Eric Hobsbawm on anarchism: "[T]he main appeal of anarchism was emotional and not intellectual. That appeal was not negligible. Everyone who has ever studied, or had anything to do with the real anarchist movement, has been deeply moved by the idealism, the heroism, the sacrifice, the saintliness which it so often produced, side by side with the brutality of the Ukrainian Makhnovshchina or the dedicated gunmen and church-burners of Spain. The very [99] extremism of the anarchist rejection of state and organization, the totality of their commitment to the overthrow of the present society, could not but arouse admiration; except perhaps among those who had to be active in politics by the side of the anarchists, and found them almost impossible to work with ... It was almost certainly the monumental ineffectiveness of anarchism which, for most people of my generation -- the one which came to maturity in the years of the Spanish Civil War -- determined our rejection of it."
Posted on: Sat, 20 Jul 2013 19:56:22 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015