Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessarily limited to, governments, nation states, and capitalism. Anarchism advocates for the replacement of the state with stateless societies or other forms of free associations. As a historically left-wing movement, usually placed on the farthest left of the political spectrum, it is usually described alongside communalism and libertarian Marxism as the libertarian wing of the socialist movement.
Libertarian socialism, also known by various other names, is a left-wing, anti-authoritarian, anti-statist and libertarian political philosophy within the socialist movement which rejects the state's control of the economy under state socialism. Overlapping with anarchism and libertarianism, libertarian socialists criticize wage slavery relationships within the workplace, emphasizing workers' self-management and decentralized structures of political organization. As a broad socialist tradition and movement, libertarian socialism includes anarchist, Marxist, and anarchist- or Marxist-inspired thought and other left-libertarian tendencies.
Green anarchism, also known as eco-anarchism, is an anarchist school of thought that puts a particular emphasis on ecology and environmental issues. A green anarchist theory is normally one that extends anarchism beyond a critique of human interactions and includes a critique of the interactions between humans and non-humans as well. Beyond human liberation, green anarchist praxis can extend to some form of non-human, total liberation and an environmentally sustainable anarchist society.
Free-market anarchism, or market anarchism, also known as free-market anti-capitalism, is the branch of anarchism that advocates a free-market economic system based on voluntary interactions without the involvement of the state. A form of individualist anarchism, and libertarian socialism, it is based on the economic theories of mutualism and individualist anarchism in the United States.
Francisco Ascaso Abadía was the cousin of Joaquín Ascaso, the President of the Regional Defence Council of Aragon, a carpenter and a prominent Anarcho-syndicalist figure in Spain.
Luigi Galleani was an Italian anarchist active in the United States from 1901 to 1919. He is best known for his enthusiastic advocacy of "propaganda of the deed", i.e. the use of violence to eliminate those he viewed as tyrants and oppressors and to act as a catalyst to the overthrow of existing government institutions. From 1914 to 1932, Galleani's followers in the United States, carried out a series of bombings and assassination attempts against institutions and persons they viewed as class enemies. After Galleani was deported from the United States to Italy in June 1919, his colleagues are alleged to have carried out the Wall Street bombing of 1920, which resulted in the deaths of 40 people.
Anarchism has long had an association with the arts, particularly with visual art, music and literature. This can be dated back to the start of anarchism as a named political concept, and the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon on the French realist painter Gustave Courbet. In an essay on Courbet of 1857 Proudhon had set out a principle for art, which he saw in the work of Courbet, that it should show the real lives of the working classes and the injustices working people face at the hands of the bourgeoisie.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to anarchism, generally defined as the political philosophy which holds 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 or non-hierarchical voluntary associations.
The following is a list of terms specific to anarchists. Anarchism is a political and social movement which advocates voluntary association in opposition to authoritarianism and hierarchy.
Louise Berger was a Russian Latvian anarchist, a member of the Anarchist Red Cross, and editor of Emma Goldman's Mother Earth Bulletin in New York. Berger became well known outside anarchist circles in 1914 after a premature bomb explosion at her New York City apartment, which killed four persons and destroyed part of the building.
Chernoe Znamia, known as the Chernoznamentsy, was a Russian anarchist communist organisation. It emerged in 1903 as a federation of cadres. It took its name, "The Black Banner", from the black flag, the use of which as a symbol of anarchism in Russia, according to An Anarchist FAQ, coincided with its founding.
Thomas Henry Keell was an English compositor who edited the anarchist periodical Freedom. In 1907, he attended the International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam, where he was hailed by Emma Goldman as "one of our most devoted workers on the London Freedom". Keell also contributed to Voice of Labour for many years and was an outspoken opponent of the First World War. He was arrested with his companion Lilian Wolfe during a 1916 raid on the Freedom offices; they were imprisoned and later lived together in Whiteway Colony in Gloucestershire from the 1920s until Keell's death in 1938.
Golos Truda was a Russian-language anarchist newspaper. Founded by working-class Russian expatriates in New York City in 1911, Golos Truda shifted to Petrograd during the Russian Revolution in 1917, when its editors took advantage of the general amnesty and right of return for political dissidents. There, the paper integrated itself into the anarchist labour movement, pronounced the necessity of a social revolution of and by the workers, and situated itself in opposition to the myriad of other left-wing movements.
John Asimakopoulos is an American sociologist and author. He is a professor of sociology at the Bronx Community College of the City University of New York. Asimakopoulos co-founded the Transformative Studies Institute.
Anarchism has had a special interest on the issue of education from the works of William Godwin and Max Stirner onwards.
Synthesis anarchism, also known as united anarchism, is an organisational principle that seeks unity in diversity, aiming to bring together anarchists of different tendencies into a single federation. Developed mainly by the Russian anarchist Volin and the French anarchist Sébastien Faure, synthesis anarchism was designed to appeal to communists, syndicalists and individualists alike. According to synthesis anarchism, an anarchist federation ought to be heterogeneous and relatively loosely-organised, in order to preserve the individual autonomy of its members.
The International group was a Riga-based radical anarchist organization, active around the time of the Russian revolution of 1905. The leaflets of the group carried Bakunin's dictum, 'The urge to destroy is a creative urge' in their mastheads. In its propaganda of the organization denounced the notion that the 1905 revolution had been 'a democratic revolution'. The group rejected the line of the socialists, accusing them of seeking compromises with the capitalists within the parliamentary framework. In 1906 six teen-age members of the International group were sentenced to death and executed.
Cindy Crabb is an American author, musician, and feminist. Her zine, Doris, played a central role in the 1990s girl zine movement associated with third wave feminism. Doris drew attention for its frank, personal exploration of topics, such as sexual assault, consent, abortion, addiction, queer identity, death of family members, among other topics. Crabb continues to publish and self-publish while also running an on-line zine distro that highlights feminist and personal zines by various authors.
Anarchist archives preserve records from the international anarchist movement in personal and institutional collections around the world. This primary source documentation is made available for researchers to learn directly from movement anarchists, both their ideas and lives.
