This handbook unites leading scholars from around the world in exploring anarchism as a political ideology, from an examination of its core principles, an analysis of its history, and an assessment of its contribution to the struggles that face humanity today. Grounded in a conceptual and historical approach, each entry charts what is distinctive about the anarchist response to particular intellectual, political, cultural and social phenomena, and considers how these values have changed over time. At its heart is a sustained (...) process of conceptual definition and an extended examination of the core claims of this frequently misunderstood political tradition. It is the definitive scholarly reference work on anarchism as a political ideology, and should be a crucial text for scholars, students, and activists alike. (shrink)

Anarchism is a political concept and social movement associated with future or present politico-social projects without the state. It is informed by a commitment to the autonomy of the individual and the quest for voluntary consensus. In historical overviews of anarchism, it is often presented as possessing family resemblances to political, intellectual, and cultural innovations in classical Greece, ancient China, medieval Basra and medieval Europe, Civil War England, and Revolutionary Paris. Equally anthropologists will point to ‘stateless peoples’ throughout the world (...) and human history as evidence of the deep pedigree that informs anarchist rejections of the state as an organising principle, and, indeed for most of humankind’s existence, the state did not exist. As a self-conscious ideology—as an ‘ism’—anarchism may owe its existence to the political formulations and intellectual currents that shaped Europe in the wake of the dual revolution, but it is also, crucially, a global and not merely European tradition. Anarchism’s history—its tenets, concepts, approaches, arguments, and style—was thus nurtured by global currents that spread people and ideas around the world, and its local manifestation was often shaped by domestic cultural and intellectual traditions that make anarchism an elusively protean ideology. (shrink)

The innocent ampersand between ‘anarchism’ and ‘indigeneity’ in our title is actually an invitation to think critically and creatively about the tangled links of these two heterogeneous historical lines of thought. We are looking for resonances across these fields of thinking and acting, without insisting on correspondence or eschewing tensions. We reflect on and pluralise four key concepts: temporalities, states, laws, and sovereignties. Both anarchism and indigeneity are often discarded by dominant ways of thinking and acting because ‘their time has (...) passed’ or ‘their time will never come’. Yet, time can be imagined in the plural as competing trajectories rather than a single arc from ‘then’ to ‘now’. We rethink relations among states, nations, laws, and treaties to open possibilities for self-organising communities. We examine radical education, integral living, and prefigurative politics for their contributions to autonomous communities. By exploring a few fertile sites of encounter between anarchy and Indigeneity, we hope that sparks will fly and affinities will develop. (shrink)

Most critical political movements are concerned with the internalised operations of power. But anarchists alone argue that human freedom cannot be institutionalised, or legislated from outside, which gives them a particular interest in psychology. From an anarchist point of view, the risk in using any form of psychology is being diverted from the world outside of ourselves. Still from an anarchist point of view, the risk of not engaging with psychological perspectives is to miss the prefigurative and transformative insights of (...) some psychological practice and research. A focus on the self, ‘being the change you want to see,’ and the inner work of social transformation, loom large in the anarchist vision of action. This chapter will explore the shared frontiers of psychology and anarchism with a view to identifying which aspects of psychological research and psychotherapy, including humanistic psychology, have resonated most authentically with anarchist projects. Psychological perspectives emerging from the work of radical Freudians such as Wilhelm Riech and Otto Gross, and therapeutic practices advanced by the pioneers of Gestalt Therapy have framed the experience of choice and liberation from structures and norms as therapeutic in itself, with politically significant reverberations. Also, the radical therapeutic interventions of some humanistic psychologists such as Marshall Rosenberg have specifically sought to mobilise motivation in the individual for social and political transformation. Where these critical psychological insights have focused on the development of new personal, interpersonal, and collective skills, they have had the most to offer to transformative practices in relation to political and social dilemmas addressed by anarchist movements. (shrink)

Anarcha-feminism emerged as a ‘school of thought’ in late nineteenth-century Europe and America. Informed by the experience of female subjugation, anarchist women undertook a radical critique of sexual double standards and the gendered division of labour in ways that anarchist men were less inclined to recognise. In addition to describing the sociopolitical conditions from which anarcha-feminism arose, this chapter highlights the following key thinkers: Louise Michel, Charlotte Wilson, Lucía Sánchez Saornil, Lucy Parsons, Voltairine de Cleyre, and Emma Goldman. As a (...) dynamic, loosely formed network of activists who came from diverse socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds, these women held differing ideas on how to create a free society. Yet, several intersecting principles were reflected in their activism, if not explicitly through their public advocacy, then implicitly through their unconventional lifestyles: the liberating potential of individual autonomy, the necessity of sexual freedom in order to achieve autonomy, and the inseparability of women’s liberation from the larger schema of human liberation. Beyond supporting the broader efforts of the anarchist movement, anarcha-feminism offered a model of womanhood that articulated women’s sexual agency as an economic and personal imperative, which in turn provided a radical alternative to the suffrage movement and a critical framework for modern feminism. (shrink)

In this chapter, we provide a general overview of the literature on anarchism and disability. We provide an introduction to historically relevant disabled anarchists and the work of contemporary disabled scholars. Relevant disability theory frameworks are discussed, including the fluidity of disability as a category and the use of systems of power in its construction. The hierarchy justifying the medical model of disability is contrasted with the social model of disability which actively critiques systemic oppression. Similarly, the threads of organic (...) anarchism within the disability movement are explored. We outline how the dehumanisation of disabled people is incentivised by capitalism and the state, and how the dismantling of these systems risk leaving disabled people facing a collapse of their life support systems. We discuss how this fear is not without grounds given that anarchism, generally, fails to incorporate intersections of ableism in its studies. As deaf and disabled academic scholars and activists who ground their work in deaf and disability studies, we explore the ways in which research from these and other disciplines might overlap with anarchist theory and praxis. (shrink)

