anarchism

anarchism The belief that government and law should be abolished and society organized by voluntary means without resort to force or compulsion. The French social theorist Pierre Joseph PROUDHON first expounded the theory that equality and justice should be achieved through the abolition of the state and the substitution of free agreements between individuals. Other anarchist visions of the society of the future include the economic individualism, outlined in the American writer Benjamin Tucker's Instead of a Book (1893) and the communism envisaged by the Russian émigré Peter Kropotkin's work The Conquest of Bread (1906).

Groups of anarchists tried to find popular support in many European states in the 1860s and 1870s. They were hostile to MARXISM on the grounds that a seizure of state-power by the workers would only perpetuate oppression. The Russian anarchist Mikhail BAKUNIN founded a Social Democratic Alliance (1868), which attempted to wrest control of the workers International from MARX. Anarchists switched between strategies of spontaneous mutual association and violent acts against representatives of the state. The Presidents of France and Italy, the King of Italy, and the Empress of Austria were killed by anarchists between 1894 and 1901. Subsequently they tried to mobilize mass working-class support behind the Russian General Strike, which was a central feature of the RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS of 1905 and 1917. Their influence in Europe declined after the rise of totalitarian states elsewhere. They were active in the SPANISH CIVIL WAR, and in the latter half of the 20th century anarchism attracted urban terrorists.