NEGATIVITY OF ANARCHISM First, anarchism is the natural generic expression for the many particular movements of liberation, including a number that have emerged in force only recently. As such a generic Idea, anarchism implies these liberations, and most lines of argument against particular power-and-dominance relations tend conversely to generalize to the anarchist position. Not merely awareness of twentieth century extensions of statepower, therefore, has given anarchism contemporary «relevance~ both for radical youth and for various intellectuals and social philosophers. Anarchism does more than unify the many themes of liberation. For those who suspect that power rather than wealth may be the root of oppression, and that power may be the more comprehensive concept, anarchism offers a framework of explanation. Marxist have generally derived racism from the interest of the wealthy classes in dividing the mass of the people against one another; one does not have to deny this interpretation all validity to see that the psychology of social or ethnic domination, for the sake of domination, may be a deeper theme. It has been difficult, in view of the imperialist actions of the Russian state, to attribute imperialism and wars to economic and profit considerations primarily. In many other spheres, the sphere of «liberation, included, we see power sought after from motives deeper than a theory centered upon economics accounts for; while a theory centering upon power is capable of explaining also the seemingly irrational intensity of acquisitive behavior. Third, it is becoming increasingly apparent that to speak about a «ruling class~ in the present era is totally inadequate. Nationally and internationally, the economics of capitalist distribution retains its disproportionality of wealth and poverty but now power is corporate and bureaucratic. Even that statement falls short, and phrases like 'military-industrial complex' seem ineluctably apt. Individuals and groups face elaborate structures of power, national and transnational, and their selfsense, even at relatively high levels of privilege, is likely to be one of powerlessness, helplessness, insecurity. The «class~ that rules ls not exactly a class of persons but more like an institutional complex whose administrative and managerial technicians work, one may say with only slight exaggeration, to jobdescription. Even if we define this personnel, together with the major beneficiary individuals and families, as «the ruling class~. it remains nonetheless, in the U.S.A. as in the U.S.S.R., 35
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