In Our Time - Anarchism

Episode Date: December 7, 2006

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anarchism and why its political ideas became synonymous with chaos and disorder. Pierre Joseph Proudhon famously declared “property is theft”. And perhaps more surprisingly that “Anarchy is order”. Speaking in 1840, he was the first self-proclaimed anarchist. Anarchy comes from the Greek word “anarchos”, meaning “without rulers”, and the movement draws on the ideas of philosophers like William Godwin and John Locke. It is also prominent in Taoism, Buddhism and other religions. In Christianity, for example, St Paul said there is no authority except God. The anarchist rejection of a ruling class inspired communist thinkers too. Peter Kropotkin, a Russian prince and leading anarcho-communist, led this rousing cry in 1897: “Either the State for ever, crushing individual and local life... Or the destruction of States and new life starting again.. on the principles of the lively initiative of the individual and groups and that of free agreement. The choice lies with you!” In the Spanish Civil War, anarchists embarked on the largest experiment to date in organising society along anarchist principles. Although it ultimately failed, it was not without successes along the way.So why has anarchism become synonymous with chaos and disorder? What factors came together to make the 19th century and early 20th century the high point for its ideas? How has its philosophy influenced other movements from The Diggers and Ranters to communism, feminism and eco-warriors?With John Keane, Professor of Politics at Westminster University; Ruth Kinna, Senior Lecturer in Politics at Loughborough University; Peter Marshall, philosopher and historian.

Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk, forward slash Radio 4. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, Pierre Joseph Proudon famously declared property is theft, and perhaps more surprisingly, that anarchy is order. Speaking in 1840 was the first self-proclaimed anarchist. Anarchy comes from the Greek word anarchos, meaning without rulers, and the movement draws on the ideas of philosophers like William Godwin, John Locke. It's also evident in Taoism, Buddhism, and in other religions. In Christianity, for example,

St. Paul said there's no authority except God. The anarchist rejection of a ruling class inspired Peter Kropotkin, a Russian prince and leading anarcho-communist, to utter this rousing cry in 1897, either the state forever, crushing individual and local life, or the destruction of states and new life, starting again, on the principles of the lively initiative of the individual and groups and that of free agreement. The choice lies with you. He identified some examples of anarchism in action, including the Lifeboat Association. In the Spanish Civil War, anarchists embarked on the biggest experiment to date in organizing society along anarchist principles. Although it ultimately failed, it wasn't without successes along the way. So why has anarchism

become synonymous with chaos and disorder? What factors came together to make the 19th century, an early 20th century, the high point for its ideas? Joining me, a Peter Marshall, philosopher and historian. John Keene, Professor of Politics at Westminster University, and Ruth Kinner, Senior Lecture in Politics, I'd Loughborough University. John Keane, when the word anarchy, when was the word first used in English to describe someone's political stance, and why did it appear then? It's a word that finds its way into English in the middle of the 16th century, and it's synonymous with the absence of government, with lawlessness, with disorder. Milton, for example, in Paradise Lost, refers to the waste.

wide anarchy of chaos. What's remarkable is that this meaning still survives until today, but roughly at the end of the 18th century, it undergoes a change of meaning so that it becomes a wholly positive term. Anarchy stands for

the self-discipline and self-imposed rules among individuals. They have no, they don't stand for organized government, over them. That brute engine was the way that Godwin described all government. They are hostile to parties. The old anarchist slogan that if voting could change anything, they'd abolish it, is redolent of that.

The rejection of all false gods, for example, organized institutionalized religions. The opposition to the wages system, wage labor, markets. The strong sense among anarchists, all seen as positive as individualism, self-imposed judgments, reason means that anarchy and anarchism came from the end of the 18th century to be associated with cooperation, with love, with, for example, mutual aid. And I would say as well, it's important to see that the tradition of anarchism came to be associated, and it has a prescience today, because of its identification with nature, with the simplicity of nature, with the closeness to nature. So just as societies, industrialised societies dominate nature and have destroyed parts of nature,

and I could subject that this is a reason for, so to say, standing in defence of nature. Well, that's a terrific overview. We won't stop the programme now. We're still going for the next 40-odd minutes to try to sort of spread it out a little bit, John. Can we go back to why it was used, you've mentioned Milton, but as I understand it might have been used in the civil war by the royalists of their opponents. Can you just give us a note on that? Yes, I mean, the word anarchism first enters the English language in 1642, at the point at which the royalist state is in collapse and the beginning, there is the beginning of rebellion. and the word anarchist also appears in this period,

not surprisingly, because it is a term of abuse used principally by royalists to describe those who are fermenting disorder. So basically it is used by people who have the control of society against those who seek to overthrow them in English from the beginning. That is its first use. Yes. They will not see them as opposing a different sort of society. They see them as merely destructive and therefore to be got rid of.

