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anarchism,
a social philosophy whose central tenet is that human beings can live justly and
harmoniously without government and that the imposition of government upon human
beings is in fact harmful and evil. Anarchists are distinguished from Marxists
and other socialists in that the latter believe that the state must first be
taken over before it can "wither away"; anarchists are too suspicious
of the corruptions of power to believe that this is desirable or even possible.
The word anarchism derives from an
archos (Greek: "without a rule"). When the word first appeared it
was used as a pejorative term; the Levelers of the English Civil War and the
Enragés of the French Revolution were labeled anarchists by their
opponents. In 1793 William Godwin anticipated
many later anarchist views in his An
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, although he did not use the
word. Godwin not only supplied an outline of a decentralized society but also
made explicit many of the theoretical assumptions involved. He insisted on the
natural benevolence of individual human beings apart from governmental
institutions and on the natural harmony of such individuals in their
interactions. He therefore advocated the progressive breaking down of all
institutions that contributed to coercion and inequality--eventually to include
even marriage. Future organizations would be loose and voluntary associations.
The French writer Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon adopted the word anarchism as a positive term for the first time
in Qu'est ce que
la propriété? ("What Is Property?") in 1840.
Proudhon's book laid much of the theoretical groundwork for later anarchist
movements, of which he is generally considered to be the father. First praised
and later viciously attacked by Karl Marx,
Proudhon denounced personal property ("property is theft") but
rejected Communism in advocating the relative autonomy of local communities.
The various heresies that Marxism faced
during the last half of the 19th century consisted chiefly of different forms of
anarchism that grew out of the work of Proudhon. The earliest of these, and
Marx's chief obstacle in the First International,
was that of Mikhail Bakunin. Bakunin's brand of
anarchism came to be called collectivism. He and
his followers agreed with Marx in stressing the role of workers' associations
and the need for violent revolutionary action but protested what Bakunin called
Marx's German authoritarianism in favour of a looser confederation of
associations. When the International disbanded in 1872, Bakunin and his
followers retained control of workers' organizations in Latin countries such as
Spain and Italy. It was in those countries that anarchist movements attained
their greatest strength, and they were finally and decisively crushed only by
the victories of Fascism just before the onset of World War II. Bakunin's
emphasis on violence and revolutionary action inspired later anarchists, such as
the Italian Errico Malatesta, to stress the value of violent acts as means of
revealing the vulnerability of the state. A string of assassinations by
anarchists took a heavy toll on world leaders around the turn of the century,
including President Sadi Carnot of France (1894), Empress Elizabeth of Austria
(1898), King Umberto I of Italy (1900), and President William McKinley of the
United States (1901). (see also terrorism)
Not all anarchist movements were
associated with violence. Many forms, such as that developed by Proudhon and
known as Mutualism, rejected revolutionary
activity; certain of Proudhon's followers even rejected strikes as a tactic,
since they represented a form of coercion. The form of anarchism to attract the
largest following was known as anarcho-syndicalism,
which developed in the late 1880s after the crushing of the Paris Commune.
Anarcho-syndicalism combined the anarchists' distrust of political action with
the tactics of the trade union movement; the labour syndicats were to become the basis for direct action by the working
class, to culminate in a general strike that would paralyze the economy and the
state. Anarcho-syndicalism generated a mystique of the working class instead of
the mystique of the individual that was characteristic of other forms of
anarchism.
Owing to their repudiation of political action and to
their vision of a just and harmonious society of individuals linked only by
voluntary associations, many anarchist thinkers tended to take a high moral
tone; notable among them was Peter Kropotkin. Anarchism as a social movement did
not survive World War II. Nevertheless, some of its tenets, such as that human
beings can be naturally moral and complete without governments, continue to
attract followers. |
