In the past decade, women have worked together, met together, and talked together in ways that have been considered novel, emerging from and at the same time creating a new attitude about group organization which proposes only egalitarian, non-hierarchical relationships. The methods used in support/collaboration (such as consciousness raising) and the kind of group created have seemed unique. However, this attitude and these methods have been generally restricted to the small group, while the dominant form of mass organization among middle class women has been conventionally reformist, aimed at changing legislation, working for the ERA and so forth. This kind of political work relies on organizing methods historically unrelated to significant social change.

Many women who were in radical politics in the late 1960s have fallen back on working methods that can have immediate, tangible effect. This is a recurrent problem for the left: should it work for immediate reforms, setting the stage for greater ones? Will reform (or opportunism, according to some) eventually produce a consciousness sufficiently advanced to change the social structure? The women's suffrage movements in England and America were also divided on this issue. Some saw the vote as leading to further reforms for women, while others saw it as leading to socialism. Today, reformist politics tactically involved with a more or less accepted social structure are at odds with attempts by radical feminists to rethink society and relationships within society. In the criticism of power, bureaucracy and institutional rigidity, in the emphasis on the personal, on the family (whatever its form), on education, child care and sex —feminists have proved, consciously or not, to be anarchists.

The anarchist premise of radical feminism is that only through collectivity and equality can individuality, autonomy and independence be achieved. Individuality, in this sense, means something like "personal and interpersonal realization." This is "therapeutic" only when the group helps women "survive" within the system, when the group becomes estheticized or escapist and class analysis doesn't provide a basis for further organization. Anarchist egalitarianism in women's groups has been based not only on political, but on ethical or moral grounds which presume that women should behave in a certain way—openly, honestly, with integrity. Women, by requiring this of each other, sometimes create a feeling of moral superiority over men who, by implication, and often in fact, are not honest among themselves, or "in touch with their feelings."

Historically, ethical and egalitarian relationships among women did not result only from choice, as was the case with anarchists, but from material conditions excluding women from full participation in production and power—and thus from the hierarchies of production. Whenever women began to work together, each contributing what she knew, there was relatively the same level of experience and skill—a necessary or "natural" equality, which often made democracy intrinsic to organization. Because woman's domain was traditionally more personal, women's political activities tended to center around personal questions. (Sheila Rowbotham suggests that this focus is a necessary precondition for the mobilization of women en masse.1. Sheila Rowbotham, Women, Resistance and Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), p. 124.) But the moral imperative, when elicited as a response to oppression, often bogs down in the attempt to reconcile morality with revolutionary strategy. The impetus behind a moral position is more often rational than revolutionary; it is a call to reason, to the recognition of how things should be and the decision to make them that way. But the idea that change is effected only by reason and understanding can be utopian and/or reactionary, since recognition of class and economic contradictions alone cannot affect the power relationships behind these conflicts. On the other hand, the alliance of feminism with political ideologies that stress revolution, especially marxism-leninism, has often been destructive to the radical content of feminism. The real question is, then: how can the content of change be maintained within a confusion about form? What organizational form will work without sacrificing feminist content to political ideologies that maintain sexist social institutions?

Thus, feminism's major problem—how to concretize ideas about personal liberty within a form of organization that is not hierarchical, that does not contradict individual freedom, and that is not utopian—has been anarchism's traditional dilemma as well. Anarchist and often feminist arguments tend to be predicated on a moral-philosophical belief in a "natural" social state without government or male-created institutions—a condition that would be "naturally" reinstated if government or male institutions were abolished; that is, Nature herself, or women, would produce a better social organism.

