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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   36289 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 10, 2023

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Why isn’t anarchism talked about more?

Around the turn of the previous century anarchism probably seemed like the threat to established society. The late nineteenth-early twentieth century saw an enormous amount of intellectual output in anarchist philosophy, producing such famous-to-this-day anarchist thinkers and political scientists as Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, and James Guillaume. To many it seemed like just as viable a revolutionary philosophy as socialism, and played major roles in radical, secessionist movements like the Catalan independence fighters and the Paris Commune.

And the violence that emerged from this movement was breathtaking. Anarchists pursued “propaganda of the deed,” or expressing their philosophy through acts of violence. Bombings became standard fare across the western world, claiming scores of victims - up until the 1990s World Trade bombing, the anarchist bombing of Wall Street in 1920 was the bloodiest act of terrorism in the US. The Palmer Raids, often focused on for their anti-socialist agenda, were in just as large part about expelling anarchists following the Galleanist bombing campaigns.

But this was far bigger than just the US - anarchist assassins killed no less than nine (nine!) heads of state across the western world! It happened to William Mckinley of the US, Czar Alexander II of Russia, Empress Elizabeth of Austria, President Sadi Carnot of France, Prime Minister Del Castillo of Spain, Prime Minister Iradier, also of Spain, King Umberto I of Italy, King George of Greece, and King Charles of Portugal. That is crazy. It was so bad that the turn of the century is sometimes called “the golden age of assassination”. There were even international conferences of the major powers in Rome and St Petersburg to form coalitions to fight against international anarchism.

My broad theory of the era is this: prior to the industrial revolution many more people were still functionally “self-employed,” working on their own farm, or as an artisan, or managing their store. Throughout the nineteenth century the modern divisions of capitalists and wage laborers, who would live and die working for someone else, really grew and solidified over time. This brought growth, but I think it was likely also a wrenching, unpleasant experience for most people, and a lot of radical movements since have been a form of response to that sense that something about modern society is deeply unnatural.

Even for countries with recent traditions of serfdom, like Russia and Austria, the changes in day-to-day life everywhere from industrialization were vast. The immense, impersonal scale of capitalism, the constant supervision, workers used to setting their own schedules and working at their own pace finding strict schedules thrust upon them, a shift so significant it came in many places with the literal synchronization of standardized time. At the extremes, capitalist modernity created institutions like company towns, where workers with no rights labored from dawn till dusk under the constant watchful eye of the manager, lived in apartments owned by the corporation, purchased all their goods and food from stores owned by the corporation, and walked on streets patrolled by private law enforcement hired for the corporation to enforce rules set by the corporation. You were stripped of all autonomy and ownership and forced to labor in brutal conditions every day; the slightest agitation could be met with brutal repression and you could at any moment be turned out on the streets because you didn’t even own your home, you lived there at the corporation’s behest.

Anarchism seems to be the first way that sort of visceral reaction to these conditions manifested at large scale, and it's understandable in an era when people found themselves in significantly more servile, managed conditions, that those radicalized would rebel against authority itself. Galleani himself, for instance, was radicalized following the mass arrests in Patterson of factory workers striking for an eight hour work day. He went on to create one of the most dangerous anarchist terrorist groups in America. It's a simple response - if society is rotten then tear it down.

But nowadays almost no one other than teenagers seriously pushes anarchism. Yet little more than a century ago scarcely a year would go by without a head of state being murdered by an anarchist. Where did what once seemed like a global threat just disappear to? Did socialism just suck away anarchism’s energy by speaking to the same people disaffected by capitalism but offering a more compelling vision of society? Or was it wrong to consider it anything more than a sensational but somewhat short lived trend, a little like the way the western world speaks less and less about Islamist terrorism?

Well there is the "Boston School" - as opposed to Chicago School - of individualist anarchism, which has arguably been channeled into a generalized libertarianism you see all across the US cultural-political spectrum, be it cold-dead-hands right-wingers or leave-the-homeless-alone left-wingers. And of course tech libertarianism and crypto.

