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Notes -
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?
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:
More recent activities:
I would also include Anarchist substantial presence in Occupy Wall Street.
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.
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