p Anarcho-asceticism, a form of hope-inspired active nihilism,  [176•*  is closely linked with the stoic and, partly, the quietist ideal in life. Relative to these ideals it sometimes performs a pedagogical and ritualistic role in accordance with the original meaning of the word (in antiquity it meant merely training the body and will, i.e., exercises, and not a cult of sacrifice and self-torture).

p At the same time, anarcho-asceticism is independent, not at all necessarily in its most familiar, religious variant. As in the case of stoicism and quietism, it is guided primarily by the nihilistic vision of the world, believing that it is possible, chiefly through spiritual self-restructuring, to avoid all the theoretical and practical effects and conditions stemming from this vision.

p In all its postulates the anarcho-ascetic ideal is, above all, anti-consumer, a contrast to hedonism. Hence its forthrightness and even crudeness, that liken it to its antipode. Its logic is utterly simple: within the framework of social organisation life brings man nothing save suffering; in face of it the individual and all mankind are helpless; the only way out is to reassess suffering; a new attitude to suffering that can elevate man must be worked out on the basis of this reassessment; the attitude to suffering must be such as to facilitate the activation of creative initiatives, open man to compassion and lead to moral renewal. According to this logic, in assimilating a definite type of culture the individual finds himself helpless before the Trojan horse of social influence and subjected to behaviour patterns and bans alien to him. That is why for anarcho-asceticism the alpha and omega of independence lies in allergic antipathy for culture, social values and forms of association, i.e., in nihilism. Whereas to achieve stabilisation and prosperity bourgeois society is prepared to sacrifice true culture for culture serving such stabilisation, anarcho-asceticism is prepared, in token of protest, to sacrifice true culture in order to destroy conformist pseudo-culture. In the opinion of anarcho-asceticism, all bridges to society must be burnt, in the most shocking way if necessary.

p Anarcho-asceticism recruits supporters chiefly from among young people, particularly students, from among those strata of the urban population that urbanisation and the capitalist form of progress have dislodged from traditional forms of existence (former peasants, artisans, small shop-keepers, backward segments of workers, immigrants, the inhabitants of slums, and so forth), and from among people subjected to racial and national oppression. It recruits supporters not simply from among misfits and derelicts, who are generally more attracted by quietist hopes, but from among those who 178 have preserved the spirit of protest and insubmission. Anarcho-asceticism’s vital guidelines stir these people, inducing them to begin a conscious struggle against bourgeois society. This contains the realistic possibility of joining democratic movements and adopting new views.

p This was pointed out by Frederick Engels when he drew a distinction between plebeian and proletarian asceticism, on the one hand, which was directed against inequality reigning in society, a form of protest against the luxury and idleness of the ruling classes, and bourgeois asceticism, on the other, which was a manifestation of philistine cupidity and greed.  [178•*  However, asceticism’s spirit of protest and rebellion should not be exaggerated. With the development of the proletariat’s class-consciousness it increasingly plays a negative moral and political role, camouilaging passiveness, diverting people from the struggle and channelling energy solely towards moral self-improvement, towards the struggle against one’s own nature.

p It is, however, able to attract also people from the privileged strata. It is particularly attractive to some ,young people from well-to-do families who do not desire a technobureaucratic career. These people are impressed by the radicalism of its projection beyond the ordinary, its cult of barrenness, its ban on contact with official bourgeois culture, its state of psychological exaltation and political confusion. Despair becomes a magnet. They furtively cast envious glances at their anarcho-hedonistic brothers. They regard the aim of immediate destructive action, of setting up an anchoretic anti-community  [178•**  as the operational reply to the need 179 for action, for giving an outlet to spontaneous energy, a form of satisfying their impatience and reassessing “direct action”, on the one hand, and a form of satiating their desire to flaunt despair, “to be unique”, to stun, to be demolishers, on the other. They have broken away only from the direct influence of bourgeois ideology but found themselves stuck in social weightlessness.

p Thus, under one and the same umbrella of anarcho-asceticism there are two different streams, two frames of mind. They are induced to strive for the same ideal by different motives, and for that reason despite their mutual infection they have different outlets to practice and the further evolution of views. One of these outlets we have already noted. The second (attracting social dregs who have succumbed to corruption) erupts as active nihilism and renunciation of organised action against the capitalist social system as such.

