Anarchist Theory Research Articles

Against Prefiguration: an Anarchist Iconoclasm

Prefigurative politics is frequently identified as a central, essential feature of anarchist theory and practice. Can claims for prefiguration's centrality to anarchism, though, withstand scrutiny? Departing from familiar debates that pit prefiguration against strategy, this paper critically assesses the continued relevance of prefiguration for anarchist thought. The first half of the paper contends that prefiguration continues to be ascribed a pivotal role in accounts of anarchist theory largely due to a continued, unacknowledged commitment to Marxism as a category through which anarchism is understood. It also highlights contradictions between efforts to establish prefiguration as one of anarchism's essential features and definitions of anarchism that disavow the existence of any such essential qualities, proposing that claims for a fundamental centrelessness in anarchism both conflict with claims for prefiguration's centrality and constitute a more convincing and more useful approach. In the second half of the paper I respond to the vexed issue of prefiguration's relation to violence. How can an overriding emphasis on 'being the change one wishes to see' be reconciled with the fact, recognised by anarchism in its most compelling articulations, that violence is an unavoidable feature of politics and of life? Considering the weaknesses of attempts to reconcile prefiguration with violence, I propose that prefiguration requires a commitment to nonviolence, but that the resulting paralysis requires accounts of prefiguration as a fundamental anarchist precept be rejected.

Against Prefiguration: an Anarchist Iconoclasm

Prefigurative politics is frequently identified as a central, essential feature of anarchist theory and practice. Can claims for prefiguration's centrality to anarchism, though, withstand scrutiny? Departing from familiar debates that pit prefiguration against strategy, this paper critically assesses the continued relevance of prefiguration for anarchist thought. The first half of the paper contends that prefiguration continues to be ascribed a pivotal role in accounts of anarchist theory largely due to a continued, unacknowledged commitment to Marxism as a category through which anarchism is understood. It also highlights contradictions between efforts to establish prefiguration as one of anarchism's essential features and definitions of anarchism that disavow the existence of any such essential qualities, proposing that claims for a fundamental centrelessness in anarchism both conflict with claims for prefiguration's centrality and constitute a more convincing and more useful approach. In the second half of the paper I respond to the vexed issue of prefiguration's relation to violence. How can an overriding emphasis on 'being the change one wishes to see' be reconciled with the fact, recognised by anarchism in its most compelling articulations, that violence is an unavoidable feature of politics and of life? Considering the weaknesses of attempts to reconcile prefiguration with violence, I propose that prefiguration requires a commitment to nonviolence, but that the resulting paralysis requires accounts of prefiguration as a fundamental anarchist precept be rejected.

American individualist anarchists’ critique of the democratic state

RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: The aim of this paper is to investigate major premisses of American individualist anarchist movement as the critique toward the constitutional democratic state.
 THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS: Paper analyses premises that led individualist anarchists to formulate their thesis about supreme character of individual rights and individual sovereignty. Consequently, this brought them to conclusion that such defined sovereignty is irreconcilable with any form of government, including constitutional democracy.
 THE PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION: After taking preliminary considerations, reconstructing development of individualist anarchist theory paper examines the shortcomings of constitutional democratic state pointed out by anarchists.
 RESEARCH RESULTS: The result of the study is to clarify the Individualist Anarchists critique of the state, including the constitutional democratic state. Also, to elaborate why classical elements like judicial control, constitution, legal protection of individual rights was not perceived by individualist anarchist as sufficient to legitimise the political authority as such.
 CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS: Adopting anarchists’ perspective and introducing into discourse stateless order as the possible alternative allows to introduce more critical voices about original shortages in legitimization of state power.

The Inversions of Walter Benjamin’s Anarchism

Walter Benjamin’s ambivalent engagement with anarchist thought extends beyond well-known works from the early 1920s such as “Critique of Violence” (1921). Contemporary anarchist thinkers, including Gustav Landauer and Georges Sorel, influenced Benjamin and many of his associates, including Ernst Bloch, Erich Unger, Hugo Ball, and Gershom Scholem. This article describes the place of anarchism in Benjamin’s work, particularly in the fragment “World and Time” (1919) and in the essay on surrealism (1929), as a rhetorical double inversion, in which two reversals reconceptualize anarchist thought to yield original insights on questions of political agency, aesthetics, and tradition.

