negations

* * * From The Telegraph * * *

Professor Norman Cohn, who died on Tuesday aged 92, was a historian, philosopher, linguist, author and expert on persecution, genocide and extermination; his seminal book, The Pursuit of the Millennium: revolutionary millenarians and mystical anarchists of the middle ages (1957), earned cult status.

Translated into 11 languages since its initial publication, The Pursuit of the Millennium became Cohn’s best-known work and was acclaimed as one of the most important studies of apocalyptic ideas.

In the book Cohn revealed for the first time the history of revolutionary millenarians, people who believe that the old world is about to be transformed into a new order in which the chosen few reap their reward of an earthly paradise and everyone else perishes.
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Having witnessed at first hand the apocalyptic atrocities of war, Cohn wondered whether the fanatical ideas of the Nazis and Communists were exclusively a 20th-century phenomenon or whether they had more ancient roots. Both tyrannies contained the myth of a final titanic struggle against a demonised enemy – the Jews in the case of Hitler’s Germany, the bourgeoisie in that of Stalin’s Soviet Union.

Although working as a linguist when he returned to academic life after the Second World War, Cohn – with no training as an historian but never hidebound – embarked on a quest for the historical origins of these ideas which took him back to the Middle Ages.

Armed with Latin and medieval German and French, he embarked on an 10-year investigation of sources for his book, with the aim of shedding light on the ancient collective fantasies that still exerted an influence on European culture.

In a clear, classical style, Cohn brought obscure medieval documents to life, creating scenes that portrayed, for instance, the starving, blood-spattered flagellants who in 1349 stormed the gates of Frankfurt to slaughter the Jews in a religious-ecstatic orgy of killing; or describing how, in 1251, a raggle-taggle army of paupers, led by a renegade monk, captured the villages of Picardy on the orders of the Virgin Mary.

In 1995, when the Times Literary Supplement listed the 100 non-fiction works that had had the greatest influence on the way in which post-war Europeans perceive themselves, Cohn’s book ranked alongside works by Camus, Sartre, Friedman and Foucault.

At the turn of the century seven years ago, Cohn’s apocalyptic themes again caught the zeitgeist and his book enjoyed a revival, thanks to those people who mistakenly believed that the advent of the new millennium portended the dawn of doomsday. As one critic noted, The Pursuit of the Millennium’s cult status was confirmed by the fact that it was frequently quoted by people who had never even read it.
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David Graeber on on Charlie Rose.

The volume of anarchist literature will likely grow significantly in the next several years as authors who came of age during the anti-globalization movement (1999 – 2001) publish their works.

For instance, there is David Graeber’s forthcoming Possibilities: Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion, and Desire, which is sure to challenge and captivate (AK Press, September, 400 Pages). AK Press describes the book in the following terms:

In this new collection, David Graeber revisits questions raised in his popular book, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. Written in an unpretentious style that uses accessible and entertaining language to convey complex theoretical ideas, these twelve essays cover a lot of ground, including the origins of capitalism, the history of European table manners, love potions in rural Madagascar, and the phenomenology of giant puppets at street protests. But they’re linked by a clear purpose: to explore the nature of social power and the forms that resistance to it have taken, or might take in the future.

Anarchism is currently undergoing a worldwide revival, in many ways replacing Marxism as the theoretical and moral center of new revolutionary social movements. It has, however, left little mark on the academy. While anarchists and other visionaries have turned to anthropology for ideas and inspiration, anthropologists are reluctant to enter into serious dialogue. David Graeber is not. These essays, spanning almost twenty years, show how scholarly concerns can be of use to radical social movements, and how the perspectives of such movements shed new light on debates within the academy.

Another instance is Uri Gordon’s Anarchy Alive! Anti-authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory (Pluto Press, November, 2007). The publisher offers this description:

Anarchy Alive! is a fascinating, in-depth look at the practice and theory of contemporary anarchism. Uri Gordon draws on his activist experience and on interviews, discussions and a vast selection of recent literature to explore the activities, cultures and agendas shaping today’s explosive anti-authoritarian revival. Anarchy Alive! also addresses some of the most tense debates in the contemporary movement, using a theory based on practice to provocatively reshape anarchist discussions of leadership, violence, technology and nationalism.

This is the ideal book for anyone looking for a fresh, informed and critical engagement with anarchism, as a mature and dynamic political force in the age of globalization.

