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23 June 2011

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Philosophy of Anarchy

 

Violent protests at international gatherings such

as the G20 meeting in Toronto in 2010 from

the Italian revolutionary Errico Malatesta

 

Between the 1870s and 1920s the world witnessed a spasm of violence not unlike the Islamic terrorism of today; although much smaller in scale, the deadly work of the anarchists had similar underpinnings.

 

Goal is a World without Government

The word “anarchy” comes from Greek and means “contrary to authority.” In 1910, the Encyclopedia Britannica described anarchy as a “theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government - harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups…”

 

Much of the philosophical groundwork for the anarchists was done by the Italian thinker Errico Malatesta who lived from 1853 to 1932.

 

He travelled widely and had almost no personal possessions, was reluctant to join any group, and wrote extensively on creating a world without government. He also advocated the use of violence in pursuit of anarchist goals.

 

Other Philosophers of Anarchy

Malatesta was not alone in his belief in a system that dispensed with government.

 

The French politician Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-65) was the first person to call himself an anarchist. He is famous for saying “Property is Theft,” but he accepted that it was all right for people to own a house and some land.

 

Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1875) was a Russian anarchist who wrote that, “The liberty of man consists solely in this, that he obeys the laws of nature, because he has himself recognized them as such, and not because they have been imposed upon him externally by any foreign will whatsoever, human or divine, collective or individual.”

 

Violence Necessary to Achieve Objectives

Errico Malatesta wrote, in the florid style of the time, that “The insurrectionary deed, destined to affirm socialist principles by acts, is the most efficacious means of propaganda.”

 

Today, Signor Malatesta might write: “By committing some obscenely violent act you will draw attention to your cause.”

 

The Russian, Prince Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) was another strong advocate of the use of violence to spread the word about anarchism.

 

The aim of the anarchists was to destroy organized government, which they saw as being “forced” on people—a form of domination or submission to compulsory authority. It was their hope to replace it with voluntary associations and communities.

 

Assassination as a Political Statement

For half a century the anarchists pulled off the murders of several prominent people. They killed: President Sadi Carnot of France (1894); Prime Minister Antonio Canovas del Castillo of Spain (1897); Empress Elizabeth of Austria (1898), King Umberto of Italy (1900); President William McKinley of the United States (1901); Prime Minister Jose Canalejas y Mendez of Spain (1912); and, Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Countess Sophie of Austro-Hungary (1914).

 

Those last murders, although not motivated solely by anarchism, triggered the First World War. This was precisely the chaotic aftermath of their actions that the anarchists hoped for.

 

Such an upheaval, they believed, would create conditions they could exploit to their advantage. The population would see the wisdom of changing society to adopt anarchist principles.

 

Authorities Push Back

Then, as now, governments reacted with harsh laws that diluted civil liberties.

 

After an unsuccessful attempt on the life of Kaiser Wilhelm I in 1878, Germany arrested 500 people, many of them for “approving” of the attack.

 

Following a bombing in 1893, the Spanish government rounded up scores of suspects and tortured them. A new law was passed so that suspected bombers were tried in military courts.

 

The United States Congress passed a law that banned from the America anyone “teaching disbelief in or opposition to all organized government.”

 

The massive security operation surrounding the June 2010 G20 Summit in Toronto is a modern echo of earlier government crackdowns.

 

As an editorial in The Globe and Mail (June 25, 2010) points that “The Ontario government was more than just heavy-handed and oppressive in giving police wide powers at the G20 Summit in Toronto – it was sneaky, too. With…no chance of debate, no time for a court challenge, it quietly declared the downtown area within the security fence an ‘island of non-constitutionality’…”

 

Image credit

Chris Huggins

 

Sources

“Anarchism.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 1910.

“Errico Malatesta.” Marxists’ Internet Archive.

“Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.” Politics Professor.

“Compromised Civil Liberties: the Other Cost of G20 Security.” Globe and Mail, June 25, 2010.

“Was this Man the First Terrorist of the Modern Age?” John Merriman, BBC News Magazine, October 7, 2009.

 

© Canada and the World, June 2011

All rights reserved

EARLY TERRORISTS?

 

In December 1893, Auguste Vaillant took a seat in the public gallery of the French Chamber of Deputies. Then, as the BBC reports, Vaillant threw “a small bomb into the chamber…slightly wounding several people. His goal: to call attention to the plight of the poor.”

 

Vaillant’s protest earned him a date with the guillotine, where he was beheaded two months later, and that really angered Emile Henry. He was a young anarchist and he vowed to avenge Vaillant’s death.

 

On February 12, 1894, BBC says “He entered the Cafe Terminus, which is still there, near the Gare St. Lazare, ordered two beers, and a cigar.”

 

With the cigar he lit the fuse of a bomb he had hidden under his coat and lobbed it into the crowded restaurant. Twenty people were injured and one died.

 

This was one of the first occasions in which innocent civilians were the targets of bombers.

 

Henry was just 21 years old when he suffered the same fate as Auguste Vaillant.

 

 

Anarcho-syndicalism is an ideology that combines the notion of anarchy with the trade union movement.

 

Followers believe that factories, for example, should be run by committees formed among the workers.

 

One of the thinkers behind anarcho-syndicalism was the German writer Rudolph Rocker, who noted that, “Through the taking over of the management of all plants by the producers themselves…Theirs must be the task of freeing labour from all the fetters which economic exploitation has fastened on it.”

 

There have been several occasions in which the ideals of anarcho-syndicalism have been put into practice.

 

In 1871, workers took over and ran the city of Paris for about three months until they were ousted violently by the French army.

 

More recently, from 1994 onwards, the Zapatista movement in Mexico has set up worker-controlled governments in several areas.