Anarchists
For the Anarchist, freedom is not an abstract philosophical concept, but the vital concrete possibility for every human being to bring to full development all capacities and talents with which nature has endowed him, and turn them to social account.
—Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism
In the United States, with its at least theoretically uninhibited possibility to exercise one’s rights and freedoms, anarchist idealism—the idea that, as Immanuel Kant has it, “freedom and order” are possible “without the use of force”—found enough ground to flourish on in the mid- to late nineteenth century. In reality— other than in nationalist fiction and myth—the United States never were a “melting pot” but rather a heterogeneous conglomerate of groups and class fragments, immigrant associations, and upwardly mobile individuals. This left spaces for local (mostly rural) utopian projects, as well as for urban associations and cooperative projects. Consequently, almost all known variants of anarchist beliefs found a following in North America, ranging from religiously inspired sectarians to free- market extremists. Due to the background of anarchism in the ideals of the Enlightenment, many of the early anarchists were German and French immigrants. Among their representatives were such diverse activists as Wilhelm (Christian) Weitling (1808-1871), August Becker (18131871), and Karl Heinzen (1809-1880). Important figures later in the century were August Willich (1810-1878), the apostate priest Robert Reitzel (editor of Der Arme Teufel [The Poor Devil], 1849-1898), August Spies (1855-1887), and Johann Most (1846- 1906), ranging in their ideologies from syndicalism to radical action and utopian terrorism.
To draw a clear line between the various forms of anarchist idealism is almost impossible. To simplify, three main brands of anarchist thinking can be distinguished: one syndicalist, trade union, and cooperative-based form of leftist socialism that tries to overcome hierarchical order and oppression by establishing a grassroots form of counterhegemony and one radical and often militant form that believes in the necessity of destroying existing order before anything new can be erected, are usually (over-)identified with two theorists of anarchism, Petr Krapotkin (1842-1921) and Mihail Bakunin (1814-1876).
The third direction is indebted to Max Stirner’s (1806-1856) radical individualism. His belief in the absolute independence and therefore irresponsibility of the individual toward any form of society, however, has been less influential in anarchist circles than among free-market capitalists and the followers of Ayn Rand.Among the unifying principles of all subforms of anarchism are the following: (1) anarchism is different from communism in that it rejects party control; (2) the ultimate goal is liberty from any form of institutionalized power; (3) and anarchism is based on the individual’s free choice of association, thus also transcending the (artificial) borderlines of nation, race, class, creed, and even gender. The sexual liber- tinage in some anarchist theories (viz. the campaign in Der Arme Teufel) met with fierce opposition from Puritan quarters in the United States; many of the demands have since been adopted by feminism. Anarchist freedom naturally came into confrontation with the interests of invested capital and the political power system in the United States. Notably, those anarchist groups whose ideals included social responsibility and opposed the established form of government-supported and profit- oriented market economy soon became the objects of misrepresentation in the media and worse. From the beginning in the late eighteenth century (The Anarchiad, 1787) to the stage melodrama of the late nineteenth century, anarchism had usually been identified with chaos and terror. On this pretext, persecution by state and federal agencies as well as by private security companies like the Pinkerton Agency was made to appear necessary. Measures against anarchists ranged from intimidation and physical violence to assassinations and, as in the case of the Haymarket anarchists in 1886, the International Workers of the World (IWW) spokesman Joe Hill in 1915, and the famous case of Nicola Sacco (1891— 1927) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (1888— 1927) in the 1920s, to judicial murder.
Individual militant anarchists and anarchist groups contributed their share to this confrontation. The Arbeiter Lehr- und Wehrvereine (Workingmens’ Education and Defense Associations) stood in the tradition of the prewar socialist Turner Societies and rejected violence. The 1886 Haymarket incident changed the situation. Not only was it the first challenge to representatives of state order (in this case police trying to disperse a crowd of striking workers), but it also signaled a new quality in the fight. Though anarchist operations in the United States never reached the level or the impact they had in czarist Russia, for example, the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901 is usually attributed to a selfstyled anarchist, Leon Czolgosz (1873— 1901). His actual connections with anarchism are, however, doubtful.
After 1886, the anarchist movement in the United States lacked theoreticians and intellectual figureheads, with August Spies and Albert Parsons (1848—1887) dead, and Johann Most, the Russian immigrant Emma Goldman (1869—1940), and others like Reitzel constantly under surveillance and repeatedly imprisoned. The practical side and value of anarchism, however, remained visible in and behind many strikes for better working and living conditions and in countless acts of solidarity among miners, sailors, and transportation and steelworkers, notably in the eastern states and in the Great Lakes region. Out of this practical anarchism rose the anarcho-syndicalist IWW in the early 1900s, which again met with stiff resistance and relentless persecution, including a court decision to have the IWW archives destroyed. As a consequence, and also because of IWW opposition to the Communist Party, anarchist groups dwindled in size and effectivity. After the demise of figures like the syndicalist theorist Rudolf Rocker (1873— 1958), who escaped Nazi Germany to the United States, or Sam Dolgoff (1902— 1990), the various anarchisms are now mainly clandestine theoretical ideologies, advanced by intellectuals like Murray Bookchin (1921—) and Noam Chomsky (1928—). The notable exception is the Stirnerian form of anarcho-capitalism, first introduced in the Reagan era and advanced by the George W. Bush administration. The heyday of the German anarchists, however, had ended already before World War I.
Wolfgang Hochbruck
See also Bismarck’s Anti-Socialist Law; Haymarket; Most, Johann; Schwab, Justus H.; Turner Societies; Weitling, Wilhelm
References and Further Reading
Diefenbacher, Hans, ed. Anarchismus: Zu Geschichte und Idee der herrschaftsfreien Gesellschaft. Darmstadt: Primus, 1996. Foner, Philip Sheldon. History of the Labor
Movement in the United States. Vol. 2. New
York: International Publisher, 1977.
Most, Johann. Revolutionare Kriegswissenschaft. Millwood: Kraus Reprint, 1983.