Anarchism is a political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, or harmful. However, others argue that while anti-statism is central, it is inadequate to define anarchism solely on this basis. Therefore, they argue instead that anarchism entails opposing authority or hierarchical organization in the conduct of human relations, including, but not limited to, the state system. Proponents of this form of anarchism advocate stateless societies based on non-hierarchical free associations.
Since the last third of the 20th century, anarchists have been involved in student protest movements, peace movements, squatter movements, and the anti-globalization movement, among others. Anarchists have participated in violent revolutions (such as in Revolutionary Catalonia and the Free Territory) and anarchist political organizations (such as IWA-AIT or the IWW) exist since the 19th century.
Anarchism was influential in the Counterculture of the 1960s and anarchists actively participated in the late sixties students and workers revolts. In 1968 in Carrara, Italy the International of Anarchist Federations was founded during an international anarchist conference held there in 1968 by the three existing European federations of France (the Fédération Anarchiste), the Federazione Anarchica Italiana of Italy and the Iberian Anarchist Federation as well as the Bulgarian federation in French exile.
In the United Kingdom in the 1970s this was associated with the punk rock movement, as exemplified by bands such as Crass and the Sex Pistols. The housing and employment crisis in most of Western Europe led to the formation of communes and squatter movements like that of Barcelona, Spain. In Denmark, squatters occupied a disused military base and declared the Freetown Christiania, an autonomous haven in central Copenhagen.
Since the revival of anarchism in the mid 20th century, a number of new movements and schools of thought emerged, well documented in Robert Graham's Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, Volume Two, The Emergence of the New Anarchism (1939-1977). Although feminist tendencies have always been a part of the anarchist movement in the form of anarcha-feminism, they returned with vigour during the second wave of feminism in the 1960s. The American Civil Rights Movement and the movement against the war in Vietnam also contributed to the revival of North American anarchism. European anarchism of the late 20th century drew much of its strength from the labour movement, and both have incorporated animal rights activism. Anarchist anthropologist David Graeber and anarchist historian Andrej Grubacic have posited a rupture between generations of anarchism, with those "who often still have not shaken the sectarian habits" of the 19th century contrasted with the younger activists who are "much more informed, among other elements, by indigenous, feminist, ecological and cultural-critical ideas", and who by the turn of the 21st century formed "by far the majority" of anarchists.
Around the turn of the 21st century, anarchism grew in popularity and influence as part of the anti-war, anti-capitalist, and anti-globalisation movements. Anarchists became known for their involvement in protests against the meetings of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Group of Eight, and the World Economic Forum. Some anarchist factions at these protests engaged in rioting, property destruction, and violent confrontations with police. These actions were precipitated by ad hoc, leaderless, anonymous cadres known as black blocs; other organisational tactics pioneered in this time include security culture, affinity groups and the use of decentralised technologies such as the internet. A significant event of this period was the confrontations at WTO conference in Seattle in 1999.
International anarchist federations in existence include the International of Anarchist Federations, the International Workers' Association, and International Libertarian Solidarity. The largest organised anarchist movement today is in Spain, in the form of the Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT) and the CNT. CGT membership was estimated at around 100,000 for 2003. Other active syndicalist movements include in Sweden the Central Organisation of the Workers of Sweden and the Swedish Anarcho-syndicalist Youth Federation; the CNT-AIT in France; the Union Sindicale Italiana in Italy; in the US Workers Solidarity Alliance and the UK Solidarity Federation. The revolutionary industrial unionist Industrial Workers of the World, claiming 10,000 paying members, and the International Workers Association, an anarcho-syndicalist successor to the First International, also remain active.
Post-classical schools of thought and movements
Anarchism continues to generate many philosophies and movements, at times eclectic, drawing upon various sources, and syncretic, combining disparate concepts to create new philosophical approaches.
Anarcha-feminism developed as a synthesis of radical feminism and anarchism that views patriarchy (male domination over women) as a fundamental manifestation of compulsory government. It was inspired by the late 19th century writings of early feminist anarchists such as Lucy Parsons, Emma Goldman, and Voltairine de Cleyre. Anarcha-feminists, like other radical feminists, criticize and advocate the abolition of traditional conceptions of family, education, and gender roles.
Green anarchism (or eco-anarchism) is a school of thought within anarchism that emphasizes environmental issues, with an important precedent in anarcho-naturism, and whose main contemporary currents are anarcho-primitivism and social ecology.
Anarcho-syndicalism is a movement within anarchism that seeks to organize society along economic syndicalism. Among its proponents include Noam Chomsky who said it is "highly relevant to advanced industrial societies."
Anarcho-pacifism is a tendency that rejects violence in the struggle for social change (see non-violence). It developed "mostly in the Netherlands, Britain, and the United States, before and during the Second World War". Christian anarchism is a movement in political theology that combines anarchism and Christianity. Its main proponents included Leo Tolstoy, Dorothy Day, Ammon Hennacy, and Jacques Ellul.
