Maia Ramnath - Decolonizing Anarchism.pdf - Libcom

Echoes and Intersections I 107
approve of It will be a kind of survey (from the Anarchistic
standpoint) of XIX century history, descriptive and critical,
having for its central theme the dissolution of medievalism
and the introduction of Anarchism (in its broad sense)."61
Incidentally, this plan brings to mind a similar opus
envisioned by Aldred. Biographer and associate John
Taylor Caldwell reveals some of Aldred's thinking circa
1908, toward an ambitious compendium of social philosophy
in the form of a projected series of books and pamphlets.
"One was a book containing the biographies of ten
radicals, among them such varied characters as Richard
Carlisle, Jonathan Swift, Theodore Parker, Robert Owen,
Bishop Colenso, and Michael Bakunin . ... This would
be the first of a series of books . .. under the general title
of The Library of Synthetical Iconoclasts . ... The term
'Synthetical' did not refer to the character of the biographical
subjects;' explained Caldwell, but to Aldred's theory
that "every aspect of dissension (iconoclasm) from right
to left, whether in religion, politics, art or science, was the
forward-urging of the first principle of change, of becoming
.... This dissenting articulation should be brought together,
synthesized, in a general concept."62
Another of his intended projects, Organisation, was
supposed to include sections on Marx, the Communist
International, and the International's failure and supplanting
by Lassallean social democracy; "the development
of Capitalist Imperialism, and the subsequent industrial
development of the native races towards the stage of
International Working Class Solidarity, the specific examples
taken being India and Africa"; the history and theory