African Anarchism : The History of A Movement

Chapter 1 : What Is Anarchism ?

Anarchism as a social philosophy, theory of social organization, and social movement is remote to Africa — indeed, almost unknown. It is underdeveloped in Africa as a systematic body of thought, and largely unknown as a revolutionary movement. Be that as it may, anarchism as a way of life is not at all new to Africa, as we shall see. The continent’s earliest contact with European anarchist thought probably did not take place before the second half of the 20th century, with the single exception of South Africa. It is, therefore, to Western thinkers that we must turn for an elucidation of anarchism.

Anarchism derives not so much from abstract reflections of intellectuals or philosophers as from the objective conditions in which workers and producers find themselves. Though one can find traces of it earlier, anarchism as a revolutionary philosophy arose as part of the worldwide socialist movement in the 19th century. The dehumanizing nature of capitalism and the state system stimulated the desire to build a better world — a world rooted in true equality, liberty, freedom and solidarity. The tyrannical propensities of the state — any state — underpinned by private capital, have propelled anarchists to insist on the complete abolition of the state system.

The New Encyclopaedia Britannica[1] (15th Edition) characterizes anarchism as a social philosophy “whose central tenet is that human beings can live justly and harmoniously without government and that the imposition of government upon human beings is in fact harmful and evil.” Similarly, The Encyclopedia Americana[2] (International Edition) describes anarchism as a theory of social organization “that looks upon all law and government as invasive, the twin sources of nearly all social evils. It therefore advocates the abolition of all government as the term is understood today, except that originating in voluntary cooperation.” Anarchists, it goes on to say, do not conceive of a society without order, “but the order they visualize arises out of voluntary association, preferably through self-governing groups.”

For its part Collier’s Encyclopedia[3] conceives anarchism as a 19th-century movement “holding the belief that society should be controlled entirely by voluntarily organized groups and not by the political state.” Coercion, according to this line of reasoning, is to be dispensed with in order that “each individual may attain his most complete development.” As far as definitions go, these lend some useful, if superficial, insights into anarchist doctrine. But their usefulness in the elucidation of the rich and expansive body of thought known as anarchism is patently limited. The wide gamut of anarchist theory is revealed only in the writings of anarchists themselves, as well as in the writings of a few nonanarchists.

According to Bertrand Russell, anarchism “is the theory which is opposed to every kind of forcible government. It is opposed to the state as the embodiment of the force employed in the government of the community. Such government as anarchism can tolerate must be free government, not merely in the sense that it is that of a majority, but in the sense that it is assented to by all. Anarchists object to such institutions as the police and the criminal law, by means of which the will of one part of the community is forced upon another part.... Liberty is the supreme good in the anarchist creed, and liberty is sought by the direct road of abolishing all forcible control over the individual by the community.”[4]

Russell justifies the anarchist demand for the abolition of government, including government by majority rule, writing, “it is undeniable, that the rule of a majority may be almost as hostile to freedom as the rule of a minority : the divine right of majorities is a dogma as little possessed of absolute truth as any other.”[5]

Likewise, anarchism is irreconcilably opposed to capitalism as well as to government. It advocates direct action by the working class to abolish the capitalist order, including all state institutions. In place of state/capitalist institutions and value systems, anarchists work to establish a social order based on individual freedom, voluntary cooperation, and self-managed productive communities.

Toward this end, anarchism posits that every activity currently performed by the state and its institutions could be better handled by voluntary or associative effort, and that no restraint upon conduct is required because of the natural tendency of people in a state of freedom to respect each other’s rights.

