U.S. ANARCHISM existence of evil and, obsessed by its presence, feels impelled to find a formula to exorcice it. But which formula? Hess's own private pantheon of sources of inspiration bear witness to his confusion in coming up with an answer. Marx alongside Proudhon, Mao juxtaposed to Barry Goldwater, the Black Panthers in tandem with Paul Goodman. Conspicuous by his absence is Kropotkin, whose writings on 'collectivist anarchism' would bear reading by Hess. But Hess occupies a position on the Left of the 'Rightwing anarchist' spectrum. For the bulk of the movement's leading figures, the major intellectual influences have been the free market ideologues Murray Rothbard and Ludwig Von Mises (5) and, on occasion, t.he conservative economist Milton Friedman. Among strictly anarchist figures, the only name which recurs with frequency in their publications (e.g. Outlook) is the 19th century American libertarian, Lysander Spooner. All of which bears out the view of the movement's critics that its assumption of the 'anarchist' mantle is, at best, fortuituous and, at worst, opportunistic, that its real philosophy, if it can be said to have one, is an old-fashioned Lockean 'possessive individualism'. Thus, while its concern for civil liberties seems genuine enough, the real preoccupation of 'Right-wing anarchism' seems to be State interference with private enterprise, conveniently conceived in its pre-corporate form. But, if 'Right-wing anarchism's' origins and current behavior render it unacceptable in the historie anarchist fold, its existence in the present-day U.S.A. can still be regarded as a salutory development. For its evolution has broken the strangle-hold of the radical Right on conservative American youth, has opened up new perspectives that may lead them on to a more genuine movement for social change, perhaps one founded on anarchist principles. For such movements do exist in the U.S.A., as the renewed interest in the anarchist classtcs (Kropotkin, Berkman, Goldman, Thoreau) will attest and which the emergence of modern anarchist thinkers like Murray Bookchin seems to prove. (5) Rothbard, America's Great Depreasion; Man, Economy and St.au Von Mises, Human Action. 5S
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