Anarchism has been gaining traction in archaeological theory and practice. In a field marked by quotidian anarchisms such as collective interpretation, health and safety practices of care, protection and caretaking of past materials, and a wide understanding of the diverse ways humans have constructed societies across millennia, archaeology has deep resonance with anarchism. This has in turn made archaeologists more open to models derived from anarchist thought, even as the field has grown out of violent colonialism and ethnonationalism and still (...) struggles with these legacies. In this chapter, we review the burgeoning field of anarchist archaeology, investigating perspectives on ancient history, contemporary anarchist archaeological approaches, labour practices, anarchist heritage, and the work of the Black Trowel Collective. In this, we ask: How does archaeology understand anarchism? What can anarchism bring to archaeology? What can archaeology bring to anarchism? We offer perspectives from archaeological traditions in Europe, Australia, and the United States, in a chapter written collaboratively with named authors and members of the Black Trowel Collective who remain anonymous. (shrink)

The arts have been integral to anarchism since its inception in the nineteenth century. Foundational thinkers including Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Peter Kropotkin, and Emma Goldman wrote persuasively and eloquently about the power of art as a potential tool of social criticism, revolutionary vision, and an essential component of a life free of domination. Some contemporary anarchists pick up on these themes while opening new ones: especially, the relation between art and anarchists’ quest for a life free of alienation, and the role (...) played by some popular forms of art in opening cracks in dominant structures of everyday life where anarchist values and practices can take root. They emphasise the prefigurative capacity of art: its capacity for pointing toward a better world of greater freedom and less domination, and the ways some art forms already model that world. This chapter will, first of all, summarise the arguments of foundational and contemporary anarchists while further developing some of them. Second, for purposes of illustration, it will interpret several popular art forms in terms of anarchist values of autonomy, equality, power, and direct action. Third, the chapter will argue that these art forms prefigure deeper forms of democracy than currently practised in neoliberal democracies. (shrink)

Starting as a hashtag in 2013, Black Lives Matter (BLM) is now a household name. The movement emerged as a response to the ongoing police killings of unarmed Black people in the United States, and specifically after the acquittal of the police officer who murdered Black teenager Trayvon Martin. Since then, the movement has spread internationally, with groups created and protests erupting in the name of BLM, all aiming for the universal dismantling of systemic racism. Those involved in the uprisings (...) have been branded by right-wing critics as ‘anarchists’ in an effort to undermine their actions by defining it as nothing more than frivolous destruction. BLM shares some common features with anarchism, drawing, for instance, on the politics of abolition, a belief in community action, and the aim of creating a decentralised network. However, other actions undertaken by BLM do not fit with anarchism. The movement sometimes focuses on using its actions to influence policy and elections, for example, and it mimics bureaucracy in certain decision-making structures, and appears to endorse neoliberal values in pursuing corporate brand partnership. This chapter explores where BLM fits within the radical tradition of Black anarchism. (shrink)

In most surveys of anarchism, cosmopolitanism is mentioned in reference as one of its sources in discussions of classical Greek thought, namely the Cynics and the Stoics. Whether or not one can draw such a linkage with the theory and practice of anarchism as an ideology in its various shapes and forms since the nineteenth century may be debatable. Nevertheless, the cosmopolitan currents found in the Radical Enlightenment but also in the extra-European thought and practice of the Global South and (...) in liminal encounters between Europe and the colonial Other are important influences for the formation and transmission of anarchism. Furthermore, the engagement with nationalism and patriotism by such anarchists as Rudolf Rocker and Gustav Landauer deal with cosmopolitanism in critical ways. More recently, the revival of cosmopolitan thought in critical International Relations and the practices and theorisations of the Global Justice, Occupy and Square movements link the classical anarchist tradition with New and Post Anarchist currents. This chapter will discuss these themes. (shrink)

This chapter defends the centrality of ethics to anarchist theory and practice. It starts by describing some of the main meta-ethical and normative positions associated with different constellations of anarchism and postanarchism. It then explains and argues for an anti-hierarchical virtue approach as being the most productive and consistent with the main anarchist ideological constellations (socialist anarchisms), its key classical proponents and contemporary practitioners. It demonstrates that this practice-based virtue approach is consistent with anarchism’s wider materialist philosophical commitments—including its critiques (...) of universal values—and micropolitical orientation. This chapter explores and critically evaluates post-left and postanarchist critical rejections of ethical analysis, which uses Max Stirner’s radical egoism as a basis. It goes on to argue that as these critics increasingly engage with material problems, significant areas of convergence develop between them and social anarchisms. The chapter further illustrates the pertinence of the revolutionary Aristotelian virtue approach by providing examples of anarchist practices that are rich in virtues and showing that anarchist virtue theory provides a strong basis for dealing with some standardly contentious questions, such as defending freedom of speech or supporting anti-fascist interventions against discriminatory and oppressive speech acts. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the relations between anarchism and geography following three main directions. First, I discuss the historical and material links existing between the very foundations of both geographical and anarchist thoughts, through the common work of scholars and activists who are considered as founding figures for both, such as Elisée Reclus, Peter Kropotkin and their collaborators. Importantly, this correspondence was not occasional, as early anarchist geographers elaborated notions that merged their political and scholarly spheres such as their ideas on (...) communalism, federalism and decentralisation, their commonly elaborated notion of mutual aid, their critique of maps as instruments of authoritarian education and political power and their anticolonial understanding of geography as a discipline challenging frontiers, racism and Eurocentrism by fostering worldwide fraternity. Second, I expose the plural waves of rediscovering anarchist geographers and geographies that took place since the 1970s in different countries and linguistic areas, highlighting the links between activism and scholarship that variously characterised these moods, especially the interest in anarchism that has affected international geographical scholarship in the last 15–10 years. Third, I propose further applications of anarchist-inspired geographies and geographical approaches to anarchism in political/societal current debates such as decoloniality, geographies of the pluriverse, intersectionality and spatial/social/environmental justice. I conclude arguing that the connection between anarchism and geography still offers relevant instruments to tackle these challenges. The anarchist tradition brings great insights to potentially enrich all these fields, including coherence between theory and praxis, connection between social and spatial freedom and a voluntarist drive to social transformation countering all their possible authoritarian, academic and liberal distortions. (shrink)

