FEATURES (abstracts)
The Ghost of Anarcho-syndicalism - Murray Bookchin, p.3
First Steps Towards Mass Sex-economic Therapy? Wilhelm Reich and the Spanish Revolution - Richard Cleminson, p.25
The Anarchist Press in France Today - David Berry, p.39
The Anarchist Art of John Cage (1912-92) - Richard Kostelanetz, p.47
REVIEW ARTICLES
George Crowder's Classical Anarchism and the Uniqueness of Kropotkin's Thought - Ruth Kinna, p.51
The End of Nature and the Bioregional Vision - Brian Morris, p.59
Apocalypse And/Or Metamorphosis: A Surre(gion)al View - Max Cafard, p.65
BOOK REVIEWS
Ruth Wodak (editor), Language, Power and ldeology - Bronislaw Szerszynski, p.71
Clifford Harper, Anarchy: A Graphic Guide - Martyn Everett, p.72
Anthony Arblaster, Democracy - Alan Carter, p.74
Ian Cook and David Pepper (editors), 'Anarchism and geography' - Martyn Everett, p.76
NOTICES OF PERIODICALS, p.77
ANARCHIST GATHERINGS
Social Ecology Network - Karen Goainan, p.86
Kropotkin Conference - Laure Akal, p.88
OBITUARY
Leab Feldman - Andrew Whitehead, p.91
Many anarcho-syndicalists claim that their approach, based on a factory system, and the economic needs of workers, is the central if not the exclusive concern of modern anarchism. In doing so, they often ignore die earlier and more significant communalist tendencies and moral dimensions in anarchism. These early and persistent dimensions are explored, challenging the claims to exclusivity of anarcho-syndicalism and its privileging of the industrial proletariat as a hegemonic force in social change. The behaviour of various anarcho-syndicalist organizations, the industrial collectives in Spain, and syndicalist leaders in a period of social upheaval and revolution are examined. The concept of citizen, which encompasses not only workers but many transclass elements and issues, is advanced - as is the need for a communalist emphasis, of which the interests of industrial workers are a part - as a more appropriate approach to modern social phenomena and social change.
This Paper analyses the degree of success that the radical psychoanalyst
Wilhelm Reich obtained in spreading his views on the organization of sexuality
under capitalism with reference to Spain. Fundamental to Wilhelm Reich's
thesis of sex-economy was the perceived need for an international sex-economic
organization and this article assesses the reception of his writings and
activities among the revolutionary sectors of the Spanish left.
The revolutionary socialist, Trotskyist and anarchist press of the 1930s
is examined and inter-organizational links on an international level are
discussed. Examples are taken from journals such as the Revista Blanca and
Leviatán as well as from Reich's own Zeitschrift für politische
Psychologie und Sexualökonomie. The reception of radical ideas on sex
is placed in the context of anarchism's ability to embrace new ideas, which
placed it ahead intellectually of its counterparts on the left.
In a movement which historically has been more concerned than others with changing peoples' ways of thinking and ways of living, it is not surprising that so much importance has always been attached to the press. In France, this has perhaps been especially the case, for the birth of anarchism as a distinct ideological movement coincided with the liberalization of the press laws and the establishment of free and compulsory schooling: this was a time when the best-known and most powerful political figures were journalists before all else, and when the real debates took place in the pages of newspapers, not in parliament. Moreover, the periodical press has always played a central rôle in a movement with such loose organizational structures, with so many individual members and sympathizers isolated from any active groups, and in an extremely large country where the abyss separating the capital city from the provinces is still a major source of conflict.
In surveying his work in music and theatre, in poetry and visual art, I have noticed that the American John Cage favoured a structure that is nonfocused, nonhierarchic and nonlinear, which is to say that his works in various media consist of collections of elements presented without climax and without definite begin-flings and ends. This is less a negative structure, even though lam describing it negatively, than a visionary aesthetic and political alternative. In creating artistic models of diffusion and freedom, Cage is a libertarian anarchist.
