From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Anarchism is a
political philosophy that advocates
self-governed societies based on voluntary institutions. These are often described as
stateless societies, although several authors have defined them more specifically as institutions based on non-
hierarchical or
free associations. Anarchism holds the
state to be undesirable, unnecessary and harmful.
The word "
anarchism" is composed from the word "
anarchy" and the suffix
-ism, themselves derived respectively from the Greek
ἀναρχία, i.e.
anarchy (from
ἄναρχος,
anarchos, meaning "one without rulers"; from the
privative prefix
ἀν- (
an-, i.e. "without") and
ἀρχός,
archos, i.e. "leader", "ruler"; (cf.
archon or
ἀρχή,
arkhē, i.e. "authority", "sovereignty", "realm", "magistracy")) and the suffix
-ισμός or
-ισμα (
-ismos,
-isma, from the verbal
infinitive suffix
-ίζειν,
-izein). The first known use of this word was in 1539. Various factions within the
French Revolution labelled opponents as anarchists (as
Maximilien Robespierre did the
Hébertists)
although few shared many views of later anarchists. There would be many
revolutionaries of the early nineteenth century who contributed to the
anarchist doctrines of the next generation, such as
William Godwin and
Wilhelm Weitling, but they did not use the word "anarchist" or "anarchism" in describing themselves or their beliefs.
The first political philosopher to call himself an anarchist was
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, marking the formal birth of anarchism in the mid-nineteenth century. Since the 1890s and beginning in France, the term "
libertarianism" has often been used as a synonym for anarchism and its use as a synonym is still common outside the United States.
On the other hand, some use libertarianism to refer to individualistic
free market philosophy only, referring to free market anarchism as
libertarian anarchism.
History
Origins
The earliest anarchist themes can be found in the 6th century BC among the works of
Taoist philosopher
Laozi and in later centuries by
Zhuangzi and Bao Jingyan. Zhuangzi's philosophy has been described by various sources as anarchist. Zhuangzi wrote: "A petty thief is put in jail. A great
brigand becomes a ruler of a Nation".
Diogenes of Sinope and the
Cynics as well as their contemporary
Zeno of Citium, the founder of
Stoicism, also introduced similar topics.
Jesus is sometimes considered the first anarchist in the
Christian anarchist
tradition. Georges Lechartier wrote: "The true founder of anarchy was
Jesus Christ and [...] the first anarchist society was that of the
apostles". In early
Islamic history, some manifestations of anarchic thought are found during the
Islamic civil war over the
Caliphate, where the
Kharijites insisted that the
imamate is a right for each individual within the Islamic society.
The French
Renaissance political philosopher
Étienne de La Boétie wrote in his most famous work the
Discourse on Voluntary Servitude what some historians consider an important anarchist precedent. The radical
Protestant Christian Gerrard Winstanley and his group the Diggers are cited by various authors as proposing anarchist social measures in the 17th century in England. The term "anarchist" first entered the English language in 1642 during the
English Civil War as a
term of abuse, used by
Royalists against their
Roundhead opponents. By the time of the
French Revolution, some such as the
Enraged Ones began to use the term positively in opposition to
Jacobin centralisation of power, seeing "revolutionary government" as
oxymoronic. By the turn of the 19th century, the English word "anarchism" had lost its initial negative connotation.
Modern anarchism emerged from the secular or religious thought of the
Enlightenment, particularly
Jean-Jacques Rousseau's arguments for the moral centrality of freedom.
As part of the political turmoil of the 1790s in the wake of the French Revolution,
William Godwin developed the first expression of modern anarchist thought. According to
Peter Kropotkin,
Godwin was "the first to formulate the political and economical
conceptions of anarchism, even though he did not give that name to the
ideas developed in his work" while Godwin attached his anarchist ideas to an early
Edmund Burke.
William Godwin,
was "the first to formulate the political and economical conceptions of
anarchism, even though he did not give that name to the ideas developed
in his work" according to Kropotkin.
Godwin is generally regarded as the founder of the school of thought known as
philosophical anarchism. He argued in
Political Justice (1793)
that government has an inherently malevolent influence on society and
that it perpetuates dependency and ignorance. He thought that the spread
of the use of reason to the masses would eventually cause government to
wither away as an unnecessary force. Although he did not accord the
state with moral legitimacy, he was against the use of revolutionary
tactics for removing the government from power. Rather, he advocated for
its replacement through a process of peaceful evolution.
His aversion to the imposition of a rules-based society led him
to denounce as a manifestation of the people's "mental enslavement" the
foundations of law,
property rights
and even the institution of marriage. He considered the basic
foundations of society as constraining the natural development of
individuals to use their powers of reasoning to arrive at a mutually
beneficial method of social organisation. In each case, government and
its institutions are shown to constrain the development of our capacity
to live wholly in accordance with the full and free exercise of private
judgement.
The French
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon is regarded as the first self-proclaimed anarchist, a label he adopted in his groundbreaking work
What is Property?, published in 1840. It is for this reason that some claim Proudhon as the founder of modern anarchist theory. He developed the theory of
spontaneous order
in society, where organisation emerges without a central coordinator
imposing its own idea of order against the wills of individuals acting
in their own interests. His famous quote on the matter is "Liberty is
the mother, not the daughter, of order". In
What is Property?, Proudhon answers with the famous accusation "
Property is theft". In this work, he opposed the institution of decreed "property" (
propriété), where owners have complete rights to "use and abuse" their property as they wish.
He contrasted this with what he called "possession", or limited
ownership of resources and goods only while in more or less continuous
use. However, Proudhon later added that "Property is Liberty" and argued
that it was a bulwark against state power. His opposition to the state, organised religion and certain
capitalist practices inspired subsequent anarchists and made him one of the leading social thinkers of his time.
The
anarcho-communist Joseph Déjacque was the first person to describe himself as "
libertarian". Unlike Proudhon, he argued that "it is not the product of his or her
labour that the worker has a right to, but to the satisfaction of his or
her needs, whatever may be their nature". In 1844, the
post-Hegelian philosopher
Max Stirner published in Germany the book,
The Ego and Its Own, which would later be considered an influential early text of
individualist anarchism. French anarchists active in the
1848 Revolution included
Anselme Bellegarrigue, Ernest Coeurderoy, Joseph Déjacque and Proudhon himself.
First International and the Paris Commune
In Europe, harsh reaction followed the
revolutions of 1848,
during which ten countries had experienced brief or long-term social
upheaval as groups carried out nationalist uprisings. After most of
these attempts at systematic change ended in failure,
conservative elements took advantage of the divided groups of
socialists,
liberals and
nationalists along with anarchists to prevent further revolt. In Spain, Ramón de la Sagra established the anarchist journal
El Porvenir in La Coruña in 1845 which was inspired by Proudhon's ideas. The Catalan politician
Francesc Pi i Margall became the principal translator of Proudhon's works into Spanish and later briefly became President of Spain in 1873 while being the leader of the
Federal Democratic Republican Party.
