This is the seventh issue of Black Rose, and the second "Editor's Introduction"to begin with an apology. Regular readers will have noted that our publishing schedule has been interrupted over the last several months and perhaps have not/ced that the composition of the Black Rose group has changed with this issue. The cause of both is the same: d/sagreement within the group that prevented the progress of the project and which led to a series of resignations from the group. I wish I could say that the source of the disagreement and subsequent resignat/ons was one of political principle, but I can not. Wh/le some political /ssues were of course involved, the root issue was one of personality, and the confl/ct thus unfortunate, unnecessary, and wasteful.

Those of us who did not resign have jo/ned with others and will continue to publish Black Rose as regularly as we can, the only mitigating factor being the ubiqu/tous, but too often absent one—money. Black Rose over the first six issues has established an /dent/ty for itself and stead/ly increased its readership. Black Rose is clearly concerned with bettering the human condition, /s tied to no one particular polit/cal or social movement, and is seriously committed to increasing freedom /n the world. The responsib/lity to ourselves, our readers, and our beliefs overrides any petty personal differences and /s the source of our continu/ng commitment.

0 as frothing wounds of roses

Harry summer over a wintry sea, So does thy very strangeness

Bring me ever nearer thee

—Kenneth Patchen

Our age is one of paradox and reversal, where the reasonable has become irrational, where progress seems regressive, where enlightenment brings with it darkness, where barbarism flows from civilization, where material plentitude creates spiritual poverty, where mass organization suffocates individuality, where ideologies of liberation become rationales of domination. It is an age of achievement and wonder, an age of violence and uncertainty. It is an age in which the place of humanity in the universe is unsettled. It is our age, but we are scarce at home in it.

is /t any wonder, then, that creeds, sects, movements, and ideologies abound, all claiming to make sense of an inchoate, though organized, world? Creeds, sects, movements, and ideologies of left, right, and center, secular and religious, materialist and idealist, all promising security, a place in the world, a barrier however fragile against dark fear. These creeds, etc. fill a need; they aren't necessarily harmful in most forms. But they are myths, partial truths, and, in organized form, potentially dangerous, enemies of tolerance, freedom, and open thought.

Black Rose, on the other hand, preaches no dogma; it merely publishes a variety of articles on a number of subjects from sundry, though not all, points of view. For some this indicates a lack of coherence or commitment. Black Rose provides no "theory" to key "practice'; no guide to choose the correct "tactics" and "strategy", is tied to no one "movement". But this is to make no criticism at all, or at least no telling criticism.

I have seen capitalist (or developed or whatever) nations commit great atrocities. I have seen socialist countries do the same. I have seen liberal pol/ticians move to reduce freedom and maximize dependency, and conservatives do the same. I have seen athe/sts do horrible things and religious people do as bad. I have also known good capitalists, socialists, atheists, and theists. I have thus concluded that whatever the ideology, the most important factor is that people be good-hearted. Capitalism or socialism, liberal or conservative, atheist or the/st, these are genuine differences in some important ways. But at root these ideological differences pale before the fact that all these ideolog/es create forms of m/sery and that none of them matter before bas/c decency. Thus, while questions oft belief and organization are important, the most important thing is values: the framework around which political and social action should be constructed ought to be values, a set of pr/nciples which allow for the widest possible scope of activ/ty, application, and discussion.

"Political ideals must be based upon ideals for the individual life. The aim of politics should be to make the lives of individuals as good as possible." (Bertrand Russell, Political Ideals) After all, why not? This certainly sounds reasonable. But in fact this approach runs counter to that prevalent in our century, that being to first consider the claims of the "totality" and then the individual, the assumption being that social good entails individual good. In the end this usually means that society has to be organized properly, with goods to be apportioned, each to get a proper share, though not usually the same share. But if so-called "social justice" is achieved and you still aren't happy, what good is "social justice" to you? If society is a fiction, being composed of individuals, then why not start with individuals, see that good is first to be had for them, and let social good follow?

It seems to me, quite simply, that the authoritarian principle is inherent in the very fact of looking at the commun/ty, with regard to political and social problems, only in terms of the totality and considering only the conceptual and mechanical congruence of the parts and the efficient functioning of the whole. In fact, the preoccupation with totality implies that human society is an organism whose laws we know, and by implying this it also implies that we can, indeed, that we must, modify it by means of more or less violent external intervention.

Now it is obvious that if we set out with this postulate that we will never arrive at the autonomous individual, the free, self-assured man who is the bulwark, not a "part"—not a cog or even an organ—of any community that wants to be both civil and orderly.

Nicola Chiaramonte, The Worm of Consciousness and Other Essays

The things that make an /ndividual life good are in outline very simple and f feel generally agreed upon. First would be material security, the securing of the means of life through work. Beyond that we would want to encourage diversity, to prevent each from being alike and to provide the widest possible tolerance for individual differences. "It is not one ideal for all men, but a separate ideal for each separate man, that has to be realized if possible." (Russell) Development of individuality means freedom, that aside from only necessary social obligations individuals ought to be free to choose the/r own options. This freedom entails the absence of arbitrary authority and unnecessary control, meaning that power over others ought to be minimal. Freedom, however, is not an absolute. It is affected, or limited, by responsibility to others. Respect for others is the necessary "qualifier" to any consideration of individual freedom. Humans live in communities, with life being in a real sense a cooperative effort. We would want to develop a real sense and awareness of mutual aid not to limit individuality but to enrichen it and make it possible.

it is a question of mutual being

a question of congruence not identity

of proximity occupying the same

space at a different time

a similar breathing in a common atmosphere.