This chapter begins by laying out the major features of capitalism as analysed by anarchists historically, noting similarities and differences arising from the various tendencies within the libertarian milieu. Defining anarchist contributions to political economy through identification and analysis of wage labour/exploitation, private property, markets, class society, and states allows for an engagement with historical and contemporary voices within anarchism that highlights these analytical commonalities and differences. Next, the chapter examines the ideological structures and cultural mechanisms through which capitalism is (...) naturalised and defended. Finally, this chapter will outline some anarchist objections to visionary thinking in political economy and the tendency for some in the milieu to think in pluralist terms when it comes to visionary proposals. (shrink)

The intellectual history of the debate between Anarchism and Marxism has its own fascination as a story of two elaborate idea systems in perpetual and inevitable conflict. Yet, they seem to share the same theory of the state. Bakunin brought Machiavelli into the discussion and advanced, along with Jan Wacław Machajski, a critique of Social Democracy as the ideology of the Intelligentsia. Both these impulses found their way into the Marxism of the Bolsheviks. The two great idea systems both endorsed (...) the Paris Commune and for a time the revolutions of 1917. A neglected dimension in historical studies is the attitudes of the two ideologies towards the great states and the balance of power. Marxism pinned its hopes on the rise of Germany, Anarchism on the defence of France, the land of the great revolution. The war of 1914 changed all the valences, with the two ideologies pitted against all the great states. Ironically, Anarchism can be seen as playing a role in saving Russia for its later struggle against fascism. (shrink)

Anarchism has a significantly longer pedigree than punk, with Proudhon’s specific usage of the term ‘anarchist’ (1840) predating the first coinage of ‘punk rock’ by music journalists by some 130 years—but that shared controversialist streak, in the appropriation of profane terminology for a movement or idea, points towards a common resonance at the very roots of anarchism and punk. The chapter begins by exploring the ‘anarchy’ of early punk, before upending that nostalgic focus by pointing to contemporary punk (and anarchism) (...) and its global proliferation. The complexities of ‘punk anarchism’ are unpicked, including the criticisms levelled against it by the anarchist ‘old guard’, as well as highlighting some of its activist manifestations. A rough delineation of punk anarchism is sketched out, pointing towards distinctive features such as its déclassé analysis, its iconoclastic relation to the anarchist ‘canon’, the foregrounding of do-it-yourself (and do-it-together) production/consumption and focus on culturally focused activisms. The chapter concludes with an exploration of the tension between DIY underground punk and those moments where punk ‘sells out’ to the mainstream. (shrink)

Anarchism is nearly always anticlerical and frequently atheistic, yet the intersection of religion and anarchism is more complex than is often assumed. Indeed, this intersection has proved a fertile ground for a variety of analyses, especially in recent years. The interactions between religion and anarchism vary: sometimes anarchists are making or revisiting claims about religion; sometimes religious scholars are articulating a theology which engages with anarchism; sometimes the focus is on how specific anarchists approached religion; and sometimes religious scriptures are (...) interpreted to point to anarchist politics. In other words, the encounter between religious studies and anarchism can concentrate on very different facets of either, and involves very different approaches and methodologies, very different modes and tones of enquiry. The aim of this chapter is to map out the intersections of religion and anarchism by considering four main types: classic anarchist quarrels with religion and its institutions; anarchist interpretations of founding religious scriptures and figures; anarchist ‘theology’ as distinct from scriptural exegesis; and historiographies of specific religious anarchist thinkers, communities and movements. (shrink)

Though it is still largely regarded as a wholly political tendency, anarchism has long enjoyed a close relationship with the sciences. As figures such as Kropotkin have argued, it is the only ideology not bound to arbitrary stipulations about the proper functioning and organisation of societies. In particular, anarchists have stressed how the ethical principles of state capitalist societies are not in any way a reflection of human nature or the findings of psychology, but are rather imposed from above. Departing (...) from modern liberalism and conservatism, anarchism is perhaps the only political ideology which proposes that morality is a mind-internal procedure. More specifically, how the brain is responsible for aspects of human nature such as morality and how the brain sciences might even be able to inform discussions of political ideology are major topics of current neuroscientific research. This contribution will consequently discuss developments in the sciences and their implications for domains ranging outside naturalistic investigation and will consider to what extent our current understanding of the brain can inform accounts of political action. It will be argued that it can be shown very evidently that aspects of political critique can, and should, be grounded in a naturalistic basis. (shrink)

The events of 1968, especially in France, are often thought of as some kind of anarchist or at least anarchistic revolution, yet surprisingly little scholarly work has been done on the role of the anarchists or of anarchist ideas in those events from a historical perspective. This chapter will therefore examine the événements of May–June 1968 in France, drawing not only on the existing secondary literature but also on original research on primary sources including periodicals and pamphlets and militants’ personal (...) archives. It will examine the role of the anarchists in the events, the extent to which the ‘spirit of 68’ can be said to have been libertarian or anarchistic (despite the predominance of Marxists among the gauchistes), and the impact of the events on the anarchist movement. It will be suggested that 1968 can be seen both as the culmination of post-war struggles over the (re)definition of anarchism and, as Tormey (2004) has argued, the beginning of a new radicalism strongly informed by anarchism. (shrink)