According to George Woodcock: "These translations were to have a
profound and lasting effect on the development of Spanish anarchism
after 1870, but before that time Proudhonian ideas, as interpreted by
Pi, already provided much of the inspiration for the federalist movement
which sprang up in the early 1860's". According to the
Encyclopædia Britannica: "During the Spanish revolution of 1873, Pi y Margall
attempted to establish a decentralised, or "cantonalist," political system on Proudhonian lines".
In 1864, the
International Workingmen's Association (sometimes called the First International) united diverse revolutionary currents including French followers of Proudhon,
Blanquists,
Philadelphes, English trade unionists, socialists and
social democrats. Due to its links to active workers' movements, the International became a significant organisation.
Karl Marx became a leading figure in the International and a member of its General Council. Proudhon's followers, the
mutualists, opposed Marx's
state socialism, advocating political
abstentionism and small property holdings. Woodcock also reports that the
American individualist anarchists Lysander Spooner and
William Batchelder Greene had been members of the First International. In 1868, following their unsuccessful participation in the
League of Peace and Freedom (LPF) Russian revolutionary
Mikhail Bakunin and his
collectivist anarchist associates joined the First International, which had decided not to get involved with the LPF. They allied themselves with the
federalist socialist sections of the International,
who advocated the revolutionary overthrow of the state and the
collectivisation of property. At first, the collectivists worked with
the Marxists to push the First International in a more revolutionary
socialist direction. Subsequently, the International became polarised
into two camps, with Marx and Bakunin as their respective figureheads. Bakunin characterised Marx's ideas as
centralist and predicted that if a Marxist party came to power, its leaders would simply take the place of the
ruling class they had fought against.
Anarchist historian George Woodcock reports: "The annual Congress
of the International had not taken place in 1870 owing to the outbreak
of the Paris Commune, and in 1871 the General Council called only a
special conference in London. One delegate was able to attend from Spain
and none from Italy, while a technical excuse – that they had split
away from the Fédération Romande – was used to avoid inviting Bakunin's
Swiss supporters. Thus only a tiny minority of anarchists was present,
and the General Council's resolutions passed almost unanimously. Most of
them were clearly directed against Bakunin and his followers". In 1872, the conflict climaxed with a final split between the two groups at the
Hague Congress, where Bakunin and
James Guillaume
were expelled from the International and its headquarters were
transferred to New York. In response, the federalist sections formed
their own International at the
St. Imier Congress, adopting a revolutionary anarchist programme.
The
Paris Commune
was a government that briefly ruled Paris from 18 March (more formally,
from 28 March) to 28 May 1871. The Commune was the result of an
uprising in Paris after France was defeated in the Franco-Prussian War.
Anarchists participated actively in the establishment of the Paris
Commune. They included
Louise Michel, the Reclus brothers (
Élie Reclus and
Élisée Reclus) and
Eugene Varlin
(the latter murdered in the repression afterwards). As for the reforms
initiated by the Commune, such as the re-opening of workplaces as
co-operatives, anarchists can see their ideas of associated labour
beginning to be realised. Moreover, the Commune's ideas on federation
obviously reflected the influence of Proudhon on French radical ideas.
The Commune's vision of a communal France based on a federation of
delegates bound by imperative mandates issued by their electors and
subject to recall at any moment echoes Bakunin's and Proudhon's ideas
(Proudhon, like Bakunin, had argued in favour of the "implementation of
the binding mandate" in 1848 and for federation of communes), thus both
economically and politically the Paris Commune was heavily influenced by
anarchist ideas.
George Woodcock states that "a notable contribution to the activities
of the Commune and particularly to the organization of public services
was made by members of various anarchist factions, including the
mutualists Courbet, Longuet, and Vermorel, the libertarian collectivists
Varlin, Malon, and Lefrangais, and the bakuninists Elie and Elisée
Reclus and Louise Michel".
Organised labour
The
anti-authoritarian sections of the First International were the precursors of the
anarcho-syndicalists, seeking to "replace the privilege and authority of the State" with the "free and spontaneous organization of labour". In 1886, the
Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions of the United States and Canada unanimously set 1 May 1886 as the date by which the
eight-hour work day would become standard.
A sympathetic engraving by
Walter Crane of the executed anarchists of Chicago after the
Haymarket affair, which is generally considered the most significant event for the origin of international
May Day observances
In response, unions across the United States prepared a
general strike in support of the event. On 3 May, a fight broke out in Chicago when
strikebreakers attempted to cross the picket line and two workers died when police opened fire upon the crowd. The next day on 4 May, anarchists staged a rally at Chicago's Haymarket Square. A bomb was thrown by an unknown party near the conclusion of the rally, killing an officer. In the ensuing panic, police opened fire on the crowd and each other. Seven police officers and at least four workers were killed.
Eight anarchists directly and indirectly related to the organisers of
the rally were arrested and charged with the murder of the deceased
officer. The men became international political celebrities among the
labour movement. Four of the men were executed and a fifth committed
suicide prior to his own execution. The incident became known as the
Haymarket affair
and was a setback for the labour movement and the struggle for the
eight-hour day. In 1890, a second attempt—this time international in
scope—to organise for the eight-hour day was made. The event also had
the secondary purpose of memorialising workers killed as a result of the
Haymarket affair. Although it had initially been conceived as a once-off event, by the following year the celebration of
International Workers' Day on May Day had become firmly established as an international worker's holiday.
In 1907, the
International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam gathered delegates from 14 different countries, among which were important figures of the anarchist movement, including
Errico Malatesta,
Pierre Monatte,
Luigi Fabbri,
Benoît Broutchoux,
Emma Goldman,
Rudolf Rocker and
Christiaan Cornelissen. Various themes were treated during the Congress, in particular concerning the organisation of the anarchist movement,
popular education issues, the general strike or
antimilitarism. A central debate concerned the relation between anarchism and
syndicalism (or
trade unionism). Malatesta and Monatte were in particular disagreement themselves on
this issue as the latter thought that syndicalism was revolutionary and
would create the conditions of a
social revolution while Malatesta did not consider syndicalism by itself sufficient. He thought that the trade union movement was
reformist
and even conservative, citing as essentially bourgeois and anti-worker
the phenomenon of professional union officials. Malatesta warned that
the syndicalists aims were in perpetuating syndicalism itself, whereas
anarchists must always have anarchy as their end and consequently
refrain from committing to any particular method of achieving it.
In 1881, the
Spanish Workers Federation
was the first major anarcho-syndicalist movement—anarchist trade union
federations were of special importance in Spain. The most successful was
the
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
(National Confederation of Labour, CNT), founded in 1910. Before the
1940s, the CNT was the major force in Spanish working class politics,
attracting 1.58 million members at one point and playing a major role in
the
Spanish Civil War. The CNT was affiliated with the
International Workers Association,
a federation of anarcho-syndicalist trade unions founded in 1922, with
delegates representing two million workers from 15 countries in Europe
and Latin America. In Latin America in particular, "[t]he anarchists
quickly became active in organising craft and industrial workers
throughout South and Central America, and until the early 1920s most of
the trade unions in
Mexico,
Brazil,
Peru, Chile, and Argentina were anarcho-syndicalist in general outlook;
the prestige of the Spanish C.N.T. as a revolutionary organisation was
undoubtedly to a great extent responsible for this situation. The
largest and most militant of these organisations was the
Federación Obrera Regional Argentina [...] it grew quickly to a membership of nearly a quarter of a million, which dwarfed the rival socialdemocratic unions".