Interesting point

Anarchism only ever really developed a mass following in two countries: Russia and Spain. There were anarchist movements all across the western world, but they only rarely managed to put down the kinds of roots among the workers that more 'mainstream' socialist parties/movements did. The SPD in Germany, the SFIO in France, Labour in England. Socialism seemed a much more reasonable philosophy to most workers. Even while theoretically advocating a future classless socialist society, socialist politicians and activists also worked within the system to improve conditions here and now. Another thing is that socialism took root among industrial workers while anarchism tended to be more popular among poor peasants. Socialism was, at least ostensibly, a much more 'scientific' philosophy while anarchism was much more romantic and primitive in instinct. Marxist theory and analysis were taken very seriously by many of the most learned, intelligent people of this period, while anarchism never was. It had a rigor that anarchism lacked, which endeared it to intellectuals and the increasingly secularized urban working classes alike. That is probably a big part of the reason anarchism did not endure, besides those enumerated elsewhere in the thread, is that its intellectual foundations were much shakier than those of marxist socialism.

What Spain and Russia had in common were that they were two of Europe's least industrialized, poorest countries. Anarchism proved very popular among uneducated and deeply impoverished landless rural workers who adhered to it basically as if it was a religion. In the south of Spain the tenets of anarchism essentially replaced Catholicism among the braceros (regular church attendance had collapsed to something like 5% of the population in Andalusia in the 30s). They had the idea of "the Revolution" as like the coming of Christ, one singular event after which there would be heaven on earth.

Anarchism was wiped out in Russia by the Bolsheviks. It peaked in Spain in the 1930s at the outbreak of the Civil War. The anarchists blew a lot of their credibility with the base by collaboration with the republican government, and whatever was left was destroyed by the Franco victory.

What Spain and Russia had in common were that they were two of Europe's least industrialized, poorest countries.

Extremely good point. Anarchism has a bit of a flavor to "leave me alone to go back to what I was doing," which if you're a rural farmer at least does mean sustaining yourself. If you live in a city and already depend on an industrial ecosystem for food and goods, and all the available jobs are industrial in nature, then the most realistic improved scenario is one much the same but with better working and living conditions.

The rest of your post makes me think I really need to read more on Spanish anarchists, I had no idea the movement literally usurped religion in places.

Spain in the early 20th century is very fascinating. Gerald Brennan's The Spanish Labyrinth is old but a good overview of the conditions that ultimately produced the civil war, including the popularity of anarchism in the south. An excerpt:

The character of the rural anarchism that grew up in the south of Spain differed, as one would expect, from that developed in the large cities of the north. 'The idea', as it was called, was carried from village to village by Anarchist 'apostles'. In the farm labourers' gañanias or barracks, in isolated cottages by the light of oil candiles, the apostles spoke on liberty and equality and justice to rapt listeners. Small circles were formed in towns and villages which started night schools where many learned to read, carried on anti-religious propaganda and often practised vegetarianism and teetotalism. Even tobacco and coffee were banned by some and one of these old apostles whom I knew maintained that, when the age of liberty came in, men would live on unfired foods grown by their own hand. But the chief characteristic of Andalusian anarchism was its naive millenarianism. Every new movement or strike was thought to herald the immediate coming of a new age of plenty, when all even the Civil Guard and the land owners would be free and happy. How this would happen no one could say. Beyond the seizure of the land (not even that in someplaces) and the burning of the parish church, there were no positive proposals.

Thanks for the added info, I’ll definitely have to check that book out

“I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.”

Which was more common—deciding that the system was flawed, and ought to be removed? Or that the old times were better, and we need to go back? I suspect that nationalism was more common among workers than anarchy ever was. Easier to say the government should be the right guys than no guys, at least when you still have a family to support. Maybe I’m wrong and the vast increases in state capacity by 1800 were impossible to ignore.

Regardless, the “golden age of assassination” probably has more to do with the industrialization of weapons. Bigger explosives and semi-automatic personal weapons in particular. Revolvers and repeating rifles.

Recent events in Japan call this into question -- one successful assassination at the highest level using a homemade shotgun, and just now a pretty close brush with some sort of IED. Almost certainly much crappier than the actual dynamite and shitty revolvers favoured around the fin de siecle.

These people in Japan are (probably?) not anarchists per se, but I think it points in the direction that it's simply that the will is no longer there in the West.

