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The New Left was a term applied to activists, educators, and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had focused mostly on labour unionization and questions of social class. The”New Left” was associated with the hippies and college campus protest movements. At the core of this was the Students for a Democratic Society, or SDS. They sought to correct the perceived errors of “Old Left” parties in the post-WWII period.

Post-left anarchy is a recent current in anarchist thought that promotes a critique of anarchism’s relationship to traditional leftism. Some post-leftists seek to escape the confines of ideology in general, also presenting a critique of organizations and morality. The contemporary network of collectives CrimethInc. is an exponent of general post-left anarchist views.

Primitivism is a particularly extreme class of post-leftist anarchism that believes that civilization is the root cause of oppression. Some notable primitvists, such as John Zerzan, advocate humanity’s return to more close-knit, tribalistic hunter-gatherer societies as a means of reclaiming our lost humanity. Others, such as Derrick Jensen, argue that destruction of civilization is the only way that we can prevent the complete destruction of our planet, and begin to rebuild society along a more sustainable framework.

Insurrectionalist Anarchism is the belief that insurrectionary tactics will provide a catalyst for social change, by motivating disillusioned citizens to rise up and destroy the existing social order. Insurrectionalists believe that tactics of building mass movements necessarily require working with discredited or outdated organizations, such as unions, and that struggles for reforms are at best useless, or at worst, simply opportunities for the ruling class to prolong its own existence through the placation of large segments of the population - thereby sapping their desire for revolution.

Mass Anarchism is based on the argument that without a popular base of support, revolution is impossible. Mass anarchists struggle towards winning people over to the ideals of anarchism by participating in a wide variety of existing social struggles and emphasizing anarchism’s historical values of decentralization, class struggle, secular anti-statism and direct democracy.

Manarkid is a play on words described as: Man + Anarchist + Kid. ‘Manarchism’ is a huge problem on the left. Patriarchy is often viewed as a side issue, rather than one of the most integrated systemic causes of oppression. Manarchism typically manifests in young males who have not made the connection between all forms of oppression. It is especially the case for those wearing the badge of Anarchy as if it meant people should be free from all restraints ( including personal responsibility, and recognizing how individual actions will affect the greater community at large) - which is clearly a mistaken interpretation of the origins and true meaning of the word.

Hipster is a slang term that is often used to describe types of young, recently-settled urban middle class adults and older teenagers with interests in non -mainstream fashion and culture, particularly alternative music, indie rock, independent film and magazines. Some say that the subculture’s original menace has long been abandoned and has been replaced with the form of not-quite-passive aggression called snark.

“Hipsters manage to attract a loathing unique in its intensity. Critics have described the loosely defined group as smug, full of contradictions and, ultimately, the dead end of Western civilization”
Dan Fletcher, Time Magazine

Considering the number of public relations agents, televangelists, self-help gurus and other salesman competing to convert them, the hesitance of the masses to get involved in any kind of social movement is actually a healthy self-defense mechanism. Consequently, the greatest challenge for those who seek common cause with others to make revolutionary change is to avoid making them defensive.

The tendency of radical politics to make people feel defensive may currently be a greater obstacle to social transformation than any corporate control or government repression. It is caused in part by the attitudes of activists themselves: many activists have invested in their activist identities as an act of compensation at least as much as out of a genuine desire to make things happen – for them, activism serves the same function that machismo, fashion and popularity serve for others. Activists who are still serving the imperatives of insecurity tend to alienate others so that they can stand alone as the virtuous vanguard. Seeing such activists in action, people who placate their insecurities in other ways frequently conclude that revolutionary struggle has nothing to do with their lives.

Whenever we are considering a revolutionary project, we must ask ourselves: Are we certain of our motivations? Will our words and deeds mobilize and enable, or immobilize and discourage? Are we trying to create a spectacle of our freedom and compassion or erudition, to establish our status as revolutionaries or leaders or intellectuals, to claim the moral high ground, to win at the childish game of who is most radical or most oppressed (as if suffering was quantifiable!) – are we still seeking power and revenge in the guise of liberation? People can tell when you are lording yourself over them or playing a role, just as they can sense when you are acting honestly from a place of desire and good faith. They’re much more likely to respond to that, since their lives already include too much role-playing and rivalry.