Anarcho-Cosmopolitanism: Towards a New Ethos of Hospitality

This paper develops a new understanding of hospitality on the basis of an anarchist philosophy of cosmopolitanism. It is argued that anarchism – in its radical critique of the principle of sovereignty and sovereign ipseity – is primarily a philosophy and politics of hospitality. The argument proceeds in five key steps. Firstly, the relationship between ontological anarchism (Schürmann and Levinas) and political anarchism (Bakunin, Kropotkin, Proudhon, Godwin) is explored. Secondly, anarchism’s critique of nation state sovereignty is linked to a radical cosmopolitanism based on cross-border solidarity, mutual aid, and human rights activism, including the defence of the rights of migrants and asylum seekers. Thirdly, I show how the anarchic subject cannot be reduced to a fixed or definable identity with closed borders, but, rather, embodies an attitude of hospitality towards the Other and an openness to being transformed by this encounter. On this basis, I aim to develop an anarchist ethics formulated around the idea of care – for the other, both human and non-human, for the world, for the natural environment (Four) – and an alternative cosmopolitan ethical and political horizon (Five).

Anarchy and Its Overlooked Role in Health and Healthcare.

In this paper, I will argue that a number of well-known health interventions or initiatives could be considered anarchist, or at the very least are consistent with anarchist thinking and principles. In doing this I have two aims: First, anarchism is a misunderstood term-by way of example, I hope to first sketch out what anarchist solutions in health and healthcare could look like; second, I hope to show how anarchist thought could stand as a means to improve the health of many, remedying health inequalities acting as a buffer for the many harms that threaten health and well-being. On this second point, I will argue that there are a number of theoretical and instrumental reasons why greater engagement with anarchism and anarchist thinking is needed, along with how this could contribute to health and in addressing broader injustices that create and perpetuate poor health.

Anarchism, colonialism and the question of “race” in Portugal (c.1890-1930)

ABSTRACT This article explores, through a close reading of newspapers and publications connected to the Portuguese libertarian movement, anarchist discourses and practices around understandings of “race” in Portugal in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A contribution is made both to studies of Lusophone anarchism as well as broader labour movement history where analyses of the interconnections between race and colonialism have been sparse. Portuguese anarchist understandings of race are placed within the context of broader ideas on internationalism within the anarchist movement, contemporary theories of the inheritance of racial characteristics and contestations against notions of nationhood and nationalism. The specific context of Portuguese colonialism and the development of anthropology in the country form the backdrop against which anarchist ideas are analysed. The article argues that while anarchism disrupted certain tropes within racial and colonialist discourse, it also reinforced some cultural categories and rigidified understandings of race, culture and social development.

L'anarchisme en RDA - L'importance de l'anarchisme pour l'opposition de la RDA dans les années 1980

This article deals with the significance of anarchist theory as a point of contact for different currents of the opposition movement within the GDR in the 1980s and the years of transition. It is an exemplary description and analysis of the significance of anarchism for opposition movements in the former states of the Eastern Bloc.

Nature Without the State: An Anarchist Critique of ‘Animalistic Evil’

I here present an anarchist critique of the idea of ‘animalistic evil’ and its common use as a justification for the State’s existence and use of force. On this view, ‘evil’ is a privation of morality, justice, and civilised behaviour. It is then identified with the ‘animalistic’ since animals are often thought to be defined by the aforesaid privation. I first clarify the idea of animalistic evil within the history of philosophy and science. Aristotle (384–322 BCE), Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), and Thomas H. Huxley (1825–1895) prominently argue that all that prevents humanity from devolving into animalistic evil, a state of violent and individualistic struggle for bare survival, is the power of State government to forcibly control the animalistic drives within its citizens. I subsequently pose two questions. (1) Is it justified to associate animal life with evil when this is (a) understood as a privation of a morality, justice and society and (b) characterised as an individualistic struggle for survival? (2) If this is not justified, what is the political harm of doing so? Building on the work of the anarchist thinker Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921), I argue that any conception of animalistic evil is unjustifiable, that it is a false justification for the State’s existence and use of force, and that the State, upon making the empty threat of animalistic evil, both violently harms individuals and impedes the socially beneficial practice of mutual aid.

Acting Local, Thinking Global in Post-War British Anarchism

ABSTRACT Internationalism has always been a major strand of anarchist political thought where it works on several levels. It has described their commitment to dynamic cosmopolitanism but also dictated revolutionary strategy and structured their social alternatives. In the post-war years, however, many anarchist thinkers, confronting the implications of the atomic bomb for state power and global governance, acknowledged the need for strategic revision. Retreating from the idea of revolution as a series of national armed uprisings, they shifted, instead, towards endorsing an ‘act local, think global’ approach to policy. But what did it mean to think global? This article focuses on British post-war anarchists and explores their spectrum of approaches to this strategy shift. While it recognises a common move towards more permeable notions of the local-global dynamic, it also argues for a richer differentiation among their responses than is usually acknowledged.

