Anarchism is a political philosophy that advocates
stateless societies often defined as self-governed
voluntary institutions, but that several authors
have defined as more specific institutions
based on non-hierarchical free associations.
Anarchism holds the state to be undesirable,
unnecessary, or harmful. While anti-statism
is central, anarchism entails opposing authority
or hierarchical organisation in the conduct
of human relations, including, but not limited
to, the state system.Modern anarchism sprang
from the secular or religious thought of the
Enlightenment. The central tendency of anarchism
as a mass social movement has been represented
by anarcho-communism and anarcho-syndicalism,
with individualist anarchism being primarily
a literary phenomenon which did nevertheless
affect the bigger currents, including the
participation of individualists in large anarchist
organizations.
== Early history ==
Most contemporary anthropologists as well
as anarcho-primitivists agree that for the
longest period before recorded history human
society was without a separate class of established
authority or formal political institutions.
According to Harold Barclay, long before anarchism
emerged as a distinct perspective, human beings
lived for thousands of years in self-governing
societies without a special ruling or political
class. It was only after the rise of hierarchical
societies that anarchist ideas were formulated
as a critical response to and rejection of
coercive political institutions and hierarchical
social relationships.
Taoism, which developed in ancient China,
has been embraced by some anarchists as a
source of anarchistic attitudes. The Taoists
sages Lao Zi (Lao Tzu) and Zhuang Zhou whose
philosophy was a kind of philosophy based
on a "anti-polity" stance and rejection of
any kind of involvement in political movements
or organisations and developed a philosophy
of "non-rule" in the Zhuang Zhou and Tao Te
Ching and many Taoists in response lived an
anarchist lifestyle. In 300 CE, Bao Jingyan
explicitly argued that there should be neither
lords nor subjects. Similarly, anarchistic
tendencies in the West can be traced to the
philosophers of ancient Greece such as Zeno
of Citium, the founder of Stoicism; and Aristippus,
who said that the wise should not give up
their liberty to the state.The usage of the
words anarchia and anarchos, both meaning
"without ruler", can be traced back to Homer's
Iliad and Herodotus's Histories. The first
known political usage of the word anarchy
appears in the play Seven Against Thebes by
Aeschylus, dated at 467 BC. There, Antigone
openly refuses to abide by the rulers' decree
to leave her brother Polyneices' body unburied
as punishment for his participation in the
attack on Thebes, saying that "even if no
one else is willing to share in burying him
I will bury him alone and risk the peril of
burying my own brother. Nor am I ashamed to
act in defiant opposition to the rulers of
the city (Ἒχουσα ἄπιστων τήν
ἀναρχίαν πόλει; Ekhousa apistõn
tēn anarkhian polei)".
Ancient Greece also saw the first Western
instance of anarchism as a philosophical ideal.
The Cynics Diogenes of Sinope and Crates of
Thebes are both supposed to have advocated
anarchistic forms of society, although little
remains of their writings. Zeno of Citium,
the founder of Stoicism, who was much influenced
by the Cynics, described his vision of a utopian
society around 300 BC. Zeno's Republic advocates
a form of anarchism in which there are no
need for state structures. According to the
20th century anarchist Peter Kropotkin, Zeno
was "[t]he best exponent of Anarchist philosophy
in ancient Greece". As summarized by Kropotkin,
Zeno "repudiated the omnipotence of the state,
its intervention and regimentation, and proclaimed
the sovereignty of the moral law of the individual".
Within Greek philosophy, Zeno's vision of
a free community without government is opposed
to the state-utopia of Plato's Republic. Zeno
argued that although the necessary instinct
of self-preservation leads humans to egotism,
nature has supplied a corrective to it by
providing man with another instinct, namely
sociability. Like many modern anarchists,
he believed that if people follow their instincts,
they will have no need of law courts or police,
no temples and no public worship and use no
money (free gifts taking the place of the
exchanges). However, Zeno's beliefs have only
reached us as fragmentary quotations.In Athens,
the year 404 BC was commonly referred to as
"the year of anarchy". According to the historian
Xenophon, this happened even though Athens
was at the time in fact under the rule of
the oligarchy of "The Thirty", installed by
the Spartans following their victory in the
second Peloponnesian war and despite the fact
that there was literally an Archon in place
nominated by the oligarchs in the person of
Pythodoros of Tralles. However, the Athenians
refused to apply here their custom of calling
the year by that archon's name since he was
elected during the oligarchy and "preferred
to speak of it as the 'year of anarchy'".
The Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle
used the term anarchy negatively in association
with democracy which they mistrusted as inherently
vulnerable and prone to deteriorate into tyranny.
Plato believed that the political corruption
created by democracy loosens the "natural"
hierarchy between social classes, genders
and age groups, to the extent that "anarchy
finds a way into the private houses, and ends
by getting among the animals and infecting
them" (Republic, book eight). Aristotle spoke
of it in book six of Politics when discussing
revolutions, saying that the upper classes
may be motivated to stage a coup d'état by
their contempt for the prevailing "disorder
and anarchy (ἀταξίας καὶ ἀναρχίας;
ataxias kai anarkhias) in the affairs of the
state. He also connected anarchy with democracy
when he saw "democratic" features in tyrannies,
namely "license among slaves (ἀναρχία
δούλων; anarkhia doulōn)" as well as
among women and children. "A constitution
of this sort", he concludes, "will have a
large number of supporters, as disorderly
living (ζῆν ἀτάκτως; zēn ataktōs)
is pleasanter to the masses than sober living".
It has also been argued that the Mu’tazilite
and Najdite Muslims of 9th-century Basra were
anarchists.
== Early modern era ==
In Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1552),
François Rabelais wrote of the Abby of Thelema
(Greek word meaning "will" or "wish"), an
imaginary utopia whose motto was "Do as Thou
Will". Around the same time, the French law
student Etienne de la Boetie wrote his Discourse
on Voluntary Servitude in which he argued
that tyranny resulted from voluntary submission
and could be abolished by the people refusing
to obey the authorities above them.
There were a variety of anarchistic religious
movements in Europe during the Middle Ages,
including the Brothers and Sisters of the
Free Spirit, the Klompdraggers, the Hussites,
Adamites and the early Anabaptists. The Anabaptists
of 16th-century Europe are sometimes considered
to be religious forerunners of modern anarchism.
