Anarchist Beginnings

Anarchist Beginnings

Charles Clark Rodolf, “The Unrighteousness of Government” (1895)

July 20, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
THE UNRIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOVERNMENT, AS VIEWED BY A PHILOSOPHICAL ANARCHIST. BY CHARLES CLARK RODOLF, M. D. Whoever applies to himself the term anarchist should add a definition, if he does not wish to be misjudged, for no word in the English language is more misused and misunderstood. Some of this misuse is viciously intentional, but most of it is the result of pure ignorance. It is less than half a dozen years since the public began to learn that anarchist, nihilist, and socialist are not synonymous; and even now the three words are more or less confounded in popular usage, […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Commonweal Anarchist Group, “Why We Are Anarchists” (1894)

July 20, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
WHY WE ARE ANARCHISTS. REPRINTED FROM “THE COMMONWEAL.” 1894 PART I. It may be well to give some of the arguments for our belief in Anarchism as the coming form of our social and political institutions. We are confronted, it appears, on all sides by obstacles and difficulties. Here, the inveterate belief in law and authority, in religious superstitions and in the educational powers of compulsion and coercion; there, the various forms of political humbug, the representative system, the struggle for political power, expressed in the shape of self-advertizing electioneering political swindlers on one side and the ever befooled, hero-worshipping, […]
anarchism without adjectives

Max Nettlau, “More Heretical Views” (1911)

July 19, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
MORE HERETICAL VIEWS * To my mind, at least, the more modern Socialism and Syndicalism spread, the more our ideal of many years is left behind, and real Socialism seems more remote than ever. We all feel, I think, that if intensity of feeling and energy for action were in any way corresponding to numerical strength, we should not see, side by side with immense Socialist and Labour Parties, Capitalism more flourishing than ever, monarchism and militarism triumphant, parsons and priests unabashed and prospering. Socialism, degraded to “Labourism,” now forms part and parcel of a system which it once meant […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Works by Max Nettlau

July 18, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
[Report on the Ravachol meetings] (1892) Untitled (IISH 1924: “Whilst our conviction of the rightness of our anarchist opinions…”)(1895) Contributions à la biographie de M. BAKOUNINE, La Société Nouvelle (Sept.1896) : 309. Bibliographie de l’anarchie (1897) [BIBLIOGRAPHY PROJECT] “Responsibility and Solidarity in the Labor Struggle” (1899) German Social Democracy and Edward Bernstein (London: Freedom Press, 1900) “Telepathy—Prophetic Visions” (manuscript, 1901) Some criticism of some current anarchist beliefs (1901) Essai d’une critique de quelques tendances actuelles du mouvement anarchiste (1902)(forthcoming) Fragment (IISH 1777) (1902) “Are there New Fields for Anarchist Activity?” (1907) “La Lutte contre l’Etat (1908) “Panarchy, a Forgotten Idea of […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Max Baginski, “Without Government” (1906)

June 27, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
WITHOUT GOVERNMENT By Max Baginski THE gist of the anarchistic idea is this, that there are qualities present in man, which permit the possibilities of social life, organization, and co-operative work without the application of force. Such qualities are solidarity, common action, and love of justice. To-day they are either crippled or made ineffective through the influence of compulsion; they can hardly be fully unfolded in a society in which groups, classes, and individuals are placed in hostile, irreconcilable opposition to one another. In human nature to-day such traits are fostered and developed which separate instead of combining, call forth […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Max Nettlau, “Mutual Toleration versus Dictatorship” (1921)

June 8, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
MUTUAL TOLERATION VERSUS DICTATORSHIP. When a great man dies, the King and the Government of that country usually try to bask a little in his glory by exhibiting their participation in the general grief, and so on. Kropotkin did not escape from this fate, the amazing dessous of which are exposed by the letter published in Freedom for April. Such a temporary armistice is always followed by a recrudescence of persecutions, and the letter of April 1 (Moscow) addressed to Lenin and all the lending committees in Russia by the Anarchist-Syndicalist publishing, organising, and propagandist bodies of Russia (published in […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Robert Harding, “What is Anarchism and Why are we Anarchists?” (1923)

June 7, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
The Anarchist contention is that, though many of the evils existing in human society are grave and deplorable, those of them that result from the idea “ government “ and from the institution called by that name far outweigh in their disastrous effects on human happiness and prosperity all the others put together. Now, of course, this contention, like all contentions not open to fairly simple demonstration or verification, may be right or it may be wrong. But it is, at least, a clear, plain, unambiguous, and comprehensible contention. What, then, are the grounds on which it is bused? They […]
Anarchist Beginnings

William C. Owen, “What is Anarchism?” (1920)

June 6, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
We receive pleasure or suffer pain through our own individual organs, breathe with our own lungs, think with our own brains, and move about actively or are bed-ridden, according to the condition of our own muscles. From ourselves we never get away. We cannot. The basic law of our existence is that each of us is a kingdom in himself, and that beyond the limits of his individual kingdom none of us can stray. Each one of us strives, instinctively and unceasingly, to protect and develop his own kingdom, because failure to do so is punished remorselessly. If my body […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Henry Glasse, “Anarchism in a Nutshell” (1918)

June 6, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
The State is a mutual assurance company comprising the ruling classes—landowners, capitalists, high officials, and clergy; government is the directorate or executive committee of this association, whose object is to secure to its members their domination over the mass of the people, and the exploitation of its necessities for their aggrandisement. Even supposing that the State could be reorganised according to the theories of Social Democracy (Parliamentary Socialism), the most that could result would be the substitution of majority rule for minority rule; the one is just as much tyranny as the other. For my part, with Byron, “I’d have […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Andrea Costa to “l’Egalité” of Paris (1878)

April 19, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
Extracts from a letter by Andrea Costa to l’Egalité of Paris (1878): “As for doctrines, we can say that we have very few. We are anarchists, and that is all. We desire that each be given the possibility of communicating their needs and the means of of satisfying them. But, the expression of those needs being impossible without the prior destruction of the present order of things, our aim is action. We consider participation in politics, perpetuating in the masses the idea of and need for government, as a renunciation of the revolution. We do not mean to remain popular […]