Anarchism in Algeria mainly concerns the history of the anarchism movement during and after French colonization in Algeria.
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Anarchism in Algeria mainly concerns the history of the anarchism movement during and after French colonization in Algeria.
According to the French historian Gilbert Meynier: "The anticolonialist antecedents of French anarchism do not really make it possible to distinguish it, from the rest of the workers' movement in the colonies. It would be wrong to think that the anarchist tradition was quite anticolonialist. If activists claiming in any way the libertarian / anarchist current could have anti-colonialist positions, it was mainly through antimilitarism or defense, general and global, the oppressed." [1]
As early as the end of the 19th century, numerous groups of political activists (emigrants or exiles of European origin) claimed to be anarchist. Despite their desire to promote anarchism to the entire population of Algeria, the anarchist movement was predominantly European. Article writers, as well as subscribers of the libertarian press, were in their vast majority Europeans from Algeria. It was not until the 1920s that activists of Algerian Arab and Berber origin joined the movement. [2]
The first anarchist newspaper, Revolutionary Action, was published in Algiers in 1887. [3] Élisée Reclus participated in anarchist attempts in Algeria to try to found a local labor movement. At that time, some libertarians sympathized with emigrating to Africa for the purpose of "revolutionary propaganda". [4] Over the decades numerous publications emerged printing a variety of anarchist viewpoints, including translations of Peter Kropotkin's works. By 1890, anarchist groups were publishing newspapers and holding public meetings in Algiers, Bab El Oued, Boufarik and Mustapha. These groups refused to send delegates to the Algerian Socialist Congress of 1901, instead standing for the creation of a revolutionary Committee with a single objective: "the Social Revolution". [2]
In 1923, the "Libertarian Federation of North Africa" and its newspaper, Le Flambeau, was established by Algerian anarchists to coordinate Maghrebi libertarians in one and the same political organisation: "Le Flambeau has the ambition to unite all the anarchist comrades, scattered on all sides of our region, in the young and lively anarchist federation of northern French Africa and intensify anarchist propaganda more than ever". [2]
The French anarcho-syndicalist Émilie Busquant is commonly credited with creating the first copy of the Flag of Algeria. [5] The anarchist Pierre Morain was also the first person from France to be arrested for publicly supporting the cause of Algerian independence. [6]
Anarchist communism is a political ideology and anarchist school of thought that advocates communism. It calls for the abolition of private property but retention of personal property and collectively-owned items, goods, and services. It supports social ownership of property and the distribution of resources "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".
Jacques Élisée Reclus was a French geographer, writer and anarchist. He produced his 19-volume masterwork, La Nouvelle Géographie universelle, la terre et les hommes, over a period of nearly 20 years (1875–1894). In 1892 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Paris Geographical Society for this work, despite having been banished from France because of his political activism.
Anarchism in Africa refers both to purported anarchic political organisation of some traditional African societies and to modern anarchist movements in Africa.
E. Armand, pseudonym of Ernest-Lucien Juin, was an influential French individualist anarchist at the beginning of the 20th century and also a dedicated free love/polyamory, intentional community, and pacifist/antimilitarist writer, propagandist and activist. He wrote for and edited the anarchist publications L'Ère nouvelle (1901–1911), L'Anarchie, L'En-Dehors (1922–1939) and L'Unique (1945–1953).
Anarchism in France can trace its roots to thinker Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who grew up during the Restoration and was the first self-described anarchist. French anarchists fought in the Spanish Civil War as volunteers in the International Brigades. According to journalist Brian Doherty, "The number of people who subscribed to the anarchist movement's many publications was in the tens of thousands in France alone."
Jean Maitron (1910–1987) was a French historian specialist of the labour movement.
Anarcho-naturism, also referred to as anarchist naturism and naturist anarchism, appeared in the late 19th century as the union of anarchist and naturist philosophies. In many of the alternative communities established in Britain in the early 1900s, "nudism, anarchism, vegetarianism and free love were accepted as part of a politically radical way of life". In the 1920s, the inhabitants of the anarchist community at Whiteway, near Stroud in Gloucestershire, "shocked the conservative residents of the area with their shameless nudity". Mainly, it had importance within individualist anarchist circles in Spain, France, Portugal and Cuba.
