DAVID T. WIECK thinkable, as the resolution and liquidation of the power-andpowerlessness polarity. Because such a consciousness has never yet been realized on a large social scale, with the partial exception of a certain period in Spain, its potentialities have never been tested. But the choice of powerlessness, the choice, if run one must, to run with the hares and not with the hounds, and, beyond that, the choice to reject such definition of options, is a choice open to each person as a life-choice, and its intrinsic meanings are not invalidated either by choices others make or by verdicts of mindless History. Anarchist Ethics (a. Anarchist Principle) I should like now to begin to present certain implications of an anarchist view of power and liberation. In theories justificatory of anarchism one encounters a confusing variety of ethical arguments - a variety attributable in part but not entirely to the authors' desire to emphasize either the theme of individuality or the theme of sociality. In anarchist movement and the lives of anarchists, however, one finds something simpler - a consistent emphasis upon principles and action from princlple. Herein I believe lies a key to the ethical meanjngs of anarchism. To the bourgeois. anarchist principle sign!f!es fanaticism, to Marxists an unrealistic and irresponsible unadaptibility to objective circumstance and historical necessity. «On principle, anarchists abstain from all elections, refuse to form or support political parties or party-like organizations, refuse to appeal to or accept the aid of government to achieve immediate desired ends, refuse to accept positions of power, oppose and seek the downfall of liberal as well as overtly tyrannical states, oppose all wars and resist military service, refuse to be married by state or church, and so on. Anarchists refuse to ~ recognize, laws, courts, and police authorities, refuse to defend themselves by accepted legal procedures. Anarchists make a principle of direct (i.e., personal and non-mediated) action, a principle of solidarity, a principle of personal responsibility. In general the word 'compromise' means for anarchists compromise of principles, and has only pejorative connotations. The conclusion would be difficult to avoid, that this «inflexibility, is somehow intrinsic to anarchism. 38
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