are happy ind Jke

hers happy. The mediocre singer at the Metropolitan Opera wSuld be rustrated trying to perforin and his listeners would suffer with him n his element, he reaches his maximum and his less discriminating ' udience are content with his rendition. To say that collecting ull economic rent forces the occupants to put the land to its most roductive use is equivalent to saying the mediocre singer is forced p be a great singer. Should a sophisticated audience b<- forced to lSten to a mediocre singer bo he won't be forced to use his talents n the boondocks?

Implied in this argument is still the idea that the land belongs 0 the user, instead of what is the fact which is that the community s letting him have exclusive possesion of something which belonqs to

II the people, for a definite period of time. Just as the owner of a heatre has every right to expect that the best seats in the house hould command the higher prices, so the community has the right to xpect the best pieces of land to be rented at the highest prices. Who cannot afford the high priced theatre seat takes one he can afford.

The same applies to the land.

As regards the improvements on the land which belong to the occupier. If the land is rented to someone else, that person simply Hkes a deal to purchase the improvement. In an ideal society, the conditions under which improvements of land would be sold, would be part of the contract. In New Zealand, certain arrangements were set up which are to be followed in such cases.

Georgist do not favor large concerns or small concerns. They rarely recognize that land is of unequal opportunity and that all individuals have equal rights to all of the land. The problem is how to divide up the unequal opportunities of the earth amonq the equal claimants to them with justice to all. The answer in our hiqhly technical society is by leasing the land to the hiqher bidders, with the rent being divided per capita among all the members of the community. In that way the physical problem that two things cannot occupy the same spot at the same time and the moral problem that all men are equally entitled to any and all parts of the earth are resolved. If the requirements are such that the land requires large concerns for it to be utilized then so be it, if small, then small concerns. There is no superior merit in small size over large size; just a difference in size.

0: The State is another name for eminent domain, for coercive land monopoly. Taxation, government-bank foreclosure, and direct seizure transfer land f rom the peaceful occupant to the "private'm0"0^11^' In essence, all "private" ESTATES are but fuedal grants which the state, ^ original "Indian giver", can take back at will. Does not Georq sm Propose to extend thi s power of the State? Will it not ur it >«nd monopoly and monopoly rent — instead of abolishing them/

. A: The right of eminent domain is merely a recognition J^iV?* /^T) ^lonqs to all the people and not to someone who happens to have tfgj P'ece of paper giving him title to the land.

Tt- is precisely in this problem of dividing up the unequal

r^rt.mities of the earth among the equal claimants to it with

to all that we stumble on the reason why this collectivity „ nailed functions as protection of life and property; the construction of roads or education. All such functions are and can be performed much Sore efficiently and at less expense by private enterprise. But the onlv wav in which the land can be divided up among the people is bv the people acting together in some kind of collectivity. if anyone can devise a method other than that, which is still just, then aovernment would not be necessary. Since history teaches us that men cannot act collectively with justice when the areas of land are larqe and the numbers of people huge, it seems logical to assume that aovernment should be on the lowest possible level -- barely above the family. The ideal form might be similar to that of the New England Town Hall Government where all members of the community meet at intervals to decide community problems.

Q: One anarchist solution to land monopoly is to do away with all eminent domain — the private Estate and the public State — in all its forms. Individual sovereignty over your own life, liberty, and labor-property implies your right to undisturbed possession of the land you and your labor-property occupy. Thus no one can claim the land you use or buildings you've constructed or purchased. (Thus the community cannot evict you or seize your labor-property if you do not pay it tribute.) Of course, if you wish to disown a building, you are free to sell or abandon it — but not privileged to abandon the building while retaining ownership of the land, as ir the case today. So long as vacant land and abandoned structures can be freely occupied, homestead fashion, the competition would cause the rent of building space to also fall. Homesteading will also be facilitated by the abolition of monopoly interest rates. Anarchists propose to replace the government finance monopoly with freely competing (and co-operating) means of credit and exchange. Thus, the economic disasters caused by rising monopoly land values and falling monopoly money values would be abolished — and individual liberty validated.

A: For the anarchists to argue against eminent domain is to argue against land being a gift to Nature to all men and to substitute something worse than exists at present. How much land is an individual to have to serve his needs? One man could claim he needs all the land which he can see, and all the land he cannot see his son needs. What consititutes vacant land? There are a host of problems which arise. If all the land on an island is divided up among all the anarchists, what happens if another anarchist now comes to the land? If no one will permit her even to stand on any piece of land, must she be consigned to the sea? Such is possible if, as the anarchists claim, they want undisturbed possession of land they occupy. How did they get possession of the land in the first place? If you trace history, you find all titles to land go back either to force or fraud. .Whether they like it or not, the anarchists would find themselves forced to set up some rules by which the land is divided among themselves. — That is government.

Oscar Johannsen is on the editorial board of Fragments, a quarterly in the traditions of Henry George and Henry David Thoreau. One year sub. is $5; tow years:$9. write: Fragments, 146 Jericho Turnpike Floral Park, N.Y. 11001

THE GEORGIST JOURNAL ($2 per year) Write: Henry George Institute 5 East 4 4St; 3rd Floor New York, N.Y. 10017

GREEN REVOLUTION P.O. Box 32 3 3 $1 per issue York, Pa. 17402

EVERY IDEOLOGY IS a tool of domination. By its very nature ideoloqy is the domination over the mind by fixed ideas, precludinq any creative spontaneous relationship with that which the ideology attempts to explain. Ideology alienates the mind from its own thoughts as well as from "outside", non-symbolic, non-linguistic, reality. Freedom from ideology is possible when the mind and its ideas are seen as creations and tools of the whole person. Self-determination, or individual sovereignty, the realization of anarchy, is not possible to those enslaved to ideologies.

