IPOS and SCUM, what he get's wrong about Anarchism

 

Content Warning: Includes discussion of sexual violence. 

A video essay by the YouTuber In Praise of Shadows (IPOS) popped into my recommended list yesterday. It's about the SCUM manifesto and its author Valerie Solanas. The link to the video is here. As a quick summary Valerie Solanas rose to fame in 1968 for the attempted murder of Andy Warhol, the manifesto she wrote was published to capitalise on the notoriety of her attempted assassination. It has since gained a reputation as an extremely radical feminist call to arms for the extermination of all men, and that reputation is earned SCUM is nothing if not explicit. SCUM the quasi movement of the text stands for Society for Cutting Up Men. 

I was intrigued as IPOS normally covers horror content. I had previously read SCUM many years ago while exploring the depths of 60s-70s radicalism. The video covers the text and the life of Solanas in great detail, I suggest watching it for more insight. 

Overall I was surprised that IPOS was willing to look beyond the popular stereotype of a "Crazy bitch" and investigate the ideas of SCUM. It is a hard text to take seriously, leaving aside the attempted murders (she also shot and wounded art critic Armando Amaya) the language is not only blunt and ugly but has a strange habit of sliding into the comical. e.g. "The male has a negative Midas touch--everything he touches turns to shit." It also uses ugly slurs which while more common in the 1960s were still considered vulgar for printing in a serious political essay. 

Despite SCUM's many flaws, its arguably got worse with age as passages read in the current year read clearly as forerunners to many anti-trans and anti-queer arguments that can be found easily in every unmoderated comment section today, there are some interesting bits of critique and commentary to be found, though as IPOS notes they usually miss the mark or shift into the wrong lessons. 

Sadly, at around the 01:02 mark  (citing YT vids is a pain) IPOS ruins the positive impression by attempting to critique Solanas's "Anarchistic themes". In doing so he retreats into a very common superficial rant about human nature we've all heard before mixed with misanthropy and American centrism, that I find genuinely baffling in how common it is to find amongst politicos in the USA. 

For the most part its fairly standard fare, humans are terrible people who can't be trusted, society becomes a "wasteland" without a government. It's quite disappointing, but as I was just going to roll my eyes and let the segment pass. However, as the segment wore on it shifts gears into a deeply misanthropic or perhaps misAmercathropic series of comments about how the US and its populations are irrevocably tainted*. That seemed a bit of a logical leap at first, but then as the moment worked through the personal beliefs of IPOS that it clicked for me. The parts of SCUM that IPOS found interesting seemed to tally with his own beliefs and criticisms to a degree, so when we get to the "anarchistic" parts of SCUM which IPOS rejects it is treated in much the same way as the overt bigotry and calls for mass murder.

So, with that in mind I think its worth poking a bit deeper to explore the weaknesses of this argument and IPOS's weakness as an essayist. 

But first to clear the air, this is not motivated by anger, disagreement is not a failing in my book. I don't agree with much of SCUM either to pick a relevant example, I like IPOS's content just fine, and have diasgreed before and will no doubt do again. I'm just interested in probing further and a great case study fell into my lap. No personal animosity is intended.  

I'm also not really interested in defending the "anarchist vision" of SCUM, while I can see anarchist influences within SCUM as well as many other radical political and cultural and scientific movements that were in vogue at the time, I don't think it is at its source and anarchist text for reasons that will probably come up. Though I do think there are times when IPOS misrepresents these ideas and will be pointing them out.  

The core of the issue

So, you don't think human's can be trusted with freedom, why on earth do you want to trust them with power? 

The core of this argument is that human's are greedy and selfish and wicked, I was initially confused why so many people including IPOS act like this is some kind of trump card. I can only infer that they believe anarchism is an idea based on optimism and unicorns. There certainly are many anarchist arguments that emphasise positive aspects of humanity but to pretend that's all there is to it is just showing ignorance. One of the key texts arguing in favour of Anarchism is Kropotkin's Mutual Aid a factor of evolution.  Which is an examination of mutual aid within animal and human societies. It's a scientific text with empirical data and observations. And importantly while it emphasises examples of working together independently for mutual benefit it does not ever deny the negative associations with behaviour and nature. Furthermore, there are anarchists who have embraced greed and shown how it makes anarchism a more viable method of social organisation. 

To be more blunt even if your misanthropic view of humanity is completely accurate, you're making an argument for anarchism and not one against anarchism. To believe that humanity is fundamentally threatening and to then advocate a society where human's have power over others is simple put stupid. Why on earth would you want these same nasty goblins to have direct power over you backed up with institutional force? IPOS like every ideologue who presents this argument has no answer to this contradiction. The best IPOS can manage is a very weak acknowledgement that this isn't ideal and that "restructuring" of society. But restructuring class society in a way that preserves classes and power dynamics via states and government is ultimately pointless, some humans will still have power over others to enact their vices at the expense of others. 

At one point later in the video IPOS brings up Trump and the MAGA movement, the reason is to use them as an example of a dangerous minority capturing a nation. I think that's an interesting example but works even better illustrating the weaknesses of IPOS's wider argument. Much of the opposition to Trump focuses on how his abnormal and different from the other President's of the USA. And yes Trump is certainly different, but the difference is in degree not in kind. Trump is killing US civilians in his brutal ICE raids, but ICE has always killed people including US citizens, as did the border agencies that predate ICE, just as the cops have killed people in the US regardless of whose in the White House. If you can't trust a Trump to be in charge of police, borders or nuclear warheads you cannot trust anyone with them.

 "We are selfish. We are dangerous. Even the most mildmannerd and empathetic of us can still easily be pushed over the edge in the right circumstances. The most moral of us can still make bad judgement calls and act in selfish ways, no one is a saint". IPOS.

Anarchism is a materialist criticism of the failings of human beings. It advocates for the dismantling of the material power relationships and the institutions that uphold them. What's more harmful a bully or a bully with a badge? a bigot or bigot with a church? a control freak or a control freak with the power to evict you or fire you? All of these are bad and anti-social and should ideally be dealt with where possible. However the negative impulses of the latter are magnified by their positions of power. Just restructure things so only good people occupy positions of power is utopian nonsence. Even IPOS does not believe it is possible, his argument is founded on the belief that anyone can become the later. Which is itself a core anarchist belief hence the solution of getting rid of the mechanisms for domination. Anarchism is not abolish the state and perfection reigns. Its well aware that people are still flawed and complex social creatures capable of many things some positive, some negative. The Defence Councils of Aragon and the insurgent territories of Ukraine to pick two examples of anarchism on a mass scale were not perfect, but they do not reflect the lazy and ugly caricature that IPOS and others associate with them. 