The International Workingmen’s Association (the so-called First International, 1864–1880) marked a watershed moment in the history of anarchist movements and ideas. For it was through the debates and struggles within the International regarding the proper direction of working-class movements that the principles of modern anarchism were first clearly articulated. Anarchists were at the forefront of the debates within the International regarding collective property, the family and education, the roles of the state, trade unions, cooperatives and mutual aid societies, political participation (...) and the structure and purpose of the International itself as an organisation dedicated to the emancipation of the workers by the workers themselves. The anarchists articulated a revolutionary socialist alternative to both social democratic parliamentary politics and revolutionary dictatorship, rejecting the state as a transitional or permanent institution. After the International was split in two with the expulsion of Bakunin at the Hague Congress in 1872, the debates within the anti-authoritarian wing of the International gave expression to virtually every anarchist tendency that was to follow—from anarcho-syndicalism, to anarchist communism, communalism, insurrectionism, anti-organisationalism and illegalism—as anarchism emerged as a distinct force on the revolutionary left. (shrink)

Something new has been taking place around the world. Societies are in movement as never before—not with such tremendous numbers, consistent horizontal forms, uses of direct action over demands, in vastly disparate geographies and with such overarching global consistency. This chapter will delve into the specifics of the newer anti-capitalist movements, as well as ground them in many historical movements, both recent and with a longer view, that have similar forms and visions, such as the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico, the (...) Global Justice Movement and the Argentine assembly movements post-2001. In particular, the question of the similarities with an anarchist approach and vision will be discussed in relation to the newer movement forms and will ask the question of the newness of these forms. (shrink)

Centring on the defining debate between Kropotkin and Malatesta, this chapter contextualises anarchist responses to the outbreak of war in the major belligerents. Drawing on the latest historical research, it examines the multifaceted reactions to the war amongst anarchists and their struggles to plot a path through the unprecedented crisis confronting them in 1914. In so doing, it demonstrates the importance of grappling with these challenges to the articulation of a distinctive anarchist political identity; the importance of the war in (...) generating fresh tactical perspectives, especially in terms of anti-militarism and anti-colonialism; and the tactical and theoretical plurality obscured by undue focus on the Kropotkin/Malatesta debate. (shrink)

Communism is a model of stateless society based on the common ownership of the means of production and informed by the principle ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’. Though this concept has remained stable throughout the history of anarchism, the corresponding label does not denote a single, coherent current traversing that history. Rather, different currents used that label at different times, as a way of contrasting themselves to other anarchist currents. Through the controversies first (...) between communists and collectivists, then between communists and individualists, anarchist communism has ultimately come to represent an associationist tradition that is characterised more in terms of tactics (collective action, involvement in unions, insurrection) than of ultimate goals. At the same time, anarchist communism has taken on distinctive traits that set it apart from the communism of the Marxist tradition. In the voluntaristic views of its foremost advocate Errico Malatesta, anarchist communism evolved from being a sine qua non of anarchism to being one among different options, to be realised to the extent that it received support, in a pluralist, experimentalist, gradualist, solidaristic, libertarian process of social evolution. (shrink)

In this chapter, I will discuss how the anarchist objection to the state and the defence of central anarchist values, such as mutual aid, autonomy and cooperation, yields a distinct perspective on debates about the aims of education. I will draw on historical accounts of anarchist educational experiments to explore how their pedagogical practices, organisation and content constituted a radical alternative to mainstream forms of educational provision in different historical periods and will reflect on the relevance of these alternatives in (...) contemporary educational contexts. My discussion will incorporate both formal and informal education and will address central issues within educational philosophy and theory, such as the relationship between education and social change, the moral legitimacy of educational intervention and the conception of human nature. I will argue that the anarchist tradition of educational thought and practice, while overlapping in some respects with forms of libertarian, progressive and democratic education and with critical pedagogy, offers a unique perspective on issues such as the above, and a valuable set of resources with which to critique some dominant trends in contemporary educational policy and practice. (shrink)

Focusing on the period from 1870 to 1960, this chapter provides an overview of anarchist approaches to anti-imperialism, offering examples of collaborations, solidarities, antagonisms and syntheses between anarchists and anti-colonialists from across the British, Spanish, French and Portuguese colonial worlds and within the imperial metropoles in Europe. Alongside anti-colonial resistances to these processes, anarchists were central to the development of an anti-imperial political modernity within the European left as well as across the colonial worlds. In fact, as this chapter illustrates, (...) anarchism was inherently anti-imperial in its demands for individual freedom and insistence on dismantling the power structures that governed European colonial policies. Exploring core principles of anarchist anti-imperialism with a vision of postcolonial societies, the chapter discusses issues of nationalism and the nation-state, anti-statism and political organisation, exile and diaspora, anti-capitalism and boycott. In doing so, it pays particular attention to theory and praxis, ideological sympathies and revolutionary methods, including terrorism, insurrection and sabotage. Within these discussions, the chapter highlights antagonisms and incompatibilities among and between anarchists and anti-colonialists, allowing for an assessment of the limitations of anarchism within the anti-colonial context. (shrink)

