The Anarchism Read online

  The Anarchism

  History and alternative view by A.G.

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  Anarchism is a philosophy that calls for the abolition of government, and by extension, of all authority, hierarchy or social control imposed on the individual, considering it to be undesirable, unnecessary and harmful. Sébastien Faure, French anarchist philosopher, said, "Anyone who denies the authority and fight against it is an anarchist." Under such a simple formulation, few doctrines or movements have expressed such a variety of approaches and actions, which were not always well understood by the public. Historically speaking, anarchism generally focuses on the individual and on the review of its relationship with society, their goal is social change towards a future society, in the words of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, "without master or sovereign."

  There is no academic agreement on a taxonomy of anarchist movements, some make a distinction between two basic lines of thought, individualists and communists; it’s also common to note the four major streams: individualist anarchism, mutualism, communist anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism, and according to some sources, also collectivism.

  Having emerged from various precursors movements since antiquity, the starting point of the doctrinal debate about modern anarchist thought dates back to the late eighteenth century, in the work of William Godwin, but anarchism develops in the nineteenth century through different movements, giving some of the most significant throughout the twentieth century libertarian experiences. After the decline of anarchism as a social movement in the 1940s, anarchist ideas have been recovered and reworked by scholars and thinkers, and have continually been inserted in many doctrines and contemporary movements, especially after its emergence in the context of certain movements by student and anti-authoritarians in the 1960s.

  Contents:

  1 Etymology

  2 History of anarchism and its movement

  2.1 Background of modern anarchism

  2.2 XVIII Century: Enlightenment and the French Revolution

  2.3 Socialism: Utopian and modern anarchism

  2.4 Toward the First International

  2.5 Development of the American anarcho-individualism

  2.6 Emergence and evolution of anarcho

  2.7 Anarcho-syndicalism, anarchism without adjectives

  2.7.1 Anarchism without adjectives

  2.7.2 Spain

  2.7.3 France

  2.7.4 Anarchism in Latin America

  2.8 First revolutions

  2.8.1 Ilinden. The revolution in Macedonia and Thrace

  2.8.2 Russian Revolution of 1905

  2.9 The European anarcho-individualism

  2.10 The interwar period

  2.10.1 The Revolution Marxism

  2.10.2 Platformism and synthetism

  2.10.3 Other anarchist revolutions and events

  2.10.4 anarchist revolutions in Spain

  2.11 After the Second World War

  2.12 Contemporary Period

  Three main movements of thought

  3.1 individualist anarchism

  3.2 Mutuality

  3.3 Communist Anarchism

  3.4 Anarcho-syndicalism

  4 New movements of anarchist thought

  4.1 environmentalist Anarchism

  4.2 Anarchist Feminism

  4.3 Insurrectionalism

  4.4 Positive anarchism

  4.5 Anarcho-capitalism

  5 Anarchism in culture

  5.1 Literature

  5.2 Theatre

  5.3 Cinema

  5.4 Visual arts

  5.5 Music

  6 Criticisms of anarchism

  7 Related readings

  8 References

  9 Bibliography

  Etymology

  The word 'anarchy' comes from the Greek 'ἀναρχία »( «anarkhia" ).It is composed of the Greek prefix ἀν-( n ), which means 'no' or 'no', and root arche (Greek ἀρχή, "origin", "beginning", "power" or "mandate"). The etymology of the term refers, in a general way, to be devoid of a guiding principle and origin. This translates to "no priori ' 'No standard' "No hierarchy" "No authority" or "no government."

  The terms 'anarchy' and 'anarchist' were used freely, in a political sense, during the French Revolution, in terms of negative criticism relating to abuses employed by various parties to damage their opponents as well, both Enragés that wary of excessive power, as Robespierre, who sought, were labeled anarchists. This negative image change when Pierre Joseph Proudhon published What is Property? (1840), the book that established him as a pioneer of libertarian thought. After responding to the title ("property is theft"), the author becomes the first man to call himself anarchist and precise what he means by anarchy , "a form of government without a master or sovereign."