Propaganda of the deed and illegalism
Italian American anarchist
Luigi Galleani
whose followers, known as Galleanists, carried out a series of bombings
and assassination attempts from 1914 to 1932 in what they saw as
attacks on "tyrants" and "enemies of the people"
Some anarchists, such as
Johann Most,
advocated publicising violent acts of retaliation against
counter-revolutionaries because "we preach not only action in and for
itself, but also action as propaganda". Scholars such as Beverly Gage contend that this was not advocacy of mass murder, but
targeted killings of members of the
ruling class
at times when such actions might garner sympathy from the population,
such as during periods of heightened government repression or labor
conflicts where workers were killed.
However, Most himself once boasted that "the existing system will be
quickest and most radically overthrown by the annihilation of its
exponents. Therefore, massacres of the enemies of the people must be set
in motion". Most is best known for a pamphlet published in 1885,
The Science of Revolutionary Warfare,
a how-to manual on the subject of making explosives based on knowledge
he acquired while working at an explosives plant in New Jersey.
By the 1880s, people inside and outside the anarchist movement
began to use the slogan, "propaganda of the deed" to refer to individual
bombings,
regicides and
tyrannicides.
From 1905 onwards, the Russian counterparts of these anti-syndicalist
anarchist-communists become partisans of economic terrorism and illegal "
expropriations".
Illegalism as a practice emerged and within it "[t]he acts of the anarchist bombers and assassins ("
propaganda by the deed") and the anarchist burglars ("
individual reappropriation")
expressed their desperation and their personal, violent rejection of an
intolerable society. Moreover, they were clearly meant to be exemplary
invitations to revolt". France's
Bonnot Gang was the most famous group to embrace illegalism.
However, important figures in the anarchist movement distanced
themselves from such individual acts as soon as 1887. Peter Kropotkin
thus wrote that year in
Le Révolté that "a structure based on centuries of history cannot be destroyed with a few kilos of dynamite".
A variety of anarchists advocated the abandonment of these sorts of
tactics in favour of collective revolutionary action, for example
through the trade union movement. The anarcho-syndicalist
Fernand Pelloutier
argued in 1895 for renewed anarchist involvement in the labour movement
on the basis that anarchism could do very well without "the individual
dynamiter".
State repression (including the infamous 1894 French
lois scélérates) of the anarchist and
labour movements
following the few successful bombings and assassinations may have
contributed in the first place to the abandonment of these kinds of
tactics, although reciprocally state repression may have played a role
in these isolated acts. The dismemberment of the French
socialist movement into many groups and—following the suppression of the 1871—Paris Commune the execution and exile of many
communards to
penal colonies favoured individualist political expression and acts.
Numerous heads of state were assassinated between 1881 and 1914 by members of the anarchist movement, including Tsar
Alexander II of Russia, President
Sadi Carnot of France,
Empress Elisabeth of Austria, King
Umberto I of Italy, President
William McKinley of the United States, King
Carlos I of Portugal and King
George I of Greece. McKinley's assassin
Leon Czolgosz claimed to have been influenced by anarchist and
feminist Emma Goldman.
Russian Revolution and other uprisings of the 1910s
Anarchists participated alongside the
Bolsheviks in both
February and
October revolutions and were initially enthusiastic about the Bolshevik revolution.
However, following a political falling out with the Bolsheviks by the
anarchists and other left-wing opposition the conflict culminated in the
1921
Kronstadt rebellion,
which the new government repressed. Anarchists in central Russia were
either imprisoned, driven underground or joined the victorious
Bolsheviks; the anarchists from Petrograd and Moscow fled to
Ukraine. In the
Free Territory, they fought in the
civil war against the
Whites
(a grouping of monarchists and other opponents of the October
Revolution) and then the Bolsheviks as part of the Revolutionary
Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine led by Nestor Makhno, who established an
anarchist society in the region for a number of months.
Expelled American anarchists Emma Goldman and
Alexander Berkman
were among those agitating in response to Bolshevik policy and the
suppression of the Kronstadt uprising, before they left Russia. Both
wrote accounts of their experiences in Russia, criticising the amount of
control the Bolsheviks exercised. For them, Bakunin's predictions about
the consequences of Marxist rule that the rulers of the new "socialist"
Marxist state would become a new elite had proved all too true.
The victory of the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution and the
resulting Russian Civil War did serious damage to anarchist movements
internationally. Many workers and activists saw Bolshevik success as
setting an example and
communist parties
grew at the expense of anarchism and other socialist movements. In
France and the United States, for example, members of the major
syndicalist movements of the
General Confederation of Labour and
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) left the organisations and joined the
Communist International.
The
revolutionary wave of 1917–1923 saw the active participation of anarchists in varying degrees of protagonism. In the German uprising known as the
German Revolution of 1918–1919 which established the
Bavarian Soviet Republic, the anarchists
Gustav Landauer,
Silvio Gesell and
Erich Mühsam had important leadership positions within the revolutionary
councilist structures. In the Italian events known as the
biennio rosso, the anarcho-syndicalist trade union
Unione Sindacale Italiana "grew to 800,000 members and the influence of the Italian Anarchist Union (20,000 members plus
Umanita Nova, its daily paper) grew accordingly [...] Anarchists were the first to suggest occupying workplaces." In the
Mexican Revolution, the
Mexican Liberal Party
was established and during the early 1910s it led a series of military
offensives leading to the conquest and occupation of certain towns and
districts in
Baja California with the leadership of anarcho-communist
Ricardo Flores Magón.
In Paris, the
Dielo Truda
group of Russian anarchist exiles, which included Nestor Makhno,
concluded that anarchists needed to develop new forms of organisation in
response to the structures of Bolshevism. Their 1926 manifesto, called
the
Organisational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft), was supported.
Platformist groups active today include the
Workers Solidarity Movement in Ireland and the
North Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists of North America.
Synthesis anarchism
emerged as an organisational alternative to platformism that tries to
join anarchists of different tendencies under the principles of
anarchism without adjectives. In the 1920s, this form found as its main proponents
Volin and
Sebastien Faure. It is the main principle behind the anarchist federations grouped around the contemporary global
International of Anarchist Federations.
Conflicts with European fascist regimes
In the 1920s and 1930s, the rise of
fascism in Europe transformed anarchism's conflict with the state. Italy saw the first struggles between anarchists and
Benito Mussolini's
fascists. Italian anarchists played a key role in the
anti-fascist organisation
Arditi del Popolo, which was strongest in areas with anarchist traditions and achieved some success in their activism, such as repelling
Blackshirts in the anarchist stronghold of
Parma in August 1922.