We would do better to abandon the crusade to convert the masses, with its patronizing implications that others are lazy, weak, victimized, or in need of guidance. Instead, we can begin by reaching out to those with whom we have the most in common, to whom our perspectives can be most useful and with whom cooperation comes most naturally. Likewise, we can work with those who are already active in other communities, insofar as we share values and goals – this is vastly preferable to entering others’ communities and attempting to organize them according to the doctrines of outsiders. We can help others defend themselves from the encroachments of power and ideology, offering them the tools we have developed in our own struggles to apply as the see fit.

Finally, we can find common cause with people on the basis of all the social and “antisocial” things they are already doing and feeling: theft, vandalism, graffiti, “laziness”, rebelliousness, apparent nihilism, not to mention compassion and cooperation, wherever they appear. This is the real purpose of the glorification of shoplifting, vagrancy and so on that some radical propaganda indulges in: not to argue that shoplifting itself is revolutionary (or that one must shoplift to be radical, as if revolution was a commodity in a scarcity economy!), but to establish connections to the daily lives and resistances of individuals who have not necessarily articulated a desire for revolution but are already acting, however impetuously, outside the logic of the ruling order.

The private longings and frustrations people feel – their hatred for busywork, the pleasure in transgressions they find they share with teenagers and anarchists, the instinctive suspicion with which they view all totalitarian systems – provide a starting point for a resistance that proceeds from the individual motivations and standpoints of all who comprise it rather than the demands of political parties and dogmas. This is the only kind of resistance that can rescue us from authoritarian power and authoritarian ideology alike.

From Expect Resistance: A Field Manual - CrimethInc ex- Workers’ Collective

By Neon Trotsky

One need not go far in historical literature to discover the divisive nature of the left. This enigmatic concept was conceived in the mid-nineteenth century with Marx and Engels’ theories, but has been reinvented throughout the twentieth century, and has been associated with political movements from Fabian socialism in nineteenth-century Britain to Bolshevism in Russia and Progressivism to the New Deal in the United States. In Canada “the New Left,” arguably influenced by all of those political movements, has been just as interesting of a phenomenon. Perhaps because it is a relatively new ideology, arising only after the nineteen fifties in the Atlantic World, or maybe because politicians of all stripes in the US and Canada have used “leftist” principles to gain the popular support of the working class, the “New Left” lacks a cohesive identity. The ambiguous history of the left, a lack of true identity for leftist politics in the Atlantic World, and legally sanctioned state repression of political expressions deemed “leftist,” have been exacerbated by leftist politics’ inherent factionalism.

The factionalism of the historical left stems from deeper philosophical problems than those that currently constitute divergent “New Left” concerns in Canada and the United States. Namely, these “New Left” concerns have collectively composed the struggle for a “universal” “state-of-nature baseline”—i.e. food and shelter for every person (possibly with certain amenities like clothing) and universal access to healthcare and education. Whence the medium (or media) for the harvest, distribution and regulation of resources necessary for the aforementioned universal state-of-nature baseline? Does this medium lie in “the left” or off of the political spectrum and outside of state control? Do anarchists consider that the ideology is indeed a “leftist” one? And, regardless of the answers to those questions, should a universal state-of-nature baseline be on an anarchist agenda? You will certainly see these interests on contemporary leftist political platform. In any case, most compassionate, rational beings would agree, at least in principle, with free access to that which is necessary for survival; problems, issues, arise when subjective standards (of living and necessity) differ, though. And so the cycle of social interaction continues between 1) the difficulties of harvesting, distributing and regulating the natural resources that we so greatly depend upon in civilized society, and 2) the individual freedom to choose, the ultimate decision of free will in any matter, that we so intensely cherish, regardless of ideological predispositions.

