by Francesco Codello
I became thoroughly acquainted with Colin Ward’s original and innovative thinking thanks to the Italian publication of his work Anarchy in action [Italian title: Anarchia come organizzazione] by Edizioni Antistato in 1976. Reading this book was a revelation which, as the years have passed, has struck me as increasingly innovative and extraordinary. At the time, having only just read it, I did not fully grasp its revolutionary significance for anarchist theories and ideas. Despite the difficulties faced by militant anarchism in those years – which was still very much tied to tradition, as Amedeo Bertolo writes in the ‘Foreword to the Italian edition’ – reading this book ‘brings about an openness and intellectual richness which, we believe, anarchism greatly needs in order to break out of its cultural ghetto and avoid suffocation’. Thanks to Bertolo’s own foresight, from that point onwards, Italian anarchism too was able to benefit from Colin Ward’s fundamental contribution. Ward was already, albeit very marginally, known in Italy, thanks above all to the journal «Volontà» and the cultural and intellectual ties that had developed around it in post-fascist Italy1. He himself attested his connection with Italy, which lasted until the end of his life, on several occasions2 and, amongst other things, through an article published in «Anarchy» in the late 1980s, ‘A Few Italian Lessons’, in which he reflects on the rise in unemployment caused by the crisis in British industry and on possible prospects, in a context where mass employment was giving way to self-employment. He therefore identified a model worth exploring in the Italy of ‘small businesses’ that was flourishing at that time. What emerged was an optimistic vision of a culture of self-employment, which, in the world of production, translated into entrepreneurial skills and adaptability that had no equivalent in the culture of the British labour movement.
Ward was actively involved in many aspects of social life (urban planning, architecture, education, sociology, economics, landscape, popular traditions and social behaviour, horticulture, water, transport, etc.) but with a very particular perspective, decidedly at odds with that of the Establishment. The many books he has written, and the countless articles and essays published in both anarchist and non-anarchist journals – always drawing on sources and studies, as well as personal experiences, from a wide range of cultural backgrounds and perspectives – bear witness not only to the breadth of his interests but also to the uniqueness and singularity of his approach3.
‘The many years I have spent trying to spread libertarian ideas have convinced me that the best way to persuade people to consider the anarchist approach is to draw on the experience of informal, temporary, self-managed networks that actually make human community possible, rather than on the wholesale rejection of existing society and the envisioning of a future society in which some different kind of humanity will live in perfect harmony’4.
Ward does not, therefore, dream of an anarchist society, nor does he seek to outline imaginative visions of it, since his pragmatism leads him to realise that what can be imagined today, whether in positive or negative terms, will not necessarily still be assessable tomorrow according to today’s understanding. There is, therefore, an element of constant criticism and self-criticism in Ward’s interpretation of anarchist ideas, which leads him to believe that, in practice, an anarchist society is almost never fully achievable. Whilst it is, to say the least, difficult to bring about an anarchist society, it is not so impractical to ‘increase the level of anarchism’ here and now, even within an authoritarian society such as the one in which we live. But anarchism does not aim exclusively at the individual and personal liberation of human beings, following a logic of perpetual protest. Anarchists must retain the will and determination to change social structures and activities as well, even if society itself cannot be completely and definitively transformed in an anarchist direction. For whilst the idea of a free society may be an abstraction, that of a freer society is not.
The fundamental question, therefore, is not so much whether anarchy is possible or not, but whether it is possible to broaden the sphere of influence – through action and experimentation – of anti-authoritarian methods, ensuring that they increasingly become the standard criteria by which human beings organise their coexistence and their relationships.
The fundamental characteristic of Colin Ward’s thought, however – drawing on Kropotkin’s pragmatic focus on anarchism as both a theory and a practice of social organisation – will always be that particular interpretation of anarchist ideas as already existing (the ‘seed beneath the snow’) in the spontaneous solutions that human beings devise when faced with a collective problem. This occurs whenever men and women freely choose the libertarian solution over the authoritarian one when faced with the most diverse of issues.
