Tag Archives: anarchism

Ursula Le Guin

Odonianism is anarchism. Not the bomb-in-the-pocket stuff, which is terrorism, whatever name it tries to dignify itself with; not the social-Darwinist economic ‘libertarianism’ of the far right; but anarchism, as pre-figured in early Taoist thought, and expounded by Shelley and Kropotkin, Goldman and Goodman. Anarchism’s principal target is the authoritarian State (capitalist or socialist); its principal moral-practical theme is cooperation (solidarity, mutual aid). It is the most idealistic, and to me the most interesting, of all political theories.

Ursula Le Guin, ‘The Day Before the Revolution’, Galaxy, vol. 8 (August, 1974)

Emma Goldman

Anarchism, the great leaven of thought, is today permeating every phase of human endeavor. Science, art, literature, the drama, the effort for economic betterment, in fact every individual and social opposition to the existing disorder of things, is illumined by the spiritual light of Anarchism. It is the philosophy of the sovereignty of the individual. It is the theory of social harmony. It is the great, surging, living truth that is reconstructing the world, and that will usher in the Dawn.

Emma Goldman, ‘Anarchism’, in Anarchism and Other Essays, New York, 1917

Juan Suriano

¿Dónde terminó el anarquismo? Refiriéndose al caso español un autor sostiene que “su movimiento se perdió en la evolución de los tiempos, pero sus problemas de libertad e igualdad quedaron incroporados a la cultura de la sociedad europea, y por tanto, factibles de extenderse al resto del mundo”. El anarquismo argentino también se extravió en el transcurso del siglo XX y, como su homónimo hispano, instaló en la sociedad local problemas de libertad e igualdad. Fue casi la única corriente contestataria que defendió la libertad individual y la igualdad de todos los hombres como valores supremos. Ni el Estado ni el interés partidario o doctrinario debían interponerse entre el individuo y su libertad, y, en este sentido, se diferenció de cualquier grupo o partido de izquierda. Estas ideas eran heredadas del liberalismo, pero a diferencia de aquél, el anarquismo las puso en práctica (o intentó hacerlo) entre los sectores más oprimidos de la sociedad. Tal vez los actuales movimientos de derechos humanos en su defensa de los derechos civiles y, consecuentemente, de las libertades individuales sean herederos del individualismo libertario.

Juan Suriano, Anarquistas: Cultura y política libertaria en Buenos Aires. 1890 – 1910, Buenos Aires, 2001, p. 342

George Woodcock

The anarchists attack the principle of authority which is central to contemporary social forms, and in doing so they arouse a guilty kind of repugnance in ordinary people; they are rather like Ivan Karamazov crying out in the court-room, ‘Who does not desire his father’s death?’ The very ambivalence of the average man’s attitude to authority makes him distrust those who speak openly the resentments he feels in secret, and thus it is in the psychological condition which Erich Fromm has named ‘the fear of freedom’ that we may find the reason why—against the evidence of history—so many people still identify anarchism with unmitigated destruction and nihilism and political terror.

George Woodcock, Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Movements and Ideas, Harmondsworth, 1975, pp. 14

Ángel Cappelletti

Es frecuente entre los historiadores y sociólogos que se ocupan hoy del anarquismo afirmar que éste representa una ideología del pasado. Si con ello se quiere decir simplemente que tal ideología logró su máxima influencia en el pueblo y en el movimiento obrero a fines del siglo XIX y durante la primera década del XX, nada podemos objetar. Pero si ese juicio implica la idea de que el anarquismo es algo muerto y esencialmente inadecuado al mundo del presente, si pretende que él no puede interpretar ni cambiar la sociedad de hoy, creemos que constituye un notorio error. Frente a la grave crisis (teórica y práctica) del marxismo, que se debate entre un stalinismo más o menos vergonzante y una socialdemocracia que suele renegar de su pasado, el anarquismo representa, más bien, la ideología del futuro.

Ángel Cappelletti, La ideología anarquista, Buenos Aires, 1992, pp. 130-131

Rafael Barrett

Anarquista es el que cree posible vivir sin el principio de autoridad. Hay organismos esencialmente anarquistas, por ejemplo la ciencia moderna, cuyos progresos son enormes desde que se ha sustituido el criterio autoritario por el de la verificación experimental.

Rafael Barrett, Moralidades actuales, Montevideo, 1910

Eduardo Gilimón

[L]os anarquistas no van precisamente contra una clase social, ni contra un sistema económico, ni proceden ellos exclusivamente de una determinada clase social sino de todas. Van contra un principio—el principio de autoridad—contra la organización social que es autoritaria en todos los órdenes de la vida desde el político hasta el moral y desde el intelectual hasta el económico, y contra todas las clases sociales que se opongan a la libertad, a la anarquía.

Eduardo Gilimón, ‘La Anarquía’, La Protesta, 20 de agosto de 1908

Alan Carter

Marxists, by considering the use of state power or in advocating a revolutionary vanguard (which would eventually form a new state power) as acceptable means toward equality and freedom, advocate courses of action that, as the State-Primacy Theory reveals, would perpetuate the extensive inequalities Marxists ostensibly oppose. And they are uncritical of such courses of action because their theory overlooks the fundamental importance of the state and, especially, state power. The result of this is the promotion of a strategy that inadvertently perpetuates unfreedom and inequality. Consequently, the State-Primacy Theory indicates that anarchists are indeed correct to oppose all statist and vanguardist approaches to revolutionary change. In this respect, the State-Primacy Theory provides anarchism with the theory of historical transition it requires.

So, an anarchist theory of history can be developed that offers the promise of being at least as effective as Marxist theory in explaining technological, economic, and political developments but that has the added advantage, by drawing attention to the tremendous power that the state can exert, of predicting accurately the outcome of statist and vanguardist revolutions. This is in stark contrast with Marxist theory, which, through underemphasizing the power of the state because of an unbalanced stress on the economic, has created such a dangerous pitfall for the Left. By stressing the technological and the economic, Marxists have distracted attention from the state. This proved disastrous in the Russian Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, and numerous revolutions in the Third World and will do so time and time again until Marx’s theory of history is eventually abandoned by the Left.

Alan Carter, ‘Analytical Anarchism: Some Conceptual Foundations’, Political Theory, vol. 28, no. 2. (April, 2000)

C. H. Herford

[William] Godwin saw in government, in law, even in property, and in marriage, only restraints upon liberty and obstacles to progress. Yet Godwin was not, strictly speaking, an anarchist. He transfered the seat of government from thrones and parliament to the reason in the breast of every man. On the power of reason, working freely, to convince all the armed unreason of the world and to subdue all its teeming passion, he rested his boundless confidence in the ‘perfectibility’ of man.

C. H. Herford, The Age of Wordsworth, London, 1916, pp. 7-8