A CRITIQUE OF ANARCHIST COMMUNISM, by Ken Knudson.
($8 from Underworld Amusements)
This short work (80 pages) attempts to put anarchism back upon a footing of desire for freedom. Marxism, however, is the tar-baby that anarchism seems less and less able to un-stick itself from. In a valuable Afterword, the author addresses persons who are caught In this La Brea pit and have perhaps not yet sunk out of sight:
“…When it comes to economics, your mind suddenly becomes rigid. You forget your sound anarchist principles and surrender without a struggle the one thing that makes you an anarchist: your freedom…
“In commendably searching for remedies against poverty, inequality and injustice, you forsake the doctrine of freedom for the doctrine of authority…”
Then, quoting our vanished friend of so many years ago, S.E. Parker:
“‘The trouble is that what you call anarchism is at best merely a hodge-podge, halfway position precariously suspended between socialism and anarchism. You yearn for the ego-sovereignty, the liberating individualism, that is the essence of anarchism, but remain captives of the democratic-proletarian-collectivist myths of socialism. Until you can cut the umbilical cord that still connects you to the socialist womb you will never be able to come to your full power as self-owning individuals. You will still be lured along the path to the lemonade springs and cigarette trees of the Big Rock Candy Mountains.'”
We recommend this small book, but in a forlorn sense. Like a doctor looking on as a sick man in the direst straits convulses and vomits, we now rattle a lone last capsule in its empty bottle and reflect that at one time an extended course of massive doses might have burned out the disease. But the antibiotic wasn’t taken regularly or in large enough quantities. And now for that patient it is, at last,too late.
