From Babeuf’s Conspiracy of Equals, 1795-6, there was continuing socialist ferment

in France

Pierre-Joseph Proudon

(1809-1865) was “the father of

anarchism”

In What Is Property (1840) he coined the

term “anarchist”.“Sovereignty will wind

up fading into a scientific socialism… anarchy, absence of

master, or sovereign… the natural form of

human society”

Proudhon foresaw a balance between “community” and

“property”, and replacement of government by “contract”

Despite his famous saying “property is theft”, he was against seizing capitalist property. He foresaw a network of small workshops and farmers exchanging with

each other at values equal to labour-time, and giving each other free credit, spreading to prevail peacefully.

Proudhon opposed unions, strikes,

worker candidates in elections, and

progressive taxation.

Marx called Proudhon a “bourgeois socialist”. “He has neither courage enough

nor insight to rise, even speculatively, above the bourgeois horizon”. Instead he

just juggled bourgeois concepts.

Proudhon was also anti-feminist, anti-semitic, and

pro-war

Proudhon had an idea of human nature not very different from

bourgeois “economic man”, but emphasising propensity to contract.

Proudhon preferred to call his system “mutualism”,

“federalism”, or “scientific socialism”

In the First International (1864-72) Proudhonism faded, but Mikhail

Bakunin (1814-76) and others in the Jura Federation developed a new sort

of anarchism (Bakunin called it “revolutionary socialism”) more

“infected” by Marxism

Bakunin supported workers seizing capitalist property, and called himself

a “collectivist”; but wanted a federation of small communes

negotiating with others rather than a workers’ state.

Bakunin supported

workers’ unions and strikes, but

not workers’ politics; and he looked more to

peasants and the “lumpen-

proletariat”

Bakunin advocated “all of the States presently in

existence be destroyed...

… except Switzerland”

The first task was to destroy - all institutions, laws, etc. - so that the natural order of

anarchy could emerge.

For Bakunin and his followers,

religion was the base of authority, and authority the

base of exploitation. So,

first destroy religion!

Bakunin said socialist organisation should reflect the ideal new society of tomorrow, but also wanted the “invisible dictatorship” of a secret

revolutionary elite.

Marx retorted that on Bakunin’s principle the Paris Commune of 1871

would have “thrown away all discipline and all weapons”.

Bakunin himself regretted that the Commune “in order to combat the

monarchist and clerical backlash, were obliged to set aside the basic principles of

revolutionary socialism, and organise themselves into a Jacobin counter-force”.

Marx: “All arms with which to fight must be drawn from society as it

is, and… not adapted to the idealistic fantasies of these doctors in social science”.

Engels: “Wanting to abolish authority in large-scale industry is tantamount to wanting to abolish industry itself...”

From the First International split in 1872 to 1917 there was a big anarchist movement in Europe, but with many different strands

Paul Brousse……… Jules Ravachol… Peter Kropotkin.. Errico Malatesta…. Emile Pouget

In the 1880s Paul Brousse (1844-1912) coined the idea of “propaganda of the deed” - starting revolutionary activity by individual acts of violence against society. Anarchists

killed a king of Italy and presidents of France and the USA.

Emile Henry bombs the Café Terminus in Paris, 1894

Brousse himself gradually developed

anarchism’s emphasis on the

small-scale and local into a fixation on

municipal reformism, and became the

leader of the hangdog “possibilist” right

wing of French parliamentary

socialism.

Max Stirner (1806-56) was rediscovered as a prophet of the

most individualist anarchism. Stirner also influenced outright right-

wingers like Nietzsche, and through them today’s postmodernism.

Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) developed Bakunin’s ideas into “anarcho-

communism”. He foresaw immediate free distribution of goods where Bakunin

envisaged some trading

Kropotkin’s ideal society reads something like a world entirely run

by NGOs.

After October 1917 Kropotkin returned to Russia. There, “we

worked on a blueprint for a federal republic…”

Emile Pouget and others developed

anarcho-syndicalism, which the federal units of the future

society would be not local communes but

trade unions.

“Fields and factories for the unions”

Anarcho-syndicalism focused on

class struggle; registered the facts of large-scale industry; and integrated “destructive” activity with

“constructive”

But it tended to equate revolution with a

utopian version of a general strike. The

CGT in France organised a general

strike in May 1906, not a complete defeat but

not the revolution, either.

It tried to combine the functions of trade union, of

political party, and of workers’

councils in one pantomime-horse body: result, none covered properly.

The French CGT, led by anarcho-syndicalists, ended up backing

World War 1

Leon Jouhaux, leader of CGT 1909-47

Kropotkin and other well-known anarchists also backed the Allies in World War 1, but Malatesta and others opposed the war.

In October 1917 the Bolsheviks and the Soviets showed the alternative to both reformist-socialist

parliamentarism and to anarchist postures.

Many anarchists rallied to Bolshevism.. The rest dispersed into

sects, except in Spain… which is another story.