Some of the most influential anarchists—Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, and later, Emma Goldman and Federica Montseny—provide the historical precedents for many aspects of women's groups. It must be kept in mind, however, that anarchists and feminists have often reached the same conclusions from different directions, which raises the question of intentionality. For example, William Godwin, husband of Mary Wollstonecraft and father of Mary Shelley, imagined the world structured around discussion groups with a purpose similar to consciousness raising. His ideal society, as described in Political Justice (1793) was based on "public inspection," "positive sincerity, and "political simplicity"—the foundation for the first two. This meant reorganization through federalism, nations broken down into small autonomous units. Psychological pressure would replace force, for people would have to be honest and virtuous in face-to-face confrontations. Small discussion groups would encourage the pursuit of knowledge, extending laterally to become a universal movement. Godwin's speculations, however, were based not in practice but in reaction against the retardation of the French Revolution by governmental authority.

The major impetus of consciousness raising has been Godwinian, centering around discussion and inquiry with trust, loyalty and honesty as criteria for respect. According to the Red Stockings, the purpose of consciousness raising was to "develop female class consciousness through sharing experience and publicly exposing the sexist foundations of all our institutions. While the call-to-arms was political, the methods were personal, based on the idea that the subjective experience of objective conditions can lead to objective analysis. "We regard our personal experience, and our feelings about that experience, as the basis for an analysis of our common situation.... The notion of equality, as conceived by feminists, has had a double mean ing: the struggle to be recognized as equal to men (the oppressors) and the struggle to maintain equality among women (so as not to oppress each other). "We are committed to achieving internal democracy. We will do whatever is necessary to ensure that every woman in our movement has an equal chance to participate, assume responsibility, and develop her political potential."2. All quotations in this paragraph are from the Redstockings Manifesto, July, 1969. Methods like "going around the circle" have been used to prevent dominance—and to recognize that personality is an instrument of domination.

However, when consciousness raising fails to distinguish between sex and class consciousness and does not acknowledge middle- and working-class contradictions, it falls into liberalism —"a moralistically humanitarian and egalitarian philosophy of social improvement through the re-education of psychological attitudes."3. Charnie Guettel, Marxism & Feminism (Ontario, Canada: Women's Educational Press, 1974), p. 3 From a marxist point of view, there can be no radical analysis if the critique of society rests upon change within the individual (or in self-help and education) rather than relations of production. While small-group interaction can extend laterally to become a mass movement, consciousness raising includes no strategy for mass organization. Consequently, while personal interaction can be helpful as a beginning—generating support building up individuals' confidence—it remains idealistic if every thing stops there.

Another strain of feminism is related to the theories of Pierre Joseph Proudhon, who carried anarchism into more concrete forms of organization. He wanted to rebuild society by creating a federation of communes and cooperatives based on "Mutual Aid," through contract and mutual credit, replacing "economic powers" with "economic forces. In his statement, "property is theft," Proudhon opposed the exploitative accumulation of capital but not property for use.

Some feminist organizations, such as health centers, credit unions and food co-ops, are Proudhonian in their reliance on mutual aid, on exchange of skills and services. While such groups can often radicalize a particular community, they restrict them selves to immediate need, affecting consumption rather than production, and they do not in themselves deal with the sources of production or help analyze the power of women in the labor force. This kind of cooperative activity is still linked to household activity, which is also about consumption, contrary to what the Wages for Housework women argue.

Cooperative organizations are Proudhonian in their hope that cooperation can extend laterally to change the economic and psychological bases of society. If the cooperative form is that of the extended family, if it is apolitical, and isolationist, like most communes, it simply avoids the realities of production. A commune is similar to a consciousness-raising group, it can radically change the individuals within it but it is imperialized, economically and socially, by external institutions, and can serve only as an example rather than as a political force.

Mikhail Bakunin's influence—on both anarchists and women—seems to be emotional; his ideas are based in conventionally "female" modes: "revolution is instinct rather than thought, it operates as an instinct, and as an instinct gives first battle."4. Mikhail Bakunin, quoted in Eugene Pyziur, The Doctrine of Anar chism of Michael A. Bakunin (Baltimore: Gateway Editions, 1955), p. 17 Unlike Proudhon, he did not think institutions could be rebuilt; they were to be demolished in a revolution that would culminate in the construction of a world where everyone would be free and equal. Bakunin was the only influential anarchist to make a constant litany of violence, and his statement, "the passion for destruction is a creative passion," became a romantic battle cry.

