This article discusses the different forms of organization utilized by anarchists within various anarchist movements from their beginnings in the 1860s until the present day. Despite the claims of some contemporary anarchists that horizontal network forms of organization are a recent development that distinguish contemporary anarchist organizing from the anarchism of the past, anarchists have used informal and formal networks to coordinate their activities and spread their ideas since the beginning. Contrary to popular stereotypes, anarchists have also used more formal organizational structures, particularly within the context of anarcho-syndicalist movements, such as federations of anarchist oriented trade unions on regional, national and international levels. While some anarchists continue to advocate the creation of anarchist organizations which then form larger federations to coordinate their activities in order to achieve a common aim, a free society without coercive state institutions, many contemporary anarchists emphasize instead the need for people to create their own organizations through which they can take control of their daily lives.

Introduction

In this paper what I hope to show is that although informal networks have always played an important role in historic anarchist movements, contemporary anarchists have broadened the concept of horizontal networks to embrace movements for social change with libertarian potential, working within them without seeking to lead them. Instead of focusing on what sort of structures, if any, anarchists should adopt within their own organizations, the focus is on what sort of structures and social practices within broad-based social movements will generate positive social change, empowering people and communities, without any forms of representation, including by self-proclaimed anarchists.

From the beginnings of self-identified anarchist movements in the 1860s in Europe, anarchist movements have been created and sustained by informal networks maintained through personal contacts and movement literature, primarily newspapers and pamphlets. Unless the role of these networks is recognized, the emergence and reemergence of various anarchist movements appears relatively inexplicable. However, despite the important role that informal networks have played in the various histories of anarchist movements, the kinds of networks advocated by some anarchists today are different in important respects from those which helped create and sustain the anarchist movements of the past.

The first part of this paper therefore deals with the role of networks in the emergence and spread of anarchist ideas and movements. From there I go on to compare these networks to the transnational networks advocated by contemporary anarchists, particularly within global justice movements against neo-liberalism. I discuss some of the theoretical considerations that help to differentiate contemporary anarchist approaches from those of the past, while taking care not to exaggerate the differences, as some post-structuralist anarchists are prone to do.

The Role of Networks in Historic Anarchist Movements

Davide Turcato has persuasively argued that the perennial resurgence or resurrection of anarchist movements, particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, can be explained by the existence of transnational networks of anarchist activists and the physical movement of the anarchists themselves from country to country, depending on the local political situation. Turcato tends to focus on the Italian anarchist movement, which provides an excellent example of this (Turcato, 2007). The Italian movement was kept alive through the work of various exiles, including Errico Malatesta, who would return to Italy when the revolutionary prospect appeared more promising (while in exile he was active in the Argentine, US and UK anarchist movements, and maintained close ties with the Spanish anarchists (Turcato, 2012)).

Similar observations have been made regarding the Spanish language movement, with Spanish anarchists emigrating to Latin America and then returning to Spain when the situation in Latin America worsened and the Spanish situation appeared to be improving. Diego Abad de Santillan is a good example. He first became involved with the CNT in Spain, then went into exile in Argentina, where he was very active in the FORA (Argentine anarcho-syndicalist trade union federation), then returned to Spain around the time of the Revolution and Civil War, after which he was forced to flee once again to Latin America (along with numerous other Spanish anarchists). European anarchists like Abad de Santillan helped establish social and cultural networks and institutions which sustained the Argentine anarchist movement (Suriano, 2010). These included cultural centres (ateneos), free schools, reading circles and newspapers. Neno Vasco provides another example of an anarchist who through personal contacts, literature and travel between Portugal and Brazil played an influential role in the anarchist movements of both countries.

As Turcato emphasizes, these networks were fairly loose and informal, being maintained by personal contacts, newspapers and correspondence. In the United States, the German immigrant anarchist movement used beer halls as one of their primary networking mechanisms, in addition to personal contacts and newspapers (Goyens, 2007). More formal anarchist organizations have sometimes played a role, as I will describe below, but the use of informal ‘network’ organizations goes back at least to Bakunin. Because of the anarchists’ use of informal networks, it is sometimes difficult for historians to trace the spread of anarchist ideas and groups, and to explain their reappearance after periods of repression.

