According to James C. Scott, in The Art of Not Being Governed, the resistance of Southeast Asian “hill peoples” to state subordination manifested itself in their deliberate abandonment of both sedentary agriculture and literacy. He argues that “tribality” (group-generated state evasion) is the polar opposite of “peasantry” (state-controlled agriculture). The hill peoples’ foraging and swiddening were thus political choices. Scott’s anthropological and geographical approach to these historical studies is admirable, but, despite his book’s subtitle (An Anarchist History of Upland (...) Southeast Asia), it lacks any reflection on the history of anarchism beyond the observation that tens of millions of persons wanted to avoid being bossed and taxed by the state. There is in the book, moreover, an absence of reflection on the oppressive nature of society: the state, Scott claims, is always repressive, whereas societies without a state are freer. This essay review asks whether the author shares with states, despite his criticism of them, a paucity of concern for the fates of individuals. (shrink)

Anarchist philosophy has often played and continues to play a crucial role in interventions in working-class and labor movements. Anarchist philosophy influenced real-world struggles and touched the lives of real, flesh-and-blood workers, especially those belonging to the industrial, immigrant working classes of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America. Too often the writings, which were disseminated to, and hungrily consumed by, these workers are dismissed as “propaganda.” However, insofar as they articulate and define political, economic, and social concepts; subject political, economic, (...) and social institutions to trenchant critique against clear and well-defined normative standards; offer logical justifications of their own positions; and advance positive alternative proposals, why should these writings not be regarded as philosophical texts and analyzed accordingly? Obviously they should, and the fact that they have been so long ignored by political philosophers, historians, and other scholars reflects academic prejudice rather than the intellectual and philosophical merit of the writings. This article is a preliminary step toward giving anarchist philosophy the hearing it so richly deserves. (shrink)

We can think of the club not as a small business, but as a would‐be “anarchist‐syndicalist commune.” Anarcho‐syndicalism is a kind of anarchism based in labor unions, where workers take control of the economy not through a top‐down government bureaucracy but through revolutionary labor associations called “syndicates. The club resembles just such a syndicate: it's hierarchical, but, unlike capitalist enterprises, it is a democratically governed hierarchy. The state is essentially an instrument of class struggle and will gradually “wither away,” (...) as both the “anarchy” of capitalist markets and the centralized command economy are replaced with socialist anarchism. This chapter portrays the difference between Marxists and classical anarchists such as the French Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon and the Russian Peter Kropotkin, for whom the state should immediately be abolished. SAMCRO seems anarchistic in its principal economic relations, too, with decisions about production, distribution, and labor made by members of the MC collectively. (shrink)

This essay critically examines one of the dominant tendencies in recent theoretical discussions of anarchism, postanarchism, and argues that this tradition fails to engage sufficiently with anarchism’s history. Through an examination of late 19th-century anarchist political thought—as represented by one of its foremost exponents, Peter Kropotkin—we demonstrate the extent to which postanarchism has tended to oversimplify and misrepresent the historical tradition of anarchism. The article concludes by arguing that all political-theoretical discussions of anarchism going forward (...) should begin with a fresh appraisal of the actual content of anarchist political thought, based on a rigorous analysis of its political, social, and cultural history. (shrink)

How we define the anarchist canon—let alone how we decide which thinkers, theories, and texts should count as canonical—depends very much on what we take the purpose of the anarchist canon to be. In this essay, I distinguish between thinkers, theories, or texts that are “anarchist,” by virtue of belonging to actually-existing historical anarchist movements, and those which are “anarchist” in virtue of expressing “anarchistic” (or “anarchic”) ideas. I argue that the anarchist canon is best conceived as a repository of (...) historically-expressed anarchistic ideas and, for this reason, should include both kinds of theories, thinkers, and texts. (shrink)

While Hermann Levin Goldschmidt didn’t read Yiddish anarchists, there seems to have been a convergent evolution in their thinking. Goldschmidt’s looking up to Jewish lore as a source of liberating creativity is commonly encountered in Yiddish anarchist texts. His view of action as a constant response to internal and external challenges in the struggle for an open future is developed by Isaac Nachman Steinberg on the basis of nineteenth-century vitalism. Goldschmidt’s theory of anarchist individualism as willed self-limiting solidarity has a (...) compelling parallel in Hillel Solotaroff’s view of history. His use of impressionism and photography to eternalize the immediacy of human actuality is akin to Rudolf Rocker’s championing of decadent literature. In both cases, the goal of anarchism is not a dictatorship of the former downtrodden, but a continuous and contradictory evolution of freedom in ever-changing contexts. (shrink)

