Aldous Huxley: social anarchist

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article shows that in the years between 1937 and 1962 Aldous Huxley adopted a species of anarchism. It demonstrates, first, how in espousing gradualism and pacifism, in stressing the significance of education and meditation as agents of social change, in seeking to construct intentional communities in the here and now, as well as build on pre-existing examples of ‘anarchy in action’ such as consumer and producer cooperatives, in taking a measured view of the state, not rejecting the institution on principle, but only its coercive form, and in making sex central to his vision of utopia as an essential ingredient of a happy and sustainable life, Huxley anticipated the ‘new’ anarchism of the postwar era. Second, it argues that, in rejecting notions of ‘normal’ subjectivity, in seeing the human subject as fundamentally irrational, in viewing power as coextensive with society itself, as a relationship that can only be managed as opposed to abolished, in repudiating grand theory or metanarratives in favour of ‘micro-politics’, and in viewing science as both epistemologically flawed and potentially oppressive, Huxley anticipated postanarchism. Despite his reluctance to adopt a label, it is the contention of this article that Huxley ought to be considered a social anarchist.