Colin Ward’s anarchism is not the transposition of a doctrinal corpus onto reality but the search, within reality, for a libertarian consciousness. He has steadfastly adopted a third way, distinct from both pragmatism as an end in itself and dogmatic, abstract ideologism, defining the essence of being an anarchist in a non-libertarian society through the need for continuous experimentation and an anti-authoritarian consciousness – one that is as much an inner state as it is social action. Colin suggested to us that libertarian practices already exist, like ‘seeds beneath the snow’, and that it is our task to nurture them and bring them to the fore. Drawing on Buber, Landauer, Goodman, but above all Kropotkin, he always sought to demonstrate, on the basis of existing realities, that anarchy is ‘better’ and that it is ‘possible’.
In 1975, in a lecture delivered at the Garden Cities/New Town Forum in Welwyn Garden City, whilst criticising the proponents of a certain revolutionary Marxist culture, Colin Ward argued that ‘they are like those who think it is better for the poor to starve to death in the slums because that way the day of the revolution will come sooner. Apart from our moral aversion to this way of thinking, that is simply not how things work.’
All his writings, his entire life as a militant scholar, architect and educator, journalist and teacher, sociologist and urban planner, economist and observer of human habits and behaviour, is shaped by this conviction, because an ‘anarchic society, a society that organises itself without authority, has always existed, like a seed beneath the snow, buried under the weight of the State and bureaucracy, of capitalism and its waste, of privilege… of nationalism… of religions’.
The main cultural influences (not the only ones, of course) to which he feels indebted, as he himself reminds us, are those of William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft in education, Alexander Herzen in politics, Peter Kropotkin in economics, Martin Buber in sociology, William Richard Lethaby and Walter Segal in architecture, and Patrick Geddes and Paul Goodman in urban planning5. Alongside these – let us say ‘original’ references – he takes up and develops many other investigations and research projects, giving priority to those studies that are most original and up-to-date, capable of providing reliable data and evidence to support his underlying thesis.
Among the classical authors of anarchism, Kropotkin is undoubtedly the one to whom Ward pays the closest attention, identifying all the elements which, in his view, remain central to a re-examination of anarchist thought.
Whenever the opportunity arises for him to define the term ‘anarchism’, it is no coincidence that he quotes the definition drafted by the Russian revolutionary for the Encyclopaedia Britannica in 1910, according to which ‘anarchy’ is to be understood as:
‘the name given to a principle or theory of life and behaviour, according to which society is conceived as being without government, the harmony of such a society resulting not from submission to the law or obedience to any authority, but from free agreements established between numerous and diverse groups, on a territorial or professional basis, freely formed out of the necessity of production and consumption, as well as to satisfy the infinite variety of the needs and aspirations of civilised people’.
Furthermore, as Ward reminds us, it was Kropotkin who first pointed out that libertarian forms of organisation have already existed in various historical periods and represent the spontaneous response adopted by different social groups to resolve various problems, even within the framework of authoritarian and hierarchical societies.
Referring also to the thought of authors such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Gustav Landauer and Martin Buber, as well as Kropotkin, Colin Ward can be regarded, like Paul Goodman, as the populariser of a pragmatic and workable conception of anarchism. Indeed, the strategy associated with writers such as Colin Ward and Paul Goodman is designed to bring anarchism into everyday life. The English anarchist argues that this strategy, which he calls ‘anarchy in action’, is a footnote to Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid. In other words, it is a way of demonstrating that anarchism is present in our daily lives and that the anarchist’s commitment is to help individuals and groups express their natural aptitudes.
‘For me, anarchism is a social philosophy based on the absence of authority. For me, anarchism is an individual or social perspective. As far as I am concerned, anarchism is a social viewpoint… in which the principle of authority has been superseded by one based on voluntary cooperation. One might say that anarchism is extreme decentralisation. I believe in a decentralised society. What I wish to achieve is to transform a mass society into a mass of societies’6.