Platformism is a tendency within the wider anarchist movement based on the organisational theories in the tradition of Dielo Truda's Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft). The document was based on the experiences of Russian anarchists in the 1917 October Revolution, which led eventually to the victory of the Bolsheviks over the anarchists and other groups. The Platform attempted to address and explain the anarchist movement's failures during the Russian Revolution. Today "Platformism" is an important current in international anarchism. Around thirty platformists and especifistas are linked together in the Anarkismo.net project, including groups from Africa, Latin America, North America and Europe. At least in terms of the number of affiliated organisations, the Anarkismo network is larger than other anarchist international bodies, like the International of Anarchist Federations and the International Workers' Association. It is not, however, a formal "international" and has no intention of competing with these other formations. Today there are organisations inspired by the Platform in many countries, including the Workers Solidarity Movement in Ireland, Common Struggle/Lucha Común in the United States, the Union Communiste Libertaire in Quebec, Common Cause in Ontario, the Federación Comunista Libertaria (FCL) and Organización Comunista Libertaria (OCL) in Chile, the Federación Anarco-Comunista de Argentina (FACA) and Línea Anarco-Comunista (LAC) in Argentina, the Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici (FdCA) in Italy, the Fórum do Anarquismo Organizado in Brazil, Unión Socialista Libertaria in Peru, the Organisation Communiste Libertaire and Alternative Libertaire in France, the Alianza de los Comunistas Libertarios (ACL) in Mexico, the Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group (MACG) and Sydney Anarchist Communist Trajectory (SACT) in Australia, Motmakt in Norway, Libertære Socialister in Denmark, Collective Action in the UK, the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF) in South Africa, and the Revolutionary Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists by the name of N. I. Makhno (RKAS), which is an international anarcho-syndicalist, platformist confederation with sections and individual members in Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Germany, Latvia, Bulgaria and Israel. Organisations inspired by the Platform were also among the founders of the now-defunct International Libertarian Solidarity network and its successor, the Anarkismo network; which is run collaboratively by roughly 30 platformist and especifista organisations around the world.
Synthesis anarchism is a form of anarchist organization that tries to join anarchists of different tendencies under the principles of anarchism without adjectives. In the 1920s, this form found as its main proponents the anarcho-communists Voline and Sébastien Faure. It is the main principle behind the anarchist federations grouped around the contemporary global International of Anarchist Federations. The International of Anarchist Federations (IAF/IFA) was founded during an international anarchist conference in Carrara in 1968 by the three existing European anarchist federations of France (Fédération Anarchiste), Italy(Federazione Anarchica Italiana) and Spain (Federación Anarquista Ibérica) as well as the Bulgarian federation in French exile. These organizations were also inspired on synthesist principles. Currently alongside the previously mentioned federations, the IAF includes the Argentine Libertarian Federation, the Anarchist Federation of Belarus, the Federation of Anarchists in Bulgaria, the Czech-Slovak Anarchist Federation, the Federation of German speaking Anarchists in Germany and Switzerland, and the Anarchist Federation in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
Post-left anarchy is a recent current in anarchist thought that promotes a critique of anarchism's relationship to traditional Left-wing politics. Some post-leftists seek to escape the confines of ideology in general also presenting a critique of organizations and morality. Influenced by the work of Max Stirner and by the Marxist Situationist International, post-left anarchy is marked by a focus on social insurrection and a rejection of leftist social organisation.
Insurrectionary anarchism is a revolutionary theory, practice, and tendency within the anarchist movement which emphasizes insurrection within anarchist practice. It is critical of formal organizations such as labor unions and federations that are based on a political programme and periodic congresses. Instead, insurrectionary anarchists advocate informal organization and small affinity group based organization. Insurrectionary anarchists put value in attack, permanent class conflict, and a refusal to negotiate or compromise with class enemies. The Informal Anarchist Federation (not to be confused with the synthesist Italian Anarchist Federation also FAI ) is an Italian insurrectionary anarchist organization. It has been described by Italian intelligence sources as a "horizontal" structure of various anarchist terrorist groups, united in their beliefs in revolutionary armed action. In 2003, the group claimed responsibility for a bomb campaign targeting several European Union institutions. In 2010, Italy’s postal service intercepted a threatening letter containing a bullet addressed to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. A large envelope containing a letter addressed to Berlusconi with the threat “you will end up like a rat” was discovered on Friday in a post office in the Libate suburb of the northern city of Milan. On 23 December 2010, credit for exploding parcels delivered to the Swiss and Chilean embassies in Rome was claimed by the Informal Anarchist Federation,.
Post-anarchism is a theoretical move towards a synthesis of classical anarchist theory and poststructuralist thought, drawing from diverse ideas including post-modernism, autonomist marxism, post-left anarchy, situationism, and postcolonialism. Analytical anarchism, which partly began as a response to analytical Marxism, is a recent development in academia that uses the methods of analytic philosophy to clarify or defend anarchist theory. Analytical anarchists include Robert Paul Wolff, Alan Carter, and Michael Taylor. Wolff argues that we have no obligation to obey the state, while Carter argues that the state cannot be trusted to liberate the people, and Taylor uses game theory to argue that cooperation is possible without the state.
Free-market anarchism, usually referring to anarcho-capitalism, is a political philosophy advocating property rights and the non-aggression principle. While not considered to be a form of anarchism by the majority of anarchists, due to its connection with capitalism, it is most common in the United States. It is "based on a belief in the freedom to own private property, a rejection of any form of governmental authority or intervention, and the upholding of the competitive free market as the main mechanism for social interaction." Anarcho-capitalists advocate for all services, including law enforcement and security, to be performed by multiple private providers all competing for business, rather than by a monopolist state agency funded by taxation. Anarcho-capitalism's proponents include Murray Rothbard, David D. Friedman, Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Walter Block
"New Anarchism" is a term that has been notably used by Andrej Grubacic, amongst others, to describe the most recent reinvention of the anarchist thought and practice. What distinguishes the new anarchism of today from the new anarchism of the 1960s and 1970s, or from the work of US-UK based authors like Murray Bookchin, Paul Goodman, Herbert Read, Colin Ward and Alex Comfort, is its emphasis on the global perspective. Some of essays on new anarchism include David Graeber's "New Anarchists" in A Movement of Movements: is Another World Really possible?, ed. Tom Mertes (London: Verso, 2004) and Grubacic's "Towards Another Anarchism" in World Social Forum: Challenging Empires, ed. Jai Sen and Peter Waterman (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2007).
