Anarchism is a difficult ideology to define.

And anarchism of a sorts was present in many movements and ideologies throughout history – from the Taoists in Ancient China through to the anarchism currently being practised in Rojava in Northern Syria, where communities are attempting to establish autonomous bottom-up direct democracies where anyone can vote on any issue.

Philosophy professor Nathan Jun defines anarchism as, ‘(a) universal condemnation of and opposition to all forms of closed, coercive authority (political, economical, social, etc.), coupled with (b) universal affirmation and promotion of freedom and equality in all spheres of human existence’.

For much of history, the term ‘anarchism’ was, and for many still is, a term, rather than the name of any movement or ideology.

But towards the end of the 18th century William Godwin began to define anarchism as an ideology for the first time.

What is now referred to as classical anarchism was popularised across the course of the 19th century, when most terrorism globally was perpetrated by anarchists.

King Umberto I of Italy, for example, was assassinated by an anarchist in 1900.

At the height of the French Revolution in 1794, Godwin published An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, which, while not using the term ‘anarchism’ is undoubtedly one of the first modern anarchist texts, and influenced fathers of socialism and the workers movements like Robert Owen and poets like Percy Shelley.

Influenced by John Locke’s argument that the mind was a blank slate, Godwin argued that men were born equal and that differences were a product of their environment.

Godwin was also a utilitarian. He believed that morality was a ‘system of conduct which is determined by a consideration of the greatest general good’.

At the same time, he believed that man was perfectible, and so when these three principles were combined – the blank slate, the greatest good, and continual improvement – and as man became more educated and rational, they would become capable of governing themselves.

Godwin argued that property accumulation was an evil that should be replaced by a kind of communism where each is entitled to their share of a common stock, and where communities that governed themselves face-to-face would replace nation states.

A technological utopian, Godwin also believed that if everyone took a share of the work load and the innovations of the industrial revolution were justly put to use, work hours could be reduced to just half an hour a day.

Godwin was a gradualist who believed in progress through careful progression and reform.

Next came Max Stirner.

Godwin died in 1836 and Max Stirner wrote his magnum opus – The Ego and Its Own – in 1844.

Where Godwin looked to cooperation and community as the essence of anarchism, Stirner argued for a radical individualism.

Stirner was heavily influenced by Hegel’s dialectics – the idea that progress occurs through the development of a thesis, antithesis and a synthesis that drives ideas and history.

Instead of progressing towards the state as the embodiment of the community though, as Hegel argued, Stirner thought that the dialectic of history would progress towards a supreme individual freedom, where each man stood on his own moral footing.

Stirner’s system was supremely philosophically abstract but his fundamental point is that we are all egoists.

For Stirner, we do everything for our own benefit. Even when we are being charitable, for example, we do it because it makes us look good and will benefit us in some way in the end.

So the state was superfluous because we would be moral to further our own individual interests.

As a result, laws and government are an unjust restraint on the personal freedom of the ego.

Stirner famously declared that, ‘I am everything to myself and I do everything on my account’.

For Stirner there are no rights, there is no transcendent morality – all of these are spooks invented by the powerful to oppress.

I and I alone decide what is right and what is wrong.

Stirner believed that instead of the state, people should band together in unions of egoists. Workers, for example, should band together and strike for better pay.

The state, he argued, only gets in the way.

Because we are roughly equal as humans, unions will balance each other out leading to a kind of egoistic equilibrium.

Pierre Joseph Proudhon published What is Property? in 1840, which would become one of the most influential anarchist texts of the 19th century.

His answer to the question of what is property was the contradictory statement ‘property is theft’.

Proudhon argued that property that was a result of labour was legitimate, whereas property in the form of unused land or property whose profit was a result of rent or interest was illegitimate.

He was involved in a dispute with Marx and deserves praise for his foresight that, and I quote, ‘the doctrinaire, authoritarian, dictatorial, governmental, communist system is based on the principle that the individual is essentially subordinate to the collective; that from it alone he has his right and life; that the citizen belongs to the State like a child to the family; that he is in its power and possession, in manu, and that he owes it submission and obedience in all things’.