Yes, and it's this chaos, this waste-wide anarchy of chaos, as Milton calls it, which generates enormous fear among the defenders of the monarchy. So in a sense, you sort of demonise them instead of explaining them or taking them intellectually seriously by throwing this word at them and sort of fudging, spluttering, obscuring the issues. But at this point in time, there are no anarchists in the positive, positive late 18th century since. That comes later and it's associated I think with the French revolution. We're sidling towards that. We will get there at about quarter past nine.

Ruth Kinnett's generally been a term as John said of abuse associated with chaos and even ungodliness. Can we develop that a bit? Why that was the case? Well I mean the anarchists argue that it's a prejudice and if that's so I think it's a fairly deep-seated one. I mean in the history of ideas. is it's, I think there are two challenges that anarchists have to face. One is the idea that if you don't have law, you can't have virtue, which is a sort of Machiavellian notion that if you leave people by their own devices, then they tend to be lazy and corrupt.

And so what you need to give them purpose is a strong leader who will bring out the best in them and raise them to virtue. So it comes out of a notion of human beings, of humankind as being like that, Well, that's one part of it. I mean, the other part of it is the sort of the Hobbesian challenge that the anarchists face, and that's the idea that where you have self-interested individuals who have different moral codes, and no one to arbitrate between them, what will happen is that they are necessarily drawn into conflict with each other.

They can't resolve that conflict, and so they live a life of constant insecurity and fear. and the only way out of that is to create an authority who will literally lay down the law, establish what is right and wrong, and back those judgments up with physical force through coercion. So, I mean, in a sense, what the anarchist faces is, you know, on one hand, anarchy is at best directionlessness. You know, you won't have any kind of purpose unless you have law,

and at worst, it's civil strife. But the anarchist didn't actually say that they wouldn't have any law at all, but we'll come back. How did godliness and non-god... We're talking about the 17th century where the idea of godliness was a great defining political fact. How did Godliness our ungodliness play in the case of those who could be called anarchist, although the word wasn't commonly used there? Well, I think, you know, the... You know, what you were saying earlier is the key to it.

Anyone who challenges the orthodoxy of the time is someone who is accused of being anarchist. I'm not sure that it's tied necessarily to godliness. I mean, people like Locke, who are advocating mixed government or constitutional monarchy, are denounced as people who are leading us towards anarchy, simply because they're challenging the orthodoxes. And I think that's the key to it. I mean, later anarchists would say that 19th century anarchists would pick up the problem, point about godliness in terms of saying

it's godliness and the idea that we have to subordinate ourselves to some higher authority that lies at the root of the problem, of the fear that unless you have something outside of your self, you're going to

collapse back into some kind of chaotic life. John Kean indicated in his opening overview really, the semantic shift occurred in the French Revolution, let's say. These are generalisations, but it's I hope you think it's reasonably accurate. How did that occur and what did it mean?

There's a group of militants in the French Revolution, opponents of the Jacobins, called the Enraget, I think it's literally the rabid ones. And they attack the Jacobins for the centralisation of power. And they're taken off to trial in 1793. They don't call themselves anarchists, but they're denounced as anarchists. and the sort of the prosecution focus on the fact

that they are seemingly advocating an abandonment of central controls. And I think what's important about the French Revolution for the later history of anarchism in the 19th century is that the term is used for the first time in opposition to a mainstream form of socialism, if you like, or there's a line of development at least that you could trace from the Jacobin French Revolution through to the later Russian Revolution

and the opponents, the revolutionary opponents, of that tendency, are claimed to be and later claim themselves to be anarchists. So you could say from the French Revolution he began to dig itself in as it could almost be called a movement, but certainly a strand. Certainly a strand. Certainly a strand.

