Giuseppe Mazzini was an Italian politician, journalist, and activist for the unification of Italy (Risorgimento) and spearhead of the Italian revolutionary movement. His efforts helped bring about the independent and unified Italy in place of the several separate states, many dominated by foreign powers, that existed until the 19th century. An Italian nationalist in the historical radical tradition and a proponent of a republicanism of social-democratic inspiration, Mazzini helped define the modern European movement for popular democracy in a republican state.
The Hague Congress was the fifth congress of the International Workingmen's Association (IWA), held from 2–7 September 1872 in The Hague, the Netherlands.
The Jura Federation represented the anarchist, Bakuninist faction of the First International during the anti-statist split from the organization. Jura, a Swiss area, was known for its watchmaker artisans in La Chaux-de-Fonds, who shared anti-state, egalitarian views on work and social emancipation. The Jura Federation formed between international socialist congresses in 1869 and 1871. When the First International's General Council, led by Marxists, suppressed the Bakuninists, the Jura Federation organized an international of the disaffected federations at the 1872 St. Imier Congress. The congress disavowed the General Council's authoritarian consolidation of power and planning as an affront to the International's loose, federalist founding to support workers' emancipation. Members of the First International agreed and even statists joined the anti-statists' resulting Anti-authoritarian International, but by 1876, the alliance had mostly dissolved. While in decline, the Jura Federation remained the home of Bakuninists whose figures engaged on a two-decade debate on the merits of propaganda of the deed. The egalitarian relations of the Jura Federation had played an important role in Peter Kropotkin's adoption of anarchism, who became the anarchist standard-bearer after Bakunin.
The Anarchist International of St. Imier was an international workers' organization formed in 1872 after the split in the First International between the anarchists and the Marxists. This followed the 'expulsions' of Mikhail Bakunin and James Guillaume from the First International at the Hague Congress. It attracted some affiliates of the First International, repudiated the Hague resolutions, and adopted a Bakuninist programme, and lasted until 1877.
The International Alliance of Socialist Democracy was an organisation founded by Mikhail Bakunin along with 79 other members on October 28, 1868, as an organisation within the International Workingmen's Association (IWA). The establishment of the Alliance as a section of the IWA was not accepted by the general council of the IWA because, according to the IWA statutes, international organisations were not allowed to join, since the IWA already fulfilled the role of an international organisation. The Alliance dissolved shortly afterwards and the former members instead joined their respective national sections of the IWA.
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."
The Ligue internationale de la paix was created after a public opinion campaign against a war between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia over Luxembourg. The Luxembourg crisis was peacefully resolved in 1867 by the Treaty of London but in 1870 the Franco-Prussian War could not be prevented so the league dissolved and refounded as the 'Société française pour l'arbitrage entre nations' in the same year.
Italian anarchism as a movement began primarily from the influence of Mikhail Bakunin, Giuseppe Fanelli, and Errico Malatesta. Rooted in collectivist anarchism and social anarchism, it expanded to include illegalist individualist anarchism, mutualism, anarcho-syndicalism, and especially anarcho-communism. In fact, anarcho-communism first fully formed into its modern strain within the Italian section of the First International. Italian anarchism and anarchists participated in the biennio rosso and survived Italian Fascism. Platformism and insurrectionary anarchism were particularly common in Italian anarchism and continue to influence the movement today. The synthesist Italian Anarchist Federation appeared after the war, and autonomismo and operaismo especially influenced Italian anarchism in the second half of the 20th century.
Over the past 150 years, anarchists, anarcho-syndicalists and libertarian socialists have held many congresses, conferences and international meetings in which trade unions, other groups and individuals have participated.
Rafael Farga i Pellicer was a Catalan anarcho-syndicalist who led the establishment of the Spanish Regional Federation of the IWA (FRE-AIT). As a print worker, he became involved in the Barcelona workers' movement following the Glorious Revolution of 1868, when he was first introduced to anarchism by the Italian anarchist Giuseppe Fanelli. He then set about organising the Catalan workers' movement along anarchist lines, emphasising decentralisation and federalism, eventually affiliating the FRE-AIT with Mikhail Bakunin's Anti-Authoritarian International. He then came to uphold the precepts of anarcho-syndicalism, overseeing the establishment of the FRE-AIT's successor, the Federation of Workers of the Spanish Region (FTRE). Later in life, he lost interest in syndicalist organising and turned to journalism, penning a series of studies of political figures and movements of the 19th century.
