Anarchism

Summary

Unlike the previously discussed terms, Anarcho-Socialism did not arise out of Marxism; it developed alongside it.

The word and concept anarchy is about as old as the concept of democracy itself. It comes from a combination of the prefix "an," which means without, and the word "arkhos," which meant ruler, or leader, literally meaning without a ruler.

Anarcho-Socialists believe that a socialist society can be created by community organizations and power structures that are non-hierarchical and started by the communities themselves.

Timeline

1. 1840

   Proudhon and property

   Pierre-Joseph Proudhon publishes a famous critique of private property and becomes a key early anarchist figure.

2. 1860s-70s

   First International debates

   Anarchists and Marxists clash over the state, parties, and revolutionary strategy.

3. 1872

   Anarchist split from First International

   The Hague Congress expels Bakunin, and anarchists form their own international organizations, cementing the anarchist-Marxist divide.

4. 1918-21

   Makhnovshchina in Ukraine

   Anarchist peasants and workers led by Nestor Makhno establish a stateless, self-organized territory in Ukraine before Bolshevik suppression.

5. 1936-39

   Spanish Revolution

   Anarchist unions and militias play a major role in revolutionary Spain during the civil war.

6. 1994

   Zapatista uprising

   The Zapatista Army of National Liberation rises in Chiapas, Mexico, building autonomous communities inspired by anarchist and indigenous self-governance traditions.

7. 1999

   Seattle WTO protests

   Horizontal organizing and direct action become visible in anti-globalization movements.

8. 2012 onward

   Rojava Revolution

   In northern Syria, a revolution based on democratic confederalism, heavily influenced by anarchist and libertarian socialist ideas, establishes autonomous self-governing cantons.

9. 2020s

   Mutual aid and abolitionist organizing

   Mutual aid networks, tenant organizing, and abolitionist campaigns keep anarchist methods influential.

History

Thinkers well respected in modern philosophical thought, like Plato and Aristotle, used it to describe a supposed flaw in democracy, or what we would call today direct democracy, proposing that a strong, virtuous leader was necessary to lead society and make decisions on its behalf.

In medieval Europe the term was often used to describe civil disorder, and even today many people use the term this way, and many people, like myself before I was 23, believe this is the only definition of this term. But this concept, which originally meant "without a ruler," would gradually begin to be used by socialist thinkers in a way that throws away Plato's commonly accepted perception of it, that it is associated with chaos and disorder when a society does not have a good leader, or a leader at all, and goes back to the root of the word, with a positive perception of it.

There were philosophers who remarked on what positive aspects a society without rulers would have, but anarchy was not considered an actual political ideology or movement until it was resurrected with socialist thought.

Anarcho-Socialism and Anarcho-Communism were described as simply "anarchy" by Anarcho-Socialists in Marx's time, and even today, and he and Engels made many critiques against it, while the anarchists also made criticisms of their idea of socialism.

The reason for distinguishing the term with socialism or communism in modern analysis is the fact that after this Anarcho-Socialist theory there came another ideology that also wanted to abolish the state, like Anarcho-Socialism, but in contrast did not want to abolish the economic power structures and change them. This ideology became known as Libertarianism to many of its followers, but is known to others who study it as "Anarcho-Capitalism."

Anarcho-Socialists believe that a socialist society can be created by community organizations and power structures that are non-hierarchical and started by the communities themselves. These power structures and organizations, in Anarcho-Socialist theory, will multiply and abolish capitalism and the state at the same time, replacing them with these alternative power structures that have been created by the communities they operate in.

Anarcho-Socialism rejects the Marxist-Leninist idea of the need for professional, committed social scientists, or revolutionary intellectuals, to lead the people to revolution and liberation from oppression.

While many anarchists today, some of which I have met personally, are just hippies who believe bottom-up, or "grassroots," community building is the path for a better life, the broadness of anarchism as a school of thought, combined with the insistence of many Anarcho-Socialists on identifying as simply "anarchist," makes the concept of anarchism that anarcho-socialists perceive, and its relation to socialism and other socialist schools of thought, not immediately evident to the outsider who hears the term.

The reasoning for anarcho-socialists simply defining themselves as anarchist is because, to them, anarchism is inherently socialist, and so anarcho-capitalism is not seen as "real anarchism." To anarcho-socialists, if the government or state is dismantled and there is still a ruling class, the capitalist class, then there are still rulers.

While the word and concept of "anarchy" stretches back thousands of years, the modern political ideology of "anarchism" also emerged as a response to capitalism, but more specifically to the state apparatus that enables it. This origin of this ideological trend is attributed to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, a French philosopher who is known for being the first person to identify with the label "anarchist."

In 1840 he published one of his most famous works, "What is Property," wherein he famously declared that "property is theft." He advocated for a concept he described as "mutualism," which would aim to create a society where the workers owned their own means of production and exchanged the items they created based on the actual amount of labor that went into creating them. In the theory, this would all be managed by a decentralized bank run by the people collectively.

One of these people inspired by Proudhon and seemingly taking up the mantle of the movement was Mikhail Bakunin. You see, the thing about Proudhon's ideological conception of anarchism, mutualism, was that it preached against violent revolution, advising that a violent uprising would just lead to more authoritarian rulers.

Arguing against the Marxist concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat," the idea that the working class needs to seize control of the state apparatus and industries and democratically run them collectively, Bakunin advocated for a violent uprising by the workers and peasants united, to abolish not only capitalism, but the state itself.

Bakunin argued that Marx's concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat would just create a new ruling class, believing that any position of legal power creates oppression and is not negotiable in the struggle for a truly equitable world.