I think it's more the sort of "general weapons level"--I assume many European nations used to (and some still do) have meaningful gun ownership (you used to be able to just buy a handgun in Britain, for example--the Pistol Act, which introduced a relatively-mild form of hangun control via requiring more paperwork from retailers, was enacted only after like the first Boer War, I think). Japan, meanwhile, confiscated swords before the Meiji era and the modern Japanese state limits you to shotguns and air rifles that have further regulations regarding ownership thereof. There was also that time in like the 60's when a left-wing politician was ran through with a freaking short sword during a public appearance.

More like much better VIP security, the rich and powerful do not longer believe they are "god chosen" an no common peon can harm them.

Times when empress was just walking the street without any security and precautions are gone.

You can still minecraft you town mayor or council, but it is not so glamorous, so fewer people bother.

Call what into question?

I'm saying that the Golden Age, specifically, saw more high-profile assassinations because of new weapons. Japan doesn't really have an equivalent scenario.

The link between the improved weapons and the anarchist assassinations -- McKinley could just as well have been shot with a duelling pistol. (or a homemade shotgun)

Bombs of course have been an available method of expressing discontent at least since 5 November, 1605 -- it's just a matter of how many people are willing to take up the gauntlet.

I suspect that nationalism was more common among workers than anarchy ever was.

Nationalism, at least as anything more developed than "don't like foreigners, simple as" was probably more of a middle class phenomenon in the 19th and early 20th centuries than a working class one. You may be right about anarchism in particular but revolutionary ideas in general maybe not. In Spain I think anarchism probably was more popular with the workers than nationalism.

My knowledge of Spanish anarchy is fueled largely by Hearts of Iron, so I’ll have to take your word for it.

Which was more common—deciding that the system was flawed, and ought to be removed? Or that the old times were better, and we need to go back? I suspect that nationalism was more common among workers than anarchy ever was.

I assume the latter was more common too, or at least a variety of nationalism that was also promised cool stuff you didn't have in the past. On the other hand, it didn't win everywhere just by having greater numbers; the Bolsheviks probably only really had a small chunk of the population personally backing them (as opposed to backing replacing the Czar with whatever) and they came to power, and then everyone was a Bolshevik. I guess I'm just interested how anarchism fizzled out where other movements grew. There doesn't really need to be a more dramatic answer than other stuff being more compelling or the anarchists losing on the battlefield, I think this post is more driven by my interest that this was such a crazy phenomenon and barely gets talked about these days. Not like there was a shortage of more crazy movements in that era to get distracted by though.

Regardless, the “golden age of assassination” probably has more to do with the industrialization of weapons. Bigger explosives and semi-automatic personal weapons in particular. Revolvers and repeating rifles.

Definitely partially true, though a lot of the weapons were kinda primitive. Of course, weaponry is even more sophisticated nowadays and yet we have less of this, and the Wall Street Bombing for instance was carried out with dynamite, which had been around for half a century without being used for domestic terrorism. I assume there was sort of an overlapping time where 1. improved weapons were at hand, 2. it occurred to radicals and terrorists they could actually use them, and 3. it hadn't occurred to Presidential staff how really vulnerable they were before modern security forces.

Yeah, I originally included a paragraph about how Guy Fawkes needed a dozen conspirators and 36 barrels of gunpowder, while Timothy McVeigh did his dirty work with much less. Then I checked, and apparently he had…a couple dozen 55-gallon drums. Oh. He just had the advantage of a personal truck. I guess things didn’t change as much as I thought.

Seriously, though, the revolver was such an outrageous step up from its predecessors. Five or six rounds in a pocket. And they only became more readily available over the course of the 1800s. You see a similar thing happen in 1900s China with the proliferation of cheap Webley copies and autoloaders.

Seriously, though, the revolver was such an outrageous step up from its predecessors. Five or six rounds in a pocket. And they only became more readily available over the course of the 1800s. You see a similar thing happen in 1900s China with the proliferation of cheap Webley copies and autoloaders.

True and probably something I don't appreciate enough. I remember reading an interesting piece about how much radically (and unsurprisingly) colonialism had to change after accounting for the small arms released throughout the colonies by the new arrivals themselves.

If you find it, send me a link?