Certainly a strand. Peter Marshall, before we don't one step forward, let's take two steps back, because I'd like listeners to show, to know what you know, about the fact that it's been bedded in in various ways of the Western tradition long before this. Can you tell us, I'm sorry to go back to the Greece's year, and I'm not, can you tell us what happened there? Yes, I think that anarchism is actually very ancient, or what I would rather call the anarchist sensibility. Yes. I think wherever, I mean, the state is quite a recent development in human experience,

and people have lived outside the state for, for, for, for, um, hundreds of years. Longer than they've lived inside a stage. Exactly. And they've governed themselves and they've run their own affairs very peacefully and corporatively. But I think that you have, with the Greeks, you have the beginnings of the separation between religion and philosophy and people beginning to question authority and to think for themselves.

And there is a lively libertarian spirit, I think, that come through certain Greek philosophers. I'm the sophists who taught for a fee how to argue well and be good at rhetoric. They nevertheless sent off barbs of wit and they had very many challenging ideas of conventional morality. And then even Socrates, who was accused of being a sophist, he was an anti-democrat,

but he nevertheless believed the non-examined life was not worth living, and he was condemned by the Athenian state for corrupting young. I think even more importantly amongst the Greeks are the cynics, and also the Stoics. The Stoics believed they made a distinction between nature and custom, and they believe that the one should live according to the laws of nature rather than the laws of man. And they, Xeno, one of their main exponents,

in his republic, very different to the totalitarian one of Plato, has a vision of society without property and without government based on universal brotherhood. So we have that We also have it in religions We see it in Can you, I'm sorry to ask it to be brief But yeah

In Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism briefly, it is there, isn't it? The idea that he's not yet called anarchism Is around there too? It is. And it comes through very strongly In, say, 6th century BC, China within Taoism,

the Lao Tzu, for instance, pointed out that the more rules and regulations there are, the poorer people become. the sharper men's weapons, the more trouble in the land. And the Zahis were arguing for a society, a decentralized society in harmony with nature. Again, we find in Buddhism,

although there's a stress on community, there's also believed in autonomy and self-disciplined freedom, and one can work out one's own salvation without outside scriptures and masters. And then I think even more so in Christianity, You quoted at the beginning St. Paul, saying that there is no authority except God. The early Christian father, St. Augustine, went even further and said, love and do what you will. And particularly in the Middle Ages, there was millenarian sects who believed there was a second coming of Christ.

And they were in a state of grace, the Anabaptists, the Hussites, the Brethren in the Free Spirit. They all believed that they could live, since they were in a state of grace, They could live without the government of the state or of the church and that they could do no evil. And this comes through actually during the English Civil War with the ranters and the diggers, Winston Lee, since Gerald Wyn Stanley said that all men stand for freedom. For freedom is the man who would turn the world upside down.

And they wanted to form a common treasury. And God forbid there are even massless women joining in. with free love and rejection of law and government. So that brought us right up to where we left off before that, which is, sir, we know the Enlightenment is very much, we use the opinion as the age of reason, John Keene. How did reason, did reason enable anarchism, we talked in the 18th century, beginning 19th century now,

still not named widely. As to proceed, did it give it intellectual strength and certain respectability there? Yes, I think slightly in contrast, to Peter, I think that all that he's said is about the antecedents of modern anarchism, but

I think it's rather anachronistic to talk in that way as such. I mean, the language of anarchism only appears under modern conditions around the time of the French Revolution, and there's, in this sense I think anarchism is much more born of the pathologies of the modern world.

Excessive state power, the emphasis on the market, the wrecking of nature, and yet it feeds upon some of the central elements of what we call modern life, and one of them is reason. You can see this commitment to reason among the early anarchists in the work of William Godwin, said in the English tradition to be probably the first explicit defender of something like an anarchist vision, and for him, son of a parson, born in Wisbeck and Cambridge,

a man a wonderfully ascetic, self-disciplined, an embodiment of reason. He thought that all individuals, men and women, he married Mary Wollstonecraft. All men and women are endowed with reason. Probably in the end it's God-given. And it should not be abused,

taken away by anybody else. All individuals have the capacity to learn, to come closer to truth. And this commitment to sincerity, no butler said Godwin should ever lie if his master is in, this commitment to sincerity to reason to truth. Is ultimately for Godwin the justification of the abolition of government? Why should politicians, parties, ministers,

