Anarchy Archives

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The Anarchy Archives project is a self-described online research center on the history and theory of anarchism. It was created in September 1995 by Dana Ward, a Professor of Political Studies at Pitzer College. It has since been expanded by students in the Political Studies department at Pitzer College, starting in the spring of 1997.

Anarchism is an anti-authoritarian political philosophy that advocates self-governed societies based on voluntary, cooperative institutions and the rejection of hierarchies those societies view as unjust. These institutions are often described as stateless societies, although several authors have defined them more specifically as distinct institutions based on non-hierarchical or free associations. Anarchism holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful..

Dana Ward is a professor emeritus of Political Studies at Pitzer College, where he founded and maintains the Anarchy Archives and where he taught from 1982 through 2012. He was the Executive Director of The International Society of Political Psychology from July 1998 to the Fall of 2004. Dana Ward received his BA from University of California, Berkeley, an MA in political science from The University of Chicago, and a double PhD in political science and psychology from Yale University. Ward also served on the Psychology faculty at the Claremont Graduate University. Ward taught at St. Joseph's University during Fall 1981 through Spring 1982, at Ankara University in 1986 on a Fulbright Fellowship, at the Johns Hopkins-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies, from the fall of 1990 through the spring of 1992, and at Miyazaki International College, Miyazaki, Japan, from January 1995 through January 1997.

Professor academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries

Professor is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences, a teacher of the highest rank.

Contents

The project consists of two main parts, an archive of collected works of major anarchist theorists and a history of the major anarchist movements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Collected works

The Anarchy Archives contains works collected from the following authors, representing many different veins of anarchist and socialist thought including individualist anarchism, syndicalism, and communist anarchism:

Individualist anarchism several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement

Individualist anarchism refers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and his will over external determinants such as groups, society, traditions and ideological systems. Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy, but it refers to a group of individualistic philosophies that sometimes are in conflict. Benjamin Tucker, a famous 19th century individualist anarchist, held that "if the individual has the right to govern himself, all external government is tyranny".

Syndicalism Proposed type of economic system, considered a replacement for capitalism

Syndicalism is a radical current in the labor movement and was most active in the early 20th century. According to the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm, it predominated the revolutionary left in the decade preceding World War I as Marxism was mostly reformist at that time. Major syndicalist organizations included the General Confederation of Labor in France, the National Confederation of Labor in Spain, the Italian Syndicalist Union, the Free Workers' Union of Germany, and the Argentine Regional Workers' Federation. The Industrial Workers of the World, the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union and the Canadian One Big Union, though they did not regard themselves as syndicalists, are considered by most historians to belong to this current. A number of syndicalist organizations were and still are to this day linked in the International Workers' Association.

Stephen Pearl Andrews American anarchist (1812–1886)

Stephen Pearl Andrews was an American individualist anarchist, linguist, political philosopher, outspoken abolitionist, and author of several books on the labor movement and Individualist anarchism.

Francisco Ascaso Spanish anarchist murderer of Cardinal Juan Soldevila (1901-1936)

Francisco Ascaso Abadía was a prominent Anarcho-syndicalist figure in Spain.

Ba Jin Chinese novelist

Li Yaotang, better known by his pen name Ba Jin, was a Chinese author and political activist best known for his novel Family. He is considered to be one of the most important and widely read Chinese writers of the 20th century.

Giuseppe Fanelli Italian anarchist

Giuseppe Fanelli was a nineteenth-century Italian revolutionary anarchist, best known for his tour of Spain 1868, introducing the anarchist ideas of Mikhail Bakunin.

Ricardo Flores Magón Mexican anarchist and social reform activist

Cipriano Ricardo Flores Magón, was a noted Mexican anarchist and social reform activist. His brothers Enrique and Jesús were also active in politics. Followers of the Magón brothers were known as Magonistas. He has been considered an important participant in the social movement that sparked the Mexican Revolution.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn American politician

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was a labor leader, activist, and feminist who played a leading role in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Flynn was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union and a visible proponent of women's rights, birth control, and women's suffrage. She joined the Communist Party USA in 1926 and late in life, in 1961, became its chairwoman. She died during a visit to the Soviet Union, where she was accorded a state funeral with processions in the Red Square attended by over 25,000 people.

Errico Malatesta Italian anarchist

Errico Malatesta was an Italian anarchist. He spent much of his life exiled from Italy and in total spent more than ten years in prison. Malatesta wrote and edited a number of radical newspapers and was also a friend of Mikhail Bakunin.

Albert Meltzer British anarchist

Albert Isidore Meltzer was an English anarcho-communist activist and writer.

Louise Michel French author and anarchist

Louise Michel was a teacher and important figure in the Paris Commune. Following her penal transportation she embraced anarchism. When returning to France she emerged as important French anarchist and went on speaking tours across Europe. The journalist Brian Doherty has called her the "French grande dame of anarchy."

Bertrand Russell British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, social critic, political activist and Nobel laureate

Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, writer, essayist, social critic, political activist, and Nobel laureate. At various points in his life, Russell considered himself a liberal, a socialist and a pacifist, although he also confessed that his skeptical nature had led him to feel that he had "never been any of these things, in any profound sense." Russell was born in Monmouthshire into one of the most prominent aristocratic families in the United Kingdom.

Sacco and Vanzetti Italian American anarchist duo executed by Massachusetts

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were Italian-born American anarchists who were controversially convicted of murdering a guard and a paymaster during the April 15, 1920 armed robbery of the Slater and Morrill Shoe Company in Braintree, Massachusetts, United States. Seven years later, they were electrocuted in the electric chair at Charlestown State Prison. Both men adhered to an anarchist movement.