In his History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand
Russell writes that the Anabaptists "repudiated
all law, since they held that the good man
will be guided at every moment by the Holy
Spirit...[f]rom this premiss they arrive at
communism". Prior to Leo Tolstoy, Christian
anarchism found one of its most articulate
exponents in Gerrard Winstanley, who was part
of the Diggers movement in England during
the English Civil War. Winstanley published
a pamphlet calling for communal ownership
and social and economic organization in small
agrarian communities. Drawing on the Bible,
he argued that "the blessings of the earth"
should "be common to all" and "none Lord over
others".Religious dissenter Roger Williams
founded the colony of Providence, Rhode Island
after being run out of the theocratic Puritan
Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636. Unlike the
Puritans, he scrupulously purchased land from
local American Indians for his settlement.
While Williams was not explicitly anarchist,
another Rhode Islander named Anne Hutchinson
was. Hutchinson and her followers emigrated
to Rhode Island in 1638, bought Aquidneck
Island from the Native Americans and founded
the town of Pocasset (now Portsmouth). Another
Rogue Island libertarian was Samuell Gorton.
He and his followers were accused of being
anarchists.
The coastal area north of Albemarle Sound
in what is now northeastern North Carolina
was home to a quasi-anarchistic society in
the mid-17th century. Described by Murray
Rothbard as "[t]echnically a part of the Virginia
colony but in practice virtually independent",
Albemarle was a haven for political and religious
refugees, such as Quakers and dissident Presbyterians.
As Rothbard has said, "[t]his semi-libertarian
condition came to an end in 1663, when the
English Crown included Albemarle in the mammoth
Carolina land grant bestowed on a group of
eight feudal proprietors. Little is known
of pre-1663 Albemarle, since historians display
scant interest in stateless societies".When
William Penn left his Quaker colony in Pennsylvania,
the people stopped paying quitrent and any
semblance of formal government evaporated.
The Quakers treated the Native Americans with
respect, bought land from them voluntarily
and had even representation of natives and
European-Americans on juries. According to
Voltaire, the Shackamaxon Treaty was "the
only treaty between Indians and Christians
that was never sworn to and that was never
broken". The Quakers refused to provide any
assistance to New England's Indian wars. Penn's
attempt to impose government by appointing
John Blackwell )a non-Quaker military man)
as governor failed miserably.The first to
use the term "anarchy" to mean something other
than chaos was Louis-Armand, Baron de Lahontan
in his Nouveaux voyages dans l'Amérique septentrionale
(New voyages in northern America,1703), where
he described the indigenous American society
which had no state, laws, prisons, priests
or private property as being in anarchy. William
Blake has also been said to espouse an anarchistic
political position.
== Development of anarchism ==
Modern anarchism sprang 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.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 organization. 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 judgment.
In France, various anarchist currents were
present during the Revolutionary period, with
some revolutionaries using the term "anarchiste"
in a positive light as early as September
1793. The Enragés (Enraged Ones) opposed
revolutionary government as a contradiction
in terms. Denouncing the Jacobin dictatorship,
Jean Varlet wrote in 1794 that "government
and revolution are incompatible, unless the
people wishes to set its constituted authorities
in permanent insurrection against itself".
In his "Manifesto of the Equals", Sylvain
Maréchal looked forward to the disappearance,
once and for all, of "the revolting distinction
between rich and poor, of great and small,
of masters and valets, of governors and governed".
== 19th century ==
=== Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Max Stirner and
the Paris Commune ===
The Frenchman 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 organization 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.
Later, Proudhon also added that "Property
is Liberty" and argued that it was a bulwark
against state power. His opposition to the
state, organized religion and certain capitalist
practices inspired subsequent anarchists and
made him one of the leading social thinkers
of his time.
While he opposed communism and favoured remuneration
for labor, he also opposed capitalist wage
labour (i.e. profiting from someone else's
labor). He also opposed rent, interest and
profit. Proudhon supported an economic system
called mutualism and urged workers "to form
themselves into democratic societies, with
equal conditions for all members, on pain
of a relapse into feudalism". Under capitalism,
he argued, employees are "subordinated, exploited"
and their "permanent condition is one of obedience",
a "slave". Proudhon's ideas were influential
within French working class movements and
his followers were active in the Revolution
of 1848 in France as well as the Paris Commune
of 1871. Anarcho-communists such as Peter
Kropotkin later disagreed with Proudhon for
his support of "private property" in the products
of labor (i.e. wages, or "remuneration for
work done") rather than free distribution
of the products of labor.There were other
anarchists active in the 1848 Revolution in
France, including Anselme Bellegarrigue, Ernest
Coeurdero and the early anarcho-communist
Joseph Déjacque, who was the first person
to call himself a libertarian. Unlike Proudhon,
Déjacque argued that "it is not the product
of his or her labor that the worker has a
right to, but to the satisfaction of his or
her needs, whatever may be their nature".
Déjacque was also a critic of Proudhon's
anti-feminism and mutualism, adopting an anarcho-communist
position. Returning to New York, he was able
to serialise his book in his periodical Le
Libertaire, Journal du Mouvement social. Published
in 27 issues from 9 June 1858 to 4 February
1861, Le Libertaire was the first anarcho-communist
journal published in the United States. This
was the first anarchist journal to use the
term "libertarian".
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 the individual 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 organization in place
of the state. Egoist anarchists claim 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 LGBT activist
John Henry Mackay.
In 1870, Mikhail Bakunin led a failed uprising
in Lyon on the principles later exemplified
by the Paris Commune, calling for a general
uprising in response to the collapse of the
French government during the Franco-Prussian
War, seeking to transform an imperialist conflict
into social revolution. In his Letters to
A Frenchman on the Present Crisis, he argued
for a revolutionary alliance between the working
class and the peasantry and set forth his
formulation of what was later to become known
as propaganda of the deed.
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 program.
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 manifests 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".Louise
Michel was an important anarchist participant
in the Paris Commune. Initially, she worked
as an ambulance woman, treating those injured
on the barricades. During the Siege of Paris,
she untiringly preached resistance to the
Prussians. On the establishment of the Commune,
she joined the National Guard. She offered
to shoot Thiers and suggested the destruction
of Paris by way of vengeance for its surrender.
In December 1871, Michel was brought before
the 6th council of war, charged with offences
including trying to overthrow the government,
encouraging citizens to arm themselves and
herself using weapons and wearing a military
uniform. Defiantly, she vowed to never renounce
the Commune and dared the judges to sentence
her to death. Reportedly, Michel told the
court: "Since it seems that every heart that
beats for freedom has no right to anything
but a little slug of lead, I demand my share.
If you let me live, I shall never cease to
cry for vengeance". Michel was ultimately
exiled to New Caledonia.
Following the 1871 Paris Commune, the anarchist
movement as the whole of the workers' movement
was decapitated and deeply affected for years.
