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what is anarchism? 21
sense, for example, of the difference between Kropotkin’s and
Voltairine de Cleyre’s conception of individualism. Kropotkin’s
immersion in Continental European philosophy suggested that
anarchists like Voltairine de Cleyre were mutualists, not individualists.
With her background in American radicalism and dissent, she
classed herself as an individualist.
The emergence of new anarchist schools can also be explained by
drawing on Horowitz’s model. One of the striking features of much
contemporary anarchism is the conviction that political and cultural
conditions have altered so radically in the course of the twentieth
century that the traditional schools of thought – those listed in the
table – have become outmoded. As a result, as Horowitz suggests,
anarchists who associate themselves with new schools believe that
the struggles of the past must be jettisoned so that the challenges of
the present can be confronted.
The main thrust of new anarchist thinking is the belief that the
struggle by workers for economic emancipation no longer holds the
key to anarchist revolution. The social ecology of Murray Bookchin,
a major trend in new anarchism, is based on the belief that the transformation
of west European societies in the late twentieth century
no longer allows ‘revolutionary consciousness [to] be developed ...
around the issue of wage labor versus capital’. 30 The ‘twenty-first
century’ anarchism discussed by Jon Purkis and James Bowen follows
Bookchin’s lead. Anarchism, they argue:
... is firmly rooted in the here and now ... The terrains of theory and
action have changed, and now there are generations of activists
operating in many fields of protest for whom the works of
Kropotkin, Malatesta and Bakunin are as distant ... as the literary
classics of ... Charles Dickens. The industrial age from which
anarchism emerged operated on very different temporal and spatial
levels from the present one, spawning political movements that
addressed mostly issues of economic injustice and the instrumentalism
of making sure that everyone had enough to eat. The dominant
anarchist political vision of change was an insurrectionary one (the
Revolution, on the barricades) ...
Modern anarchism has long since needed a major overhaul ... 31
Treading a similar path, John Zerzan, America’s leading anarchoprimitivist,
identifies the fundamental shift in anarchist thinking
from ‘traditional, production/progress-embracing outlook, toward