American middle-class feminist activism has usually not included physical violence, although from the time of the temperance societies and the suffragettes there have been bloodless demonstrations and guerrilla actions—women chaining them selves to benches and fences, hunger strikes, bar smashing, window breaking. In England, upper- and middle-class guerrilla actions were more violent than those of working-class women because poor wage-earners could not risk jail. For middle-class feminists, prison brought class conflict into the public eye; upper-class women were given privileges, while bourgeois women were treated miserably. They often left jail determined to work for prison reform.5. Sheila Rowbotham, "The Vote," Hidden from History (New York: Vintage Books, 1976), pp. 77-89. Contemporary feminists who have advocated violence and terrorism (such as the Weatherwomen and Susan Saxe) often operate in the Bakuninist spirit of acts that seem to be political theater rather than effective strategies, ever though these women are not professed anarchists. Being forced underground, however, away from usefulness in organization, has fostered greater impotence. It is ironic that the legal defense of some of these fugitives, once they have been caught, has become an organizational focus. Jane Alpert's surrender was an exception, because it appeared that she collaborated with the government in locating and arresting her friend Pat Swinton. To be jailed for being in contempt of grand juries, for refusing to turn state's evidence, has at times been seen as a high honor, serving to focus class and sex contradictions better than the original bank robberies or bombings.

Pêtr Kropotkin may have set the most useful anarchist precedent. Many strands of feminism stem from his thought—from anthropologists and historians attempting to rewrite the history of women by material analysis of sexism in production in early societies, to socialists who have practically rejected marxist-leninist authoritarianism but still base their economic analyses on those theories. Both Emma Goldman and Federica Montseny were strongly influenced by Kropotkin's ideas, especially by his attempt to place anarchism on a scientific and evolutionary rather than moral ground. All three advocated a communism that went beyond collectives and mutualism, which Kropotkin saw as reflections of "mitigated individualism." He argued that communist possession of land and individualist production were too contradictory to survive, that the wage system should be abolished, that common possession of the means of production implied equal consumption, that people should be provided for according to their needs rather than the amount of labor they performed. Dismissing any technical necessity for large-scale industrialization, Kropotkin argued that the tendency of industry was toward decentralization. But small scale was also important for the same reason it was for Godwin and for today's feminists —for its reliance on trust and honesty in making and keeping agreements. However, Kropotkin's belief that change would come through evolution, shared by some feminists, is optimistic but utopian. Past glory is as problematic as future glory, and as useless to speculate about.

During and after the Russian Revolution, anarchists in Russia and elsewhere, hoping to create a political science by basing their analyses more concretely on economics, rejected the romantic utopianism of their nineteenth-century predecessors. There were two major lines of social-anarchist thought—that of the anarcho-communists, who were opposed to large-scale industry, and that of the anarcho-syndicalists, such as Emma Goldman, who supported trade unionism and thought that anarchists should use the capitalist system of production progressively to liberate rather than to alienate people. Both groups agreed in their opposition to the Bolsheviks when they saw that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" really meant the "dictatorship of the Social Democratic Party."

