CHANGE OF NAME

I've decided to dress as a demarchist - see John Burnheim's Is Democracy Possible? - rather than as an anarchist. I just can't cotton to the current crop of anarchists. When I took up the anarchist banner it was under the influence of Godwin, Shelley, Proudhon, and Kropotkin. I would guess at least half the youngsters now calling themselves anarchist know little or nothing of these folks.

The most famous "anarchist" of today is Noam Chomsky, but according to the analysis of anarchism scholar, Alan Ritter, Chomsky is not even an anarchist in the above tradition, but a type of Marxist. But it is just that Chomsky brand of extreme and sterile negativism that is so admired by many of those protesting as anarchists. Can you imagine Kropotkin or Godwin wearing a mask?

Anyway, I still have heroes in the anarchist community of the past, such as Gustav Landauer. And believe Sacco and Vannzetti were innocent,and more importantly I think it matters whether they were innocent or not. I say that because Howard Zinn says he doesn't care. That is, to Zinn it only matters that the prosecution was corrupt. He is like many others on the left of today who enjoy the war of unproven allegations - rhetoric and cleverness are everything, truth nothing.