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Title: Guy Aldred
Author: Ruth Kinna
Date: 2011
Language: en
Topics: biography, history
Source: *Journal of Political Ideologies*, Volume 16, 2011 — Issue 1. DOI: 10.1080/13569317.2011.540950

Ruth Kinna

Guy Aldred

Abstract

This article examines the political thought of the socialist campaigner,

Guy Aldred, in order to reflect on divisions between anarchism and

social democracy in the late 19^(th) and early 20^(th) centuries.

Aldred’s thought drew on a diverse range of ideas and he labelled this

rich synthesis communism. Believing that his position captured the best

of Marxist and anarchist traditions, he argued that socialist

factionalism was based on a distortion of Marx’s work and that the

relationship between Marxism and anarchism was properly understood as

the one between the head and heart of the movement. His claim not only

subsumed the anarchist critique of social democracy into Marxism but it

also relied on a system of classification which undercut the creative

tensions in his political thinking.

Introduction

Some historical figures are deservedly neglected but Guy Aldred is not

one of them. His influence, thought not extensive, is important.[1]

Although Aldred is a problematic figure in many ways, his attempt to

carve a niche for himself as a non-aligned revolutionary socialist in

the early 20^(th) century was significant. What Nicholas Walter called

his ‘main problem’—that ‘he belonged to no viable organisation’[2]—is

precisely what sheds important light on the nature of socialist

factionalism, illuminating the difficulty of bridging the gap between

Marxism and anarchism. Moreover, Aldred’s defence of individualism and

the centrality of his activism provide a useful vantage point from which

to observe contemporary divisions within anarchism. For all these

reasons, Aldred deserves to be rescued from obscurity. In this article,

after a brief biographical sketch, I analyse his political thought and

the development of his communism, placing it in the context of the

important dispute about federalism and individualism which divided

Marxists and anarchists in the years leading up to the First World War.

Aldred’s political development

Aldred was born in London in 1886 and died in Glasgow in 1963, just

before his 77^(th) birthday. By the time of this death some of his

would-be comrades thought that he was living in something of a time

warp. Albert Meltzer left this portrait:

He was an old-fashioned socialist agitator, who struck to Victorian-type

knickerbockers … rather than trousers, and who early in life conceived

his career as a professional street-corner speaker. It is something now

inconceivable, and reliance on collections … made for a hard struggle

with poverty for most of his days …[3]

The trajectory of Aldred’s career was also rather Victorian. He began as

an evangelical Christian encouraged by his anti-militarist and

freethinking maternal grandfather to study and read widely. At school,

he joined the Anti-Nicotine League to become a ‘recruiting agent’ for

the Band of Hope and Total Abstinence Movement.[4] In 1902, he extended

his activities to anti-war propaganda, adopting the title of the

‘Holloway boy preacher’ of the Christian Social Mission, an evangelical

organization he founded with John Willoughby Masters, the self-styled

‘Lyrical Gospel Herald.’[5] However, Aldred’s evangelism did not prevent

him from challenging Victorian moral codes. In 1907, he met Rose Witcop.

Flouting convention they practiced the principle of free love, marrying

in 1926, long after the experiment had collapsed, only because she was

threatened with deportation.[6] Against the moralizing tone of Aldred’s

writings, Rose represents perhaps the most refreshing and libertarian

aspect of his life. The younger sister of Milly Witcop (the lifelong

companion of Rudolf Rocker) was a committed feminist and at no little

cost put up with the social stigma of being a single mother. Swept along

by ideas of social revolution, Aldred campaigned with her to spread

information about contraception and the evils of bourgeois marriage law

and was particularly concerned to tie socialism to women’s emancipation.

Yet there were limits to his libertarianism, while both rejected the

women’s suffrage campaign as reformist Aldred, unlike Rose, had a

natural inclination to monogamy and cherished an ideal of chaste

socialist partnership.[7] Moreover, he combined the spirit of social

experimentation with a disturbing sense of his own infallibility.

John Caldwell, Aldred’s biographer, described him as ‘a man of true

genius who vigorously and untiringly devoted his life to the

enlightenment and uplifting of the people and to the bringing about of

socialism.’[8] For those less devoted, his enthusiasms could wear thin.

His pun on his surname—‘the man they all dread’—aptly pointed to his

troubled relationship with his comrades. He joined the Social Democratic

Federation in March 1905 but resigned less than 2 years later.

Gravitating towards the anarchist Freedom Group, he got on well with

some anarchists and greatly admired Errico Malatesta[9] but described

the majority as a feckless bunch. By 1907, he had severed his ties with

both wings of the socialist movement and started to call himself a

communist, a term which was still little used at the time. In this, he

was inspired by the example of William Morris[10] who, he said, had

meant it to describe ‘world harmony, social love, service and

commonweal.’[11] While Aldred’s temperament was hardly in tune with all

these ideals, he shared the vision of socialism they evoked.

The principles on which he grounded his actions grew from his strong

need to find purpose in life. Aldred described his intellectual

development as the ‘growth in freedom’ of his own mind, but his account

actually suggests that it involved the discovery of an existing tendency

as much as a gradual enlightenment. His story is the development of an

‘inward allegiance’ of a truth seeker, looking for ‘a philosophy that

was progressive, yet definite and certain.’[12] At its heart was an

idiosyncratic religious commitment.

Even at the height of his evangelism, Aldred never espoused an orthodox

Christian faith: his study of world religions, his friendship with the

theist Charles Voysey and his attraction to Thomas Huxley led him from

Anglicanism to atheism, without forcing any open rupture. His mature

view was that it was possible to question the existence of a deity and

the historical existence of Jesus but remain a Christian: the fact of

Jesus’ existence was less important than his teachings; and since God

was an idea that came from within the minds of men, it was important to

distinguish faith in the possibility of living a Christian life from

belief in a divine being. The former was a positive, motivating force

but the latter encouraged dull submission. Indeed, associating the

belief in God with theology, miracles and superstition, Aldred declared,

‘God never did, never will and never can exist.’[13]

Initially, Aldred’s religiosity was romantic and conservative. Later, he

combined romanticism with radical dissent. Having taken to ‘heresy with

all sincerity,’[14] as he subsequently put it, he gave up Toryism in

favour of materialist free thought and so descended from ‘the world of

cloudland to that of matter, of social life and struggle.’[15] In all

this, religion remained a powerful influence and it lent his socialism a

visionary, crusading and dissenting character.

Aldred described his vision of socialism as the realization of equality,

mutual aid, freedom, justice and social peace, in short: ‘the kingdom of

heaven on earth into which the rich cannot enter.’[16] Unlike Morris,

Aldred was not interested in describing this picture and he tended

instead to think in terms of a process of ethical development. As he put

it: ‘the drawing out, in the sense of cultivation, of the inspirational

part of man’s character, whereby men are led to forget the limitations

of their material environments in their realization of their oneness

with all phenomena.’[17] Vision, he argued, was nothing without the

possibility of achievement. His view lent his socialism a purposive,

crusading character. Here too, religion was the inspiration.