  History of anarchism and its movement

  Index

  1 Precursors of anarchism

  1.1 Ancient Greece

  1.2 Renaissance Europe

  2 History of modern anarchism

  2.1 Development of anarchist ideology

  3 Anarchism in Action

  3.1 Spain

  3.2 France

  3.3 Anarchism in Latin America

  3.4 First revolutions

  3.4.1 Ilinden. The revolution in Macedonia and Thrace

  3.4.2 Russian Revolution of 1905

  3.5 The interwar period

  3.5.1 The Marxism revolution

  3.5.2 Platformism and synthetism

  3.5.3 Other anarchist revolutions and events

  3.5.4 anarchist revolutions in Spain

  3.6 From World War II to today

  4 Notes

  Precursors of anarchism

  In the pre-written in the most primitive forms of organization period history, human society living mainly in large family groups (although a family, whether patriarchal or matriarchal, and would be a form of hierarchy). Thus, there was not a state, small accumulation of wealth or division of labor, nor enacted laws or rules. This would be a primitive state of anarchy.

  Some anarchists turned to Taoism, which developed in ancient China, as a source of anarchist attitudes, but later, as the late nineteenth century and then in the twentieth century, Taoists adopted Marxism as a political ideology, as this coincides in many aspects with the philosophy of Tao. Example of this is the fact that the Principle of Perpetual Mutation of Lao-tzu resembles in many areas to the Theory of Permanent Revolution by Leon Trotsky, and that is so revolutionary groups I Ho Chuan ("Boxers") Taoists also rebelled against Empress Xi Yi, using the teachings of Marx in their struggles against the imperial regime and against British imperialism.Similarly, anarchist tendencies can be traced to ancient Greek philosophers such as Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, and Aristippus, who said that the wise should not surrender their freedom to the state.

  Later movements, as Stregheria in the fourteenth century, the Free Spirit in the Middle Ages, the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century in Europe, the Levellers, Diggers and Protestant nonconformists also presented ideas that have been linked to anarchists becoming religious precursors of these. It is also interesting that in many of the tribal structures and practices of resistance among the American indians, African tribes, Maori, etc.. we can see some support of libertarian
practice. European craft guilds of the Middle Ages are also often considered precursors of the trend in question.

  Ancient Greece

  The first known use of the word "anarchy" appears in the play Seven Against Thebes (467 a.) Aeschylus. There, Antigone openly refuses to accept the decree of the rulers to leave the body of her brother Polyneices unburied, saying " Even if no one else was willing to share the burial of him, I'll bury him alone and take the risk that means burying my own brother. Neither am I ashamed to act in defiant opposition to the rulers of the city".

  Ancient Greece also saw the first example of Western anarchism as a philosophical ideal, in the ideas of the philosopher Zeno of Citium, who, according to Peter Kropotkin, was " the best exponent of Anarchist philosophy in ancient Greece . " Summarized by Kropotkin, Zeno " repudiated the omnipotence of the state, its intervention and regiment, and proclaimed the sovereignty of the individual's moral law . "

  In Greek philosophy, Zeno's vision of a free community without government is opposed to Plato's utopia of State (exposed in The Republic ). Zeno argued that although the necessary instinct of self-preservation leads to human selfishness, nature has provided a remedy for this evil by another instinct: sociability. As some modern anarchists, Zeno believed that if people followed his instincts would not need laws, courts, police, money, temples or acts of faith. Zeno's thought has come to us only by short quotations.

  The set of philosophical concepts of Socrates, Heraclitus, Democritus, Epicurus, Epictetus, Diogenes, Plato, Aristotle listed ideas about man, life, passion, society, in which there are glimpses of common criticism of what later should be anarchist thought.