The historical and conceptual contours of Black anarchism are shaped by how ‘Blackness’ is understood to be modifying ‘anarchism’, or what the ‘Black’ of Black anarchism is made to mean. In the western world, Black anarchism might be traced to resistances to a newly global racial slavery, as enslaved Africans, suddenly marked by Blackness, were neither persons nor citizens to the societies that had enslaved them, and their resistance presented a challenge to the roots of the social order. In a (...) more modern context, there are Black anarchisms that emerged from mid-century anticolonial struggles, radicalisations of Black freedom struggle in the United States, and the work of prison revolutionaries. Then, more recently, Black anarchisms formed within and parallel to the prison abolition, ‘anti-globalisation’, and Occupy movements. Some of these iterations of Black anarchism resemble other national and indigenous anarchist traditions, but others are more productively understood as radicalisations of the anarchist tradition itself. That is, they reimagine the subject of anarchism in ways that destabilise the meaning of foundational concepts like mutual aid, democracy, and freedom. This chapter will outline some histories of notable Black anarchists and anarchist movements in the United States, but will devote special attention to recent work that traces the anarchisms incipient in what Cedric Robinson called the Black Radical Tradition. These Black anarchisms posit Blackness not as nationality, ethnicity, or indigeneity, but as the negative condition of personhood, and theorise anarchism as the pursuit of new forms of being, being-together, and becoming-free. (shrink)

This chapter situates anarchist concern around human relations with non-human animals, and with the raising of animals for food, in the context of the history of anarchist thought. The openness of anarchism to considering multiple forms of domination means that it is well-suited to critique the human domination of other animals. The chapter begins with a consideration of important anarchist contributions to debates on human relations with other animals: those of Kropotkin and Bookchin, both of whom see humanity as co-constituted (...) in ‘federations’ of life with non-humans. Particular attention is paid to Élisée Reclus’ arguments in On Vegetarianism, which emphasise our emotional connections to other creatures and the dominatory power and violence implied in the production and consumption of meat. The chapter proceeds to examine anarchist work, which foregrounds the intersectionalised oppression of humans and other animals in the food and farming industries, looking in particular at the contributions of Bob Torres and Erika Cudworth examining the mass breeding and raising of animals for meat and other ‘animal products’ (eggs, ‘dairy’). It suggests that while intersectionality and social domination are increasingly engaged with by both anarchism and animal liberation discourse, there is a significant way to go. (shrink)

In this chapter, I survey the ways in which anarchists have understood the concept of freedom. I argue that anarchists have understood freedom in three ways, which often overlap and combine. Anarchists understand freedom negatively, as freedom from domination, positively, in terms of the enabling conditions of freedom, and freedom with or freedom in, or in relation to the necessary institutional parameters for freedom. This latter conception of freedom is arguably more central to the lived anarchist movement than many have (...) recognised, pervading the major anarcho-syndicalist unions and most anarchist groups. I link it to negative and positive accounts of freedom in order to defend a wide and plural account of anarchist accounts of freedom. The institutional focus of the chapter also enables an approach to freedom that takes inter-group freedoms seriously and allows us to link anarchism more coherently to the dynamics of international relations. Each of these aspects of the problem of freedom in anarchist politics demands a reappraisal of the constitutionalising practices of anarchist groups, and I conclude by pointing to some of the most recent research on this topic. (shrink)

In the early 2000s, some commentators such as Barbara Epstein and David Graeber wrote about the ‘new anarchists’, in the aftermath of the so-called Battle of Seattle, opposing the alterglobalisation movement and the police protecting the World Trade Organization (WTO) Summit. At the end of the day, the ‘anarchists’ had stolen the show, either by their civil disobedience non-violent collective action under the umbrella of the Direct Action Network (DAN), which prevented the Summit to open, or the spectacular hit-and-run action (...) of the Black Bloc, which smashed tens of windows of infamous international firms (banks, coffee shops, fast food restaurants, etc.). The goal of the chapter is to explain what lead the new activists to endorse, openly or not, anarchism and how this anarchism translated into their collective organisation, decision-making process, and collective action. While discussing the role of the anarchists within the alter globalisation movement, we deal more specifically with the ‘fluffy vs spiky’ debate (non-violence/violence) and explain how the movement developed the concept of ‘the respect for diversity of tactics’ (which is consistent with anarchism). (shrink)

As the emergence of the green movement in the late 1960s ran alongside the resurgence of the anarchist tradition, it is perhaps no surprise that the two traditions would converge into what we would call today green anarchism. However, this was not simply an accident of timing: even the most cursory of surveys of the philosophies anarchism and ecology show clearly that the guiding principles of both are remarkably similar—participation, diversity, complementarity, and interdependence are the foundational principles of both areas (...) of thought. Taking in the work of the three main contributors to green anarchism—Murray Bookchin, Arne Naess, and John Zerzan—as our starting point, and drawing on contemporary examples of green anarchism in practice, this chapter examines the broad contours of what it means to be both an anarchist and a green, and argues that if we follow either school of thought to the logical conclusions of their foundational principles, then the two positions are inseparable: all genuine green thinking is by definition anarchistic; all anarchist thinking is by definition green. (shrink)

This chapter will outline how anarchism’s anti-authoritarian and autonomous ethic has been extended to gender hierarchy and domination and sexual normativity, considering how freedom is restricted by these phenomena. Anarchists have made unique contributions to analysis of these phenomena and resistance to them that will be explored in this chapter, both applying anarchist principles to gender and sexuality in wider society and applying feminist and queer perspectives to anarchism. These include critique and analysis of the hierarchical components of gender including (...) the public/private hierarchy; greater emphasis on the ‘personal’ terrain of politics; focus on how identity can be part of coercion and control; gendered analysis of the state; prefiguration of alternative modes of living and relating including freedom from gender hierarchy and sexual freedom; and approaches to organising that do not collapse back in to the hierarchies of gender. (shrink)