=== Individualist anarchism in the United
States, free love and freethought ===
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 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; and his essay,
Civil Disobedience, an argument for individual
resistance to civil government in moral opposition
to an unjust state. Later, Benjamin Tucker
fused Stirner's egoism with the economics
of Warren and Proudhon in his eclectic influential
publication Liberty.
An important concern for American individualist
anarchism was free love. Free love particularly
stressed women's rights since most sexual
laws discriminated against women, 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 staunchly advocated free love
and women's rights and critiqued "Comstockery"—censorship
of sexual information (see Anthony Comstock).
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 defense of homosexual love before the
general public". In fact, 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. In Argentina, anarcha-feminist
Virginia Bolten published the newspaper called
La Voz de la Mujer (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.Freethought also motivated
activism in this movement. 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 the excellent free thought/free
love journal Lucifer, the Light-Bearer. Many
of the anarchists were ardent freethinkers
and reprints from freethought papers such
as Lucifer, the Light-Bearer, Freethought
and The Truth Seeker appeared in Liberty,
with the church being viewed as a common ally
of the state and as a repressive force in
and of itself.Some of the American individualist
anarchists later in this era such as Benjamin
Tucker abandoned natural rights positions
and converted to Max Stirner's egoist anarchism.
Rejecting the idea of moral rights, Tucker
said that there were only two rights, "the
right of might" and "the right of contract".
After converting to Egoist individualism,
he also said: "In times past...it 
was my habit to talk glibly of the right of
man to land. It was a bad habit, and I long
ago sloughed it off....Man's only right to
land is his might over it". In adopting Stirnerite
egoism in 1886, Tucker rejected natural rights
which had long been considered the foundation
of libertarianism. This rejection galvanized
the movement into fierce debates, with the
natural rights proponents accusing the egoists
of destroying libertarianism itself. So bitter
was the conflict that a number of natural
rights proponents withdrew from the pages
of Liberty in protest even though they had
hitherto been among its frequent contributors.
Thereafter, Liberty championed egoism although
its general content did not change significantly.
Several periodicals were undoubtedly influenced
by Liberty's presentation of egoism. They
included I published by Clarence Lee Swartz,
edited by William Walstein Gordak and J. William
Lloyd (all associates of Liberty); and The
Ego and The Egoist, both of which were edited
by Edward H. Fulton. Among the egoist papers
that Tucker followed were the German Der Eigene,
edited by Adolf Brand; and The Eagle and The
Serpent, issued from London. The latter, the
most prominent English-language egoist journal,
was published from 1898 to 1900 with the subtitle
"A Journal of Egoistic Philosophy and Sociology".Among
those American anarchists who adhered to egoism
include Benjamin Tucker, John Beverley Robinson,
Steven T. Byington, Hutchins Hapgood, James
L. Walker, Victor Yarros and Edward H. Fulton.
Robinson wrote an essay called "Egoism" in
which he states that "[m]odern egoism, as
propounded by Stirner and Nietzsche, and expounded
by Ibsen, Shaw and others, is all these; but
it is more. It is the realization by the individual
that they are an individual; that, as far
as they are concerned, they are the only individual".
Byington was a one-time proponent of Georgism
who later converted to egoist Stirnerist positions
after associating with Tucker. He is known
for translating two important anarchist works
into English from German: Max Stirner's The
Ego and Its Own and Paul Eltzbacher's Anarchism:
Exponents of the Anarchist Philosophy (also
published by Dover with the title The Great
Anarchists: Ideas and Teachings of Seven Major
Thinkers).
=== The First International and collectivist
anarchism ===
In Spain, Ramón de la Sagra established 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 Democratic Republican Federal 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 decentralized, or “cantonalist,”
political system on Proudhonian lines."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, anarchists,
liberals, and nationalists, to prevent further
revolt. 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 organization.
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. 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 collectivization 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. 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 program. Woodcock also reports that
the American individualist anarchists Lysander
Spooner and William B. Greene had been members
of the First International.
=== The emergence of anarcho-communism ===
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 and Errico Malatesta
took importance later as it expanded and developed
pro-organizationalist and insurrectionary
anti-organizationalist sections. Anarcho-communism
proposes that the freest form of social organisation
would be a society composed of self-managing
communes with collective use of the means
of production, organised democratically and
related to other communes through federation.
While some anarcho-communists favour direct
democracy, others feel that its majoritarianism
can impede individual liberty and favour consensus
democracy instead. In anarcho-communism, as
money would be abolished individuals would
not receive direct compensation for labour
(through sharing of profits or payment), but
would have free access to the resources and
surplus of the commune.As anarcho-communism
emerged in the mid-19th century it had an
intense debate with Bakuninist collectivism
and as such within the anarchist movement
over participation in syndicalism and the
workers movement as well as on other issues.
In the theory of the revolution of anarcho-communism
as elaborated by Peter Kropotkin and others,
"it is the risen people who are the real agent
and not the working class organised in the
enterprise (the cells of the capitalist mode
of production) and seeking to assert itself
as labour power, as a more 'rational' industrial
body or social brain (manager) than the employers".
Between 1880 and 1890 and with the "perspective
of an immanent revolution", who was "opposed
to the official workers' movement, which was
then in the process of formation (general
Social Democratisation). They were opposed
not only to political (statist) struggles
but also to strikes which put forward wage
or other claims, or which were organised by
trade unions". However, while they were not
opposed to strikes as such, they were opposed
to trade unions and the struggle for the eight-hour
day: "This anti-reformist tendency was accompanied
by an anti-organisational tendency, and its
partisans declared themselves in favour of
agitation amongst the unemployed for the expropriation
of foodstuffs and other articles, for the
expropriatory strike and, in some cases, for
'individual recuperation' or acts of terrorism".After
Peter Kropotkin along others decided to enter
labor unions after their initial reservations,
there remained the anti-syndicalist anarcho-communists,
who in France were grouped around Sebastien
Faure's Le Libertaire. From 1905 onwards,
the Russian counterparts of these anti-syndicalist
anarcho-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".Proponents and activists of these
tactics among others included Johann Most,
Luigi Galleani, Victor Serge, Giuseppe Ciancabilla
and Severino Di Giovanni. The Italian Giuseppe
Ciancabilla (1872–1904) wrote in Against
Organization that "we don't want tactical
programs, and consequently we don't want organization.