  Renaissance Europe

  The Anabaptists of the sixteenth century in Europe are sometimes considered religious pioneers of modern anarchism. Bertrand Russell, in his History of Western Philosophy , writes that the Anabaptists " repudiated all law, since they held that the good man will be guided in every situation by the Holy Spirit ... from this premise was communism formed. "

  The novel Q provided a portrait of this movement and its revolutionary ideology. In 1548 Étienne de La Boétie wrote The Politics of Obedience: Discourse of Voluntary Servitude , an essay that explored the question of why people obey the rules.

  Another precursor of modern anarchism is Gerrard Winstanley, of The Diggers, who published a pamphlet calling for communal ownership and social and economic organization forged from small farming communities in the seventeenth century.

  Rabelais, Montaigne, de la Bretonne Restif provided more concrete ideas. The Do they want Rabelaisian, inscribed on the porch of the Abbey of Thelema, is all a poem and an entire program.

  In literary works of the Italian Renaissance, and especially in those of some of the genuises Vanini, Leonardo da Vinci, Giordano Bruno, and in Spain: Miguel Servet, Luis Vives, San Juan de la Cruz, is shown the aspirations or freedom, the conception of a man in full possession of his individual rights.

  History of modern anarchism

  .

  The basis of anarchist thought in modern political philosophy comes from very different views about how a society should be imposed without authority. It is, first, the humanism of the sixteenth century and the human right of resistance to oppression, because of all other rights, which appeared in the Jacobin Constitution of 1793, and has been endlessly debated ever since.

  The philosophical roots of modern anarchism sink into the Renaissance and Enlightenment. In the Renaissance, the Reformation during the foundation of free inquiry and critical thinking were developed,besides humanism with features like front theocentrism-anthropocentrism of the previous era, pacifism and optimism emerge. With the Enlightenment, they will reach the concepts of rationalism and idealism and the search for a social and political system based on the ideas of liberty, equality and fraternity.

  In the years II, III and IV of the French Revolution, man writes and speaks for the first time the word "anarchist" as synonymous with men with a revolutionary social and political thought. The group " Les Egaux "(The Equals) of François Noël Babeuf and his friends, were labeled" anarchists ".

  Anticipating the development of anarchism in other fields beyond ideology, and in response to the same excessive rationalism and Enlightenment, Romanticism in the late eighteenth century to century rejects the faculty of imagination, and arises mainly focusing on cultural subversion and man that leads him to destroy all other chains. The development of utopian socialism and philosophical environment of early modern anarchist theory itself is influenced by the Romantics.

  In the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century a movement known as the utopian socialists, argued that if they let individuals act freely their natural inclinations, would be organized spontaneously. The utopian socialists thought was possible to transform society through education and persuasion, and radicalized forms of liberalism for its emphasis on civil liberties have been considered mile stones of modern anarchism.

  Of a whole series of anarchist elements postulated that the media must be consistent with the purposes, so that anarchy can not get through the authority is derived.To do this, it is central to the anarchist idea of voluntary association. Anarchism has been characterized by the media as identifying similar purposes (ethical action, prefigurative politics) (. Particular, local, etc.) to start from the small scale to try to integrate individual freedom to all aspects of human life, not only the political and economic (eg education).

  In 1793, William Godwin published questions about political justice , in which he presented his vision of a free society along with a review of the government. Some consider this text as the first anarchist thought and began calling Godwin founder of philosophical anarchism.

  Development of anarchist ideology

  The first opposition to the industrial revolution were the Luddites, labor movement calling for the destruction of the machines. Its importance lies in England in 1811-1816 subsequently spreading throughout Europe, from 1817 being the precursor of the first labor unions. The tactics of sabotage remain in the labor movement, and their approaches are reflected in primitivism.

  Among the thinkers and activists of libertarian socialism was the utopian Charles Fourier, he proposed a political organization based in communities he called "phalanxes" linked together in a decentralized manner. On the other hand he criticized the division of labor within the patterns of feudalism and capitalism and Christian morality, and proposed a social order based on the full exercise of subjectivity.

