Ken Worpole on Colin Ward

I agree with Matt that Cohen’s attempt to describe sozialist ideals via the supposed natural logic of how the ideal camping trip would operate revealed nothing so much as the likely fact that Cohen himself probably almost never actually went camping. Still, I take the more important insight of the metaphor to be that sozialism carries an almost entirely different—and, to most Westerners anyway, much more positive—set of expectations and implications when it is not associated with the state, but rather associated with a small, informal community. In other words, Cohen towards the end of his life, with his talk of the importance of a sozialist ethos, was in one sense re-opening the long-standing argument between sozialists, localists, and anarchists, with him implicitly acknowledging the force of the claim that real sozialist equality and community will have to happen either absent or aside from the modern technocratic state.

What do you make of the appreciative note from libertarian Reason magazine?

http://reason.com/blog/2010/02/17/colin-ward-rip

Interestingly, in his forthcoming book on real utopias, Erik Wright is strongly influenced by Ward (largely via an essay Stuart White wrote about Ward a few years ago) — and also, obviously, by Cohen.

marcel — excellent stuff. Regardless of one’s people’s history, the reasoning is as sound as could be.

JK 02.23.10 at 2:02 pm

“What do you make of the appreciative note from libertarian Reason magazine?”

Meh. Just because the Reason guys are not 100% crap doesn’t mean that one should be impressed by them.

Hey Chris,

Thanks for that. In particular the ‘pdf on-line reader’ is helpful (it quoted my compatriot Louis-Paul Boon, one of those writers that would have been a universal household name if he had not been born as a Flemish guy writing in Dutch).

I had not realized the link of anarchism with optimism enough, as in: ” As a political ideology, anarchism was formulated in the 19th century by its founding fathers who, like those of other varieties of soc1alism (..) had an optimistic view of inevitable progress towards their goal.”

There is a lack of optimism on the left. Most leftist are cultural pessimists nowadays, afaik – at least when they ‘look at reality’. They also tend to be moralizing which seems rather related as tendency. That’s what’s wrong with the camping trip and ethos and all that stuff: it’s moralizing like hell. I am much too anarchistic to be told I need to adhere to some ethical standards and it is one of the most annoying things in the ‘green movement’ as well, I feel it rather as something anti-anarchistic. A bit like this: “Don’ t mourn, Organise!” as a rallying cry for anarchists ;-(

PS: really, can’t you do anything against this sozialism block? it is way past ridiculous.

Do you have any more information about Wright’s book, Harry?

The full text of the manuscript seems to be online at http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~wright/ERU.htm

Huh, I’m sorry to read that Colin Ward is dead. I own a couple of his books, but I’ve never made any kind of serious study of his ideas, unfortunately. To the best of my knowledge, he never received the kind of approbation (or opprobrium) in the US that Chomsky, Bookchin, Zerzan and other anarchist writers of similar stature have. My very casual inference was always that there was something a little too English about his outlook, that perhaps his vision of a truly local and decentralized communal economy seemed a bit too utopian even for anarchists here. Which is unfortunate, given that we, as a community and as an ideology, are often shown to our best advantage when we are pursuing precisely that vision. I had an opportunity recently to hover around the fringes of a conference of independent, community bike-repair shops, and what I heard and saw there would have, I think, done Ward proud: An anarchist response to an actual bread-and-butter issue that is functional and sustainable. Unfortunately, that sort of thing, as well as Food Not Bombs, the Common Ground project in post-Katrina New Orleans, and of course our long history of publishing, printing, literacy work and the like is overshadowed by the corporate media’s portrayal of us as 50 kids in balaclavas who summit-hop and burn dumpsters. (Not that we don’t often encourage such portrayals, but there is a counter-discourse, and it never sees the light of day.)

alex, It’s a bit rash to condemn me like that. After all: whether I’m selfish or not is a bit more depending on what I do in real life than what I blog-comment. My wife, children, and friends are probably better placed to be judgmental about little old me.

I believe – and that was the interesting part of Chris’ link – that we will be able to have a good agreement based on reason for the environmental challenges. That’s what we are in need of, not somebody pointing fingers and being moralistic. That is where we need optimism – and a bit of good faith in our fellow human beings to come up with the good agreements.

I can assure you by the way that many people would be jealous of my carbon footprint and that is not by chance but by choice (chiefly because I live in the city where I work, where my wife works and where my children go to school).

Hey alex, whatever, I guess.

(for the record: no ski-masks or black flags here; not even long hair)

JoB, you may want to read some sort of introduction. George Woodcock’s Anarchism is a good one.

I second the George Woodcock intro, though he’s accused of being too narrow sometimes. Chomsky on Anarchism is also good, for the underlying ideas expressed. It’s a collection of his essays, notes and interviews on the subject, not a formally worked out tome. I like this format a lot, and it decomposes even more in his Understanding Power, which I recommend to a lot of people, mainly because it’s so meandering and discursive. It’s (mostly) transcribed conversations with (mostly) leftist groups, ranging from lectures to coffee table discussions, to informal question-and-answer sessions. Among the issues that surface in these discussions, along with the kind of practical questions that so involved Colin Ward, are issues of left and right libertariansim.

Also, The Spanish Labyrinth, while dated, is thought to be the best account of the background to the Spanish Civil War and covers a lot of ground on anarchism and the workers’ communes it emerged in.

d

telling others what to do

As you’re obviously not talking about anyone here, we won’t take offence at your strawman ;-)

“JoB, the problem with a view like ‘I am much too anarchistic to be told I need to adhere to some ethical standards and it is one of the most annoying things in the ‘green movement’ as well, I feel it rather as something anti-anarchistic’ is that no form of anarchistic community/society/existence will ever work without people exercising the kind of self-moderation and concern for others that such comments suggest that you are not interested in. Therefore you are not anarchistic at all.”

I hate to quibble with definitions (since, after all every language game is, qua game, always the same one: russian roulette or, more charitably, a game of shoot one’s foot), but why should the proper usage of anarchism be a _workable_ one? Why would the criterion of being “anarchistic at all” be concern for others or moderation or ethics, which would distinguish anarchism from — well, which competing political theories, exactly?

That restriction seems particularly question-begging if, as might be plausibly claimed, the principle problem of anarchism is practical not theoretical.

Moreover, if the right conception takes ethical standards or social rules to be a given in any workable political theory, why on earth would one want not to discard the word anarchism. A, to the N, to the ARCH, to the ism? Sure, it comes from “ruler” — but that comes from freakin’ “rule.” I happen to like rules, but I don’t have the gall to call myself an anarchist–a _proper_ one even. The first rule of anarchy club is don’t talk about anarchy club. Or talk to anarchists.

Platonist, the answer to your question is that anomie and anarchy are not the same thing.

Platonist: the objection to ‘anarchism’ which consists of saying ‘F**k you I won’t tidy my bedroom’ is not that it’s a wrong definition – as distinguished from my (or Alex’s, or anyone’s) right one – it’s that it’s historically inept. Actually-existing left-anarchists – from Godwin to Proudhon to Bakunin to Kropotkin to Colin Ward – have never been about mere rejection of any reason to do or not do X which isn’t ‘because I want to’. Anarchism – where it has meant anything at all – has been an ethical doctrine for as long as it has existed.

Generally: those wanting a primer on anarchism could do a lot worse than Ward’s own Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction. Woodcock is highly readable but a bit outdated. Colin Marshall’s Demanding the Impossible is huge and perhaps a bit too comprehensive, although skipping through it and slowing down for chapters that sound interesting is worthwhile. But I’d be tempted to go straight to primary material, and read some Kropotkin, say The Conquest of Bread and Mutual Aid.