Labels. When it comes to political philosophy there is no shortage of divergent definitions and labels. Among the most confusing, least understood, political labels is Anarchism. What do anarchists believe? Who are the spokesmen for anarchism? Are there different schools of anarchist thought? As with most questions of political philosophy (or any kind of philosophy), it all goes back to history.
The first self-declared anarchist was Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a French intellectual and member of parliament in the mid -19th century. He apparently was an early influence on Karl Marx, but the German socialist’s thinking took a separate path. Proudhon hadn’t focused as much as Marx would on class struggle – he instead blamed the whole concept of property, and governments’ obeisance to it, as the source of the world’s woes. Proudhon’s anarchism was originally called “mutualism” and emphasized worker control (and ownership) of the means of production, as did Marx, but in a free market economy. Today we might think of Libertarian Socialism as its descendant. In any case, Proudhon didn’t have much use for governments. Marx and Proudhon later had a major falling out and, at the International Workingmen’s Congress in 1872, Marx (now a principal in the IWA) decided to throw all the anarchist followers of Proudhon out of the organization. Subsequent socialist Internationals saw some anarchists attempt to rejoin, indeed even Lenin was a “reformed” anarchist, but mostly anarchists had to form their own organizations and hold their own Congresses – always officially on the “outs” with Marxist-identified groups.
Just because they were shunned by Marxists, however, didn’t mean they were ingratiated by any governments, authoritarian or democratic. After all, despite considerable divergence and blooming of thought among the various strands of anarchism, one principle they all shared was opposition to any centralized authority of the state. Marxists, especially post-Bolshevik Marxist-Leninists, believed in the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” otherwise known as totalitarianism – or certainly strong central state authority. Advocating, instead, communal cooperatives or other voluntary associations, anarchists believed that the nation-state was an oppressive entity, using force or other compulsion to control its populace. And Social Democrats (the branch of Marxism that established itself with the Second International after 1889) would use democratic, parliamentary governments to empower the working class, not destroy those governments. Anarchism, in all its variations, favored ultimate destruction of the state – the means of the revolution varied with different anarchist groups, but the end was the same. Property rights and coercion by the state were to be abolished.
While Proudhon didn’t write much about the means of revolution, one of his earlier followers, Mikhail Bakunin from Russia, did. Bakunin wrapped himself, as did Proudhon, in the anarchist label, but had a much stronger, more urgent, desire to do whatever it took to overthrow authoritarian regimes. He travelled around Europe encouraging multiple insurrections in France, Germany, Austria, Hungary. To Bakunin, violence was the primary vehicle for revolution — as leader of the anarchist wing of the IWA after Proudhon’s death, he was the foe Marx expelled from the International in 1872. It was during Bakunin’s time that the term “propaganda of the deed” came into fashion. His gang was clearly dangerous! Propaganda of the Deed was taken to mean literal “bomb-throwing,” assassination, bank robberies to finance the movement, and general disorder. This became the face of revolution to much of Europe and America. Instead of stimulating support and growing the ranks of revolutionaries, the primary effect of these actions was merely to facilitate further state repression – the opposite of what the anarchist theoreticians wanted.
But there was an alternative to Propaganda of the Deed, and it is usually attributed to Peter Kropotkin, another Russian of noble birth, like Bakunin – but somewhat younger. Kropotkin was a scientist by inclination, his stint in the Army included significant geographical and naturalistic exploration of eastern Siberia (and Manchuria, somewhat furtively). Kropotkin gladly accepted the anarchist mantel, but a different flavor from Bakunin. He took issue with Charles Darwin, at least the Darwinian interpretation then becoming popular – leading to something we know as “social Darwinism.” This interpretation of natural selection valorized competition as the key to survival of a species. This familiar mode of thinking usually ends up as a justification for capitalism. Kropotkin believed it to be false – and wrote perhaps his most profound work, “Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution,” to dispute that version of Darwin’s work. Kropotkin, as a dedicated anarchist and follower of Proudhon, believed that cooperation, not competition, was the dominant characteristic of all species, whether animal or human. And voluntary cooperative association has always been at the core of anarchist philosophy.
Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin – these are the “big three” thinkers at the origin of the political philosophy we know as anarchism. Proudhon invented the idea of worker control of the means of production (and distribution of its fruits), Bakunin preached the primacy of revolution to seize and destroy the state, and Kropotkin imagined an ideal (utopian?) society based on mutual and voluntary cooperation – perhaps in small, atomized communities. What became of these ideas as we moved through the twentieth, into the twenty-first, centuries?
I confess, as a septuagenarian, that for the first twenty years of my life there was no visible political activity that anybody (in the U.S.) considered “anarchist.” That began to change in the 1960s! When the 1968 Democratic Convention was held in Chicago, we all (if we were sentient, politically involved, youth) became acutely aware of anarchist activity and groups. The Yippies, SDS, followed by the Weather Underground (ostensibly Marxist, but we know differently now), the Simbionese Liberation Army – even the Black Panthers. They could all be considered anarchists. Some called them “terrorists,” harking back to that 19th century Propaganda of the Deed direct action. True, the Weather Underground fit that definition (officially labeled as such by the FBI), and the SLA did rob banks and kidnap Patty Hearst, but if the Yippies of Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin committed any Propaganda of the Deed, it was limited to peaceful marches and painting expletives on their foreheads! The Black Panther Party thought it important to be armed and they were idolized by the Weatherman faction (Weather Underground), but their primary activity was distribution of direct aid to marginalized communities – they were anarchists in that they absolutely DID NOT trust local or national government to distribute that aid to their communities. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS of Tom Hayden and others), while splintering into more radical sects (Weathermen), was primarily a socialist organization on college campuses starting in the Midwest – mainstream by 21st century standards.
The “radical” sixties and seventies were a precursor to the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle, then came the Occupy Movement, and Antifa. Punk Rock in the ‘80s and ‘90s took anarchist values into the aesthetic realm – I’m not ashamed that I still enjoy listening to that music! Getting back to basics, however, we are confronted by the fact that governments are probably necessary to implement any of the good ideas about property, legality, and personal freedom that anarchists have always embraced. The administrative state is also the democratic state, the protector of rights and facilitator of justice. This runs counter to the professed objectives of revolutionary anarchists and Libertarians alike. So, the answer to the question, “Where Have All the Anarchists Gone?” may well be that they still dwell in our hearts, but we’ve learned so much more as our minds have grown … and we have gotten older!
— William Sundwick
Warp and Woof 