2012 - Encyclopedia Anarchism

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Snow, David A., Donatella Della Porta, Bert Klandermans, and Doug McAdam (eds),The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements, Blackwell, Oxford,forthcoming (February 2013).

ANARCHISM

Eduardo Romanos

Universidad Complutense de Madrid, [email protected]

Word Count: 2,057

Anarchism refers to a tradition of social and political thought that in the 1860s

emerged as an organized political force. Since then, anarchism has inspired protests,organizations and movements, mainly in Europe, Russia and the Americas, but also in

other parts of the world. While it may be difficult to talk of ‘one’ anarchist movement, a

distinct anarchist current within the history of the labor movement can be identified aswell as anarchist tendencies and groups within other social movements. The term‘anarchy’ comes from the Greek an-arkhos, meaning ‘without a leader or ruler’. It was

first used in a positive sense, being identified as the ideal form of government, in Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s (1809-1865) What Is Property? (1840). Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin

(1814-1876) and Pyotr Kropotkin (1842-1921) pioneered a broad tradition which hasdeveloped in a variety of forms. These range from varying interpretations of how to

organize society in economic terms to the more basic distinction between socialanarchism and currents farther removed from collective action (e.g. philosophical,

individualist, and spiritual anarchism) as well as more specific variations around forms oforganization, of action, the use of violence, and so on. In spite of this rich variety,

anarchism can be identified by its strong commitment to individual freedom andsovereignty, the opposition to any form of oppression, domination and authority, the

promotion of voluntary, decentralized and non-hierarchical associations, and the use offorms of direct action that prefigure a freer society with more solidarity and respect for

individual self-government.

Problems, targets and goals

Historically, anarchists have seen the state as the origin of social problems, a form ofcentralized, hierarchical social organization which monopolizes violence to exploit

workers for the benefit of the bureaucracy and the ruling elite. The state maintains a cruel

prison system and requires individuals to fight each other in wars that serve only ‘the protection or aggrandizement of the state itself’ (Miller 1984: 7). The state is seen as asolution worse than the problem of violence that it supposedly wants to eliminate,

regardless of the form it may adopt, whether liberal or socialist. It produces authoritarianand self-preserving dynamics regardless of who runs it. Anarchists also challenge other

institutional forms of authority and domination such as organized religion and theeducation system. Moreover, anarchists have attacked the state-regulated capitalism

which prevails in the West as an oppressive and criminal economic system.



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The responsibility for this corrupt state of affairs is seen as lying mainly with the

representatives of the state and big capitalists but also with bureaucrats, the armed forces, police and priests. Faced with a distinctive but heterogeneous body of enemies,

anarchism has not focused on a single revolutionary subject, but rather on an equally

heterogeneous social base consisting of industrial workers, peasants, professionals,disillusioned intellectuals, members of what Marx disparagingly called the Lumpenproletariat (city drop-outs, vagabonds, unemployed, and so on) and more

recently by representatives of the middle class, students and casual workers.

Anarchism does not stop, however, at identifying problems and their origins butalso sets targets for collective efforts articulated in social and political terms. However, it

is possible to discern a tension between the defense of individual autonomy and theeffectiveness of political action (Arvon 1979). The recognition of a human nature - a

common element of modern political thought - led the major anarchist theorists of thenineteenth-century to develop alternative economic models to satisfy the needs of

humanity. These are the mutualism of Proudhon, Bakunin's collectivism and the anarcho-communism of Kropotkin. Their influence can be seen well into the twentieth-century.

Nevertheless, criticisms of their essentialism and historical linearity, especially after1945, led many anarchists to address specific policy problems by replacing the longing

for total revolution with a more concrete ‘problem-solving’ approach (White 2007).