The veteran Italian anarchist Luigi Fabbri was one of the first
critical theorists of fascism, describing it as "the preventive
counter-revolution". In France, where the
far-right leagues came close to insurrection in the
February 1934 riots, anarchists divided over a
united front policy.
Anarchists in France and
Italy were active in the
Resistance during World War II. In Germany, the anarchist
Erich Mühsam was arrested on charges unknown in the early morning hours of 28 February 1933, within a few hours after the
Reichstag fire in Berlin.
Joseph Goebbels, the
Nazi propaganda minister,
labelled him as one of "those Jewish subversives". Over the next
seventeen months, he would be imprisoned in the concentration camps at
Sonnenburg, Brandenburg and finally,
Oranienburg. On 2 February 1934, Mühsam was transferred to the
concentration camp at
Oranienburg
when finally on the night of 9 July 1934, Mühsam was tortured and
murdered by the guards, his battered corpse found hanging in a latrine
the next morning.
Spanish Revolution
In Spain, the national anarcho-syndicalist trade union CNT initially
refused to join a popular front electoral alliance and abstention by CNT
supporters led to a right-wing election victory. In 1936, the CNT
changed its policy and anarchist votes helped bring the popular front
back to power. Months later, conservative members of the military, with
the support of minority extreme-right parties, responded with an
attempted coup, causing the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). In response to the army rebellion, an
anarchist-inspired movement of peasants and workers, supported by armed militias, took control of
Barcelona and of large areas of rural Spain where they
collectivised the land. However, the anarchists were losing ground even before the fascist victory in 1939 in a bitter struggle with the
Stalinists, who controlled much of the distribution of military aid to the
Republicans cause from the
Soviet Union. According to
Noam Chomsky,
"the communists were mainly responsible for the destruction of the
Spanish anarchists. Not just in Catalonia—the communist armies mainly
destroyed the collectives elsewhere. The communists basically acted as
the police force of the security system of the
Republic and were very much opposed to the anarchists, partially because
Stalin still hoped at that time to have some kind of pact with Western countries against
Adolf Hitler. That failed and Stalin withdrew the support to the Republic. They even withdrew the Spanish gold reserves". The events known as the
Spanish Revolution was a workers' social revolution that began during the outbreak of the
Spanish Civil War in 1936 and resulted in the widespread implementation of anarchist and more broadly
libertarian socialist organisational principles throughout various portions of the country for two to three years, primarily
Catalonia,
Aragon,
Andalusia and parts of
Levante.
Much of Spain's economy was put under worker control and in anarchist
strongholds like Catalonia the figure was as high as 75%, but lower in
areas with heavy
Communist Party of Spain
influence as the Soviet-allied party actively resisted attempts at
collectivisation enactment. Factories were run through worker
committees,
agrarian areas became collectivised and run as libertarian
communes. Anarchist historian
Sam Dolgoff estimated that about eight million people participated directly or at least indirectly in the Spanish Revolution,
which he claimed "came closer to realising the ideal of the free
stateless society on a vast scale than any other revolution in history". Spanish Communist Party-led troops suppressed the collectives and persecuted both
dissident Marxists and anarchists. The prominent Italian anarchist
Camillo Berneri, who volunteered to fight against
Francisco Franco was killed instead in Spain by gunmen associated with the Spanish Communist Party. The city of
Madrid was turned over to the Francoist forces by the last non-francoist mayor of the city, the anarchist
Melchor Rodríguez García.
Post-war years
Anarchism
sought to reorganise itself after the war and in this context the
organisational debate between synthesis anarchism and platformism took
importance once again especially in the
anarchist movements of Italy and
France. The
Mexican Anarchist Federation
was established in 1945 after the Anarchist Federation of the Centre
united with the Anarchist Federation of the Federal District.
In the early 1940s, the Antifascist International Solidarity and the
Federation of Anarchist Groups of Cuba merged into the large national
organisation Asociación Libertaria de Cuba (Cuban Libertarian
Association).
From 1944 to 1947, the Bulgarian Anarchist Communist Federation
reemerged as part of a factory and workplace committee movement, but was
repressed by the new Communist regime. In 1945 in France the
Fédération Anarchiste and the anarchosyndicalist trade union
Confédération nationale du travail was established in the next year while the also
synthesist Federazione Anarchica Italiana was founded in Italy. Korean anarchists formed the League of Free Social Constructors in September 1945 and in 1946 the
Japanese Anarchist Federation was founded. An International Anarchist Congress with delegates from across Europe was held in Paris in May 1948. After World War II, an appeal in the
Fraye Arbeter Shtime detailing the plight of
German anarchists
and called for Americans to support them. By February 1946, the sending
of aid parcels to anarchists in Germany was a large-scale operation.
The Federation of Libertarian Socialists was founded in Germany in 1947
and Rudolf Rocker wrote for its organ,
Die Freie Gesellschaft, which survived until 1953. In 1956, the
Uruguayan Anarchist Federation was founded. In 1955, the Anarcho-Communist Federation of Argentina renamed itself as the
Argentine Libertarian Federation. The
Syndicalist Workers' Federation (SWF) was a syndicalist group in active in post-war Britain, and one of
Solidarity Federation's earliest predecessors. It was formed in 1950 by members of the dissolved Anarchist Federation of Britain (AFB).
Unlike the AFB, which was influenced by anarcho-syndicalist ideas but
ultimately not syndicalist itself, the SWF decided to pursue a more
definitely syndicalist, worker-centred strategy from the outset.
Anarchism continued to influence important literary and intellectual personalities of the time, such as
Albert Camus,
Herbert Read, Paul Goodman, Dwight Macdonald,
Allen Ginsberg, George Woodcock,
Leopold Kohr,
Julian Beck,
John Cage and the French
Surrealist group led by
André Breton, which now openly embraced anarchism and collaborated in the Fédération Anarchiste.
Anarcho-pacifism became influential in the
Anti-nuclear movement and
anti war movements of the time as can be seen in the activism and writings of the English anarchist member of
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Alex Comfort or the similar activism of the American catholic anarcho-pacifists
Ammon Hennacy and
Dorothy Day. Anarcho-pacifism became a "basis for a critique of militarism on both sides of the
Cold War". The resurgence of anarchist ideas during this period is well documented in Robert Graham's
Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas,
Volume Two: The Emergence of the New Anarchism (1939–1977).
Contemporary anarchism
The famous
okupas squat near
Parc Güell,
overlooking Barcelona (on the roof: "Occupy and Resist"), since
squatting was a prominent part of the emergence of renewed anarchist
movement from the
counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s
A surge of popular interest in anarchism occurred in western nations during the 1960s and 1970s. Anarchism was influential in the
Counterculture of the 1960s and anarchists actively participated in the
late sixties students and workers revolts. In 1968, in
Carrara, Italy the
International of Anarchist Federations
was founded during an international anarchist conference held there in
1968 by the three existing European federations of France (the
Fédération Anarchiste), the Federazione Anarchica Italiana of Italy and the
Iberian Anarchist Federation as well as the
Bulgarian federation in French exile.