determine for us how we should live? This instead should be done by means of self-reflection, commitment to truth, sincerity, listening to public opinion, and applying above all rules to ourselves, which we ourselves have made. Can we talk a little bit about Ruth Rousseau, Ruth Kinner, who was enormously influential at the end of the 18th century, and his ideas? Did he, as it were, give more feed this notion as much as, God didn't, because he's more influential than Goddred. I think in terms of the attraction that the anarchists said to Russo, I think

what the anarchists like about Russo stems from Russo's notion of natural freedom and this is the freedom that Russo says we enjoy in the state of nature, the condition he imagines that we lived in prior to the formation of government. And natural freedom is your freedom to secure things in nature and it's something that you initially enjoy

in isolation. But gradually Russo says, what happens is that you come into contact with others. And for a brief period, at least, you can enjoy your natural freedom and have sociability. Now, in the long run, Rousseau says, in fact, you can't hang on to natural freedom. And once you've lost it, you can't recover it. And so in the ideal form of government, Rousseau recommends that you exchange your natural freedom for what he calls civic freedom, which is the freedom to participate in lawmaking

and moral freedom, which is the freedom you enjoy as part of your membership of the community. Now, the anarchists don't like that part of Rousseau, and they're very critical of this ideal form of government. What they do like is the notion that there's no necessary trade-off, if you like, between freedom on one hand, sociability on the other, even if you have to have certain conditions for that to work. And the other thing they like about Rousseau is,

the story that he tells about the formation of non-ideal government. And this story is one which points up that government doesn't just happen, it's not a spontaneous sort of evolution, and it's not necessary either in a kind of a Hobbesian

sense, because we're not all living at each other's throats in Russo's state of nature. The government that develops that people first enter into according to Russo is an imposition. And it's imposed by those people who in the state of nature have managed to secure certain advantages for themselves.

And what they want to do in government is to maintain those advantages at the cost of everybody else. So the anarchist takes from that, I suppose, the idea that government is basically exploitative. It's basically oppressive. And it deprives us as something which is extremely valuable, which is our natural freedom. Now, we could talk about Tom Paine, we could talk about Blake. We could talk about various people feeding him, but let's get on to the first person who called himself public in, anarchist, Peter Marshall,

Joseph Prudon, and is best known for his declaration, property is theft. Can you explain why property was, it seems to be at the centre of his philosophy attack and why he was influential and gripped this idea of anarchism and from him, from the time that he got hold of it as a way, he has been in our politics? Yes, well, in the middle of the 19th century,

it was Prudon who did, deliberately call himself an anarchist. And he said, I'm a strong supporter of order, but I am in full of sense an anarchist. And that he linked a rejection of government with the rejection of exclusive property. So when he asked in his book, what is property, he said property is theft.

It's theft because the large property owners are taking the surplus from the workers themselves. and they are not receiving the full fruits of their labour. And as such, it is an unjust institution. And in its place, he recommended a form of what he called mutualism, which is in which people set up banks with free credit, with trade unions, where they would share... Not unlike cooperative movements.

It's very similar to the cooperative movement. But without any government, obviously, to organise it. And this had a huge influence on the 19th century working class movement, particularly in France and also in Spain and Italy. Robert Owen, of course, is more influence in Britain. But he also took a very strong dislike of parliamentary politics. He was actually a Republican candidate of the 1848 Revolution. And the very experience of being lost, as he called it,

into this parliamentary Sinai thereafter he declared that that universal suffrage was the counter-revolution and he wanted to work with peasants and with the workers to create a more just and equal society without government and without exclusive property. He eventually, he didn't actually reject property

in the sense of possession on a limited basis. In fact, in some ways he saw it as a bulwaker freedom, but he rejected a large-scale ownership. Can we then move to Bakunin with you, John Keen, in a sense of what did he bring and add to? We're talking about the middle of the 19th century still. Well, I think of all the 19th century anarchists,

Mikhail Bakunan, I think, lived and looked the part. Copious brandy drinker, a huge appetite for reading and food, great cigar smoker apparently in prison in a month in Saxony, he went through 1,600 cigars, wild-looking and the great enemy of Karl Marx in this international working men's association that tried to develop across borders in Europe and beyond

solidarity among the emerging working classes. Barcunan's objection to Marx and the Marxists. Is this the best way to define his ideas, to his objection to Marx? I think this is what Barcunin today is remembered for. It is the point at which I think the black splits from the red, that anarchism becomes hostile

to what they take, as Barcunin insists, on the authoritarianism, of Marxian socialism. The central dispute that Barclunin has with Marx has to do with this dictatorship of the proletariat idea. So Marx and other socialists and communists have this idea that there will be a transition to socialism and then communism,

and it will require self-discipline administration and government as a transitional device. For Barconin, that is, if you like, trying to cast out devils with Beelzebub. it's the recipe for a dictatorship over the proletariat. And of course, Barconin proved to be right about this, that lurking within Marxian socialism was the possibility of a new kind of political authoritarianism.

