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