Anarchists are so implacably opposed to the state system and its manifestations that one of the founding fathers of anarchism, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, proclaimed : “Governments are the scourge of God.” Mikhail Bakunin elaborated on Proudhon’s propositions, explaining the goal of anarchism as the full development of all human beings in conditions of liberty and equality :

It is the triumph of humanity, it is the conquest and accomplishment of the full freedom and full development, material, intellectual and moral, of every individual, by the absolutely free and spontaneous organization of economic and social solidarity as completely as possible between all human beings living on the earth.[6]

Bakunin goes on to say that “we understand by liberty, on the one hand, the development, as complete as possible, of all the natural faculties of each individual and, on the other hand, his independence, not as regards natural and social laws but as regards all the laws imposed by other human wills, whether collective or separate.... What we want is the abolition of artificial privilege, legal, official influences.”[7]

Such privileges are necessarily the prerogative of the state. And thus Bakunin characterizes the state as nothing but domination, oppression, and exploitation, “regularized” and “systematized” :

The state is government from above downwards of an immense number of men, very different from the point of view of the degree of their culture, the nature of the countries or localities that they inhabit, the occupation they follow, the interests and the aspirations directing them — the state is the government of all those by some or other minority ; this minority, even if it were a thousand times elected by universal suffrage and controlled in its acts by popular institutions, unless it were endowed with the omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence which the theologians attribute to God, it is impossible that it could know and foresee the needs or satisfy with an even justice the most legitimate and pressing interests in the world. There will always be discontented people because there will always be some who are sacrificed.[8]

As Bakunin further observes, the state was an historically necessary evil, but its complete extinction will be, sooner or later, equally necessary. He repudiates all laws, including those made under universal suffrage, arguing that freedom does not mean equal access to coercive power (i.e., government via “free” elections), but rather that it means freedom from coercive power — in other words, one becomes really free only when, and in proportion as, all others are free.

It is Peter Kropotkin, however, who provides both systematic and penetrating insight into anarchism as a practical political and social philosophy. In two seminal essays, Anarchism and Anarchist Communism, he declares that the private ownership of land, capital and machinery has had its time and shall come to an end, with the transformation of all factors of production into common social property, to be managed in common by the producers of wealth. Under this dispensation, the individual reclaims his/her full liberty of initiative and action through participation in freely constituted groups and federations, that will come to satisfy all the varied needs of human beings. “The ultimate aim of society is the reduction of the functions of government to nil — [that] is, to a society without government, to Anarchy.”[9]

He elaborates :

You cannot modify the existing conditions of property without deeply modifying at the same time the political organization. You must limit the powers of government and renounce parliamentary rule. To each new economical phase of life corresponds a new political phase. Absolute monarchy — that is, court-rule — corresponded to the system of serfdom. Representative government corresponds to capital-rule. Both, however, are class-rule.

But in a society where the distinction between capitalist and laborer has disappeared, there is no need of such a government ; it would be an anachronism, a nuisance. Free workers would require a free organization, and this cannot have another basis than free agreement and free cooperation, without sacrificing the autonomy of the individual to the all-pervading interference of the state. The no-capitalist system implies the no-government system. Meaning thus the emancipation of man from the oppressive power of capitalist and government as well, the system of Anarchy becomes a synthesis of the two powerful currents of thought which characterize our century.[10]

Kropotkin posits that representative government (democracy) has accomplished its historical mission to the extent that it delivered a mortal blow to court-rule (absolute monarchy). And since each economic phase in history necessarily involves its own political phase, it is impossible to eliminate the basis of present economic life, namely private property, without a corresponding change in political organization.[11] Conceived thus, anarchism becomes the synthesis of the two chief desires of humanity since the dawn of history : economic freedom and political freedom.

An excursion into history reveals that the state has always been the property of one privileged class or another : a priestly class, an aristocratic class, a capitalist class, and, finally, a bureaucratic (or “new”) class, as in the Soviet Union and China. The existence of a privileged class is absolutely necessary for the preservation of the state. “Every logical and sincere theory of the state,” Bakunin asserts, “is essentially founded on the principle of authority — that is to say, on the eminently theological, metaphysical and political idea that the masses, always incapable of governing themselves, must submit at all times to the benevolent yoke... which in one way or another, is imposed on them from above.”[12]

This phenomenon is the virtual equivalent of slavery — a practice with deep statist roots. This is illustrated by the following passage from Kropotkin :

We cry out against the feudal barons who did not permit anyone to settle on the land otherwise than on payment of one quarter of the crops to the lord of the manor ; but we continue to do as they did — we extend their system. The forms have changed, but the essence has remained the same.”[13]