I get a sense that IPOS hasn't read much or any anarchist statements which if true is very poor form for an essayist commenting on the subject. I went ahead and re-read SCUM in preparation for this rather than rely on half remembered phrases, doing so confirmed to me that much of what IPOS was saying her is effectively meaningless. 

 But even stranger, while I don't consider SCUM an anarchist text I must on re-reading it concede that SCUM itself goes beyond IPOS's characteture in its criticisms of state or Man's as SCUM puts it society which exposes IPOS's superficial commentary even when read narrowly as an attempted rebuttal of Solanas. 

"But she very much disagrees with me, and again to me showcases a bit of a pie in the sky mentality of how people function in reality". Immediately after saying this IPOS quotes the following section.

 There's no reason why a society consisting of rational beings capable of empathizing with each other, complete and having no natural reason to compete, should have a government, laws or leaders.

SCUM but quoted by IPOS,

Which seems to be a fair reading of SCUM, however, if you have read SCUM or have it open for reference you will notice something odd. Many passages of the text explicitly reject "pie in the sky**" reading of humanity including this section

     Authority and Government: Having no sense of right or wrong, no conscience, which can only stem from an ability to empathize with others...having no faith in his non-existent self, being necessarily competitive and, by nature, unable to co-operate, the male feels a need for external guidance and control. So he created authorities--priests, experts, bosses, leaders, etc. --and government. Wanting the female (Mama) to guide him, but unable to accept this fact (he is, after all, a MAN), wanting to play Woman, to usurp her function as Guider and Protector, he sees to it that all authorities are male.

 SCUM

Which precedes the section IPOS quotes so he must have been aware of it. And even if he missed that part it is not an isolated passage, there are multiple criticisms of communal living throughout SCUM. 

     The "hippie" babbles on about individuality, but has no more conception of it than any other man. He desires to get back to Nature, back to the wilderness, back to the home of the furry animals that he's one of, away from the city, where there is at least a trace, a bare beginning of civilization, to live at the species level, his time taken up with simple, non-intellectual activities--farming, fucking, bead stringing. The most important activity of the commune, the one on which it is based, is gangbanging. The "hippie" is enticed to the commune mainly by the prospect of all the free pussy--the main commodity to be shared, to be had just for the asking but, blinded by greed, he fails to anticipate all the other men he has to share with, or the jealousies and possessiveness of the pussies themselves.

SCUM 

Ironically, IPOS and Solanas's views on humanity are very similar, the real separation isn't some professed support for anarchist optimism, but that Solanas places the source of the rot on Man's nature while IPOS places it on Human nature. Miasndry vs misanthropy if you will.

IPOS tries to dismantle his strawman about a world where everyone is good and rational by asking the rhetorical question as to what even is a good and rational society? This pushed me off the fence into the side that IPOS is just using SCUM as an opportunity for personal soapboxing, and has little appetite for self reflection. The solution offered by Solanas is to kill all men and the women who are too tainted by the ideas of Men. That's a terrible solution, but it is obviously what Solanas considers as a "society consisting of rational beings capable of empathizing with each other, complete and having no natural reason to compete, should have a government, laws or leaders."

You do not have to agree with SCUM and I sincerely hope you do not, but that is for Solanas what a better society looks like. If the object was to sift and probe into SCUM IPOS should have a response to that, playing coy as he does is essentially useless. If however IPOS meant to move beyond SCUM and to explore anarchism generally and just fumbled the transition than the answer to the question is to look at anarchist alternatives to our present day. IPOS doesn't do that either, the only references made are to SCUM and his own personal beliefs with very little of substance or elaboration. 

IPOS's solution is less murderous but even flimsier, "restructure" society. The hows and the whys of such a restructuring are left undexamined. Meanwhile SCUM's androcidal views did also realise that for this perfect lesbian commune to survive dismantling of the power relationships goes beyond simple murder.

     Philosophy, Religion and Morality Based on Sex: The male's inability to relate to anybody or anything makes his life pointless and meaningless (the ultimate male insight is that life is absurd), so he invented philosophy and religion. Being empty, he looks outward, not only for guidance and control, but for salvation and for the meaning of life. Happiness being for him impossible on this earth, he invented Heaven.

SCUM

 "Without a government even if you did kill every man on the planet, widespread pillaging and sexual assault would still happen".  IPOS says with a smirk.

This may seem like I'm repeating myself but I was stunned that IPOS admission that his views are incoherent slip out while grinning as if he delivered a master stroke. The first part suggests that government's prevent pillage and sexual assault a ludicrous statement destroyed by just accesing a newsfeed, but then follows it up with an admission that no it actually does happen with governments. This effectively raises some questions, if government (which by the by is not the state in totality) does not actually prevent this man eat man world than what exactly is the point of keeping it around at great cost to the population and the world? Surely this is an admission that government et al is irrelevant in preventing violence. 

 After this odd bit of rhetorical flubbing IPOS proceeds to talk about sexaul assault, violence and rape happening right now, only to declare that the answer is "restructuring". This is an admission that IPOS has a limited grasp on societal violence. Many women are in prison because they defended themselves from their abusers.  The state and its version of justice is complicit in punishing victims, that's what hierachies do, they build links with the upper levels and exploit the lower levels. You can wish for a better exploitation, rejig the edges but as long as the system is in place someone will have to be on the recieving end. To think you can "reform" or "restructure" an fundamentally violent system so that it only does good things but still somehow has the capacity to order others to comply is simply "pie in the sky thinking" it has no basis in facts and is just wish fulfilment. 