Christianity, he argued, ‘cannot be shut up in a few lines of abstract

and ridiculous creed.’ It is ‘a declaration of fire, light, freedom

…’[18] To make it real, it needed enthusiasts like him—preachers—who

were not only prepared to spread the Word but also put up with the

‘scorn and abuse’ that genuine commitment to cause was likely to bring.

Aldred’s grandfather had once asked him to reflect on the ‘lofty

heroism, the enduring patience, the unselfish love and the perfect

sweetness in service’ that Shelley’s ‘tragic story of Prometheus

inspired.’[19] Aldred did and found in it a ‘central ethic of

brotherhood and service.’[20] To adopt this ethic was to engage in

action. Service, he remarked, ‘makes life not a worship but a struggle’

because it was driven by ‘peace of conscience’ and ‘unyielding

martyrdom.’[21] To show that these demands could be met by ordinary

people, Aldred devoted much of his writing to recounting the lives and

experiences of virtuous fighters—from the Marian martyrs to the nameless

conscientious objectors with whom he campaigned in two World Wars. Most

were unknown and they came from different classes and social

backgrounds. Tom Dowd, the subject of one of Aldred’s essays, was a

common criminal. The common bond he identified in them was their

rebellious character and willingness to endure hardship for the sake of

principle.

Aldred’s celebration of socialist service was combined with a third

element: dissent. As a self-styled heretic, Aldred was also an ethical

voluntarist who abhorred the idea of coercion. It was one thing to point

out individuals’ errors, quite another to force them down the road to

redemption. Smokers and drinkers might be told that their ‘habits are

injurious’ but, he insisted, his own abstinence ‘had no bigotry’ about

it.[22] To support this position, he identified reason as his ‘supreme

guide,’ meaning not what he called the ‘Freethinkers’ abstract “reason,”

but individual conscience.[23] He elaborated his idea through Descartes

but claimed that the philosopher had ‘never understood his own maxim’ or

its radical implications. ‘Cogito, ergo sum’ for Aldred was a

‘definition of the … unchallengeable integrity of the individual.’ No

man who had ‘sufficient courage to accept as the keynote of his life …

“I think, therefore I am”’ could ever be ‘a slave … (or) victimised or

imposed upon by any system of authority or oppression.’[24] This

conviction became a guiding principle which he eagerly applied to adults

and children alike. For example, he resigned from the Social Democratic

Federation because he thought the party’s support for Socialist Sunday

Schools was an attempt to impose ‘Marxism upon the child’s mind.’[25]

Though he believed it was his duty to effect social transformation, he

claimed to rely solely on ‘example and personal integrity … in the power

of moral suasion and very simple, very direct propaganda.’[26] Having

cast himself in the role of ‘Minister of the Gospel of Revolt,’ he

expected others to do likewise: ‘(e)ach one of us should, and must,

belong to ourselves.’[27]

Socialist theory

Drawing on these visionary, crusading and dissenting principles, Aldred

developed a form of socialism that was both radically anti-statist and

evolutionary.

Aldred’s anti-statism recalled Tom Paine who, he claimed, had been the

first to argue that ‘the abolition of formal government’ was the

‘beginning of true association.’[28] He rejected the state on both

functional and organizational grounds. The state’s function was to

fleece ‘or blackmail the capitalist class’ in order to provide ‘a

standing army, navy, judicial bench, etc.’[29] All states were

instruments of class exploitation and the constitution of government was

irrelevant to this function. The difference between ‘the crowned Monarch

in England, the sceptred Emperor in Germany (sic) and the uncrowned

President of the United States’ was only one of the forms: in each case,

government was a reflection of class power and its character in the

state was always the same.[30]

In its organization, the state’s ‘bureaucratic institution’ supported

‘tyranny and expertism.’ These were not merely facets of economic

exploitation. Even assuming that the basic precondition for

communism—‘social ownership based on social production and

distribution’—was met, socialists would still need to address the

organization of the state’s ‘historically evolved administrative

function.’ The abandonment of the bourgeois state’s legislative and

judicial systems would not lessen this necessity.[31] Aldred warned here

that ‘the representatives of administration’ might ‘so control industry

and education as to become the monopolisers of its advantage.’[32] Such

socialism would merely perpetuate class rule, grounding advantage in

position rather than ownership.

While Aldred’s critique left open the possibility that socialists might

detach the principle of government from the function of the state, his

concerns about ‘expertism’ pointed to a form of decision making that

would look very different from existing governmental systems. Indeed,

Aldred argued that the representative institutions of parliamentary

government could never provide a model. Representation meant

majoritarianism and it was simply a cover for coercion. At its heart was

the fallacy that decision makers could speak on behalf of others. He

found a working alternative model in industrial unionism and expressed

broad sympathy with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and,

later, with the Spanish CNT. However, Aldred did not consider himself a

syndicalist. Having ‘no faith in the majority, less unbelief in the

minority and most reliance in the individual,’[33] he was suspicious of

the scale of syndicalist organization and he rejected the idea of ‘one

big union’ touted in the early decades of the 20^(th) century. Moreover,

while he preferred small workshop units to protect against

reformism,[34] he believed that even this form of association still fell

short of meeting his religious, visionary needs.[35] Its followers

understood that socialism ‘applies a materialistic analysis to society’

but wrongly ‘ignored … the need for Idealism.’ Socialism ‘involves

love’; it ‘is harmony,’ Aldred declared.[36] Again turning to Morris for

inspiration he argued, ‘There can be no talk of working-class political

power … There must be an end of political power if the workers are to be

free.’[37]

Aldred’s faith in the possibility of socialism rested on a specific

concept of change. This fused an instinctive Hegelianism with a broad

commitment to historical materialism. Aldred’s general view was informed

by a feeling ‘that belief in change represented the stream of life: yet

the change must express a stability of purpose, have direction, and not

be so much drifting.’[38] With his discovery of economics and sociology,

this intuition led him quickly to conclude that ‘political changes have

occurred “simultaneously with economic changes in society.”’[39] At the

same time, Aldred sought to go beyond materialism and combine his view

of change with a concept of ethical development. Here, he borrowed from

both Kropotkin and Nietzsche.

Aldred claimed that his interest in evolution was inspired by T.H.