August Spies American upholsterer, radical labor activist, and newspaper editor

August Vincent Theodore Spies was an American upholsterer, radical labor activist, and newspaper editor. Spies is remembered as one of the anarchists in Chicago who were found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder following a bomb attack on police in an event remembered as the Haymarket affair. Spies was one of four who were executed in the aftermath of this event.

See also

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George Woodcock was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet and published several volumes of travel writing. In 1959 he was the founding editor of the journal Canadian Literature which was the first academic journal specifically dedicated to Canadian writing. He is most commonly known outside Canada for his book Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962).

Anarchism in the UK initially developed within the context of radical Whiggery and Protestant religious dissent. During the English Civil War and the industrialisation English anarchist thought developed in the context of revolutionary working class politics.

Anarchists have employed certain symbols for their cause, including most prominently the circle-A (Ⓐ) and the black flag (⚑), although anarchists have historically largely denied the importance of symbols to political movement. Since the revival of anarchism around the start of the 21st century and concurrent with the rise of the anti-globalization movement, anarchist cultural symbols are widely present.

Anarchists have traditionally been skeptical of or vehemently opposed to organized religion. Nevertheless, some anarchists have provided religious interpretations and approaches to anarchism, including the idea that glorification of the state is a form of sinful idolatry.

Gustav Landauer German anarchist

Gustav Landauer was one of the leading theorists on anarchism in Germany at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. He was an advocate of social anarchism and an avowed pacifist. In 1919, during the German Revolution, he was briefly Commissioner of Enlightenment and Public Instruction of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic. He was killed when this Republic was overthrown.

Robert Graham is a Canadian anarchist historian and writer. He is the editor of Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, a three-volume collection of anarchist writings from ancient China to the present day. Volume One, subtitled "From Anarchy to Anarchism", covers the period from 300CE to 1939. Volume 2, subtitled "The Emergence of the New Anarchism," covers the period from 1939, when the Spanish anarchists were defeated and the Second World War began, to 1977, by which time the world had witnessed a remarkable resurgence in anarchist ideas and movements. Volume 3, subtitled "The New Anarchism," covers the period from 1974 to 2012, showcasing the different currents in anarchist theory and practice which have developed since the 1970s. The anthology is published by Black Rose Books. Each selection is introduced by Robert Graham, placing each author and selection in their historical and ideological context. The focus of the anthology is on the origins and development of anarchist ideas. It is not a documentary history of the world's various anarchist movements, although there is a wealth of material from many different areas, including not only Europe and North America, but also Latin America, China, Japan, Korea, India, Australia, Africa and the Middle East.

Dyer Lum labor activist and poet

Dyer Daniel Lum was a 19th-century American anarchist, labor activist and poet. A leading syndicalist and a prominent left-wing intellectual of the 1880s, Lum is best remembered as the lover and mentor of early anarcha-feminist Voltairine de Cleyre.

Anarchism in Canada spans a range of anarchist philosophy including anarchist communism, green anarchy, anarcho-syndicalism, individualist anarchism, as well as other lesser known forms. Canadian anarchism has been affected by thought from the United States, Great Britain, and continental Europe, although recent influences include a look at North American indigenism, especially on the West Coast. Anarchists remain a focal point in media coverage of globalization protests in Canada, mainly due to their confrontations with police and destruction of property.

<i>Now and After</i> book by Alexander Berkman

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Uri Gordon Israeli anarchist theorist and activist

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<i>Anarchy Alive!</i> book by Uri Gordon

Anarchy Alive!: Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory is a book by Uri Gordon that investigates anarchist theory and practice. An expanded reworking of the author's PhD thesis at the University of Oxford, the book was released by Pluto Press, a London-based radical publisher, in November 2007. It is presented as "an anarchist book about anarchism", and assumes some background knowledge and sympathy for anarchism on the part of the reader. Gordon considers his approach in the book to have many commonalities with that of anthropologist David Graeber, author of Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology.

Anarchism is a political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, or harmful. However, others argue that while anti-statism is central, it is inadequate to define anarchism solely on this basis. Therefore, they argue instead that anarchism entails opposing authority or hierarchical organization in the conduct of human relations, including, but not limited to, the state system. Proponents of this form of anarchism advocate stateless societies based on non-hierarchical free associations.

Anarchy refers to a society, entity, group of people, or a single person that rejects hierarchy. The word originally meant 'leaderlessness', but in 1840 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon adopted the term in his treatise What Is Property? to refer to a new political philosophy: anarchism, which advocates stateless societies based on voluntary associations.

Social anarchism is a non-state form of socialism and is considered to be the branch of anarchism that sees individual freedom as being interrelated with mutual aid.

Post-anarchism or postanarchism is an anarchist philosophy that employs post-structuralist and postmodernist approaches. Post-anarchism is not a single coherent theory, but rather refers to the combined works of any number of post-modernists and post-structuralists such as Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Jean Baudrillard; postmodern feminists such as Judith Butler; and alongside those of classical anarchist and libertarian philosophers such as Zhuang Zhou, Emma Goldman, Max Stirner, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Thus, the terminology can vary widely in both approach and outcome.

Anarchist schools of thought

Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds ruling classes and the state to be undesirable, unnecessary and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority and hierarchical organization in the conduct of human relations. Proponents of anarchism, known as "anarchists", advocate stateless societies based on non-hierarchical voluntary associations. However, anarchist schools of thought can differ fundamentally, supporting anything from extreme individualism to complete collectivism. Strains of anarchism have often been divided into the categories of social and individualist anarchism or similar dual classifications.