Emma Goldman, the most famous female anarchist, was one of the harshest critics of the Bolshevik government. She came to America as a young Russian immigrant and was radicalized by the condition of the working class—long hours in sweatshops, unsafe conditions, the sexual exploitation of women workers, the prejudice against Jews. Objecting to communist authoritarian ism, she was drawn to anarchism. Goldman was influenced by Bakunin's passion for revolt—("As to methods. Anarchism is not, as some may suppose, a theory of the future to be realized through divine inspiration. It is a living force in the affairs of our life, constantly creating new conditions"6. Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays (New York: Dover, 1969), p. 63.)—and by Kropotkin's economic analyses of decentralization, his attempt to make anarchism scientific—("Just as the animal cells, by mutual cooperation, express their latent powers in formation of the com plete organism, so does the individual, by cooperative effort with other individuals, attain Ithe) highest form of development ..."7. Ibid., p. 36.). Goldman became an anarcho-syndicalist, agitating for women's rights, birth control, and labor reforms. She was not primarily a feminist, although feminism was part of her anarchism, and she criticized women who were committed only to women's suffrage, asking why they would want the same right to be oppressed as men. She also lambasted middle-class suffragettes for failing to understand the problems of working-class women.

When Goldman was deported during the Red Scare after World War I, she went to Russia, but was bitterly disappointed by what she saw as the betrayal of the revolution.8. See "The Revolution Betrayed," Patterns of Anarchy (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1966), pp. 98-115. She argued that the people's passionate yearning for liberty had made the revolution possible, in spite of industrial backwardness. The "spirit of mutual purpose" in the labor organizations and cooperatives emerged in response to the need for them. However, the Bolsheviks limited the scope of popular power. Seeing that the Soviets threatened the supremacy of the state, Lenin put a "new economic policy" into effect, destroying the Soviets, the trade unions and the cooperatives in order to further centralize the political state. The revolution, though, had been fought with a different objective—the negation of authority and centralism. Goldman blamed not only the Bolsheviks, but the "fanatical governmentalism" of marxism—and felt that only anarcho-syndicalism—"the industrial power of the masses expressed through their libertarian associations"—could organize economic life. The power of the masses represented revolution to her: "The inherent tendency of the state is to concentrate, to narrow, and to monopolize all social activities; the nature of Revolution is, on the contrary, to grow, to broaden, and disseminate itself in even wider circles. In other words, the State is institutional and static, Revolution is fluent, dynamic.."9. Ibid., p. 110. Goldman also criticized the Russian Revolution for propagating anti-humanitarian feelings in its criticism of all ethics. The Bolsheviks saw the desire for justice, equality, and liberty as sentimental, bourgeois, superstitious and counter-revolutionary, this last a criticism especially leveled against outspoken women. All of history, she wrote, "is continuous proof of the maxim that to divest one's methods of ethical concepts means to sink into the depths of utter demoralization."10. Ibid., p. 113.

For Goldman, the primary ethical precept was the identity of means and ends. Like Kropotkin, she found ethics involved more than morals. How, in practice, could the dictatorship of the intelligentsia transform itself into the dictatorship of the proletariat? Wouldn't any class dictatorship be the same as any other? How could a revolution attempting to free the masses do away with all ethical concepts about why they should be free? This means-ends contradiction is important for feminists, preventing the advocation of revolutionary action where revolutionary method and end are not compatible.

It is interesting to compare Goldman's ideas with those of some of the leading female communists, for many of these women, no matter how allied their ideas were to an orthodox marxist line, tended to separate from their male compatriots and come closer to anarchism in their opposition to bureaucracy, to the subversion of revolution by the Bolsheviks, and to the use of purely efficacious means. Some of them resisted official policy so strongly that they were silenced by not receiving appointments, dismissals from posts or absurd "propaganda" missions to the hinterlands.

It has often been pointed out both in criticism and support that Rosa Luxemburg's treatment of the nature of organization, her belief in the creative power and spontaneity of mass action and her advocation of the mass strike were replete with anarchist assumptions. Though she was, in fact, strongly opposed to anarchism in any form, in relation to Lenin's authoritarian political analysis, Luxemburg's refusal to support any rigid relationship of leadership to masses seems more sensitive to the complexities of struggle. While her goal was the same as Lenin's the destruction of capitalism by the working class—she believed in creative improvisation of leadership rather than in precisely planned strategies. She did, of course, believe in leadership, but considered good organization the product of action rather than its precedent and saw organization as growing out of struggle.