Huxley’s Romanes lecture of 1893, the lecture which also influenced the

development of Kropotkin’s theory of mutual aid. However, Aldred’s

repeated references to Huxley’s work were taken from an earlier essay,

‘Government: Anarchy or Regimentation.’ Aldred appears to have

misunderstood Huxley’s essay as an endorsement of anarchy, when in fact

it presented a critique.[40] He added to the confusion by

misinterpreting Kropotkin. Kropotkin had taken issue with Huxley’s claim

that the natural world was ‘red in tooth and claw’ and argued that the

social ethic which Huxley associated with civilization and the struggle

against nature was in reality a factor of evolution which might be

realized in anarchy. Ignoring Kropotkin’s criticisms of Huxley’s

characterization of nature, Aldred focused on Huxley’s treatment of

‘ethical fitness.’ As a result, he wrongly suggested that Huxley’s work

lent scientific support to the idea of anarchy (and, indeed, to

Kropotkin’s idea of anarchy) and that he subscribed to an evolutionary

theory which grounded ethics in nature.[41] Aldred agreed with Kropotkin

that the expression of socialist ethics was environmentally conditioned

and he shared Kropotkin’s view that altruistic behaviours were motivated

by egoism, remarking that ‘(w)e incline to abolish suffering because

pain to others occasions agony for ourselves.’[42] However, his

conception of environment and ethics was different. Aldred linked

socialist ethics to a process through which ‘the individual ability and

power to survive’ would be reconciled with ‘the evolution of the social

instinct and the desire to serve’; a process of harmonization leading

individuals to perform certain functions in the social organism.[43] In

contrast, Kropotkin argued that mutual aid—the anarchist ethic—was an

instinct which supported co-operative behaviours that the environment

might encourage or inhibit.

Aldred identified education as the mechanism for evolutionary social

practice. His view chimed in with Morris’s, particularly the policy of

‘making socialists,’ but it was also tied to his own biography and

whereas Morris linked education to moral behaviour, specifically the

shift from competitiveness to fellowship, Aldred associated it with

revelation and the acquisition of practical skills. Education described

both the ability to grasp the truth and the possibility of applying

acquired knowledge to redress the injustices that it made plain. John

Caldwell described Aldred’s conception as Orwellian: ‘In a time of

universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.’ Adding a

new twist to Marx’s prediction that capitalism would create its own

gravediggers, Aldred further located the dynamic for learning in the

capitalist system. The ‘capitalist environment’ he argued, ‘not only

favours, but creates the Communist.’[44] In order to feed its need for

capable workers, capitalism educated the masses, thus undermining the

position of the expert. As Aldred put it, the ‘evolution of the

capitalistic educational system has prepared a minimum educational basis

for the future society to start from, which is founded on an

ever-increasing negation of expertism.’[45] The brilliance of this

account of educational development was that it underwrote the promise of

socialist equality; its weakness, which Aldred seems to have

acknowledged, was that the analysis was not entirely persuasive. As if

attempting to convince himself of the truth of capitalism’s demise, he

resorted to defending evolution negatively. The possibility that he

might be wrong about learning was simply too horrible to contemplate:

The psychological guarantee against expertism will be found in the

contempt with which all men will regard it, and the tendency to

excellence of administration will be reposed in the admiration which all

men will have for efficiency. Should this possibility still meet with

opposition on the ground that such a central directing authority,

finding its embodiment in a collective will, would not find legal

oppression incongruous with its industrial basis, one can only conclude

that either humanity is inherently bad and progress an impossibility, or

else that in a system of absolute individualism must humanity’s hope

lie.[46]

Aldred’s individualism was the final plank in his understanding of

ethical change. If his original concept had been shaped first by his

freethinking background, it was with Nietzsche that Aldred identified as

a socialist, but a Nietzsche read through a Darwinian lens. Nietzsche

took the ‘self-preservation instinct which all recognise as being the

first law of nature … to be the last law of ethics.’[47] In contrast to

neo-Darwinians like Spencer, who adopted this law to defend competitive

free markets, inequality and servitude, Nietzsche, he argued, used it to

provide critique of domination, exploitation and oppression. In the idea

of the superman Nietzsche had elaborated an ideal in which individuals

‘(f)reed from the desire and the economic power to dominate … would be

neither dominator nor dominated.’ With each having ‘different traits,’

the lack of officialdom would ‘spell freedom, variety, and consequent

genius.’[48] Aldred’s reading was idiosyncratic but his attraction to

Nietzsche tapped into the important avant-garde trends that developed

within anarchism in the period leading up to 1914. Emma Goldman’s

anarchism drew on similar influences. Alfred Orage’s introductions to

Nietzsche appeared in 1904–1907; and although Aldred was a contributor

to Dora Marsden’s increasingly Stirnerite New Freewoman rather than

Orage’s New Age,[49] his claim that Nietzsche ‘realised that Socialism

must inevitably be identical with absolute individual freedom’ was

uncontroversial in both of these circles.[50] Aldred’s effort to inject

a religious sensibility into Nietzsche’s work was more unusual, for even

though Tolstoy’s work encouraged some to explore the possibilities of a

Nietzschean Christian anarchism, Aldred’s interpretation was firmly

rooted in the religion of his youth. On his account, Nietzsche was a

visionary and a ‘herald of revolt’ who stood in the tradition of the

heretical martyrs, dissenters and conscientious objectors he so admired.

To summarize, Aldred’s communism was predicated on an idea of

dialectical development in which class struggle, capitalist collapse and

economic change, together with enlightenment and knowledge, would give

rise to the expression of natural sociability and the realization of

individual freedom in a condition of statelessness. His political theory

drew on an impressively wide range of influences and, even though his

interpretations are sometimes problematic, his attempt to combine them

sheds interesting light on the currents of socialist thought. However,

Aldred is interesting not just because of the way he synthesized these

currents but also because of the ideological terms he used to describe

his position. The way in which Aldred situated himself in the political

spectrum raises some enduring questions about the status of Marxist

theory in socialist thought and, as I will now argue, about the

distinctive contribution to revolutionary socialism made by anarchism.

Communism, anarchism and marxism

After cutting his ties with the Freedom circle in 1907, Aldred was

involved with a number of groups: the Industrial Union of Direct Action,

the Communist Propaganda Group, the Glasgow Communist Group and, between

1921 and 1934, the Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation.[51] Although

the Glasgow Communist Group co-operated closely with the longer

established Anarchist Group, all these groups were non-aligned. The

success of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 and the subsequent

identification of communism with the Soviet system, or what Aldred

called ‘dictatorship and totalitarian oppression, assassination and

darkness,[52] complicated the parameters of Aldred’s early

non-alignment. But in the period leading up to 1914, these were marked

by the ideological poles of social democracy and anarchism. In this

context, non-alignment did not indicate neutrality or aloofness. On the

contrary, Aldred broadly accepted the anarchist critique of social

democracy and his decision to label himself ‘communist’ symbolized his

belief that the gap between the two wings of the socialist movement

could be bridged. Outlining the debate between social democrats and

anarchists—which were well rehearsed in the socialist press—reveals the

space that Aldred sought to occupy and helps explain how communism

brought these two socialist traditions together.