The concept of anarchy is often presented as a recipe for pure disorder. The Anarchist Turn brings together innovative and fresh perspectives on anarchism to argue that in fact it represents a form of collective, truly democratic social organisation. The book shows how in the last decade the negative caricature of anarchy has begun to crack. Globalisation and the social movements it spawned have proved what anarchists have long been advocating: an anarchical order is not just desirable, but also (...) feasible. The contributors, including leading anarchist and critical theorists, argue that with the failure of both free markets and state socialism the time has come for an 'anarchist turn' in political philosophy. In doing so they relate the anarchist hypothesis to a range of other disciplines such as politics, anthropology, economics, history and sociology. (shrink)

Most of the seminal and interesting work on anarchism has come from outside universities and standard intellectual circles. Academics have contributed histories, surveys and (usually not‐so‐sympathetic) criticisms. With a very few exceptions, however, they have contributed little original anarchist thought.

The article analyses relationships between profane and religious illumination, materialism and theology, politics and religion, Marxism and Messianism. For Walter Benjamin, every second is “the small gateway in time through which the Messiah might enter”. This is the starting point in the reading of Benjamin’s works, where we confront various liaisons and couplings of radical politics and messianic events. Through the reading of Benjamin and through the analysis of his conceptions of history and time, the article addresses the question (...) what is possible in the world. (shrink)

Anarchism and Political Modernity looks at the place of 'classical anarchism' in the postmodern political discourse, claiming that anarchism presents a vision of political postmodernity. The book seeks to foster a better understanding of why and how anarchism is growing in the present. To do so, it first looks at its origins and history, offering a different view from the two traditions that characterize modern political theory: socialism and liberalism. Such an examination leads to a (...) better understanding of how anarchism connects with newer political trends and why it is a powerful force in contemporary social and political movements. This new volume in the Contemporary Anarchist Studies series offers a novel philosophical engagement with anarchism and contests a number of positions established in postanarchist theory. Its new approach makes a valuable contribution to an established debate about anarchism and political theory. It offers a new perspective on the emerging area of anarchist studies that will be of interest to students and theorists in political theory and anarchist studies. (shrink)

This essay explores the philosophical significance of the history of mystical anarchism for contemporary ethics and politics. It examines the complex relationship between religion and politics, and elaborates the thesis that many of our contemporary political concepts are secularized theological concepts. After a critical discussion of Carl Schmitt's theory of sovereignty and John Gray's critique of liberal humanism, it examines the anarchist practices of medieval mystics such as Marguerite Porete and the heresy of the Movement of the Free (...) Spirit, and contrasts this mystical anarchist tradition with more recent forms of anarchism, such as Raoul Vaneigem's Situationism.Retrieving the mystical anarchist tradition might help us rethink the relationship between religion and politics and suggest ethically grounded forms of anarchism that avoid violence or abstraction. (shrink)

Professionalized nursing and anarchism could not be more at odds. And yet, if nursing wishes to have a future in the precarious times in which we live and die, the discipline must take on the lessons that anarchism has on offer. Part love note to a problematic profession we love and hate, part fever dream of what could be, we set out to think about what nursing and care might look like after it all falls down, because it (...) is all falling down. Drawing on alternate histories, alternate visions of nursing history, we imagine what nursing values would look like, embracing anarchist principles. We consider examples of community survival, mutual aid, and militant joy as strategies to achieve what nursing could be if nurses put an end to their cop shit, shrugging off their shroud of white cisheteropatriarchal femininity that manifests as professionalism and civility. We conclude with a call to action and a plan for skill-building because this can all be different. (shrink)

Abstract:This article examines the transformation that occurred in anarchist political economy during the interwar period by tracing the intellectual trajectory of Diego Abad de Santillán, an important labor organizer and policymaker during the Spanish Revolution and Civil War (1936–39). Representative of a broader intellectual struggle within anarchism, Abad de Santillán moved away from nineteenth-century ideas about inaugurating anarchism through autonomous communes and gravitated toward participatory national economic planning. Uncovering this shift sheds light on the techniques of governance available (...) to anarchists during the conflict and it highlights their efforts to steer elitist discourses about planning toward democratic management. (shrink)

