The Resurgence of Anarchism

The specters that haunt the Western liberal imagination today are not fascism or communism (now confined, nominally, to China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam), but authoritarian ethnonationalism on the one hand and certain brands of anarchism on the other.

In a recent post, the prolific political commentator Matthew Yglesias makes a compelling claim: that anarchism, not socialism, may well be the future of the cultural left.

While the historic signatures of anarchism—syndicalism, communes and mutual aid societies—have been swept into history’s dustpan, its spirit persists. It could be seen in the 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas, the 1999 antiglobalist battle of Seattle, the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement and, more recently, the 2016 mobilization against the Dakota Access Pipeline and the 2020 demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd. Its spirit animates antifa, the combative antifascist and antiracist political movement, and the more militant and radical wings of the environmental movement.

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Although Marxist ideas dominated the great revolutions of the 20th century in Russia, China and Cuba (and, to a lesser extent, labor, social democratic and socialist parties) it is also the case that other forms of left-wing radicalism, including anarcho-syndicalism, populism and various communitarian and cooperative movements, were nearly or even more important in Latin America and southern Europe and among some of the most famous U.S. radicals.

Indeed, one effect of the Russian Revolution was to make Marxist communism virtually synonymous with left-wing radicalism in Western thought. But the collapse of East European Communist governments, followed by the Soviet Union’s demise, which discredited that kind of utopianism, led to a revival of another radical tradition—anarchism. The anarchist vision infuses a host of left-wing movements today: anticolonial, antiglobalist, the Occupy movement and the more radical currents in environmentalism and feminism.

Anarchism is many things. It is a disparaging label, a philosophy, a utopian ideal and a political and labor movement. It rejects the state and structures of domination and hierarchical authority. It emphasizes freedom and individual autonomy. It envisions a society organized around the voluntary reciprocal exchange of resources and services for mutual benefit. It advocates self-managed, self-governed societies and institutions without a governing body. It favors organizing society around decentralized structures and networks of voluntary associations and strives for a society where all individuals have equal access to resources and opportunities and where economic, gender, racial and all other forms of inequality are eradicated.

There are different strands of anarchism, including:

• Anarcho-communism, which seeks a classless, stateless society where communal ownership of property and the means of production replaces private ownership.
• Anarcho-syndicalism, which advocates a society where workers control production through their own democratic unions or syndicates.
• Anarcho-primitivism, which criticizes modern technology and industrialization and favors a return to ways of life that allow for closer harmony with nature.
• Anarcho-feminism, which calls for the abolition of all forms of domination and hierarchy, including patriarchy.

The standard histories of anarchism by such scholars as Robert Graham, Ruth Kinna, Peter H. Marshall, Cindy Milstein and Alex Prichard trace the intellectual roots of this tradition to such figures as William Godwin, the French communitarians and utopians like Charles Fourier and Comte de Saint-Simon and their critique of state power and social inequality. A specific emphasis is placed on the key architects of anarchist ideas:

• Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, best known for declaring, “Property is theft!” whose writings stressed mutualism, where individuals and cooperative groups exchange products in markets without profit.
• Max Stirner, who argued for the absolute primacy of the individual over all forms of collective identity and societal institutions.
• Mikhail Bakunin, who emphasized collective, direct action by the working class to overthrow the state and capitalism.
• Pyotr Kropotkin, who argued that cooperation, not competition, is the driving force of evolution and human societies.

Studies of anarchism in the United States tend to focus on such utopians and activists as Josiah Warren, “Mother” Jones, “Big Bill” Haywood, Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Murray Bookchin, Murray N. Rothbard and Noam Chomsky.

Anarchism is not just a set of thinkers, activists and abstract ideas about decentralization, horizontal decision-making and opposition to status and power hierarchies. It’s also a distinctive sensibility manifest in a host of disparate movements that may not explicitly identify as anarchist but do reflect certain shared values, outlooks and commitments.

After the First World War, the appeal of anarchism dissipated for several reasons, including repression, internal divisions, state-led welfare reforms and the rise of Bolshevism. The success of the Russian Revolution made the model of a vanguard party taking state power to impose socialism from above dominant, overshadowing anarchist models of direct action and voluntary association.