In the 10 years before 1907, when Aldred defined his position as an

independent, relations between social democrats and anarchists had

soured appreciably. Some historians trace the roots of the division to

the 1871 dispute between Bakunin and Marx in the First International.

Others go even further back and suggest that it was Marx’s falling out

with Proudhon some 20 years before which marked the start of the

split.[53] As G.D.H. Cole notes, the causes of the disagreement were

both more proximate and more dramatic. The key event was the affaire

Millerand of 1889, which brought into sharp focus the question of

whether socialists could legitimately participate in bourgeois

institutions. Its immediate trigger was the resolution of the 1893

Zurich Congress of the Second International, which committed working

class organizations to political action and resulted 3 years later in

what Edward Marx-Aveling celebrated as the final ‘casting out of the

anarchists’ in London.[54] Aveling’s remark that the expulsion of the

anarchists had been ‘well worth working 3 years for’ shows how tensions

had been building.[55] Nevertheless, the exclusion of the anarchists

caught many participants by surprise. The so-called non-parliamentary

socialists—those who had refused to align themselves either to anarchism

or to social democracy—were appalled to see how a policy difference was

made into a test of ideological commitment.[56] The attempt to narrow

the definition of socialism to mean social democracy alone and to outlaw

anarchism was also fiercely criticized.[57] Critics like Keir Hardie

condemned this reduction and ridiculed the result as ‘cast-iron

socialism,’ a reference, perhaps, to its seeming Prussian

inflexibility.[58] Proponents of parliamentary action also recognized

the significance of the division. ‘Justice,’ the paper of the Social

Democratic Federation, argued that forcing non-parliamentary socialists

to give up their ‘untenable … position’ and finally ‘choose sides’ was a

positive result of the decision.[59] The extent of the polarization was

also indicated by the intolerant language adopted. Justice no longer

treated anarchism as a strain of socialism; nor did it merely

distinguish anarchism from socialism—it now identified anarchists as the

enemies of social democracy. In August 1896, one correspondent to

Justice expressed his disappointment at finding the ‘language of the

capitalist press repeated in a Socialist journal.’ He complained that

the editors had been wrong to describe anarchist tactics as ‘blackleg

and blackguardly.’[60]

In the aftermath of the 1896 London Congress, differences between social

democrats and anarchists touched on a number of core questions: the

relationship of socialism to science and utopianism; the nature of

socialist organization and the relationship between capitalism,

socialist transformation and modernization; the process of revolutionary

change and the use of terrorist methods. For Aldred, two ideas were of

particular importance: federalism and individualism. Recalling his

initial attraction to anarchism, he wrote,

It must not be concluded that I was any less a Socialist because I

called myself an Anarchist. I definitely accepted the principle of

Federalism as opposed to Centralism, and I did not believe that

Individualism was opposed either to Socialism or to Democracy. On the

contrary, I believed that Individualism must be asserted and defended in

the interests of Socialism and as a cardinal principle of

Democracy.’[61]

Justice treated both principles with suspicion because, as Aldred

observed, it saw them as synonyms for anarchism. Individualism, in

particular, came under sustained and systematic critique. In the words

of one correspondent to Justice, it ran counter to ‘organisation and

true policy’ and ‘agreement on a practical programme’ which genuine

socialists recognized.[62] Because they were individualists, he

continued, anarchists rejected authority and, indeed, all forms of

association. They refused ‘(c)ombination, organisation (and) unity’ and,

believed that ‘these words imply government of some kind hurtful to the

ego.’[63] Justice recognized that individualism was contested in

anarchist circles and that ‘anarcho-communists’ typically rejected

individualist positions. Yet the paper argued that whatever prefix they

might attach to their name, all anarchists defended the absolute

interests of the individual. That made co-operation impossible. It gave

what it claimed was the essence of the anarchist view:

The Anarchist, with all his denunciations of authority, does believe in

authority—autocratic authority, the authority which any individual can

impose upon any community or assembly, that is, the authority which the

Anarchist favours. The authority he does not believe in is democratic

authority, authority constituted by the will of the community, that is

anathema … to the Anarchist.[64]

In reinforcing this point, leading international theorists of social

democracy used Stirner and Nietzsche as Aunt Sallies.[65] William

Liebknecht, for example identified Stirner as the ‘father of modern

Anarchism,’ dismissing ‘Bakounin (sic.), Proudhon and the latest day

saints of Anarchism’ (all influential figures in the European labour

movement) as ‘mere pigmies’ by comparison.[66] As one contributor to the

anarchist paper The Torch noted, the focus on Stirner was a convenient

half-truth since it allowed social democrats to forge a link between

anarchism and certain forms of laissez-faire capitalism which claimed to

take inspiration from his work.[67] Liebknecht pressed this point:

There is, in fact, nothing in common between Anarchism and Socialism.

Anarchism—if it is not altogether a senseless phrase—has individualism

for its basis; that is, the same principle on which capitalist society

rests, and therefore it is essentially reactionary, however hysterical

may be its shrieks of revolution.[68]

Nietzsche was used in a similar way. In November 1896 a leader in

Justice presented Nietzsche as an advocate of the ‘struggle for

existence and the survival of the fittest, the rule of force and

cunning.’ ‘Justice, sympathy, self-control and all the so-called

virtues,’ the paper noted, were for him ‘so many arbitrary restraints on

the indefeasible right of every man to do what he pleases where and when

he can.’ Nietzsche’s statement of the Anarchist ‘theory of the

sovereignty of the individual’ was unusual for the ‘simplicity of

nakedness,’ the leader argued, but in other respects it provided an

accurate account.[69] Even writers like E.B. Bax, who was otherwise

sensitive to anarchist concerns about liberty and who clearly

distinguished anarchist socialism from liberal free-market voluntarism,

argued that anarchists treated individual freedom as a ‘holy dogma of

the abstract freedom or autonomy of the individual at all times and in

all cases.’[70]

The social democrats’ rejection of anarchist federalism was an

elaboration of their critique of individualism and it boiled down to the

claim that anarchy was chaotic because anarchists were incapable of

recognizing, still less working for a common interest. The critique did

not imply a rejection of federalism altogether, and most social

democrats fiercely rejected the term ‘state socialism’ which anarchists

used to describe their position. In fact some, including Bax, called

themselves federalists. But they rejected the decentralized communal

federalism proposed by the anarchists as unworkable. At issue here was

not the possibility of order but its quality. In an examination of the

Cecilia community in Palmira, Brazil, one social democrat reported that

the anarchists had succeeded in showing ‘that men could live without

masters and without law.’ The community had no ‘table of hours’ or

‘assemblies of the residents.’ It had abandoned rules, laws, officials,

majority votes and programmes. Moreover, ‘all work was voluntary and

freely chosen.’ Yet for all this abandonment of regulation, anarchy was

far from paradise. In Cecilia ‘public opinion’ was ‘an unsparing and

almost tyrannical force.’ Individuals were hardly free; and despite

their industriousness, their effort still ‘kept them poor.’ Because of

the failure to devise common rules, anarchy was nasty and cold and, if

not brutish, probably short. The important lesson was that ‘it is not by

individual effort that we shall conquer nature.’ No ‘amount of

enthusiasm and ability can build up a new civilization, unless there is

also subordination, organisation and a regular industrial code.’[71]

