Anarchism and nationalism
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Anarchism and nationalism both emerged in Europe following the
During the early 20th century, anarchism was very supportive of
Irish anarchist Andrew Flood argues that anarchists are not nationalists and are completely opposed to it, but rather they are
Overview
Anarchist opposition to nationalism
A critique of nationalism from an anarchist point of view is
In 1984, Perlman also wrote a work in the
Mikhail Bakunin and nationalism
Prior to his involvement with the anarchist movement,
Later exiled to
National-anarchism
Among the first advocates of national-anarchism were Hans Cany, Peter Töpfer and former
A position developed in Europe during the 1990s, national-anarchist groups have arisen worldwide, most prominently in Australia (New Right Australia/New Zealand), Germany (International National Anarchism) and the United States (BANA).
Although the term national-anarchism dates back as far as the 1920s, the contemporary national-anarchist movement has been put forward since the late 1990s by British political activist
National-anarchism has elicited skepticism and outright hostility from both
By country
China
Anarchists formed the first labor unions and the first large-scale peasant organizations in China. During the roughly two decades when anarchism was the dominant radical ideology in China (roughly 1900–1924), anarchists there were active in mass movements of all kinds, including the nationalist movement.
A small group of anarchists, mostly those associated with the early Paris Group, a grouping of Chinese expatriates based in France, were deeply involved in the nationalist movement and many served as "movement elders" in the
After the Nationalist Revolution, anarchist involvement with the Kuomintang was relatively minor, not only because the majority of anarchists opposed nationalism on principle, but also because the KMT government was more than willing to level repression against anarchist organizations whenever and wherever they challenged state power. Still, a few prominent anarchists, notably Jing Meijiu and Zhang Ji, both affiliated with the Tokyo Group, were elected to positions within the KMT government and continued to call themselves anarchists while doing so. The response from the larger anarchist movement was decidedly mixed. They were roundly denounced by the Guangzhou group, but other groupings that favored an evolutionary approach to social change instead of immediate revolution such as the Pure Socialists were more sympathetic.
The "Diligent Work and Frugal Study" program in France, a series of businesses and educational programs organized along anarchist lines that allowed Chinese students from working-class backgrounds to come to France and receive a European education that had previously been only available to a tiny wealthy elite, was one product of this collaboration of the anarchists with nationalists. The program received funding from both the Chinese and French governments as well as raising its own independent funds through a series of worker-owned anarchist businesses, including a tofu factory that catered to the needs of Chinese migrant workers in France. The program allowed poor and working-class Chinese students to receive a high-quality modern university education in France at a time when foreign education was almost exclusively limited to the children of wealthy elites, and educated thousands of Chinese workers and students, including many future Chinese Communist Party (CPC) leaders such as Deng Xiaoping.
Following the success of the
Partly because of the growing power of the right-wing within the KMT and the repression of workers movements advocated by that right-wing, the anarchists opted not to join the KMT en masse or even work within it. Instead, the result of this last collaboration was the creation of China's first Labor University. The Labor University was intended to be a domestic version of the Paris groups Diligent Work and Frugal Study educational program and sought to create a new generation of labor intellectuals who would finally overcome the gap between "those who work with their hands" and "those who work with their minds". The goal was to train working-class people with the skills they needed to self-organize and set up their own independent organizations and worker-owned businesses which would form the seed of a new anarchist society within the shell of the old in a dual power-based evolutionary strategy reminiscent of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.