Of course, anarchism has a long history. One particularly troubled and troubling chapter in this history is the state-sponsored murder of Sacco and Vanzetti. A new book has just been appeared on the topic, whose publication coincides with the eightieth anniversary of their executions: Bruce Watson’s Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind. The publisher states:

In the first full-length narrative of the case in thirty years, Bruce Watson unwinds a gripping tale that opens with anarchist bombs going off in a posh Washington, D.C., neighborhood and concludes with worldwide outrage over the execution of the “good shoemaker” and the “poor fish peddler.” Sacco and Vanzetti mines deep archives and new sources, unveiling fresh details about these naïve dreamers and militant revolutionaries. This case still haunts the American imagination. Authoritative and engrossing, Sacco and Vanzetti will capture fans of true crime books and everyone who enjoys riveting American history.

Finally, Spanish readers will want to check out: Sergio Grez Toso’s Los anarquistas y el movimiento obrero. La alborada de “la Idea” en Chile, 1893-1915 (in English: The Anarchists and the Workers Movement: The Dawn of “the Idea” in Chile, 1893-1915). As the title implies, this book explores the origins of the anarchist movement in Chile. Its release is noteworthy because Chile has largely been neglected in the literature on anarchism in the Americas. Hopefully this publication will prompt the emergence of a fuller depiction of the movement’s legacy.

by Jordi Berenguer

(From El Mostrador, July 22, 2007. English Translation by Chuck Morse)

* * *

Life. The world. Society. Everything or at least almost everything offers new opportunities. Today there is an opportunity for ideas that were forgotten–poorly interpreted or obscured when the world was divided between two choices–to make their contribution to the possibility of a freer, more generous life. I refer to anarchist or libertarian ideas, which, though marginal, are significant for many adults and young people in this country and around the world.

I am not thinking of individuals who repeat anarchist slogans to be fashionable or who might look like anarchists because of their style, but those who genuinely embrace the vision. And it is necessary to demystify the word and dispense the negative charge attributed to it by those in power, by the media, and by all those who want to erase the very thought of a society built upon liberty and equality and in which mutual respect is a central foundation. Although the image of assassinations, robberies, and generalized disorder has always predominated, nothing is further from the anarchist spirit and idea.

If we were to select a quotation to sum up the primary conviction of this ideology, we could use a statement that Michael Bakunin made when he speaking of the Paris Commune. He described himself as a “fanatical lover of liberty . . . the only environment in which human intelligence, dignity, and happiness can thrive and develop. . . . I mean the only liberty worthy of the name, the liberty which implies the full development of all the material, intellectual, and moral capacities latent in every one of us; the liberty which knows no other restrictions but those set by the laws of our own nature. Consequently there are, properly speaking, no restrictions, since these laws are not imposed upon us by any legislator from outside, alongside, or above ourselves. These laws are subjective, inherent in ourselves; they constitute the very basis of our being. Instead of seeking to curtail them, we should see in them the real condition and the effective cause of our liberty.”

When noting that anarchist ideas have been forgotten, I think of the Spanish Civil War, a key event for the European anarchist movement and yet the moment when libertarian ideas went into hibernation (with the exception of May 1968). However, as radical thinker and linguist Noam Chomsky once explained, anarchism has broad shoulders and can support many things upon them, which is exactly why it has been able to reassert its relevance in recent years.

This is also true, in part, because of another issue underscored by Chomsky: “What I have always understood to be the essence of anarchism is the conviction that the burden of proof has to be placed on authority, and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met.” Certainly the few times that we have demanded such proof from our authorities in the last century have only highlighted the importance of the criterion.

That is why today, as the historian Luis Vitale points out, “a new anarchism has emerged under neo-liberalism. . . that rescues from its ideological ancestors a libertarian sense of life as a response to the authoritarianism of the contemporary state apparatus and its assaults on the individual and collective freedom of the oppressed.”

Is anarchism only a beautiful utopia? An appealing but impractical idea? It would be easy to say so, given that it can seem to be the least practical of all the ideologies, even if one sees its precepts instituted in various historical moments. However, in the context of the present world, our survival demands that we search for new alternatives and exhume Josef Proudhon, Bakunin, and other thinkers that will help revive our faith in the future and demonstrate that there is more than just the ideology of the free market.