This paper aims to show that the development of Feyerabend’s philosophical ideas in the 1950s and 1960s largely took place in the context of debates on quantum mechanics. In particular, he developed his influential arguments for pluralism in science in discussions with the quantum physicist David Bohm, who had developed an alternative approach to quantum physics which (in Feyerabend’s perception) was met with a dogmatic dismissal by some of the leading quantum physicists. I argue that Feyerabend’s arguments for theoretical pluralism (...) and for challenging established theories were connected to his objections to the dogmatism and conservatism he observed in quantum physics. However, as Feyerabend gained insight into the physical details and historical complexities which led to the development of quantum mechanics, he gradually became more modest in his criticisms. His writings on quantum mechanics especially engaged with Niels Bohr; initially, he was critical of Bohr’s work in quantum mechanics, but in the late 1960s, he completely withdrew his criticism and even praised Bohr as a model scientist. He became convinced that however puzzling quantum mechanics seemed, it was methodologically unobjectionable – and this was crucial for his move towards ‘anarchism’ in philosophy of science. (shrink)

This second half of a two-part essay examines how Proudhon’s ideas about monarchy changed during his 1858–62 Belgian exile and further evolved upon his return to France around the time of the 1863 legislative elections. If Proudhon justified monarchy’s role in state formation in the French pre-revolutionary past, he did not want the political liberalization of the Second Empire to lead to a return to a regime ressembling the July Monarchy. He attempted in the final years of his life to (...) develop a theory of constitutional evolution which could explain France’s internal political evolution since 1789 and Europe’s geopolitical evolution since the Vienna Settlement. This theory was designed to indicate why the teleological logic at work in both national and international developments since the French Revolution spelled the death knell for Napoleon III’s regime and pre-empted any regression to those political constitutions which came before the February 1848 Revolution in France. While developing these reflections, Proudhon continued to imagine alternative forms of political and social representation anticipating and influencing the way in which later theories of federalism and corporatism were discussed during the French Third Republic in a context of general dissatisfaction with parliamentary democracy. (shrink)

Sophie Scott-Brown’s intellectual biography of Colin Ward does a superb job of putting Ward’s anarchism in its historical and political context. In so doing Scott-Brown arguably draws attention to how Ward’s pragmatic anarchism was dependent on post-war social democracy in the UK. This comment explores whether this makes Ward’s anarchism vulnerable in the following sense: that, as an anarchism, it cannot take sides in the struggle between social democracy and neo-liberalism even though its own prospects for (...) success depend on the strength of social democracy. Ward’s anarchism may be contrasted in this respect with libertarian/radical democratic socialisms (such as of Sheila Rowbotham and Stuart Hall) which envisage a simultaneous struggle both ‘for’ and ‘against’ the (social democratic) state. (shrink)

This handbook unites leading scholars from around the world in exploring anarchism as a political ideology, from an examination of its core principles, an analysis of its history, and an assessment of its contribution to the struggles that face humanity today. Grounded in a conceptual and historical approach, each entry charts what is distinctive about the anarchist response to particular intellectual, political, cultural and social phenomena, and considers how these values have changed over time. At its heart is (...) a sustained process of conceptual definition and an extended examination of the core claims of this frequently misunderstood political tradition. It is the definitive scholarly reference work on anarchism as a political ideology, and should be a crucial text for scholars, students, and activists alike. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION It is a commonplace to observe that the left-Hegelian Max Stirner is little-known.gure in the history of political and philosophical thought. However, that obscurity should not be exaggerated. The author of Der Einzige und sein Eigentum is not only familiar to certain rather specialised and largely academic circles-those with an interest in Hegelianism, for example, or in the early intellectual development of Karl Marx -he is also, and more widely, known as a member of, and in.uence upon, the (...) anarchist tradition. Stirner's best-known work is often excerpted in anthologies of anarchist writings, and his name is regularly included as part of the modern pantheon in historically orientated surveys of anarchist thought. (shrink)

Anarchist theory has a long-standing history in political theory, sociology, and philosophy. As a radical discourse, anarchist theory pushes educators and researchers towards new conceptualizations of community, theory, and praxis. Early writers, like Joseph Proudhoun and Emma Goldman, to more contemporary anarchists, such as Noam Chomsky, have established anarchist theory as an important school of thought that sits outside the Marxist discourses that have dominated the radical academic scene. Today, anarchists have been responsible for staging effective protests (specifically, Seattle, (...) 1999) and have influenced autonomous groups like the Animal Liberation Front in their organizational and guiding philosophies. Interestingly, anarchism is glaringly absent from the literature in educational theory and research. In this article, I highlight aspects of anarchist theory that are particularly applicable to education, and also establishes specific ways that anarchist theory can inform one's own educational praxis. Specifically, I employ the anarchist framework of direct action and micro-level strategies, such as sabotage, that challenge people to resist the oppressive practices found in institutions today. (shrink)