SADLY, MANY ANARCHISTS today are under ideological domination of Marxism. This was recently brought home to me at an anarchist lecture forum. An elder anarcho-individualist remarked that state socialism is not communism but fascism, one-party rule. He said he was against capitalism, but preferred the partial bourgeois freedom of the West to the complete lack of freedom in the Communist regimes. He was promptlv and loudly denounced as the worst of reactionaries by one of the attending anarcho-marxists. Another marxist asserted that there was just as little freedom under capitalism as under state-socialism, and (five minutes later) that the rest of the world paid for the great freedom we enjoy. (Beina economic determinists, Marxists tend to confuse freedom with affluence — of no matter since state socialism is incapable of supplying either) . How persons who call themselves anarchists can defend the murderous and authoritarian regimes spawned by Marxism is beyond my comprehension. It is clear to me that our "movement" cannot survive corruption or co-optation. Anarchism has never been a compulsory economic program and those "anarcho"-communists who attempt to so define anarchism are really advocates of fascism (one-party rule) regardless of their intentions.

AS ANARCHISTS, WE have no business telling others how they should live either now or in the future. Anarchism is dissent; it is the critique of domination; it is perpetual protest. When anarchism becomes panacea as well as critique, it decends to the level of ideology. At best, anarchism is the critique of all ideology — at worst, it is a new ideology, a new religion, a new morality, a new conformity.

AS A POSITIVE goal, anarchism advocates equal freedom for all. Equal freedom and equal rights are the respective qoals of anarchism and liberalism (broadly conceived). If anarchism is not marxism, compulsory communism, neither is it liberalism, a compulsary program as well. The liberal hopes to reform statute law and then trust the State to uphold the reforms: "equal rights." The anarchist would abolish all statute law and trust voluntary agreements to maintain equal freedom. Anarchists seek to increase their self-determination — their sovereignty over their own lives. Agreements among those of equal authority are not laws. Laws are imposed by

some upon othots. Union is often necessary to increase one's strength •gainst the State. Max Stirner, areh-individualist, realised this, and only opposed raisimi union up to the level of >i new Church 01 a now State (as out compulsory "anarcho"-communists tend tc do). Anarcho-individual ism is opposed to ALL-EMCOMPASSIN6 solidarity as a species of fascism -- but not to solidai ity pen so.

THE IDEA of "the anarchist society" is a manifestation of the ideological, fascist, tendency within the anarchist movement. "The anarchist society" is a contradiction in terms. Contrary to Ronnie Reagan, Society is a community of imposed, not Shared, values. All societies are based on conformity — on ideology, authority, and exploitation -- which anarchism opposes. Anarchy can only mean individuals, alone or in association, creating their own lives, values and freedom. The idea — the fixed idea — that we must labor to produce a society that Wl' want (but others may or may not) causes a great deal of conformity and a great waste of energy. Let us 1 ive as freely as possible — here and now. Let us expand our self-determination - here and now. Let us not abandon the fight — let us tight for PRESENT gains as well as future ones. Let us tight for OUR OWN liberty — not the IDEA of liberty. Anarchy is freedom in the flesh, not on paper. Anarchy is the end of the sacrifice of real liberty to abstract liberty; it is the end of the sacrifice of the individual to ideology.

WHAT WE SHOULD DO to advance our cause of self-determination is for each one oi us to decide. With those who share our love of freedom, we can join hands in cooperation and (even when we disagree) mutual respect. From those who proclaim by word or deed that they do not respect our individual sovereignty, we should defend ourselves by any means necessary. Anarchy (or liberty) is based solely on mutual respect and agreement. Invasive individuals and institutions (politicians and the State) by definition violate this mutual respect — and thus they deserve to be treated as our enemies — with no respect at all. And they certainly should not be courted in vain attempts to win them over (!) witness the 1970s metamorphosis of the gay liberation movement into the gay rights movement. Not liberation, but respectability, is now the goal. All unrespectable gay tendencies, such as anarchism, tranvestism, pederasty, S&M and child liberation have been purged from the "movement." What remains is a discredited collection of liberal reform organizations run by lesbian and qay puritan fascists, looking for liberal politicians to support and sell—out to (again and again — remember "gays for Carter'?)

i HAVE COMi" to the conclusion that "human rights," "equal rights," "women's rights," "gay rights," "children's rights," all "rights," are false notions. "Rights" is an ideological concept used by the liberal State (and political movements) to justify its existence (after all, you must have SOME institution to ENFORCE these "rights" on owryone). "Equal rights" is a camoflage for unequal might. The ——— struqgle by women, gay people, and children for "equal rights" is leadinq to equal serfdom under the law (eg. the push to draft women into the military). The Patriarchal State is now to protect women(1) fairies(!) and children! (The white-jstraight-man's burden, T suppose.) It is the role of the State to "protect our riqhts" — and we are now,and always have been, and always will be oppressed by those we authorize and empower to "protect" us. — , , e i\

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ERRATUM: on page 26, line 4 (as follov/s) wos accidentally omitted:.we call government is needed. Government is not needed for the so..."