Anarchism
Anarchism gave the word "ruler" no home. Its name comes from the Ancient Greek anarkhia, meaning "without a ruler," built from the prefix an-, "without," and arkhos, "leader" or "ruler." For centuries that bare idea drifted through English as a synonym for chaos. The word anarchy appears in English from 1539, and anarchisme from 1642, both carrying a sense of disorder. Then one man turned the insult inside out. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who lived from 1809 to 1865, was the first political philosopher to call himself an anarchiste and to mean it as praise. From that single act of self-naming grew a movement that sought to abolish every institution that perpetuates authority, coercion, or hierarchy, aiming first at the state and at capitalism. How does a philosophy born of an insult become a force in workers' struggles across the world? Why do its followers argue endlessly about what their own word means? And how does a movement that rejects all leaders ever decide anything at all? These are the questions that follow.
Defining anarchism is not an easy task for scholars, and the disagreements run deep. Major definitional elements include the will for a non-coercive society, the rejection of the state apparatus, and a belief that human nature allows people to live in or move toward such a society. The fourth element is a suggestion on how to act to pursue the ideal of anarchy. Beyond opposition to the state, currents perceive the philosophy slightly differently.
Since the 1890s, beginning in France, libertarianism has often served as a synonym for anarchism, a usage still common outside the United States. Its meaning has since been diluted by adoption from ideologically disparate groups, including the New Left, libertarian Marxists, and extreme cultural liberals concerned mainly with civil liberties. To dodge the negative connotations of their own name, some anarchists prefer the phrase libertarian socialist, which stresses the link to socialism. Scholars generally highlight anarchism's socialist credentials and criticise attempts to split the two apart.
William Godwin, who lived from 1756 to 1836, and Wilhelm Weitling, who lived from 1808 to 1871, helped shape the doctrines of the next generation. Yet neither used the words anarchist or anarchism to describe themselves or their beliefs. The label could be a weapon long before it was a banner. During the French Revolution, various factions branded their opponents anarchists, though few of the accused shared the views of later anarchists. Many scholars now reject the idea that anarcho-capitalism counts as anarchism at all, calling it a misunderstanding of anarchist principles.
In China, philosophical anarchism was delineated by the Taoist philosophers Zhuang Zhou and Laozi, who questioned the legitimacy of the state itself. Alongside Stoicism, Taoism has been said to hold "significant anticipations" of anarchism. The instinct to ask whether rulers deserve obedience is older than the movement that took the name.
Aeschylus and Sophocles reached for the myth of Antigone to dramatise the clash between laws imposed by the state and personal autonomy. Socrates questioned Athenian authorities constantly and insisted on the right of individual freedom of conscience. The Cynics dismissed human law, called nomos, and the authorities that enforced it, trying instead to live according to nature, or physis. The Stoics imagined a society held together by unofficial and friendly relations among its citizens, with no state present at all.
In the Sasanian Empire, a man named Mazdak called for an egalitarian society and the abolition of monarchy, and was soon executed by Emperor Kavad I. Medieval Europe saw little anarchistic activity beyond some ascetic religious movements, and in Basra religious sects preached against the state. These currents, along with certain Muslim movements, later gave birth to religious anarchism. Renewed interest in antiquity during the Renaissance, and in private judgement during the Reformation, restored elements of anti-authoritarian secularism, particularly in France, setting the stage for the revolutions of the 1790s and 1848.
By the late 1870s, various anarchist schools of thought had become well-defined, and a wave of then-unprecedented globalisation ran from 1880 to 1914. This era of classical anarchism is considered the golden age, and it lasted until the end of the Spanish Civil War. Three early currents lit the fuse: Godwin's philosophical anarchism in England, which morally delegitimised the state, Max Stirner's thinking that paved the way to individualism, and Proudhon's theory of mutualism, which found fertile soil in France.
Mikhail Bakunin drew from mutualism to found collectivist anarchism, then entered the International Workingmen's Association, the class worker union formed in 1864 and later known as the First International. Karl Marx sat on its General Council as a leading figure. Bakunin's faction, the Jura Federation, and Proudhon's followers, the mutualists, opposed state socialism and advocated political abstentionism. After bitter disputes, the Bakuninists were expelled by the Marxists at the 1872 Hague Congress. Bakunin predicted that if revolutionaries gained power by Marx's terms, they would become the new tyrants of workers.
Peter Kropotkin, a Russian philosopher and scientist, shaped anarcho-communism so that it overlapped with collectivism. Anarcho-communists drew inspiration from the 1871 Paris Commune and called for free federation and for goods distributed according to one's needs. In response to their expulsion from the First International, anarchists formed the St. Imier International. The anarchist movement, historians argue, appeared somewhere between Proudhon and the Saint-Imier Congress of 1872.
A minority of anarchists adopted tactics of revolutionary political violence known as propaganda of the deed. Assassination attempts were carried out against heads of state, and some succeeded. Most of these attacks were the work of individual assailants, and the majority fell in the late 1870s, the early 1880s, and the 1890s, with some still occurring in the early 1900s. Many of the Galleanists believed such attempts would spark a revolution against capitalism and the state.
The suppression of the Paris Commune scattered the French socialist movement into many groups and sent many Communards into execution or exile in penal colonies. That fracture favoured individualist political expression and acts. Even though many anarchists distanced themselves from terrorism, infamy fell on the whole movement. Attempts were made to stop anarchists immigrating to the United States, including the Immigration Act of 1903, also called the Anarchist Exclusion Act. Illegalism was another strategy some anarchists adopted in this period.