"rape would happen in a wasteland, ten more times than it does now if the average man did not fear death or imprisonment at the hands of the state" IPOS

No, IPOS doesn't back any of these assumptions up beyond gut feelings. I notice that IPOS keeps referring to a strange choice between the state and a "wasteland" which does goes to show the ignorance of IPOS and his confidence in regugitating hunches as cast iron facts. This is a very common argument against police and prison abolition, usually by right wing groups that favour more criminalisation and more use of the death penalty. So, it is interesting when a self described "leftist" makes it as it is the same logic and justification that religious fundamentalists make in regards to the "wasteland" of atheist society. If fear of the state is sufficient to prevent 10x the number of rapes ocurring in the world thant surely faith or fear of a deity will stop even more? There is no difference here, its a swapping of a religious diety for a secular one. Perhaps Bakunin was on to something when he wrote God and the State.

Is it even worth addressing this "argument"? its just baseless speculation, why settle for 10 times and not a 100 times more rape? I'll be honest I find it in extreme poor taste that IPOS would attempt to use rape for cheap rhetorical points, anyone aware of the seriousness of this issue would put more effort into interrogating their views and see if its supported by something before speaking so glibly about it. 

But as IPOS rambles on without any anchor he again makes an odd admission "the inherent sexual violence that has been baked into the core functioning of our society". If IPOS really believes this and is not just confused or trying to pre-empt criticism with a figleaf, then we can ignore what he said before this. If rape is due to the baked in core functioning of our society (The USA for him) then his objections to any different society melt away. They cannot by definition have the same outcomes if their core functioning differs from ours. The only way you could consciously claim that sexual violence would go up by a factor of 10 in some other society is if the soceity in question reflected the same core functions as this one but by a factor of 10. You can't claim in one sentence the state is preventative of sexual violence and then argue sexual violence is baked into the core functions of this soceity, what is the state if not a core function? They are in mutual conflict which each other. Its like claiming a strong military keeps a nation secure and then admitted you're a believer in the security dilemma. Which is it then?

 Speaking of facts, Cheran a town in Mexico was overwhelmed by cartel violence, the police and government did nothing to stop it and often were complicit. The town as a community rose up, expelled both the police and the mayor and then drove the cartel out of their territory on their own. Since 2011 they have administered their own affairs, communally. Crime or anti-social behaviour still occurs, mostly by cartels trying to get a foothold in the town again, but overall rates for all crimes have fallen drastically. Is this anarchism in action? Not quite, though it is close to what anarchists in Mexico and globally advocate in building new communities.   

 This might work for a village but not the world

This also comes up often in this style of argument and IPOS does not dissapoint.  

 "It may work on a community level, but globally it would never" what is a globe if not made up of communities? Even in the current world of power blocks and nation states each constituent player on the world stage is built of communities. The populations of the world are alienated from their government's but they still take part in their societies. Taxes fund armies, labour produces commodities for internal and international markets, without communities the global system would collapse. So, how could something work on a community level and not be scalable to a higher level? What exactly is the stumbling block? If you can't even name it how do you know its there?

Anarchism has scaled up on several occasions, Anarchist collectives in Aragon assembled on the village community level, then built up to regional level, eventually organising a population of 7 million at its peak. They organised schools, fields, workshops, shops, communal areas, defence and security, and trade and were in the process of building a hydroelectric dam.  

 It's also worth considering The Conquest of Bread by Kropotkin. Which is a how to build anarchist relationships in an isolated community up to a city the size of Paris. You start small and then scale up as and when you can and need to. 

 Conclusion

While watching the video I grew increasingly certain that IPOS's familiarity with anarchism was limited at best. I assumed though that much of this was coming from exposure to SCUM and its extremism. But on re-reading I don't think that's true either. I'm still a sceptic of SCUM but I don't think IPOS's rebuttals work as good faith criticisms of that. Which I think is damning.

 If IPOS reads this I would urge him to not take this as an attack on the person but on the ideas and negative impulses associated with them. By all means, reject anarchism all you want, just take sometime to figure out what anarchism actually is first. Opposition keeps the wits sharp, you made through SCUM, there are many far more pleasant anarchist texts out there.

 

 *The cult of American exceptionalism has sunk such deep roots that the US citizen has to centre themselves and present as unique even while supposedly lamenting their own short comings.

 

** Interesting bit of trivia, "Pie in the sky" was popularised by the Industrial Worker's of the World (IWW) a radical labour Union with heavy anarchist involvement, who used the term to criticise defenders of work and hierarchy, as seen in their song the Preacher and the Slave, "You'll have pie in the sky when you die". Its modern usage flipping the script to be a criticism of political radicals seems to be an excellent example of the smothering nature of capitalism and hierachy over modern society. 

The Workers Union by Flora Tristan

 

The Workers Union is a book written by Flora Tristan a French Socialist and early feminist. It was published in 1843 after she managed to raise enough donations to pay for its first printing. It proved popular, so much so that it had two more printings in its first year of circulation. In a way Tristan was also a pioneer in crowdfunding. The book is an odd creation, or rather its become odd thanks to the passage of time. 

It was written during the last years of the July Monarchy, where radical voices were scrutinised and spied upon by the police, and gatherings of a political nature were limited to seven people at most. So it can be hard to put hindsight aside while reading it. But the effort is worth it. I believe Tristan's thought is a sort of mix and transition from the old co-operative and guild socialism of the early 1800s, the ideas of Fourier, Owen, St Simon etc, who are usually written off with the pejoratives Idealists, and Utopians, and the later socialist ideas. The translator of the book is keen to stress the connections and relevance her ideas have to the socialism of Marx and Engels, and I can see connections. But I was also strongly reminded of similarities with the Mutualist ideas of Proudhon who has a book La Celebration du dimanche, included in Tristan's recommended reading list for a hypothetical learning library for workers. And certain passages in the Workers Union could've been recycled into many a pamphlet on the merits of the One Big Union popularised by early syndicalists.

Tristan is open about her inspirations, St. Simon, Robert Owen and Fourier among others are acknowledged and praised, but also criticised for their shortcomings. The socialism of Flora Tristan represents a unique combination from a time of change and transformation. The American Anarchist Tom Wetzel believes Tristan to be a forerunner to International Workingmen's Association (IWMA) and this Workers Union is indeed an early proposal and rough blueprint for an international workers organisation. Its a flawed one mainly advocating that combination of all workers will empower and fund important projects including representation, welfare and educational enterprises (the workers palaces) and compel governments to grant the rights of work and organisation. 