Anarchists and homosexuals have periodically occupied similar positions in relation to US laws and policies: both have functioned as the needed outside against which the proper inside of political order can be established and maintained. Both have blurred the relation of words to deeds, speaking words that are forbidden because the words themselves are seen as dangerous deeds. Examining the deportation case of anarchist John Turner in 1903 and the 1993 Pentagon ban on homosexuals serving openly in the military, and (...) utilizing the intellectual tools provided by Judith Butler in her analysis of speech acts, this article investigates the process of criminalizing an identity category as well as the political context from which that criminalization can be challenged. My goals are to make use of Butler’s arguments about insurrectionary speech to understand anarchism’s historical role in the American political imaginary, and to supplement Butler’s analysis with greater attention to the histories of anarchist struggle. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Adolf Meyer: Psychiatric AnarchistS. Nassir Ghaemi (bio)KeywordsMeyer, biopsychosocial model, Jaspers, pluralism, philosophy, psychiatryThey had weekly lunches in 1920s New York City: In one door stepped a stooped philosopher, with a mustache and a twinkle, perhaps ruminating on some recent Marxist theory; in the other door came the elegant Swiss physician, goateed and erudite. Every week, for a time, John Dewey (leader of American pragmatism) and Adolf Meyer (dean of (...) mid-twentieth century American psychiatry and long-time chair of the Johns Hopkins psychiatry department) lunched together and, somewhere in those conversations—one might imagine—the field of philosophy and psychiatry was born (Meyer 1948, 152).Yet pragmatism—as a proper school of philosophy—does not capture Meyer’s psychiatry. Rather, the core of his thinking, in my view, is to be found in a vague term that deserves analysis: eclecticism.EclecticismIt has been said that eclecticism is a vice in theory but a virtue in practice (Stone 1981), which highlights why so many are attracted to it. Deep down, practitioners just want to be free: They believe that their freedom of choice will tailor treatments best to patients and thus result in best outcomes. As a conceptual theory for psychiatry, eclecticism is a model that views any theory or method as potentially correct, but no theory or method as definitively incorrect. There is no way to avoid an “anything goes” practice with eclecticism: It is—to use a political analogy—an anarchism of mind.William James once remarked that the basis for all philosophies lies in the personalities of philosophers. So it was with Meyer’s eclecticism: congenial personally, he seemed congenitally incapable of disagreeing with any person. Any idea, even the most unusual, would receive a respectful hearing from Meyer. (Double brings out new, excellent documentary evidence of this extreme indecision in the drafts of Meyer’s unsent letters to the behaviorist John Watson.) Although quaint and commendable pedagogically, this excessive open mindedness left American psychiatry—so dependent on Meyer—prey to hard-headed biological radicals and psychoanalytic dogmatists. This is where his eclecticism failed us.Enabling Biological ExtremismMeyer played a key role in legitimizing extreme biological approaches. In addition to his interest in insulin coma (which Double mentions), Meyer enabled the popularization of colectomy and frontal [End Page 341] lobotomy. Psychiatric colectomy, developed by Henry Cotton, was based on the focal toxin theory of mental illness—the idea that mental illness was caused by toxins released by bacteria in the body, the specific locations of which where were the colon and rotted teeth. In one hundred case reports, with mostly short-term follow-up, published in his prominent text, The Defective Delinquent and Insane (Cotton 1921), Cotton laid out his case, which Meyer legitimized by writing a generous foreword. Meyer’s authority was powerful enough to render Cotton’s limited evidence base much more credible than it might otherwise have been. In the 1920s and 1930s, tens of thousands colectomies and full mouth teeth extractions were conducted in patients with mental illness. (Meyer himself sometimes recommended it).1The other biological extremist story is more famous. In a 1936 conference, with Meyer in attendance, the neurologist Walter Freeman presented, for the first time, cases of refractory schizophrenia treated with a new method: frontal lobotomy. Psychoanalyst attendees protested that Freeman was proposing nothing more than mutilation of the brain; yet Meyer intervened in favor of Free-man (“I am not antagonistic to this work, but find it very interesting” [El-Hai 2005]). Unfortunately, Freeman, like Cotton, was a dogmatist: Over time, he performed frontal lobotomy more and more extensively, not just as a treatment of last resort in the most ill schizophrenics (as in the first cases presented to Meyer), but later as a treatment of first resort for the mildest mood disorders. (By 1950 Freeman had personally conducted 2400 transorbital lobotomies, an “office procedure” that allowed him to lobotomize a patient in 15 minutes [El-Hai 2005]).2Lest my critique of Meyer in that era be seen as a Whiggish interpretation of history (the claim that we are so much smarter than those shrinks of the past; in fact I think... (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper examines a relationship between heresy and utopianism forged in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century socialist histories to reveal a significant, pervasive fault-line in the ideological construction of anarchism. It first looks at Marxist narratives which trace the lineages of socialism back to medieval religious dissent and argues that a sympathetic assessment of European heretical movements was qualified by a critique of utopianism, understood as the rejection of materialist ‘science’. It then argues that strands of this narrative have (...) been woven into anarchism, looking at three examples: E.V. Zenker’s Anarchism (1897), James Joll’s The Anarchists (1964/1979) and Saul Newman’s From Bakunin to Lacan (2001). The dominant theme is that anarchism promises the transformation of corrupted nature and aims to achieve it though ecstatic violence, cataclysmic revolution and future perfection. Although this Millenarian anarchism is a ‘straw man’, rather than jettison ‘heresy’ as an investigative tool, I prefer an alternative conception of heresy derived from Martin Buber’s analysis of utopianism in Paths in Utopia (1949) and Michael Bakunin’s critique of political theology. I relate utopianism to the rejection of perfection and heresy with faith. By reframing of heresy in this way I seek to correct a long-standing distortion of anarchist ideas. (shrink)

