October 21st, 2024 Lauren S.
The Anarchist Cookbook read like it was Walter White’s diary from an episode of Breaking Bad. The book’s entire premise was the author’s recordings of how to make illegal drugs and weapons or how to fight in the hopes of a revolution that would eventually come. According to the text (PDF page 11), anarchism is “…nonviolent; philosophy is Spinozian, ethical, nature, and loving.” This quote is referencing the Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, considered one of the most radical philosophers of his time. In the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, they say that his work was mostly focused on “His extremely naturalistic views on God, the world, the human being and knowledge serve to ground a moral philosophy centered on the control of the passions leading to virtue and happiness.” This is interesting because earlier in the Prefatory Note written by PM Bergman (he will be important later), he claims on PDF and text page 9 that “… (also religion) is missing here for good reason that it lost its sensational popularity in the anarchist kitchen.” Bergman claims that no religion is present in this text because anarchists are not religious at all nor have religious beliefs. Then why does he reference a Dutch philosopher who was known for being religious? I honestly do not know, which is why I did research into PM Bergman, who wrote the Prefatory Note for The Anarchist’s Cookbook. I could not find anything on a PM Bergman, so the name was most likely an alias, which tells me, as a reader, that he would’ve gotten in trouble for his views or writings. More about the context of The Anarchist’s Cookbook, it was written in 1971 at the peak of the protesting of the Vietnam War, which does make sense when reading William Powell’s comments about a revolution coming. William Powell was a teenager at the time he released this book, which does make sense about the book’s context of violence. Powell was drafted into the Vietnam War, crushing his dreams of being a writer, and when he got back to the States, he posted the original version of The Anarchist’s Cookbook. The original version of the text was a bunch of flyers posted on how to throw a Molotov cocktail and how to make LSD. Later, he released a copy of the book that we know and showed remorse about it later. His intent in releasing the novel was to have the skills to go up against communism, like what he faced in the Vietnam War.
Sources
Nadler, Steven. “Baruch Spinoza.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman, Spring 2024, Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2024. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2024/entries/spinoza/.