The university would only function for a very few years before the Nationalist government decided that the project was too subversive to allow it too continue and pulled funding. When the KMT initiated a second wave of
Ireland
The armed struggle against
In two articles published on Anarkismo.net, Andrew Flood of the WSM outlines what he argues was the betrayal of class struggle by the IRA during the war of independence and argues that the statism of traditional Irish nationalism forced it to place the interests of wealthy Irish nationalists who were financing the revolution ahead of the interests of the vast majority of Ireland's poor. The
The WSM has produced a number of articles and essays on the relationship between anarchism and Irish republicanism over the years. Their position is that anarchism and republicanism are incompatible and opposed to each other, but that anarchists can and should learn things from Ireland's long history of struggle. In their analysis, republicanism has always been split between rich people who want to rule directly and working class movements that demand social equality and community self-governance instead of simply trading foreign bosses for local ones. In "The Republican Tradition – A Place to Build From?", the WSM wrote:
In Ireland in the 1790s we had a mass republican movement influenced by the American and then the French revolutions. That movement included those who favored a radical leveling agenda as well as the democratic agenda of mainstream republicans. Edward Fitzgerald, the military planner of the rising was one such proponent. But it also contained those like Wolfe Tone who saw an independent Ireland as opening up its own colonies in the Caribbean. In the north Henry Joy McDonald had to remove the existing United Irish leadership paralyzed by fear of the mob seizing property before the rising there could get underway, weeks after it had begun in the south. After its defeat and before his execution he warned future republicans to beware that "the rich always betray the poor." [...] This process was mirrored in republican movements elsewhere. Left republicans would build real popular struggle but then be confronted with the need to preserve national unity in the face of the wealthy republicans whose funds were often needed for arms backing off because they feared for their privilege. And this is where we find the roots of the early anarchist movement. [...] So in terms of historical development anarchism and republicanism have a lot in common, in fact anarchism is arguably an offshoot of republicanism, an offshoot that emerged for the first time in the 1860s but has emerged on other occasions since then including in 1970s Ireland where some of those leaving the official republican movement became anarchists while other anarchists were joining both provisional and official republican movements.[24]
According to this analysis, anarchism is the successor to left-wing nationalism, a working-class movement working to achieve the liberation that the republican movements that toppled the worlds monarchies in the last two centuries promised, albeit never delivered. According to the WSM, although the ideas of anarchism are fundamentally different from those of nationalism, it is still possible to learn from nationalist movements by studying the working-class elements of those movements that demanded more than the bourgeoisie leadership was willing or able to deliver. In "An Anarchist Perspective on Irish Nationalism", Irish anarchist Andrew Flood wrote:
Anarchists are not nationalists, in fact we are completely against nationalism. We don't worry about where your granny was born, whether you can speak Irish or if you drink a green milkshake in McDonalds on St Patrick's Day. But this doesn't mean we can ignore nations. They do exist; and some nationalities are picked on, discriminated against because of their nationality. Irish history bears a lot of witness to this. The Kurds, Native Americans, Chechins, and many more have suffered also – and to an amazingly barbaric degree. National oppression is wrong. It divides working class people, causes terrible suffering and strengthens the hand of the ruling class. Our opposition to this makes us anti-imperialists. [...] So fight national oppression but look beyond nationalism. We can do a lot better. Changing the world for the better will be a hard struggle so we should make sure that we look for the best possible society to live in. We look forward to a world without borders, where the great majority of people have as much right to freely move about as the idle rich do today. A worldwide federation of free peoples – classless and stateless – where we produce to satisfy needs and all have control over our destinies – that's a goal worth struggling for.[5]
The
At heart, nationalism is an ideology of class collaboration. It functions to create an imagined community of shared interests and in doing so to hide the real, material interests of the classes which comprise the population. The 'national interest' is a weapon against the working class, and an attempt to rally the ruled behind the interests of their rulers. [...] Anarchist communists do not simply oppose nationalism because it is bound up in racism and parochial bigotry. It undoubtedly fosters these things, and has mobilised them through history. Organising against them is a key part of anarchist politics. But nationalism does not require them to function. Nationalism can be liberal, cosmopolitan and tolerant, defining the 'common interest' of 'the people' in ways which do not require a single 'race'. Even the most extreme nationalist ideologies, such as fascism, can co-exist with the acceptance of a multiracial society, as was the case with the Brazilian Integralist movement. Nationalism uses what works – it utilises whatever superficial attribute is effective to bind society together behind it.[6]
India
In the 1910s, Lala
Spain
During the
Ukraine
Classical anarchist theory posed
Following the ratification of the
Despite their hostility to Ukrainian nationalism, the Ukrainian anarchists were not "