This chapter will present a global survey of the evolution of anarchists’ views of, and participation in, workers’ movement and labour unions. The executions of the Haymarket Martyrs—Chicago anarchists involved in the 1886 strike movement in pursuit of the eight-hour workday and condemned to death in a controversial trial connected to a bomb thrown at police—marked a pivotal moment in this history. It provided both an example of anarchist labour militancy and a potent new international workers’ holiday in the form (...) of May Day. The American strike movement of 1886 informed the development of syndicalist ideas in Europe, which in turn spread throughout the globe and intermixed with local traditions of labour radicalism. Synthesising the sizable body of literature on this topic, this chapter will (1) survey anarchist views of labour unions prior to Haymarket, (2) summarise the events of the Haymarket bombing and trial, (3) describe the influence of the Haymarket Martyrs on the development of syndicalism and creation of May Day, (4) trace the spread of anarcho-syndicalism from the 1890s to the 1910s, (5) provide an overview of anarchist debates over syndicalist organisation and tactics, and (6) review the subsequent evolution of anarcho-syndicalist ideas and organisations. (shrink)

Scholars of political ideology commonly allege that anarchism is not a coherent ideology because of the coexistence within it of irreconcilably opposed individualist and communalist strands. This chapter argues, to the contrary, that the coexistence within anarchism of well-developed and very different individualist and communalist strands is a primary source of its ideological coherence, distinction, and political strength. It argues, moreover, that the sometimes competing demands of individuality and community can never be perfectly reconciled, even in an ‘ideal anarchy’, and (...) that this seeming limitation of anarchism is actually one of its greatest strengths. These points are illustrated with reference to anarchist debates about and expressions of so-called ‘lifestyle’ politics, radical democracy, and literary utopianism. (shrink)

This chapter will consist of an overview of the thought and practice of American individualist anarchism from its onset in the early 1830s to its decline in the 1910s. It will do this by exploring the work and political action of key individualist anarchists, such as Josiah Warren, Ezra and Angela Heywood, Lysander Spooner, Moses and Lilian Harmon and Benjamin R. Tucker, highlighting their unique language of anarchism and their impact on American cultural and political life. By exploring their evolving (...) ideas on individuality, rights and political and economic organisation, the chapter will illuminate how the American individualists adjusted their thinking in response to the changing social, political and economic conditions of the US during this period. Further, the individualists’ impact on American social, political and cultural life will be demonstrated through an exploration of their activities in print media and social leagues. The chapter will stress the underappreciated importance women anarchists had on individualist anarchism through their formulation of a unique language of free love / sexual politics based on the principle of individuality. In doing so, this chapter will provide, for the first time, a broad overview and appreciation of the history of American individualist anarchism. (shrink)

Anarchism is a political concept and social movement associated with future or present politico-social projects without the state. It is informed by a commitment to the autonomy of the individual and the quest for voluntary consensus. In historical overviews of anarchism, it is often presented as possessing family resemblances to political, intellectual, and cultural innovations in classical Greece, ancient China, medieval Basra and medieval Europe, Civil War England, and Revolutionary Paris. Equally, anthropologists will point to ‘stateless peoples’ throughout the world (...) and human history as evidence of the deep pedigree that informs anarchist rejections of the state as an organising principle, and, indeed for most of humankind’s existence, the state did not exist. As a self-conscious ideology—as an ‘ism’—anarchism may owe its existence to the political formulations and intellectual currents that shaped Europe in the wake of the dual revolution, but it is also, crucially, a global and not merely European tradition. Anarchism’s history—its tenets, concepts, approaches, arguments, and style—was thus nurtured by global currents that spread people and ideas around the world, and its local manifestation was often shaped by domestic cultural and intellectual traditions that make anarchism an elusively protean ideology. (shrink)

Individualism is the poor relation of the anarchist movement. Its modern association with anarcho/capitalism has marginalised it within a movement that is predominantly collectivist and an advocate of stateless socialism. By examining the early history of individualist ideas, rather than its later offshoots, this chapter gives a more sympathetic reading of individualist anarchism as a radical and, to an extent, anti-capitalist doctrine. The chapter identifies three main themes running through individualist anarchism. The first is the philosophical idea of the autonomous (...) individual, drawing on the writings of Max Stirner. Secondly, individualists developed a distinctive political economy, based on free exchange and extensive property rights that rejected all forms of monopoly. Finally, they promoted the idea of a free society in which self-ownership would be the basis for individual liberty and social equality. Though individualism floundered in the wake of growing collectivist polities, it provides an original and insightful critique of the mainstream that deserves our continued attention. (shrink)

Due to the success of the first edition of The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism (2019), we have the great pleasure of writing a short introduction to the second. We noted in the first edition the revival of anarchism as a political and cultural force and area of study since the end of the Cold War and the decline of its paradigms.

Anarchism contributed conceptual, thematic, and topical contents to literature—likewise, literature contributed to anarchism as a political philosophy and practice. This chapter covers Romantic through contemporary literature emphasising English-language traditions in Europe and North America since 1790. It covers anarchist authors, such as William Godwin through to George Woodcock, as well as authors who integrated anarchist thought into literary works, like Percy Shelley, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, John Cowper Powys, Henry Miller, Herbert Read, Robert Duncan, Jackson Mac Low, and Kathy Acker. (...) Anarchist literary movements are included distinct from individual participants, such as the New Apocalypse and the San Francisco Renaissance, as well as non-Anglophone international literary traditions. The chapter covers authors whose depictions of anarchism shaped popular consciousness, primarily Joseph Conrad and G. K. Chesterton. The chapter also covers popular genre writing, including works by Ursula K. Le Guin, Michael Moorcock, Starhawk, and Alan Moore. How these authors, movements, and works diverge from Marxist and liberal literary traditions is discussed, including conflicts within literary criticism and literary theory. In addition to the historical relationships between anarchism and literature, the chapter considers how thematic, formal, structural, and stylistic innovations in literature relate to anarchism. (shrink)

Mutualism designates a group of anarchist philosophies that envision non-governmental society and non-capitalist commerce as the product of bilateral agreement and mutual guarantees between free individuals and social groupings. Historically, it predates anarchism as a term to describe the constructive counterpart to anarchists’ critique of authoritarian institutions. From 1840 until his death in 1865, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon produced a body of social scientific work contrasting the systematic exploitation inherent in existing governmental and commercial institutions with the possibility of a society based (...) on mutual tolerance and ‘synallagmatic contract’. This analysis not only provided an explanation for how the exploitation occurs but also, he believed, demonstrated an already existing ‘mutuality’ of relations. As collectivist and communist forms of anarchist thought emerged, the term ‘mutualism’ became associated with non-communist forms of anarchism, including the individualism of Benjamin R. Tucker. The twentieth century saw the emergence in the United States of a more individualist form of mutualism, a ‘market anarchism’, and the present century has seen a continuation of the tradition that began with Tucker, in the ‘free market anti-capitalism’ of Kevin Carson. Meanwhile, more traditionally ‘Proudhonian’ mutualism continues to experience periods of renewed interest. (shrink)

This chapter offers a very brief overview of non-Western anarchisms (while criticising that very terminology), touching upon historical and contemporary manifestations of anti-authoritarian movements in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, closing with a consideration of two comprehensive liberation projects in progress in Chiapas and Rojava. In analysing manifestations of anarchism and related formations across various contexts, it’s necessary to map power relations and relevant forms of oppression, exploitation and hierarchy as they manifest in each specific context, and (...) their corresponding histories of resistance and alternative-making, drawing on cultural repertories which practitioners may or may not choose explicitly to identify as connected to the modern genealogy of anarchist tradition. Although each example is unique, one important factor shared by most non-Western anarchisms is a history of colonisation, foreign occupation or intervention. This adds an additional layer of complexity to the analysis of power and resistance, requiring a systemic awareness of where a given society is located in relation to global structures of capital and empire, dispossession and extractive industry, as these intersect or collude with locally rooted forms of domination, hierarchy and authority. Looking beyond “the West” for radical alternatives, this exploration alights on a note of hope. (shrink)

This chapter explores some of the diverse changes to production and consumption facilitated by the Internet, particularly those that embody a shift towards non-hierarchical and participatory practices. Some of these practices are explicitly informed by anarchist praxis and history. The development of independent, non-commercial communication infrastructures online has frequently been driven by a concern with evading state censorship and surveillance. These communication infrastructures are also often produced by collectives drawing on anarchist principles in their organisational forms. Other emerging practices are (...) heavily influenced by the US libertarian subculture associated with early Internet development and with the large multinational companies that continue to shape the Internet. More interesting potential lies, perhaps, in marginalised practices being enacted outside the gaze of hacktivists, Bitcoin fanatics, and venture capitalists. Anarchist praxis is frequently at its most disruptive in the networks of solidarity and mutual aid facilitated by the Internet. By developing gift economies; disrupting the assumption that only paid labour is meaningful labour; and developing radical, anti-capitalist, and anti-hierarchical discourses around labour and consumption, they offer new possibilities growing within the cracks of the old system. These practices are deserving of more attention than they have received from anarchist theorists to date. (shrink)

Postanarchism has emerged over the last decade as a central genre in contemporary anarchist thought. While it has followed different paths and trajectories, it can generally be seen as a reformulation of anarchism through an encounter with poststructuralist theory. Postanarchism has involved two main theoretical moves. Firstly, it is a critical deconstruction of some of the epistemological limits of what I call classical anarchism—the anarchism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It questions some of its key assumptions about human nature, (...) sociability, power relations and the immanence of revolution. Secondly, postanarchism is a positive political and ethical strategy that can inform contemporary radical struggles and movements. It is based around key political and ethical themes, such as the non-acceptability of power, the problematic of voluntary servitude, rethinking the idea of freedom and what I call ontological anarchy—in other words, it is an anarchism without fixed ontological foundations and without a specific telos. Yet, what is the place of anarchism today at a time when the horizon of radical politics is much more opaque, when reactive and fundamentalist forms of politics are gaining prominence and when the machine of power increasingly reveals its nihilistic and ‘anarchic’ operation? (shrink)

Syndicalism is an anti-statist revolutionary strategy rooted in the anarchist tradition. It argues that revolutionary labour unions, built through daily struggles, radically democratic practices and popular education, provide an irreplaceable force for defending and extending gains and rights for the working class and crucial levers for social revolution. It involves prefigurative mass organising and immediate struggle, to build a revolutionary counter-power and counter-culture to abolish capitalism, the state and oppression. Direct action and solidarity, self-activity and the development of political and (...) technical knowledge are means to enable the accumulation of individual and organisational capacities for a revolutionary general strike (or ‘general lockout’ of the capitalist class) in which working people occupy workplaces, take control of the means of production and construct a stateless, socialist order based upon self-management, planning through interlinked assemblies and councils and production for need, rather than the profits or power of a ruling class minority. (shrink)

The last decade has experienced a revival of global anarchist movements in Western and non-Western contexts. It is so in the case of Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and other Southern Mediterranean countries where anarchist groups and forms of doing politics have re-emerged during the last years with the Revolutions in 2011 in the Southern Mediterranean societies. Tahrir, and other squares in Egypt, Tunisia and Syria, constituted spaces of convergence, of encounter and ‘anarchist experiences’ in themselves. These experiences ended up with the (...) establishment of self-declared anarchist groups and of different autonomous spaces and collectives that, by reclaiming their right to the city and radicalising the public space, were organised in horizontal, decentralised and anti-hierarchical ways with the ultimate goal of keeping alive the demands of 2011 Revolutions. The present study incorporates theories of new social movements and ‘autonomous spaces’ (Newman, 2011) in order to analyse the contemporary political culture of anarchism in the Southern Mediterranean contexts. Throughout the study of ‘autonomous spaces’ I intend to decolonise and broaden the meaning of anarchism, on the one hand, and to incorporate the experiences of the Arab social revolutions to its history, on the other. (shrink)

