Anarchism

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ANARCHISM

moving toward a stateless society
anarchist movements
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The belief that justice requires the abolition of states and other authoritarian institutions not based on some form of cooperative agreement between autonomous individuals—often referred to as anarchism—can be traced back to the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno of Citium (c. 335–c. 263 b.c.e.) and followed through utopian and millenarian religious movements like the Brethren of the Free Spirit of the thirteenth century and the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century. Modern anarchism, however, is rooted in the reorientation of sociopolitical thought that took place in Europe following the outbreak of the French Revolution. Stimulated by revolutionary hopes for fundamental moral and sociopolitical regeneration, anarchists argued that human beings possessed sufficient moral and rational capacities to hold societies together without traditional political institutions like the state and without political practices like elections.

This does not mean that anarchists rejected all organizations that coordinated collective action or that they denied the significance of all interactions that one would consider "political." They were antipolitical in their rejection of traditional political institutions, but they remained political in their concern to foster human communities dedicated to justice. Characteristically, they looked for ways to bring individuals together in voluntary associations in order to coordinate production and to provide social solidarity for specific purposes. In the words of Jean Grave (1854–1939), the most prominent French anarchist journalist of the late nineteenth century, anarchists wished to demonstrate "that individuality cannot develop except in the community; that the latter cannot exist unless the former evolves freely; and that they mutually complement each other. "States, however, were unacceptable associations in their eyes because they were coercive, punitive, exploitative, and destructive. And because state action was identified with politics, hopes for progress were predicated on the absorption of this political realm into the moral and economic realms.

Though champions of liberty vis-à-vis the state, anarchists were not advocates of an absolute ideal of liberty that implied the absence of impediments to whatever the individual wished to do. Though advocates of "negative liberty," to use the English philosopher Isaiah Berlin's (1909–1997) terminology, anarchists were also dedicated to an ideal of "positive liberty," which evaluated actions in accordance with conceptions of the true or essential self; that is, in terms of obedience to normative conceptions of reason and morality. The failure to recognize the moral dimension of anarchist thought has led some to assume that anarchists were dedicated to disorder. In fact, most anarchists disliked chaos and argued that anarchy was, in the words of the French anarchist geographer Jean-Jacques-Élisée Reclus (1830–1905), "the highest expression of order." Anarchists believed that stateless societies did not imply disorder because, in their eyes, humans could most successfully achieve rational and moral fulfillment in arenas of human interaction not identified with the state.

Different anarchist theorists looked to different institutions to stimulate cooperation and community. The Englishman William Godwin (1756–1836), the first modern writer to make a reputation condemning government, argued that close interpersonal discussion or conversation was the best means to foster the growth of reason that makes individuals independent and the expansion of sincerity that ties individuals together. The French theorist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865), who was the first to call himself an anarchist (in his 1840 book What Is Property?), favored the association of the workshop and, in his later, federalist phase, regional communities as the appropriate loci for stimulating respect and the altruistic concern for others. The famous Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876), and the other anarchists connected with the Jura Federation during the 1870s, like Reclus and Paul Brousse (1844–1912), also searched for social solidarity in the context of trade and industrial groupings (corps de métier or la corporation), organized federally and by contract. Brousse, however, distinguished himself by emphasizing that the Commune (1871) was the privileged agent for the achievement of a stateless society. During the 1890s, Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921), Reclus, and Grave translated anarchism into a language of solidarity and mutual aid, emphasizing extended neighborhoods that fostered benevolence and reciprocal support. After the mid-1890s, anarchist-syndicalists like Paul Delesalle (1870–1948) looked to working-class syndicats as the context for education and libertarian organization. Central to all anarchist visions was the conviction that the growth of solidarity, neighborhoods, free associations, syndicats, and so forth, would lead to the development of moral and rational individuality and would stimulate cooperation and community.

Where anarchists obviously differed from other sociopolitical thinkers was in their belief that the rational and moral capacities of individuals were vigorous enough—or could be improved sufficiently through education—to permit the elimination of the threat and use of force associated with states. There is an obvious assumption here that morality and rationality are not related to state politics; indeed, they are diametrically opposed. Anarchists viewed states as poisons that contaminated social relations with impersonality, distrust, and resentment. And they argued that it was the inherent nature of states that produced the evil, not a particular form of state control, as might be suggested by liberal or socialist theorists. "Under whatever form that the state exists and functions,"

wrote Octave-Henri-Marie Mirbeau (1850–1917), "it is degrading and deadly to human activity: because it prevents the individual from developing his normal sense." Bakunin put it succinctly when he wrote that "despotism lies less in the form of the state or of power than in their very principle."

moving toward a stateless society

There was significant divergence among anarchists concerning how to move toward the goal of a stateless society. Many placed high hopes in education. Proudhon, for example, insisted on the importance of articulating the "worker idea." Reclus conceived in the 1870s a plan for a "scientific socialist education." Grave wrote of the need to disseminate "propaganda" to emancipate people from prejudice, ignorance, and the intellectual supports of the bourgeois system. Beyond calls for education, anarchists proposed a wide variety of means. Early anarchists like Godwin and Proudhon disapproved of revolution, believing that rational discussion, education, and (for Proudhon) credit reform and productive cooperation based on contracts were the appropriate means for ushering in the stateless society of their dreams. Later anarchists like Bakunin, Brousse, Kropotkin, Reclus, and Grave believed that education, monetary reform, and workers' associations were insufficient and that, therefore, spontaneous popular revolt was necessary.