Forms of organization

Anarchists deploy decentralization, transversal communication, committed but voluntary participation, and deliberative democracy as organizing principles. They search for

consensus solutions instead of relying on the ‘majority rule’ system and replace

representatives with delegates or spokespersons. Anarchism’s heterogeneous social basehas prevented them from using Marxist-style class-based organizations. Instead,anarchism has found its basic unit of organization in the affinity group; a voluntary

group, usually consisting of five to ten members connected by personal relationships anda strong commitment to the same ideological principles. The group’s small size allows

easy coordination for specific actions, even in the context of state repression. Althoughradically autonomous, the groups may act in collaboration with one another.

Gordon (2008) places the affinity groups at the micro-level of anarchist

organization along with ‘collectives’ (a more permanent group with a small membershipthat may exist for an ongoing task). The meso-level is formed by local networks,

typically in one city, coordinating non-confrontational activities and contacts with otheractors while serving as platforms from which affinity groups and collectives may emerge.

Finally, at the macro level we find broader anarchist networks (regional, national,continental and global) for communication and coordination but without formal

membership or fixed boundaries. It must be remembered that this macro level describescontemporary anarchist organization practices, rather than those of the past, when affinity

groups were coordinated by national federations, often territorially organizing themselvesinto local and sub-national federations. Nor should we forget the role of the anarchists in



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the trade unions. For many, the union represents a small, defined space for grassrootsactivism (as opposed to the vast structure of the state). Anarchism’s influence on

revolutionary trade union activity has been far from insignificant, and anarcho-syndicalism is the name given to the branch of anarchism arising from it.

Forms of action

The anti-state attitude of anarchists has led them to reject participation in its institutions,

whether through democratic parliamentarism or a Marxist strategy of conquest of thestate. In fact, tactics based on programmes are thoroughly disapproved of as they involve

the submission of the individual to some degree. Instead, anarchists use direct action; aspecific intervention often carried out by individuals but sometimes by groups, aimed at

changing reality in a desired direction without reference to the authorities. Historically, ithas been used as a trade union tactic as it involves the absence of intermediaries in

dealing with employers. Sabotage, boycott and the strike produced immediate pressure, but were also intended to pave the way for a revolutionary general strike that would

overcome the state and capitalism. Probably better known is another version of directaction which first appeared in the late 1870s; ‘propaganda by the deed’, defined as

dramatic interventions in the form of violent attacks on property and persons in order tomake a major impact on public opinion and denounce a situation of misery and

exploitation. Although only sporadically employed, it has contributed to a negative imageof anarchists as ‘bomb-throwers’, down to the present day.

In any case, it is important to stress that the use of violence is a minority trend

within anarchism, strongly rejected by many activists who have chosen instead to participate in constructive projects, such as land-based agricultural communes, de-

centralized ‘free schools’ and independent platforms for information and communication.

In terms of theory, violence also contradicts the tactical principle of consistency betweenmeans and ends. A second such principle concerns spontaneity. Both date back toBakunin and his followers, who saw the Workers International as the embryo of a future

society, and appealed to the spontaneous forces of life against the abstractions ofscientific socialism. Spontaneity and ‘prefigurative politics’ are not obsolete as they have

been renewed with the revival of direct action, initially in protests in the late 1960s and,more recently, in the mobilizations against neoliberal globalization. Even though there is

no shortage of affinity groups describing themselves as vanguard movements, it would befairer to say that anarchist action has arisen mostly from below, through spontaneous

initiatives that seek to raise awareness of the existing and problematic state of affairs andthe need for change.