Tactics are the techniques and actions used by social movements that implement strategies for the purpose of achieving goals. For anarchist movements, tactics can assume a reactive, diagnostic, or destructive force for opposing hierarchy, repression, and inequality. Tactics can also assume a proactive, prognostic, or creative force that promotes horizontalism, liberation, and egalitarianism. The purpose of these tactics is twofold: intervening in society to immediately accomplish goals (also called ‘direct action’) and illustrating a vision for a better world (also called (...) ‘prefiguration’). Anarchist movements commonly have a protest repertoire that they regularly draw from, deploying one tactic or another from their ‘toolkit’, the choice of which depends on changing external conditions, participant interests, and coalition alliances. Tactics and other organisational forms are never imposed by anarchists upon others and thus must spread horizontally. Usually a combination of word-of-mouth, movement press, and stories of first-hand experiences help to diffuse these tactics from one location to another. (shrink)

Anarchist modes of ‘doing architecture’ may seem, at first, a seemingly irreconcilable dichotomy. How can something as regulated, controlled, planned and expensive to execute as the building of buildings possibly take place in an anarchist mode? Our attitude to architecture has developed alongside the professionalisation of ‘building buildings’. The architecture where anarchist practices are most evident is the building of shelter. There is a complex history of people in Britain building their own homes, assisted by their communities, and using ancient (...) lore to enable them to own these homes. These stories serve to illustrate the alternative history of ‘building buildings’. Additionally, the more contemporary history of residents occupying their homes, resisting plans for ‘regeneration’, provides templates of anarchist practices existing in architecture. The 1970s in the UK is a key period when practices of resistance to architect’s hegemony emerged. Exemplars such as the Architects’ Revolutionary Council (ARC) tell the story of a rebellion of professionals against the profession. The development of a new anarchist vernacular of housing architecture, in particular, will not emerge, if: ‘…we insist that every last structure has got to be blessed by the magic of the architect’. (shrink)

This chapter traces the ideological genesis of the notion of ‘propaganda by the deed’, recounts the terrorist wave which it partly inspired in the 1880s–1920s and highlights the contemporary legacies of the concept and its terrorist ramifications. The elaboration of propaganda by the deed as an activist strategy in the last years of the First International is charted, as well as subsequent, narrower reinterpretations of propaganda by the deed focusing on violence as the means to achieve political goals. The four-decade (...) anarchist terrorist wave and its complex links with propaganda by the deed are then examined, highlighting tensions between the systematic characterisation of anarchism as a terrorist movement and actual internal divisions regarding the use of political violence. The third section surveys the explanations for both the rise and eventual decline of political violence, in particular the deployment of policing on a variety of scales as a response to terrorism. The widespread contemporary interest in the era of propaganda by the deed is highlighted, with a focus on academic debates exploring the possible parallels between anarchist terrorism and post-2001 Islamist-inspired attacks. (shrink)

The end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century were crucial years for the development of anarchist theory and practice. Anarchist ideology would draw on key ideas from the Enlightenment. The French Revolution would provide a revolutionary model of direct action driven by revolutionary minorities in the cause of liberation and an early form of socialism. It would also be during this period that the term anarchist would enter the political lexicon in a prominent way, and (...) the first anarchist texts would be published. During the French Revolution, the roots of anarchist political theory and revolutionary practice would be laid. Later anarchists would embrace the Revolution’s spontaneous revolutionary violence, as well as the role played by revolutionary minorities and the proto-socialist ideas they would promote. Additionally, the direct democracy practised by the Sections and Commune of Paris would provide a model of revolutionary political governance. Also during the Revolution, the term anarchist would enter the political discourse of revolutionaries. (shrink)

The Spanish Civil War is one of the most significant events in the history of anarchism. The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936 prompted a libertarian social revolution, which saw widespread collectivisation and worker self-management in Barcelona and urban Catalonia and the rural provinces of neighbouring Aragon. Empowered anarchist committees and groups also sought to overturn gender oppression, overhaul the education system, and enact radical public health programmes. This unprecedented revolution ended in May 1937, with the reassertion (...) of Republican state control. After a week of violence in Barcelona, the anarcho-syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) was removed from its dominant position in the north-east of the country, and most revolutionary measures were halted or reversed. This chapter will begin by outlining the development of the anarchist movement in Spain. It will then focus on the Spanish Revolution, highlighting the key anarchist individuals, groups, and ideas of the early months of the Civil War, before moving on to a discussion of the events and historiography of the ‘May Days’. Finally, the chapter will examine the decline of the movement in the remaining years of the Civil War, and the experience of defeat, repression, and exile during the Franco dictatorship. (shrink)

This chapter draws upon Michael Freeden’s morphological theory of ideology to examine diverse conceptions of the State within the anarchist tradition. Its principal aim in so doing is twofold: first, to determine how and to what extent these conceptions serve to distinguish anarchism from other libertarian ideologies, and second, to explore the role they play in the formulation of diverse anarchist tendencies. As I shall argue, the particular meaning and degree of relative significance that a given conception assigns to the (...) State depends on the internal arrangement of its ‘micro-components’ and/or on its relation to other concepts within the ideological morphology. Both of these factors must be taken into account in order to understand anarchism’s internal diversity as well as its distinctiveness among ideologies. (shrink)