From Babeuf

1
From Babeufs Conspiracy of Equals, 1795-6, there
was continuing socialist ferment in France
2
Pierre-Joseph Proudon (1809-1865) was the father
of anarchism
3
In What Is Property (1840) he coined the term
anarchist.Sovereignty will wind up fading
into a scientific socialism anarchy, absence of
master, or sovereign the natural form of human
society
4
Proudhon foresaw a balance between community
and property, and replacement of government by
contract
5
Despite his famous saying property is theft, he
was against seizing capitalist property. He
foresaw a network of small workshops and farmers
exchanging with each other at values equal to
labour-time, and giving each other free credit,
spreading to prevail peacefully.
6
Proudhon opposed unions, strikes, worker
candidates in elections, and progressive taxation.
7
Marx called Proudhon a bourgeois socialist. He
has neither courage enough nor insight to rise,
even speculatively, above the bourgeois horizon.
Instead he just juggled bourgeois concepts.
8
Proudhon was also anti-feminist, anti-semitic,
and pro-war
9
Proudhon had an idea of human nature not very
different from bourgeois economic man, but
emphasising propensity to contract.
10
Proudhon preferred to call his system
mutualism, federalism, or scientific
socialism
11
In the First International (1864-72) Proudhonism
faded, but Mikhail Bakunin (1814-76) and others
in the Jura Federation developed a new sort of
anarchism (Bakunin called it revolutionary
socialism) more infected by Marxism
12
Bakunin supported workers seizing capitalist
property, and called himself a collectivist
but wanted a federation of small communes
negotiating with others rather than a workers
state.
13
Bakunin supported workers unions and strikes,
but not workers politics and he looked more to
peasants and the lumpen-proletariat
14
Bakunin advocated all of the States presently in
existence be destroyed...
15
except Switzerland
16
The first task was to destroy - all institutions,
laws, etc. - so that the natural order of anarchy
could emerge.
17
For Bakunin and his followers, religion was the
base of authority, and authority the base of
exploitation. So, first destroy religion!
18
Bakunin said socialist organisation should
reflect the ideal new society of tomorrow, but
also wanted the invisible dictatorship of a
secret revolutionary elite.
19
Marx retorted that on Bakunins principle the
Paris Commune of 1871 would have thrown away all
discipline and all weapons.
20
Bakunin himself regretted that the Commune in
order to combat the monarchist and clerical
backlash, were obliged to set aside the basic
principles of revolutionary socialism, and
organise themselves into a Jacobin counter-force.
21
Marx All arms with which to fight must be drawn
from society as it is, and not adapted to the
idealistic fantasies of these doctors in social
science.
22
Engels Wanting to abolish authority in
large-scale industry is tantamount to wanting to
abolish industry itself...
23
From the First International split in 1872 to
1917 there was a big anarchist movement in
Europe, but with many different strands
Paul Brousse Jules Ravachol Peter
Kropotkin.. Errico Malatesta. Emile Pouget
24
In the 1880s Paul Brousse (1844-1912) coined the
idea of propaganda of the deed - starting
revolutionary activity by individual acts of
violence against society. Anarchists killed a
king of Italy and presidents of France and the
USA.
Emile Henry bombs the Café Terminus in Paris, 1894
25
Brousse himself gradually developed anarchisms
emphasis on the small-scale and local into a
fixation on municipal reformism, and became the
leader of the hangdog possibilist right wing of
French parliamentary socialism.
26
Max Stirner (1806-56) was rediscovered as a
prophet of the most individualist anarchism.
Stirner also influenced outright right-wingers
like Nietzsche, and through them todays
postmodernism.
27
Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) developed Bakunins
ideas into anarcho-communism. He foresaw
immediate free distribution of goods where
Bakunin envisaged some trading
28
Kropotkins ideal society reads something like a
world entirely run by NGOs.
29
After October 1917 Kropotkin returned to Russia.
There, we worked on a blueprint for a federal
republic
30
Emile Pouget and others developed
anarcho-syndicalism, which the federal units of
the future society would be not local communes
but trade unions.
Fields and factories for the unions
31
Anarcho-syndicalism focused on class struggle
registered the facts of large-scale industry and
integrated destructive activity with
constructive
32
But it tended to equate revolution with a utopian
version of a general strike. The CGT in France
organised a general strike in May 1906, not a
complete defeat but not the revolution, either.
33
It tried to combine the functions of trade union,
of political party, and of workers councils in
one pantomime-horse body result, none covered
properly.
34
The French CGT, led by anarcho-syndicalists,
ended up backing World War 1
Leon Jouhaux, leader of CGT 1909-47
Kropotkin and other well-known anarchists also
backed the Allies in World War 1, but Malatesta
and others opposed the war.
35
In October 1917 the Bolsheviks and the Soviets
showed the alternative to both reformist-socialist
parliamentarism and to anarchist postures. Many
anarchists rallied to Bolshevism.. The rest
dispersed into sects, except in Spain which is
another story.