Amidst these cyclical patterns and established institutions of human habituation, at least allow yourself to be guided by reason. Just over two hundred years ago, the agents of the French Revolution and the Enlightenment hailed reason as the guiding force of a comfortable human existence. But we know that definitions change over time, the historical context in which they are used changes, and circumstances are constantly changing. Reason for the twenty-first century comes in the form of “thinking otherwise”—in the form of socialist democracy *. The ideology of socialist democracy is so open that, in principle, it draws from political philosophies and theories ranging from anarchism, communism and, yes, even capitalism. There’s no loss without gain and no gain without loss. That is a psychological resolution to the historical human obsession with dichotomy (or what has become known in postmodern parlance as binary thinking). There is no paradox or contradiction without human perception and consciousness—only unity. The criticism of “the left” from “the left,” the self-criticism, can stop with just one question: What is “the left?” What is its purpose?

The economic determinism of the “traditional left,” that was based heavily upon Marxist theory (in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries), was altered by the popularization of particular ideals of the left that took place in the 1960s. The disestablishmentarianism of the ‘counter-culture’ within North America had a defining influence on what could be loosely referred to as the current ‘leftist’ worldview. Because of this lasting influence, it becomes appropriate to concentrate mainly on the “New Left” while simultaneously (but latently) acknowledging the roots of the “New Left” that lie deep in Marxist theory, and the “traditional left.” That explains both 1) this article’s emphasis on the “New Left,” and the factionalism and political infighting that resulted from a shift in the definition of “the left,” and 2) the de-emphasis upon the temporal historical jump from “traditional left” to “New Left.” In any case, our concerns here should be focused more upon the present and contemporary society than on the past, and the history of the development of the left (despite the epistemological importance and value of that history). So even if you throw the peace, love and understanding (the more freedom-loving, anti-authoritarian, and pacifistic elements) of the “New Left” out the window, the fundamental concerns of the “traditional left” (that of Bukharin [c.1923] and others based upon the dictatorship of the proletariat, workers’ ownership of the means of production and economic determinism more generally) remain even today. Somewhere along the line, there was much confusion, misrepresentation and misunderstanding between these “leftist” entities of different times and places. Despite that, what remains important now is both the recognition of these historical difficulties within the left, and the resolution of this apparently innate self-criticism in order to develop united and coherent sociopolitical economic strategies to change the system (because I think that is something upon which we can all agree).

The left has historically been perceived as a revolutionary force willing to disrupt established social order to further the cause of social equality and justice for all. What is usually left out, (no pun intended), is the fact that the majority of states that have proclaimed, at one time or another, leftist governance have been heavily state-controlled and state-centralized. Many leftist movements in contemporary North American society, on the other hand, denounce state control. So, the questions arise: Is division of the political left inevitable? Is self-criticism simply a necessary part of the leftist political discourse? Or, is the fact that I am concluding with only questions indicative of the fact that “the left,” whatever one may conceive that to be, will always have more questions than answers, and therefore will only ever contribute, from the margins, to a politically centralized, statist, socioeconomic status quo?

* By “socialist democracy,” I do not mean the social democracy of the short-lived Social Democrats in the Russian Dumas of 1905, nor do I mean the Social Democracy of the Scandinavian countries in the face of Soviet invasion after 1917. Socialist democracy means something entirely different: it means getting over the collective fear of the concept of socialism in North America, and accepting Canada and the United States as socialist countries; that, of course, may seem like a pipe dream.

From The Abolition of the State: Anarchist & Marxist Perspectives - By Wayne Price

There are those who accept the existing state and seek only to make it more democratic and use it to tame the excesses of capitalism. These are the liberals. There are those who believe that the existing state may be used to gradually change capitalism into socialism, by means of nationalizing the corporations or by other forms of intervention into the economy. These are reform socialists or social democrats. The liberals and social democrats overlap.

Then there are those called revolutionary socialists or communists. They aim to overthrow the existing state. They may support struggles for reforms and make demands on the existing state; what distinguishes them from reformists is that their strategic goal is the destruction of the state. Of these, Marxists intend to replace the existing state with a new state - the ‘worker’s state’ or ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. Various nationalists of oppressed nations or races have a similar goal of creating new states. Anarchists on the contrary, plan to go immediately into a stateless society.

Put another way, socialists may be divided between those who wish to create a new society by using the state -either the existing one or a new one- and those who think a new society must be in opposition to all states. That is, socialists are either state socialists or libertarian socialists (mostly anarchists).

