p Having acknowledged the world of advanced industrial society to be absurd and at a stage when it has already become historically meaningless and therefore worthy of only one fate—total rejection—the members of the New Left needed a theory of an undeniably radical-critical type such as would provide theoretical substantiation and at the same time moral vindication for revolt. They needed a theory which would provide a basis for the alternatives they put forward, that would confirm the existence of wide scope for the individual’s historical creativity and proclaim the existing social environment sufficiently plastic to be capable of transformation into a "free society". Finally the New Left needed a theory, which on the strength of people’s very reference to it would serve as a symbol of protest.

p Soon anarchism appeared to fulfil all these requirements more fully than anything else, the more so because it had grown up on a non-proletarian class foundation and had been aimed above all at non-proletarian strata. Anarchism played a conspicuous role in the moulding of the radical consciousness and the political complexion of the protest movements of the sixties, a fact which incidentally is also noted by the ideologists of the radical Left.

p Anarchism lays stress on the negative-critical, that is the destructive aspect of the revolutionary process, on the 38 negation of the given society which was in tune with the spontaneously evolving negative attitude to the establishment reached by the "too large minority”.

p The members of the New Left were impressed by the incisive terms in which anarchism expressed its anticapitalist sentiments in its appeal for destruction of capitalist society, its complete negation not accompanied by the retention of any positive phenomena that do not serve to embody capitalism but rather crystallise human labour as such, the overall human aspect in the historical development of mankind.

p Anarchism calls for spontaneous action rather than theory, appealing to emotion rather than reason, which lends it resemblances with theoretical nihilism born of dissatisfaction with modern social theories that provide no scope for the manifestation of historical initiative. Revolutionarist impatience, efforts to bring nearer the desired goal—all the more intense when the material and economic preconditions for the achievement of that goal have long been ripe—have close affinity with the anarchist idea (as elaborated by Bakunin) to the effect that the means should by nature be identical with the ends, or in more concrete terms, that the form of the revolutionary movement should anticipate the form of post-revolutionary society.

p The attempt to achieve a proper balance between ends and means, which when taken to extremes results in an identification of the two, has a real foundation: it stems from the growing gulf within advanced capitalist society between the ends and the means, a gulf which is degenerating into an inversion of the two. This inversion, which is essentially anti-humanitarian, in so far as the ultimate end of all social activity—man—becomes the means, the means for achieving a different, inhuman and anti-human end: man becomes the appendage of the machine, the means for “money-making”, etc. At certain stages of historical development—to be more precise within the framework of the "realm of necessity"—this inversion can be historically justified, just as slavery or capitalism can be “justified”. This inversion only starts gradually to disappear in the "realm of freedom" and, until that stage is achieved, the gulf between ends and means is inevitable and the crux of 39 the matter is to what extent the width of that gulf can be historically vindicated.

p The radicals are poor historians, and indeed this is the key to their tragedy. Tired of waiting for a truly humane future, which as they see it is delayed only because its possibility has not yet been appreciated, tired of hypocritical speeches from politicising moralists and moralising politicians they are eager to accelerate the march of time, they are anxious today to live their tomorrows and want the very means of negating the present to serve as the embodiment of the future as they envisage it. "For these young people (Paris students in revolt—E. B.) the revolutionary movement is not only the pattern of future society which Bakunin believed that it should be: it is future society. Their Utopia is realised here and now in the process of revolution itself. A typical example of this way of thinking is a remark of a Columbia student, printed in the Cox Commission’s report: ’Always meetings and more meetings lasting long into the night. Participatory democracy. There was a real community spirit; everything belonged to everybody; the building was “liberated”. Girls ... were not expected to do the kitchen work alone for this was a “liberated” area, and boys had to help. Couples slept together in public view, nobody cared, we were “liberated”: here was a single commune in which adult hypocrisies did not apply any longer, where people shared and shared alike, where democracy decided everything, where people were free of adult values and codes....’ This aspect of the revolution has become of extreme importance in contemporary movements of revolt. In a sense very different from that intended by Eduard Bernstein in a famous phrase: ’The goal is nothing, the movement is all’ ”.  [39•*  As a matter of fact for the young radicals or at least for part of them the movement is not an end in itself, as certain critics maintain, but a goal which is being or has already been embodied. This idea expresses that very " purposefulness bereft of purpose" of which Kant spoke, namely a purpose not in the name of anything outside itself, but a purpose as such, for its own sake.