The anarchist response to this was to attack parliamentarism and

political action. Parliamentarianism, they argued, was based on a

misconception of the state. It was politically flawed because it

identified the state with government. Even assuming that individual

representatives of the working class could resist the psychological

appeal of power—which most anarchists doubted—parliamentarism aimed at

the achievement of a narrowly political revolution, centred on the

seizure of government power, when what was required was a social

transformation that would challenge the cultural norms that the state

upheld. To make this point Freedom quoted Ibsen. Politicians, he

explained, ‘only desire partial revolutions, revolutions in externals,

in politics. But these are mere trifles. There is only one thing that

avails—to revolutionise peoples’ minds.’[72]

Furthermore, parliamentarism indicated that the social democratic

concept of the state was sociologically flawed. Here, anarchists argued

that parliamentarianism required the adoption of organizational forms

that replicated the very structures they wanted to destroy. As Malatesta

put it, the ‘gendarmes of Bebel, Liebknecht and Jaurès always remain

gendarmes. Whoever controls them will always be able to keep down and

massacre the proletariat.’[73] The historical analysis that supported

this view, pioneered by Proudhon and developed by Kropotkin, highlighted

the tendency of the state to expand its area of influence in the

domestic realm and to militarize the international system. It assumed

the existence of a historic free realm into which the state was

continuing to expand its competence. Anarchists aimed at resisting both

this expansion and the new models of organization—bureaucratic,

representative and centralized—that it threatened. Their criticism of

social democracy was that it was so narrowly preoccupied with questions

of ownership that it failed to appreciate this equally significant

aspect of state development. An analysis published in The Torch

suggested that ‘(w)hat passes for labor organization amongst State

socialists, Labor parties, present-day Trade Unions etc. is not an

organization of the men but really of the bosses and misleaders to keep

their slaves in their slavery.’ The author continued,

The governments from Social Democrats to Tories base their so-called

organization on forms and majority rules with the result that all the

organized are the exploited dupes of the organizers; and are driven here

and there like cattle.[74]

Anarchists described the social dynamics of their organizational

alternatives differently. Elisée Reclus suggested that anarchy would be

constructed on a yearning for co-operation and an overlapping

consciousness of purpose: ‘a wonderful unity in thoughts, sentiments,

and the desire to be free.’[75] By contrast, J.A. Andrews argued that

individual interest played the crucial organizing role, safeguarding

individuals from majoritarianism and/or the adoption of programmes for

collective action.[76] But there was consensus that the revolution

promised by social democracy would, at best, result in a liberal radical

programme of reform and, at worst, a highly disciplined, rigidly

controlled system of oppression. The optimistic view was that ‘Socialism

“made in Germany”’ would bring freedom of worship, universal suffrage,

national education, equal rights, public utilities, protective

employment legislation and an international court to arbitrate

international disputes.[77] Pessimistically, the anarchists feared that

these liberal rights would be tied to a duty to recognize ‘as an

absolute truth the complete submission of the individual to the State’;

and that the achievement of these goals would result in ‘State-monopoly

in the organisation of the whole economic life of the nation with

“obligatory work for all,” and “the raising of a working army,

especially for agriculture.”’[78]

In these debates, Aldred was clearly not on the side of social

democracy. His critique of the state dovetailed with Malatesta’s; not

only was his concern with social revolution anarchistic but his embrace

of Nietzsche, his rejection of representation, his interest in

non-statist principles of organization and his fierce defence of the

individual all suggest a deep dissatisfaction with social democratic

thinking. Admittedly, Aldred was also an anti-utopian and, taking his

lead from Daniel De Leon, he dismissed all attempts to consider

alternatives to state organization as ‘childish’ speculation.[79]

Nevertheless, this difference hardly weighed against his disagreements

with the social democrats. Why, then, did Aldred shy away from calling

himself an anarchist and prefer communist, instead? The reason is that

he thought that anarchism threatened to deepen an unnecessary rift and

to conceal the fundamental theoretical unity of revolutionary socialism.

Moreover, whereas the anarchists traced the failures of social democracy

to Marx, Aldred dismissed social democracy (and later Soviet communism)

as a perversion of Marxism and identified Marx as his most significant

influence.

The basis for this identification and its implications for Aldred’s

understanding of anarchism emerge in a review of the relationship

between Bakunin and Marx which suggests a creative interplay between

generations of socialist thinkers: Bakunin, he argued, was ‘Proudhon

adulterated by Marx and Marx expounded by Proudhon.[80] At first sight,

this almost seems to anticipate Daniel Cohn-Bendit’s conception of

‘leftism’ as progressive critical review: Marx against Proudhon, Bakunin

against Marx, Makhno against Bolshevism and the student–workers’

movement against the ‘transformation and development of the Russian

Revolution into a bureaucratic counter-revolution, sustained and

defended by Communist parties throughout the world.’[81] Yet the

similarity is misleading since unlike Cohn-Bendit, Aldred was not

concerned to resist ‘ossification.’ On the contrary, he wanted to

retrieve a particular reading of Marx’s thought and inject a concept of

Bakuninism into it. Bakunin, he argued, was ‘an excellent guide,

philosopher and friend to the cause of Communism’ when he spoke as a

Marxist.[82]

In his keenness to stress Bakunin’s significance, Aldred noted that his

writings ‘are replete with profound political thought and a clear

philosophic conception of history ….’[83] After the rise of Stalin, he

reiterated this view. Agreeing wholeheartedly with Bakunin that the

problem of the state was ultimately one of command, he argued that the

terror of Soviet system arose from ‘a brutal claim to authority almost

unbelievable in the name of Communism and Socialism.’ More pointedly,

returning to the ruins of the First International, he argued that

Bakunin’s theoretical insights anticipated Soviet communism’s failings.

Bakunin’s warning that ‘authoritarian Communism … would persecute like

an autocratic or bureaucratic State,’ he noted, had once been ‘viewed

with scepticism.’ But he had been vindicated by Stalinist practice. The

development of the Soviet Union and the Third International proved that

the ‘arguments of yesterday must be acknowledged as being right in their

anticipation.’[84] At times Aldred went as far as to suggest that Marx

had played a lesser role in the development of socialism than Bakunin.

