HISTORY

• Socialism: reaction & revolt against new social conditions

(capitalism)
• Anarchism: reaction against socialist method of using state
power

First splits in the International (1868-72): Bakunin vs. Marx

• 1868: direct economical struggle against capitalism, without
participating in parliamentary politics against Marx’s favoring
parliamentary path
• 1872: Marx's ideas are authoritarian, if a Marxist party came
to power it would be as bad as bourgeois rule

➣ Anarchists were expelled from the International

• An-archy: A-: absence + archos: ruler
but this does not mean “devoid of principles”
• Anarchy as disorder is a conservative designation!

Versions of anarchism:
Utopian socialism: Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen
Rationalist anarchism: William Godwin
Anarcho-syndicalism: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
Anarcho-communism: Michael Bakunin
Collectivism & mutualism: Proudhon and Peter Kropotkin
Individualist anarchism: Max Stirner
Libertarianism: Thoreau, Tucker, Warren
Anarcho-capitalism: Robert Nozicki Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard
 CLASSICAL ANARCHISM

MIKHAIL BAKUNIN (19th)

• Collectivist anarchism: against leadership, ruler/ruled division, state
or government
• Sent to prison and to forced labor camp in Tsarist Russia; involved
in the 1870 Lyon insurrection which foreshadowed Paris Commune;
spent his life in exile.

Statism and Anarchy (1873)

• Scientific method: from concrete fact to theory, not from theory to
fact (qualitative jump)
➣ i.e. from movement of society toward forms of life 
• Anarchist revolution: spontaneous emergence of creative forms of
social life
➣ Not: ideal or scientific model into which to force future
generations
Bakunin’s position against the state:
Q: If the proletariat is to be ruling class, over whom will it rule?
A: factory workers over peasants or German workers over Slavs!

“People’s State” = contradiction & yoke

• If anarchism is the aim, but state is the means, then to free
the masses you have to first enslave them!
➣ Bakunin: Freedom can only be created by freedom!

Bakunin’s position against religion:

• Inversion & fetishism to explain idea of God
• Lust for power to explain State
• Priests & aristocrats as two ruling classes
 Statism Anarchism

government/dictatorship of bottom-up organization

proletariat
minority rule (vanguard or popular rule (no governing
elite) body)
representation participation

imposing ideal model creative spontaneity

lack of trust in the people confidence in the people

liberalism & socialism

The Paris Commune (1871):
Attn: in this text, revolutionary socialism means anarchism
(Proudhonism) & communism means socialism (German
School)!

Anarchist freedom = full development of material, intellectual &

moral capacities latent in us
 formal liberty regulated by state (i.e. legal)
 individual liberty (freedom from)
= liberty in solidarity
Two changes proposed to liberate man from authority & from
idols (state & religion):
1. spontaneous organization of labor & collective ownership of
property by freely organized producers’ associations
2. spontaneous federation of communes to replace paternalistic
State
• Against liberalism: conflict of interests and assumption of
human selfishness is not natural, but produced by state &
theology (+ metaphysics)
• Natural order: not the result of a superior intelligence, but
the absence of it!
➣ Bakunin’s cosmology fully embraces contingency and
spontaneity

PIERRE-JOSEPH PROUDHON (1809-65): 

• Mutualism: cooperative/mutual aid
• Small property ownership is acceptable and healthy
• But in favor of dictatorship of the proletariat
➣ “Property is theft” !
PETER KROPOTKIN (1842-1921)
• Anarchist communism
• Became part of anarchists expelled from International (Jura
Federation), was active in nihilist anti-Tsarist movement of
Tolstoy in Russia; rejected ministerial post after February Rev.

Mutual aid is natural and explains “survival of the fittest”!

➣ Burn all the prisons!

Law and Authority (1886):

Law = obedience to authority, incapacity to think and judge for

oneself 
Equality before the law = homage to justice just as hypocrisy is
homage to truth
Contra liberal thought:
Customs, habits, usages are anterior to law and are what makes
society possible because they develop fraternity & unity of
interest
But/ priests & warriors: superstition, laziness, fear  oppression
& then rebellion

Function of law: to avoid strife

Two-fold character of law:

1. Ensuring existence of inequality
2. Legalizing customs necessary for society to continue obeying
 
Three categories of law:
1. Protection of private property
2. Protection of persons
3. Protection of government: aristocracy, clergy, traders

Crime:
• Caused by social conditions
• Caused by punishment – degrading conditions in prisons

Liberalism: abolition of laws that have proven irksome to middle

classes

➣ Therefore, return to pre-church and pre-king times

 CONTEMPORARY ANARCHISM

COLLECTIVIST ANARCHISM:
• Anti-capitalist, i.e. promotes collectivist production &
consumption
• Anti-system, i.e. rejects party politics and elections

Council democracy and collectivization:

Committee Economic General Industrial

Federation Council

Workplace council Factories in each All industries

sector of industry
Peasants: collectivized production and consumption

Advantages:
• Promotes cooperation and sharing
• Collective decision-making
• Human-scale, i.e. small units with face-to-face interaction

Anarchist methods:
• Revolutionary violence: sabotage, vandalism, agitation
• Direct action, factory takeovers, mutualism & cooperatives
• Non-violence, boycott, civil disobedience
• Anarcho-syndicalism: general strike, boycott, sabotage