—with apologies to Kenneth Rexrothin previous times individuality was emphasized to the detriment of

social needs. Our age goes the opposite way. Our age is the age of the mass person, one in which what it means to be an individual is a burning problem. We seem lost at sea. The situation needs to be rectified without

falling into either of the extremes of collectivism or of individuality, avoiding the bad points of each extreme while retaining their virtues. The

answer, I feel, is contained in the well-known phrase, "Small is beautiful,"

or decentralization.

Large scale organizations don't work any longer, leave the individual

adrift, promote an ethical nihilism. Small scale organ/zations, on the other hand, do work, though not perhaps in the same way large scale ones do. In a small scale organization the individual can clearly matter, with a share of sovereignity that would have some weight. In the small scale organization a real sense of community can develop because each can easily see how the other is more than a mere part but rather something meaningful. Thus, in a small scale organization value is important, and decent behavior more easily the norm. In a small scale society, or a society composed of small scale organizations, what is good for the individual (that is, the ideals I sketched out before) can become a reality. In large scale or mass society the chances are rather less.

Small scale organization is not unfeasible, unrealistic, or impossible. There is an impressive literature of decentralization which demonstrates its practicality and possibility. Kropotkin's Fields, Factories and Workshops, Mum ford's Myth of the Machine, Kohr's Breakdown of Nations, Bookchin's Post-Scarcity Anarchism, Hess's Dear America, just to name a few off the top of my head. Thus, decentralization makes sense from the point of view of the individual, of what is good for the individual, and from the point of view of what would be a good form of social organiz ation.

All th/s shows that only the small state fulfills the requirements of both ind/vidualistic and democratic existence. It is individualistic because it fits the small physical size of man so much better than the colossal robes of large powers which, far from clothing and protecting the individual, smother him. And it is democratic because of its phsyical inability to overwhelm the citizen, who is at all times capable not only of participating in government but also of resisting governmental encroachments without the intermediary of powerful organizations.

—Leopold Kohr, The Breakdown of Nations

In practical terms small scale thinking means focusing on what /s near at hand, on the neighborhood, the city, the area, the region, even when considering matters of national or international /mport. This does not at all exclude there being groups of groups, or groups of neighborhoods, and so on from getting together. But if America, for example, could devolve its Political and economic power, currently so huge and so centralized, /nto neighborhood, city, and regional control, there would be no necessary barrier to functioning better than at present and w/th potentially fewer abuses. Thus, small scale doesn't mean isolated, self-sufficient commun/ties. There is no reason why as large a body as this country couldn't be composed of a whole series of communities joined together and interrelated economically, politically, and socially.

Our task is not to clean the padded cells

Or heal volcanic pity. We shall live

In no cathedral: our country is the careless star in man. —Kenneth Patchen

Small scale society is, at least it seems so now, hardly l/kely in North America /n the near future. But small scale ways of doing th/ngs and ways of thinking about things can certainly be instituted, and will just as certa/nly be important /n bringing about the devolution of power /n North America. In a sense it would be "build/ng the new society /n the shell of the old". But small scale involves a major shift /n the way things are looked at and understood. If large scale approaches don't work, then they can't sensibly be opposed by large scale approaches, whether /n terms of analyses of situations, of political movements, or even in the way we approach daily activities such as work. We have to begin to think and do things differently, even if the changes are only oh so small.

This explains, perhaps, why there is so little prospect of overcoming the defects of the power system by any attack that employs mass organization and mass efforts at persuasion; for these mass methods support the very system they attack. The changes that have so far been effective, and that give promise of further success, are those that have been initiated by animated individual minds, small groups, and local communities nibbling at the edges of the power structure by breaking routines and defying regulations. Such an attack seeks, not to capture the citadel of power, but to withdraw from it and quietly paralyze it Once such in/tiatives become widespread, as they at last show signs of becoming it will restore power and confident authority to its proper source: the human personality and the small face-to-face community.

—Lewis Mum ford, The Myth of the Machine, Vol. 2,

The Pentagon of Power

A small scale social movement is thus hardly one of the usual sort, and is more akin to some of the religious movements of earlier years that were also social movements. A small scale social movement is more of a flowering than anything else. It involves organizational forms, but it is just as much a cultural phenomenon, expressing itself in a variety of ways every day. It is more, much more than the usual understanding of a political or social movement. The development of this approach remains wide open. It does not in any way preclude political or social action, but does affect first the way in which such action is undertaken, and second the way in which such action is understood. It holds the possibility that there will be a community and a culture based not on hatred, rancor, and power but one that would center on happiness, mutual a/d, and common concerns, in which the individual will matter and be at home, in which goodness is something both common and valuable.

We do not affirm delight: would you

Have the signature of the sun itself to stay the dawn? This enterprise is earnest balloonful flowering Of brain and all the wonder blowing good like grain.

—Kenneth Patchen

Black Rose is a flower and a flowering, something real and something imagined, not yet existing but conceivable and common sense, a thought, an action, a motion, an ideal, brainful flowering yet rooted like good grain, delightful, blowing, enticing, a dream and yet real, to be created yet being created, a movement that gives pause without pausing, an enjoyable enigma.