I don't believe such a program was viable especially given that a key part of this Union was the appointment of a sole individual as its defender and champion in open copying of the Irish masses subscriptions for O'Connell in his work for constitutional reforms for Ireland. There is at least an acknowledgement that a dictatorial figure would be less than ideal and an attempt to control this hypothetical workers advocate with an idea of setting up a committee to examine their conduct and use of funds, and who can revoke their mandate if not satisfied. It's difficult for modern readers to understand the fixation on a singular great man but in the 1840s and long after even the socialist movement was dominated by powerful individuals. 

There is also a section dedicated to a series of draft appeals to the powerful in society, including the King and the Catholic church which are unthinkable in this day and age. But there is at least some method to this madness, the appeals were essentially politely worded charges of hypocrisy and in Tristan's own words would serve the dual purposes of soliciting support from the few progressives in society and the lack of response or critical rebukes to such appeals would serve as proof of general antagonism to the workers and their initiatives. 

So I don't think this work should be read seeking a practical strategy. It is an historic document. The longest appeal by far is addressed to women. Although called the Workers Union many pages are dedicated to the plight of women in 19th century society and advocating for improvements and inclusion within the working class. A modern feminist would have much to criticise, it leaves intact the family and a women's role within it, i.e. carer, but it does demand and advocate for education and condemns unequal pay practises in work. It also repeats Wollstonecraft's demand of a declaration of the rights of woman to be paired with the rights of man declared during the French revolution. 

It is an odd document that deserves to be read with open but critical minds. 

Women as Sex Vendors; or Why Women are Conservative

 

 A marxists' confused attempt to argue that women are a petits-bourgeois class in society, both reactionary and privileged when compared to men.

The propertyless woman today is rarely reduced to starvation. If the price (or wages) offered for the sale of her laboring power are unsatisfactory, she may always supplement them through the barter or sale of her sex. That there are no women hoboes in the civilized world today is incontestable proof of the superiority of the economic status of woman over man.

The arguments are diverse and often contradictory, and there is absolutely no acknowledgement nor attempt to grapple with the contemporary women's movement, whose very existence rebuked most of his points. At the beginning of the book, the author mentions that there are few women revolutionists, so I suspect he was using this as an excuse not to engage with it. The Women's movement in particular the campaigns for suffrage and full civil rights were overwhelmingly reformist, but they involved a very diverse coalition of women from all backgrounds and political lineages, including revolutionaries like Sylvia Pankhurst. But even though for many political and social reforms were the end point of the movement it was an international movement that mobilised thousands of women to intervene socially and politically with an incredible diversity of tactics, from respectable petitioning to acts of terrorism, one Suffragette -Mary Leigh- threw an axe at the Prime Minister Asquith. 

 

And in response to this demand for reforms the suffrage movement was met with systematic violence, that included police beatings, arrests and torture by force-feeding hunger strikers.  

And he weakens any revolutionary purity grounds by comparing men to women and concluding that men are serious minded and talk and discuss things of importance like civil engineering. So I suspect this refusal to even acknowledge the existence of a mass and diverse movement of committed political reformers willing to make extreme sacrifices is less to do with purity and more to do with cowardice.

Also, largely ignored was the related movement by women to enter the workplace, thus giving up their beneficial sex commodity privileges in favour of the far inferior selling of labour that men must suffer through. I say largely because the author does grudgingly acknowledge women work but it's sparse and highly revealing. Apart from references to stereotypical jobs for women like stenographers there's a speculative passage on the First World War leading to massive social upheaval if it continues and forces more women into industry, and a criticism of women bringing down wages, which lays the blame not on the bosses or the weakness of the labour movement but on women themselves.

Women compete for jobs with men today, force down wages to a lower level and demand more from men before they will marry. And yet we see $25.00 a week stenographers giving up their positions to barter themselves, presumably for life, to $35.00 a week clerks or salesmen, rarely because of the mating instinct, but usually because of the personal triumph this means in the competition between members of the sex, and the social approbation which marriage brings.

Why compete for jobs and then ditch them as soon as they can attract a man with even a slightly higher salary? Selling labour power in this book is a negative, inferior way of survival in class society according to this book. This is not explained, the fact that women were increasingly pushing for access to work should be recognized as a major issue for the overall "biological and economic" argument, but instead it's just brushed aside because many of these women were still marrying. And where on earth is the evidence for why these relationships happen to come from? Either the author is thinking of one specific woman who earned $25.00 a week as a stenographer who married a clerk on $35.00 a week and told them it was for the "personal triumph this means in the competition between members of the sex, and the social approbation which marriage brings" or they're making assumptions.

Furthermore, several points can only stand up if you ignore or weren't aware of men in the sex industry. A key argument is that women are better off in the 1910s America because they can sell their sex in both marriage and prostitution, whereas men apparently could not. This is simply incorrect, men do in fact sell their sex commodities, both in sexual work and in courtship and marriage. Ultimately the approach being used in this book is the shotgun technic, the author lacks a killer argument to be the foundation, so it moves from one point to another but the relationship between them is rarely made clear and is only assumed, and  in numerous cases contradict one another.

One passage assures the reader that women are as capable as men at everything, and it's the economic system we live in that is to blame. But then a few pages later it advises only hiring male stenographers because they're smarter than women in that role. Another passage claims that listening to boys is always intellectually stimulating because they talk about serious topics like civil engineering, careers and politics, whereas girls only talk about boys and dresses. Another section relies heavily on Engels' Origins of the family to make its points for it. Most of the quotes concern the decline of maternal societies with the advent of industrial capitalism, one quote even refers to this as the "historic defeat of the female sex". But after that, the book makes the argument that women as a sex are superior to men because there are laws to protect women and in capitalist society laws are only made to protect the propertied, ergo women have more economic power. So Engels is correct that maternal society has been abolished and the key feature of this society was that women occupied privileged positions of power over men, turn the page and this non-maternal society we live in has as its key feature women occupying privileged positions of power over men. Unless Engels and the other historians named in that section were being brought up simply as an appeal to authority, this actually raises many questions over the orthodox marxist approach to stages of development.

The legal framework argument would also make the outlawing of child labour prove that it is the adult population who serve at the beck and call of the youth. Indeed, quite a few of the arguments in this book could be taken and altered slightly for "Why Children are Conservative".  

The book maintains a detached tone, arguing that the conclusions of the author are the result of economic and biological analysis and the attempt to get at the root of the issue. There are a few moments where this slips, usually when the author attempts to generalize from anecdotes or make absolute statements about things that have very obvious counter examples. But when the issue of divorce comes up, this falls away completely. The entire section is just a highly emotive tirade about how the courts and public opinion always sides with the woman and never the man.

If she be discreet, she may entertain lovers galore; she may refuse to perform any of the theoretical duties of the home; she may refuse to bear children or to surrender to her husband, without censure, and often without the knowledge of the world. If she be addicted to drunkenness, people will divine that her husband must have treated her brutally; if she be seen with other men, folks suspect that he neglects her.

If her husband seeks satisfaction for his desires elsewhere, she may divorce him and secure alimony; if he deserts her the law will return him to her side, if it can find him. If he fails to bring home the wherewithall to provide for her, she may have him sent to jail. If she discovers that he is getting the affection and the sex life which she has denied him, outside of his home, and if she buys a revolver and murders him in cold blood, the jury will exonerate her.

If a wife deserts her husband and her children, the law does not make her a criminal; for wife abandonment, the husband is held criminally liable.

No matter what the offense of the woman, custom and public opinion demand that every "decent" man permit his wife to accuse him on "just grounds" and to secure the divorce and call on the law to force him to pay her alimony for the rest of their natural lives.

No matter what the provocation, legally or sentimentally, no man can be exonerated for killing a woman. No matter how little the provocation, legally or sentimentally, any woman may kill almost any man, and the jury will render a verdict of Not Guilty. She has only to say that he "deceived her."

I looked it up, and it's not true, until the 1970s the easiest way to get a divorce was to move to Nevada because its requirements were less stringent, and you only had to live in the state for six months to qualify. Failing that, another Western state would do. These `divorce mill` states as they were called wouldn't have been needed if the tirade above were true. Until no-fault divorce was made legal in the US, you had to prove one spouse was at fault, if both were found at fault the divorce request was denied. During the period that this book was written, the majority of divorces were given to the wife 

During the whole period under study the over-
whelming majority of divorces were granted to the
wife, and this majority increased slightly through-
out the period. There is a definite territorial
pattern: The proportion of decrees granted to
women in the South, particularly the South Atlantic
Division, was always lower than in other areas.
During the early years of divorce statistics the
overwhelming majority of decrees in several
southern States were granted to husbands, but
this majority disappeared about the turn of the
century. On the other extreme, wives have ob-
tained about three-fourths of all decrees in the
West and, since 1916, in the North Central Region

 https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_21/sr21_024.pdf

However, this still shows the dishonesty of the author's framing, husbands could obtain divorces if they wished and could prove the fault. 

To be perfectly honest, I suspect this pamphlet was authored as an attempt to promote a conservative conception of the socialist movement. During the war, the suffrage movement was making progress and women were entering the workforce in large numbers. It was only a matter of time before the number of women agitators and revolutionists increased significantly. Of course since it can't even acknowledge the existence of these currents its ability to head this off was doomed from the beginning.

The Dispossessed

"Do you think you can stop an idea by ripping up a piece of paper?"

 Ursula K. Le Guin a famous and well regarded author of Science Fiction and fantasy and political Anarchist passed away this week. I really enjoyed the stories of hers I read, but never really found the time to really get into them. The Earth Sea series is highly recommended but I never really got acquainted with the series.

I've decided to add her back catalogue to my lists, and in the searching I found a radio play adaptation of arguably her most famous work, the science fiction story The Dispossessed.



Its an abridgement, but it remains true to the novel's themes and political message. If anything it makes the Anarchism within the story more explicit. I recommend the series its easy to listen too, and apart from some confusion over similar names is a good way to get into the work itself.

Great Lives - Louise Michel

This from a radio program that runs on the BBC called Great Lives, essentially a series of audio biographies on people chosen by the guests. This episode on the life of Louise Michel was chosen by Paul Mason, this was in 2013 before he reminded us all that he is firmly a social democrat. He the host and the other guest Professor Carolyn Eichner author of Surmounting the Barricades Women and the Paris Commune.



Link https://youtu.be/yIv3P1p47Ro
Its very comprehensive and covers her life from childhood to working as a teacher, to the Commune and her time in exile and her return to France.

Louise Michel

Great Lives

Transcript.

Matthew Paris Show Host:

Our Great Life this week was known as the “Red Virgin of Motmartre” the “Red She-wolf” and “Bonne-Louise”, she’s also been called the “Grande dame of Anarchy”.  And she used the pseudonym Clémence. But she had a name, it was Louise Michel. She was a school teacher, writer, orator, anthropologist, Anarchist and cat lover.

Born 1830 in Haute-Marne, died in 1905 in Marseille. Here’s one of her poems.

I have seen criminals and whores

And spoken with them,

Now I inquire if you believe them

Made as now they are

To drag their rags in blood and mire

Preordained an evil race,

You to whom all men are prey

Have made them what they are today.

Louise Michel has been nominated by the television journalist and writer Paul Mason. Newsnight’s business and industry correspondent, Paul was born in 1960 in Leigh near Wigan, the son of a miner. His books include Live Working or Die Fighting; How the Working Class Went Global, and more recently Why its Kicking Off Everywhere: The New Global Revolutions. Paul what’s so great about Louise Michel?

Paul Mason:

Well Matthew the Paris Commune of 1871 is probably the most crucial event in nineteenth century working class history, and what happened to women in it is one of the most interesting stories and the woman at the centre of that story is Louise Michel. She was a revolutionary, she was a fighter she fought you know with a rifle in her hand. And to me represents a kind of lost tradition on the left which is about principle, which is about passion and which is also about slight surrealism, her memoirs are full of dream like sequences that you don’t expect to read in the work of somebody whose spent their entire life in and out of jail fighting the system.

Matthew Paris:

Our guest expert is Professor Carolyn Eichner of the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, author of Surmounting the Barricades: Women and the Paris Commune. Carolyn let’s set Louise Michel in the context of French History before start to look at her own history. This was a pretty important and strange moment wasn’t it?

Carolyn Eichner:

Yes, it was, the Paris Commune was a Revolutionary Civil War which came at the end of the Franco-Prussian war. The working classes of Paris rose up and threw off a reactionary republican government and were able to keep them at bay for 72 days. And as Paul said it’s an incredibly important moment in working class history of the 19^th century, and on the Left it has absolutely been lionised, canonised, considered to be a golden, golden moment and on the Right is considered to be one of the worst historical moments of the century.

Matthew Paris:

Let’s look at her now, she’s right at the centre of all this, and let me ask you Carolyn, what was her background?

Carolyn Eichner:

She was born in 1830 in the Haute-Marne, her mother was a servant in a wealthy home, and her father was most likely the son of the family who owned the chateau. And the owners of the Chateau the Demahis family raised her as their granddaughter. But a marginalised granddaughter, they educated her, they fed her, clothed her, treated her as a granddaughter but she was still the illegitimate child of the family. So, she grew up in a slightly privileged yet marginalised position.

Matthew Paris:

It’s notable Paul, in all the Great Lives I’ve done and I’ve done quite a few now how many the lives of people who- in whose childhood there was some kind of strange disjunction, there was something very odd happened, and this is obviously the case in her life.

Paul Mason:

Yes, I think with Louise Michel her own account of the childhood is very interesting because she’s living in a world of make believe. In this castle that’s gone to seed because the family itself is partly ruined, and the castle is partly ruined. And she kind of wonders around it collecting the skulls of birds, and animals she’s an intelligent young girl, and I think educates herself. She has access through her family to the educated world of the mid-19^th century French elite. And so, when she leaves that to become a young teacher, she very quickly was writing poetry at a young adult and sending it to Victor Hugo.

And that and there is evidence that she met Hugo very early on and remained inspired by him, so this is not somebody detached from mainstream French culture, she’s she’s plunged straight into it at the first opportunity.

Matthew Paris:

So, Carolyn she decided to become a teacher, why?

Carolyn Eichner:

There were very few career options available for women in the 19^th or most of the 20^th century, and becoming a teacher was a way that a woman could support herself and still be considered a legitimate member of society.

Matthew Paris:

And she couldn’t get into a state school because she wouldn’t swear allegiance to Napoleon is that right? The Third?

Carolyn Eichner:

Right, she was opposed to Napoleon III from a fairly early age.

Matthew Paris:

She opened her own school Paul.

Paul Mason:

Yes, she gets to Montmartre, at the time it is a slum in the north of Paris. And Louise Michel opened a series of private schools aimed at the children of the poor. Interestingly she was also one of the few teachers as far as we can tell who was prepared to teach people with severe learning difficulties. And she tried to teach them in the same classes as the kids who were not disabled.

Louise Michel’s classroom must have been an amazing place because she filled it with animals, pictures, music, quite like 1960s Primary school. But very, very different to the rote learning the 19^th century French education had become.

Matthew Paris:

One of the things that’s already striking me about her is that she was a woman who from the earliest age took everything from first principles. Not all those kinds of rules and assumptions, do you see what I mean?

Carolyn Eichner:

She really was quite an iconoclast, she lived her life exactly as she thought it should be lived. And that meant that the choice of not marrying, which made her subject to all sorts of speculation about her sexuality. Many critics mentioned her looks and criticised her looks, which was not unusual for women in the public eye to be subjected to rather intensely negative critiques of their appearance. And then the logic that well she must be a revolutionary, an activist, an unmarried person because she’s ugly.

Matthew Paris:

We’ve pictures of her in front of us now, and I wouldn’t call her ugly, you could say it’s a plain face, but it’s terrifically striking. A thin woman, a strong serious face, what do you think of her appearance Paul? What would it say to you?

Paul Mason:

Well, she is a loner, she is a thinker, there’s not a speck of make-up. Her nickname was the Red Virgin, you can see a severity about her, in her face. When she was on trial after the Commune, one of the witnesses described her as being dark-haired, high forehead, quite small. And she objected, she said “In fact I am quite tall”.

Carolyn Eichner:

Later in life she had a female companion Charlotte Vau-velle who she was constantly with for years and of course there was all sorts of speculation about that, but there really is no way of knowing you know whether she would be what we would call a lesbian, a term that wouldn’t have existed then. Or whether she just really felt she was married to the revolution, and to the idea of bringing about social revolution.

Matthew Paris:

Let’s talk about that revolution, let’s talk about the Commune. What were the background circumstances?

Carolyn Eichner:

The Franco-Prussian war preceded the Commune, and this was a situation where the Prussians laid siege to Paris. And ultimately the French government surrendered to Prussia because they were more frightened of the working-class Parisians then they were of the Prussians.

Paul Mason:

And remember at this point one of the things that Napoleon III had done was call up the workers of Paris into a National Guard. Based street by street, so they had their rifles their uniforms and their military training on their doorstep. And when the time came for the Republican Government to say you know we surrendered, so let’s collect all the cannons that the National Guard have bought and um are currently looking after. And that was the moment that the revolution started.

Matthew Paris:

And here is her description of that moment.

I descended the hill

My rifle under my coat

Shouting treason! In the rising dawn

The people heard the alarm

We climbed the hill

Believing we would die for liberty

We were as risen from the earth

Our deaths would free Paris

Between us and the army

The women had thrown themselves on the cannons and machine guns

The soldiers stood immobile

When General Lecomte commanded them to fire on the crowd

A subordinate officer broke ranks and cried surrender!

The soldiers obeyed,

The revolution was made

So on March the 18^th 1871 the people in charge of Paris where the Central Committee of the National Guard, they had to decide what to do, they could carry on fighting the retreating army or they could set up their own Commune. Which Paul is what they did.

Paul Mason:

They called elections to a Commune, and let’s remember what Commune meant in this regard. It meant like the GLC of London it was a City Government, and Paris hadn’t been allowed to have a city government under the dictatorship for a very good reason. Everybody knew what the political makeup of that government would be. And within a week the army had cleared out and you have elections and you have basically a city government set up.

Matthew Paris:

Here is her description of that moment.

The proclamation of the Commune was splendid

Their names were announced

An immense cry arose

Vive la Commune!

The drums beat a salvo, the artillery shook the ground

In the name of the people the Commune is proclaimed

Carolyn, these were not revolutionaries in the, in the modern sense of the word, in fact Karl Marx was against the whole idea wasn’t he?

Carolyn Eichner:

Yes, Marx thought that it was premature, but some of them definitely were revolutionaries. And many others of them were working-class people who were completely fed up with the kind of repression and marginalisation they had faced. And this was very much the case for women also. So, in certain respects it was like a festival, because there was a sense that the working-class government had finally taken power. There was free Opera, there was music in the streets it was very much of a festival kind of atmosphere.

There were public meetings throughout Paris almost daily in which thousands of people attended and really got to practice there opposition to government.

Matthew Paris:

But Paul, what did these people want? Louise Michel was becoming prominent among them, what was her plan?

Paul Mason:

What most of them wanted was what was called the Social Republic, they wanted a democratic republic and they wanted it to have social justice as its key deliverable. So that meant ending starvation, ending poverty, ending the criminalisation of women. They’re thinking they’ll have the Social Republic, that means an anti-clerical Republic, it means one where Cooperatives are set up and facilitated by the state. And one in which there is above all personal freedom, I think the Commune remains, and of course Karl Marx later recognised this, the first experiment in successful self-government by a working-class community.

This is the important thing about it, and of course in the last days and Louise Michel is among the people who do this, as they fought to survive, they did adopt extreme measures that later allowed moderate socialist propagandists to say that well they were crazy, killing priests etc.

Matthew Paris:

What was Michel doing during this period? What was her role?

Carolyn Eichner:

She was involved in the Women’s Vigilance Committee, she was also involved in the Men’s Vigilance Committee, and the vigilance was essential since the city was under siege by the French government. She was involved in some of the political clubs and these were working-class clubs that met in churches, which was a real appropriation of space and power. These were very much grassroots organisations, she fought on the battlefield and then ultimately on the barricades in the final week when there was street fighting.

Paul Mason:

One of the pictures of her is in a man’s uniform, and there’s a reason for that, she wanted to fight. We that before the Commune had even started, she used to go to fairgrounds to do target practice. So, she did fight and she was involved in a number of engagements, one at Clamart station in the south of Paris another one at Issy.

Matthew Paris:

Louise later claimed that during the 72 days of the Commune she never went to bed. She was with the Communards when they made their last stand in the cemetery of Montmartre. After the fall of the Commune she was arrested and she was officially Prisoner Number One.

 Apparently, the noise from the firing squads while other Communards were being killed led to complaints from the neighbours, so the soldiers started bayonetting the prisoners to death instead. Altogether there were about 25,000 men women and children executed. Among them Louise’s dear friend Théophile Ferré.

She dedicated a farewell poem to him. The Red Carnations Oeillets Rouges.

If I go to the black cemetery brother

Throw on your sister as a final hope

Some red carnations in bloom

In the last days of Empire when the people were awakening

It was your smile, red carnation

That told us all was being reborn

Today go blossom in the shadow of the black and sad prisons

Go flower by the sombre captive

And tell him truly that we love him

Tell him that through fleeting time everything belongs to the future

That the livid proud conqueror can die more surely

Than the conquered

Paul you’ve suggested that the ideology of the Paris Commune has been hijacked by historians of the left to explain later developments of Marxism-Leninism. If it doesn’t what does it explain? What’s its real significance?

Paul Mason:

For me Louise Michel and the Commune she was part of almost the sort of uber case study of what happens when workers make revolutions without people like Bolsheviks to help/hinder them. I think the Commune remains because above all of its personal and its sexual politics, so far in advance of the 20^th century. You know one of the things we remember Louise for, she fought for the rights of all women.

Paul Mason:

Was she a feminist, do you think Carolyn?

Carolyn Eichner:

Yes absolutely, she was absolutely a feminist. And the term feminism did not come into use until the 1880s, but if one defines feminism as a movement for gender equity, Louise Michel was absolutely a feminist.

Matthew Paris:

In December 1871 Louise Michel was brought before the 6^th Council of War, charged with offences including trying to overthrow the government, encouraging citizens to arm themselves and herself using weapons and wearing a military uniform. When she was asked if she had anything to say in her defence, she’s said to have replied

Since it seems that every heart that beats for freedom has no right to anything

But a little lump of lead I demand my share. If you let me live, I shall never cease to cry for vengeance

And I shall avenge my brothers. If you are not cowards kill me!

If you are not cowards kill me. That’s an extraordinary speech Paul, do we believe that that is what she said? Is in character?

Paul Mason:

I think it’s what she said and what she meant because she is in a state of grieving. Even reading her memoirs written twenty-thirty years later that grieving never stops. The dreamlike quality of the memoir comes from the fact that she’s seen a massacre. And when we as modern journalists cover massacres, we’re all to aware of what that does to people’s psychology for decades beyond that.

You know there were piles of bodies in the streets, she writes constantly about the Hecatomb, the mass grave. That’s an image that’s in her writing till the day she dies. So yeah, she’s ready to die, she knows what the future holds, and that is deportation.

Matthew Paris:

Why didn’t they kill her? When she said kill me, why was she transported to New Caledonia as her sentence when she was such a leader of the rebels?

Carolyn Eichner:

It’s an excellent question, and most likely because they did not want to make her a martyr. She had such a following which did only grow, but she was charismatic, heroic, mythical and the French state must have recognised that making her a martyr would have been a larger problem.

Matthew Paris:

Then four months in a ship the Virginie on the way to New Caledonia, which is an island off Australia. How long did she spend there?

Carolyn Eichner:

She was there for seven years. Her experience there was that of most of the Communards who were sent to New Caledonia, which was that they were basically dumped there and left to fend for themselves. Including constructing their own habitations, getting their own food, these were urban people, New Caledonia now one would think oh this is a tropical paradise, but when one reads the memoirs of the people who were there it was very hot, there were malarial mosquitoes, dengue fever. The conditions were extremely difficult and brutal, and she was among a small number of women who were sent there and very much left to fend for themselves.

Matthew Paris:

And she did fend for herself, she didn’t just vegetate she ended up teaching the native people the Kanaks, she ended up teaching the children of the colonists, she got to know and respect the indigenous culture. She wrote a rather poetic treatise about their language, their island and their culture and here’s part of it.

It is night, it was hot during the day and the coolness is good.

The tribe stretched out beneath the coconut palms, near the huts

Listens to the tales of the storyteller and the breakers in the distance tell tales as well.

The storyteller half-asleep half-awake tells while dreaming stories that we listen to while dreaming.

One would think that it is the branches of the coconut tree that move in the air

But its fruit bats, let them fly away in peace.

This evening the tribe is not hungry, here come drops of rain,

But they are hot, they feel good as they fall on us lying here on the grass

From which we feel the heat of the earth rise.

