It is extremely difficult for a revolutionary [today] to read anarchist literature of the present period without a feeling of distaste. To read a book like Kropotkin's Memoirs of a Revolutionary is to capture the flavour of a whole epoch. We may disagree violently with a man who finished up capitulating to Czarist nationalism but someone who spent half his life in exile [and] had the spirit of a true revolutionary [illegible] to recommend him. The prattlings of the anarchists of the Apter and Joll and Messrs. Stansil and Mairowitz books on the other hand simply represent the spoilt children of a bourgeoisie which no longer even believes itself it has a mission in life. However, not content with dropping into the [illegible] parading their self conceit in public [illegible]. The book [illegible] need not be dealt with at length. Presumably at some point in time it may become an interesting exhibit in a revolutionary museum marked 'death agony of capitalism'. The material covered ranges from the 'London Street Commune' which we are informed "was to have a big impact on London", a glorification of the most reactionary aspects of skinheads on the basis of the cult of action, to the "internal structure of the Crazies organization". which is apparently based on an interaction between the 'Gung Pu Assault' and 'Cultural Vibrations.'
The Apter and Joll book has more to offer, in particular a historical background to the most significant anarchist movements. Pride of place here must of course go to Spanish anarchism. However, this chapter [un]fortunately is politically curious to say the [least]. We are informed that "The attitude of the [illegible] to the problem of collaboration with the State (i.e., refusing to admit its existence) and with bourgeois institutions inoculated it against bourgeois influence' (p.79). For an organisation whose members entered a bourgeois government during the Spanish Civil War this is rather a remarkable statement to make!!! Equally revealing, in a completely different way, is Joll's final chapter. Here we have the classic anarchist statement in reference to Bakunin: "many contemporary revolutionaries share his belief that the revolution will be made possible by the action of a militant elite of people totally dedicated to the revolutionary cause. In adopting this attitude the revolutionary becomes an outlaw in practice as well as an outlaw emotionally. He identifies with the bandits, the robbers and the people who attack bourgeois society directly by stealing or destroying other people's property." Apart from the ridiculous politics of this statement (far from robbing = attacking bourgeois society, on the contrary it means working within it) here we have [illegible] petit-bourgeois anarchism shown perfectly. By an individual act of will the anarchist will lift himself above the filth of capitalist society and roam in a classless realm only answerable to his own ego, meanwhile "the people", whom the anarchist professes to love so dearly, will wallow around in filth waiting to be 'galvanised' by the 'exemplary acts' of the 'elite'. All this, of course, in the name of opposition to the 'substitutionist' Leninists!!!
To turn to the Kropotkin is a blessed relief. Here at least is the voice of someone capable of thought. The descriptive passages in the book are worth the price alone. Particularly notable are the accounts of relations with nihilists (p.296-300) and how many revolutionaries would have admitted to pouring avidly over Stanley's "How I discovered Livingstone". Also brilliantly captured is the immense confused elemental force of the peasantry. Indeed, this is in a sense the image which dominates the book. The following passage sums it up perfectly: "Sometimes Serghei, who knew the New Testament almost by heart, spoke to the peasants as a religious teacher, proving to them by quotations from the Bible that they ought to have a revolution. Sometimes he formed his arguments of quotations from the economists. The peasants listened to the two men as real apostles, took them from one house to another, and refused to be paid for food". (p.322). Anyone who wants to understand how Russia could produce in a short period men as unlike as Tolstoy, Kropotkin and Lenin could do no better than read this book.
R. Massgeil