Some advocated "propaganda by the deed," a controversial concept that can be traced to anarchists in Italy and Switzerland during the 1870s, and that was formally adopted as a tactic at an international meeting of anarchists and social revolutionaries held in London in 1881. Whether propaganda by the deed sanctioned acts of terrorism, or whether it should be confined to periods of insurrection, was a much-debated issue. This became a central issue during the l'ère des attentats (1892–1894) when self-professed anarchists in France—like Ravachol, Auguste Vaillant, and Émile Henry—set off bombs in public places and in the homes of public figures. Anarchists assassinated six heads of state between 1881 and 1901, including the French president Sadi Carnot in 1894 and the U.S. president William McKinley in 1901. Many anarchist writers were embarrassed with the association and condemned these acts, even though they were reluctant to condemn the actors, whom they depicted as driven to action by circumstances. In 1891, Kropotkin wrote that "it is not by heroic acts that revolutions are made…. Revolution, above all, is a popular movement." And Jean Grave defensively stated that "we are not among those who preach acts of violence." But, it is equally clear that Kropotkin and Grave were disturbed only by violence directed at individuals; violent acts that destroyed institutions or that were part of a widespread revolution were entirely justified. "Once the struggle has begun," wrote Grave, "sentimentality will have no place, the multitude will distrust all phrase makers and unmercifully crush all who try to stand in the way." Many late-nineteenth-century anarchists believed in the necessity of violent insurrection, but most did not support individual acts of political terrorism.

Reclus and the majority of Italian anarchists refused to make these distinctions between

insurrection and terrorism. They advocated propaganda by the deed in the late 1870s; they defended anarchist thefts in the 1880s; they wrote admiringly of the terrorists in the 1890s. The popular image of the anarchist as a bomb-throwing extremist, not surprisingly, grew accordingly.

anarchist movements

European anarchist movements were strongest in Italy and Spain. In the late 1860s, young Italian radicals became dissatisfied with Mazzini's conservative stance on social change, and they sided with Bakunin and the other "nonauthoritarians" against Karl Marx (1818–1883) within the International Workingmen's Association (IWA) when it split in 1872. The rapid growth of the IWA in Italy during the early 1870s was due to the activities of young militants like Carlo Cafiero (1846–1892), Andrea Costa (1851–1910), and Errico Malatesta (1853–1932). These men were enchanted by Bakunin, and won over by his writings that extolled the virtues of labor, attacked capitalists, defended atheism, proposed social revolution, and denounced the state. In August 1874, Italian anarchists made plans for a coordinated series of uprisings in Bologna, Rome, Florence, and other cities, but lack of popular support and early detection by the authorities led to the easy suppression of the uprising and the quick arrest of most of the anarchist leaders. Three years later, in April 1877, there was a second attempt in the mountain villages of the Campagna; again it failed and led to a cycle of government repression.

Anarchism was vigorous on the Iberian peninsula during the same years. It was propagated by representatives of the nonauthoritarian wing of the IWA in the late 1860s, especially in the years following the September Revolution of 1868, which overthrew Queen Isabella II (r. 1833–1868). Until the Bourbon Restoration of 1875, there was intense social turmoil in Spain, which allowed radicals of various ideological colorations (including collectivist anarchists, who called for workers to receive the integral product of their labor, and communist anarchists, who called for a communal system of economic distrubition) to bid for influence among disaffected rural and urban workers. The repression that accompanied the Restoration forced anarchist groups underground, giving proponents of insurrection and terrorism a stronger voice. With the establishment of the right of association in 1881, syndicalist forces within the anarchist movement became stronger. The most vocal and visible anarchists—writers like Fernando Tárrida del Mármol (1861–1915) and Ricardo Mella (1861–1925)—embraced an anarchism that appealed to the strong Spanish tradition of working-class associations, unions, circulos, ateneos, and similar organizations. Their so-called anarquismo sin adjetivos (anarchism without adjectives) converged with the ideal of the general strike to form the anarchosyndicalist ideology of the Confederción Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), founded in 1910.

In England, there was a split in 1884 between left-wing theorists who advocated political action and those who opposed parliamentarianism. In this year, William Morris (1834–1896) and others broke off from the Social Democratic Federation to form the Socialist League. For the next five years, Morris and his close associates advocated a radical change of the economy and society through education and revolution. In Commonweal, the paper of the Socialist League, workers were warned against compromising with contemptible politics and advised to put their faith in militant trade-unionism. The battles of "Bloody Sunday" between police and demonstrators at Trafalgar Square on 13 November 1887, and the success of the great Dock Strike of 1889 led some British militants to imagine that revolutionary change could be achieved through a universal strike.

Anarchism in France was usually associated with militant labor organizations (syndicats) that called for class war, the suppression of government, and the turning of workshops and factories over to the workers. This anarchosyndicalism, as it is sometimes called, was the orientation, for example, of Fernand Pelloutier (1867–1901), a young anarchist journalist who inspired and organized labor exchanges (Bourses du Travail) in the last years of the nineteenth century. In 1902, the Bourses merged with the Confédération Générale du Travail (General Confederation of Labor—CGT), and their doctrine, called revolutionary syndicalism, remained radical, violent, and directed against politicians and the state. The 1906 CGT congress at Amiens voted overwhelmingly for workers to shun politics and to prepare for the general strike for their "integral emancipation."

Like all nineteenth-century anarchists, French revolutionary syndicalists believed that states were immoral, coercive, bureaucratic machines responsible for the many oppressions and injustices of the modern age. For humans to achieve moral fulfillment and social justice, states must be replaced by interpersonal conversations, working-class associations, and local communities.