In his work on the Chinese anarchist Liu Shifu, later simply Shifu (1884-1915), Edward Krebs devotes a chapter to the remarkable 1912 transformation of an anti-Manchu assassin into an a self-proclaimed “apostle of anarchism” who rejected violence as an effective means of acheiving social revolution.1
A core component of this transformation was the creation and elaboration of a series of moral pledges that, beyond his immediate rejection of violence, help us understand the ways in which these radical movements could move well beyond the kind of associations that might come to mind when we think of “anarchists” if we have not studied these movements in greater depth and have only popular cultural references to go by. One thing we might associate with anarchism is the goal of liberation from, not only oppressive state power, but, presumably, oppressive rules and regulations surrounding individual conduct. Presumably, according to anarchist ideals, this will unleash the formerly repressed natural “social” and compassionate tendencies of humanity and establish a kind of socialist utopia that does not need the artificial oppressive structures of the state to thrive.
In the course of his tranformation, however, Shifu and his close collaborators embraces a set of moral principles. The 12 articles of what Krebs translates as the “Conscience Covenant” (心社社约十二条 – 12 article covenant of the Xinshe, literally heart society) are:
1) Do not eat meat 不食肉
2) Do not drink liquor 不飲酒
3) Do not smoke tobacco 不吸煙
4) Do not use servants 不用僕役
5) Do not ride in sedan chairs or rickshaws 不坐轎及人力車
6) Do not marry 不婚姻
7) Do not use a family name 不稱族姓
8) Do not serve as an official 不作官吏
9) Do not serve as a member of a representative body 不作議員
10) Do not join a political party 不入政黨
11) Do not serve in the army or navy 不作海陸軍人
12) Do not believe in a religion 不奉宗教 2
Of these, it is relatively easy to connect points 4-12 to principles prevalent in anarchist thought, not only in China, but elsewhere. They may be read as avoiding behavior that proliferates the kind of oppressive society that anarchism’s concept of social revolution wants to oppose. Starve these institutions of your participation, and you can uncover our natural humanity underneath.
What is more interesting, however, are the elements 1-3, which we might associate more commonly with the influence of religious asceticism (the connection between religion, especially Pure Land buddhism and anarchism is taken up by other readings from our module). According to Krebs, Shifu argued that these “polluting” or “crude” desires had to be elimited to allow humanity to develop its character, and notes that some western anarchists such as Leo Tolstoy, also embraced vegetarianism.3 Laudable though we might find the principles, we should note how relatively arbitrary this could become, however: if this line of argument is embraced, with its combination of negative and positive imperatives on conduct, might there not be the risk of other rules of conduct sneak in here, threatening either to reinforce forms of societal oppression on the one hand, or leave little left of the supposedly spontaneous natural moral conduct to emerge once we have purified our character?