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.
Whither Anarchism?
Whither Anarchism?
Can the contemporary anarchist scene investigate its short-comings and mark a path toward the total transformation of society and the creation of a more just world? As the title suggests, in this pamphlet Williams asks: “where is anarchism headed?”
We begin with a succinct overview of what anarchism means as a political philosophy. From there, two recent histories are used as jumping off points to look at a gap in the make up and ideology of today’s anarchists and that of their ancestors. The final essay ponders what cultural and structural prerequisites might be necessary to shrink that gap in order to align our highest ideals with the current “movement,” such as it is. Whither Anarchism? is a challenge, a provocation, and it is real talk.
“It is my hope that, despite everything, anarchism may someday transcend its present limitations and once again come to represent the highest ideals and aspirations of humanity, and that anarchists may make a distinctive contribution to the struggle for freedom and equality, and to the new world that the struggle seeks to create.”
Kristian Williams has been active in the anarchist movement since the early 1990s. He is the author, most recently, of Between the Bullet and the Lie: Essays on Orwell.