Bakunin expresses this thought even more poignantly :

Slavery can change its form and its name — its basis remains the same. This basis is expressed by the words : being a slave is being forced to work for other people — as being a master is to live on the labor of other people. In ancient times as today in Asia and Africa, slaves were simply called slaves. In the Middle Ages, they took the name of “serfs,” today they are called “wage-earners.” The position of the latter is much more honorable and less hard than that of slaves, but they are nonetheless forced by hunger, as well as by the political and social institutions, to maintain by very hard work the absolute or relative idleness of others. Consequently, they are slaves. And, in general, no state, either ancient or modern, has ever been able, or ever will be able, to do without the forced labor of the masses, whether wage-earners or slaves.”[14]

The primary distinguishing factor between the wage worker and the slave is, perhaps, that the wage worker has some capacity to withdraw his or her labor while the slave cannot.

G. P. Maximoff does not see things any differently. To him, the essence of anarchism consists of the abolition of private property relations and the state system, the principal agent of capital. He states that “capitalism in its present stage has reached the full maturity of imperialism... beyond this point, the road of capitalism is the road of deterioration.”[15]

But capitalism is not alone here. Marxist state socialism as expressed in the former Soviet Union, from its very inception, provided ample evidence for the anarchist argument. Says Maximoff :

The Russian Revolution... revealed the nature of state socialism and its mechanism, demonstrating that there is no great difference in principle between a state socialist and a bourgeois society... between these societies, seemingly so irreconcilable and so antagonistic to each other, there is really only a quantitative, not a qualitative, difference. And the attempt to solve the social problem by utilizing the methods inherent in rigid, logically consistent power communism, as in the Russian Revolution, demonstrates that even quantity is not always on the side of authoritarian communism and that, on the contrary, when logically pursued to the end, it resembles despotism in many ways.[16]

Thus, says Maximoff, anarchism is the only social force capable of destroying private property and its mainstay, the state ; of establishing public ownership and a stateless, federalist organization of society on the basis of the free association of productive units both in factories and towns. Anarchism alone “can assure liberty, i.e., the well-being and the free development of the individual in society, and of society itself. It alone will stop the division of society into classes and will abolish every possibility of the exploitation or rule of man by man.”[17]

The International Workers Association[18] (IWA) is a federation of anarchist labor groups in dozens of countries around the world. While it terms its goals “revolutionary syndicalist,” they are in fact virtually identical with anarchist goals. The IWA’s statutes state in part :

Revolutionary syndicalism is the pronounced enemy of all economic and social monopoly. It aims at the abolition of privilege by the establishing of economic communes and administrative organs run by the workers in the fields and factories, forming a system of free councils without subordination to any power or political party. Revolutionary Syndicalism poses as an alternative to the politics of states and parties, the economic reorganization of production. It is opposed to the governing of people by others and poses self-management as an alternative.

Consequently, the goal of revolutionary syndicalism is not the conquest of political power, but the abolition of all state functions in the life of society. Revolutionary Syndicalism considers that the disappearance of the monopoly of property must also be accompanied by the disappearance of all forms of domination. Statism, however camouflaged, can never be an instrument for human liberation and, on the contrary, will always be the creator of new monopolies and privileges.

Based on the foregoing, we may summarize the theoretical aspects of anarchism : anarchism seeks the abolition of capitalism and the capitalist mode of production — this includes the social relations it engenders, its market processes, and the commodity and wage systems. This is not possible to accomplish, however, without the simultaneous abolition of the state system together with its value systems and institutions, including the legal and school systems, mass media, bureaucracy, police, patriarchal family, organized religion, etc.

The state system is, of course, neither peculiar to nor exclusive to capitalism ; it is also a cardinal feature of state socialism, that is, marxist socialism as represented by both the Soviet and Chinese systems. And the state system everywhere displays the same authoritarian and hierarchical features that serve to circumscribe the freedom of the individual, and thus that of society at large.

Anarchism derives from the class struggle engendered by the enslavement of workers and from their historical aspirations toward freedom. Class in this sense is not just an economic concept, nor does it relate merely to the ownership of the means of production : it in fact represents the unwholesome amount of power which a tiny group wields and exercises over the rest of society.