Proudhon wrote that, ‘to be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated, regimented, closed in, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, evaluated, censored, commanded’.

Proudhon believed, instead, in a bottom-up organised federation of communes where the higher levels would be subordinated to the lower levels. This would be the very opposite of a centralised system.

Instead of laws, Proudhon proposed contracts between people and groups.

This was called mutualism.

Another anarchist involved in a dispute with Marx was Michael Bakunin, maybe the most famous anarchist.

Bakunin believed that justice was synonymous with equality, so that, ‘the freedom of each is therefore realizable only in the equality of all’.

Like Proudhon, Bakunin believed in the commune, which while federated into larger units, would always retain the right to secede.

His collectivist anarchism argued for, ‘equal means of subsistence, support, education, and opportunity for every child, boy or girl, until maturity, and equal resources and facilities in adulthood to create his own well-being by his own labor’.

While not a particularly philosophical thinker, Bakunin is best known as the leader of the anarchists of the First International, which lasted from 1864 to 1876, and for his bitter dispute with Marx over the question of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Bakunin argued that rather than state communism, workers associations should themselves own the means of production.

He argued that authority should be a matter of choice rather than the illegitimate authority of the state over its citizens: ‘In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or engineer . . . But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect . . . to impose his authority upon me’.

Finally, closing off the 19th century, is Peter Kropotkin Kropotkin – the eccentric who went from Russian prince and aide to Tsar Alexander II to world-renowned anarchist – was a communist anarchist and a great geographer whose most famous work, Mutual Aid, was published in 1902.

Kropotkin spent much of his life challenging those who thought that Darwin’s new theory of evolution as ‘survival of the fittest’ justified racial and class hierarchy.

He argued that rather than competition and prevailing of the dominant gene, mutual aid and cooperation within species was the defining factor of evolution.

He argued that the phenomenon of mutual aid and altruism, a kind of natural morality, existed biologically within humans and so the state was an unnecessary protector of order.

Kropotkin has much in common with someone like Rousseau, who argued that humans are inherently good natured but live under the corrosive effects of modern society.

Travelling the world and writing Mutual Aid, Kropotkin observed beetles helping each other carry and bury pray that was too big for just one, and ants who share food and water if they pass another in need. He also observed eagles that call on each other for aid and who let the elders and the weak eat before the young and the strongest.

Kropotkin also pointed to organisations like the English Lifeboat Association as an example of a voluntary organisation that provides aid without the coercion of the state.

As well as Mutual Aid, Kropotkin wrote The Conquest of Bread, which outlined his views on what an ‘anarcho-communist’ world would look like. The book influenced anarchists in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War and anarchists today in Rojava.

These five thinkers provided a rough genesis of anarchist thought that would divide into separate but sometimes overlapping schools.

During the 19th century, anarchists would either be communists or non-communists.

Non-communists – mutualists like Proudhon – usually argued for individual property rights but also equal access to land and the means of production, and the abolishment of rent, profit and taxation.

This was in contrast to anarcho-communists who would usually argue that the community, rather than the individual, should control all property, abolishing all market exchange and distributing all property by need.

In the 1905 entry for anarchism in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Kropotkin noted that there were six main schools of anarchist thought: mutualist, individualist, collectivist, communist, Christian, and literary.

Collectivists, for example, argued that a federated system of collective communities should be in charge of the land and means of production in its area.

Kropotkin neglected to include anarcho-syndicalists, which, through unionisation, would put all decisions in the hands of the workers, who would own the means of production and have an equal say in the decision-making process.

Anarchism has a rich and varied history that is impossible to do justice to in a short video. What I have sketched is just the beginnings of what is often now referred to as ‘classical anarchism’.

Sources

Peter Marshall, Demanding the Impossible

Nathan Jun, Anarchism and Political Modernity

Ruth Kinna, Anarchism: A Beginners Guide