Fédération Anarchiste is an anarchist federation in France, Belgium and Switzerland. It is a member of the International of Anarchist Federations since the latter's establishment in 1968.
Anarchism in Romania developed in the 1880s within the larger Romanian socialist movement and it had a small following throughout all the existence of the Kingdom of Romania. Social anarchism was initially propagated by the Revista Ideei during the time of the Old Kingdom, but following the rise of Bolshevism, socialist tendencies were sidelined in favor of individualism and vegetarianism, which were the predominant anarchist tendencies in Romania during the 1920s and 1930s.
Le Libertaire is a Francophone anarchist newspaper established in New York City in June 1858 by the exiled anarchist Joseph Déjacque. It appeared at slightly irregular intervals until February 1861. The title reappeared in Algiers in 1892 and was then produced in Brussels between 1893 and 1894.
Libertarian possibilism was a political current in early-20th-century Spanish anarchism that advocated achieving the anarchist ends of ending the state and capitalism by participation in structures of contemporary parliamentary democracy. The name of the political position appeared for the first time between 1922 and 1923 within the discourse of the Catalan anarcho-syndicalist Salvador Seguí when he said, "We have to intervene in politics in order to take over the positions of the bourgeoisie".
Maurice Fayolle was an electrician based in Versailles, best known as an influential libertarian communist militant. A couple of years before his death from lung cancer, he inspired the political regrouping that formed the Revolutionary Anarchist Organisation .
Émilie Busquant (1901–1953) was a French feminist, anarcho-syndicalist and anti-colonial activist who was married to the Algerian nationalist leader Messali Hadj. She is notable for her involvement in the creation of the Algerian flag.
Georges Fontenis was a school teacher who worked in Tours. He is more widely remembered on account of his political involvement, especially during the 1950s and 1960s.
Pierre Morain was a building worker, a trades unionist, a militant libertarian communist and an anti-colonialist activist. For most purposes he would be considered a Frenchman. However, when he faced trial in connection with a newspaper article he had written opposing the government position in respect of the Algerian War, the president of the court noticed that his nineteen co-defendants were all Algerian and felt it necessary to clarify Morain's nationality: "But you .. are nevertheless French". Morain's defiant clarification is often requoted when Pierre Morain is discussed: "No, I'm not French. I'm a worker". When he was arrested on 29 May 1955 Morain became the first French anti-colonialist activist to be sent to prison for supporting Algerian independence.
Anarchism in Portugal first appeared in the form of organized groups in the mid-1880s. It was present from the first steps of the workers' movement, revolutionary unionism and anarcho-syndicalism had a lasting influence on the General Confederation of Labour, founded in 1919.
Anarchism spread into Belgium as Communards took refuge in Brussels with the fall of the Paris Commune. Most Belgian members in the First International joined the anarchist Jura Federation after the socialist schism. Belgian anarchists also organized the 1886 Walloon uprising, the Libertarian Communist Group, and several Bruxellois newspapers at the turn of the century. Apart from new publications, the movement dissipated through the internecine antimilitarism in the interwar period. Several groups emerged mid-century for social justice and anti-fascism.
Jacques Gross, or Gross-Fulpius was a member of the Jura Federation, historian of the Paris Commune and a contributor to libertarian and free-thinker newspapers. He contributed to the creation of the newspaper Le Réveil anarchiste in Geneva under the pseudonym of Jean-qui-marche.
Anarchism in Switzerland appeared, as a political current, within the Jura Federation of the International Workingmen's Association (IWA), under the influence of Mikhail Bakunin and Swiss libertarian activists such as James Guillaume and Adhémar Schwitzguébel. Swiss anarchism subsequently evolved alongside the nascent social democratic movement and participated in the local opposition to fascism during the interwar period. The contemporary Swiss anarchist movement then grew into a number of militant groups, libertarian socialist organizations and squats.
The Union of Libertarian Communist Workers was a political organization established in France and created in 1978 after splitting from the Revolutionary Anarchist Organization two years earlier. It was active until 1991, when Alternative libertaire was created.
