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George Walford: Anarchism in Series

September 6, 2012

Thinkers fall into two groups: unifiers and dichotomizers, otherwise lumpers and splitters. Anarchists stand on both sides of this fence, lumping their opponents together as supporters of the state and splitting their own movement off as independent of them. This leaves anarchism rootless, with no sufficient explanation for its presence, and in any case it… read more »

George Walford: IQ Against Anarchism

September 6, 2012

When trying to tell whether people support anarchism it doesn’t help a bit to know what accent they use, how they dress or were educated, how much money they have, whether they bear a title, own shares, run a business, work as labourers or in one of the professions. Neither does it help to know… read more »

George Walford: The Competitive Co-operators

September 6, 2012

A glance at Freedom, Black Flag, Our Generation, the Bulletin of Anarchist Research, or almost any other anarchist journal, will confirm that the groups and people who make up this movement spend much energy on criticising and opposing each other. This tendency, strong enough to prevent them consistently working together, sometimes provokes the assertion that… read more »

George Walford: In The Beginning

September 6, 2012

Genesis set the first people in Paradise, Hesiod spoke of a Golden Age at the beginning of things, and the belief that life used to be better than it is has persisted down to our own time. Anarchists often look back nostalgically to a time before the state appeared. The ancients had experience of people… read more »

George Walford: Even Worse

September 6, 2012

In spite of all the horrors for which anarchists hold the state responsible, we have little reason to believe that getting rid of it would be enough, by itself, to bring the reign of sweetness and light. In 1989 the Italian authorities admitted that the state no longer controlled Sicily and parts of southern Italy,… read more »

George Walford: The Anarchist Police Force

September 6, 2012

The Spanish Civil War ended half a century ago. Anarchism has not approached its Spanish stature in any other country and does not seem likely to do so in the reasonably near future; this raises questions about that extraordinary flowering. In what follows I rely upon two books: The Spanish Civil War (1977), by Hugh… read more »

George Walford: The Higher The Fewer

September 6, 2012

Raven, the anarchist quarterly, [1] includes a review-article by Brian Morris. Against the writers who seem to be kidding themselves that as a serious critique of Marxism anarchism doesn’t exist, he asserts that it does. He is, of course, right. Anarchism exists as a critique of Marxism, but Marxism has no theory capable of criticising… read more »

George Walford: The Two-Sided Anarchist

August 5, 2013

Anarchy means freedom. The phrase comes easily to the tongue, but when you try to envisage how it would work out in social life the difficulties begin to appear. You can’t have a number of people, who live together, all exercising unlimited freedom. By their actions they affect each other, and if you affect anybody… read more »

Peter Cadogan: Gnostics as Anarchists of Old

September 7, 2012

The Gnostics were the arch-rebels of Christian society from the second to the Fourth Century. The Pauline Christians of Rome set out to crush them and to hand over an obedient and conformist church to the Roman Emperor. These things they did, as Constantine is our witness. In those early days there were some 80… read more »

George Walford: Why So Few?

September 7, 2012

Anarchism offers a society in which everybody will be able to do what they want, provided only that they don’t interfere with the freedom of others. Yet most people do not support it. Anarchism claims to fight for the free spirit of humanity against oppression and coercion, but it remains a small movement of protest,… read more »