Definitely will

And the violence that emerged from this movement was breathtaking. Anarchists pursued “propaganda of the deed,” or expressing their philosophy through acts of violence. Bombings became standard fare across the western world, claiming scores of victims - up until the 1990s World Trade bombing, the anarchist bombing of Wall Street in 1920 was the bloodiest act of terrorism in the US. The Palmer Raids, often focused on for their anti-socialist agenda, were in just as large part about expelling anarchists following the Galleanist bombing campaigns.

Not sure about that..to call it breathtaking is a stretch. Excluding Wall Street in 1920, we're talking maybe 2-3 far-left incidents in the US over an 80 year stretch with no casualties , such as Earth Liberation Front attacks, which caused property damage. These are easily dwarfed or matched by far-right and Islamic violence. If you include the Unabomber as an anarchist, that is all according to Wikipedia, for a total of three deaths over an 80 year stretch. The 1993 WTC bombing was not motivated by anarchist thought ( I would not lump islamic terrorism with anarchism).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_terrorism_in_the_United_States

anarchists are more into writing books and pamphlets and less about violence

As for why anarchism fell out of favor, it's obvious that the far-left , which has assimilated/become the state is incompatible with an ideology that rejects the state.

Which 2-3 incidents are you referring to? I can think of at least the SLA and the Zebra murders off the top of my head.

Zebra murders

I cannot find evidence the perpetrators were motivated by anarchist thought, whereas such a case can be made for the Unabomber . I would just lump those as left-wing violence

When you said far left wing violence, I didn't know that was referring to anarchists in particular. Agreed that they weren't anarchists.

Where are you coming up with "maybe 2-3 far-left incidents in the US over an 80 year stretch with no casualties?" Looking at the wikipedia article you linked, anarchists were responsible for at least 3 major terrorist attacks resulting in at least 60 deaths in the US between 1886 and 1920. Which doesn't include the assassination of William McKinley, any of the WWI-related bombings and violent demonstrations that resulted in at least a couple of deaths and were almost always at least tangentially linked to a known anarchist group, or any violence in Europe, where it was much more prominent.

Now, maybe "breathtaking" is a bit much in the context of the truly horrifying violence of the early 20th century, but to claim anarchists aren't (or at least weren't - remember, we're specifically talking about the turn of the century here) into violence or don't have a body count is simply disingenuous.

The last notable incident in US was in 1920, the Wall Street bombing. It's not like anarchism just went away but the violence did. There were some incidents in the 60s and 70s but limited property damage and no injuries and casualties. It's as if they tried to avoid causing bodily harm. These are easily outnumbered by other types of extremism over the past century. So what can explain the end of anarchist violence. Maybe anarchists saw they could no longer win on that front and instead focused more on other means of change.

Where are you coming up with "maybe 2-3 far-left incidents in the US over an 80 year stretch with no casualties?"

The 80-year stretch is from 1920 to 2000.

I'll link to the Status 451 book review that everyone always links to:

What if fanatics made a serious and nearly successful attempt on the life of the President of the United States?

What if those fanatics got into the Capitol building and committed a mass shooting on Congress while it was in session?

What if those fanatics conducted bombing sprees, for years, in multiple American cities?

And what if people really did do every one of those things, and you’d never heard of them? That’s the story of Puerto Rican separatists.

https://status451.com/2017/01/20/days-of-rage/

My post was pretty clear that the era I was referring to was the end of the nineteenth century - beginning of the twentieth century. A big part of my post was asking the very question why have things calmed down since then. Starting your measurement in 1920 is like saying fascists had a low body count from 45 onward - true, but not very useful (this is of course not to say these two movements are comparable in violence, just that they had select eras they were active in).

As @Thoroughlygruntled pointed out, your numbers are deflated even for the US, but remember this was also a much bigger phenomenon than just America; there were bombing campaigns across the western world, especially in Russia and Italy. Assassinating nine leaders of the most powerful countries in the world is pretty breathtaking imo - if right wing or Islamist terrorism had accomplished anything of this magnitude I think we would consider them a far, far more serious threat.

My post was pretty clear that the era I was referring to was the end of the nineteenth century - beginning of the twentieth century.

you said:

Anarchists pursued “propaganda of the deed,” or expressing their philosophy through acts of violence. Bombings became standard fare across the western world, claiming scores of victims - up until the 1990s World Trade bombing,

So I assumed you meant the period form 1920 to 90s, or 80 years.