Ward reminds us that, as we all know, there are a variety of interpretations of the word ‘anarchism’ and that he will nevertheless attempt to provide a definition broad enough to encompass several of them. Furthermore, this emphasis on a ‘multitude of societies’ highlights precisely his experimental and pluralist approach, even in his conception of a libertarian society.
He is keen to emphasise that, in all the choices we make in our social lives – within the family, in the local community, at work, in our leisure time and ‘in the organisation of healthcare funding’, in communications, transport and the arts – there is a variety of possible solutions. In his view, an anarchist is someone who generally seeks out, chooses and supports libertarian solutions as opposed to authoritarian ones. The values he describes as anarchist are upheld by a large number of people who do not consider themselves anarchists; he is therefore happy to regard them as universal, and, of all these, the most important is trust in mutual aid, which forms the basis of human social life.
Moving beyond the traditional debate between reformism and revolutionism, Colin Ward writes:
‘Similarly, the distinction is not between revolution and reform, but between, on the one hand, that sort of revolution which serves to install a new clique of oppressors or that sort of reform which serves only to make oppression more palatable or more efficient, and those social changes, whether revolutionary or reformist, through which peoples expand their spheres of autonomy and reduce their subjugation to external authorities, on the other. Anarchism, in all its forms, is an affirmation of the dignity and responsibility of human beings. It is not a programme of political change, but an act of social self-determination’7.
He is well aware that the course of history is made up of moments of acceleration and moments of deceleration, even when it comes to social change. This conception echoes Elisée Reclus’s idea of ‘evolution and revolution’, the title of one of his well-known writings on the subject. Ward consistently upholds this idea, drawing on a phrase borrowed from Alexander Herzen, according to which ‘an infinitely distant goal is not a goal; it is a deception’. And his frequent reference to the necessary and concrete commitment that must be made here and now, if one truly desires a radical change in society, is characterised by his conviction – drawn from Gustav Landauer – that ‘the State is not something that can be destroyed by a revolution; it is a condition, a relationship between human beings, a way of behaving. It can be destroyed by forging other relationships, by behaving differently’. Drawing on the insights offered by Martin Buber regarding the relationship between the State and society, Ward develops the idea that the State is the result of society’s abdication (that is, of spontaneous and direct initiatives) in its favour. In other words, the presence of the State itself must be rendered increasingly superfluous through society’s reappropriation of its ‘power to act’, thereby preventing the emergence and consolidation of that ‘power to make others act’, which is embodied precisely by the State.
In his view, there are significant differences between the anarchist movement at the end of the 19th century and that of the 20th century, which aims to adopt a different approach to anarchist propaganda. Faced with the crisis not only of anarchism but also of the mainstream socialist movement, following the fall of the Berlin Wall, he feels it is important to emphasise that anarchy is not a theory of utopia, but a theory of organisation. He echoes the words of Paul Goodman when he observes that ‘a free society cannot be the replacement of an “old order” with a “new order”; it must be an extension of the sphere of free action, until it has transformed the greater part of social life’. Ward is convinced that an intelligent 21st-century anarchism will continue to forge closer links with the world of environmental movements and with the unofficial and informal economies of the developing world, as well as with those of the poor within the developed world, in order to draw anarchist lessons regarding human survival. He believes that the lessons taught to us by the 21st century lend greater strength to the anarchist message, but that ‘our language must take account of the new and complex social realities’. Consequently, in his view, it is important for anarchist propagandists to draw attention to those elements of freedom and voluntary cooperation that exist in every nation. Anarchism envisages the expansion of these elements to encompass the whole of social and productive life. This is why he believes it is important for anarchists to continue emphasising the existence of a ‘widespread’ and ‘underground’ anarchism. His analysis highlights how 19th-century anarchist ideas were inevitably Eurocentric, even when they were brought to Japan, China and the cities of Latin America by students and immigrants. But one of the major developments of the late 20th century was the contribution made by a different style of anarchist thought – perhaps under a different label – through the emergence of numerous spontaneous initiatives of self-sufficiency and self-organisation in Africa, South Asia and Latin America. Right up until the end of his life, Colin Ward remained a keen observer of all those phenomena emerging in various parts of the world which, in some way, served to confirm his observations on this form of anarchism.
