Branches of anarchism

Anarchism refers to an ideology opposed to all forms of hierarchy or authority in theory and practice. It seeks to create a world in which people are in full control of their own lives, and live without being exploited or dominated. To achieve its ultimate aims, which include the abolition of the state and capitalism, various anarchists have adopted different principles underlying their social visions, which have led to different tendencies of anarchism to emerge and compete. These tendencies can be reorganized into three general categories or branches, which I seek to explain briefly.

First, we can speak of individualist anarchism, which was actually the latest branch to emerge within ‘classical’ anarchism. Contrary to many anarchists who suppose that individualist anarchism is just a philosophical approach that emphasizes the individual and their needs over society, it should be argued that the label denoted a specific economic vision of society based on individual property in the means of production.

According to these individualists, by some means, wealth throughout society is essentially redistributed to ensure that each individual has their own means or tools of production to make something they can exchange. No longer would anyone have to work for somebody else and be exploited. At each individual’s disposal is the products they have chosen to produce, which they can then choose to consume themselves or exchange with other producers to obtain the things they need. Individualists did not share a common means of attaining their ends, rather it varied among them throughout history. Generally, they preferred a peaceful, reform based approach, which led many to embrace mutualism in particular, our next branch.

Mutualism is the earliest developed tendency within anarchism, largely formulated by Pierre Joseph Proudhon. While some say that it falls wholly under individualist anarchism, it is better to think of it as a branch in its own right. Unlike individualist anarchism, mutualism more denoted a method to create ‘anarchy’ than a specific economic prescription. This method advocates workers pooling their resources to create alternative institutions within existing society, such as mutual credit and cooperatives, which will eventually overtake traditional economic institutions.

According to mutualists, while the economic arrangement mutualism leads to doesn’t necessarily have to have money or markets, exchange of products between firms, whether individual proprietors or cooperatives, are seen as essential. This is because reciprocity is seen as the core of all desired economic relations, resulting in exchange for exchange, product for product. It should be noted that some mutualists insist that more radical economic arrangements can be the possible outcome of their strategy.

Thus far, the individualists and mutualists are similar in respect to their shared preference of peaceful, reformist or gradualist approach to creating a new society as well as in their championing of exchange of products between producers. Both share a vision of society as fragmented into competing individual producers or cooperatives which control the product of their labor. In contrast to these two tendencies developed the tradition of socialist anarchism.

Socialist anarchism first took the form of anarchist collectivism within the first International Workingmen’s Association. Later on, a significant majority of collectivism developed into anarchist communism. Within the context of the debates or conflicts between the remaining remnant of anarchist collectivism (particularly in Spain) and the more popular anarchist communism, the term ‘socialist anarchism’ was preferred by some on both sides as an inclusive category uniting both tendencies. Anarcho-syndicalism, a synthesis of the two tendencies, also belongs to this branch of anarchism.

What united all socialist anarchists, and distinguished them from the individualists and mutualists, is their embrace of the class struggle, that workers should directly confront the bosses and statesmen to fight for their collective interests. The course of this struggle, either by insurrection, or by a labor movement approach, or some form of community based mass politics, should lead the workers to the direct expropriation of the wealth currently owned by the capitalists and the state, and the reorganization of society according to their needs. Therefore, socialist anarchism is the only form of revolutionary anarchism, and have sometimes been called class struggle anarchism.

The economic arrangement that they advocate for is one that not only places ownership of all means of production in the hands of society as a whole, but insist on collective organization of production and distribution, which is opposed to the fragmented society of the individualists and mutualists. If there are any differences among them, it is with regard to the principle of distribution and consumption, with collectivists preferring that producers are tied to the value of their work, while communists prefer that producers are allowed to provide what they are able and take freely from common stockpiles what they need.