And this, I think, was a restatement by Barclun of this classic modern anarchist idea that government is the principal enemy of autonomy of freedom. And also, you know, that hierarchy somehow almost embedded in any social organisation because both Prudon and Bakunin spotted that Marx was, could be authoritarian dictatorial authoritarian. And they fell out with him, both of them fell out with him. Could you just, John's given us, again, a good overview of that, but could we elaborate that a little? This happened with Bakunian at the First International, where Marx expelled him. And so the fight is coming very much into the ideas which are beginning to shape them.

modern world doubt. Then we just elaborate that a bit more. Yeah, certainly. I think that the essential difference between Buchanan and Marx comes in the conception of the state. And Buchanan accepts quite a lot of what Marx says. He accepts the idea that the state is an instrument of class rule, which means basically that whoever happens to have

political power, decisions are always made in the interests of those who have the economic power, so the property owners and the share. holders and so forth. Bikinin thinks that's right, but that you can't explain all forms of domination or oppression by exploitation or by class, so that there are other things like patriarchy or racism, for example, that aren't reducible to economic exploitation. Or religion, he brings up. Or religion. Certainly he talks about religion and religious intolerance and this sort of thing. And Marx's system is too narrow in that sense, because he's only looking at class exploitation. The other

problem that the Buchanan has with Marx is that Buchanan believes that there's an organisational element or dimension to the state which Marx entirely misses and that organizational element is tied to what Buchanan calls authority, the idea that we must subordinate ourselves to others, that we must obey commands, that we must do as we're told pretty much. And so in a practical sense, the problem that Buchanan has is that Marx's strategy for the transition from capitalism to socialism

relies on the working class coming in and seizing political power and using the machinery of the state, so government and the army and so forth, to force through the economic changes that will form the basis for socialism, so collectivizing the land and abolishing the market, whatever it happens to be. and Buchanan says well that's all very well as far as it goes but what you're not addressing is all those other forms of exploitation or oppression that might exist so you might still have a sexist society or a patriarchal society

and even worse what you're doing although you only have one class now which is the working class you've got a division between those who are in a position to make decisions and everybody else who has to do as they're told so you might have an equal society, but you don't have a free one. In a sense, what Becunin is saying is the animal farm scenario,

that everyone's equal, but some people are more equal than others. Can we just pause for one second before we move on to Kropotkin, because I want to keep him for a minute to two. But can you just give us some idea, Peter Mosh? We're talking about these in Bakunin, Prudon, Marx, middle of the 19th century, ferment, revolutions and so. How is it spreading out into what is happening in the politics and organisation of, let us say, West European society.

Can you just give us some view on that before we move on? I think you haven't mentioned the Paris Commune of 1871, where there are many prudonists involved and follows of Pekooning. But that cast us a shadow over, if you like, the bourgeoisie of Europe. And they saw the tremendous threat of anarchism and socialism, working class, socialism, and a period of great repression followed. But during that period, that particularly Bikunin had a very strong influence in the working class, they started to organise what was being called anarcho-sindicalism,

so revolutionary syndicalism, which again rejected the Marxist, an authoritarian socialist approach to the conquest of power, and they believed the union itself would form a, a cell, an embryo in the new society of the new society. But how, where is this happening? Where is this happening? What influence does it have? Well, this had a very wide influence in France, and particularly in Italy and also in Spain,

which of course in the 20th century became the great, had the great anarchist experiment all time. So the ideas are going directly through to people, as it were, let's say, on the ground. Yes, they are. And also in Germany and Switzerland becomes a hotbed of anarchism where Bacooning goes and also Krapotkin. Yes, I agree with that, and I think the traditions of friendly societies of cooperatives,

the birth of trade unions are fundamentally bound up with this anarchist sensibility, if not outright anarchism. But it should also be remembered there's another side, another face of anarchism in the 19th century and its assassination. Tsar Alexander II, bumped off in 1881. McKinley, 1896. I mean, there were great controversies about whether this was the fault of anarchism,

but the point is there was a tendency within late 19th century anarchism to pick up the gun, to deal directly with political power. And in that sense, it had its presence. Ruth? I was just going to say that one of the ways that the anarchists get their message across is by setting up newspapers.

