Anarchism has long been ignored or misunderstood. Academics routinely make factual errors about anarchism, like claiming that all anarchists reject organisation, that anarchists care only about state oppression, or that anarchists have never organised any major social movements. More than a few throw out all pretensions of charity, or even commitment to doing the reading, before dismissively pontificating about anarchism. Little wonder that similar mistakes are made throughout teaching, with the result that much of it actively worsens students’ ability to make sense of and assess anarchist ideas. This is despite the importance that anarchist ideas and movements have played, as more and more historians recognise. For instance, Benedict Anderson points out that in the late 19th century ‘international anarchism . . . was the main vehicle of global opposition to industrial capitalism, autocracy, latifundism and imperialism’ (Anderson, 2013, 54), while Eric Hobsbawm writes that in the period 1905-14 ‘the bulk of the revolutionary left was anarchosyndicalist, or at least much closer to the ideas and the mood of anarcho-syndicalism than to that of classical marxism’ (Hobsbawm, 1994, 61).
Zoe Baker’s new book is the best hope to change this, explaining the theoretical foundations of the historical anarchist movement and illustrating it with relevant historical examples. The book’s introduction presents the topic of anarchist history and political theory, articulates the author’s motivations, explains the methods and approaches chosen, and points out the inevitable limitations of any work as ambitious as this.
Although the book’s focus is on Europe and the United States in the period 1868-1939, Baker is keen to point out that this is a purely pragmatic decision, since the ‘real historical anarchist movement was constituted by transnational networks that operated at a global scale and enabled ideas and people to flow between continents’ (3). The book thus covers only ‘a small fragment’ of the ‘true history of anarchism’ (3). This is necessary because the author only knows English and many important sources about historical anarchism, both primary and secondary, have never been translated.
What this approach sacrifices in scope, it makes up for in historical depth and theoretical rigour. In general, the choice of combining contextual historical analysis with a rational reconstruction of theories and arguments is very effective. According to Baker, anarchists developed a sophisticated body of theory that includes:
- A theoretical framework for thinking about human beings, society, and social change.
- A set of ethical values.
- An analysis and critique of existing social relations and structures in terms of their failure to realise these values.
- A vision of alternative social relations and structures that are achievable and would realise their values.
- A series of strategies for abolishing existing social relations and structures in favour of the proposed alternative social relations and structures. (2-3)
Chapter One begins with a discussion of transhistoricist vs historicist approaches to defining anarchism, a defence of Baker’s historicist approach, and an overview of how anarchism emerged as a social movement that sets the stage for reconstructing their theory. Chapter Two lays out the social theory of the anarchist movement, centred on their theory of practice (more on which below), before Chapter Three spells out the movement’s most important values, social critique, and vision for the future. Chapter Four discusses their core ideas on strategy, in particular their rejection of taking existing state power and their commitments to social revolution, direct action, the spirit of revolt, and prefigurative politics (crudely, deliberately implementing desired future social relations and practices in the here-and-now).
Among other things, the discussion of the anarchist arguments for prefigurative politics and direct action should be especially interesting today. The former because debates about it have re-emerged throughout social movements of the last decades and, more recently, in academic literature as well. The latter because, although direct action has been central to the labour movement, civil rights movement, feminist movements, movements for migrants’ rights, and many others, it has been systematically undertheorized – often in favour of a literature on civil disobedience that tends to misrepresent e.g. the civil rights movement’s ideas and strategy (Pineda, 2021).
Chapter Five provides an unparalleled explanation of the anarchists’ systematic critique of statist approaches to socialism, like social democracy and Leninism. Many readers will find this to be the most engaging chapter of the book, partly due to how prescient the anarchists were. Rooted in their theory of practice and broader social theory, anarchists made a number of specific predictions about how statist socialist strategy would fail to achieve free socialism. The history that followed proved them right about virtually everything. This is a feat rarely achieved in any area of social theorising and must be addressed in all future discussions of socialist strategy.