Theorising the anti‐nation: George Woodcock, anarchism, and Canadian nationalism

AbstractGeorge Woodcock was anarchism's most influential historian and an important public intellectual in Canada. This article focuses on his engagement with Canadian nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s. It argues that a ‘philosophical anarchism’ was at the heart of his intellectual project, and this informed his reading of Canadian cultural development and subsequent political challenge to Pierre Elliott Trudeau's civic nationalism. Woodcock decoupled the concepts of ‘nation’ and ‘state’ in order to develop a radically different model for Canada—the ‘anti‐nation’—defined by regionalism, federalism and direct democracy. His reading of Canada's cultural history supporting this position was therefore part of a strategy to repurpose nationalist rhetoric towards anti‐state ends.

Political Violence and Instrumental Use of Religion in the Works of Carl Schmitt and Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin and Carl Schmitt were active in the interwar period, a very difficult time in the history of Germany. The issues of violence, war, and the role of religion in public affairs were of vast importance for both men. I want to show that, in relation to the issues of religion and political theology, both favored instrumentalizing religious concepts in the name of their own political ideas. Schmitt used Catholicism to establish the so-called concrete order, and Benjamin used Judaism to promote Marxist and anarchist ideas of liberation. That means they were more interested in earthly affairs than in having mystical religious experiences or exploring metaphysical concepts of God and the afterworld. I believe that the instrumental use of theology and religion in the works of Schmitt and Benjamin could indicate that theology was then and is now in a big crisis.

From the Ashes of the Old: Anarchism Reborn in a Counterrevolutionary Age (1970s-1990s)

After almost a century of Marxist predominance, how did anarchism develop from a marginal phenomenon into a force at the centre of the anti-globalisation movement? This article explores how anarchism was reborn in a counterrevolutionary age. Part one investigates how the New Right's post-1960s counterrevolution defeated the New Left and remade US society, including by recuperating potentially liberatory elements of social movements. Part two examines how a new generation of radicals critiqued the failures of MarxismLeninism and popularised the anarchist analysis and principles that provided the foundation for the anti-globalisation movement. The article discusses five examples of the development of anarchist theory and practice: Black/New Afrikan Anarchism, anarcha-feminism, eco-anarchism, punk anarchism, and revolutionary social anarchism. Ultimately, the article argues that anarchism was revitalised in the late twentieth century because it provided compelling answers to the new problems posed by the neoliberal counterrevolution and the crisis of state socialism.

Crypto-Anarchism: The Ideology of Blockchain Technologies

One of the most modern currents of anarchism - crypto-anarchism - arose as a response to the global development of digital technologies and the Internet and operates exclusively within the framework of the “global web”. The paper attempts to study one of the most unusual branches of anarchist philosophy and its impact on the digital life and politics of several states. With the help of functional and comparative methods of political research, the author analyzes crypto-anarchism as part of the ideology of anarchism, the main goal of which is to find out how viable crypto-anarchism is as an independent movement. The article raises the question of whether the ideas of crypto-anarchism can be used to effectively address current socio-political problems. The theoretical basis of crypto-anarchism looks more and more relevant, as it affects the security of the individual on the Web and is aimed at fighting against widespread state control. Despite the fact that, as the study showed, cryptoanarchism as a movement does not have sufficient elaboration and influence on real politics, its deeper study can be useful for preparing political programs aimed at Internet users (which constitute around 62.5 % of the global population), as well as studying political models and their development paths using virtual simulations and virtual states (Liberland, Wirtland), which are characteristic of crypto-anarchism.

‘Squat City’: Dublin’s temporary autonomous zone. Considering the temporality of autonomous geographies

‘Squat City’ was an autonomous social centre and squat that was open for nearly three years in Dublin, Ireland, and the space played a key role in the development of autonomous and anarchist politics in the city. In framing my research, I began with the concept of ‘temporary urbanism’, a well-developed area in urban studies, cultural geography, and planning, that focuses on the temporal aspects of short-term places and spaces. I noted that the concept of autonomous geographies was important to understanding the politics and culture of short-term uses of space like squats, direct actions, protests, and social centres, but that temporary urbanism was not discussed in tandem with autonomous geographies. Using Squat City as the case study, I bring these two ideas together, to create a meaningful discussion based on the similarities between them. The reasons why urban actors are motivated to create these short-term projects can vary greatly, including the urban actors involved in squats, autonomous social centres, direct actions, and protests. What can we learn about city residents’ motivations and politics, how urban spaces are used in the city, and how can we consider the timeframes of autonomous geographies? By focusing on the everyday scale and use value of cities, how do alternative urban practices challenge what we may understand as the normal workings of cities? In this article, I discuss Squat City as a temporary autonomous zone to think about the temporality of radical practices.

