Toby Boraman

20 Gombin, The Origins of Modern Leftism.

21 René Riesel, ‘Preliminaries on the Councils and Councilist Organization’, in Situationist International Anthology, ed. Ken Knabb, Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 1981, p.274.

22 For some sweeping histories, or collections of material from the time, see Howard Ehrlich, Carol Ehrlich, David de Leon and Glenda Morris eds., Reinventing Anarchy: What Are Anarchists Thinking These Days? London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979; Alexandre Skirda, Facing the Enemy, pp. 174-82; Gerald Runkle, Anarchism, Old and New, New York: Delacorte Press, 1972; George Woodcock, Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements, 2nd revised edn., Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986, pp.410-22; Peter Marshall, Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism, London: Fontana Press, 1993, pp.539-58; David Apter and James Joll eds., Anarchism Today, New York: Doubleday, 1971; and Benjamin Franks, Rebel Alliances: The means and ends of Contemporary British Anarchisms, Edinburgh and San Francisco: AK Press, 2006, pp.54-75; and Colin Ward ed., A Decade of Anarchy 1961–70, Selections From the Monthly Journal “Anarchy”, London: Freedom Press, 1987.

23 This makes many of their assertions problematic. For example, it is generally assumed that anarchism during the 1970s was a student “middle class” phenomenon. Yet in New Zealand this was not the case. Most 1970s anarchists were male, young (under twenty-five), white, unemployed and from working class backgrounds. Students were very much in a minority, and the vast majority of groups were not campus-based. See Boraman, Rabble Rousers, pp.135-6.

24 For accounts of Anarchy, the Angry Brigade and Bookchin’s involvement in the 1960s and 70s anarchist movement, see Colin Ward ed., A Decade of Anarchy 1961–70, Tom Vague, Anarchy in the UK: The Angry Brigade, Edinburgh and San Francisco: AK Press, 1997, and Murray Bookchin, Anarchism, Marxism, and the Future of the Left: Interviews and Essays, 1993-1998, Edinburgh and San Francisco: AK Press, 1999.

25 Examples include Woodcock, Anarchism, Runkle, Anarchism, Old and New, and David Goodway in his introduction to Alex Comfort, Against Power and Death: The Anarchist Articles and Pamphlets of Alex Comfort, ed. David Goodway, London: Freedom Press, 1994.

26 See especially a series of articles by Nicolas Walter: “Has Anarchism Changed? Part One”, Freedom, 17 April 1976, pp.9-10, “Has Anarchism Changed? Part One Continued”, Freedom, 1 May 1976, pp.11-2, “Has Anarchism Changed? Part Two”, Freedom, 26 June 1976, pp.9-10, and “Has Anarchism Changed? Part Two Concluded”, pp.12-3.

27 Boraman, ‘The New Left and Anarchism in New Zealand’, pp.559-67.

28 For a definition of class struggle anarchism, see Franks, Rebel Alliances, pp.12-3, although Franks does not seemingly include the centrality of class struggle, and the working class as the major revolutionary agent, as defining characteristics of class struggle anarchism. ‘Class-struggle anarchism’ came into use as a term in the 1960s to denote revolutionary, class-based anarchism (either anarchist communism or anarcho-syndicalism) that was opposed to the more liberal, individualist and reformist varieties of anarchism.

29 Walter, “Has Anarchism Changed? Part Two”, p.9. New anarcho-syndicalist groups were represented by the Syndicalist Workers Federation, the Anarchist Syndicalist Alliance, the Anarchist Black Cross and the magazine Black Flag. New anarchist communist organisations were represented by the platformist influenced Organisation of Revolutionary Anarchists, which changed its name to the Anarchist Workers Association in 1975 and later to the Libertarian Communist Group, and the Anarchist Communist Association. For a few overviews of the British anarchist movement in the 1960s and 1970s, see Peter Shipley, Revolutionaries in Modern Britain, London: The Bodley Head, 1976, pp.172-207, Franks, Rebel Alliances, pp.54-71 and “Anarchist Communism in Britain”, Organise! For Class Struggle Anarchism, 42 (Spring 1996), pp.15-8.

30 See Daniel Guérin, Anarchism: From Theory to Practice, New York: Monthly Review Press, 1970, pp.155-9 and Paul Berman ed., Quotations from the Anarchists, New York: Praeger, 1972, p.23.

31 Cf. Michael Seidman, “Workers in a Repressive Society of Seduction: Parisian Metallurgists in May-June 1968”, French Historical Studies, Vol. 18, no. 1 (Spring 1993), pp.255-78 and The Imaginary Revolution: Parisian Students and Workers in 1968, New York: Berghahn Books, 2004.

