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ABSTRACT
This article analyzes the Anarchist attitude to marriage and free unions in England in the fin-de-siecle by examining two relationships - that of Guy Aldred and Rose Witcop and Rudolf Rocker and Milly Witcop. Anarchist rhetoric about marriage was trenchant and uncompromising; marriage was legalized prostitution and unworthy of truly free individuals. In practice, however, anarchists were more flexible, accepting that hostile circumstances required adjustments. In fact, both of these couples legally married, though for different reasons. Because most anarchists believed in (at least) serial monogamy and in heterosexuality, they had fewer alternatives to marriage from which to choose. In addition, in the end, what mattered most was the relationship between the couple, not its legal form. Ironically, the group most associated with 'free love' actually practiced it rarely, not from timidity but from a respect for individual rights, particularly for women members.
Keywords: marriage, free union, utopianism, woman question, individualism
Nineteenth-century critics often dismissed anarchism as Utopian in the negative sense of being overly optimistic about human nature, about the likely impact of their theoretical ideas on the lives of real people, and about the possibility of being able to find alternative, non-hierarchical ways of living. The critique was frequently supplemented by the charge that anarchism threatened social dissolution. Anarchists championed individual freedom more than other socialists; some anarchists argued that no social concerns should interfere with the rights of the individual.1 Naturally, the anarchist movement that emerged in 1880s Britain was diverse. Renewed by constant waves of émigrés from all over Europe - including Prince Peter Kropotkin and Louise Michel - anarchists benefited from the rise of syndicalism in the years before World War I and worked in conjunction with other radical organizations, for example William Morris's Socialist League. A few Tolstoyan communities also formed, living off of the land and their own labour; the colony of Whitcway, in the Cotswolds, was the best known example.2
Nevertheless, what distinguished the anarchists from other revolutionaries was a commitment to individualism as well as socialism and a belief that coercion could play no part in a just society. In politics, this commitment translated to a rejection of the power of the state as well as the oppression of capitalism. This did not necessarily...