The May Pamphlet


The May Pamphlet is an anarchist pamphlet written by Paul Goodman in May and early June 1945. Written as six essays, Goodman discusses how an individual can resist a society's coercive conditions and how to summon "natural powers" to invent solutions to social dilemmas. Goodman suggests "drawing the line", an ideological delineation beyond which a libertarian should refuse to conform or cooperate, and generally avoiding potentially coercive situations as a society. While themes from the May Pamphlet—decentralization, peace, social psychology, youth liberation—would recur throughout his works, his social criticism focused on practical application rather than theoretical concerns.
The pamphlet was originally published in small, New York libertarian journals and was first compiled as a set among literary essays in Art and Social Nature. The pamphlet was not well known before Goodman's 1960 book Growing Up Absurd led a resurgence of interest in his works, including the pamphlet's republication in Drawing the Line. The May Pamphlet was Goodman's most significant contribution to anarchist theory and a primary influence on British anarchist Colin Ward, who later dedicated Anarchy in Action to Goodman's memory.

Overview

In the 1940s, Paul Goodman began to publicly identify his political beliefs. He would subsequently become the best-known contemporary literary anarchist in the United States. Goodman's first anarchist essays, in 1945, were likely propelled by his rejection of the World War II draft, his anarcho-pacifist peers, and the ugliness of wartime social conditions. Having been dismissed from the Partisan Review and influential New York literary circles for refusing to jettison his pacifism, Goodman turned to the city's marginal, bohemian communities, where he published in several libertarian journals—Politics, Why?, and Retort—and was influential in the circles behind each. Because Goodman saw societal arrangements as an aesthetic matter, he combined his anarchist essays alongside literary essays in his 1946 book, Art and Social Nature. His early anarchist short essays from May 1945, together known as The May Pamphlet, compose the book's first section.
The major themes of The May Pamphlet are tools with which an individual can resist a society's coercive conditions and the possibility of summoning "natural powers" to invent solutions to social dilemmas. Goodman proposes that individuals find their natural powers prone to coercive co-option and instead re-purpose them for the individual's own creative use. Individuals could be free in a coercive society, he wrote, through pursuit of creative work, acts of passion/emotion, and "spontaneous recreation". The duties of citizenship, to Goodman, entail dismantling the institutional barriers that separate people from the basic conditions of life. He wrote about "waging peace" as one would "wage war".
Though the essays do not suggest specific actions, Goodman suggests general approaches such as avoiding societal coercion in the manner one avoids anything dangerous in the everyday, or "drawing the line", an ideological delineation beyond which a libertarian should refuse to conform or cooperate. To allay the confrontation that comes with drawing the line, he advocates for individuals to do what is within one's own nonconfrontational power: reform oneself rather than attempt to influence others directly, remove oneself from coercive situations to instead find affinity groups closer to one's identity. Goodman prefers this libertarian system of self-identifying and adjusting one's own prejudices so as to permit a loose worldview that can afford multiple contradictory views. Goodman simultaneously proposes civil disobedience as a core facet of libertarianism: that individuals should exercise moral conscience to challenge societal coercion, even if that exercise is a jailable crime. In turn this would, he argued, help individuals better distinguish political prisoners from common criminals. The essays generally encourage draft and war resistance.

Contents

  1. Reflections on Drawing the Line
  2. On Treason Against Natural Societies – originally published in Retort, Fall 1945
  3. A Touchstone for the Libertarian Program – originally published in Why?, June 1945
  4. Natural Violence
  5. Revolution, Sociolatry, and War – originally published in Politics, December 1945
  6. Unanimity
The first short essay, "Reflections on Drawing the Line", covers inventiveness as a necessary condition of libertarianism. Goodman sees libertarianism as the fulfillment of "natural powers": that individuals produce art and society by living their nature. "Free action is to live in present society as though it were a natural society" goes the pamphlet's main maxim. In his characteristic, reformist avoidance of revolutionary pronouncements, Goodman writes that new order should not simply replace old order, but instead, spheres of free action should expand until they compose the totality of a free society, though Goodman does also contend that "any genuine liberation" requires "total change". The exact meaning of "free" and "natural" is imprecise in this context yet generally refers to the ability to work in mutual aid without coercive legal pressure to do otherwise. His examples of coercive restrictions include industrial labor's restraints on time and specialty, and adult "lack of encouragement" towards adolescent sexuality. The title's "Drawing the Line" refers to establishing the limits, as a line in the sand, beyond which a libertarian would act in resistance. But Goodman conservatively advocates for non-allegiance in lieu of open insurrection. Goodman embodied this stance by living a free, "sexually polymorphous bohemian-artist life" in defiance of societal norms.
Goodman faults modern society and its focus on industry for man's alienation from nature, thus causing disaffection, coercion, and war. He refers to this trade-off as "", that the masses, alienated from nature, enable industrial progress in hopes of a higher standard of living. In this way, their unconscious desires are coerced into behavioral norms in the name of institutional power. Goodman's solution is a return to nature in which individuals reconnect with their natural urges and powers to pursue meaningful work, mutual aid, and direct democracy. The revolutionary potential of this redirection of energies rests in individual decisions, not necessarily collective action.
The second essay discusses the personal, therapeutic benefits of small acts of resistance. "A Touchstone for the Libertarian Program", the third essay, encourages libertarians to dilute their prejudices against jailable offenses. Goodman praises "acts of liberty our strongest propaganda", likely referring to marginalized personal behavior, in particular. The fourth essay, "Natural Violence", blames the "sterilization" of natural experiences—such as birth, death, and sex—for aggressive deviance, such as war.
The May Pamphlet last two essays are more theoretical. "Revolution, Sociolatry, and War", the May Pamphlet fifth essay, was first published in Politics as a libertarian response to Marxist theory typical for the magazine. Goodman approves of Karl Marx's social psychology but disagrees on topics of statism and history. Goodman holds that external institutions and narrow focus on socioeconomic progress are weak substitutes for small sets of individuals working in mutuality to realizing their personal desires, a kind of decentralized syndicalism. Goodman expects routine aggression to be relieved by "natural institutions" such as friendly competition and mutual interdependence. The sixth essay, "Unanimity", argues that only invention can resolve natural conflict. "If a man cannot invent a way out", Goodman asks, "what right has such a man to be a to be a libertarian on the issue at all?" He faults negative criticism for unproductively dispiriting individuals where positive criticism—a tenor throughout Goodman's social criticism—can offer possibilities for improvement and self-actualization. He proposes that individuals connect their creative efforts to their deeper, psychoanalytic needs—their nature—and to wider wisdom of the community. Goodman puts special emphasis on unanimity as opposed to rough consensus, and writes that unanimity is found by "sharpening" the point of conflict until a new idea emerges. The act of unifying one's social and political attitudes, he additionally suggests, has therapeutic effects. Goodman views his commentary as standard libertarianism to which he has added elements of psychoanalysis.
While themes from the May Pamphlet—decentralization, peace, social psychology, youth liberation—would recur throughout his later body of work, his social criticism would focus on practical application rather than theoretical concerns, like that of unanimity.

Publication

Goodman wrote The May Pamphlet in May and early June 1945, with the exception of "Revolution, Sociolatry, and War", written in October. Half of its essays were previously published across the small libertarian journals Politics, Why?, and Retort the same year. The full pamphlet was first compiled and released in Goodman's 1946 book Art and Social Nature, published by Vinco, a one-man publisher. Alexander Katz, who had become interested in Goodman through "Revolution, Sociolatry and War" in Politics, later bought the book's unsold copies when establishing his small publisher, the Arts and Sciences Press, in the late 1940s.
As Growing Up Absurd brought Goodman into the limelight as a social critic, Goodman revised the pamphlet for its republication in his 1962 book Drawing the Line, 15 years after its original publication, alongside a new essay on "Crisis and New Spirit". Taylor Stoehr used this revised version in the 1977 posthumous reissue of Drawing the Line, which expanded to include other political essays by Goodman.
A German translation of the May Pamphlet was published in 1977.

Reception and legacy

The May Pamphlet was Goodman's most significant contribution to anarchist theory. They were both his first explicitly political works and his foremost political writings of the period. The essays were influential on the central position of the New York Why? Group, who were disenchanted with traditional anarchism, alienated from rising pro-war fervor, and excited by politics that put gradual, individual change before millenarian, collective conflict. Goodman reformulated anarchist politics to elevate issues of expression, such as discrimination and conscription, as existential hazards for freedom and well-being. Goodman's early anarchist thought was also influential in Politics development of its pacifist, nonviolent, individualist socialist, anti-mass society political stance. Later, the essays were a primary influence on British anarchist Colin Ward, who dedicated the 1973 Anarchy in Action to Goodman's memory.
The essays outlined the conceptual positions and convictions that would pervade Goodman's entire career. Art and Social Nature and its cornerstone, The May Pamphlet, established Goodman as a noteworthy cultural theorist, despite it being mostly ignored at its release. Goodman would sustain the May Pamphlet libertarian social critique for the rest of his life and continued to refine its ideas in works including Growing Up Absurd, the 1960 study of alienated youth in America that established his importance as a mainstream cultural theorist and pillar of leftist thought during the counterculture. The May Pamphlet saw a wider audience when Growing Up Absurd brought about a resurgence of Goodman's writing. Through his influence, the stances of the 1940s New York anarchist magazines prefigured the activism and personal empowerment stances of the 1960s New Left.