Anarchism - from Heyday to Now

Anarchism’s heyday, in terms of popular support, occurred in the early decades of the 20^th century.

At this point anarcho-syndicalism acquired growing political influence, notably in France, Italy, Spain and parts of the Americas, and for a time posed a serious ideological threat to socialism and Marxism. In the early 1900s for example, about half the French labour force belonged to anarcho-syndicalist unions, including the powerful CGT. Furthermore, the US anarcho-syndicalist union, the International Workers of the World, possessed over 200,000 members. Significant anarcho-syndicalist movements developed in Argentina and Uruguay during the early 20th century and anarchism played an important role in Emiliano Zapata’s Mexican revolution.

Anarcho-syndicalist influence declined in most countries after 1918, except in Spain where membership of the anarchist trade union, the CNT, increased from one million (1914) to about two million during the Spanish civil war (1936-39). Indeed, in the mid-late 1930s, the CNT temporarily controlled large parts of Spain. However, the growth of right-wing political authoritarianism, including General Franco’s victory in the Spanish civil war, and the increasing prestige of communism on the left due to the successful 1917 Bolshevik revolution in Russia, effectively ended anarchism as a mass movement in Europe and the Americas by the late 1930s.

Having said this, anarchism is still a political force in the contemporary world. Its rejection of the state and authority, and its commitment to grass roots non-hierarchical political organisation and activism, continues to exert an idealistic-moral appeal for many, notably younger, people.

The modern anti-capitalism and anti-globalisation movements, for example, are partly influenced by anarchist ideas and contain anarchist groups. However, unlike other political ideologies (such as conservatism, liberalism, socialism or fascism), anarchism has never won power on a national level. In part, this is because anarchists argue for the removal of the state and the decentralisation of all forms of authority, so gaining national power has never been part of the anarchist agenda.

Instead, anarchists have often identified with societies, communal experiments and movements that appear to support their values such as early ‘primitive’ or traditional human communities, the cities of Ancient Greece, the 18^th century Enlightenment, the counter-culture movements of the 1960s and the ‘free town’ of Christiania in Copenhagen.

Furthermore, anarchism’s appeal has been limited by its goals and methods. Most people regard the anarchist aim of a stateless society and the removal of all political authority as an impractical utopian fantasy. Similarly, anarchism’s methods, such as the rejection of conventional political behaviour (e.g. working through political parties and contesting elections to secure public office) and the endorsement of revolutionary violence as an agent of change by some strands of anarchism, have marginalised the ideology as far as mainstream opinion is concerned.