The Great Anarchists

The fascinating linguist and research-heavy political commentator who helped get anarchist theory through a particularly fallow period.

In the 20th century, anarchism ceased as a mass revolutionary movement (except perhaps in Spain in the 1930s). Why? I give three reasons here: the internal momentum of the state, reaching its culmination as a war and genocide machine; the internal direction of the left, particularly around Bolshevism, toward extreme statism (from welfare state liberalism to socialist state control of the economy t...

Can you be a religious anarchist? Bakunin probobly thought not; Emma Goldman thought so. But any way you look at it, Tolstoy was a beautiful writer with a beautiful Christian vision. I agree with him, and Petr Chelčický, and William Lloyd Garrison, that Christianity is incompatible with human government. PS pacifism entails antistatism 

The brilliant speaker and inspiring visionary (1869-1940): from Haymarket to the McKinley assassination, from confronting Lenin in his office to the Spanish Civil War. Alexander Berkman. Nestor Makhno.

The great American feminist and anarchist emerged from the American individualist tradition into the communist anarchist movement of Johann Most and Emma Goldman. Voltairine de Cleyre was also the greatest anarchist prose stylist this side of Thoreau. 

Kropotkin (1842-1921) was a fine scientist as well as revolutionary: perhaps the greatest anarchist intellectual.

The split between Bakunin and Marx, between "authoritarian communism" and "collectivist socialism" (in Bakunin's terms) represents the key moment in the history, and the tragedy, of the left.

A wild and bizarre genius whose one book garnered momentary attention, especially from Marx and Engels. He's very closely connected to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, in my view.  I quote a blog entry from Alexander Green: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alexander-green-stirner-and-marx

From basic American or Lockean or classical liberal values, Spooner (1808-1887) proves that anarchism follows. Proves it, I say. The killerest of the American individualists. If we have equal unalienable rights, anarchism follows immediately and obviously. lysanderspooner.org

Our best writer, maybe. The assertion that he's an (individualist) anarchist is based on "Civil Disibedience," but Thoreay expresses these positions throughout his authorship.

The first person to call himself an 'anarchist' (that we know of), and a central transitional figure between Rousseau and Marx. His 'mutualism' might still be a decent way between individualism and collectivism.

supplement to the Warren episode. Abolitionism as the source of American anarchism. John Stuart Mill.

The continuity with Godwin is provided by Robert Owen and the astonishing Frances (Fanny) Wright. Warren (1798-1874) was the founder of American individualist anarchism, but...let's talk about the meaning of individualism and collectivism.

A supplement to the Godwin episode. I argue that anarchists need not have a naively positive view of human nature. Not at all, though Godwin and Emma Goldman did, and though for example absolutist Thomas Hobbes had a very negative one. But anarchism follows from Hobbes's view too, believe it or not. Or if Hobbes is right about human nature, anarchism is just as or more valid than if we'r...

The first great "philosophical" or non-religious anarchist in the West, author of the novel Caleb Williams or Things as They Are , and the still underrated classic  An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice . Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft (whom he married and with whom he had a daughter [Mary Shelley]) are major influences.

Gerrard Winstanley and Levellers, but a whole long history including Thomas Müntzer and the German Peasants' Rebellion. Anabaptists, Diggers, Ranters, Quakers and the origin of modern egalitarianism and anti-authoritarianism.

And also Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu). Ancient Daoism is a beautiful and profound underpinning for ant-statist political philosophy.

the most wonderful anti-authoritarian philosopher in western history the book i mention is 'fearless speech' by michel foucault

(and what we'll be talking about in future episodes)