While Luxemburg understood the necessity of centralism as a reaction against the "autonomy and isolation of the old organizational type, against localism and federalism,"11. The quotations in this and the following paragraph are from Rosa Luxemburg: Selected Political Writings, ed. Robert Looker (New York: Grove Press, 1974), pp. 96, 99, 101, 102, 104. the task was "to unite all workers and all worker organizations in a single party" despite national and religious differences. In the German Social Democratic Party, this was predicated upon the "direct, independent action of the masses," where the workers would "develop their own political activity through direct influence in public life." However, Luxemburg objected to Lenin's principles of centralism: "1. The blind subordination, in the smallest detail, of all party organs, to the party which alone thinks, guides, and decides for all. 2. The rigorous separation of the organized nucleus from its social-revolutionary surroundings. . . ." The German Social Democracy, she insisted, was not joined to the proletariat, it was the proletariat. The party was synonymous with the masses; it was to provide the "spirit of movement" to the masses. Luxemburg objected that the power of the Central Committee would be comprehensible only if it took the initiative of a "vast revolutionary act," paralleling Goldman's means-ends argument.

Luxemburg saw the development of class consciousness as a product of the frictions between the party and trade union activity. Lenin, denying this dialectical function, saw trade union activity as a mere reflection of bourgeois consciousness in the working class. Through her belief that continued agitation was the only way to prevent the retardation of the struggle, Luxemburg supported the traditionally anarchist idea of the mass strike. "Spontaneity, as she used the term, meant action as opposed to static or reformist attitudes; it was misinterpreted by the Bolsheviks to mean confusion or to suggest that the party's rational policies should be determined by the "spontaneous" desires of the masses. "But what has been the experience of the Russian socialist movement up to now? The most important and most fruitful changes have not been the inventions of several leaders and even less so of any central organizational organs. They have always been the spontaneous product of the movement in ferment." The tactical policy of social democracy was not "invented" but was the "product of a series of great creative acts." Luxemburg argued that Lenin's was not a "positive and creative spirit," that he tried to "narrow the movement rather than to develop it, to bind it rather than to unify it....For us it is not the letter but the living spirit carried into the organization by the membership that decides the value of this or that organizational form." It is here that she seems closest to anarchism. She wanted to replace system not with another system, but with the opposite — movement and dynamism.

Clara Zetkin, a close friend of Luxemburg, agreed with most of her ideas. However, Zetkin was a feminist, working for women's rights, editing a socialist women's paper, organizing biannual women's conferences in the German Social Democratic Party, the International Socialist Women's Conference, and International Women's Day. She felt that as long as there were sexist attitudes in the party, there was a need for separate women's organizations, meetings and groups for self-education and political agitation. She compared woman's relation to man to that of the worker to the capitalist (a favorite quotation was from Engels: "He is the bourgeois in the family, the woman represents the proletariat"12. Peter Nettl, Rosa Luxemburg (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 415n.), and she believed that economic independence through socially productive labor was the key to women's freedom. Because of this, she thought at first that the destruction of private property would free women by transforming the family from an entity bound by economic ties to a "moral entity" united by love, understanding, and respect."13. There is very little available in English on Zetkin. Thus, a valuable essay is "Clara Zetkin: A Socialist Approach to the Problem of Women's Oppression" by Karen Honeycutt, Feminist Studies (Spring Summer, 1976), pp. 131-144 But like Goldman, Zetkin later recognized the difference between the role of women's rights for bourgeois women and for working-class women. Middle-class women could focus on issues of personal liberation and more individual concerns, while working-class women, exploited as women and as workers, did not have that kind of leisure. Because she believed that biological as well as social factors created oppression, she concentrated, perhaps too heavily in later life, on motherhood as the primary defining characteristic and fulfillment of women. Because of her feminism, Zetkin was victimized by the party and excluded from important positions.