Modern anarchism

In 1793 William Godwin published An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, in which he presents his vision of a free society alongside a critique of government. This is considered by some to be the first anarchist treatise. These commentators credit him with founding modern philosophical anarchism although Godwin never used the word anarchism. He is also considered a forebear of utilitarianism. It wasn't until Pierre-Joseph Proudhon published What is Property? in 1840 that the term "anarchist" was adopted as a self-description. It is for this reason that some claim Proudhon as the founder of modern anarchist theory.

Individualists, taking much from the writings of Max Stirner, among others, demanded the utmost respect for the liberty of the individual.

Later in the 19th century, Anarchist communist theorists like Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin built on the Marxist critique of capitalism and synthesized it with their own critique of the state, emphasizing the importance of a communal perspective to maintain individual liberty in a social context.

Mikhail Bakunin saw a need to defend the working class against oppression and overthrow the ruling class as a means to dissolve the state. Peter Kropotkin's anarchist communism developed from his scientific theory based on evolution in which co-operation equaled or surpassed competition in importance, as illustrated in Mutual Aid (1897).

Some revolutionaries of this time encouraged acts of political violence such as bombings and the assassinations of heads of state to further anarchism. However, these actions were regarded by many anarchists as counter-productive or ineffective (see "Violence and non-violence", below).

In the late 19th century Anarchosyndicalism developed as the industrialized form of libertarian communism, emphasizing industrial actions, especially the general strike, as the primary strategy to achieve anarchist revolution, and "build the new society in the shell of the old".

Anarchists played a role in many of the labour movements, uprisings, and revolutions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including the Russian Revolution (1917). In the United States, many new immigrants were anarchists; an especially notable group was the large number of Jewish immigrants who had left Russia and Eastern Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These groups were disrupted by the Red Scare of 1919.

Emma Goldman was a very influential anarchist and feminist during this period. She traveled around the country and the world spreading anarchist ideas and attempting to live out an anarchist life.

The anarcho-syndicalist orientation of many early American labor unions played a large part in the formation of the American political spectrum. The United States is the only industrialized former English colony to not have a labor-based political party.

In Europe, in the first quarter of the 20th century anarchist movements achieved relative, if short-lived, successes and were violently repressed by states. However, in the 1920s and 1930s the conflict between anarchism and the state was eclipsed by the one among liberal democracy, fascism and communism, which ended with the defeat of fascism in World War II. During the Spanish Civil War (1936-9), which many consider a prelude to World War II, a widely popular anarchist movement supported by militias loyal to the republic took control of rural areas of north-east Spain in 1936-1937 and collectivized the land, being crushed in short order by the Communist-controlled republican army.

At the end of World War II Europe was mostly divided into a liberal region under United States influence and a communist region under control of the Soviet Union, and the major political dichotomy became that between capitalism and communism. The philosophical influence of anarchism remained latent until it resurfaced in the 1960s.

After World War II a political theory known as anarcho-capitalism developed, mainly in North America. Drawing primarily from classical laissez-faire liberalism in addition to several other political and economic theories, it is disowned by many anarchists who believe that capital relations contradict widely held anarchist tenets. Anarcho-capitalism took the classical liberal critique of government intervention one step further, claiming that free markets can provide not only economic goods, but also justice and security and that the state is not only unnecessary to maintain the market mechanism but harmful to it.

From a very different perspective but also in North America, primitivists like John Zerzan proclaimed that civilization — not just the state — would need to be abolished to foster liberty and a just social order. A rejection of modern Technology is also prominent in the views of many primitivists, such as Theodore Kaczynski (the Unabomber).

A surge of popular interest in anarchism occurred during the 1960s and 1970s. In the UK this was associated with the punk rock movement; the band Crass is celebrated for its anarchist and pacifist ideas; of note is also the Sex Pistols' hit "Anarchy in the UK" In Denmark, the Freetown Christiania was created in downtown Copenhagen. The housing and employment crisis in most of Western Europe led to the formation of communes and squatter movements like the one still thriving in Barcelona, Spain.

Through the 20th century anarchists were actively involved in the labour and feminist movements, and later in the fight against fascism. The influence of this on anarchist thought is apparent, as most of the traditional anarchist philosophies emphasize the economic implications of anarchism or arrive at anarchism from economic arguments. Since the last third of the 20th century, anarchists have been involved in student protest movements, peace movements, squatter movements, and the anti-globalization movement, among others.

Anarchism today

Today, traditional anarchist organizations continue to exist across the globe and, in recent years, anarchism as a political philosophy has gained a higher profile as a result of the rise in protest against globalisation.

Feminism has always been a part of the anarchist movement, in the form of anarcha-feminism. North American anarchism also takes strong influences from the American Civil Rights Movement and the movement against the war in Vietnam. European anarchism has developed out of the labour movement, and both have incorporated animal rights activism. Globally, anarchism has also grown in popularity and influence as part of the anti-war, anti-capitalist, and anti-globalisation movements. Recently, anarchists have been known for their involvement in protests against World Trade Organization and Group of Eight meetings, and the World Economic Forum; protests which are generally portrayed in mainstream media coverage as violent riots. Many anarchists are part of the black blocs at these protests and some engage in rioting, vandalism, and violent confrontations with police. Others peacefully protested, upholding non-violent principles. Agent-provocateurs most commonly pose as anarchists, often committing or provoking violence or vandalism, themselves, in order to discredit protesters or legitimize police mobilization.

Anarchists and others might say that recent technological developments have made the anarchist cause both easier to advance and more conceivable to people. Many people use cell phones or the Internet to form loose communities which could be said to be organized along anarchist lines. Some of these communities have as their purpose the production of information in a non-commodified or use-value format, a goal made attainable by the availability of personal computing, desktop publishing and digital media. These things have made it possible for individuals to share music files over the Internet, without economic incentive, and even with a certain amount of risk. There are also open source programming communities, who donate their time, and offer their product freely as well. Examples include Usenet, the free software movement (including the GNU/Linux community and the wikiwiki paradigm), and Indymedia. A book analyzing how this new "anarchic" mode of production is possible is Eric S. Raymond's The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Traditional historical materialist analysis, used by many libertarian socialists, is one means of interpreting the above, and would describe it as a "political economy of non-commodity information production".

This article incorporates text from An Anarchist FAQ [1]

@-faq

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