And from the 1870s onwards, you have a range of, anarchist press, which have quite a wide circulation. And so the ideas are getting out to workers through the networks of press, which are either sold openly in countries like Britain or are smuggled through to states like Russia. And so anarchist ideas do get directly to the people themselves. One of those persons who ran a newspaper is a one of the...

Another great figure, perhaps one of the greatest figures in some people's eyes, of anarchism, is Prince Peter Kropotkin. He was widely read across the group. Oscar Wilde described him as a new Christ coming out of Russia. He advocated mutual aid and based some of its ideas on a deep reading of Darwin, talking about Darwin's cooperative elements and the later Darwin, which a lot of Darwinists don't face up to these days. And he was very influential.

He was exiled from Russia. escaped, came in the state, a lot of time here, run papers. Can you put him in place, and then we can talk about what happens in the 20th century? Peter. Yes, well, Cropocottson is a key figure. He, of course, was a communist that we proved on was a mutualist. We had Pekun who was collectivist. So Cropotting did believe in the possessions being in a common pool,

but he was a geographer and also a prince and also one-time page to the Tsar of Russia. But when he left Russia, because of his revolutionary interest, went into exile, he, as a geographer and an early ecologist, he was very interested in Darwin in evolution, and argued that cooperation rather than competition was a key element in evolution. Sorry, how to you? Well, I was going to say, and so mutual aid was something which was very much part of the human experience. and human beings, by their very nature, through evolution,

had developed a moral sense, which meant that external laws and imposed authority was no longer necessary. Ruth, can you develop that? Because what Kropotkin seems to be saying very clearly and a way that attracted a lot of people is that people left on their own without government can manage not only well, which is the opposition to...

but they can do it in a moral basis, they can do it successfully in all sorts of ways. Can you just take that on? Well, the way it works in, in the context of Kropokin's theory of Darwin, or his interpretation of Darwin, is to say that, is to try and rescue, if you like, Darwin from social Darwinists from people like T.H. Huxley,

who believe that what Darwin has described in the struggle for existence is something that equates to the survival of the fittest, where fitness is defined in terms of the individual. capacity to compete for scarce resources. And as Peter said, I mean, what Kropokin says is that there's another way in which you can interpret fitness. And that's the ability of species to cooperate to protect themselves against the environment, against predators and so forth. And Kropokin's concern is not only to say that, you know, therefore Darwin is describing a nature which is more Russoian, if you like, than it is Hobbesian. but that he wants to counter the claim that T.H. Huxley makes,

which is that because nature is red and tooth and the claw, you can't find the source of moral reason from within nature. What Kropokin says is that once you understand that Darwin has a wider understanding of struggle, you can look at anthropological evidence and you can look at historical evidence and you can see the way in which humans have come together and developed deliberately ethical codes, codes of mutual aid and support. And what Kropocke wants to do then is say, well, if this is what humans do by their own volition, then what we should do as anarchists is find ways of structuring society

in ways that will allow mutual aid to flourish. And that's where the communism comes in. That's the best form of society Kropokin argues to allow mutual aid to develop. John Keynes said that by the beginning of the century, anarchism is very much on the political agenda. Can you tell us how it worked its way through, say, the first couple of decades of the 20th century? What impact, what influence it has, how it threaded its way into the political discourse? Well, a continuation from below of self-organisation of workers, the Labour movement, in some areas creating some parts of the world creating tremendous effects.

think of the wobblies in the United States, the IWW, with their heroes Joe Hill, hanged by the neck in the state of Utah in 1915, stood against the struggle for the franchise, stood against government, and particularly World War, I mean, the eve of World War I, I think, is a period of great flourishing of anarchist and anarchist-sindicalist ideas and actions,

direct action. there is as well I think the what's interesting about anarchism is that it could be it could be seen I think as as as the ideas as the language as the style of the losers of the modern world and it partly explains why anarchism took root in the countryside so the Ukraine Catalonia andalusia so there begins to be this bite of anarchism within the rural areas. And I think this resonates, for example, with the way that Ruth has spoken about Kropotkin and this rural element. Can I use this as an excuse to, well, there's a... Can I get to the anarchist movement in Spain and the civil war,

which a lot of our listeners will know about through all worlds on which to Catalonia, very closely observed, and there you are. Now, it was perhaps the biggest experiment. it was in many ways very successful. Can you briefly tell us how successful it was and how big it was in the context of the Spanish Civil War, Peter Marshall? Well, it was extraordinary successful in the greatest experiment so far.