In the United Kingdom in the 1970s, this was associated with the
punk rock movement as exemplified by bands such as
Crass and the
Sex Pistols.
The housing and employment crisis in most of Western Europe led to the
formation of communes and squatter movements like that of Barcelona,
Spain. In Denmark,
squatters occupied a disused military base and declared the
Freetown Christiania, an autonomous haven in central Copenhagen. Since the revival of anarchism in the mid-20th century,
a number of new movements and schools of thought emerged. Although
feminist tendencies have always been a part of the anarchist movement in
the form of
anarcha-feminism, they returned with vigour during the second wave of feminism in the 1960s. Anarchist anthropologist
David Graeber and anarchist historian
Andrej Grubacic
have posited a rupture between generations of anarchism, with those
"who often still have not shaken the sectarian habits" of the 19th
century contrasted with the younger activists who are "much more
informed, among other elements, by
indigenous,
feminist, ecological and cultural-critical ideas" and who by the turn of the 21st century formed "by far the majority" of anarchists.
Since the 1980s, anarchism has grown into a strong political force in
Latin America, with the development of
Fejuve (1979),
CIPO-RFM (1980s),
Zapatistas (1994),
Horizontilidad (2001) and the
Oaxaca Uprising (2006). Around the turn of the 21st century, anarchism grew in popularity and influence as part of the anti-war, anti-capitalist, and
anti-globalisation movements. Anarchists became known for their involvement in protests against the meetings of the
World Trade Organization (WTO),
Group of Eight (G8) and the
World Economic Forum
(WEF). Some anarchist factions at these protests engaged in rioting,
property destruction, and violent confrontations with police. These
actions were precipitated by ad hoc, leaderless, anonymous cadres known
as
black blocs—other organisational tactics pioneered in this time include
security culture,
affinity groups and the use of decentralised technologies such as the internet. A significant event of this period was the confrontations at
WTO conference in Seattle in 1999. According to anarchist scholar
Simon Critchley, "contemporary anarchism can be seen as a powerful critique of the pseudo-libertarianism of contemporary
neo-liberalism
[...] One might say that contemporary anarchism is about
responsibility, whether sexual, ecological or socio-economic; it flows
from an experience of conscience about the manifold ways in which the
West ravages the rest; it is an ethical outrage at the yawning
inequality, impoverishment and disenfranchisment that is so palpable
locally and globally".
Rojava is supporting efforts for workers to form cooperatives, such as this sewing cooperative
International anarchist federations in existence include the
International of Anarchist Federations, the
International Workers' Association and
International Libertarian Solidarity. The largest organised anarchist movement today is in Spain in the form of the
Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT) and the CNT. CGT membership was estimated at around 100,000 for 2003.
Anarchist ideas have been influential in the development of the
Democratic Federation of Northern Syria (DFNS), more commonly known as
Rojava, a
de facto autonomous region in northern
Syria.
Abdullah Öcalan—a founding member of the
Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) who is currently imprisoned in
Turkey—is an iconic and popular figure in the DFNS whose ideas shaped the region's society and politics. While in prison, Öcalan corresponded with (and was influenced by)
Murray Bookchin, an
anarcho-communist theorist and philosopher who developed
Communalism and
libertarian municipalism. Modelled after Bookchin's ideas, Öcalan developed the theory of
democratic confederalism.
In March 2005, he issued his "Declaration of Democratic Confederalism
in Kurdistan", calling upon citizens "to stop attacking the government
and instead create municipal assemblies, which he called '
democracy without the state'".
Anarchist schools of thought
Anarchist schools of thought had been generally grouped in two main historical traditions,
individualist anarchism and
social anarchism, which have some different origins, values and evolution. The individualist wing of anarchism emphasises
negative liberty, i.e. opposition to state or
social control over the individual, while those in the social wing emphasise
positive liberty
to achieve one's potential and argue that humans have needs that
society ought to fulfil, "recognising equality of entitlement".
In a chronological and theoretical sense, there are classical—those
created throughout the 19th century—and post-classical anarchist
schools—those created since the mid-20th century and after.
Beyond the specific factions of anarchist thought is
philosophical anarchism,
which embodies the theoretical stance that the state lacks moral
legitimacy without accepting the imperative of revolution to eliminate
it. A component especially of individualist anarchism philosophical anarchism may accept the existence of a
minimal state as unfortunate, and usually temporary, "necessary evil" but argue that citizens do not have a
moral obligation to obey the state when its laws conflict with individual autonomy. One reaction against sectarianism within the anarchist milieu was "anarchism without adjectives", a call for
toleration first adopted by
Fernando Tarrida del Mármol in 1889 in response to the "bitter debates" of anarchist theory at the time.
In abandoning the hyphenated anarchisms (i.e. collectivist-,
communist-, mutualist– and individualist-anarchism), it sought to
emphasise the
anti-authoritarian beliefs common to all anarchist schools of thought.
Mutualism
Mutualism
began in 18th-century English and French labour movements before taking
an anarchist form associated with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in France and
others in the United States.
Proudhon proposed spontaneous order, whereby organisation emerges
without central authority, a "positive anarchy" where order arises when
everybody does "what he wishes and only what he wishes" and where "business transactions alone produce the social order."
Proudhon distinguished between ideal political possibilities and
practical governance. For this reason, much in contrast to some of his
theoretical statements concerning ultimate spontaneous self-governance,
Proudhon was heavily involved in French parliamentary politics and
allied himself not with anarchist but socialist factions of workers'
movements and, in addition to advocating state-protected charters for
worker-owned
cooperatives, promoted certain nationalisation schemes during his life of public service.
Mutualist anarchism is concerned with
reciprocity, free association, voluntary contract, federation, and credit and currency reform. According to the American mutualist
William Batchelder Greene,
each worker in the mutualist system would receive "just and exact pay
for his work; services equivalent in cost being exchangeable for
services equivalent in cost, without profit or discount".
Mutualism has been retrospectively characterised as ideologically
situated between individualist and collectivist forms of anarchism. Proudhon first characterised his goal as a "third form of society, the synthesis of communism and property".
Social anarchism
Social anarchism
calls for a system with common ownership of means of production and
democratic control of all organisations, without any government
authority or
coercion. It is the largest school of thought in anarchism. Social anarchism rejects private property, seeing it as a source of social inequality (while retaining respect for
personal property) and emphasises cooperation and
mutual aid.
Collectivist anarchism
Collectivist anarchism, also referred to as revolutionary socialism or a form of such, is a revolutionary form of anarchism, commonly associated with Mikhail Bakunin and Johann Most. Collectivist anarchists oppose all private ownership of the means of
production, instead advocating that ownership be collectivised. This was
to be achieved through violent revolution, first starting with a small
cohesive group through acts of violence, or propaganda by the deed,
which would inspire the workers as a whole to revolt and forcibly
collectivise the means of production.