p Consistent fulfilment of ascetic-nihilistic injunctions leads to ultra-anarchism. In the demoralised consciousness the negation of the capitalist system, bureaucracy, mass technology, conformist morals and law, the official religion, the sense of contentedness, and also quietist estrangement as passive reaction to alienation and imagined means of restoring freedom and originality, develops into a savage rebellion. However, its purpose is not to overthrow the bourgeois system, for to do this it has to be orientated on considerable social forces, on organising, uniting and educating these forces, on understanding the prospects for the struggle, which is categorically disallowed by nihilism’s fundamental postulates. For that reason the aim is only to shatter the system, to disorganise it as far as possible. It urges pulling down everything—institutions and the family, corporations and schools, parties and banks, trade unions and social insurance agencies—everything in sight.

p What is the purpose of this obstruction and destruction? Steeped in anarcho-asceticism, nihilism knows only what it does not want and is incredibly uninformed about what it wants. The spirit of insubordination and resistance to responsibility cannot, however, replace a well-considered affirmative programme, or a scientific analysis of the objective laws of social development, or systematic work to achieve the aims of the struggle, aims which nihilism interprets without discernment. Although it waits for the “great day”, it does not know how to muster the forces to create great events. Besides, he who strives to get everything in order to avoid nothing most surely remains with nothing.

p Anarcho-ascetic nihilism stigmatises non-mutinous behaviour pattern and ways of thinking equally as time-serving. This brings it to the simplified dilemma: either conformist contentedness with an apologetic attitude to bourgeois reality, or active non-conformism springing from the sense of wretchedness. In its striving to destroy, this nihilistic ideal calls down on the capitalist system’s head crises capable of paralysing it in many ways. But from these crises ( economic, military, political, cultural) it expects not changes for the better but mainly abstract confirmation that it is right. The anarcho-ascetic ideal is antipathic not only to the bourgeois regime but also to any other social system and, consequently, to the organised political mass struggle, which it regards as an alienating force, as usurpation of freedom. Anarchic nihilism says: Fight, but on no account dare to win, for “revolutions are truths only as processes, but they are most certainly false as regimes”.  [180•*  It even goes so far as to try to use impulsive revolutionary enthusiasm against the revolution, and is prepared to destroy everything except the actual foundations of bourgeois society.

p Being a transformed variety of social helplessness, anarcho-asceticism derives satisfaction not so much from abnegation of career, prudence and the blessings and pleasures of consumer society as from the spirit and acts of subversion, scandalous insubordination and improvised protests. Its excited state of mind and actions of this kind that 181 sometimes come near to vandalism and accentuatedly primitive forms of satisfying physiological needs, contain and manifest something in the nature of a morbid, pathological and neurotic delight in destruction. Both nihilism and the forms of “surmounting” it are taken to extremes, beyond which lie only suicide or madness. There is much truth in the reproach hurled by a stoic at a rebellious ascetic: “You must remember that even a rebellion can reduce you to a state of thing!”

p It should not be forgotten that anarcho-asceticism easily degenerates into anarcho-terrorism. The purpose of its political excesses (assassinations, provocations, abductions, acts of terrorism by “urban guerrillas”, and retribution against apostasy in its own ranks on the basis of the gangster moral of collective guarantee) is to whip up social tension and goad the philistine’s fear of its possible effects, with the result that these excesses have the destructive force of mosquito bites only relative to the system it wants to reduce to ruin. In all other aspects they are not so harmless or, in any case, their negative effects are much greater than the directly calculable social and moral losses.

p In addition to the fact that they infect social consciousness with the germs of social unruliness, fanaticism and brutality, giving an example of a smooth transition from ultrarevolutionarism to links with the criminal world (for example, the evolution of the notorious group led by Andreas Baader and Ulrika Meinhoff), it is important to take into account the point that these excesses give the conservative political forces the possibility of making capital out of the “anarchist threat”, to lay it on thick by depicting them as the .self-exposing strategy and tactics of the entire Left camp, notably of the Communists. On this foundation conservative policy seeks to inflame annoyance and fear among the philistines, worried by the frequent spasms of various crises (from economic to ecological), their nostalgia for the “good old days" of stability and, as a consequence of these moods, prevent them from supporting ideas calling for a radical social and political reorganisation of society.

p Moreover, experience shows that Right-extremist, neofascist elements hasten to use any advantageous situation. Their ears pricked to catch changes in the feeling of the 182 middle strata, they act on the pretext of safeguarding immutable moral principles, depicting their activity as a “ foresighted mission" of saving society from anarchism, which cannot be suppressed by the bourgeois parliamentary state with its consumer ideology and faceless technocratic leadership.

Such are the political effects of super-revolutionary anarcho-asceticism, becoming a factor splitting the democratic forces and a blind instrument of conservatism and extreme reaction.