The Role of Networks in the Emergence of Anarchism

The earliest anarchist network was probably the loose knit ‘revolutionary brotherhood’ that the exiled Russian anarchist, Michael Bakunin, began organizing in the mid-1860s. Contrary to claims that Bakunin was the dictator of this group, it was simply a rather fluid association of people attracted to Bakunin’s revolutionary anarchism who would sometimes coordinate their activities (Lehning,1974). Several people who were at one time or another part of the brotherhood helped spread anarchism in Europe and the Americas, including Malatesta, Carlo Cafiero, Elisée Reclus and James Guillaume. Their main methods for networking were personal contacts, correspondence, newspapers and pamphlets (for example, when Bakunin published a pamphlet in Switzerland, he would send it to his contacts in France, Italy and Spain for distribution).

The anti-authoritarian wing of the International Workingmen’s Association (the ‘First International’) is an example of a more formal anarchist organization, but it also functioned much like a more informal network in between official congresses (Graham, forthcoming; Stafford, 1971; and Cahm, 2002). Some of the national federations affiliated with the First International adopted anarchist programs following the split between the ‘anti-authoritarians’ and the centralists (Marxists and Blanquists) in 1872, most notably the Spanish and Italian federations. The federations and sections of the International that rejected any central authority and participation in existing political systems reconstituted the International along anti-authoritarian lines, with affiliates not only in Spain and Italy, but also among French and Russian exiles, some of the Belgian delegates, and the Jura Federation in Switzerland, which was founded by Bakunin and Guillaume before the split (Enckell, 2012). The Jura Federation played a significant role not only within the anti-authoritarian wing of the International but also in articulating and spreading anarchist ideas through its Bulletin, pamphlets and books. Several influential anarchists, including Paul Brousse, Peter Kropotkin and Reclus, worked closely with the Jura Federation in developing and disseminating anarchist ideas.

Within the anti-authoritarian International, some of the anarchists began to develop a critique of formal organization as such, concerned that even within an international federation of anarchist groups any central coordinating agency or correspondence bureau could control the communications between the various sections and manipulate them for its own ends, gradually assuming more and more control over the federated groups, much as had happened with the General Council of the International, which had ultimately fallen under the control of the Marxists.

Anarchists who adopted this critique became known as ‘anti-organizationalists.’ One of their more prominent spokespersons became Luigi Galleani, who opposed both revolutionary trade union, or ‘syndicalist,’ organizations, and formal anarchist organizations of any sort. Galleani argued that an anarchist organization, as with any organization, would have its own hierarchy which would push its members to adopt ‘provisions, decisions, measures to which the card-carrying members will submit for the sake of discipline, even though they may be contrary to their opinion and their interest,’ or face censure, excommunication and expulsion (Galleani, 2005: 121-122).

The anti-organizationalists therefore opposed anarchist advocates of ‘dual organization.’ This idea, which also originated with Bakunin, was that anarchists should participate in broader social movements and their organizations, such as the working class movement and trade unions, while maintaining their own ideologically distinct anarchist organizations, through which the anarchists would coordinate their activities within these broader social movements in order to steer them in a more anarchist direction.

By 1881, the formal organization of the anti-authoritarian wing of the International had effectively ceased to function, but anarchist networks were broader and even more international. An international congress of anarchists was held in London that same year. Despite the failure (or disinterest) in recreating a formal international anarchist organization along the lines of the anti-authoritarian wing of the International (which lasted from 1871 until around 1879, although some people put 1881 as its final year), anarchist movements had emerged in Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany and Mexico and were beginning to emerge in Russia, Latin America and the United States.

While the role of the anti-authoritarian wing of the International should not be underestimated, the role of personal contacts, anarchist newspapers and the movement of anarchists between different countries clearly played an equally important role, which explains how anarchism was able to spread so quickly and so far without the continuation of a formal international organization. The next international anarchist congress wasn’t until 1907 in Amsterdam, although anarchists did gather at the Brussels and London congresses of the Second International in 1891 and 1896 respectively, establishing important contacts between them (and sympathetic revolutionary socialists uncomfortable with the parliamentary focus of many of the Socialist delegates and parties).