Having established the aim, the goal to which
we hold, we leave every anarchist free to
choose from the means that his sense, his
education, his temperament, his fighting spirit
suggest to him as best. We don't form fixed
programs and we don't form small or great
parties. But we come together spontaneously,
and not with permanent criteria, according
to momentary affinities for a specific purpose,
and we constantly change these groups as soon
as the purpose for which we had associated
ceases to be, and other aims and needs arise
and develop in us and push us to seek new
collaborators, people who think as we do in
the specific circumstance".By the 1880s, anarcho-communism
was already present in the United States as
can be seen in the publication of the journal
Freedom: A Revolutionary Anarchist-Communist
Monthly by Lucy Parsons and Lizzy Holmes.
Parsons debated in her time in the United
States with fellow anarcha-communist Emma
Goldman over issues of free love and feminism.
Another anarcho-communist journal later appeared
in the United States called The Firebrand.
Most anarchist publications in the United
States were in Yiddish, German, or Russian,
but Free Society was published in English,
permitting the dissemination of anarchist
communist thought to English-speaking populations
in the United States. Around that time these
American anarcho-communist sectors entered
in debate with the individualist anarchist
group around Benjamin Tucker. In February
1888, Berkman left for the United States from
his native Russia. Soon after his arrival
in New York City, Berkman became an anarchist
through his involvement with groups that had
formed to campaign to free the men convicted
of the 1886 Haymarket bombing. Berkman as
well as Emma Goldman soon came under the influence
of Johann Most, the best-known anarchist in
the United States and an advocate of propaganda
of the deed—attentat, or violence carried
out to encourage the masses to revolt. Berkman
became a typesetter for Most's newspaper Freiheit.According
to anarchist historian Max Nettlau, the first
use of the term "libertarian communism" was
in November 1880, when a French anarchist
congress employed it to more clearly identify
its doctrines. The French anarchist journalist
Sébastien Faure started the weekly paper
Le Libertaire (The Libertarian) in 1895.
== 20th century ==
=== Organised labour and anarcho-syndicalism
===
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 labor." In 1886, the Federation
of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (FOTLU)
of the United States and Canada unanimously
set 1 May 1886, as the date by which the eight-hour
work day would become standard.
In response, unions across the United States
prepared a general strike in support of the
event. On 3 May, in Chicago, a fight broke
out when strikebreakers attempted to cross
the picket line, and two workers died when
police opened fire upon the crowd. The next
day, 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 memorializing 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 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.The Spanish Workers Federation
in 1881 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
"The anarchists quickly became active in organizing
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 organization was
undoubtedly to a great extent responsible
for this situation. The largest and most militant
of these organizations 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."According to Lucien van der Walt,
"once you look globally, you find mass movements
of comparable, sometimes even greater, influence
in countries ranging from Argentina, to China,
to Cuba, to Mexico, to Peru, to the Ukraine
and so on. What gets a bit lost in studies
that focus on Western Europe is that most
of anarchist and syndicalist history took
place elsewhere. In other words, you can’t
understand anarchism unless you understand
that much of its history was in the east and
the south, not only in the north and the west."
The anarchist and syndicalist canon must be
understood as a "global" one, that must "include
figures from within but also without the West,"
ideally including figures like Li Pei Kan
(Ba Jin) and Liu Shifu ("Shifu") of China,
James Connolly of Ireland, Armando Borghi
and Errico Malatesta of Italy, Nestor Makhno
and Piotr Arshinov, of the Ukraine, Juana
Rouco Buela of Argentina, Lucía Sánchez
Saornil and Jaime Balius of Spain, Ricardo
Flores Magón, Juana Belén Gutiérrez de
Mendoza, Antonio Gomes y Soto and Práxedis
Guerrero of Mexico, Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis
of the Netherlands, Ōsugi Sakae, Kōtoku
Shūsui and Kanno Sugako of Japan, Lucy Parsons
and Emma Goldman of the United States, Enrique
Roig de San Martín of Cuba, Shin Chaeho and
Kim Jwa-jin of Korea, Rudolph Rocker of Germany,
Neno Vasco and Maria Lacerda de Moura of Brazil,
Abraham Guillén of Spain and Uruguay, S.P.
Bunting and T.W. Thibedi of South Africa,
Manuel González Prada in Peru and Alejo Capelo
in Ecuador.
=== Propaganda of the deed and illegalism
===
Some anarchists, such as Johann Most, advocated
publicizing violent acts of retaliation against
counter-revolutionaries because "we preach
not only action in and for itself, but also
action as propaganda." By the 1880s, the slogan
"propaganda of the deed" had begun to be used
both within and outside of the anarchist movement
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 "The 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, as soon as 1887, important figures
in the anarchist movement distanced themselves
from such individual acts. 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 favor 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 labor 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 labor
movements following the few successful bombings
and assassinations may have contributed to
the abandonment of these kinds of tactics,
although reciprocally state repression, in
the first place, 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, favored
individualist political expression and acts.Numerous
heads of state were assassinated between 1881
and 1914 by members of the anarchist movement.
On 6 September 1901, the American anarchist
Leon Czolgosz went armed with a .32 caliber
Iver Johnson "Safety Automatic" revolver (serial
#463344) he had purchased four days earlier
for $4.50 and assassinated the President of
the United States William McKinley. Czolgosz
was convicted on 24 September 1901 after the
jury deliberated for only one hour. On 26
September, the jury unanimously recommended
the death penalty and was electrocuted by
three jolts, each of 1800 volts, in Auburn
Prison on 29 October 1901, just 45 days after
his victim's death. Emma Goldman was arrested
on suspicion of being involved in the assassination,
but was released, due to insufficient evidence.
She later incurred a great deal of negative
publicity when she published "The Tragedy
at Buffalo". In the article, she compared
Czolgosz to Marcus Junius Brutus, the killer
of Julius Caesar, and called McKinley the
"president of the money kings and trust magnates."
Other anarchists and radicals were unwilling
to support Goldman's effort to aid Czolgosz,
believing that he had harmed the movement.
Bombings were associated in the media with
anarchists because international terrorism
arose during this time period with the widespread
distribution of dynamite. This image remains
to this day.
Propaganda of the deed was abandoned by the
vast majority of the anarchist movement after
World War I (1914–1918) and the 1917 October
Revolution.
=== European individualist anarchism and anarchist
influence in bohemia and the arts ===
European individualist anarchism proceeded
from the roots laid by William Godwin, Pierre
Joseph Proudhon and Max Stirner. Individualist
anarchism expanded and diversified through
Europe, incorporating influences from North
American individualist anarchism.