Historical forms and recent developments

Numerous ideas and experiences have fueled anarchism, the form it takes varies widely

from country to country and its historical development is rather discontinuous. Its origincan be located in the aftermath of the French Revolution, when the principal modern

ideologies took shape and crystallized, but it did not become a distinctive social forceuntil the late 1860s with the rise of a Bakuninist position in conflict with that of Marx and



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his followers within the First International, a largely anarchist-inspired body founded inLondon in 1864 under the name of the International Workingmen’s Association (IWA),

whose statutes were drawn up on the basis of an initiative by Proudhon’s mutualists.However, the victory of Marxist positions led to the final expulsion of the anarchists from

the IWA in 1872. They again tried to influence the Second International (Paris, 1889) and

were expelled once more in 1896. Between the First and Second International anarchistswent through a period of ostracism, accompanied by unsuccessful attempts to organize a purely anarchist international. The second expulsion coincided with the rise of

revolutionary trade unionism and the massive influx of anarchists into unions, especiallyin France. This was a period of visibility marked by the influence of trade unions

independent of political parties (Charter of Amiens, 1906) and an anti-militarist position(Congress of Amsterdam, 1907) (Woodcock 1986).

The end of WWI and triumph of the Revolution of 1917 marked the beginning of

a new period of a certain visibility, in this case dominated by the anarcho-syndicalists,who re-founded the IWA (Berlin, 1922). Among the original member organizations, the

most important were those from Italy, Argentina, Portugal and Germany, soon joined bythe Spanish National Labor Confederation (CNT). The latter became the beacon of

international anarchism in the 1930s. During the early stages of the Spanish Civil War(1936-1939), its membership reached almost two million and it engaged in the

organization of a social revolution in the form of industrial and agrarian collectivization;the only experience of a revolutionary anarchist society except the ephemeral federated

commune system built in Ukraine in 1921. Both were dismantled by state troops, by theRed Army in the case of Ukraine and the Republican Army in Spain in 1937.

After 1945, anarchism failed to regain its influence within the labor movement,

but certainly did not disappear. In postwar Europe and America, transnational networks

opposed the division of the world into two imperialist blocs. Some intellectuals (e.g.,Herbert Read, Paul Goodman, Albert Camus, Daniel Guérin) contributed to new ideasthrough dialogue and confrontation with socialism and liberalism. New protest

movements (the Dutch Provos, Situationists, and the New Left) linked to the anarchisttradition while exploring opportunities for emancipation outside the world of work.

Following the 1968 protests, anarchist tendencies developed within new socialmovements. For example, a new wave of anarcha-feminists linked their radical critique of

everyday life to past historical activists and organizations, such as Emma Goldman(1869-1940) and the Spanish Mujeres Libres (created in 1937). Also, new anarchist

theory influenced the development of new social movements, for example, MurrayBookchin's (1921-2006) philosophy of ‘social ecology’ in the environmental movement.

More recently, anarchism has come to the fore with the Global Justice Movement, in partthanks to the popularity of a supposedly anarchist ‘black block’ that uses confrontational

and sometimes violent direct action in counter-summits. In any case, and despite the factthat many anti-globalization activists do not self-identify as anarchist, or do so as part of

a multiple identity, their interest in non-violent direct action, transversal forms oforganization and communication, respect for internal diversity, and deliberative and

participatory democracy has opened new opportunities for the renewal of anarchism inthe twenty-first century.



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REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Arvon, H. (1979) L'Anarchisme au XXe Siècle. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris.

Cappelletti, A. J. (1985) La Ideología Anarquista. Alfadil, Caracas.

Goodway, D. (ed.) (1989) For Anarchism: History, Theory and Practice. Routledge,

New York.

Gordon, U. (2008) Anarchy Alive!: Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory.Pluto Press, London.

Jennings, J. (1999) Anarchism. In: R. Eatwell and A. Wright (eds.), Contemporary

Political Ideologies. Continuum, London, pp. 131-151.

Marshall, P. H. (2008) Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (New Edition). Harper Perennial, London.

Miller, D. (1984) Anarchism. Dent, London.

White, S. (2007) Making Anarchism Respectable? The Social Philosophy of Colin Ward.

Journal of Political Ideologies 12(1): 11-28.

Woodcock, G. (1986) Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (New

Edition). Penguin, Harwondsworth.

Date Submitted: 8 April 2010Date Accepted: 25 July 2011

2012 - Encyclopedia Anarchism

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