[DOZE] "There were no bombs, though there was plenty of beer"

[Juan Fajardo]

Naturally, the title caught my eye...




Tom Goyens. 'Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New 
York City, 1880-1914.'    Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007. 
263 pp. $40.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-252-03175-5.

Reviewed by Thomas Adam (University of Texas at Arlington)
Published on H-German (March, 2009)
Commissioned by Susan R. Boettcher


"There were no bombs, though there was plenty of beer"

Tom Goyens's book investigates and describes the cultural and social 
infrastructure of New York's German-American anarchist circles. It 
provides a colorful, impressive picture of this movement and makes a 
significant, valuable contribution to the recent turn towards 
transatlantic and transnational history by looking at a truly 
transatlantic movement: anarchism.

The German and German-American anarchist movement in New York was, as 
Goyens points out, "part of the broader history of international 
radicalism, making it an American, a German, and a transnational 
movement" (p. 3). And, although many in this country might identify 
anarchism with open and sometimes undifferentiated violence (and the 
Haymarket bombing in particular), there was nonetheless more to the 
movement. Anarchism was defined by two fundamental experiences: "one of 
momentum, the other of exclusion" (p. 5). Goyens contends that "the 
anarchists' opposition to the state--their civil disobedience--became 
the foundation for a self-sufficient culture of defiance" (p. 6). 
Therefore, he explores the infrastructure of the anarchist milieu in New 
York by looking into its neighborhoods, particularly via meeting places, 
such as saloons and lecture halls. Yet, it would be impossible to reduce 
New York's anarchist milieu to the meetings and political discussions in 
beer halls and saloons. Like the Social Democratic milieu in various 
German cities, it included social and cultural activities such as 
reading clubs, theater and musical groups, and even picnics, all of 
which represented the attempt to create a counterculture.

According to Goyens's interpretation, beer halls were not just 
convenient places to meet and drink beer; they also "mirrored the 
anarchist sensibility" (p. 37). Since anarchists despised organization 
and structure, beer halls offered places for less formal political 
activities. New York's saloons and beer halls provided a "decentralized 
network" for the movement, which represented a culture that was anathema 
to mainstream American culture and linked the anarchist movement to a 
"bohemian-artisan" lifestyle. Goyens's suggestion that these meeting 
places also stood in opposition to orthodox socialist culture is somehow 
questionable, however, since German socialists practically built their 
movement in beer halls.

These claims may strike specialists as not especially novel. Many of his 
observations remind the reviewer of the results of similar studies of 
the German Social Democratic movement in the 1880s and 1890s. For 
instance, when Goyens describes a typical anarchist meeting and points 
to the function of the beer collector, one is immediately reminded of 
similar mechanisms in German Social Democratic meetings. Goyens 
correctly asserts that beer played a central role in German (Social 
Democratic) social life. In both German and American saloons, owners of 
these establishments allowed socialist or anarchist groups to meet in 
their back rooms not only out of sympathy, but also because they knew 
that anarchists in New York and Social Democrats in German cities such 
as Leipzig would provide a guaranteed income. In Leipzig, it was even 
customary for Social Democratic groups to pay Lichtgeld ("light money," 
a charge to cover operating expenses) if they did not drink as much as 
the owner of the establishment had expected. Goyens's recounting of 
contemporary criticisms of overreliance on beer halls and the attendant 
emphasis on beer-drinking, as well as the groups' pride in conducting 
orderly meetings, will remind readers of comparable criticisms voiced by 
more radical Social Democrats in the German context. [...]

Full review at: http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.php?id=23999