I will just take the L on this one. I am used to almost always being wrong here anyway haha

Ah, no worries at all, I see what you mean, the way the sentence is structured it's weird but there's another half to it

up until the 1990s World Trade bombing, the anarchist bombing of Wall Street in 1920 was the bloodiest act of terrorism in the US.

I didn't mean that the violence sustained over that time period, just that the body count from that particular act of terrorism was a high point for a while after

You forgot about the Haymarket Square bombing/gunfight, just for one example.

I read a long quote from an early 20th century anarchist. He lived with a bunch of other anarchists in Europe according to their principles. Almost all of them went to Russia during the revolution and then were murdered by Soviets. According to that guy Europe was cleaned out of anarchists by them going to Russia and then not making it out alive.

I can't find the quote now, but other anarchists have similar sentiments. George Orwell wrote about the Soviet backed communists purging the various sorts of anarchists in revolutionary Spain in Homage to Catalonia. Soviet communists were a much greater threat to George Orwell's life than the actual fascists he fought in trench warfare against.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/goldman/works/1920s/disillusionment/ch28.htm

The massive growth of the state in the 20th century. For someone living in say, 1850s Russia, it's not hard to see the appeal of anarchism. States mostly did not organize or fund day-to-day services that affected the lives of average citizens. Mostly, taxes were spent on war and extravagances for the royal family, and justice mostly served to defend the rents and property of the aristocracy. Only a small proportion went into charitable institutions which concerned themselves with providing healthcare and education. The government payroll was itself, miniscule - world empires were run by small handfuls of disinterested bureaucrats.

In some cases, increased state provision of services (and salaries) was explicitly done in order to counter anarchism. However, in all cases, it soon became unimaginable to do away with the state entirely. In addition, it made a tempting prize. No longer foes of the state, leftists seek to control it and use it to advance their ideology. Of course, some leftists do occasionally succumb and remember that they're not supposed to like the FBI. But basically every structural trend pushes them further into the arms of the state. There is no other path to power, and for leftists in the PMC, it is as difficult as falling out of bed.

The far left moved from its base of support among blue collar males to have a core base of support among neurotic women from upper-middle class backgrounds. One of these is more violent than the other in every context.

When would you say this happened?

Labor was the biggest pipeline to communism, not housewifing.

That's not actually true. The socialist/communist/anarchist movement in 19th- and early-20th century Russia was extremely well entrenched among the young elite; same as today. One of the major draws of far left radical social movements was precisely that they, in theory, didn't make gender distinctions and thus allowed large-scale female involvement and membership. (Also, the idea that elite women didn't exercise extreme amounts of influence over elite politics prior to enfranchisement is wrong)

Right, Emma Goldman being one great example of a woman who had a ton of influence in the anarchist movement. Supposedly Leon Czolgosz, the anarchist who assassinated President McKinley, was obsessed with her and committed the assassination partially to impress her.

In the US, real wages for young men rose by upwards of 50% (some sources suggest 100%) in the period between 1914-1920 due to labor market tightness. It was, in all likelihood, one of the fastest rises in real incomes anywhere in history. In the UK, there were also smaller real increases, certainly much larger than during the preceding fifteen years.

Elsewhere, especially in France and Italy (which produced so many anarchists), postwar governments and employers reacted to the Bolshevik revolution and high rates of inflation in 1918-1920 by giving industrial workers a lot of what they wanted, including shorter working days and better pay. When the postwar recession hit in 1920-1922, unions were in disarray and some extant socialist movements were torn over events in Russia, and workers had already negotiated better conditions in many cases.

All true, though this burst in prosperity was of course followed shortly by a pretty incredible dip in living conditions during the Great Depression. And socialist movements did indeed rise again in this era, and even continued to raised heck across the western world during the latter-mid century when living conditions were actually pretty good - but anarchism never had a comparable resurgence.

I think basically, though, that you're right: it's a combination of living/working conditions getting a lot better while dissent got cracked down upon, along with @Stefferi's point that anywhere that revolution actually was possible, socialists pretty literally defeated anarchists on the battlefield, and their ability to create viable socialist societies acted as PR that suctioned directionless leftists into their orbit who in another era might have followed the road to Catalonia.