For example, he argued that in 1847, Marx had sounded ‘the call of

battle and revolutionary anti-parliamentarism’ identifying ‘his work

with the ideal and endeavour of Bakunin.’[85] In Bakunin’s defence, he

also openly took issue with Kropotkin’s assertion ‘that we must measure

Bakunin’s influence not by his literary legacy … but by the thought and

action he inspired in his immediate disciples.’[86]

Nevertheless, Aldred’s claims about Bakunin’s theoretical brilliance

were fragile and the general tenor of his argument suggested that his

assessment of Bakunin was after all not so far removed from Kropotkin’s.

More often than not, he identified Marx as the initiator of ideas and

Bakunin as his practitioner. He noted while Marx was wasting his energy

worrying about the anarchism of his sons-in-law, Lafargue and Longuet,

‘the Anarchists, inspired by Bakunin… were putting their hearts and

souls into the task of explaining and popularising the work of

Marx.’[87] Central to Aldred’s view were Marx’s historical writings,

particularly The Eighteenth Brumaire and the Civil War in France. These

recorded ‘as a maturing and matured conviction of Marx, that the Social

Republic is not the Parliamentary Republic; that Parliamentarism is …

the counter-revolution.’[88] Reflecting on the degeneration of Marxism

into social democracy, Aldred advanced a similar point:

It has always seemed strange to me that the Marxists, whose economic

explanation of politics or the State is correct, should have become, in

practice, parliamentarians and pretend to believe that parliament

controls industry. Proudhon, Bakunin and (Johann) Most, being

Anarchists, might be forgiven did they deduce from their hatred of

authority, some idea of warring against the State instead of economic

conditions. In practice they adopt the correct attitude to wanting to

liquidate the State in economic society … Hence they conclude their

propaganda as sound Marxians.’[89]

For all his originality, Aldred painted Bakunin as ‘the word

incarnate’—not the author of the word. At one with Marx ‘in purpose and

in aspiration,’ he was suited to the fulfilment of ‘distinct tasks,’ to

serve ‘different functions’ and ‘fitted by temperament to enact a

peculiar role ….’[90] He continued,

Marx DEFINED the Social Revolution, whilst Bakunin EXPRESSED it. The

first stood for the invincible logic of the cause. The second

concentrated in his own person its unquenchable spirit. Marx was an

impregnable rock of first principles, remorselessly composed of facts …

he was the immovable mountain of the revolution. Bakunin, on the other

hand, was the tempest. He symbolised the coming flood.’[91]

Aldred’s dichotomy, between Marx the real theoretician and Bakunin the

soul of socialism, was echoed in other assessments. He judged the

reformism of Kautsky and Liebkecht, the architects of the policy of

political action, by the standards of their theory, quoting their own

youthful critiques of parliamentarism against them.[92] Anarchists, on

the other hand, were assessed with reference to their personal talents

and virtues and/or by their mistaken attempts to elaborate an anarchist

theory.[93] For example, taking issue with Kropotkin once more, Aldred

questioned his identification of ‘Locke, the timid, and Godwin, the

Whig,’ as the fathers of anarchism. This history of anarchist ideas

simply missed the point: what was important in anarchism was what

individuals did, not what they thought. Aldred used measures of action

to chart his alternative story of British anarchist traditions. In it

Richard Carlisle, the early 19^(th)-century freethinker, ‘whose reward

for clear thinking was imprisonment,’ was the real father of British

anarchism. Godwin had no claim whatsoever since he was ‘but a politician

for all practical purposes’ and ‘a gentleman.’[94] Admittedly, Aldred

also linked failures of social democracy to Marx’s personal weakness. He

described Marx as an authoritarian who ‘slandered Bakunin’ and whose

‘personal vanity and domination detract seriously from his claim to our

love as a man and a comrade.’[95] But given Aldred’s assumptions about

Marx’s theoretical standing, this claim merely reinforced his leading

idea that the anarchists’ main role was to stand out against the

Marxists’ corruption of their own doctrine—to inoculate it against

degeneration into social democracy—it was not to challenge that doctrine

with a distinctive philosophy of their own.

One of the peculiarities of this argument is that it casts Bakunin,

famous for his desire to abolish God, as a latter-day Jesus: a rebel who

gave his life, through constant rebellion, in service to others. As

Caldwell notes, ‘the mighty Russian’ and the ‘gentle Nazarene’ enjoyed

equal status in Aldred’s ‘humanist pantheon.’[96] Using Bakunin to

bridge the gap between anarchism and Marxism, Aldred suggested that it

was the space left in socialism for religion—voluntary service in the

name of brotherhood—that anarchism filled.

Evaluating Aldred

Aldred’s understanding of communism was based on three claims: first,

that the Marxism of the Second International and, later, of the

Stalinist Soviet Union had nothing to do with Marx’s ideas and were

outgrowths of the personal authoritarianism—or what he called the human

egoism—of Marx; second, that anarchists—the Bakuninists, at least—were

the activists that the Marxists ought to have been and third, that the

anarchists added nothing of theoretical importance to left criticism.

All of these claims are contestable and the last has been fiercely

rejected: anarchists have often explained the invisibility of anarchism

as a measure of the success with which non-anarchists have appropriated

anarchist ideas. George Woodcock adopted this approach when he

criticized Chomsky for inventing ‘libertarian communism’ as a Marxist

cover to steal the anarchists’ clothes.[97] Nevertheless, some of

Aldred’s ideas chime in with contemporary anarchist thinking. His

treatment of Marx is similar to a distinction that John Clark has since

articulated. Clark distinguishes between two aspects of Marx’s thought,

one he calls the ‘part … most relevant to his dispute with Bakunin, and

which … has exerted the greatest influence on history’ and the other

which ‘one might well wish to have been of more historical

importance.’[98] Some anarchists have even echoed Aldred’s much more

contentious suggestion that anarchists have been the practitioners of

socialism rather than the theorists. In 1968—a moment of anarchist

revival—Cohn-Bendit was significantly identified as the student

movement’s prime personification; Daniel Guérin described ‘Dany’ as the

outstanding spokesman of ‘68 because, unlike his brother Gaby, he was

“no anarchist theoretician” but someone in whom the ‘libertarian fire’

blazed ‘in the highest degree.’[99] Recently, Graeber and Grubacic have

argued that this ‘fire’ is still considered to be anarchism’s most

distinctive contribution to socialism. In a discussion of ‘small-a

anarchists’ they note,

Marxism, then, has tended to be a theoretical or analytical discourse

about revolutionary strategy. Anarchism has tended to be an ethical

discourse about revolutionary practice. As a result, where Marxism has

produced brilliant theories of praxis, it’s mostly been anarchists who

have been working on the praxis itself.[100]

It seems unlikely that the continuing popularity of this idea owes much

to Aldred’s influence. Nevertheless, his early formulation of the

relationship usefully highlights its flaws. One important weakness of

Aldred’s ideological re-packaging of the late 19^(th) and early

20^(th)-century debates was his assumption of theoretical cohesion among

opponents of social democracy. The idea that the anarchists were Marx’s

rightful heirs coupled with the claim that the relevant distinction

between anarchists and Marxists turned on questions of practice blinded

him to the specificity of his own theoretical position. It also

convinced him that anarchist critiques of the state were irrelevant:

they could be subsumed into an analysis of class power and bureaucracy

and grounded in a theory of historical materialism. Aldred conceded that

Bakunin’s warnings about the rise of authoritarian communism had been

ridiculed. Unfortunately, because he had already decided that Bakunin’s

significance lay solely in the strength of his convictions, he was not

interested in interrogating the theoretical basis of these claims.