The Soviet historian Mikhail Kubanin noted that the number of ideological anarchists within the Makhnovist ranks diminished substantially by the later period of the war, with the Nabat themselves breaking with the Makhnovists by November 1920. But his claims of the Makhnovists forming a "truce, non-aggression pact, and joint action against the Soviets" with the Petliurists were contradicted by his own sources, which noted "no official link" between the two opposing camps and only scant examples of "certain chance meetings".[44] There were cases of former Petliurists joining the Makhnovists in 1920, which introduced more Ukrainian nationalists into their ranks, but Makhno claimed to resist their influence, as the Makhnovist command was still strongly opposed to nationalism.[45] Former Makhnovists came to view the confluence of Ukrainian nationalists and the anarchists as a result of desperation, brought on only at the last minute by the successful Russian offensive, rather than as the culmination of a gradually increasing nationalist sentiment.[46]
While the emergence of a Ukrainian national consciousness had largely been a product of the war of independence against the Hetmanate, the Ukrainian anarchist movement only developed a national consciousness as a result of the Bolshevik victory in the
Anarchism and anti-imperialism
Black anarchism
Black anarchism opposes the existence of a
Black anarchists oppose the
Black anarchists are influenced by the civil rights movement and the Black Panther Party, seeking to forge their own movement that represents their own identity and tailored to their own unique situation. However, in contrast to black activism that was in the past based in leadership from hierarchical organizations, black anarchism rejects such methodology in favor of developing organically through communication and cooperation to bring about an economic and cultural revolution that does away with capitalism, racist domination and the state. In the @narchist Panther Zine, Alston wrote:
Panther anarchism is ready, willing and able to challenge old nationalist and revolutionary notions that have been accepted as 'common-sense.' It also challenges the bullshit in our lives and in the so-called movement that holds us back from building a genuine movement based on the enjoyment of life, diversity, practical self-determination and multi-faceted resistance to the Babylonian Pigocracy. This Pigocracy is in our 'heads,' our relationships as well as in the institutions that have a vested interest in our eternal domination.[50]
Independence anarchism
Independence anarchism (also known as anarcho-independentism) attempts to synthesise certain aspects of
Independence anarchism frames national questions primarily in terms of equality, and the right of all peoples to cultural autonomy,
Post-colonial anarchism
Post-colonial anarchism is a relatively new tendency within the larger anarchist movement. The name is taken from an essay by Roger White, one of the founders of Jailbreak Press and an activist in North American
Where traditional anarchism is a movement arising from the struggles of
References
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- ^ Éticaserá el Ateneo Naturista Ecléctico, con sede en Barcelona, con sus diferentes secciones la más destacada de las cuales será el grupo excursionista Sol y Vida.
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La insumisión voluntaria: El anarquismo individualista español durante la Dictadura y la Segunda República (1923–1938).
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- ^ a b Flood, Andrew. "An Anarchist Perspective on Irish Nationalism". Workers Solidarity Movement.
- ^ a b "Against Nationalism". Anarchist Federation. 3 April 2009. Retrieved 23 September 2020.
- ^ Woodcock, George. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. p. 233.
- ^ Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century. p. 283.
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- ^ Flood, Andrew. "Insurrection in Ireland". Anarkismo.net. Retrieved 23 September 2020.
- ^ "The Republican Tradition - A Place to Build From?". World Socialist Movement. 26 November 2010. Retrieved 21 September 2020.
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- ^ Aldred 1948.
- ^ Pascual, Jakue (27 October 2011). "Aizkora eta sugea". Anarkherria. Retrieved 20 September 2020.
- ^ Sysyn 1977, p. 279.
- ^ Sysyn 1977, pp. 279–280.
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- ^ "Qui som". Negres Tempestes. Archived from the original on 3 February 2020. Retrieved 21 September 2020.
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- Aldred, Guy (1948). Rex v. Aldred. Glasgow: Strickland Press.
- Bakunin, Mikhail (1848). Appeal to the Slavs. In Dolgoff, Sam (1971). Bakunin on Anarchy.
- Billingsley, Philip (n.d.). "Bakunin, Yokohama and the Dawning of the Pacific Era".
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- Hearder, Harry (1966). Europe in the Nineteenth Century 1830–1880. New York: Longman. ISBN 0-582-48212-7.
- Knowles, Rob (n.d.). "Anarchist Notions of Nationalism and Patriotism". R.A. Forum.
- Motherson, Keith (5 September 1980). "The Ice Floes are Melting: The State of the Left". Peace News. (2127): 9–11.
- Nettlau, Max (1953). "Mikhail Bakunin: A Biographical Sketch". In Maximoff, Gregori. The Political Philosophy of Bakunin: Scientific Anarchism. 42. The Free Press.
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- OCLC 942852423. Archived from the originalon 2015-09-23. Retrieved 23 September 2015.
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External links
- Alston, Ashanti. "Beyond Nationalism, But Not Without It". Discussing nationalism and anarchism from a black anarchistperspective
- "Anarchists Against Nationalism". Flag.blackened.net.
- "Anarchists and Nationalism". Flag.blackened.net.
- "Are anarchists against nationalism?". Spunk Library.
- Home, Stewart. "Anarchist Integralism".
- Knowles, Rob. "Anarchist Notions of Nationalism and Patriotism".
- Perlman, Fredy. The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism
- White, Roger. "Post Colonial Anarchism". Discussing anarchism, nationalism and national liberation from an APOC perspective.