Wayne Price is a long-time revolutionary activist and writes regularly for Anarkismo.net, The Utopian, and The Northeastern Anarchist. Previously a member of the Love & Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation, he is now a member of the NYC local of the Northeastern Federation of Anarchist-Communists (NEFAC).

From Anarchism, Insurrections and Insurrectionalism - By Joe Black

Insurrections - the armed rising of the people- has always been close to the heart of anarchism. European radical politics of the previous hundred years had been dominated by insurrections ever since the successful insurrection in France of 1789 had sparked off the process leading to the overthrow of the feudal order across the globe.

Early anarchists embraced the new forms of workers’ organizations that were emerging, and in particular the International Workers Association or First International. Although they saw the power of the working class organized in unions, anarchists insisted that insurrections would still be needed to bring down the old ruling class.

Anarchist communism was clarified in 1926 by a group of revolutionary exiles analyzing why their efforts to date had failed. The Platformists wrote:”The progress of modern society: the technical evolution of capital and the perfection of its political system, fortifies the power of the ruling classes, and makes the struggle against them more difficult… Analysis of modern society leads us to the conclusion that the only way to transform capitalist society into a society of free workers is the way of violent revolution.”

Another significant group was ‘the Friends of Durruti’. This group was composed of members of the CNT but was highly critical of the role the CNT * played in 1936. “The CNT ought to have leapt into the driver’s seat in the country, delivering a severe coup de grace to all that is outmoded and archaic. In this way we could have won the war and saved the revolution… But it did the opposite … It breathed a lungful of oxygen into an anemic terror-stricken bourgeoisie.”

*The CNT, or National Federation of Workers was the primary anarchist trade union active during the Spanish Civil War. In July of 1936, they successfully resisted a fascist coup d’etat against the socialist Republican government and won control of large sections of the Spanish countryside - where they proceeded to implement a social transformation towards libertarian communism.

The left, even the revolutionary left, post-leftists argue, is anachronistic and incapable of creating change. Post-left anarchy of¬fers critiques of radical strategies and tactics which it considers antiquated: the demonstration, class-oriented struggle, focus on tradition, and the inability to escape the confines of history. The book Anarchy in the Age of Dinosaurs, for example, criticizes traditional leftist ideas and classical anarchism while calling for a rejuvenated anarchist movement.

Why has the oppressed proletariat not come to its senses and joined you in your fight for world liberation? … Because they know that your antiquated styles of protest – your marches, hand held signs, and gatherings – are now powerless to effect real change because they have become such a predictable part of the status quo. They know that your post-Marxist jargon is off-putting because it really is a language of mere academic dispute, not a weapon capable of undermining systems of control.
— Nadia C.: Your Politics Are Boring as Fuck

Some post-anarchists have come to similar conclusions, if for different reasons:

There is a certain litany of oppressions which most radical theories are obliged to pay homage to. Why is it when someone is asked to talk about radical politics today one inevitably refers to this same tired, old list of struggles and identities? Why are we so unimaginative politically that we cannot think outside of this “shopping list” of oppressions?
-Saul Newman: From Bakunin to Lacan

Post leftists point towards four tendencies that they find problematic with traditional left-wing organizing:

•Reductionism: Only particular aspects of the social struggle are included in these organizations. Other aspects are ignored, invalidated or repressed, leading to further and further compartmentalization of the struggle. Which in turn facilitates manipulation by elites and their eventual transformation into purely reformist lobbying societies with all generalized, radical critique emptied out.

•Specialization or Professionalism: Those most involved in the day-to-day operation of the organization are selected—or self-selected—to perform increasingly specialized roles within the organization, often leading to an official division between leaders and led, with gradations of power and influence introduced in the form of intermediary roles in the evolving organizational hierarchy.

•Substitutionism: The formal organization increasingly be¬comes the focus of strategy and tactics rather than the people-in-revolt. In theory and practice, the organization tends to be progressively substituted for the people, the organization’s leadership—especially if it has become formal—tends to substitute itself for the organization as a whole, and eventually a maximal leader often emerges who ends up embodying and controlling the organization.

