“For a World Without Oppressors:” US Anarchism from the Palmer

662 Pages·2011·7.52 MB·English

by  Andrew Cornell

“For a World Without Oppressors:”
U.S. Anarchism from the Palmer Raids to the Sixties

by

Andrew Cornell

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Department of Social and Cultural Analysis
Program in American Studies
New York University
January, 2011

_______________________
Andrew Ross
© Andrew Cornell
All Rights Reserved, 2011

“I am undertaking something which may turn out to be a resume of the English
speaking anarchist movement in America and I am appalled at the little I know about
it after my twenty years of association with anarchists both here and abroad.”
-W.S. Van Valkenburgh, Letter to Agnes Inglis, 1932

“The difficulty in finding perspective is related to the general American lack of a
historical consciousness…Many young white activists still act as though they have
nothing to learn from their sisters and brothers who struggled before them.”
-George Lakey, Strategy for a Living Revolution, 1971

“From the start, anarchism was an open political philosophy, always transforming
itself in theory and practice…Yet when people are introduced to anarchism today, that
openness, combined with a cultural propensity to forget the past, can make it seem a
recent invention—without an elastic tradition, filled with debates, lessons, and
experiments to build on.”
-Cindy Milstein, Anarchism and Its Aspirations, 2010

“Librarians have an ‘academic’ sense, and can’t bare to throw anything away! Even
things they don’t approve of. They acquire a historic sense. At the time a hand-bill
may be very ‘bad’! But the following day it becomes ‘historic.’”
-Agnes Inglis, Letter to Highlander Folk School, 1944

“To keep on repeating the same attempts without an intelligent appraisal of all the
numerous failures in the past is not to uphold the right to experiment, but to insist
upon one’s right to escape the hard facts of social struggle into the world of wishful
belief. We grant such a right to the weak, the infirm, to the tired radical, to the
escapists. But we do deny such a right to the revolutionary whose main weapon is an
unflagging will and an unblunted sense of reality.”
-Vanguard: A Libertarian Communist Journal, 1934
DEDICATION

To my mother, who introduced me to non-violent direct action at two years of
age when we blocked the bulldozers attempting to demolish my daycare center.
To my father who watched the MC5 play at the White Panther Party house,
and waited until the dissertation was half complete to ask, “So when did Murray
Bookchin get so into environmentalism? He sounded like an old fashioned socialist
when I heard him lecture in ’69.”

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I had the privilege of working with a stellar dissertation committee. Each
member—Lisa Duggan, Randy Martin, Nikhil Pal Singh, and Stephen Duncombe—
encouraged and informed this project from the start. My advisor, Andrew Ross, has
providing a towering example of a scholar-activist who writes prolifically and
accessibly while also finding time for his family, students, and political commitments.
The dissertation was also shaped by members of the American Studies
Dissertation Writing Group: Kerwin Kaye, Miabi Chatterji, Dawn Peterson, Miles
Grier, Rich Blint, and André Carrington. I deeply appreciate the friendship and ideas
I’ve shared with many other members of the NYU Department of Social and Cultural
Analysis, including Emma Kreyche, Zach Schwartz-Weinstein, Johanna Londoño,
Dacia Mitchel, Rana Jaleel, Ariana Ochoa, Steve Fletcher, Neil Brenner, Alfonso
Gonzales, Madala Hilliare, Betsy Brown, and Marty Correa. I also want to thank all
the archivists that assisted me throughout the project, especially Julie Herrada.
I’ve received ideas and other forms of assistance from a huge number of
scholars, activists, and friends. I shared a number of archival resources with Ed
D’Angelo, Spencer Sunshine, and Jesse Cohn; the project is better because of it. The
Institute for Anarchist Studies provided me with a small grant that was hugely

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encouraging. I productively chewed on ideas with Chris Dixon, Harjit Gill, Cindy
Milstein, Maia Ramnath, Joshua Stephens, Josh MacPhee, Dara Greenwald, Kristin
Campbell, Malav Kanuga, Dana Burnett, the Left Turn crew, members of Organization
for a Free Society, and many many more.
A number of old friends have kept me sane throughout by encouraging me to
do and think about things other than anarchism from time to time. Thanks especially
to Adam Kuthe, Rich Miles, Dusty Morris, and Andrea Koch.
My parents, Jo Wiley and Peter Cornell, and my sister, Kerstin Cornell, have
provided love, funds, and a sounding board for ideas for years. Dan Berger has been
my closest friend and thinking partner for many years, and has assisted and inspired
me in countless ways. Finally, my life-partner Jessica Harbaugh has been an endless
source of humor, support, and happiness. I love her dearly and thank her deeply.

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ABSTRACT

In the past decade, anarchism has reemerged as an inspirational tradition and a
set of guiding principles for social justice activists throughout the world. Yet the
history of anarchist ideas and movements since the early 20th century remains
woefully under-researched. In this dissertation, I draw on radical periodicals, memoirs,
archival collections, and oral history interviews to analyze changes in the political
theory, strategies, and demographics of anarchist movements in the United States
between WWI and the end of the Vietnam War. Whereas previous accounts have
suggested that anarchism was all but stamped out in 1919 and only reemerged at the
tail end of the 1960s, I demonstrate that an unbroken line of anarchist publications,
organizations, and activities existed throughout those years.
Though the suppression of anarchist-oriented labor unions and the deportation
of skilled propagandists took their toll, racializing representations of radicals during
the Red Scare helped secure new immigration restrictions which reshuffled the U.S.
working-class, racially and ideologically, in a manner to which anarchists were
unprepared to respond. During the inter-war years, domestic organizing challenges
were compounded by the priority that U.S. anarchists placed on supporting European
comrades threatened by fascists and communists. However, a new generation of
anarchists, of mixed class origins, cohered around commitments to pacifism, poetry,
and prefigurative strategies during the Second World War. Later, anarchist-pacifists

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supplied tactics and organizing principles to the civil rights movement while black
freedom struggles pushed them to abandon theories narrowly focused on class
struggle. Meanwhile, anarchists of the Beat Generation synthesized European avant-
garde traditions with the hip culture and urban insurrectional activity of African-
Americans to infuse the 1960s counter-culture with an eclectic doctrine of anti-
authoritarian politics.
By tracing these developments, I explain how anarchism experienced upward
mobility—evolving from an ideology of the immigrant working class to one that today
appeals primarily to middle class youth. In doing so, I demonstrate that anarchism has
been a deeply trans-national, cultural and political project. Internally variegated, it has
both shaped and been shaped by major events and social movements of the 20th
century, always in pursuit of a world free from social domination.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATON v
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vi
ABSTRACT viii
LIST OF FIGURES xi
LIST OF TABLES xii
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER 1: Surviving the Black and Red Scare, 1917-1920 30
CHAPTER 2: “A Movement of Emergency, of Defense”: Regrouping
While Encircled, 1921-1932 143
CHAPTER 3: The Unpopular Front: Insurrectionist and Mass Anarchism
during the Great Depression, 1932-1939 247
CHAPTER 4: “Daily Acts of Life”: Pacifism, Poetry, and the
New Anarchism, 1940-1954 320
CHAPTER 5: Libertarian Socialism, Civil Rights,
and National Liberation, 1954-1965 409
CHAPTER 6: “White Skin, Black Masks”: Beats, Anarchists,
and the New Left, 1955-1970 501
CONCLUSION 589
APPENDIX: U.S. Anarchism in the 19th Century: An Historical Note 603
BIBLIOGRAPY 622

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