Anarchism
Anarchism and anarchists and anything associated with the thinking, the people, or the history generally get a raw deal from the media and even mainstream historians. It is true that anarchism is profoundly anti-authoritarian, but its popular association with violence (wild-eyed bearded men throwing bombs) is exaggerated, even fictionalized by the very forces threatened by it, namely governments and the media with vested interests in things as they are.
As with any subversive political and economic movement, some proponents became impatient and felt justified in striking out in vengeance or justice. Thus you have Alexander Berkman and his attempted assassination of Pennsylvanian Henry Clay Frick in 1892 and Leon Czolgosz and his successful assassination of President William McKinley in 1901. Berkman, however, served his time in jail, wrote a deep and insightful account of his experience and went on to write more worthwhile books on the subject which possessed his life. (Czolgosz did not have that opportunity, being executed forty-five days after the death of his victim.)
Anarchism survived its dramatic beginnings in the 19th Century, however, and interested readers can find its articulate concern with agricultural reform, labor rights, and prophetic worries about the growth of the surveillance state in many excellent books. Here you will find books and a superb documentary on Sacco and Vanzetti (as well as Woody Guthrie's cd of his investigation into the miscarriage of justice). Here you will find histories, biographies, anthologies, memoirs, and fiction. It is a rich tradition, relevant to this day and to the future.
Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America
Anarchist Voices: An Oral History of Anarchism in America
In Anarchist Voices, Avrich lets anarchists speak for themselves.
"The 180 interviewees in this oral history (mostly anarchists, but also their friends, associates, and relatives) represent diverse political tendencies—individualists, collectivists, pacifists, revolutionaries. What unites them is an optimistic faith that people will live in harmony once the impositions of government disappear. The respondents give firsthand recollections of Emma Goldman, Rudolf Rocker, Sacco and Vanzetti and other key anarchists; describe their experiences in libertarian schools and colonies; and offer trenchant observations on the dangers of authoritarian communism, bureaucracy and entrenched institutions. Among those interviewed are self-proclaimed 'philosophical anarchist' Roger Baldwin, founder of the American Civil Liberties Union; Daniel Guerin, historian of the U.S. labor movement; Alexandra Kropotkin, English-born daughter of Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin; Albert Boni, publisher of 'Modern Library' classics and a socialist; and Dwight Macdonald, who launched the journal Politics in 1944. Avrich profiles a movement that continues to exercise an appeal with its calls for self-determination, direct grass-roots action and voluntary cooperation." —Publishers Weekly
"Avrich is America's leading authority on anarchist movements. Through his many books and articles he has shown that anarchism is a distinctive political tradition with deep roots in the American experience. Anarchist Voices draws on interviews with native and foreign-born anarchists that Avrich has been conducting over the past 30 years. Avrich's absorbing collection makes a vital contribution to the history of the American left." —Library Journal
"Avrich shows that anarchists were much more than black-caped figures with fizzing bombs, but at the same time he does not try to sanitize them. He makes it quite clear, for example, that Sacco and Vanzetti were disciples of Luigi Galleani, who favored bomb and dynamite attacks on capitalists, and that they were active members of terrorist conspiracies." —The Times Literary Supplement
"[Avrich takes] a utilitarian approach to oral history as a kind of backup for missing archival sources...[and] achieves some wonderful results." —Paul Buhle, The Nation
"This gracefully edited study should interest all students of American radicalism..." —Choice
The interviewees represented in this book were active between the 1880s and the 1930s and represent all schools of anarchism. Each of the six thematic sections begins with an explanatory essay, and each interview with a biographical note. Their stories provide a wealth of personal detail about such anarchist luminaries as Emma Goldman and Sacco and Vanzetti. This work of impeccable scholarship is an invaluable resource not only for scholars of anarchism but also for those studying immigration, ethnic politics, education, and labor history.
Paul Avrich is professor of History at Queens College and the Graduate School, the City University of New York.