32 For example, the British Anarchist Communist Association declared it was for workplace and community councils, as well as ‘a Revolution of Everyday Life. Relationships now are based on domination and submission: bosses over workers, men over women, adults over children. We seek to change all of this. We seek not just an economic revolution but one that also frees us in our social and personal relationships.’ Of course, this statement also reflected the influence of new social movements, and in particular the women’s liberation movement. ‘Introduction to the Anarchist Communist Association’, 1979, http://struggle.ws/disband/aca/aca_what.html, accessed Feb. 22 2001.

33 See Sam Dolgoff, Fragments: A Memoir, Cambridge: Refract Publications, 1986, and The Relevance of Anarchism to Modern Society, 3rd edn., Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1989. He was critical of what he saw as the new anarchists’ impracticality, bohemian lifestylism, escapism, utopianism, individualism, anti-organisationalism, spontaneism, and their lack of thought. In short, neo-anarchism was based upon non-working-class aspects of anarchism. Dolgoff, The Relevance of Anarchism to Modern Society, pp.1-3.

34 See Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Gabriel Cohn-Bendit, Obsolete Communism: The Left-Wing Alternative, London: Andre Deutsch, 1968. It appears other French anarchist groups also drew upon councilism. Skirda notes that following 1968 the UTCL (Union of Libertarian Communist Workers) was tinged with ‘councilism and Marxism’. Skirda, Facing the Enemy, p.181.

35 November 1968 editorial quoted in Woodcock, Anarchism, p.271. The last comment applied particularly to the platformist Fédération Communiste Libertaire. ‘In the Tradition: Part Two. The Second World War and After’, Organise!, 53 (Summer 2000), p.25.

36 Gombin notes that Noir et Rouge accepted “the notion of workers’ councils, as then expressed by Socialism ou Barbarie (1958)”. Gombin, The Origins of Modern Leftism, p.86n. The influence of Socialisme ou Barbarie can be clearly seen in the brothers’ Cohn-Bendit’s book Obsolete Communism, wherein they noted their debt to the ideas of Pierre Chaulieu [Cornelius Castoriadis]. D. Cohn-Bendit and G. Cohn-Bendit, Obsolete Communism, p.133. Indeed, they wanted Socialisme ou Barbarie to be co-signatories of their book. Margaret Atack, May 68 in French Fiction and Film: Rethinking Society, Rethinking Representation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999, p.82. However, Maurice Brinton notes that Obsolete Communism was influenced not only by SouB, but also Solidarity, the SI, ICO, Noir et Rouge and Recherches Libertaires. Brinton, For Workers’ Power, p.103.

37 Interview of Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Anarchy, 99 (May 1969), p.153.

38 See Boraman, ‘The New Left and Anarchism in New Zealand’, pp.142-64. For example, many of the key members of the March 22 Movement were members of Noir et Rouge, such as Jean-Pierre Dutheuil and the brothers Cohn-Bendit.

39 Gombin, The Origins of Modern Leftism, p. 83.

40 I borrow the term ‘carnival anarchism’ from John Englart, but use it differently. Englart defines it as a disruptive, ‘chaoticist’, anti-organisational scene. See John Englart, “Anarchism in Sydney 1975-1981 Part I”, Freedom, Vol. 43, no. 11 (12 June 1982), pp.12-5, http://www.takver.com/history/sydney/syd7581.htm, accessed 24 October 2001. In this paper, ‘carnival anarchism’ is not used as a derogatory term to suggest that they were not serious, and thus ought not to be taken seriously. Nor is it meant to infer that they were interested only in having fun. In addition, many Australasian carnival anarchists were activists as well. In this regard, Graeme Minchin of the Sydney and Auckland carnival anarchists said that they called themselves ‘anti-authoritarians’. He believes the term ‘carnival anarchism’ was used by the Sydney ‘libertarian workers’ to dismiss the ‘anti-authoritarians’ as a joke, and to deny ‘that we had any other activities than those which can be described as countercultural.’ Minchin, Letter to the author, 16 March 2006.

41 See Richard Kempton, Provo: Amsterdam’s Anarchist Revolt, Autonomedia: New York, 2007, Rudolf de Jong, “Provos and Kabouters”, in Anarchism Today, eds. David Apter and James Joll, New York: Doubleday, 1971, pp.164-80; Roel van Duyn, Message of a Wise Kabouter, London: Duckworth, 1972 [1969]; Black Mask and Up Against the Wall Motherfucker: The Incomplete Works of Ron Hahne, Ben Morea and the Black Mask Group, London: Unpopular Books and Sabotage Editions, 1993; and Franklin Rosemont and Charles Radcliffe, Dancin’ in the Streets! Anarchists, IWWs, Surrealists, Situationists & Provos in the 1960s as recorded in the pages of The Rebel Worker and Heatwave, Chicago: Charles H Kerr, 2005. Undoubtedly there were many other carnival anarchist groups than the ones listed above, for example, the Resurgence Youth Movement in the US, but they are lesser known.

