Revolutionary Classic:
NOMAD, MAX
Revolutionary Classic Anarchism. By Paul Eltzbacher. Libertarian Book Club. 272 pp. $6.00. Reviewed by Max Nomad Author, "Rebels and Renegades" "Aspects of Revolt" In 1908 A fire completely...
...Shortly before giving up the struggle in 1908 and moving to Monaco, where he died in 1939 at the age of 85, Tucker published the English translation of a survey of the most important anarchist theories...
...The hook, long forgotten and out of print in the many languages into which it was translated more than half a century ago, has now been republished by the Libertarian Book Club of New York...
...The sad fact, however, is that just as the American Communists absorbed practically all the "Wobblies", so did the European Communists incorporate most militants and rankand-filers of European anarchism...
...the use of violence and the ideas of egoism versus altruism...
...That relatively minor tragedy put an end to the activities of a group of radical mavericks who called themselves "individualist anarchists" and whose leader was Benjamin R. Tucker...
...For most revolutionists are attracted more by the concrete lure of power than by the abstract glamor of liberty and many "class-conscious" workers are an easy prey to the delusion that the abolition of private capitalism necessarily entails the abolition of exploitation and oppression...
...Instead, he culled from their own works the most striking passages about the state, law, property, the stateless and classless society and other key concepts...
...So much for the fatal role accidents played in the history of what once was the "red specter" before it was supplanted by Bolshevism...
...First, the classic, almost timeless protest of the individual against the authority of the state...
...Following the Bolshevik Revolution, most anarchists went over to what theoretically was the very opposite of their previous creed...
...For the book was the most convenient timesaving device any devotee of anarchism could desire...
...In seven chapters dealing with the outstanding representatives of the different anarchist schools, the author presented the views of William Godwin (17561836), Pierre Joseph Proudhon (1809-65), Max Stirner (1806-56), Michael Bakunin (1814-76), Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921), Benjamin Tucker (1854-1939) and Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910...
...who inspired the two Russian giants of modern revolutionary anarchism, Bakunin and Kropotkin, and to a certain extent also the American individualist anarchist, Benjamin R. Tucker...
...They may not be of crucial importance to the mid-20th century student of revolutionary politics and doctrine, but they are of interest to the student of the history of ideas...
...Eltzbacher's book is an excellent guide through the labyrinth of these ideas...
...The appended chapter is full of propagandistic exaggerations —for example, the author claims that the Spanish anarchists controlled 36 daily papers—intended to make the reader believe that anarchism is still very much alive all over the world...
...Of the Club's members it may safely be said that, belonging as they do to various schools of anarchism, they all agree on only one basic point: the rejection or "negation" of the state...
...though otherwise a self-confessed disciple of Marx, tried to outbid his teacher in radicalism by postulating the immediate abolition of the state...
...Nine years later, in 1917, another conflagration of a different kind destroyed what was still left of the anarchist movement in Europe and America (except the Spanish-speaking countries...
...the name of its author, Paul Eltzbacher, a judge and college lecturer and by no means an anarchist, immediately became a household word for the then still quite active anarchists the world over...
...The book appeared in Germany in 1900...
...And, finally, there was the protest on the part of many irreconcilable and impatient elements against the moderation of the democratic socialist leaders who believed in reforms to be obtained from the state by the ballot...
...Second, the revulsion of some sensitive, early 19th century radicals and liberals against the terrorist abuse of centralized power by the Jacobins and against their would-be emulators of the Blanquist and related schools who dreamt of a party dictatorship...
...Reviewed by Max Nomad Author, "Rebels and Renegades" "Aspects of Revolt" In 1908 A fire completely destroyed a building on Sixth Avenue in New York...
...The publishers have added to the original edition of the book a chapter about "Anarchism and AnarchoSyndicalism" written by Rudolf Rocker (1873-1958), the last of the theoretical Mohicans of modern anarchism...
...The active anti-capitalism of successful Bolshevism deprived anarchism of what prestige it still enjoyed among the intransigent elements because of its terrorist and later "direct-actionist" glamor...
...Eltzbacher did not summarize the views of these thinkers in his own words, a customary and often misleading procedure...
...A third major factor was the internecine struggle between Bakunin and Marx for predominance during the First International (1364-1876...
...While they all agree on the eventual abolition of the state, the various schools of anarchism differ on such subjects as the question of property...
...The flames consumed the group's entire stock of literature, and shortly afterward Tucker gave up his apostolate...
...Bakunin...
...for it might not have occurred but for the dynamic and demonic will power of Lenin, whose plans for a second revolution were at first opposed by almost the entire leadership of his own party...
...That cataclysm, was, like the Sixth Avenue fire, an accident...
...This revulsion and fear found its most brilliant expression in Proudhon...
...Traditional anarchist negation of the state is the result of at least four historical factors...
Vol. 44 • February 1961 • No. 9
