Portal:Anarchism

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Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is against all forms of authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including the state and capitalism. Anarchism advocates for the replacement of the state with stateless societies and voluntary free associations. As a historically left-wing movement, this reading of anarchism is placed on the farthest left of the political spectrum, usually described as the libertarian wing of the socialist movement (libertarian socialism).

Although traces of anarchist ideas are found all throughout history, modern anarchism emerged from the Enlightenment. During the latter half of the 19th and the first decades of the 20th century, the anarchist movement flourished in most parts of the world and had a significant role in workers' struggles for emancipation. Various anarchist schools of thought formed during this period. Anarchists have taken part in several revolutions, most notably in the Paris Commune, the Russian Civil War and the Spanish Civil War, whose end marked the end of the classical era of anarchism. In the last decades of the 20th and into the 21st century, the anarchist movement has been resurgent once more, growing in popularity and influence within anti-capitalist, anti-war and anti-globalisation movements. (Full article...)


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Theodore Kaczynski (born May 22, 1942) is an American anarchist and an important figure in the green anarchist and anarcho-primitivist movements. He was born in Chicago, Illinois, where, as an intellectual child prodigy, he excelled in academics from an early age. Kaczynski received an undergraduate degree from Harvard University and earned a PhD in mathematics from the University of Michigan. He became an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley at age twenty-five, but resigned two years later. In 1971, he moved to a remote cabin in Lincoln, Montana, where he sought to live closer to nature.

From 1978 to 1995, Kaczynski sent sixteen bombs to several people he saw as key agents in the development of the industrial society, creating what came to be known as the "Unabomber case". A total of three people died and twenty-three were injured. Kaczynski sent a letter to The New York Times on April 24, 1995 in which he threatened further attacks if his manifesto were not published. In the manifesto, called Industrial Society and Its Future, he argues that mass society is inherently oppressive to man, with its development progressively depriving the individual of his autonomy. He then refers to primitive society, without the dependence on large social institutions, as an ideal of freedom.

Anarchist authors such as John Zerzan and John Moore, have come to Kaczynski's defense, while expressing some concerns over his actions. He has also been criticised by primitivists for having failed to understand the underlying aspects of civilization/domestication, which he might have perceived as non-issues, such as poverty, sexism, racism and homophobia. Even outside the anarchist movement, Kaczynski's writing has been referenced for the importance of its critiques and for its analysis of technology in relation to social organization and freedom. Part of Kaczynski's manifesto was cited by the scientist and author Raymond Kurzweil in his book The Age of Spiritual Machines, and then mentioned in the article "Why the future doesn't need us" by computer scientist Bill Joy. His FBI-granted name, Unabomber ("UNiversity and Airline BOMber") stands now in popular culture both as an example of a lone-wolf mad bomber and a symbol of resistance against a future technological, Orwellian dystopia. (read more...)

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Oscar Wilde, famed Irish playwright, poet, and anarchist. c. 1882
Oscar Wilde, famed Irish playwright, poet, and anarchist. c. 1882
Credit: Napoleon Sarony

Oscar Wilde, novelist, poet and playwright, was so enchanted by the work of Peter Kropotkin that he converted to anarchism and wrote the essay The Soul of Man under Socialism.

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Edward Abbey, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, 1989.

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