However, collectivisation was not to be extended to the
distribution of income as workers would be paid according to time
worked, rather than receiving goods being distributed "according to
need" as in anarcho-communism. This position was criticised by anarchist
communists as effectively "uphold[ing] the wages system". Collectivist anarchism arose contemporaneously with
Marxism, but opposed the Marxist dictatorship of the proletariat despite the stated Marxist goal of a collectivist stateless society. Anarchist, communist and collectivist ideas are not
mutually exclusive—although
the collectivist anarchists advocated compensation for labour, some
held out the possibility of a post-revolutionary transition to a
communist system of distribution according to need.
Anarcho-communism
Anarcho-communism (also known as anarchist-communism, libertarian communism and occasionally as free communism) is a theory of anarchism that advocates abolition of the state,
markets, money,
private property (while retaining respect for personal property) and capitalism in favour of
common ownership of the
means of production,
direct democracy and a horizontal network of
voluntary associations and
workers' councils with production and consumption based on the guiding principle: "
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need".
Some forms of anarchist communism such as
insurrectionary anarchism
are strongly influenced by egoism and radical individualism, believing
anarcho-communism is the best social system for the realisation of
individual freedom. Most anarcho-communists view anarcho-communism as a way of reconciling the opposition between the individual and society.
Anarcho-communism developed out of radical socialist currents after the French Revolution but was first formulated as such in the Italian section of the First International.
The theoretical work of Peter Kropotkin took importance later as it
expanded and developed pro-organisationalist and insurrectionary
anti-organisationalist sections.
To date, the best known examples of an anarchist communist society
(i.e. established around the ideas as they exist today and achieving
worldwide attention and knowledge in the historical canon), are the
anarchist territories during the
Spanish Revolution and the
Free Territory during the
Russian Revolution. Through the efforts and influence of the
Spanish anarchists
during the Spanish Revolution within the Spanish Civil War, starting in
1936 anarchist communism existed in most of Aragon, parts of the
Levante and Andalusia as well as in the stronghold of
anarchist Catalonia before being crushed by the combined forces of the
regime that won the war,
Hitler, Mussolini, Communist Party of Spain repression (backed by the
Soviet Union) as well as economic and armaments blockades from the
capitalist countries and the Spanish Republic itself.
During the Russian Revolution, anarchists such as Nestor Makhno worked
to create and defend—through the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of
Ukraine—anarcho-communism in the Free Territory of the Ukraine from 1919
before being conquered by the Bolsheviks in 1921.
Anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism that focuses on the labour movement.
Anarcho-syndicalists view labour unions as a potential force for
revolutionary social change, replacing capitalism and the state with a
new society democratically self-managed by workers. The basic principles
of anarcho-syndicalism are workers'
solidarity,
direct action and
workers' self-management.
Anarcho-syndicalists believe that only direct action—that is, action
concentrated on directly attaining a goal as opposed to indirect action,
such as electing a representative to a government position—will allow
workers to liberate themselves.
Moreover, anarcho-syndicalists believe that workers' organisations (the
organisations that struggle against the wage system, which in
anarcho-syndicalist theory will eventually form the basis of a new
society) should be self-managing. They should not have bosses or
"business agents"—rather, the workers should be able to make all the
decisions that affect them themselves. Rudolf Rocker was one of the most
popular voices in the anarcho-syndicalist movement. He outlined a view
of the origins of the movement, what it sought and why it was important
to the future of labour in his 1938 pamphlet
Anarcho-Syndicalism.
The International Workers Association is an international
anarcho-syndicalist federation of various labour unions from different
countries. The Spanish CNT played and still plays a major role in the
Spanish labour movement. It was also an important force in the Spanish
Civil War.
Individualist anarchism
Individualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasise the
individual and their
will over any kinds of external determinants such as groups, society, traditions and ideological systems.
Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy, but it instead
refers to a group of individualistic philosophies that sometimes are in
conflict.
In 1793, William Godwin, who has often been cited as the first anarchist, wrote
Political Justice, which some consider the first expression of anarchism. Godwin was a philosophical anarchist and from a
rationalist and
utilitarian basis opposed revolutionary action and saw a
minimal state as a present "necessary evil" that would become increasingly irrelevant and powerless by the gradual spread of knowledge.
Godwin advocated individualism, proposing that all cooperation in
labour be eliminated on the premise that this would be most conducive
with the general good.
An influential form of individualist anarchism, called "egoism", or
egoist anarchism, was expounded by one of the earliest and best-known proponents of individualist anarchism, the German
Max Stirner. Stirner's
The Ego and Its Own, published in 1844, is a founding text of the philosophy. According to Stirner, the only limitation on the rights of individuals is their power to obtain what they desire, without regard for God, state, or morality. To Stirner, rights were "
spooks" in the mind and he held that society does not exist, but "the individuals are its reality". Stirner advocated self-assertion and foresaw
unions of egoists, non-systematic associations continually renewed by all parties' support through an act of will, which Stirner proposed as a form of organisation in place of the state. Egoist anarchists argue that egoism will foster genuine and spontaneous union between individuals. "Egoism" has inspired many interpretations of Stirner's philosophy. It
was re-discovered and promoted by German philosophical anarchist and
homosexual activist
John Henry Mackay.
Josiah Warren is widely regarded as the first American anarchist, and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833,
The Peaceful Revolutionist, was the first anarchist periodical published.
For American anarchist historian Eunice Minette Schuster, "[i]t is
apparent [...] that Proudhonian Anarchism was to be found in the United
States at least as early as 1848 and that it was not conscious of its
affinity to the Individualist Anarchism of Josiah Warren and
Stephen Pearl Andrews [...] William B. Greene presented this Proudhonian Mutualism in its purest and most systematic form".
Henry David Thoreau
(1817–1862) was an important early influence in individualist anarchist
thought in the United States and Europe. Thoreau was an American
author, poet, naturalist, tax resister,
development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher and leading
transcendentalist. He is best known for his books
Walden, a reflection upon
simple living in natural surroundings, as well as his essay,
Civil Disobedience,
an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral
opposition to an unjust state. Benjamin Tucker later fused Stirner's
egoism with the economics of Warren and Proudhon in his eclectic
influential publication
Liberty.
From these early influences, individualist anarchism in different
countries attracted a small yet diverse following of Bohemian artists
and intellectuals,
free love and
birth control advocates (see
anarchism and issues related to love and sex), individualist
naturists and
nudists,
freethought and
anti-clerical activists as well as young anarchist outlaws in what became known as illegalism and
individual reclamation. These authors and activists included
Oscar Wilde,
Emile Armand,
Han Ryner,
Henri Zisly,
Renzo Novatore,
Miguel Gimenez Igualada,
Adolf Brand and
Lev Chernyi among others.
Post-classical anarchist schools of thought
Anarchism continues to generate many philosophies and movements, at times eclectic, drawing upon various sources and
syncretic, combining disparate concepts to create new philosophical approaches.
