Search results
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.
2 The Manifesto of the Sixteen: Kropotkin’s rejection of anti-war anarchism and his critique of the politics of peace Peter Ryley I consider that the duty of everyone who cherishes the idea of human progress altogether, and especially those that were inscribed by the European proletarians on the banner of the International Workingmen’s Association, is to do everything in one’s power, according to one’s capacities, to crush down the invasion of the Germans into Western Europe.1 With these words, published in Freedom, Peter Kropotkin launched a provocative
internationalist radical Left’ in the latter decades of the nineteenth century,6 and all of the belligerents hosted anarchist groups and dissidents of varying levels of organisational acumen and practical strength. This volume takes a first step towards filling this gap. It 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. In turn, it examines the politics of internationalism and anti
signatories were French)1 and the Russian revolutions of 1917. It focuses on the movement’s shift from a dominant yet complex anti-militarist stance to a more equivocal one, with significant voices being heard in support of interventionism. What were the arguments deployed by the supporters of the Union sacrée, and how much did they owe to the influence of Peter Kropotkin? Crucially, could the revolutionary project of the anarchists coexist with participation in the war effort, or did the war in fact expose the growing integration of the working classes into the nation
, University of London, 2003), pp. 228–30. 22 For Malatesta’s part in the interventionist debate, see Berti, Errico Malatesta, pp. 557–95, and in Freedom, S. Varengo, Pagine anarchiche. Pëtr Kropotkin e il mensile ‘Freedom’ (1886–1914) (Milan: Biblion, 2015), pp. 65–88. 23 G. Woodcock and I. Avakumović, The Anarchist Prince. A Biographical Study of Peter Kropotkin (London: T.V. Boardman, 1950), p. 186. 24 Ibid., p. 289. 25 Ibid., p. 297. 26 E. Malatesta, ‘Anti-Militarism: Was it Properly Understood?’, Freedom, December 1914. 27 E. Malatesta, ‘Pietro Kropotkin. Ricordi e
: Published by University Press of New England, 2009), 194. 2 Brauer, ‘Wild Beasts and Tame Primates’, 214. 3 Brauer, ‘Wild Beasts and Tame Primates’, 217. Note reference to scientist Lynn Margulis’s relatively neglected major biological theory on mutualism and symbiosis. 4 Matthew Wilson and Ruth Kinna, ‘Key Terms’, in The Bloomsbury Companion to Anarchism , ed. Ruth Kinna, 2nd ed. (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014), 330. 5 Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (London: Heinemann, 1902), xiii. 6 Kropotkin
1 Saving the future: the roots of Malatesta’s anti-militarism Davide Turcato Anti-militarism, the refusal to support or join a government’s military effort, is today an unquestioned mainstay of anarchism. Is it an essential or a disposable feature, though? The First World War was the historical juncture where the question was most dramatically posed. Anarchists split on the issue of intervention, with the two great figures Peter Kropotkin and Errico Malatesta taking opposite sides. Despite their irreconcilable differences, both claimed to be following the First
Introduction ‘Real life has beside and within its lowest manifestations its highest ones as well.’ (Peter Kropotkin, Ideals and Realities , 1905) This third part meshes together some of the varied, dissonant and complex scholarship on new materialism and posthumanism as it relates to the ecocritical humanities and art history in particular. In general, my view is that such contributions, whether they are entirely new or instead reinvigorated ecophilosophies from the past, collectively offer a liberating energy available to the history of
Introduction In Part II , the study is grounded in the political – particularly anarchist and social ecologist – dimensions of ecological thought. The Russian political theorist and polymath Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) is a giant in the early formation of anarchism. I pay particular attention to the cultural implications and possible models both he and, later, Murray Bookchin (1921–2006) offer for the humanities and arts practice. Kropotkin looks at social organisation across the biosphere, from early forms of life on earth to medieval and recent
The Italian anarchist newspaper L’Era nuova of Paterson, NJ, declared, ‘The anarchists … are not afraid to express their complete solidarity’ with the perpetrators, but also noted that the assassination ‘did not have an anarchist character. It was of a nationalist character.’ Berkman later clarified that the man who had shot Ferdinand, Gavrilo Princip, was in fact a ‘Serbian patriot who had never heard of Anarchism’.2 Yet this was not quite true, either; the nationalist Princip had read works by the anarchist thinkers Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin, and one of