Instead he argued that anarchism offered no solutions to socialists.

Even if this was true, the memory of the anarchist critiques was surely

worth preserving. Cohn-Bendit clearly thought so when he accused Lenin

of ‘failing to transcend the organizational level of the

bourgeoisie.’[101]

A second weakness of Aldred’s bridge building was that it was shaped by

a conviction that it is possible to establish the provenance of ideas in

ways that the history of socialist ideas does not support. Since

Aldred’s time, different terms have been chosen for the bridge:

libertarian communism and communist egoism are two examples. But the

process of bridge building tends to follow Aldred’s model. It is likely

that Aldred would have been baffled by the current terms of anarchist

debate and that he would have questioned the point of sorting anarchists

into exclusive, self-contained ‘individualist,’ ‘social anarchist’ or

‘class-struggle’ groupings. Having attempted to bring Nietzsche and

Kropotkin together, he would have rejected the claim that questions of

organization are somehow un-anarchist, regressive ‘imports’ from

Marxism. It seems likely that he would also have dismissed the

counter-claim that a defence of individualism points only to a childish

fondness for rebellion and/or that it places advocates beyond the

anarchist tradition.[102] Aldred’s socialist theory might not have been

persuasive, yet his efforts to engage with and synthesize complex

currents of thought help to highlight the range and diversity of the

influences active in pre-war radical and revolutionary circles. While

the drift of socialism towards parliamentarism and later Sovietism helps

explain his eagerness to bridge the gap between anarchism and Marxism,

the ideological classification that he devised belied the genuinely

rich, synthetic quality of his thinking and masked the anarchist

critique of social democracy. The disappointment of Aldred’s work is not

that he attempted to bridge the gap in socialist traditions, but that he

failed to acknowledge the value of anarchism’s theoretical contribution.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Trevor Bark, Rory Beaton, Carl Levy and Alex

Prichard and Sureyya Turkeli for encouragement and comments on earlier

drafts of this paper. I am also grateful to JPI’s two reviewers.

[1] For example, Stuart Christie cites him as an important early

influence. Stuart Christie, ‘Building a library: anarchy,’ Independent

on Sunday, 24 July 2005, available at

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4159/is_20050724/ai_n14806090

(accessed 20 May 2008).

[2]

N. Walter, ‘Guy A. Aldred (1886–1963),’ The Raven, 1(1) (1986), p. 82.

[3]

A. Meltzer, I Couldn’t Paint Golden Angels (Edinburgh/Oakland, CA: AK

Press, 1996), Chapter 3, available at

http://www.spunk.org/texts/writers/meltzer/sp001591/angels3.html

(accessed 27 November 2009).

[4]

G. Aldred, Dogmas Discarded, part 1 in Essays in Revolt (hereafter ER)

2 volumes (Glasgow: Strickland Press, 1940), p. 13. For Aldred’s

life, see also J. T. Caldwell, Come Dungeons Dark: The Life and

Times of Guy Aldred, Glasgow Anarchist (Barr, Ayrshire: Luath Press,

1988).

[5] Aldred, ibid., p. 25.

[6] The relationship is discussed in G. Frost, ‘Love is always free:

anarchism, free unions and utopianism in Edwardian England,’ Anarchist

Studies, 17(1) (2008), pp. 73–94.

[7]

G. Aldred, ‘The freewoman,’ The Herald of Revolt, 2(3) (March 1912), p.

17.

[8]

J. Caldwell, A Tribute to Guy Alfred Aldred (Hobnail Press, 2006), n.p.

[9]

G. Aldred, ‘The Malatesta outrage,’ The Herald of Revolt, 2(6) (June

1912), p. 58.

[10] Aldred identified himself as a critical follower of Morris. See

Pioneers of Anti-Parliamentarism in ER, pp. 11–20. Only a year before

William Morris’s death, H. B. Samuels argued that ‘communism is, as yet,

not generally understood, even by many who are supposed to worship that

ideal.’ He described it as ‘a condition of society where there shall be

perfect freedom in the economical and social relations of life … (and)

the extinction of the institution or idea of “private property.”’ H. B.

Samuels, A Contribution to Communism (London: William Reeves, 1895), pp.

3–4.

[11]

G. Aldred, Studies in Communism in ER, op. cit., Ref. 4, p. 4.

[12] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 4, p. 9.

[13]

G. Aldred, Dogmas Discarded, part 2, op. cit., Ref. 4, p. 25.

[14] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 4, p. 9.

[15] Aldred, ibid., p. 18.

[16] Aldred, ibid., p. 40.

[17] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 13, p. 28.

[18] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 4, p. 43.

[19] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 13, p. 19.

[20] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 4, p. 34.

[21] Aldred, ibid., p. 40.

[22] Aldred, ibid., p. 13.

[23] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 13, p. 45; Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 4, p. 23.

[24] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 4, p. 10.

[25] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 13, p. 43.

[26] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 4, p. 18.

[27] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 10, p. 13.

[28] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 11, p. 33.

[29] Aldred, ibid., p. 24.

[30] Aldred, ibid.

[31] Aldred, ibid., p. 18.

[32] Aldred, ibid., p. 19.

[33] Aldred, Studies in Communism, op. cit., Ref. 4, p. 33.

[34]

G. Aldred, ‘Our Glasgow lectures,’ The Herald of Revolt, 2(9) (1912),

12 September, p. 95.

[35] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 13, p. 58.

[36] Aldred, ibid., p. 59.

[37] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 10, p. 16.

[38] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 13, p. 26.

[39]

G. Aldred, Socialism and Parliament, part 2 in ER vol. II, op. cit.,

Ref, 4. p. 45.

[40] Aldred quoted Huxley’s remark that ‘anarchy may be the highest

conceivable grade of perfection of social existence’ forgetting to note

that Huxley concluded the discussion by declaring anarchy a sham and an

illusion. See T. H. Huxley, ‘Government: anarchy or regimentation,’

1890, available at http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE1/G-AR.html

(accessed 27 November 2009).

[41] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 13, p. 38; Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 11, p. 6.