This book provides a re-assessment of Kropotkin's political thought and suggests that the 'classical' tradition which has provided a lens for the discussion of his work has had a distorting effect on the interpretation of his ideas. By setting the analysis of his thought in a number of key historical contexts, Ruth Kinna reveals the enduring significance of his political thought and questions the usefulness of those approaches to the history of ideas that map historical changes to philosophical and (...) theoretical shifts. One of the key arguments of the book is that Kropotkin contributed to the elaboration of an anarchist ideology, which has been badly misunderstood and which today is too often dismissed as outdated. This sympathetic but critical analysis corrects some popular myths about Kropotkin's thought, highlights the important and unique contribution he made to the history of socialist ideas and sheds new light on the nature of anarchist ideology. (shrink)

Current historiography has considered eugenics to be an emanation from state structures or a movement which sought to appeal to the state in order to implement eugenic reform. This paper examines the limitations of that view and argues that it is necessary to expand our horizons to consider particularly working-class eugenics movements that were based on the dissemination of knowledge about sex and which did not aspire to positions of political power. The paper argues that anarchism, with its contradictory (...) practice afforded by the convulsive social situation of the Civil War in Spain, allows us to assess critically the parameters of the social action of eugenics, its many alliances, and its struggle for existence in changing political circumstances not of its own making. (shrink)

The name recognition of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in France during the early twentieth century was used to rally left-wing syndicalists and right-wing neo-monarchists to the 1911–14 Cercle Proudhon, a small political organization whose creation was once considered to represent the origins of European ‘fascism’. Oddly, no scholars have examined what Proudhon’s actual ideas about monarchy were and how they might have related to his criticisms of existing forms of political representation. This first part of a two-part series examines Proudhon’s evolving consideration (...) of royalty from the July Monarchy until his exile in Belgium in 1858. It explores how Proudhon’s ideas about monarchy were impacted by his hostility to French liberal and republican attempts at electoral reform from 1838 until 1848. It then looks at how his assessment of monarchy began to change after his experience of the Second Republic and the latter’s experiment in universal manhood suffrage. For Proudhon, the ill-fated 1848-52 regime showed how democratic voting could contribute to a dangerous Caesarist personalization of state power and facilitate a fluid transition from republic to empire. During the early years of the Second Empire, Proudhon sometimes expressed nostalgia for liberal ideas of constitutional monarchy fashionable during the earlier 1814–48 era. He did not advocate restricting suffrage again like during the pre-1848 period, however. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The article examines some thoughts on the rise of National Socialism by Rudolf Rocker and Gerhard Wartenberg, two figures of fundamental significance in the anarchism of the Weimar Republic, militant in the anarcho-syndicalist Freie Arbeiter Union Deutschlands, active from 1919 to 1933. A systematic reading of the period's anarchist press, in particular of the weekly ‘Der Syndikalist’ and the monthly ‘Die Internationale’ will show that their rejection of Hitler was based on the theoretical principles of anarchism and (...) a criticism of the authoritarian outcomes of the Russian Revolution, suggesting a substantial affinity between communism and fascism. This topic, recurrent in the international anarchist press between the two wars, confirms the intrinsic plurality of anti-fascism and the impossibility of identifying it completely with communism, and anticipates conceptually the later adoption of the notion of totalitarianism. The article thus retraces the pluralist and many-sided concept of Nazism formulated by Rocker and Wartenberg, a concept that found its place in a European perspective and took into consideration political, economic, cultural and psychological aspects. (shrink)