Autonomie Individuelle was a French individualist
anarchist publication that ran from 1887 to
1888. It was edited by Jean-Baptiste Louiche,
Charles Schæffer and Georges Deherme. Later
this tradition continued with such intellectuals
as Albert Libertad, André Lorulot, Emile
Armand, Victor Serge, Zo d'Axa and Rirette
Maitrejean developed theory in the main individualist
anarchist journal in France, L’Anarchie
in 1905. Outside this journal, Han Ryner wrote
Petit Manuel individualiste (1903). Later
appeared the journal L'EnDehors created by
Zo d'Axa in 1891. Anarchist naturism was promoted
by Henri Zisly, Emile Gravelle and Georges
Butaud. Anarcho-naturism advocated vegetarianism,
nudism, hiking and an ecological world view
within anarchist groups and outside them.
Freethought as a philosophical position and
as activism was important in European individualist
anarchism and it emphasized criticism of religious
dogmas and of the church. This tendencies
will continue in French individualist anarchism
in the work and activism of Charles-Auguste
Bontemps and others. "In this sense, the theoretical
positions and the vital experiences of french
individualism are deeply iconoclastic and
scandalous, even within libertarian circles.
The call of nudist naturism, the strong defence
of birth control methods, the idea of "unions
of egoists" with the sole justification of
sexual practices, that will try to put in
practice, not without difficulties, will establish
a way of thought and action, and will result
in sympathy within some, and a strong rejection
within others.".In Italy, individualist anarchism
had a strong tendency towards illegalism and
violent propaganda by the deed similar to
French individualist anarchism but perhaps
more extreme. The theoretical seeds of current
Insurrectionary anarchism were already laid
out at the end of 19th century Italy in a
combination of individualist anarchism criticism
of permanent groups and organization with
a socialist class struggle worldview. During
the early 20th century it is important the
intellectual work of individualist anarchist
Renzo Novatore. Novatore collaborated in the
individualist anarchist journal Iconoclasta!
alongside the young stirnerist illegalist
Bruno FilippiSpain received the influence
of American individualist anarchism but most
importantly it was related to the French currents.
Around the start of the 20th century, individualism
in Spain takes force through the efforts of
people such as Dorado Montero, Ricardo Mella,
Federico Urales and J. Elizalde who will translatre
French and American individualists. Important
in this respect were also magazines such as
La Idea Libre, La revista blanca, Etica, Iniciales,
Al margen and Nosotros. In Germany the Scottish-German
John Henry McKay became the most important
propagandist for individualist anarchist ideas.
Adolf Brand (1874–1945) was a German writer,
stirnerist anarchist and pioneering campaigner
for the acceptance of male bisexuality and
homosexuality. Brand published a German homosexual
periodical, Der Eigene in 1896.
Another important tendency within individualist
anarchist currents emphasizes individual subjective
exploration and defiance of social conventions.
Individualist anarchist philosophy attracted
"amongst artists, intellectuals and the well-read,
urban middle classes in general."
As such Murray Bookchin describes a lot of
individualist anarchism as people who "expressed
their opposition in uniquely personal forms,
especially in fiery tracts, outrageous behavior,
and aberrant lifestyles in the cultural ghettos
of fin de siecle New York, Paris, and London.
As a credo, individualist anarchism remained
largely a bohemian lifestyle, most conspicuous
in its demands for sexual freedom ('free love')
and enamored of innovations in art, behavior,
and clothing.". In this way free love currents
and other radical lifestyles such as naturism
had popularity among individualist anarchists.
The Irish anarchist writer of the Decadent
movement Oscar Wilde influenced individualist
anarchists such as Renzo Novatore and gained
the admiration of Benjamin Tucker. Oscar Wilde
"stated in an interview that he believed he
was ‘something of an Anarchist’, but previously
said, ‘In the past I was a poet and a tyrant.
Now I am an anarchist and artist.’"For anarchist
historian David Goodway:
=== Revolutionary wave ===
Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti
were suspected anarchists who were convicted
of murdering two men during the armed robbery
of a shoe factory in South Braintree, Massachusetts,
United States in 1920. After a controversial
trial and a series of appeals, the two Italian
immigrants were executed on 23 August 1927.
Since their deaths, critical opinion has overwhelmingly
felt that the two men were convicted largely
on their anarchist political beliefs and unjustly
executed. In 1977, Massachusetts Governor
Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation that
Sacco and Vanzetti had been unfairly tried
and convicted and that "any disgrace should
be forever removed from their names." Many
famous socialists and intellectuals campaigned
for a retrial without success. John Dos Passos
came to Boston to cover the case as a journalist,
stayed to author a pamphlet called Facing
the Chair, and was arrested in a demonstration
on 10 August 1927, along with Dorothy Parker.
After being arrested while picketing the State
House, Edna St. Vincent Millay pleaded her
case to the governor in person and then wrote
an appeal: "I cry to you with a million voices:
answer our doubt...There is need in Massachusetts
of a great man tonight." Others who wrote
to Fuller or signed petitions included Albert
Einstein, George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells.
The president of the American Federation of
Labor cited "the long period of time intervening
between the commission of the crime and the
final decision of the Court" as well as "the
mental and physical anguish which Sacco and
Vanzetti must have undergone during the past
seven years" in a telegram to the governor.
In August 1927, the Industrial Workers of
the World (IWW) called for a three-day nationwide
walkout to protest the pending executions.
The most notable response came in the Walsenburg
coal district of Colorado, where 1,132 out
of 1,167 miners participated, which led directly
to the Colorado coal strike of 1927. Italian
anarchist Severino Di Giovanni, one of the
most vocal supporters of Sacco and Vanzetti
in Argentina, bombed the American embassy
in Buenos Aires a few hours after Sacco and
Vanzetti were condemned to death. A few days
after the executions, Sacco's widow thanked
Di Giovanni by letter for his support and
added that the director of the tobacco firm
Combinados had offered to produce a cigarette
brand named "Sacco & Vanzetti". On 26 November
1927, Di Giovanni and others bombed a Combinados
tobacco shop.Anarchists participated alongside
the Bolsheviks in both February and October
revolutions, and were initially enthusiastic
about the Bolshevik revolution. However, the
Bolsheviks soon turned against the anarchists
and other left-wing opposition, a conflict
that 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 the Ukraine. There, 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.
The Modern Schools, also called Ferrer Schools,
were United States schools, established in
the early 20th century, that were modeled
after the Escuela Moderna of Francesc Ferrer
i Guàrdia, the Catalan educator and anarchist.
They were an important part of the anarchist,
free schooling, socialist, and labor movements
in the U.S., intended to educate the working-classes
from a secular, class-conscious perspective.