•Ideology: The organization becomes the primary subject of theory with individuals assigned roles to play, rather than people constructing their own self-theories. All but the most self-consciously anarchistic formal organizations tend to adapt some form of collectivist ideology, in which the social group at some level is acceded to have more political reality than the free individual. Wherever sovereignty lies, there lies political authority; if sovereignty is not dissolved into each and every person it always requires the subjugation of individuals to a group in some form.

The Post-Left defines itself, not by what it champions, but rather by what it opposes: The Left. At this point, it is worth recalling the origins of the anarchist movement: it grew from criticisms that certain libertarian factions had with the Marxian dominated international workers movement (that’s right, The Historical Left). Anarchism has always been a part of The Left. Yet Post-Leftists declare themselves anarchists, while disassociating themselves from the Left. The thoughtful observer can only conclude that Post-Leftism is a secessionist movement, seeking to lead anarchists out of the clutches of the leftist enemy, and on to more fruitful terrain.

What terrain is that, you may well ask? What program do Post-Leftists propose? Well, none, actually. Post-Leftism is “not a movement”, nor seemingly even a tendency within anarchism. It is, rather, a critique. Nothing more. It is “a tool of critical thinking”.

There is nothing inherently bad in criticism. Marxism originated as a critique of capitalism, and anarchism, as a critique of Marxism. However, political movements throughout history - or throughout “modern” history, at any rate - have consisted of more than mere critiques, they have also identified a social base and proposed

a program of action. Both Marxism and anarchism target social bases, the proposed agent of revolutionary change: for orthodox Marxists, the industrial proletariat, for latter day anarchists, workers, and the otherwise oppressed. Furthermore, these political movements (like their sundry splinters and offshoots) have programs of action: various, complex, often confusing and some¬times seemingly contradictory, but programs they have. But not the Post-Leftists, for whom criticism is an end in itself.

With Post-Leftism naught but a critical tool, rather than a movement, there remains but one anarchist movement (with myriad tendencies within, the anarcho-syndicalists, anarchist communists, and so on.). And yet Post-Leftists accuse the anarchist movement… of being insufficiently “anarchist”. Too “Leftist”. So we see that Post-Leftism is an ethereal, self referential critique of a critique, a supposed political movement but with no social base, no program, nothing in fact of any concrete substance whatsoever. When critics query, “We know what you are against, but what are you for?”, Post-Leftists vaguely reply, “Anarchy”. “Anarchy” is said to be anarchism… minus the ideology!

- Randy Lowens: Postmodernism in Literature and Politics: Experimental Fiction and Post-Left Anarchy (Anarkismo.net)

Love and Rage was a revolutionary anarchist organization active from 1989-1998, with chapters in the US, Canada and Mexico (where it was known, appropriately enough, as Amor y Rabia). Originally conceived as a newspaper, the organization grew into a formally established network, and finally into the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation, in 1993.

The organization can be credited with many important advancements in anarchist theory and tactics. As far back as 1990, they were actively attacking the ecological consequences of capitalism. In 1991 they called the first national black bloc in the United States, as a breakaway from a larger anti-war march opposing the Persian Gulf War. In the years following this, their members were actively involved in building up Anti-Racist Action (ARA) and Zapatista solidarity groups, as well as participating in prison solidarity, abortion rights and anti-police brutality work.

From the beginning Love and Rage members showed little regard for anarchist orthodoxies, and adopted positions heavily influenced by several varieties of Marxism, most notably support for national liberation struggles and embracing a white privilege analysis of racism in the U.S. that argued that the material and psychological benefits received by white workers at the expense of non-white (especially African American) workers undermined the basis of multi-racial working class unity and therefore had to be confronted directly if such unity was desired.

While there were several important reasons for the organizations eventual dissolution, the conventional analysis of the group’s break-up focuses on a split between two camps: supporters of an article entitled What We Believe, which argued that the group was in danger of straying from its anarchist principles, and those who sided with a response entitled What We Do, which argued that the group should focus primarily on white privilege, and building a new movement that was drawn from the struggles of every day oppressed peoples.