“We are Indians, Whores and Lesbians, Revolted and Twined Together.” Decolonial Feminism in Bolivia

Abstract The aim of the text is to analyse contemporary Bolivian decolonial feminism using Cusicanquiʼs model of cultural hybridity. Cusicanqui formulated the concept of chʼixi as an analytical tool for theorizing about the mixing of cultures that maintain distinct aspects but enter a mutual creative dialogue and create new qualities through it. In my analysis, I focus on two streams of Bolivian decolonial feminism, represented by Mujeres Creando and Mujeres Creando Comunidad movements. First, I describe historical roots of Bolivian decolonial feminism with an emphasis on the influence of anarchist ideas both on the formation of the Bolivian workersʼ movement and on strategies and practices of social and indigenous movements at the turn of the millennium. In the following discussion I analyse the ideologies and strategies of Mujeres Creando and Mujeres Creando Comunidad movements using Cusicanquiʼs model of hybridity. I conclude that both movements construct a subversive network of alternative knowledge and practices, within which seemingly contradictory experiences can coexist harmoniously and create a new, non-dichotomous qualities. According to Cusicanqui, these chʼixi spaces are the source of a new, emerging epistemology based on which a radical vision of decolonised modernity can be formulated.

The Diaries of Judith Malina, 1958–1971 (Excerpt)

The Diaries of Judith Malina, 1958–1971 (Excerpt)

Book Review: Ruth Kinna and Clifford Harper, Great Anarchists. London: Dog Section Press. 2020.

In their recent collaboration, Great Anarchists, political theory professor Ruth Kinna and illustrator Clifford Harper provide a testament to the contemporary relevance of late eighteenth through early twentieth century anarchist thought. They do so through their respective depictions of ten individuals who articulated anarchist ideas of one sort or another over the course of their lives. The people depicted in this volume range from those routinely found in mainstream academic treatments of anarchist theory (William Godwin, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Michael Bakunin, and Peter Kropotkin), to those more likely to be found in insider accounts of the history of anarchism (Max Stirner, Louise Michel, Lucy Parsons, Errico Malatesta, and Voltairine De Cleyre), to a literary figure whose relationship to anarchism has frequently gone unnoticed (Oscar Wilde).

On the edge of anarchism: a realist critique of philosophical anarchism

ABSTRACT The article examines whether realist theory should adopt a philosophical anarchist position concerning political obligation. The conclusions are mixed. Drawing on a distinction between strong and weak theories of political obligation (in the terminology of the paper, strong theories are committed to morality-based theorizing while weak theories depart from it), the article argues that philosophical anarchism and realist theory are natural allies against strong theories of political obligation but they must part company when it comes to weak theories because it is exactly their departure from morality-based theorizing that can make weak theories especially appealing to realists. In addition, two further objections can be raised against philosophical anarchism on realist grounds: first, philosophical anarchists are drawn to undesirably sweeping conclusions about the non-existence of legitimate political authority or the extreme scarcity of genuine political relations by their Kantian or Lockean background assumptions and, second, Simmons seems to have an implicit weak theory of political obligation which could be, ironically, much more appealing to realists than his overall Lockean anarchism or his sweeping criticism of weak theories. All in all, can a realist be an anarchist? Probably, but definitely not on philosophical anarchist grounds.

Imagining Peace Outside of Liberal Statebuilding: Anarchist Theory as Pathway to Emancipatory Peacefacilitation

Critical scholarship on peace has coined the term liberal peacebuilding and proven that it is unsuccessful, even counterproductive, in achieving that what it sets out to do—foster peace after violent conflict. The dominant part of this endeavor has been statebuilding. This paper adds to a slowly developing literature that starts to ask the question what an alternative to the reliance on statebuilding could look like. By employing anarchist theory, a new theoretical methodology is introduced to International Relations that allows to imagine forms of peace outside the liberal paradigm whilst preventing imperialistic claims. Such an emancipatory peace practice based on anarchism is envisioned as to build on prefigurative politics and direct action, strengthening autonomy, decentralization, and horizontality as well as challenge all structural forms of domination through radical forms of self-determination. Incorporating such an anarchist agenda offers one perspective on what fostering peace outside decontextualized and imposed liberal nation states could be. I argue that challenging statebuilding foreshadows a greater implication an anarchist research agenda promotes, namely, the need to move away from peace building toward emancipatory forms of peace facilitation.