And anarchist syndicalism was a very strong force in Spain, and that at the time of when Franco rebelled against the elected Popular Front government in 1936, that there were one and a half million members in the anarchist syndicalist movement. And as soon as the revolution, as soon as Franco's rebellion took off, that he occupied, his forces occupied half the country, then the anarchists both in the south and in Catalonia started to organise themselves. And over 3 million people in Andalusia and in the east in Levant organized agricultural communes.

They even were calling for abolishing money, and there was practicing of vegetarianism, nudism. There was a huge... Abolition of coffee. Free love as well. Women and men equal. This is of 3 million people engaged in this. And then I think slightly in disagreement with you

that it wasn't just merely a rural movement that in Catalonia was the most highly advanced industrial part of Spain at the time. 70% of industry was there. And it was in the factories, they set themselves up through workers' control and self-management. and even hostile historians who have accepted that they actually increased production.

So you both see both in agricultural areas and industrialised areas of Spain, an enormous and successful anarchist experiment taking place. Can we just develop one more thing? I mean, Peter said the increased production, and basically in that area it worked. Would you agree with that? And if so, why did it get crushed? First of all, why did you want to develop more? Did it work?

I mean, well, I don't want to think it increased. production in certain areas. I don't think it's, you know, it's not a universal success. I think the important thing about Spain and Barcelona is that the anarchists demonstrate that they can do stuff that everybody said they couldn't, which was run certain industries by themselves and that, you know, syndicalism had worked in that sense. I don't think you could say it was a universal success, but then, you know, they are working in a wartime situation. And, you know, the, you know, the reasons for the collapse of the experiment have as much to do with the kind of the international politics of the time

as they do about with the... Well, it must have to do with Germany and Mussolina and the fact that we didn't go there for one thing. Well, quite, and the fact that they were also confronted with the Stalinists and all of that. So, you know, there are reasons for the collapse of the experiment which extend way beyond what the cooperative venture itself could do. Well, I say we, I mean,

I mean, various individuals were, the great number of individuals run, but the British government had a chance to intervene and totally changed the course of 20th century. We've been moved in then, I think. A lot of people are more knowledgeable than I think that as well. You're trying to get in people. Well, I certainly agree. I mean, Germany and Italy sent weapons.

They sent tanks and aircraft and men to fight on Franco's side. France and Britain refused to send arms or support, although, of course, many Britons lost their lives in the Republican... regays. But the source of weapons was from Russia, and although the Communist Party, by that time, Stalinist, had a small grouping in Catalonia, they controlled the weapons, and in the end, they were fearful, just as Lenin had been fearful of the anarchists during the Russian Revolution, they were fearful of their influence, and they ended up as a shootout between the anarchists and the communists. Why did that leave the anarchist? Where has that left the anarchist as the big experiment? It didn't fail, was crushed overcome Forced my ear, John Keen finally. Where did it leave them? Where has it left anarchism?

Well, we still see the A in a circle splashed on walls. I like to think of this anarchist sensibility, as Peter has put it, as rather like streams that have gone underground since 45, since this great European civil war in Spain, which the anarchists lost. You can, some of this would be surprising for 19th century anarchists. I think the strong commitment

to market liberalism is a carrier of some of those, however perversely of those anarchist sentiments. Art, think of Bunwell and Kafka and modernism and postmodernism. The spirit of anarchism is strongly there. I think the revival of interest in civil society, beginning with

the civil rights movement in America, the Sittians, you know, sitting in in Woolworths, in defence of the right of black people to be equals with white. And I would say, finally, the spirit of anarchism is alive and well and increasingly important in the whole revival of ecological politics. Thank you very much. Thanks Peter Marshall, John Keene and Ruth Kina. Next week we'll be talking about Indian mathematics and the origin of our numerals today. Thanks for listening.

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