The Modern Schools imparted day-time academic
classes for children, and night-time continuing-education
lectures for adults. The first, and most notable,
of the Modern Schools was founded in New York
City, in 1911, two years after Francesc Ferrer
i Guàrdia's execution for sedition in monarchist
Spain on 18 October 1909. Commonly called
the Ferrer Center, it was founded by notable
anarchists—including Leonard Abbott, Alexander
Berkman, Voltairine de Cleyre and Emma Goldman—first
meeting on St. Mark's Place, in Manhattan's
Lower East Side, but twice moved elsewhere,
first within lower Manhattan, then to Harlem.
Besides Berkman and Goldman, the Ferrer Center
faculty included the Ashcan School painters
Robert Henri and George Bellows, and its guest
lecturers included writers and political activists
such as Margaret Sanger, Jack London, and
Upton Sinclair. Student Magda Schoenwetter,
recalled that the school used Montessori methods
and equipment, and emphasised academic freedom
rather than fixed subjects, such as spelling
and arithmetic. The Modern School magazine
originally began as a newsletter for parents,
when the school was in New York City, printed
with the manual printing press used in teaching
printing as a profession. After moving to
the Stelton Colony, New Jersey, the magazine's
content expanded to poetry, prose, art, and
libertarian education articles; the cover
emblem and interior graphics were designed
by Rockwell Kent. Acknowledging the urban
danger to their school, the organizers bought
68 acres (275,000 m2) in Piscataway Township,
New Jersey, and moved there in 1914, becoming
the center of the Stelton Colony. Moreover,
beyond New York City, the Ferrer Colony and
Modern School was founded (c. 1910–1915)
as a Modern School-based community, that endured
some forty years. In 1933, James and Nellie
Dick, who earlier had been principals of the
Stelton Modern School, founded the Modern
School in Lakewood, New Jersey, which survived
the original Modern School, the Ferrer Center,
becoming the final surviving such school,
lasting until 1958.
Expelled American anarchists Emma Goldman
and Alexander Berkman were amongst 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, criticizing 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; 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 CGT and IWW left the organizations
and joined the Communist International.The
revolutionary wave of 1917–23 saw the active
participation of anarchists in varying degrees
of protagonism. In the German uprising known
as the German Revolution of 1918–1919 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 Organizational 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 organizational alternative
to platformism which 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.
=== The rise of fascism ===
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 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."
[6] In France, where the far right leagues
came close to insurrection in the February
1934 riots, anarchists divided over a united
front policy.In Spain, the 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, the former ruling class 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, even before the fascist
victory in 1939 the anarchists were losing
ground in a bitter struggle with the Stalinists,
who controlled the distribution of military
aid to the Republican cause from the Soviet
Union. Stalinist-led troops suppressed the
collectives and persecuted both dissident
Marxists and anarchists.Anarchists in France
and Italy were active in the Resistance during
World War II. In Germany 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."
It is alleged that Mühsam was planning to
flee to Switzerland within the next day. 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. The
beatings and torture continued, until 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.
An official Nazi report dated 11 July stated
that Erich Mühsam committed suicide, hanging
himself while in "protective custody" at Oranienburg.
However, a report from Prague on 20 July 1934
in The New York Times stated otherwise:
His widow declared this evening that, when
she was first allowed to visit her husband
after his arrest, his face was so swollen
by beating that she could not recognise him.
He was assigned to the task of cleaning toilets
and staircases and Storm Troopers amused themselves
by spitting in his face, she added. On 8 July,
last, she saw him for the last time alive.
Despite the tortures he had undergone for
fifteen months, she declared, he was cheerful,
and she knew at once when his "suicide" was
reported to her three days later that it was
untrue. When she told the police that they
had "murdered" him, she asserted they shrugged
their shoulders and laughed. A post mortem
examination was refused, according to Frau
Mühsam, but Storm Troopers, incensed with
their new commanders, showed her the body
which bore unmistakable signs of strangulation,
with the back of the skull shattered as if
Herr Mühsam had been dragged across the parade
ground.
=== The Spanish Revolution ===
The Iberian Anarchist Federation was founded
in Valencia in 1927 (after a preliminary meeting
the previous year in Marseille, France), to
campaign for keeping the CNT on an anarchist
path by challenging the bureaucracy of the
CNT - which it viewed as having grown to become
a mediating link between labour and capital,
rather than a representative of the working
class. This issue was becoming especially
tense as Miguel Primo de Rivera's dictatorial
regime took over in Spain and engineered a
crackdown on labour movements.
In Spain, the national anarcho-syndicalist
trade union Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
initially refused to join a popular front
electoral alliance, and abstention by CNT
supporters led to a right wing election victory.
But in 1936, the CNT changed its policy and
anarchist votes helped bring the popular front
back to power. Months later, the former ruling
class 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. But even before the
fascist victory in 1939, the anarchists were
losing ground in a bitter struggle with the
Stalinists, who controlled the distribution
of military aid to the Republican cause from
the Soviet Union. 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 organizational principles
throughout various portions of the country
for two to three years, primarily Catalonia,
Aragon, Andalusia, and parts of the Levante.
Much of Spain's economy was put under worker
control; 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 collectivization 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 realizing 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 Franco, was killed instead in Spain
by gunmen associated with the Spanish Communist
Party. So "When clashes with the Communist
Party broke out, his house, where he lived
with other anarchists, was attacked on 4th
May 1937.... Leaving Radio Barcelona, Berneri
set off for the Plaça de la Generalitat,
where some Stalinists shouted after him. Before
he could turn and look, they opened fire with
machine guns, and left his dead body there
on the street.".Libertarian possibilism was
a political current within the early 20th
century Spanish anarchist movement which advocated
achieving the anarchist ends of ending the
state and capitalism with participation inside
structures of contemporary parliamentary democracy.
The name of this political position appeared
for the first time between 1922-1923 within
the discourse of Catalan anarcho-syndicalist
Salvador Segui when he said "We have to intervene
in politics in order to take over the positions
of the bourgoise" During autumn of 1931 the
"Manifesto of the 30" was published by militants
of the anarchist trade union Confederación
Nacional del Trabajo. Among those who signed
it there was the CNT General Secretary (1922-1923)
Joan Peiro, Angel Pestaña CNT (General Secretary
in 1929), and juan Lopez Sanchez. They were
called treintismo and they were calling for
a more moderate political line within the
Spanish anarchist movement. In 1932 they establish
the Syndicalist Party which participates in
the 1936 Spanish general elections and proceed
to be a part of the leftist coalition of parties
known as the Popular Front obtaining 2 congressmen
(Pestaña and Benito Pabon). In November 1936
the Popular Front government appointed the
prominent anarcha-feminist Federica Montseny
as Minister of Health. In doing so, she became
the first woman in Spanish history to be a
cabinet minister. When the republican forces
lost the Spanish Civil War, the city of Madrid
was turned over to the francoist forces in
1939 by the last non-francoist mayor of the
city, the anarchist Melchor Rodríguez García.
