Volume 4 - March 1996 - Number 1

EDITORIAL - Sharif Gemie, p.1


FEATURES (abstracts)

'Free love' in Imperial Germany : Anarchism and Patriarchy 1870-1918 - Hubert van den Berg, p.3
The European Road to Nowhere : Anarchism and Direct Action against the UK Roads Programme - Ian Welsh and Phil McLeish, p.27
Anarchism and Nationalism in East Asia - John Crump, p.45

REVIEW ARTICLES

Taming the Market : Capitalism and the State - Michael Levin, p.65
All American Anarchism - Tony Powell, p.68
Anti-Art : The Limits of Critique - Leigh Starcross, p.70
Papers about People and Power - Peter Cadogan, p76
Revolution and Evolution - Ruth Kinna, p.80

BOOK REVIEWS

John Crump, Hatta Shuzo and Pure Anarchism in Interwar Japan - Mark Shipway, p.84
Donald C. Hodges, Mexican Anarchism after the Revolution - Greg Hall, p.85
Jerome R. Mintz, The Anarchists of Casas Viejas - Richard Cleminson, p.86
Helena Flam (ed.), States and Anti-Nuclear Movements - Jon Purkis, p.88
Pierre Joseph Proudhon, What is Property? - David Hartley, p.89
Gui Debord, In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni - Julian Cowley, p.90
Christopher Lasch, The True and Only Heaven - Sharif Gemie, p.92

BOOKNOTES

ABSTRACTS

'Free Love' in Imperial Germany: Anarchism and Patriarchy 1870-1918

HUBERT VAN DEN BERG

During the turn-of-the-century anarchists proposed 'free love' as an alternative to the bourgeois organisation of gender relations, especially to bourgeois marriage. 'Free love' was also seen as the anarchist counterpart of feminism, advocating women's suffrage and equal economic opportunities. In current historiography, particularly in the case of Emma Goldman, this idea is usually seen as an important move towards a genuine anarchist feminism. A closer examination of the anarchist debate in Wilhelmine Germany suggests another conclusion. In the context of low female participation in the anarchist movement, a virulent antifeminism, as well as the fact that the concept of 'free love' was combined with an explicit rejection of female engagement in wage-labour, anarchist 'free love' seems rather to have contributed to the realisation and preservation of the patriarchal order.

Contents

The European Road to Nowhere: Anarchism and Direct Action against the UK Roads Programme

IAN WELSH and PHIL McLEISH

This article contextualises one activist's account of the resistance to the construction of the M11 link road through Wanstead in London during 1994. The account offered illustrates numerous issues of considerable importance for both theory and praxis within 'green movements' in the late twentieth century. Whilst the action described is not claimed as an example of anarchist praxis, its relevance to key debates for anarchists and anarchist sympathisers are highlighted. It is argued that recent attempts to make the European Union policy community more open to 'bottom up' initiatives, combined with the European-wide nature of the Union's road programme, constitute an arena within which the British experience of direct action against roads provides the basis for a European wide network of resistance.

Contents

Anarchism and Nationalism in East Asia

JOHN CRUMP

In contrast to anarchism in Japan and China, anarchism in Korea has been notable for the extent to which it has been permeated by nationalism and also for the Korean anarchists' readiness over many years to engage in conventional politics. The immediate reasons for these peculiarities of Korean anarchism would seem to lie in Korea's colonial subjugation by Japan from 1910 to 1945 and the division of the country after 1945. It is argued that, under the conditions which can occur in a 'Third World', anti-colonial setting, it is the emphasis which anarchism lays on decentralisation and local autonomy, important though these attributes are, which exposes it to the danger of degenerating into nationalism. On the other hand, it is further argued that anarchism is also equipped with principles which, if the danger is sufficiently recognised, can be invoked so as to safeguard anarchism from nationalist degeneration.

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