With this in place, Chapters 6 and 7 discuss two different strands of anarchism: insurrectionist anarchism and mass anarchism, respectively. Drawing on van der Walt’s work, Baker argues that we can loosely distinguish between mass anarchist and insurrectionist strategies. Mass anarchist strategies emphasised large-scale formal organisations as one of the main means of struggling for immediate reforms, which would build a mass movement capable of launching a social revolution. Insurrectionist strategies typically rejected such large formal organisations in favour of focusing on affinity groups engaging in propaganda and launching insurrections, hoping this would trigger a chain reaction of uprisings that would result in a social revolution. While both mass and insurrectionist anarchists employed affinity groups and were aware of the need for violence in the face of ruling class and state repression, they differed on the importance of organising large-scale formal organisations that struggled for reforms in the present. Though a helpful distinction, Baker recognises that certain anarchist thinkers switch between these categories, and sometimes combine elements of both. Interestingly, the discussion of insurrectionist anarchism does a particularly good job of combining an explanation of the reasoning behind this approach with a sober assessment of its failure in practice. Chapters Eight and Nine discuss the history, the theory, and practice, of anarchist syndicalism, perhaps the most important strand of mass anarchism.
Chapter Ten discusses dual organisationalism: the idea that anarchists should organise in specific anarchist organisations and in broad mass movements with both anarchists and non-anarchists. On this view, dedicated anarchist organisations should develop anarchist critiques, visions, strategy, and tactics that then feed into broader mass movements. Importantly, this relationship differs from e.g. the relationship between Leninist parties and trade unions in a number of ways, including (1) the mass organisations themselves ideally being organised in bottom-up democratic and non-hierarchical ways and (2) the specific anarchist organisations seeking to influence mass movements through persuasion and example rather than top-down command and control.
Finally, Chapter Eleven recaps the book and reminds us how all the anarchist ideas and strategy discussed in the book is rooted in their theory of practice.
This book has a number of strengths that makes it a worthy first place for those new to anarchism and for specialists alike. For one, it is exceptionally systematic and clear. For another, it follows through on its commitment to reconstruct not just anarchists’ views and ideas, but also their arguments for them. It also does an admirable job of discussing historical anarchist ideas using current language (e.g. ‘prefigurative politics’), while taking care to point out when this is anachronistic and differs from how historical anarchists articulated their ideas.
Perhaps the book’s greatest achievement is that it takes up the anarchists’ theory of practice and shows how it informs virtually every aspect of their thought. Baker uses this to reconstruct the anarchists’ arguments for everything from their critique of capitalism to their strategy and tactics. On this view, humans are viewed as continuously developing living beings, in constant interaction with other parts of the natural world in ways that continually shape and reshape their powers, drives, and consciousness. This builds on earlier work on anarchism and prefigurative politics, which has pointed out that the theory of the historical anarchist movement was built on just this processual and relational theory of practice (Raekstad, 2018) (Raekstad & Gradin, 2020). But Baker goes beyond this, showing how all the main commitments of anarchist theory are rooted in it. This helps Baker to bring out the depth, sophistication, and coherence of the theory of the historical anarchist movement, without underestimating the diversity within it.
This should be of particular interest to Marxist readers, who will learn that many of the tired tropes they have been told of anarchism are simply false. As Baker shows, historical anarchists did not in general rely on a negative conception of liberty, reduce all oppression to the state, reject organisations or struggles for social change, reject violence on principle, lack sophisticated theory and strategy. While the book does less to respond to these misrepresentations directly, it shows why these are all mistakes rooted in an utter failure to engage with the ideas and practices of the historical anarchist movement. Given all of this, any new attempt at a serious Marxist engagement with anarchist theory should take this book as their starting point.
In any work of this scope and ambition something is left aside. One thing I miss is more discussion of the anarchists’ precise concepts of freedom and. Another is more exploration of anarchists’ diagnoses of various forms of impersonal domination involved in things like gendered norms and values. For example, Emma Goldman’s critique of contemporary feminists for focusing on ‘[m]erely external emancipation’ (Goldman, 1966, 159), her case for the necessity of also overcoming ‘internal tyrants’ (ibid., 166), and these ideas’ connection to her positive concept of freedom, would have helped show even more of the theoretical sophistication and innovation of anarchist thinkers who are rarely discussed in these contexts.
Anarchism has long been excluded from serious academic discussion, despite the adherence of millions. Anarchists have provided a radical body of political theory that formed the basis for world-wide organising that won many important victories, correctly predicted the basics of some of the most important developments of the 20th century (like the fortunes of social democracy and Leninism), and developed systematic theories for prefigurative politics and direct-action tactics that remain important to activists across the globe. These ideas deserve to be taken seriously by anyone interested in how the world works and how to change it. There is no better place to start than with this book.
Reviewed by Paul Raekstad