=== Post-war years ===
Anarchism sought to reorganize itself after
the war. The Mexican Anarchist Federation
was established on 1945 after the Anarchist
Federation of the Center united with the Anarchist
Federation of the Federal District. In the
early 1940s Antifascist International Solidarity
and Federation of Anarchist Groups of Cuba
merge into the large national organization
Asociación Libertaria de Cuba (Cuban Libertarian
Association). From 1944 to 1947, the Bulgarian
Anarchist Communist Federation reemerges as
part of a factory and workplace committee
movement, but is repressed by the new Communist
regime. In 1945 in France the Fédération
Anarchiste is established and the also synthesist
Federazione Anarchica Italiana is founded
in Italy. Korean anarchists form the League
of Free Social Constructors in September 1945
and in 1946 the Japanese Anarchist Federation
is founded. An International Anarchist Congress
with delegates from across Europe is held
in Paris in May 1948. In 1956 the Uruguayan
Anarchist Federation is founded. In 1955 the
Anarcho-Communist Federation of Argentina
renames itself as the Argentine Libertarian
Federation.
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. In 1947, Rudolf Rocker published
Zur Betrachting der Lage in Deutschland (Regarding
the Portrayal of the Situation in Germany)
about the impossibility of another anarchist
movement in Germany. It became the first post-World
War II anarchist writing to be distributed
in Germany. Rocker thought young Germans were
all either totally cynical or inclined to
fascism and awaited a new generation to grow
up before anarchism could bloom once again
in the country. Nevertheless, the Federation
of Libertarian Socialists (FFS) was founded
in 1947 by former FAUD members. Rocker wrote
for its organ, Die Freie Gesellschaft, which
survived until 1953. In 1949, Rocker published
another well-known work. On 10 September 1958,
Rocker died in the Mohegan Colony. The Syndicalist
Workers' Federation was a syndicalist group
in active in post-war Britain, and one of
the Solidarity Federation's earliest predecessors.
It was formed in 1950 by members of the dissolved
Anarchist Federation of Britain. 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.The debate on the issue of organization
within anarchism took importance once again
in this period especially in the anarchist
movements of Italy and France. The Fédération
Anarchiste (FA) was founded in Paris on 2
December 1945, and elected the platformist
anarcho-communist George Fontenis as its first
secretary the next year. It was composed of
a majority of activists from the former FA
(which supported Voline's Synthesis) and some
members of the former Union Anarchiste, which
supported the CNT-FAI support to the Republican
government during the Spanish Civil War, as
well as some young Resistants. Within the
synthesist anarchist organization, the Fédération
Anarchiste, there existed an individualist
anarchist tendency alongside anarcho-communist
and anarchosyndicalist currents. Individualist
anarchists participating inside the Fédération
Anarchiste included Charles-Auguste Bontemps,
Georges Vincey and André Arru. On 1950 a
clandestin group formed within the FA called
Organisation Pensée Bataille (OPB) led by
George Fontenis. The OPB pushed for a move
which saw the FA change its name into the
Fédération Communiste Libertaire (FCL) after
the 1953 Congress in Paris, while an article
in Le Libertaire indicated the end of the
cooperation with the French Surrealist Group
led by André Breton. The new decision making
process was founded on unanimity: each person
has a right of veto on the orientations of
the federation. The FCL published the same
year the Manifeste du communisme libertaire.
Several groups quit the FCL in December 1955,
disagreeing with the decision to present "revolutionary
candidates" to the legislative elections.
On 15–20 August 1954, the Ve intercontinental
plenum of the CNT took place. A group called
Entente anarchiste appeared which was formed
of militants who didn't like the new ideological
orientation that the OPB was giving the FCL
seeing it was authoritarian and almost marxist.
The FCL lasted until 1956 just after it participated
in state legislative elections with 10 candidates.
This move alienated some members of the FCL
and thus produced the end of the organization.
A group of militants who didn't agree with
the FA turning into FCL reorganized a new
Federation Anarchiste which was established
on December 1953. This included those who
formed L'Entente anarchiste who joined the
new FA and then dissolved L'Entente. The new
base principles of the FA were written by
the individualist anarchist Charles-Auguste
Bontemps and the non-platformist anarcho-communist
Maurice Joyeux which established an organization
with a plurality of tendencies and autonomy
of group organized around synthesist principles.
According to historian Cédric Guérin, "the
unconditional rejection of Marxism became
from that moment onwards an identity element
of the new Federation Anarchiste" and this
was motivated in a big part after the previous
conflict with George Fontenis and his OPB.In
Italy the Italian Anarchist Federation was
founded in 1945 in Carrara. It adopted an
"Associative Pact" and the "Anarchist Program"
of Errico Malatesta. It decided to publish
the weekly Umanità Nova retaking the name
of the journal published by Errico Malatesta.
Inside the FAI a tendency grouped as (GAAP
– Anarchist Groups of Proletarian Action)
led by Pier Carlo Masini was founded which
"proposed a Libertarian Party with an anarchist
theory and practice adapted to the new economic,
political and social reality of post-war Italy,
with an internationalist outlook and effective
presence in the workplaces...The GAAP allied
themselves with the similar development within
the French Anarchist movement" as led by George
Fontenis. In Italy in 1945, during the Founding
Congress of the Italian Anarchist Federation,
there was a group of individualist anarchists
led by Cesare Zaccaria who was an important
anarchist of the time. A tendency which didn't
identify either with the more classical FAI
or with the GAAP started to emerge as local
groups. These groups emphasized direct action,
informal affinity groups and expropriation
for financing anarchist activity. From within
these groups the influential insurrectionary
anarchist Alfredo Maria Bonanno will emerge
influenced by the practice of the Spanish
exiled anarchist José Lluis Facerías.Anarchism
continued to be influential in important literary
and intellectual personalities of the time
such as Albert Camus, Herbert Read, Paul Goodman,
Dwight Macdonald, Allen Ginsberg, Julian Beck
and the French Surrealist group led by André
Breton which now openly embraced anarchism
and collaborated in the Fédération Anarchiste.