There did continue to be important regional and national anarchist organizations, for example in Mexico, where the socialist La Social group had adopted an anarchist program in 1871, which was followed by the Mexican General Workers Congress from 1879-1882; in Spain, where the Spanish Federation of the International reconstituted itself as the Workers’ Federation of the Spanish Region in 1881 (see J. Llunas Pujols, 2005: 125-128), eventually morphing into the CNT in 1910; in North America, where the International Working Peoples’ Association was founded in 1883 (see ‘The Pittsburgh Proclamation,’ 2005: 189-193), adopting a revolutionary anarchist program; the Workers’ Alliance and Federation of Cuban Workers in 1887; the anarchist inspired Federation of Bourses du Travail in 1895 in France (F. Pelloutier, 2005: 193-196), which led to the creation of the revolutionary syndicalist CGT; the founding of the Workers Federation of Argentina in 1901, which became the anarcho-syndicalist FORA in 1904; the creation around the same time of similar anarcho-syndicalist trade union federations in Uruguay (FORU, 2005: 199-202) and Brazil, culminating in the anarcho-syndicalist American Continental Workers’ Association in 1929 (2005: 330-335); the syndicalist Unione Sindacale Italiana, founded in Italy in 1912, but which traced its lineage back to the (anarchist) Italian Federation of the First International; the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI) in Spain in 1927, not to mention the various anarchist federations which emerged in Russia, particularly after the 1917 October Revolution, and in Japan, China and Korea (from around the turn of the century into the 1920s). In 1922, many of these anarcho-syndicalist federations joined together to form an international federation, the International Workers’ Association (IWA/AIT) in Berlin (IWA, 2005: 416-418; Thorpe, 1989).

But again personal networks and the dissemination of anarchist publications played an equally important role. For example, anarchism was introduced to Japan by Kotoku Shusui after he visited North America, where he met anarchists and revolutionary syndicalists and obtained anarchist propaganda, including Kropotkin’s The Conquest of Bread and Siegfried Nacht’s The Social General Strike, both of which he translated into Japanese and introduced to young radical students from China, who then translated the same works into Chinese (Shusui, 2005: 367-369; Graham, 2012: 518-519). Chinese students studying in France also helped introduce anarchism to China (Dirlik, 1993). Anarchist ideas were introduced to the Philippines by similar means (Anderson, 2007).

What the work of Turcato and others shows is that despite significant organizational discontinuity (the 1912 USI, after all, was not the direct descendant of the Italian Federation of the First International, which was essentially defunct by around 1881), anarchism has had an influence, and continues to have an influence, out of proportion to any formal anarchist organizations, and often reappears during periods when such organizations have become largely moribund.

The different ways in which anarchist networks have helped to spread anarchist ideas and to inspire anarchist movements then include emigration and exile of anarchists to other areas of the world, the receptivity of oppressed people (whether the colonized or recent immigrants) to anarchist ideas, and the sharing of ideas by certain groups, such as workers, students and intellectuals (the fact that Noam Chomsky has publicly expressed his sympathy for anarchism on numerous occasions has had a significant effect on the spreading of anarchist ideas (R. Graham, 2013)).

Because networks do not depend on an official party apparatus or hierarchy, anarchist ideas and practices are simply presented as something that may commend themselves to other people, depending on their individual circumstances, and those people can begin to adopt, adapt, improvise and implement those ideas and practices as best suits them, without having to get permission or an endorsement from someone else (in contrast, say, to the various Communist Parties that had to get the sponsorship of the Soviet Union or, later, China, often in competition with other socialist groups or parties).

Networks – Old and New

Now some people, David Graeber and Andrej Grubacic for example, argue that international networks without external hierarchies are something that distinguishes the ‘new’ anarchism from the ‘old.’ See for example Graeber’s well known essay, ‘The New Anarchists’ (2012). I disagree, but this much is true: contemporary network forms of organization are different from the organized anarchism of old, which is championed today by people who identify themselves as ‘class struggle anarchists’ or ‘Platformists,’ after the ‘Organizational Platform of the Libertarian Communists’ (P. Arshinov et al, 2005: 418-422).