[42] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 11, p. 7.

[43] Aldred, ibid.

[44] Aldred, ibid.

[45] Aldred, ibid., p. 21.

[46] Aldred, ibid.

[47]

G. Aldred, ‘Friedrich Nietzsche,’ in John Moore and Spencer Sunshine

(Eds) I Am Not Man, I Am Dynamite! Friedrich Nietzsche and the

Anarchist Tradition (New York: Autonomedia, 2004), p. 9.

[48] Aldred, ibid., p. 10.

[49] Orage is discussed in T. Steele, Alfred Orage and the Leeds Arts

Club 1893–1923 (Aldershot: Scholar Press, 1990). For Marsden see L.

Garner, A Brave and Beautiful Spirit: Dora Marsden 1882–1960 (Aldershot:

Gower Publishing, 1990); B. Clarke, Dora Marsden and Early Modernism:

Gender, Individualism, Science (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan

Press, 1996); and L. Delap, The Feminist Avant-Garde: Translatlantic

Encounters of the Early Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2007).

[50] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 47, p. 11.

[51] Two short pamphlets give a useful overview: J. T. Caldwell and M.

Shipway, An Introduction to Guy Alfred Aldred and Anti-Parliamentary

Communist Federation (Hobnail Press, 2006); B. Jones,

Anti-Parliamentarism and Communism in Britain 1917–21 (Pirate Press,

1991).

[52] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 11, p. 4.

[53]

P. Thomas, Karl Marx and the Anarchists (London: Routledge & Kegan

Paul, 1980), p. 317.

[54]

G. D. H. Cole, A history of socialist thought, vol. III part 1, The

Second International 1889–1914 (London: St Martins Press,

1967), pp. xv, 26.

[55]

E. Marx-Aveling, ‘A note on the International and the British Trade

Union Congresses,’ Justice, 19 September 1896, p. 6. The expulsion

captured a range of revolutionary socialists, some of whom did not

self-identify with anarchism.

[56]

D. Nienwenhuis, Le Socialisme En Danger (Paris: PV Stock, 1897), p. 45.

[57]

A. Hamon, Le Socialisme et le Congrès de Londres (Paris: P-V Stock,

1897), pp. 7–9.

[58] Hamon, ibid., p. 187.

[59] Justice, 29 July, 1896.

[60]

J. Watts, ‘An appeal for the anarchists,’ Justice, 8 August 1896, p. 3.

[61] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 13, pp. 52–53.

[62]

J. M. O’Fallon, ‘Social democratic federation socialism v. anarchism

and its sympathisers,’ Justice, 5 September 1896, p. 4.

[63]

J. M. O’Fallon, ‘Anarchy and anarchism,’ Justice, 19 September

1896, p. 2.

[64] Justice, ‘Our enemies the anarchists,’ 5 September 1896, p. 1.

[65]

G. Pleckanov (Plechanoff), Anarchism and Socialism, trans. E.

Marx-Aveling (Chicago: Charles Kerr, 1920).

[66]

W. Liebknecht, ‘Our recent congress,’ Justice, 15 August 1896, p. 4.

[67]

J. Robins, ‘Plechanoff answered,’ The Torch, 18 April 1895.

[68] Liebknecht, op. cit., Ref. 66.

[69] Justice, ‘An anarchist messiah,’ 14 November 1896, p. 1.

[70]

E. B. Bax, Essays in Socialism (London: E. Grant Richards, 1907), pp.

64–65; E. B. Bax and J. Haim Levy, Socialism and Individualism

(London: Personal Rights Association, 1904), p. 33.

[71] A.B. ‘Anarchism in practice,’ Justice, 5 December 1896, p. 2.

[72] Freedom, September 1890, p. 35.

[73]

E. Malatesta, ‘Report of the Holborn Town Hall meeting,’ Freedom

supplement, August–September 1896, p. 98.

[74]

C. T. Quinn, ‘Anarchist organization,’ The Torch, August 1894, p. 2.

[75]

E. Reclus, ‘Report of the Holborn Town Hall meeting,’ Freedom

supplement, August–September 1896, p. 97.

[76]

J. A. Andrews, ‘Anarchist organisation,’ Freedom supplement, July

1896, p. 87.

[77]

W. Tcherkesov, ‘Socialism or democracy,’ Freedom supplement, July 1895,

pp. 18–19.

[78]

W. Tcherkesov, ‘Frederick Engels,’ Freedom supplement, September

1895, p. 39.

[79] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 10, p. 74.

[80]

G. Aldred, Bakunin in ER vol. II, op. cit., Ref. 4, p. 47.

[81]

D. Cohn-Bendit, Obsolete Communism the Left-Wing Alternative, trans. A.

Pomerans (London: André Deutsch, 1968), p. 18.

[82] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 80, p. 47.

[83] Aldred, ibid., pp. 43–44.

[84] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 10, p. 54.

[85] Aldred, ibid., p. 26.

[86] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 80, p. 43.

[87] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 10, p. 31.

[88]

G. Aldred, ‘Parliament and the commune,’ The Herald of Revolt, 2(1)

(January 1912), p. 3.

[89] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 80, p. 46.

[90] Aldred, ibid., p. 51.

[91] Aldred, ibid.

[92] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 11, p. 12; G. Aldred, Socialism and

Parliament part 1, op. cit., Ref. 39, p. 15.

[93] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 13, p. 53.

[94] Aldred, Socialism and Parliament part 1, op. cit., Ref. 92, p. 47.

[95] Aldred, op. cit., Ref. 80, p. 36.

[96]

C. T. Caldwell, ‘Guy Aldred & the background to the anti-parliamentary

communist federation,’ in Caldwell and Shipway, op. cit., Ref.

51, p. 2.

[97]

G. Woodcock, ‘Chomsky’s anarchism,’ in Anarchism and Anarchists

(Kingston, Ontario: Quarry Press, 1992), p. 228.

[98]

J. Clark, ‘Marx, Bakunin and social revolution,’ in The Anarchist

Moment (Montreal: Black Rose, 1984), p. 89.

[99]

D. Guérin, Anarchism, trans. M. Klopper (New York: Monthly Review

Press, 1970), p. 158.

[100]

D. Graeber and A. Grubacic, ‘Anarchism or the revolutionary movement

for the 21^(st) century,’ available at

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID = 4796 (accessed

9 February 2008).

[101] Cohn-Bendit, op. cit., Ref. 81, p. 216.

[102] For a discussion see M. Bookchin, Social Anarchism or Lifestyle

Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm (Edinburgh/Oakland, CA: AK Press, 1995)

and B. Black, Anarchy After Leftism (Columbia, MO: CAL Press, 1997). M.

Schmidt and L. van der Walt present a statement of class struggle

anarchism in Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism

and Syndicalism (Edinburgh/Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2009).