What We Believe

We believe that:

1 )Revolutionary anarchism is the program of a self-organized, cooperative, decentralized, and thoroughly democratic society. All social needs will be provided by a network of voluntary, self-managed associations.

2) This makes anarchism central to our politics. Anarchism’s mistakes occur within a basically liberating vision. What matters is not anarchism as a label but anarchism as a vision and a program.

3) Especially, Marxism should be seen as an opponent of anarchism. Unlike the errors of anarchists, Marxism’s “mistake”, is basic to its real program, the creation of a new form of authoritarian state and society.

4) The state should be replaced with a self-organized society- a federation of popular councils and committees and associations, such as have appeared in revolution after revolution.

5) Struggles for reforms should be supported whenever they mean real benefits. But these must be real benefits for the people, not just illusions.

6) Where nationalist or anti-imperialist revolts take place we should work for their victory while simultaneously trying to convince people to organize independently of the nationalists
and to struggle to increase mass popular power before, during and after these struggles.

7) There is no one form of oppression which underlies all others and is the most important. Rather, all forms of oppression are aspects of a single modern authoritarian system.

8 ) The mainstream of anarchism has historically opposed capitalism in favour of a cooperative, nonprofit, self-managed economy - that is, libertarian socialism.

9) The most revolutionary forces are likely to be found at the intersection of various oppressions -such as black workers or working women.

10) Oppressed people are divided by relative privileges of gender, race, class, and nationality and are blinded by irrational and authoritarian beliefs.

11) We want to build an organization that embodies this perspective. Anarchists are a distinct minority. We want to persuade people to rely on themselves by building democratic mass organizations counterpoised to the rulers. It is part of the process of popular self-organization.

From ‘What We Believe’ - Dec ‘97 Love and Rage Federation Bulletin

What We Do

Love and Rage has always occupied a somewhat heretical place in the anarchist movement. We discuss issues that other anarchists ignore and we take positions that other anarchists view as beyond the pale. If we have succeeded in redefining anarchism in the US on certain questions, the inherent contradiction in our project is probably most clearly reflected in the absence of any similar project that defines itself as anarchist outside of North America.

I want to be part of a serious and effective revolutionary organization that is committed to an anti-authoritarian vision of the new society we are fighting for and that clearly understands the historical failure of “state socialism” in its myriad forms in the 20th century. For ten years we have sought to build such an organization and have defined that project within the anarchist tradition. It seems clear to me now that we overestimated our ability to redefine that tradition and underestimated the amount of baggage that it brought with it. At the same time I think the anarchist critiques of other traditions (particularly Leninism) remain fundamentally correct and I have no interest in embracing any other existing historical trend. Basically I think all existing revolutionary theory is out of touch with the world we live in. This has to do both with weaknesses in the theory that have been there from the start as well as important changes in the world itself that the theory has failed to keep up with.

If there is going to be a coherent anti-authoritarian revolutionary theory and practice in the coming period it must be made anew by people participating in real social struggles on the new terrain of the post-colonial, post-industrial, post-modern, Post Raisin Bran world we actually live in.

Based on our experiences as an organization over the past ten years and based on our knowledge of the historical accomplishments of the anarchist movement around the world since the Second World War, on what foundation can we base the hope that a significant number of people in the US, let alone the millions of people it will actually take to win, are going to be won to a revolutionary politics that calls itself anarchist? I would suggest that there is exactly no evidence to support this hope and that it is, for all intents and purposes, an act of religious faith. I’ll go even further. Revolutions are life and death struggles. People are right not to put their life on the line in the name of an ideology that can’t answer some of the most basic questions that people know they will face in such a struggle.

I believe that Love and Rage should be a revolutionary cadre organization that remains committed to a fundamentally libertarian perspective without narrowly defining itself within the anarchist tradition. It should be an organization that is theoretically open and flexible enough to take the lessons there are to be learned from other traditions and, more importantly, to develop new theory and practice in response to new conditions. For the moment the best model of such an organization we have is the Zapatistas and I think we should look much more closely at their experience to see what it has to teach us.

From “What We Do” - Christopher Day (1998)