For a moment there things looked particularly bleak for the working class, and coupled with their newfound ability to read about it and organize, heads (of government) were always going to roll. We’ve forgotten how plausible the criticisms of capitalism appeared when you had to send your kids down a coal mine so they wouldn’t starve. Now lefties have to contend with a relatively comfortable status quo, and the only ciriticism left is far more difficult to grasp. The few times they’ve tried alternatives, they’ve ended up reproducing company towns on a country scale, with scrip and tight, paternalistic control.

It's that the Western world has become a bureaucracy. From cradle to grave, we're taught to fit inside a system of rules and order imposed by the State, in a way that's far more omnipresent than in the past. That permanently affects our psychologies: we've been domesticated. Not everyone ends up domesticated, but everyone capable of planning an assassination and inclined to political acts does.

I think there's something to that, where when you're in the transition to an extremely managed society, by business and by the state, the transition is unpleasant and has a lot of resistance but once you're on the other end things are a lot calmer.

Looking at the Wikipedia article for Anarchism, it seems that the various strains of Anarchist philosophy are still going strong. Maybe the assassination tactic died out because it proved ineffective in achieving stated objectives.

Right after WWII, there's a pivot of focus and tactics:

By the end of World War II, the anarchist movement had been severely weakened. The 1960s witnessed a revival of anarchism, likely caused by a perceived failure of Marxism–Leninism and tensions built by the Cold War. During this time, anarchism found a presence in other movements critical towards both capitalism and the state such as the anti-nuclear, environmental, and peace movements, the counterculture of the 1960s, and the New Left. It also saw a transition from its previous revolutionary nature to provocative anti-capitalist reformism.

More recent activities:

Around the turn of the 21st century, anarchism grew in popularity and influence within anti-capitalist, anti-war and anti-globalisation movements. Anarchists became known for their involvement in protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Group of Eight and the World Economic Forum.

I would also include Anarchist substantial presence in Occupy Wall Street.

While having revolutionary aspirations, many forms of anarchism are not confrontational nowadays. Instead, they are trying to build an alternative way of social organization, based on mutual interdependence and voluntary cooperation.

That description reflects the actions of the self-professed Anarchists that I know, who are interested in developing and sustaining structures of governance (even on small scale) that don't have formalized hierarchies.

I guess it's a mixture of "USSR sucked away some of the oxygen for anti-capitalism for decades" plus the Days of Rage "all the terrorists ended up getting good-paying academic jobs" thing.

Now that the USSR has been gone for long enough and anti-capitalism is gaining steam again, the current issue is that power structures and technology conspire to make anarchism extra-unworkable.

Did socialism just suck away anarchism’s energy by speaking to the same people disaffected by capitalism but offering a more compelling vision of society?

I'd say that, even moreso, Bolshevism and the post-Bolshevist Communist movement did this. The Bolsheviks had an extremely compelling argument for everyone that was dreaming of a society with capitalism overturned: "Look, we did it!" Compared to it, anarchists looked like unserious daydreamers.

Of course, Bolsheviks also quite literally bodied anarchists in several territories, like in Russian-Revolution-era Ukraine and Spanish Civil War, but even there, even the fact that they managed to do this served as an argument for them. The Communist Parties offered a militant, regimented organization that could basically be turned into an army that asserted its will on the society as the need be. Such organizations - communist, fascist, whatever - beat the inchoate, loose anarchist structures every time these two encounter each other in the field of ideological or actual battle.

Of course, when the Bolshevik-style Communism then ended up being a spent force, the general revolutionary energy dissipated. "It's easier to envision the end of the world than the end of capitalism" and all that. Whatever existing anarchist organizing there is is more of the "try to create an alternative society in the cracks of the existing system without directly fighting against the system too much" variety, but that sort of thing still tends to either get crushed (if they can't manage to avoid fighting the system too much) or recuperated (if they don't fight the system at all, or only in a perfunctory way) by the system.

This is a good point I hadn't fully appreciated, that the contest for support between the two schools of thought was often literally a military contest, where the anarchists were bested, and that once socialists societies were built they looked infinitely more viable

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