George Walford: Doing the Splits (46)

1. “The left remains hopelessly fragmented.” (Robet Harris, Sunday Times 20 May)

2. “The ‘fragmentation’ of the left is something to be applauded, not regretted. Not from a ‘victory of the free market’ angle, but from a need to construct theory which is based on the experience of people living today. […] In a sense, anarchism should be (and largely is) quite positive about a pluralism of views, we cannot be silenced by quotations from Bakunin or Kropotkin or Bookchin, if we have a view different from theirs.” (Bulletin of Anarchist Research, April 1990, Editorial pp 30-31)

To be positive about having a plurality of views is to be negative about commitment to a single one: BAR is agreeing with IC that although there are many positive views within anarchism, the movement itself has no commitment to any one set of positive proposals (always bearing in mind, as IC has pointed out before, that negative and positive are not synonyms for bad and good).

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From the Bulletin of Anarchist Research.

Would that stinking factory be the one producing computer equipment used by IC and BAR?

from Ideological Commentary 46, July 1990.