Insurrectionary anarchism is a revolutionary theory, practice, and tendency within the anarchist movement which emphasises
insurrection within anarchist practice. It is critical of formal organisations such as
labour unions and federations that are based on a political programme and periodic congresses. Instead, insurrectionary anarchists advocate informal organisation and small
affinity group based organisation. Insurrectionary anarchists put value in attack, permanent
class conflict and a refusal to negotiate or compromise with class enemies.
Green anarchism (or eco-anarchism) is a school of thought within anarchism that emphasises environmental issues, with an important precedent in anarcho-naturism and whose main contemporary currents are anarcho-primitivism and
social ecology. Writing from a green anarchist perspective,
John Zerzan attributes the ills of today's social degradation to technology and the birth of agricultural civilization. While
Layla AbdelRahim
argues that "the shift in human consciousness was also a shift in human
subsistence strategies, whereby some human animals reinvented their
narrative to center murder and predation and thereby institutionalize
violence".
Thus, according to her, civilization was the result of the human
development of technologies and grammar for predatory economics.
Language and literacy, she claims, are some of these technologies.
Anarcha-feminism (also called anarchist feminism and anarcho-feminism) combines anarchism with feminism. It generally views
patriarchy as a manifestation of involuntary coercive hierarchy that should be replaced by
decentralised free association. Anarcha-feminists believe that the struggle against patriarchy is an essential part of
class struggle,
and the anarchist struggle against the state. In essence, the
philosophy sees anarchist struggle as a necessary component of feminist
struggle and vice versa.
L. Susan Brown claims that "as anarchism is a political philosophy that opposes all relationships of power, it is inherently feminist". Anarcha-feminism began with the late 19th-century writings of early feminist anarchists such as Emma Goldman and
Voltairine de Cleyre.
Anarcho-pacifism is a tendency that rejects violence in the struggle for social change (see
non-violence). It developed mostly in the Netherlands, Britain and the United States before and during the Second World War. Christian anarchism is a
movement in
political theology that combines anarchism and Christianity. Its main proponents included
Leo Tolstoy, Dorothy Day, Ammon Hennacy and
Jacques Ellul.
Religious anarchism
refers to a set of related anarchist ideologies that are inspired by
the teachings of (organized) religions, but many anarchists have
traditionally been skeptical of and opposed to
organized religion.
Many different religions have served as inspiration for religious forms
of anarchism, most notably Christianity as Christian anarchists believe
that biblical teachings give credence to anarchist philosophy.
Non-Christian forms of religious anarchism include
Buddhist anarchism,
Jewish anarchism and most recently
Neopaganism.
Synthesis anarchism
is a form of anarchism that tries to join anarchists of different
tendencies under the principles of anarchism without adjectives. In the 1920s, this form found as its main proponents the
anarcho-communists Voline and
Sébastien Faure. It is the main principle behind the anarchist federations grouped around the contemporary global
International of Anarchist Federations.
Platformism is a tendency within the wider anarchist movement based on the organisational theories in the tradition of Dielo Truda's
Organisational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft). The document was based on the experiences of
Russian anarchists in the 1917 October Revolution, which led eventually to the victory of the
Bolsheviks over the anarchists and other groups. The
Platform attempted to address and explain the anarchist movement's failures during the Russian Revolution.
Post-left anarchy is a recent current in anarchist thought that promotes a critique of anarchism's relationship to traditional
left-wing politics. Some post-leftists seek to escape the confines of
ideology in general also presenting a critique of organisations and
morality. Influenced by the work of Max Stirner and by the Marxist
Situationist International, post-left anarchy is marked by a focus on social insurrection and a rejection of leftist social organisation.
Post-anarchism is a theoretical move towards a synthesis of classical anarchist theory and
poststructuralist thought, drawing from diverse ideas including post-left anarchy,
postmodernism,
autonomism,
postcolonialism and the
Situationist International.
Queer anarchism is a form of
socialism which suggests anarchism as a solution to the issues faced by the
LGBT community, mainly
heteronormativity,
homophobia,
transphobia and
biphobia. Anarcho-queer arose during the late 20th century based on the work of Michel Foucault
The History of Sexuality.
Left-wing market anarchism
strongly affirm the classical liberal ideas of self-ownership and free
markets while maintaining that taken to their logical conclusions, these
ideas support strongly anti-corporatist, anti-hierarchical, pro-labour
positions and anti-capitalism in economics and anti-imperialism in
foreign policy.
Anarcho-capitalism advocates the elimination of the state in favour of
self-ownership in a
free market. Anarcho-capitalism developed from radical anti-state libertarianism and individualist anarchism, drawing from
Austrian School economics, study of
law and economics and
public choice theory.
There is a strong current within anarchism which believes that
anarcho-capitalism cannot be considered a part of the anarchist movement
due to the fact that anarchism has historically been an
anti-capitalist movement and for definitional reasons which see anarchism as
incompatible with capitalist forms.
Anarcho-transhumanism is a recently new branch of anarchism that takes traditional and modern anarchism, typically drawing from
anarcho-syndicalism,
left-libertarianism or
libertarian socialism and combines it with
transhumanism and
post-humanism.
It can be described as a "liberal democratic revolution, at its core
the idea that people are happiest when they have rational control over
their lives. Reason, science, and technology provide one kind of
control, slowly freeing us from ignorance, toil, pain, disease and
limited lifespans (aging)". Some anarcho-transhumanists might also
follow
technogaianism.
Internal issues and debates
Anarchism is a
philosophy
that embodies many diverse attitudes, tendencies and schools of thought
and as such disagreement over questions of values, ideology and tactics
is common. The compatibility of
capitalism,
nationalism and
religion with anarchism is widely disputed. Similarly, anarchism enjoys complex relationships with ideologies such as
Marxism,
communism,
collectivism,
syndicalism/
trade unionism and
capitalism. Anarchists may be motivated by
humanism,
divine authority,
enlightened self-interest,
veganism or any number of alternative ethical doctrines.
Phenomena such as
civilisation,
technology (e.g. within anarcho-primitivism) and
the democratic process may be sharply criticised within some anarchist tendencies and simultaneously lauded in others.
On a tactical level, while
propaganda of the deed was a tactic used by anarchists in the 19th century (e.g. the
nihilist movement), some contemporary anarchists espouse alternative direct action methods such as
nonviolence,
counter-economics and
anti-state cryptography
to bring about an anarchist society. About the scope of an anarchist
society, some anarchists advocate a global one, while others do so by
local ones.
The diversity in anarchism has led to widely different use of identical
terms among different anarchist traditions, which has led to many
definitional concerns in anarchist theory.
Topics of interest
Intersecting
and overlapping between various schools of thought, certain topics of
interest and internal disputes have proven perennial within anarchist
theory.
Free love
An important current within anarchism is
free love. Free love advocates sometimes traced their roots back to
Josiah Warren
and to experimental communities, viewed sexual freedom as a clear,
direct expression of an individual's sovereignty. Free love particularly
stressed
women's rights since most sexual laws discriminated against women, see for example marriage laws and anti-birth control measures. The most important American free love journal was
Lucifer the Lightbearer (1883–1907), edited by
Moses Harman and
Lois Waisbrooker, but also there existed
Ezra Heywood and Angela Heywood's
The Word (1872–1890, 1892–1893).
