N'.i:GATIVITY OF ANARCHISM two centuries has been toward solution of the problem of determination by history, by the past, by yesterday: how shall we be free today to solve today's problems? Virtually all of this thinking, however, has posed the question as one of achieving control. By sheer force, and sometimes also by social sciences, statist societies seek to master these historical processes, and have given very little evidence of ability to do so. (Besides which, the values and interests in terms of which the attempt is made are plainly those of the controlling groups or institutions.) This ambition of control is a way of human pride. In anarchist society human beings would, presumably, seek to free themselves from processes of institutional momentum by consciously choosing rhythms of change, and technologies, harmonious with viable rhythms of life-choice, in order to avoid a need, for survival, to create institutions of power. That we should cease to court disaster, that we should simplify and make possible the solution of primary life-problems in the mode of freedom, should not, especially in view of the number and magnitude of disasters our species produces for itself, be an unreasonable negative principle, particularly because there appear to be no reasons why a comparatively stable and comparatively simplified society need be reduced to spinning-wheel technology or to changelessness. We might, if such a society were realized, become able at last to apply an authentic spirit of experimentation to the practical problems of life - something virtually impossible under present conditions. Individual and Society ANARCHIST conceptions of individuality and socialization can be made clearer through brief consideration of the relation between anarchist theories labelled 'individualist' or 'mutualist' and those labelled 'communist' or 'syndicalist.' In these remarks I shall not encompass certain bourgeois dndividualisms• that call themselves anarchist but have nothing in common with anarchism as a social movement and historic idea; for example, so-called anarcho-capitalism. The main anarchist movements communist or syndicalist, endeavor to encompass the aspiration to socialism, so that predoctrinal socialism could be regarded as that aspect of (generic) anarchism that is specifically concerned with the politics of production, distribution, and wealth. Individualist and mutu47
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