During a long conversation I had with him8, in response to this further question of mine: ‘If, to conclude, you had to explain to a being from another planet what anarchy is, what would you say to them, being certain that you would be understood anyway?’, he replied:
‘My first endeavour would be to persuade my guest to share a meal with me; I have always been told that the first gesture nomadic peoples make towards strangers is to put them at ease by explaining that, in our language, the word “comrades” means people who share their bread with you. The second step would be to explain that some of us believe that the spontaneous sharing of goods and services leads to the greatest pleasure for everyone, and that if the guest were willing to take part in the work of our community, they would be welcome amongst us. They would, however, be free to leave, with one warning: many communities are hostile towards strangers of a different colour and might regard them as ‘illegal immigrants’ or ‘economic migrants’.
Colin Ward leaves us an important legacy, and taking up his mantle is no easy task. As far as I am concerned, his thinking, his outlook on life and his humanity are an example and a challenge that I believe we should embrace. But, mind you, he himself used to say that ‘Every teacher builds on the knowledge that their student already possesses’.
Through his reflections, Ward brings about a radical shift in perspective with regard to traditional revolutionary conceptions of anarchism. Whilst still valuing the insights of classical thought that remain relevant today, he frees our imagination from messianic and utopian notions, compelling us to think and act, here and now, to increase the degree of anarchism in our lives without waiting for a cathartic event that risks distancing us ever further from reality, consigning our ideas to historical marginality. Ward’s reflection is therefore positive and proactive, entrusting concrete struggles with the task of moving beyond negation in favour of proactive practice.
In conclusion, it seems to me more appropriate than ever to revisit today the question that Colin Ward raised in 1961, which must be addressed in a contemporary and critical manner. Ward wrote: ‘The theme I am addressing in this symposium is “Are we respectable enough?”. And by this question I do not mean to enquire about our dress, the conformity of our private lives to statistical standards, or the way in which we earn our living, but rather the quality of our anarchist ideas, and whether they are worthy of respect. In other words, I intend to discuss here whether the quality of anarchist ideas and proposals is worthy of respect, insofar as they suggest concrete libertarian solutions to various problems across different social spheres, and whether they can, in this way, be preferred to authoritarian ones’9.
What, then, does it mean for anarchists to be respectable? What theoretical and practical implications might arise from taking this question as the starting point for our reasoning, and, above all, what consequences does it have to prioritise the respectability of anarchism in our everyday behaviour? What repercussions does this have for the theoretical and historical body of militant anarchism? What shift in perspective does it introduce into our analyses? What stance should we adopt regarding the role of the anarchist in this society?
The discussion is open.
Endnotes
1. See: Francesco Codello, ‘Volontà: Workshop of Anarchist Research’, in: Giovanna Gioli and Hamish Kallin, Thinking as Anarchists, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2022.
2. Colin Ward – David Goodway, Lo sguardo anarchico, elèuthera, Milan, 2021.
3. Francesco Codello, I semi sotto la neve, in: Libertaria, Milan, vol. 12, nos. 1-2, 2010.
4. Colin Ward, Anarchia come organizzazione, elèuthera, Milan, various editions, p. 9.
5. Colin Ward, Influences: Voices of Creative Dissent, Green Books, Bideford (Devon), 1991.
6. Boston Richard, Conversation about anarchism, Reply by C.W. (Colin Ward), in: Anarchy, no. 85, London, March 1968.
7. Colin Ward, Anarchia come organizzazione, op. cit., p. 204.
8. Francesco Codello, I semi sotto la neve: intervista a Colin Ward, in: *Libertaria*, July/September 2001, Milan, vol. 3, no. 3.
9. Colin Ward, Anarchism and Respectability, Freedom, London, 1961.