  In the mid-nineteenth century, the industrial sector was still weak, predominantly artisans and peasants. In the 1840s, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in France and Josiah Warren in the United States reached independently to anarchism, being critical of utopian socialist doctrines, particularly those of Charles Fourier and Robert Owen respectively. For both, the ideal of collective generosity of utopian communism was too utopian, and they started advocating a more immediate and accessible reciprocity, equitable in a way to Warren’s and Proudhon's mutualism.On the other hand, in Germany, the philosopher Max Stirner left Hegelianism to reach their full expression in The Ego and Its Own(1844), denying all absolutes and institutions, in an extreme individualism which has been termed as selfishness.

  Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was the first individual to call himself an "anarchist" and is considered by some as the founder of modern anarchist theory. Proudhon, considered closer to socialism for himself and later critics and historians advocated a non-oppressive economy where individuals will exchange the product of their own labor. The exchange value of the property would be determined by the labor theory of value.The thought of Proudhon, faced with both state as authoritarian socialism that was forming, had particular impact among non-authoritarian socialists in Belgium and France. In 1843 he wrote The system of economic contradictions or Philosophy of Poverty , which resulted in a sharp response from Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (1844). After the French Revolution of 1848 Proudhon continued his outreach to anarchism during the Second Fr
ench Republic in a number of newspapers, and tried to launch in 1849 the "People's Bank"model that is currently known as a mutual bank, which failed before he started work. The articles he wrote in January of the same year against Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, the "Prince President" in Le Peuple earned him a sentence of three years in prison.

  The thought of Proudhon strongly impressed Marx (who tried to criticize it theoretically in 1847), Stirner in Germany, and Bakunin in Russia. They also had great success in Spain, in the figure of Pi, through his work The reaction and revolution. Political and Social Studies (1854), and Spanish translations of the books of Proudhon.Another French anarchist known was Joseph Déjacque, who first described himself as a libertarian. He wrote an anarchist utopia titled The Humanisferio, and criticized the patriarchal vision of the family of Proudhon.

  The thought of Proudhon had little impact in England and America, where anarchism was perceived as a logical extension of liberalism of John Locke and Jeffersonian democracy. The "natural rights" to life, liberty and property were sacred so to speak in America. Disillusioned of utopian socialism after the failure of the experimental community of Robert Owen, "New Harmony," one settler, Josiah Warren, had concluded the impossibility of anarchism in America, and from 1825 advocated the complete individualization of life social, modeled socioeconomic first experiment, the "Cincinnati Time Store" fair exchange based on the theory of labor value, economic system that is embodied in his works Equitable Commerce (1846) and Practical Details in Equitable Commerce (1852). In Individualist anarchism Warren had some impact in England, but lost to European socialism there. His ideas were later developed in the U.S. by other individualist anarchists like Lysander Spooner and Benjamin Tucker, who also translated the works of Proudhon.

  In Germany, as a reaction to Hegelian philosophy, anarchists joined the criticism of Christianity and statism and prevailing burguesism was born in an original libertarian sentiment on the 1840s, in the environment of Bruno and Edgar Bauer brothers, a group that that was named "Free Berlin”. The group developed a critical nihilism that in 1842 led to a complete repudiation of the state.The "selfish" citizen resembles the "superman" of Nietzsche, who considered it one of the unrecognized minds of the nineteenth century. The radical individualism of Stirner came to alarm some anarchists like Kropotkin, by the ferocity of his teachings. Especially Ludwig Feuerbach as a source of libertarian ideas in Germany, ending the Hegelian authoritarianism by restoring the main role of men.Francisco Pi, who, although not specifically anarchist, had many libertarian ideas expressed in his works and in 1860 translated the first major works of Proudhon in Spanish, the only well defined limits on the exercise of individual freedom, conceived as anarchists: "One's freedom ends where the freedom of another begins." This conception of freedom is often cited by those opposed to Bakunin: " (...) I understand this freedom as something that, far from being a limit to the freedom of others, is, on the contrary, in the freedom of the other confirmation and extension to infinity . " Some anarchists even consider the first a bourgeois conception of freedom as opposed to that expressed in the appointment of a "social" or "true libertarian" character.