of the issues they raised were adventitious or symbolic. The political stance of those in the buildings was blurred, but vaguely in agreement. Professor Julian Franklin, an astute political theorist, summed it up best as "anarcho-syndicalism with Leninist overtones." That is, the students were at bottom anarchists who felt that somehow society could be run by a confederation of small communes or decentralized, democratic organizations, possibly kept in line, however, by a small, authoritarian, one-party group of enlightened young political leaders, totally committed to social justice and maximum individualism. Anarchism has never been a major political outlook in America, but the student left is giving it a new dignity, or at least notoriety. There is only one early figure, scarcely known in American history, who espoused anarchism philosophically, Josiah Warren (17981874), who wrote one book, True C ivili;:;ation. Warren wrote in an article in 1848: In a progressive state there is no demand for conformity. \Ve build on individuality.... With regard to mere difference of opinion in taste, convenience, economy, equality, or even right and wrong, good and bad, sanity and insanity-all must be left to the supreme decision of each individual, whenever he can take on himself the cost of his decisions. Everyone, according to vVarren, should be completely free to do "his own thing." And only one major American philosophical anarchist appears in more recent history, Emma Goldman (18691940) . Of course, many Americans of a strong Jeffersonian bent have long practiced a kind of passive anarchism, sheep ranching in northern New Mexico, running a gas station in an almost deserted area of Montana, or living without newspapers, TV, or magazines in Boston, Atlanta, or San Francisco. And there have been active anarchists in America from time to time, such as "Big Bill" Haywood and his actionoriented street fighters of the Industrial Workers of the World. The Wobblies, as they were called, were active in the pre-\Vorld vVar I decade. But even today, there are only a few persons around in the United States-Dwight :\1acDonald and Paul Goodman are two-who openly profess anarchism of 44
a philosophical sort. Anarchism is largely a European ideology. Its chief explicators are the Englishmen Gerard \Vinstanlev and his Diggers, William Godwin, Bertrand Russell, and Herbert Read; Frenchmen like P. J. Proudhon and possibly Georges Sorel; and the Russians :\,1 ichael Bakunin and Prince Kropotkin. Its basic ingredients are a belief that human nature is basically good, loving, and cooperative and that all kinds of thority are bad. People should live together in peace and brotherhood, working and playing in small voluntary associations, ruled only by reason and sympathy. Work should be pleasurable, but if idleness brings one pleasure, that's all right too. Anarchism is humane and forever progressive. It is also blatantly reactionary and conh'adictory, envisioning a return to some mythical primitive state while keeping most of the comforts and bountiful possessions of modern, bureaucratic industrial life. (A knowledgeable British journalist promptly dubbed the Columbia rebels "The Ruddites," after the Luddites, English workers who smashed their
machines in the early 19th century to halt the advance of industrialism.) Alexander Gray in his brilliant volume
The Socialist Tradition: Moses to Lenin writes: The fundamental trouble with the anarchist is that, though he may be highly intelligent, he has no sense. It follows that a fruitful discussion of anarchism is almost an impossibility. If they do not realize that they have set their net among the stars, no word of man will persuade them that their thoughts are moving in a world unreal and unrealizable. Anarchists are a race of highly intelligent and imaginative children. Nonetheless, anarchism-not often recognized openly by its advocates as such-is in vogue among an important segment of American youth, and indeed youth of many other industrial nations, at the present time. There is even a new magazine, Anarchos, that began publishing in New York's East Village in February, 1968. Written by a group of people in ew York City who seek to advance "non authoritarian approaches to revolutionary theory and practice," the magazine's young supporters believe that "a qualitatively new order of possibility faces our generation-the possibility of a free, nonrepressive, stateless and decenh'alized ~ society based on face-to-face democracy, conln1unity, spontaneity and a new meaningful sense of human solidarity." In an impressive article in the first issue, Robert Keller writes:
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There is no "revolutionary situation" at this time in America. . . . Once we grant that a revolutionary situation does not exist now, we can add with the justification of a clear perspective that the potential for a future revolution is greater in the United States than in any other industrialized country in the world. We can begin to deal with that potential, not as Iightminded adventurers or academic theorists, but rather as significant catalysts who can offer consciousness and a clear sense of direction to the elemental forces at work. \Vhat are the elemental forces at work?
Dwight MacDonald, one of the few acknowledged anarchists in America, speaking at Columbia this spring. Anarchism has become popular among a portion of today's college students.
The most important process going on in America today is the sweeping deinstitutionalization of the bourgeois social structure. A basic far-reaching disrespect and a profound disloyalty is developing toward the values, the fon1lS, the aspirations, and above all, the institutions of the established order. On a scale unprecedented in American history, millions of people are shedding their commibllent to the society in COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY