Excerpt from «Anarchism… today» by Jens Bjørneboe

(Introduction to a debate on anarchism in Oslo Student Community, september 1971).

[Translator's note: Bjørneboe starts his introduction by talking about Mao's China, and eventually contrasts that society with Russian hierarchical, centralized communism. From that comparison he launches into his discussion of anarchism / anarcho-nihilism. The new left's fascination with Mao in the 70s might distract contemporary readers from the author's main points; and his criticism of religion also. I have therefore skipped those parts of the text. For a historical overview of the radical 70s I refer the interested reader to Hans Petter Sjøli's "Mao, min Mao" (2005, untranslated). Bjørneboe's criticism of religion and other systems of control and power are treated in his "History of Bestiality" (1966, 1969, 1973; to English in 2000). I have also elided redundancies and repetitions that stem from this text's origin as a speech.]

… we don't know very much about China today, but we do know something about the independence of the communes, we do know that statesmen, civil servants and officers work manual labour some weeks every year, on farms, in the industry, or as an army private. Access to education is not inherited socially or politically. Can you imagine anything more different from the hierarchical, centrally-governed, anti-democratic Russian state-communism we see today?

And wherein lies the difference?

I will not claim that Chinese society is an anarchistic society, but I do however claim that China today is a society that shows anarchistic traits. By that I mean: A society that to some extent is governed from below. By that I mean: A society where the people in every case has at least something to say. A society where the councils - the soviets - are not stripped of all power and influence, as in Russia and Eastern Europe.

A society is a healthy society only to the extent it features anarchism. China is certainly not a perfect country, nor ever will be; nothing seems to work that way in this best of all worlds. There are only degrees of imperfection, degrees of perfection. And so when it comes to anarchism I do not believe in perfection. I'm positive that anarchism today can only exist as a feature, an adjective, if you will, anarchism more or less featured, stronger or weaker degrees of real democracy. Thus I don't believe in absolutes, just in degrees.

I believe that having the "either-or" attitude in politics comes from evil*, because it is unrealistic. It is as unrealistic as the ancient, deranged problem of free will. * [Translator's note: Cf. Matthew 5:37]

There is in reality no absolute, total freedom, there are only degrees. The old, half-metaphysical problem of free will is utterly abstract. By observing reality instead of pondering and speculating one will determine that an alcoholic, for example, has less free will than a non-alcoholic (with regards to alcohol), but that does not mean that the non-alcoholic enjoys total and absolute free will, or that the non-alcoholic is totally unfree. Will is more or less free. The problem of anarchism is in many ways similar to the problem of free will.

These - the personal, spiritual and bodily problems of freedom - and the problem of centralized state powers and governments - are the only relevant problems to discuss today.

They reveal the essence of anarchism. Discussing the manufacture of canned meatballs or the organization of pharmaceutical products in an anarchistic society would be like discussing the pope's beard indeed, since the pope in question has no beard yet.

This is about freedom versus centralized government, and that is the only issue of interest today, to set up and maintain principled boundaries. Anything else will be pure guesswork.

I suppose most of you know that even though anarchism exist in many variants, it is distinct from leninism by maintaining the basic revolutionary goal, or ideal: Freedom in its concrete meaning, not its abstract nor idealistic nor hegelian meaning. The issue is not anarchism versus communism, but anarchism versus leninistic marxism.

We do not know what communism is like, for we have never seen it - we have only seen national and leninistic variants of it. Russia and other countries present the issue as freedom or socialism, as incompatible ideals. In Cuba, Castro has started a witch hunt for intellectuals in general, and writers in particular. Dissenters are considered dangerous for the system, and they are.

The anarchistic point of view is that the issue is communism and freedom - socialism and personal freedom in its concrete meaning. This is why anarchism is the most hated and persecuted political movement both among the US capitalists and Russian leninists: Both of them may ally themselves with fascists, but never anarchists.

There are two reasons for this, one is highly visible and easily grasped: Leninistic communism does not appeal at all to the masses in Western Europe and the US, because they see it as an enemy of freedom. Anarchism therefore offers an alternative, to unite socialism and freedom. Thus anarchism becomes dangerous in a wholly different way than authoritarian communism. The situation is the same in Russia, they want to maintain the falsehood that socialism and freedom cannot be united. The authoritatian communistic motive is of a somewhat different kind. For example, they don't want freedom of research nor of information because that would reveal the past of the ruling elite, which was to a large extent amoral or criminal.

This is the obvious and very clear reason why anarchism is hated. This hate has in the US led to - as is well known - the planned miscarriages of justice during the Haymarket affair in Chicago, and a little later to the miscarriages of justice against Sacco and Vanzetti, acknowledged innocent anarchists. The hate against anarchism in Russia led to the physical destruction of almost all anarchists. They were decimated during Lenin and Stalin.

We need to go a little further back in history to understand the deeper reason for the hate, persecution and murders of anarchists, both in the west and the east. We shall now look into anarchism's spiritual ancestor - nihilism.

The most radical form of anarchism is still referred to as anarcho-nihilism - and this is the crux of the matter. There are various definitions of nihilism in the dictionaries. Every definition builds on the literal meaning of the word "nihil", nothing. A nihilist is then a person who wants to annihilate, a destroyer, a dismantler. But this definition is only correct by bourgeois standards. I have found a more correct account in - I think - an Aschehoug dictionary - "A philosophical school that refuses to accept conventional truths that are inherited or handed over before their veracity is examined". In brief, independent critical thought and empirical examinations. This is also an accurate description of any modern, critical and empirical science, quite simply a description of a modern scientific attitude.

Any rational, scientific research is in this sense nihilism. We know from the history of natural science how much blood, how much torture, how many heretic burnings this attitude has cost our culture: The hate towards irreverent, critical intelligence has been, and still is, without limit. "Nothing is holy" for persons with this attitude - it consists of no other authority than the true authority which stems from a greater insight, a greater experience, namely reality itself.

This is where anarchism in all shapes and variations differ radically from every other political movement, from the conservative as well as the revolutionary.

The starting point for any revolutionary movement, thought and action is the will for freedom. I shall explain what I mean by freedom:

  • A. Freedom of movement. The right to live and travel wherever you want. In other words the right to own a usable passport.
  • B. Freedom of information. The right to read whatever you want of books, periodicals and newspapers, and also the right to free and unlimited research.
  • C. Freedom of speech. The right to express your opinions and beliefs in writing and in speech, even if they criticize government policies harshly.
  • D. Freedom of congregation and meetings.
  • E. The right to strike.

Freedom in the senses above are necessary for the growth and development of society for the following reasons: It is not possible to preserve people's legal protection without a well-informed and completely free public critique of their government.

I know something of the legal system, and even a rather harmless - and to coin a phrase - un-demonic - legal system as the Norwegian system would, without a certain amount of public criticism, be capable of any kind of suppression and acts of terror. Such are the effects of unchecked power on any human.

Ergo: Even a limited degree of legal protection - as e.g. in Norway - depends on the freedom of information and the free speech of a free criticism. The same goes for any society as a whole: It cannot develop healthily and properly without free criticism of its leaders. And no freedom of speech nor criticism can be meaningful without prior freedom of information.

We know how workers have been degraded and incapacitated in countries where the right to strike has been abolished, no matter the reason for abolishment.

There is no weak link in this simple logical chain. Freedom is neither caviar for intellectuals nor opium for a bourgeois minority - and freedom is not a bourgeois prejudice, as said by Lenin. Freedom is, on the contrary, a necessary foundation upon which a country can develop. A barracks-and-prison system can be constructed without freedom, but not a humane society - because a society without active, free criticism will be a static, unchanging society, and a society cannot be static without decaying.

Society must be moving, developing, changing. Revolution must be perpetual, eternal, and it must be renewed every day; revolution must be permanent. Or else society will degenerate and calcify in centralism, with no further development. But active change, development and growth is not possible without swallowing the bitter pill which, today, is the despised and underestimated intellectual freedom.

Deconstruction or demolition of any centralized power - i.e. state power, government power, religious or scientific concentrations of power - are steps along the road to freedom and justice - which, after all, is the goal of any revolution or evolution. Inherent in every centralized power is the tendency to evil, towards reactionary rigidity, the tendency towards status quo as the best of all things, towards the static. Is is both interesting and educational to note that the adjective "static" is derived from the same word as "state" and "status". The very idea of "state" is enclosed by the static, the solidified and that which is dead.

Every flavor of anarchism suffers from a handicap: They don't build upon an abstract, constructed theory. An empirical, scientific starting point cannot make any other plan than a working hypothesis, in best case. It is not possible to make closed, cast-iron systems by observing reality. It is easier to start from dogmas: Marxists, leninists and Christian theologists can with nary a difficulty create infallible systems. And when that system does not correspond to reality, it is reality's fault. It is upon the point of freedom and empiricism that anarchism is distinct from any other political current: Problems shall not be solved abstractly, in advance, by a theoretical plan, but when they actually occur; not from above by an infallible government or sacred elite, but from below, from the people, from those who in freedom can solve difficulties as independent, adult humans, not as marionettes in the hands of the powerful.

I will finally quote some words from a Chinese poem written by Mao Zedong. First he describes a plane ride above the ancient, eternal Chinese wall, and thinks of all the powerful dynasties, all those admiring people of power that once had perished below him. He ends the poem thus:

"They all perished.
But even today:
Consider the great rulers: Ever
full of that old, evil desire."

I understand there will now be a debate on anarchism - and I know I leave its legacy in the best of hands.

This translation is based on the text as published in 'Politi og anarki' (1972). November 2024. Contact info: