Nationalism and Culture

The author traces the origins of the state back to religion, claiming 'that all politics is in the last instance religion': both enslave their very creator, man; both claim to be the source of cultural progress. He aims to prove the claim that culture and power are essentially antagonistic concepts. He applies this model to human history, analyzing the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and modern capitalist society, and to the history of the socialist movement. He concludes by advocating a 'new humanitarian socialism.' Johann Rudolf Rocker (1873-1958) was an anarchist writer and activist. Though often described as an anarcho-syndicalist, he was a self-professed anarchist without adjectives, believing that anarchist schools of thought represented 'only different methods of economy' and that the first objective for anarchists was 'to secure the personal and social freedom of men.'