Free Society (1895–1897 as
The Firebrand; 1897–1904 as
Free Society) was a major anarchist newspaper in the United States at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. The publication advocated free love and women's rights and critiqued "
Comstockery"—i.e. censorship of sexual information. Also
M. E. Lazarus was an important American individualist anarchist who promoted free love.
In New York City's
Greenwich Village,
bohemian
feminists and socialists advocated self-realisation and pleasure for
women (and also men) in the here and now. They encouraged playing with
sexual roles and sexuality and the openly bisexual radical
Edna St. Vincent Millay and the lesbian anarchist
Margaret Anderson
were prominent among them. Discussion groups organised by the Villagers
were frequented by Emma Goldman, among others. Magnus Hirschfeld noted
in 1923 that Goldman "has campaigned boldly and steadfastly for
individual rights, and especially for those deprived of their rights.
Thus it came about that she was the first and only woman, indeed the
first and only American, to take up the defence of homosexual love
before the general public". Before Goldman,
heterosexual anarchist Robert Reitzel (1849–1898) spoke positively of homosexuality from the beginning of the 1890s in his Detroit-based
German language journal
Der arme Teufel (English: The Poor Devil). In Argentina, anarcha-feminist
Virginia Bolten published the newspaper called
La Voz de la Mujer (English:
The Woman's Voice), which was published nine times in Rosario between 8 January 1896 and 1 January 1897 and was revived briefly in 1901.
In Europe, the main propagandist of free love within individualist anarchism was Emile Armand. He proposed the concept of
la camaraderie amoureuse
to speak of free love as the possibility of voluntary sexual encounter
between consenting adults. He was also a consistent proponent of
polyamory. In Germany, the
Stirnerists Adolf Brand and John Henry Mackay were pioneering campaigners for the acceptance of male
bisexuality and
homosexuality.
Mujeres Libres was an anarchist women's organisation in Spain that aimed to empower working class women. It was founded in 1936 by
Lucía Sánchez Saornil, Mercedes Comaposada and
Amparo Poch y Gascón and had approximately 30,000 members. The organisation was based on the idea of a "double struggle" for
women's liberation
and social revolution and argued that the two objectives were equally
important and should be pursued in parallel. In order to gain mutual
support, they created networks of women anarchists. Lucía Sánchez Saornil was a main founder of the Spanish anarcha-feminist federation Mujeres Libres who was open about her
lesbianism. She was published in a variety of literary journals while working under a male pen name, she was able to explore lesbian themes at a time when homosexuality was criminalised and subject to
censorship and punishment.
More recently, the British anarcho-pacifist Alex Comfort gained notoriety during the
sexual revolution for writing the bestseller sex manual
The Joy of Sex. The issue of free love has a dedicated treatment in the work of French anarcho-
hedonist philosopher
Michel Onfray in such works as
Théorie du corps amoureux. Pour une érotique solaire (2000) and
L'invention du plaisir. Fragments cyréaniques (2002).
Libertarian education and freethought
For English anarchist William Godwin, education was "the main means by which change would be achieved". Godwin saw that the main goal of education should be the promotion of happiness.
For Godwin, education had to have a "respect for the child's autonomy
which precluded any form of coercion", a "pedagogy that respected this
and sought to build on the child's own motivation and initiatives" and a
"concern about the child's capacity to resist an ideology transmitted
through the school". In his
Political Justice, he criticises state sponsored schooling "on account of its obvious alliance with national government".
Early American anarchist Josiah Warren advanced alternative education
experiences in the libertarian communities he established. Max Stirner wrote in 1842 a long essay on education called
The False Principle of our Education
in which Stirner names his educational principle "personalist",
explaining that self-understanding consists in hourly self-creation.
Education for him is to create "free men, sovereign characters", by
which he means "eternal characters [...] who are therefore eternal
because they form themselves each moment".
In the United States, freethought was a basically
anti-Christian,
anti-clerical
movement, whose purpose was to make the individual politically and
spiritually free to decide for himself on religious matters. A number of
contributors to
Liberty (anarchist publication) were prominent
figures in both freethought and anarchism. The individualist anarchist
George MacDonald was a co-editor of
Freethought and, for a time,
The Truth Seeker. E.C. Walker was co-editor of
Lucifer, the Light-Bearer and many anarchists were "ardent freethinkers; reprints from freethought papers such as
Lucifer, the Light-Bearer,
Freethought and
The Truth Seeker appeared in
Liberty... The church was viewed as a common ally of the state and as a repressive force in and of itself".
In 1901, Catalan anarchist and free thinker Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia established "modern" or
progressive schools in Barcelona in defiance of an educational system controlled by the Catholic Church.
The schools' stated goal was to "educate the working class in a
rational, secular and non-coercive setting". Fiercely anti-clerical,
Ferrer believed in "freedom in education", education free from the
authority of church and state.
Murray Bookchin wrote: "This period [1890s] was the heyday of
libertarian schools and pedagogical projects in all areas of the country
where Anarchists exercised some degree of influence. Perhaps the
best-known effort in this field was Francisco Ferrer's Modern School
(Escuela Moderna), a project which exercised a considerable influence on
Catalan education and on experimental techniques of teaching
generally". La Escuela Moderna and Ferrer's ideas generally formed the inspiration for a series of
Modern Schools in the United States,
Cuba, South America and London. The first of these was started in New
York City in 1911. It also inspired the Italian newspaper
Università popolare, founded in 1901. Russian christian anarchist Leo Tolstoy established a school for peasant children on his estate. Tolstoy's educational experiments were short-lived due to harassment by the Tsarist secret police. Tolstoy established a conceptual difference between education and culture.
He thought that "[e]ducation is the tendency of one man to make another
just like himself [...] Education is culture under restraint, culture
is free. [Education is] when the teaching is forced upon the pupil, and
when then instruction is exclusive, that is when only those subjects are
taught which the educator regards as necessary". For him, "without compulsion, education was transformed into culture".
A more recent libertarian tradition on education is that of
unschooling and the
free school in which child-led activity replaces pedagogic approaches. Experiments in Germany led to
A. S. Neill founding what became
Summerhill School in 1921. Summerhill is often cited as an example of anarchism in practice.
However, although Summerhill and other free schools are radically
libertarian, they differ in principle from those of Ferrer by not
advocating an overtly political class struggle-approach.
In addition to organising schools according to libertarian principles,
anarchists have also questioned the concept of schooling per se. The
term
deschooling was popularised by
Ivan Illich,
who argued that the school as an institution is dysfunctional for
self-determined learning and serves the creation of a consumer society
instead.
List of anarchist societies
Criticisms
Criticisms of anarchism include moral criticisms and pragmatic criticisms. Anarchism is often evaluated as unfeasible or
utopian by its critics.
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