Tito Zanardelli (1848–?) was an Italian journalist and anarchist. At first a proponent of revolution, later he became more moderate and advocated legal means to achieve the goals of the workers. He then retired from politics and spent many years in Belgium as a professor of mnemonics and a prolific author on philological subjects.
Lodovico Nabruzzi was an Italian journalist and anarchist. He played a leading role in the dissensions between the revolutionary and evolutionary Italian socialists. He spent several years in exile in Switzerland and France, often forced to undertake menial work and often in trouble with the authorities. After returning to Italy his life continued to be difficult, and he suffered from mental health problems. Although he married and had four children the marriage did not last. He died alone in a public hospital.
Celso Ceretti was an Italian supporter of Giuseppe Garibaldi, an internationalist anarchist and then a socialist politician.
The International Workingmen's Association (IWA) in the United States of America took the form of a loose network of about 35 frequently discordant local "sections," each professing allegiance to the London-based IWA, commonly known as the "First International." These sections were divided geographically and by the language spoken by their members, frequently new immigrants to America, including those who spoke German, French, Czech, as well as Irish and "American" English-language groups.
The International Workingmen's Association (IWA), often called the First International (1864–1876), was an international organisation which aimed at uniting a variety of different left-wing socialist, social democratic, communist and anarchist groups and trade unions that were based on the working class and class struggle. It was founded in 1864 in a workmen's meeting held in St. Martin's Hall, London. Its first congress was held in 1866 in Geneva.
The Geneva Congress of 1866 is the common name assigned to the 1st General Congress of the International Workingmen's Association, held in Geneva, Switzerland from 3 to 8 September 1866. The gathering was attended by 46 regular and 14 fraternal delegates from a total of five countries. The Geneva Congress is best remembered for its watershed decision to make universal establishment of the 8-hour working day a main goal of the International Socialist movement.
The Lyon Commune was a short-lived revolutionary movement in Lyon, France, in 1870 and 1871 - republicans and activists from several components of the far-left of the time seized power in Lyon and established an autonomous government. The commune organized elections, but dissolved after the restoration of a republican "normality", which frustrated the most radical elements, who hoped for a different revolution. Radicals twice tried to regain power, without success.
The Besançon Commune was a short-lived revolutionary movement conceived and developed in 1871, aiming at the proclamation of a local autonomous power based on the Lyon and Paris experiences. It originates from social upheavals which metamorphosed the city and with the emergence of unions including a section of IWA in connection with the future Jura Federation. The course of events was precipitated by the Franco-Prussian War, the fall of the Second Empire, and the advent of the Third Republic. While many notables testify to an insurrectionary context and armed support from Switzerland being organized, the correspondence left by James Guillaume and Mikhail Bakunin attest to a planned release between the end of May and the beginning of June 1871. However, with the start of the Semaine sanglante on 21 May and the pursuit of an internal campaign until 7 June, any attempt was seriously compromised. Despite the hope of a restart, in the following weeks and months the idea of an insurrection was definitively abandoned, later reinforced by the extinction of groups and activities described as "anarchist" from 1875.
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.
Nikolai Isaakovitch Utin was a Russian socialist and revolutionary. He grew up in Saint Petersburg, and became a charismatic leader of the student movement. Because of his revolutionary activities, he spent most of his adult life in political exile in Switzerland, where he participated in the founding of the Russian section of the International Workingmen's Association and kept up correspondence with liberals and revolutionaries across Europe. In the conflict between Mikhail Bakunin and Karl Marx, he supported Marx, and through his involvement with Geneva journals Narodnoye delo and l'Égalité as a writer and editor, he played an important role in increasing support for Marx at Bakunin's expense. He was extremely influential in revolutionary circles until the breakup of the First International in 1876, whereupon he withdrew from politics and returned to Russia.
