The Era of Anarchism

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

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

Federica Montseny, “Definición del anarquismo” (1931)

February 1, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
Compañeros y amigos: El núcleo inteligente de camaradas organizador de este Ateneo, ha tenido a bien honrarme, designándome para explicar lo que es el ideal anarquista a las buenas voluntades reunidas en esta velada de su inauguración. La misión no es ciertamente fácil. Lo sería, si quisiera limitarme a una definición somera del anarquismo, a repetir los mil tópicos manoseados y que se ha convenido en considerar síntesis del anarquismo. Pero yo soy ambiciosa. Pretendo, o deseo, por lo menos, decir alguna cosa nueva o que las cosas viejas que diga tengan cierto valor de originalidad. Además, de un tiempo […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Soledad Gustavo, “Concepto de la anarquia” (1902)

January 29, 2017 Shawn P. Wilbur
CONCEPTO DE LA ANARQUIA Es preciso no perder de vista nunca lo que significa la palabra «anarquía», ó mejor, lo que es, lo que representa, lo que instituye esta palabra en nuestras críticas respecto á las varias fórmulas ó sistemas consecutivos al bienestar de la humanidad que se presentan en el horizonte indefinido del progreso. No podemos tener como á tales, los anarquistas, un criterio cerrado y por consecuencia limitado respecto á la manera cómo deberá regirse la sociedad del porvenir hecha que esté la revolución social; es decir, destruido que se haya el orden social existente con todo el […]
Anarchist Beginnings

William Henry van Ornum, “What is Anarchy?” (1897)

November 18, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
The average man has imbibed a general idea that anarchy is something quite terrible; and it is only necessary to brand a man as an anarchist to damn him in the eyes of the unthinking multitude. If you wish to kill a dog you have only to raise the cry of “mad dog,” and the cry will outrun the unfortunate beast until some one will succeed in ending his life, whether he were mad or not, for everyone feels, in duty bound, to help kill him. Just so, must people regard it as incumbent upon them to help destroy any […]
Anarchist Beginnings

William J. Gorsuch, “Tags” (1891)

November 18, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
The other day a friend, who is so much of a Tolstoian as to be pleased to work for a living, remarked: “You are the first person ever pointed out to me as an Anarchist. Are you an Anarchist?” I replied: “Some folks say so.” I wish if possible to explain that answer. I hold that one of the greatest hinderances to social progress is man’s proneness to accept and wear tags, labels, badges. One of the limitations of language, due to differences of experience and therefore of knowledge on the part of individuals, is that the tag attached to […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Victor Yarros, “Anarchistic Socialism” (1889)

November 17, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
State Socialists are in the habit of charging the Anarchists with a partiality for middle-class ideas and institutions, and nothing is more common than the statement that we wish to retain the bourgeois arrangements, while endeavoring to give them an ideal flavor. Our teachings are taken to be identical with those of the individualistic economists of the Cobden-Bastiat school, and we are constantly told that the principles of individualism, inaugurated and embodied by the great revolution in France, have been tried and found wanting, have been condemned and utterly discredited by life itself. Our present social evils are alleged to […]
Anarchist Beginnings

Sébastien Faure, “Anarchy” (1934) (excerpt)

October 18, 2016 Shawn P. Wilbur
From the Anarchist Encyclopedia, Vol. I ANARCHY n. (from the Greek: a privative and archè, command, power, authority) Preliminary observation. The object of this Anarchist Encyclopedia being to make known the full range of conceptions—political, economic, philosophical, moral, etc.—that arise from the anarchist idea or lead there, it is in the course of this work and in the very place that each of them must occupy within it, that the multiples theses contained in the exact and complete study of this subject will be explained. So it is only by drawing and joining together, methodically and with continuity, the various […]