The white man’s borders are far away, very far away

This is the land of the Fathers.

Paul I’m fascinated by this completely new chapter. There are three or four lives here aren’t there?

Paul Mason:

Yes, I mean let’s remember why the French state sent people to New Caledonia. It thought it wouldn’t just imprison the Communards it would force them by having to remake their lives amid stone age people to reconsider their ideas. And the effect on many of them was depression, of course many of those people, urban people lived in a tiny neighbourhood of Paris all their lives, suddenly they’re in the wilderness.

Louise Michel fought it by being creative. This is the period where she’s constantly writing novels, plays, all kinds of lost work and she becomes and amateur anthropologist. She sets out from almost day one to engage with the New Caledonian indigenous people. And once she’s done that, she ends up going to their villages, she ends up- she takes her notebook, she writes down their songs and their folktales and publishes -actually while she’s even on the island- the first edition of the Chanson de geste book is published in Paris.

So, she’s doing anthropology but what they don’t know of course is she’s also radicalising them. When the time comes for the Kanaks to revolt, she’s given them her red scarf that she’s kept hidden since the days of the Commune and is one of the few French prisoners who is whole heartedly in favour of the Kanak revolt.

Matthew Paris:

The white man’s borders are far away, very far away she wrote, but she went back to the white man’s borders she returned to Paris in 1880 after an amnesty had been granted to the Communards. She was met at the station by a crowd of about 7,000 people shouting “Vive Louise Michel! Vive La Commune!” How had she become so famous and so popular on the other side of the world during this period Carolyn?

Carolyn Eichner:

Her legacy of the time during the Commune and her activism prior to the Commune just continued to grow and amplify in her absence. And then she was continuing to write and to send her manuscripts back to Paris, things were published and she had become in some ways really transformed by the experience in New Caledonia. Now she had actively advocated anti-imperialism, she continued to push for social revolution, and one other thing that had very much come out of her experience after the Commune was that she had become an Anarchist.

And this sort of transformation had occurred on the boat on the way to New Caledonia. So in New Caledonia she was also thinking and writing about Anarchism and about how the failure of the Commune meant a redirection or real grassroots efforts for revolution. And she had become this enormous personality, thousands of people met her at the station and then even thousands more came to a talk she gave immediately after that. And that sort of set the situation for the subsequent decades.

Matthew Paris:

And she went back to being a revolutionary agitator. So, it was probably inevitable that she would get locked away again. Why? What did she do?

Paul Mason:

In 1883 she leads a bread riot, carrying a black flag now through the streets of Paris, there was violence at the end of that demonstration she is charged and imprisoned for three years. This already a woman who has spent two and a half years after the Commune in a French prison, then seven years on the island and now she’s back in prison.

I think what is important about this though is that by the 1880s you’ve got the emergence of an almost modern style French labour movement. You’ve got unions, you’ve got self help societies, Louise Michel thinks that this is all rubbish. And she wants to carry on the dream of activating the slum dwelling poorest classes. That’s what she’s doing on that bread riot, she sees her task as being to radicalise and ignite the poor.

Matthew Paris:

Paul Lafargue visited her in prison in 1885 and recorded that conversation.

I’m not complaining, to tell you the truth I’ve had to put up with worse.

I’ve found a happiness in prison I never knew when I was free.

I have time to study, and I take advantage of it.

When I was free, I had my classes, 150 students or more, it wasn’t enough for me to live on since two thirds of them didn’t pay me.

I had to give lessons in grammar, music, history a little bit of everything until ten or eleven o’clock in the evening.

And when I went home, I went to sleep exhausted, unable to do anything.

At the time I would have given years of my life in order to have time to give over to study.

Here in St Lazare I have time for myself, a lot of time and I’m happy about this.

I read, I study I’ve learned several languages.

Two years after she was let out of prison, she was shot in a theatre Carolyn.

Carolyn Eichner:

She was giving a political speech, and someone in the crowd stood up and shot her in the head, but it just barely grazed her head. And she recovered fully, and she refused to prosecute the shooter, saying that he was just clearly someone who didn’t understand what she meant, what her intentions were and she wanted to speak with him she spoke with the man and allowed him to go free. And this of course fed into the idea of her as the saintly figure.

Matthew Paris:

She spent some years in London, what did she do in London Paul?

Paul Mason:

We don’t know everything she did in London but she did a lot of philanthropy, she became known as the “good woman” I think she was going around the East End giving away food. She constantly gave away everything that was sent to her actually clothes, dresses, books. But the other thing she did was to form a school with a fellow Anarchist and survivor of the Commune in quite a posh part of London. Recently research has managed to unearth some of the prospectus and syllabus and its quite you know radical.

But surprise, surprise a bomb was found in the school, nobody was prosecuted but the school did close thereafter. We don’t know who put the bomb there, we don’t think it was Louise Michel and her cohorts, it might have been a police sting, or one of their more radical- you know there were lots of radical Anarchists around Louise Michel all the time by the 1880s and 90s.

Matthew Paris:

And she carried on lecturing not just all over France, she went to Algeria, and on a trip to Algeria she fell seriously ill. Back in Marseilles she died.

Carolyn Eichner:

Yes, she had wanted to go to Algeria to advocate for an uprising against the French Imperial government. And she managed to do this though she was in ill health she travelled around and spoke against the French government, spoke against religion, spoke against militarism and essentially this tour ended her life. She died shortly thereafter.

Matthew Paris:

Let’s give Louise Michel one more chance to convert us all to Anarchism. In all her writing there’s no paragraph more powerful than this one.

There are millions of us who don’t give a damn for authority because we have seen how little the many edged tool of power accomplishes.

We have watched throats cut to gain it, it is supposed to be the Jade axe that travels from island to island in Oceania.

No! Power monopolised is evil.

Matthew Paris:

Paul, in your book about working-class history you end with a mention of Louise Michel. I’d like you to read that last bit.

Paul Mason:

I have seen the young Louise Michel dancing to a samba band in a field outside Glen Eagle’s summit. Her face was painted and she was wearing pink fairy wings, she still has a lot to learn.

Matthew Paris:

Paul Mason, thank you for sharing with us your enthusiasm for the extraordinary Louise Michel. Carolyn Eichner thank you for joining us. And from me Matthew Paris until next week goodbye.