The problem with the old style anarchist federations is that they were inverse pyramids, but pyramids nonetheless, which in times of crisis could be turned into top down organizations (as many anarchists argue happened to the CNT and FAI in Spain during the Civil War), and which could be dominated (if not controlled) by the delegates representing the largest number of members, or the biggest region. They were also susceptible to cooptation by the state socialists, particularly after the 1917 Russian Revolution, when many syndicalists, and their organizations (the French CGT being the best known example) effectively went over to Bolshevism (Marxism-Leninism).

From the Bottom Up to Horizontal Networks

Other anarchists besides the anti-organizationalists therefore supported more fluid forms of organization. The anarchist communist, Peter Kropotkin, envisaged an anarchist society comprising ‘ever changing, ever modified associations which… constantly assume new forms which answer best to the multiple aspirations of all’ (Kropotkin, 2005: 142). Where the earlier anarchists fell short was in their lack of a sustained analysis of the internal and external dynamics of voluntary associations and the broader federations or associations to which they would belong.

Someone who did appreciate the need for such an analysis was Colin Ward, an important figure in the transition from the ‘classical’ anarchism of the 19th and early 20th centuries to  more recent conceptions of anarchism. Drawing on contemporary theories regarding ‘leaderless groups,’ cybernetics, human scale technology, decentralization, and people’s capacities for self-organization, Ward developed an anarchist theory of organization which emphasized that the organizations which people need in order for society to function ‘should be (1) voluntary, (2) functional, (3) temporary and (4) small’ (Ward, 2009: 363).

Instead of focusing on what sort of organizations, if any, anarchists should create for themselves (a ‘theory of anarchist organizations’), which animated much of the debate between the anti-organizationalists and ‘organizationalists,’ Ward focused on how societies could be organized on an anarchist basis. In place of the more structured and permanent federations advocated by some earlier anarchists and syndicalists, even though organized ‘from the bottom up,’ Ward proposed horizontal ‘networks, not pyramids,’ composed of ‘small, functional groups which ebb and flow, group and regroup, according to the task in hand’ (Ward, 2009: 371).

Anarchist feminists in the 1970s also contributed to the development of anarchism as ‘a theory of organization,’ based on their experiences in the New Left and the revived women’s liberation movement. They shared with other radical feminists a critique of the internal dynamics of New Left organizations, which were often dominated by (sexist) men, and the need to create new ways of relating to one another which rejected all forms of hierarchical organization. They pioneered the use of ‘small, leaderless, consciousness-raising groups’ (Kornegger, 2009: 493). Through their emphasis on ‘the personal and political,’ they developed techniques for ensuring equal participation by all, such as ‘the rotation of tasks and chairpersons, sharing of all skills, equal access to information and resources, non-monopolized decision-making, and time slots for discussion of group dynamics’ (Kornegger, 2009: 494-495). As we shall see, similar techniques have been adopted by people involved in the global justice and ‘Occupy’ movements.

Anarchism and Global Justice Movements

Anarchists today follow the kind of approach advocated by Ward and practiced by the anarcha-feminists, developing a variety of tools for ensuring that the groups in which they are involved are truly non-hierarchical. As David Graeber notes, many groups comprising contemporary global justice movements utilize ‘a rich and growing panoply of organizational instruments—spokescouncils, affinity groups, facilitation tools, break outs, fishbowls, blocking concerns, vibe-watchers and so on—all aimed at creating forms of democratic process that allow initiatives to rise from below and attain maximum effective solidarity; without stifling dissenting voices, creating leadership positions or compelling anyone to do anything which they have not freely agreed to do’ (Graeber, 2012: 8). Graeber does acknowledge the anarchist roots of these methods. The ‘very notion of direct action, with its rejection of a politics which appeals to governments to modify their behaviour, in favour of physical intervention against state power in a form that itself prefigures an alternative—all of this emerges directly from the libertarian tradition’ (Graeber, 2012:2). Similar approaches have been adopted by the Occupy movements that spread across the globe in 2011 (Flood, 2012).