The instrument of this tiny elite, the state, is simultaneously the organized violence of the owning class and the system of its executive will. As the Dielo Trouda group further puts it, authority is always dependent on the exploitation and enslavement of the majority of the people. And authority without hierarchy, without exploitation and loss of freedom, loses its reason for being. “The state and authority take from the masses all initiative, kill the spirit of creation and free activity, cultivate in them the servile psychology of submission.”[19]

The strength of anarchism is predicated on the fact that humans throughout history have been propelled by the quest for equality and liberty, liberty being indivisible from equality, and vice versa. This desire seems to stem from the fact that human beings are basically cooperative rather than competitive.

In place of a society organized along class lines, marked by hierarchy and authority, anarchism advocates a self-managed, self-reliant society based on cooperative, voluntary mutual aid and association, and devoid of government (i.e., coercion). In such a society the ownership of the means of production is not the exclusive preserve of any individual or group, and wage labor is nonexistent, allowing the individual ample freedom and initiative for full development. “There will be no demi-gods, but there will also be no slaves. Demi-gods and slaves will both become men ; the former will have to step down from their Olympian heights, the latter will have to move up considerably.”[20] In the broad sweep of history, anarchism will take its place as a social order founded on and geared toward a post-capitalist, post-government society.

Importantly, anarchism does not imply the absence of organization. In contrast to the irrational, hierarchical, centralized authority of government and corporations, anarchists accept and indeed respect the rational authority of the expert — an authority of a different type : one based upon expertise and experience, not coercive power.

Anarchists have always recognized the need for organization. For them, however, the question is what type of organization. Anarchists argue for horizontal organization based on decentralization, individual and local autonomy, social equality, and democratic decision making.

Ultimately, anarchism rejects all struggle for state (political) power, holding out as its weapon and method the social struggle of workers and peasants based in solidarity and internationalism. Consequently, the task of emancipating working people must be the work of working people themselves. This emancipation consists of the reduction of the functions of government to zero, ensuring that, at all times, control over all necessary forms of social organization is from below.

What Anarchism is not

Unfortunately, in addition to saying what anarchism is, it’s also necessary to say what it is not. It’s necessary to address the vulgar misconceptions and deliberate, outright distortions that marxists and capitalist apologists propagate about anarchism.

By far the greatest misconception is that anarchism is synonymous with rejection of order or with a state of disorder, involving chaos, destruction, and violence. Nothing could be further from the truth. Kevin Doyle, of Workers Solidarity magazine writes, “Anarchism has been deliberately slandered and misrepresented, not only by those running [this] society, but also by most on the left. Deliberately, for the reason that its uncompromising and radical critique of society and how to change it poses a challenge that cannot be met except by slander. Its roots and association with the working class of all countries tells the real truth.”[21]

Anarchism is basically opposed to violence, and to disorder, chaos and terrorism as well. Anarchists the world over uphold peace as an overriding value and, consequently, reject war, armies, militarism, and the development and acquisition of technologies that promote war. Anarchists advocate violence only as a form of self-defense.

The statutes of the International Workers Association put the issue in sharp perspective : “While revolutionary syndicalism is opposed to all organized violence of the state, it realizes that there will be extremely violent clashes during the decisive struggles between the capitalism of today and the free communism of tomorrow. Consequently, it recognizes as valid that violence which can be used as a means of defense against the violent methods used by the ruling classes during the social revolution.”[22]

Rejection of aggressive violence and terrorism does not, however, make anarchists pacifists. On the contrary, a successful anarchist movement will face state violence. The way to combat this repressive violence is not through terrorism or through the creation of hierarchical military organizations, but through the creation of community-based defense and educational organizations that are willing to defend their own social structures.

Anarchist advocacy of defensive organizations was born out of a historical recognition of the state as the most brutal and ruthless agent of terror, and the recognition that its use of violence depends almost entirely on the degree to which it feels challenged. Anarchists recognize that the state will do anything, no matter how vile, to maintain its own power.