p What social phenomena explain this resurgence of anarchistic ideas? Why have anarchist ideas once more become influential—now not only in France and Italy, where they were firmly rooted as far back as the last century, but also in such countries as the United States or West Germany? The answer should perhaps be sought in actual social processes at work within modern capitalist society.

p Anarchism came into being as the reaction on the part of petty-bourgeois strata and “rootless” intellectuals to the phenomena already familiar in the nineteenth century, namely the growing role of the state principle in the life of society, that is the intensification of political, legal, moral and other forms of oppression of the working people by the bourgeoisie. At the same time anarchism was a reaction to the formalisation of bourgeois democracy. Moreover it voiced the interests of those very strata of the working people, who were subjected most of all to the onslaught of the state machine; on the one hand those who (as far as the level and condition of their consciousness, determined by their social status, were concerned) were least prepared for adequate appreciation of the processes at work in bourgeois society, and on the other those who, after being ousted from their habitual social niche felt most acutely the impact of the etatisation of social life and the degeneration of bourgeois liberties, and who sought an outlet for their despair in a desperate fight against capitalism. These sectors included the petty bourgeoisie and declasse elements and also the most backward strata of the working class. Lenin pointed out that "anarchism is a product of despair. The psychology of the unsettled intellectual or the vagabond and not of the proletarian”.  [40•*  In so far as these strata were numerous in countries such as Spain or France, it was these countries which provided the traditional sources of anarchistic ideas.

p The transition of capitalism from free competition to monopolies, and later the acceleration of the merging between the monopolies and the state and efforts to ensure maximum intensification of the power of capital, led to a sharp increase in the pressure to bear on all aspects of the individual’s 41 activities via the etatist principle. Nowadays it is not just the lumpen-proletariat and the lumpen-bourgeoisie but also wide strata of bourgeois society, which have been subjected to pressure from the bourgeois state machine, and the process of etatisation has swept across not only Europe but also—and to a greater extent—the United States. The individual in modern advanced bourgeois society has become a “state” individual swallowed up in the all-embracing state. At the same time increasing etatisation has gone hand in hand with the devaluation of bourgeois democracy and political ideals and the elimination of the last safetyvalves for society’s control over the mounting power of the state machine.

p The growing subjection of the man-in-the-street in bourgeois society to the state machine, the narrowing-down of the scope for free activity for those strata which previously enjoyed the privilege of relative independence of the state, the increasing numbers of members of society ousted from their familiar social niche—all helped to broaden the social basis for anarchism, making many anarchist ideas attractive also for those who "have something to lose" but at the same time are unwilling to reconcile themselves with such loss, above all with loss of their “free” status, or who are concerned at the uncertainty of their future status. The last category includes first and foremost the student body whose numbers and weight in society are steadily on the increase.

p Individualism has always been a typical feature of anarchism. Lenin wrote that ".. .anarchism is bourgeois individualism in reverse. Individualism as the basis of the entire anarchist world outlook.”  [41•*  The development of state- monopoly capitalism predetermined the gradual shift of ideas based on individualism into the background, for individualism had been far more in tune with the age of free enterprise and individual initiative. Yet while rejecting individualistic ideas bourgeois social science was unable to come forward with any collectivist theories equipped to provide a feasible means enabling the individual to realise his potential. In these conditions anarchism appears as an inside-out version of traditional bourgeois individualism, as a means 42 of making the individual look inwards for the purpose of self-affirmation within the "lonely crowd”.

However the radical movements of the sixties in the capitalist countries were not a resurgence of anarchist movements of the type which appeared in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. While it suited the overall mood of the New Left, anarchism was nevertheless not fitted to satisfy them wholly; as a product of the nineteenth century it did not reflect many dimensions of the social reality within which the movements of the sixties took shape. Theories were required in which anarchist ideas and attitudes would provide a component or emotional packaging.