Emma Goldman and Errico Malatesta, proponents of limited use of violence, argued that violence was merely a reaction to state violence, a necessary evil. Their decrease in prevalence owed much to further judicial power and to the targeting and cataloguing of anarchists by state institutions. By the turn of the 20th century, the terrorist movement had died down, giving way to anarchist communism and syndicalism as the philosophy spread across the world.
In Tokyo, rebellious youth from East Asian countries gathered to study, making the Japanese capital a hotspot for new ideas. In China, small groups of students imported the humanistic, pro-science version of anarcho-communism. In Latin America, Argentina became a stronghold for anarcho-syndicalism, where it grew into the most prominent left-wing ideology.
Anarchists took part in the Strandzha Commune and the Krusevo Republic, both established in Macedonia during the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising of 1903, and in the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The revolutionary wave of 1917 to 1923 drew varying degrees of active anarchist participation. In the Russian Revolution, anarchists enthusiastically opposed the White movement, especially in the Makhnovshchina.
The victories of the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution changed everything. Many workers and activists turned to Communist parties, which grew at the expense of anarchism. Members of major syndicalist movements, such as the General Confederation of Labour and the Industrial Workers of the World, left their organisations and joined the Communist International. Once the Bolshevik government had stabilised, anarchists met harsh suppression, including during the Kronstadt rebellion. Several anarchists from Petrograd and Moscow fled to Ukraine, only for the Bolsheviks to crush the movement there too. Out of that defeat rose two antithetical currents, platformism and the anarchist synthesis, one seeking a coherent revolutionary group, the other opposed to anything resembling a political party.
In the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939, anarchists and syndicalists organised under the CNT and the FAI and allied with various currents of leftists. A long tradition of Spanish anarchism gave them a pivotal role, particularly in the Spanish Revolution of 1936. When the army rebelled, an anarchist-inspired movement of peasants and workers, backed by armed militias, took control of Barcelona and of large rural areas, where they collectivised the land.
Joseph Stalin's hand reached into the Republican government. The Soviet Union gave limited assistance at the war's start, but the alliance soured into a bitter fight between communists and other leftists, a series of events known as the May Days. As Stalin asserted Soviet control, the conflict ended in another defeat for anarchists at the hands of the communists.
The end of this war marked the close of the classical era of anarchism. By the end of World War II, the movement had been severely weakened. Its revival would have to wait for the 1960s, sparked in part by a perceived failure of Marxism-Leninism and the tensions of the Cold War.
The counterculture of the 1960s gave anarchism new company. It found a presence in the anti-nuclear, environmental, and peace movements and in the New Left, shifting from its revolutionary nature toward provocative anti-capitalist reformism. The philosophy became associated with punk subculture, exemplified by bands such as Crass and the Sex Pistols. Anarcha-feminism returned with vigour during the second wave of feminism, and Black anarchism began to take form, moving the movement away from a Eurocentric demographic.
Around the turn of the 21st century, anarchism grew within anti-capitalist, anti-war, and anti-globalisation movements, whose leading activist networks were anarchist in orientation. Anarchists became known for protests against the World Trade Organization, the Group of Eight, and the World Economic Forum. Ad hoc leaderless anonymous cadres known as black blocs engaged in rioting, property destruction, and clashes with police. A defining moment came in the confrontations at the 1999 Seattle WTO conference. Other tactics pioneered then include affinity groups, security culture, and the use of decentralised technologies such as the Internet.
Many contemporary forms of anarchism are not confrontational at all. Following the theories of dual power, they try to build an alternative way of social organisation based on mutual interdependence and voluntary cooperation, seen in groups such as Food Not Bombs and in self-managed social centers. Today's anarchists often gather in small groups of five to twenty individuals to enhance autonomy and friendship, then interconnect into larger networks. They build rough consensus without a leader, sometimes appointing one member as a facilitator who helps the group agree without taking part in the discussion. Anarchist ideas have shaped the Zapatistas in Mexico and the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria, more commonly known as Rojava, a de facto autonomous region in northern Syria.
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Common questions
What is anarchism as a political philosophy?
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that seeks to abolish all institutions that perpetuate authority, coercion, or hierarchy, primarily targeting the state and capitalism. It advocates replacing the state with stateless societies and voluntary free associations, and is described as part of the libertarian wing of the socialist movement.
Where does the word anarchism come from?
The word anarchism comes from the Ancient Greek anarkhia, meaning "without a ruler," composed of the prefix an-, meaning "without," and arkhos, meaning "leader" or "ruler." Anarchy appears in English from 1539 and anarchisme from 1642, with early usages emphasising a sense of disorder.
Who was the first person to call himself an anarchist?
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who lived from 1809 to 1865, was the first political philosopher to call himself an anarchiste and to invest the word with a positive meaning. Earlier figures such as William Godwin and Wilhelm Weitling shaped anarchist doctrine but did not use the term to describe themselves.
What role did anarchists play in the Spanish Civil War?
In the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939, anarchists and syndicalists organised under the CNT and the FAI played a pivotal role, particularly in the Spanish Revolution of 1936. They took control of Barcelona and large rural areas where they collectivised the land, but were ultimately defeated by communists as Joseph Stalin asserted Soviet control over the Republican government.
What are the main schools of anarchist thought?
Anarchist schools of thought are generally grouped into two main historical traditions, social anarchism and individualist anarchism. Classical currents include mutualism, collectivist anarchism, anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, and individualism, while post-classical currents include anarcha-feminism, green anarchism, and post-anarchism.
How did anarchism revive in the late 20th and 21st centuries?
Anarchism revived in the 1960s amid the counterculture, the New Left, and the anti-nuclear, environmental, and peace movements, and became associated with punk bands such as Crass and the Sex Pistols. Around the turn of the 21st century it grew within anti-capitalist, anti-war, and anti-globalisation movements, marked by black bloc protests and the 1999 Seattle WTO conference.