As for anarchism and terrorism, only a tiny minority of anarchists have taken part in terrorist activities. This is because anarchists recognize that means determine ends, and because they seek to abolish the state system, not to establish a vanguard that would aspire to state power. As the anonymous authors of You Can’t Blow Up a Social Relationship : The Anarchist Case Against Terrorism put it :

You can’t blow up a social relationship. The total collapse of this society would provide no guarantee about what replaced it. Unless a majority of people had the ideas and organization sufficient for the creation of an alternative society, we would see the old world reassert itself because it is what people would be used to, what they believed in, what existed unchallenged in their own personalities.

Proponents of terrorism and guerrillaism are to be opposed because their actions are vanguardist and authoritarian, because their ideas, to the extent that they are substantial, are wrong or unrelated to the results of their actions (especially when they call themselves libertarians or anarchists), because their killing cannot be justified, and finally because their actions produce either repression with nothing in return, or an authoritarian regime.[23]

Bertrand Russell adds :

In its general doctrines, there is nothing [in anarchism] essentially involving violent methods or a virulent hatred of the rich... The revolt against law naturally leads, except in those who are controlled by a real passion for humanity, to a relaxation of all the usually accepted moral values. It would be wholly unfair to judge anarchist doctrine, or the views of its leading exponents, by such phenomena.... This must be remembered in exculpation of the authorities and the thoughtless public, who often confound in a common detestation the parasites of the movement and the truly heroic and high-minded men who have elaborated its theories and sacrificed comfort and success to their propagation.[24]

L.S. Bevington sums it all up :

Of course we know that among those who call themselves anarchists, there are a minority of unbalanced enthusiasts who look upon every illegal and sensational act of violence as a matter for hysterical jubilation. Very useful to the police and the press, unsteady in intellect and of weak moral principle, they have repeatedly shown themselves accessible to venal considerations. They, and their violence, and their professed anarchism are purchasable, and in the last resort they are welcome and efficient partisans of the [ruling class]... Let us leave indiscriminate killing and injuring to the government — to its statesmen, its stockbrokers, its officers, and its law.[25]

Anarchism in its present manifestations as revolutionary syndicalism, anarcho-syndicalism, and anarcho-communism, advocates direct action, but not terrorism or violent acts.

Similarly, anarchism does not imply the absence of organization. As mentioned previously, anarchists reject the hierarchical and authoritarian model of organization that erodes freedom and equality ; but they do not reject the horizontal model of organization based on democratic decision-making, decentralization, voluntary association, and voluntary cooperation. Indeed, this form of organization is central to the anarchist vision.

Concerning religion, Bakunin’s God and the State exposed the integral relationship between the church and the state system. It states, “God moving in the world has made the state possible,”[26] in tracing this connection : “It is necessary to think of it [the state] not merely as a given state or a particular institution, but of its essence or idea as a real manifestation of God. Every state, of whatever kind it may be, partakes of this divine essence.”

Organized religion is indeed one of the pillars of capitalist social relationships. It embodies similar hierarchical and authoritarian features as the state and the corporation, and its ideology and institutions are just as antithetical to the individual’s quest for freedom and equality.

It should be understood, though, that some people who profess anarchist beliefs nonetheless still hold some type of religious belief. This may seem contradictory to nonreligious anarchists, but the sincerity of many of these people is unquestionable.

So, what is wrong with religion from the anarchist point of view ? In addition to their hierarchical and authoritarian features, patriarchal religions dominate through the induction of fear and irrationality, and thus rob people of self-determination and the ability to think clearly. As well, they have very pronounced intrusive tendencies. Many of the worst intrusive excesses of governments, both ancient and modern, have been the direct result of attempts by religious partisans to legislate “morality” — and to enforce that “morality” at the point of a sword or gun.

Still, most anarchists would agree with the statement of the Geneva section to the Brussels Congress of the International Workingmen’s Association, which says that “religious thought, as a product of the individual mind, is untouchable as long as it does not become a public activity.”[27] Unfortunately, because of the intrusive, authoritarian nature of almost all organized religions, it’s rare that religious beliefs remain a private matter. Thus, most anarchists oppose religion.