In 1952 Breton wrote "It was in the black
mirror of anarchism that surrealism first
recognised itself." "Breton was consistent
in his support for the francophone Anarchist
Federation and he continued to offer his solidarity
after the Platformists around Fontenis transformed
the Fédération anarchiste into the Federation
Communiste Libertaire. He was one of the few
intellectuals who continued to offer his support
to the FCL during the Algerian war when the
FCL suffered severe repression and was forced
underground. He sheltered Fontenis whilst
he was in hiding. He refused to take sides
on the splits in the French anarchist movement
and both he and Peret expressed solidarity
as well with the new Fédération anarchiste
set up by the synthesist anarchists and worked
in the Antifascist Committees of the 60s alongside
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).
=== Late 20th century ===
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.
During the IX Congress of the Italian Anarchist
Federation in Carrara in 1965, a group decided
to split off from this organization and created
the Gruppi di Iniziativa Anarchica. In the
seventies, it was mostly composed of "veteran
individualist anarchists with an of pacifism
orientation, naturism, etc, ...". 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 Italian and the Iberian Anarchist
Federation as well as the Bulgarian federation
in French exile. During the events of May
68 the anarchist groups active in France were
Fédération anarchiste, Mouvement communiste
libertaire, Union fédérale des anarchistes,
Alliance ouvrière anarchiste], Union des
groupes anarchistes communistes, Noir et Rouge,
Confédération nationale du travail, Union
anarcho-syndicaliste, Organisation révolutionnaire
anarchiste, Cahiers socialistes libertaires,
À contre-courant, La Révolution prolétarienne,
and the publications close to Émile Armand.
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. The American Civil Rights Movement
and the movement against the war in Vietnam
also contributed to the revival of North American
anarchism. European anarchism of the late
20th century drew much of its strength from
the labour movement, and both have incorporated
animal rights activism.
In the early 1970s, a platformist tendency
emerged within the Italian Anarchist Federation
which argued for more strategic coherence
and social insertion in the workers movement
while rejecting the syntesist "Associative
Pact" of Malatesta which the FAI adhered to.
These groups started organizing themselves
outside the FAI in organizations such as O.R.A.
from Liguria which organized a Congress attended
by 250 delegates of grupos from 60 locations.
This movement was influential in the autonomia
movements of the 1970s. They published Fronte
Libertario della lotta di classe in Bologna
and Comunismo libertario from Modena. The
Federation of Anarchist Communists (Federazione
dei Comunisti Anarchici), or FdCA, was established
in 1985 in Italy from the fusion of the Organizzazione
Rivoluzionaria Anarchica (Revolutionary Anarchist
Organisation) and the Unione dei Comunisti
Anarchici della Toscana (Tuscan Union of Anarchist
Communists). In the 1970s in France the Fédération
Anarchiste evolved into a joining of the principles
of both synthesis anarchism and platformism
but later the platformist organizations Libertarian
Communist Organization (France) in 1976 and
Alternative libertaire in 1991 appeared with
this last one existing until today alongside
the synthesist Fédération Anarchiste.
The Direct Action Movement was formed in 1979,
when the one remaining SWF branch, along with
other smaller anarchist groups, decided to
form a new organisation of anarcho-syndicalists
in Britain. The DAM was highly involved in
the Miners' Strike as well as a series of
industrial disputes later in the 1980s, including
the Ardbride dispute in Ardrossan, Scotland,
involving a supplier to Laura Ashley, for
which the DAM received international support.
From 1988 in Scotland, then England and Wales,
the DAM was active in opposing the Poll Tax.
In 1994 it adopted its current name, having
previously been the Direct Action Movement
since 1979, and before that the Syndicalist
Workers' Federation since 1950. In March 1994,
DAM changed its name to the Solidarity Federation.
Presently, the Solidarity Federation publishes
the quarterly magazine Direct Action (presently
on hiatus) and the newspaper Catalyst. Several
locals and networks also publish their own
newsletters. Along with the Anarchist Federation
it is one of the two national anarchist federations
active in the UK at the present time. The
Anarchist Federation (AF) is a federation
of anarcho-communists in Great Britain and
Ireland. The Federation was founded as the
Anarchist Communist Federation in March 1986
by the Anarchist Communist Discussion Group,
which had coalesced around two anarcho-communists
who had returned from France and began selling
the pamphlets of the defunct Libertarian Communist
Group tendency, and members of Syndicalist
Fight. The Anarchist Federation is a member
organisation of the Anarchist International
of Anarchist Federations (IAF-IFA), but also
has its own secretariat responsible for regions
of the world that do not have IAF-IFA members.
== 21st century ==
Anarchist anthropologist David Graeber and
anarchist historian Andrej Grubačić 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 around the start of the 21st
century formed "by far the majority" of anarchists.
Around the start 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 and the World Economic Forum. 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 disenfranchisement that is so palpable
locally and globally".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
to be around 100,000 for 2003. Other active
syndicalist movements include in Sweden the
Central Organisation of the Workers of Sweden
and the Swedish Anarcho-syndicalist Youth
Federation; the CNT-AIT in France; the Union
Sindicale Italiana in Italy; in the United
States Workers Solidarity Alliance and the
United Kingdom Solidarity Federation. The
revolutionary industrial unionist Industrial
Workers of the World, claiming 2,000 paying
members, and the International Workers Association,
an anarcho-syndicalist successor to the First
International, also remain active. The Informal
Anarchist Federation (not to be confused with
the synthesist Italian Anarchist Federation,
also FAI) is an Italian insurrectionary anarchist
organization. It has been described by Italian
intelligence sources as a "horizontal" structure
of various anarchist terrorist groups, united
in their beliefs in revolutionary armed action.
In 2003, the group claimed responsibility
for a bomb campaign targeting several European
Union institutions. During the first years
of the 2000s, the Iberian Federation of Libertarian
Youth in Spain started to evolve towards insurrectionary
anarchist positions and its differences with
anarcho-syndicalism became more evident due
to the influence of the Black block in alterglobalization
protests and the examples of developments
from Italy and Greece. Afterwards it will
receive some important repression from the
state which leads it towards inactivity In
the year 2007 it re-establishes itself as
the FIJL since it did not have news from the
other insurrectionist organization, but after
finding out of a communique by the insurrectionist
organization it decides to name itself Iberian
Federation of Anarchist Youth (Federación
Ibérica de Juventudes Anarquistas or FIJA),
but knowing that they are the continuing organization
to the previous FIJL from the 1990s to the
past. They publish a newspaper called El Fuelle.
In March 2012, the FIJL of insurrectionist
tendencies decides to not continue and so
the FIJA goes to call itself again FIJL.
== Related pages ==
International Anarchist Congresses
List of anarchist organizations
List of anarchist communities
== References ==
== External links ==
History of Anarchism. Kate Sharpley Library.