In recent years, however, anarchism has experienced a resurgence, particularly in the context of antiglobalization movements, environmental activism and grassroots community organizing. Contemporary anarchism often focuses on direct action and the creation of alternative institutions and networks that embody anarchist principles, such as cooperatives and collectives. Especially attracted today are anarchists’ emphasis on cooperative forms of production and other forms of collective living. The decentralization and horizontal structure of many social movements today reflect anarchist influences, underscoring anarchism’s continuing relevance.

The resurgence of anarchism reflects broader disillusionment with traditional political systems and a growing interest in more egalitarian, decentralized forms of social organization and in worker-owned firms. While its influence on mainstream political discourse may be limited, anarchism has had a powerful influence on a variety of activist social and political movements worldwide.

The word “anarchism” shares its linguistic roots with “anarchy,” and since the late 19th century, anarchism has been associated with violent disruption: with acts of terrorism, bomb throwing and assassinations, direct action, and what Paul Brousse, then a radical French journalist, called the “propaganda of the deed.”

Here, it’s crucial to distinguish between anarchism as a political philosophy advocating for a stateless society based on voluntary association and mutual aid and the actions of individuals or groups who have adopted violence and provocation as tactics.

Anarchism’s association with chaos and violence primarily stems from public perceptions, media portrayals and specific historical incidents, particularly during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Self-described anarchists and nihilists assassinated a number of heads of state, including Czar Alexander II of Russia in 1881, President Sadi Carnot of France in 1894, Empress Elisabeth of Austria in 1898, King Umberto I of Italy in 1900, President William McKinley in 1901, and staged bombings, such as an attack on the Liceu Opera House in Barcelona in 1893, which resulted in 72 deaths or serious injuries, and 36 bombs targeting prominent businessmen, anti-immigration politicians and anti-immigrant officials in the United States. These attacks provoked a strong backlash that resulted in the creation of Interpol and what would become the FBI. The best estimate of the number of people killed in acts branded as the work of anarchists totals around 1,000.

Some anarchist slogans also struck many as confrontational and combative, like “No war but the class war” or “No war between nations; no peace between classes.”

However, many of those associated most closely with anarchist ideas, including Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi, were outspoken advocates of pacifism. Yet the allure of violence, in many instances, proved strong. Although anarchists are no more prone to violence than any other group of political or social activists, and perhaps less so, it’s undeniable that some groups that fall vaguely under anarchism’s banner do consider disruptive protests and provocations as essential elements in advancing their goals. These activists cling to the illusion that a crisis might somehow contribute to systemic change. I have my doubts.

Today, the anarchist impulse takes many divergent forms: climate activists, degrowthers, advocates of participatory democracy, communitarian localists, not-in-my-backyard opponents of construction projects, those committed to communal living and cooperative enterprises, and various countercultural and activist movements dedicated to direct action and protest. As a consequence, it’s easy to admire or despise anarchism, depending on which version you emphasize.

I share the view that anarchists tend to downplay:

• The need for organized governance.
• The role of markets and state intervention in managing the economy effectively and promoting economic growth.
• The role of power and competition in social relations.
• The importance of political coalition building and partisan negotiation.

I also fear, to paraphrase words attributed to Oscar Wilde, that anarchism takes too many evenings. Nevertheless, without the anarchist impulse, our political discourse would be even more impoverished than it is.

The historian Carl Degler once claimed that capitalism arrived in America on the first boats. The story is, of course, much more complicated than that. This society has long had two contrasting traditions: a liberal individualist current, with an emphasis on liberty, rights, personal aspiration, mobility and free market competition, but also a communitarian tradition that seldom gets the attention or respect it deserves. Advocates of that latter tradition have often been dismissed as eccentrics, cranks or cultists or conversely as militants, subversives or incipient authoritarians. But anarchists offered a critique and alternative to the kind of unregulated commercial economy that was emerging in pre–Civil War America and the corporate capitalism and its associated inequalities of wealth and power that triumphed after the war.

That tradition has certainly had its excesses and has at times lapsed into illiberalism and turned to violence. But democracy depends upon impassioned and committed critics who denounce domination, exploitation and gender, class and race-based disparities and who believe that social relations can and should be reconfigured along more egalitarian lines. That’s why anarchism’s guiding spirit has risen again and again.