Origins of Anarcho-Syndicalism

The word anarchism is derived from two Greek words, “an” and “archos,” meaning “without rule” or “contrary to authority.”

The true origins of anarchist principles date far back in time. Conceived as a way of life or a philosophy which is opposed to every form of government or forcible state control over the individual, anarchism has been a familiar theme for humankind from the dawn of history.

In ancient Greece, Zeno (342 — 267 ? B.C.E.), the leading light of Stoic philosophy, vehemently opposed the idea of the state’s omnipotence, its intervention in the life of and its regimentation of the individual in society. He consequently proclaimed the moral law of the individual. According to him, although humanity’s self-preservation instincts can lead to egotism, nature has supplied a corrective to it by instilling the instinct of sociability : “When men are reasonable enough to follow their natural instincts, they will unite across the frontiers and constitute the Cosmos. They will have no need of law-courts or police, they will have no temples and no public worship, and use no money — free gifts taking the place of exchanges.”[28]

Similar ideas lie buried in the writings and thoughts of several subsequent philosophers and thinkers up to medieval times. It is highly probable that anarchist ideas have been equally pervasive in Africa.

In his seminal work, An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, William Godwin in 1793 anticipated later anarchist principles, although he did not employ the term anarchism. His pioneering work yielded an outline of a decentralized and nonhierarchical society ; he advocated the abolition of every form of government. He further called for “the progressive breaking down of all institutions that contribute to coercion and inequality.... Future organizations would be loose and voluntary associations.” A society could perfectly well exist without any government, he concluded ; such communities would be small and perfectly autonomous. With regard to property, he declared that the right of everyone “to every substance capable of contributing to the benefit of a human being must be regulated only by justice ; the substance must go to him who most wants it.”[29]

Godwin rejected laws, all laws, because the remedy they offer is worse than the evils they pretend to cure.

It was not, however, until the publication in 1840 of French writer Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s What Is Property ? that modern anarchism emerged as a force in social thought. Proudhon rejected law and authority in all their ramifications, and for the first time adopted the word anarchism as a positive term. He advocated a society without government, and used the word “anarchy” to describe it.

In a subsequent book, The Federation Principle, published in 1863, Proudhon elaborated slightly upon his earlier theory of government, favoring the formation of self-governing communities. He found in communism no redeeming feature, preferring instead “anarchist individualism.” He advocated an economic system of “mutualism,” which seeks to rob capital of its capacity to earn interest. It is based on “the reciprocal confidence of all those engaged in production, who agree to exchange among themselves produce at cost value.”[30] Other advocates of mutualism include Josiah Warren in the United States and William Thompson in England.

Anarchism as a social movement didn’t really emerge, however, until the appearance of Mikhail Bakunin. Born on May 30, 1814 of Russian nobility, Bakunin early in life abandoned his military commission and delved instead into philosophy, a preoccupation that brought him into contact with Karl Marx, Arnold Ruge, Wilhelm Weitling, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, George Sand, and Friedrich Engels. His activities brought him repeatedly into conflict with the Czarist government. Weitling’s ideas of a society administered without government, with obligations but without laws, and with corrections instead of punishments, had a lasting influence on Bakunin, as did the ideas of Proudhon. As for Karl Marx, Bakunin attested to the German thinker’s real genius, scholarship, and revolutionary zeal, but was repelled by his arrogance and egotism.[31]

In Italy in 1864 Bakunin founded the International Fraternity or Alliance of Socialist Revolutionaries. By 1867, he had moved to Switzerland where he played an important role in the founding of the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy. The Alliance’s program provides an insight into Bakunin’s initial ideas. It reads in part :

The Alliance declares itself atheist ; it desires the definitive and entire abolition of classes, and [favors] the political equality and social equalization of individuals of both sexes. It desires that the earth, the instruments of labor, like other capital, become the collective property of society as a whole, shall no longer be utilized except by the workers, that is to say, by agricultural and industrial associations. It recognizes that all actually existing political and authoritarian states, reducing themselves more and more to the mere administrative functions of the public services in their respective countries, must disappear in the universal union of free associations, both agricultural and industrial.[32]

Unlike Marx, Bakunin did not clearly set forth his vision of an ideal society. His best known work, God and the State, is a biting, insightful attack on government and religion ; in it, he states that “belief in God and belief in the state [are] the two great obstacles to human liberty.” But he does not present a systematic exposition of an alternative to capitalist/statist society.