42 For a few overviews of this tendency, see Joseph Berke ed., Counter Culture: The Creation of an Alternative Society, London: Peter Owen, 1969; Peter Stansill and David Mairowitz eds., BAMN: Outlaw Manifestos and Ephemera 1965–70, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971; Stewart Home, The Assault on Culture: Utopian Currents From Lettrisme to Class War, Stirling, Scotland: AK Press, 1991; Jeff Nuttall, Bomb Culture, London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1968; Richard Neville, Play Power, London: Paladin, 1971; and Julie Stephens, Anti-Disciplinary Protest: Sixties Radicalism and Postmodernism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

43 For example, Nigel Young maintains that “the Beats, Situationists, Provos, Kabouters, Diggers, Yippees – in fact, all the most active groups in the counter-culture – were continually labelled ‘anarchist’”. Young, An Infantile Disorder? The Crisis and Decline of the New Left, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977, p.135. And Paul Avrich claims that Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin were anarchists. Avrich, Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995, p.527n.

44 Ger Harmsen, “Provo and Anarchist”, Delta, 10 (Autumn 1967), pp.31-2 and Rudolf de Jong, “Anarchism Post-1945”, Delta, 10 (Autumn 1967), pp.35-6. De Jong also notes “many anarchists – and I do not exclude myself – have been excited by the actions of the Provo movement and, at the same time, puzzled about its anarchism”. De Jong, “Provos and Kabouters”, p.171.

45 Rosemont and Radcliffe, Dancin’ in the Streets!, p.378, original emphasis.

46 Although this is difficult to surmise given the lack of information about the subject.

47 For example, it reprinted two articles on workers’ councils from the SI in Anarchy 7, n.d., c. 1971.

48 See Ken Maddock, “Bill Dwyer: An Anarchist Illegalist”, Tharunka, 21 April 1970, p.15, Boraman, Rabble Rousers, pp.8-12, 18-25 and for his role in the Windsor free festivals, see George McKay, Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance Since the Sixties, London and New York: Verso, 1996, p.16.

49 Advertisement for Anarchist Congress, PYM Rabble, 2 (June 1970), p.9. The original quote is from Abbie Hoffman, Revolution for the Hell of It, New York: The Dial Press, 1968, p.56.

50 Cruickshank, “Editorial”, Salient, 2 (1971), p.2.

51 Kraus interviewed in the documentary Rebels in Retrospect: The Political Memoirs of Some Members of the Progressive Youth Movement, Director Russell Campbell, Wellington: Vanguard Films, 1991. Kraus returned to the US, and became an author and filmmaker, publishing many books through Semiotext(e) and Native Agents, such as Hatred of Capitalism: A Semiotext(e) Reader, which she edited with Sylvere Lotringer (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2001).

52 Farrell Cleary, e-mail to the author, 21 Sep. 2006. Auckland Resistance was often the focal point for the independent non-party carnivalesque wing of the Auckland New Left.

53 For a discussion of this trend, see Boraman, ‘The New Left and Anarchism in New Zealand’, pp.313-6, and 332-6.

54 Kraus interviewed in Rebels in Retrospect.

55 There were many carnival anarchists in Australia other than these three groupings. For example, the Anarcho-Surrealist Insurrectionary Feminists (AS IF), the grouping around the Collingwood Freestore and free legal aid service, and the Kensington Libertarians in Sydney who put out the underground magazines Tharunka, Thorunka and Thor (for which Wendy Bacon was imprisoned briefly in an obscenity trial). See Anne Coombs, Sex and Anarchy: The Life and Death of the Sydney Push, Melbourne: Penguin, 1996, pp.243-6.

56 ‘The Growth of the Australian Anarchist Movement’, 1970, http://www.takver.com/history/aia/aia00031.htm, accessed 2 Aug 09.

57 Joe Toscano, ‘Carnival Anarchism in Melbourne 1970—75’, http://www.takver.com/history/melb/carnival1970_75.htm, accessed 2 Aug 09.

58 See A. J. Baker, ‘What is Anarcho-Marxism?’, Broadsheet, 64 (May 1971), pp.1-4.

59 Max Nomad, ‘Comments on Anarcho-Marxism’, Broadsheet, 66 (Sep. 1971), p.1. Nomad and the Sydney Libertarians were sceptical about the prospect for a classless, stateless society, and believed that there would always be an authoritarian elite. Therefore, the only thing left to do was to ‘permanently protest’ against any authority.

60 Shadbolt in 1970 as reported in Ron Smith, Working Class Son, Wellington: Ron Smith, 1994, p.148. He said he tried working with workers, but found it too difficult. See also Shadbolt, Bullshit and Jellybeans, Wellington: Alister Taylor, 1971, p.66-7.

