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There is a curious paradox at the heart of contemporary debates about the relationship between utopian and anarchist studies. While anarchistic ideas have gained some purchase in utopian studies, there is a strong anti-utopian trend in modern anarchism. This chapter discusses early anarchist conceptions of utopianism and argue that the differences have been exaggerated. Certainly, Landauer and Kropotkin followed different paths, but they formulated their responses to utopianism in the same context, specifically through a political engagement with Marxism and an ideologically charged debate about scientific socialism. Landauer's and Kropotkin's relationship to utopianism was mediated by an understanding of scientific socialism, a term they associated with Marxist social democracy. Their efforts to reveal the flaws of social democracy were based on different logics. Landauer rejected the new pejorative spin the social democrats put on utopianism and openly attacked the notion that science provided a useful or appropriate foundation for socialism.
Utopia is an ideal society in an imaginary country. 'Utopia' in Greek means 'No place', and utopias are frustratingly to be found on faraway islands, continents or planets which are difficult to reach. Philosophers and writers have followed the prophets and been quick to offer their own versions of utopia. While anarchism has always had a utopian dimension in the sense of imagining a free society without the state, not all literary utopias have been anarchistic. Anarchist utopias value mutual aid and solidarity as well as personal freedom and autonomy. The anarchist utopia is not the closed space of a perfect society but engages in constant struggle against protean forms of domination, hierarchy and exploitation. Wary of the many potential pitfalls of utopian speculation and, in particular, of the ways in which it may constrain free thinking rather than enrich it, many anarchists are now united far more by what they are against than what they are for. The primary aim of this book is to encourage further reflection on the wisdom of such blanket anarchist anti-utopianism. It does so by assembling the first collection of original essays to explore the relationship between anarchism and utopianism and, in particular, the ways in which their long historical interaction from the Warring States epoch of ancient China to the present day has proven fruitful for emancipatory politics.
Anti-militarism is today an unquestioned mainstay of anarchism. This book presents a systematic analysis of anarchist responses to the First World War. It examines the interventionist debate between Peter Kropotkin and Errico Malatesta which split the anarchist movement in 1914. The controversy revolved around conflicting interpretations of the shared ideas of internationalism and anti-militarism. The book analyses the debates conducted in European and American movements about class, nationalism, pacifism and cultural resistance. Just as Kropotkin's position was coherent with his anarchist beliefs, it was also a product of his rejection of the main assumptions of the peace politics of his day. Malatesta's dispute with Kropotkin provides a focus for the anti-interventionist campaigns he fought internationally. Contributions discuss the justness of war, non-violence and pacifism, anti-colonialism, pro-feminist perspectives on war and the potency of myths about the war and revolution for the reframing of radical politics in the 1920s and beyond. The collaboration between the Swiss-based anarchists and the Indian nationalists suggests that Bertoni's group was not impervious to collaboration with groups whose ideological tenets may have been in tension with the ideology of anarchism. During the First World War, American anarchists emphasised the positive, constructive aspects of revolutionary violence by aestheticising it as an outgrowth of individual creativity. Divisions about the war and the experience of being caught on the wrong side of the Bolshevik Revolution encouraged anarchists to reaffirm their deeply-held rejection of vanguard socialism and develop new strategies on anti-war activities.
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book looks closely at the bitter dispute over intervention between two of European anarchism's most important figures, both marooned in British exile, Peter Kropotkin and Errico Malatesta, which split the global anarchist movement in 1914. It examines the politics of internationalism and anti-militarism in order to explain this division and consider how it contributed to the reshaping of post-war anarchist politics. The book shows how the combination of war and revolution brought well-honed anarchist conceptions of violence, state power and mutual aid into sharp relief, stimulating new approaches to resistance, transformation and social relationships that were shaped by anti-militarism. Antimilitarists were divided in their ethical responses to war. Some linked anti-militarism to pacifism while others, like Karl Liebknecht, called for the creation of a citizen army.