While Bakunin remains perhaps the most revered figure in anarchism, it fell to those who followed him, notably Peter Kropotkin Rudolf Rocker, and Murray Bookchin, to espouse clearly, systematically, and profoundly the essential ideas on the form, structure and content of an anarchist society. Among Kropotkin’s many works, Fields, Factories and Workshops Tomorrow, The Conquest of Bread, Anarchism, and Anarchist Communism stand out.

In the the first two works, Kropotkin demonstrated that a scientific and efficient production process would render long working hours unnecessary. “If civilization and progress are to be compatible with equality, it is necessary that equality should not involve long hours of painful toil for little more than the necessaries of life, since where there is no leisure, art and science will die and all progress will become impossible.”

The two major planks of Kropotkin’s argument regarding work were that improvement in methods of production would make work more pleasant, and that the wage system should be abolished. To this end, he rejected any form of coercion or compulsion in human affairs, preferring instead consensus.

In Anarchism and Anarchist Communism, Kropotkin sketched anarchist principles with penetrating clarity :

The anarchists consider, therefore, that to hand over to the state all the main sources of economical life — the land, the mines, the railways, banking, insurance, and so on — as also the management of all the main branches of industry, in addition to all the functions already accumulated in its hands (education, state-supported religions, defense of the territory, etc.) would mean to create a new instrument of tyranny. State capitalism would only increase the powers of bureaucracy and capitalism. True progress lies in the direction of decentralization, both territorial and functional, in the development of the spirit of local and personal initiative, and of free federation from the simple to the compound, in lieu of the present hierarchy from the center to the periphery.[33]

He was contemptuous of the state system and recommended its comprehensive abolition.

For Kropotkin, the ideal society was one in which the functions of government are reduced to the barest minimum, where “the individual recovers his full liberty of initiative and action for satisfying, by means of free groups and federations — freely constituted — all the infinitely varied needs of the human being.”[34]

Since Kropotkin’s time, many other writers have made significant contributions to anarchist theory, especially to the important task of outlining the possible forms that an anarchist society might take. One of the most important of these writers was Rudolf Rocker, whose most important works are Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism and Nationalism and Culture. Contemporarily, Murray Bookchin has produced many valuable works, such as Post-Scarcity Anarchism and Toward an Ecological Society, and Graham Purchase’s recent Anarchism and Environmental Survival is also worthy of note. It is beyond the scope of this chapter, however, to consider in depth the many possible forms an anarchist society might take.

For our purposes, suffice it to say that the foundation of anarchist theory lies in the rejection of coercion. The flip side — let us say the positive side — of this rejection is the belief in human freedom and equality as the highest good. From these premises, anarchists necessarily reject government (organized coercion and violence) and capitalism (organized economic domination of the individual), and instead embrace voluntary association, voluntary cooperation, persuasion, education, and mutual aid.

Anarchists recognize that means determine ends, and thus the means that anarchists embrace (voluntary association, cooperation, mutual aid, etc.) must necessarily be congruent with their ends. In the long run, this strategy will bear good fruit — a free and equal society ; but in the short term this means that quick fixes are unlikely.

Like similar radical doctrines, anarchism derives in the main from humankind’s relentless — if slow and tortured — quest for freedom, as well as from the desire for complete development of individuals through the release of their own initiatives and creative energies. This quest, ever-recurring in human society, is nothing new.

What distinguishes anarchism, as Bertrand Russell pointed out, is that the close relation of the anarchist ideal to human suffering has led to the birth of powerful social movements. It is this that makes anarchism “dangerous to those who batten, consciously or unconsciously, upon the evils of our present order of society.”

The similarities and differences between anarchism and related ideological schools such as marxist socialism, syndicalism, and guild socialism are outlined in the next chapter.