61 A. L. Constandse and Harry Mulisch, “Interview with Roel van Duyn”, Delta, 10 (Autumn 1967), p.28.

62 Kempton, Provo, pp.91-104.

63 Anarchy Newsletter, Aug. 1977, p.1. However, in Compass, they published an article by John Milne, a ‘hippy anarchist’ who produced the underground magazine Earwig.

64 Compass, Sep./Oct. 1974, p.22.

65 Englart, ‘Anarchism in Sydney’.

66 Although Connie Healy claims that it founded in 1968 as the bookshop of the New Left group The Students for Democratic Action, a group in which Brian Laver was a prominent member. Healy, ‘Radical Bookshops’ in Radical Brisbane, an Unruly History, eds. Raymond Evans and Carole Ferrier, Melbourne: The Vulgar Press, 2004, p. 204.

67 Hamish Alcorn, ‘No Organised Anarchists in Brisbane?’, http://www.ainfos.ca/99/apr/ainfos00118.html, accessed 19 Aug 2009.

68 ‘The Radical Books of Queensland’, http://bushtelegraph.wordpress.com/2008/07/18/radical-books-in-brisbane/, accessed 19 Aug. 2009. See also ‘Honeymoon over: The decline and fall of the left coalition’, The Old Mole, no. 3 (June 29, 1970), http://members.optushome.com.au/spainter/Honeymoon.html, accessed 19 Aug. 2009.

69 For example, both the Napier Street and Crummer Road affinity groups of the AAA were in Ponsonby in Auckland. In the 1970s, Ponsonby was populated by a mix of working-class Polynesians, students and bohemians. These anarchist groupuscules represented the political wing of the Ponsonby counter-culture.

70 See Boraman, Rabble Rousers, pp.103, 114-5 and 127-8.

71 Englart, ‘Anarchism in Sydney’.

72 Peter McGregor, Cultural Battles: The Meaning of the Viet Nam – USA war, Melbourne: Scam Publications, 1998, p.16. The Wikipedia entry for McGregor notes that he ‘discerned considerable similarities between the Situationist International (SI) & Socialism or Barbarism (SoB), let alone more general parallels between the SI (including its Libertarian Marxism) and Anarchism, especially in its council communist form.’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_McGregor, accessed 30 June 2009. This article was probably written by someone close to McGregor.

73 Peter McGregor wikipedia entry, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_McGregor, accessed 30 June 2009.

74 Workers’ Councils, Sydney: Rising Free Reprint, n.d.

75Anarchy and the State, Auckland: Auckland Anarchist Activists, n.d., c.1976.

76 Auckland Anarchist Activists, ‘Win a Cop Competition’, c.1976.

77 Grant McDonagh, Interview, Christchurch 24 July 1996.

78 Terry Leahy, ‘Pre-War Anarchists and the Post-War Ultra-Left’, unpublished manuscript, c.1981, p.32.

79 Leahy, ‘Pre-War Anarchists’, pp.8-10.

80 Peter McGregor wikipedia entry, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_McGregor

81 Peter McGregor wikipedia entry, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_McGregor

82 Minchin, Interview.

83 Frank Prebble, Interview, Christchurch 14 May 1996.

84 Oliver Robb, Anarchy in Albert Park: An Attack on the ‘Work Ethic’, Christchurch: Christchurch Anarchy Group, 1976, p.2 (original emphasis). Robb claimed that questioning the work ethic “presents a real threat to the foundations of our industrial society” (p.2).

85 Aufheben, “Unemployed Recalcitrance and Welfare Restructuring in the UK Today”, in Stop the Clock! Critiques of the New Social Workhouse, Brighton: Aufheben, 2000, Accessed 22 July 2003, http://geocities.com/aufheben2/stc_auf

86 As Wildcat (Germany) write, ‘for many young people it was inconceivable to adjust to wage labour and to work away at a job until reaching pension age. Additionally, we ourselves refused to strive individually through a professional career for a better place in the capitalist hierarchy. Out of this grew the practice of jobbing: to do any old shitty job for a short time, in order then to have time for ourselves, for political struggle and for pleasure.’ Wildcat, ‘Open Letter to John Holloway’, Wildcat-Zirkular, No. 39 (Sep. 1997), http://www.wildcat-www.de/en/zirkular/39/z39e_hol.htm, accessed 14 Aug 09.

87 Prebble, Interview.

88 Some anarchist communists, especially platformists, tend to assume that carnival anarchists are “individualistic” and “anti-organisational” because they reject the formal organisational schemes that platformists propound. Yet more correctly, carnival anarchists reject formal organisation and are in favour of loose, informal organisation.

89 Prebble, Interview.

90 Minchin, Interview.

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