In light of these developments, some anarchists have begun to articulate a less sectarian and more inclusive conception of anarchism which focuses on process and action, allowing for a diversity of views regarding ultimate ends, recognizing that what anarchists seek is social liberation, not the triumph of an ideology. Anarchists have participated in such international resistance networks as People’s Global Action, which also include many non-anarchists, but which also reject more conventional organizational structures. As the Zapatista inspired Second Declaration of La Realidad put it, such networks have ‘no central command or hierarchies. We are the network, all of us who resist’ (Graham, 2012: 3).

This view has been embraced by a variety of anarchist groups. In the 2001 Madrid Declaration of social revolutionary libertarian groups from Europe, Latin America and the Middle East, they argue that anarchists ‘should currently strive towards encouraging convergence, the interaction of social movements—including the workers’ movement—in a solid social movement antagonistic to capital and its present true face: economic globalization and all other types of domination. This antagonistic social movement does not have, and nor should it have, a single organizational expression. It is pluralistic, based on current reality, coming and acting together in the same territory, recreating a common territorial identity, composed of many identities,’ such as ‘the workers’ movement, the unemployed, the excluded, indigenous movements, discriminated groups, ecologists and feminists, promoting direct action as a way towards social reappropriation of wealth and as a form of propaganda by the deed, as an exercise in direct democracy, participatory and federalist, without delegations or intermediaries, building on a community level in each territory and as an alternative to authoritarian institutions’ (Madrid Declaration, 2012: 19-20).

One of the signatories to the Madrid Declaration, the CIPO-RFM or Consejo Indigena Popular de Oaxaca ‘Ricardo Flores Magón’ (‘Ricardo Flores Magón’ Native People’s Council of Oaxaca), is a liberation movement in the Oaxaca region of Mexico that consciously draws on the heritage of Mexican anarchism and indigenous traditions (CIPO-RFM, 2012). As the Columbian anarchist group, Colectivo Alas de Xue, argues, there exists much common ground between anarchists and many indigenous (or ‘Indian’) groups in the Americas, such as opposition to the conformity and homogenization imposed by nation states within their own borders, with their centralized power structures, national ‘culture’ and ‘official’ languages, and the separation of peoples by those same borders, dividing families and inhibiting people’s movements (2012).

The Colectivo Alas de Xue notes that many indigenous societies utilize collective forms of decision making similar to the kinds of direct democracy that ‘libertarians have yearned for down through the centuries’ (2012: 382). As David Graeber argues, a variety of non-European societies developed forms of consensus-based community decision making that provide a model consonant with anarchist conceptions of direct democracy precisely because in such societies there is ‘no way to compel a minority to agree with a majority decision—either because there is no state with a monopoly of coercive force, or because the state has nothing to do with local decision-making’ (2012: 46).

This is not to say that libertarian groups drawing on these communal traditions uncritically endorse every aspect of them. Sharif Gemie points out that ‘many tribal lifestyles are explicitly patriarchal: they refuse women any formal involvement in decision-making. Many tribes also affirm the sanctity of rule by elders, thus rejecting the political potential of younger people’ (2012: 319). In Mexico, the CIPO-RFM has consciously striven to deal with these sorts of issues by, for example, actively promoting ‘a culture of respect for women and for women’s rights, ensuring in practice that within our organization women take up their equal and fair share of positions of representation and responsibility within our ranks’ (2012: 377).

In Africa, anarchists have sought to build upon the pre-colonial history of people living without states in egalitarian communities, particularly in light of the disastrous consequences of colonialism and the division of Africa into nation states whose borders were arbitrarily set by the former colonial powers (Mbah and Igariwey, 2012). Kurdish anarchists have similarly argued that tribal traditions of decentralization and hostility toward the various nation states which have sought to control them predispose the Kurds toward anarchism, leading to the development of a community assembly movement drawing on the ideas of Murray Bookchin (Kurdistan, 2012). Bas Umali has suggested that Bookchin’s ideas can also be adapted to conditions in the Philippine archipelago, building on traditional community forms such as the ‘barangay,’ a small community of 50 to 100 families (2012).

Whether in Africa, the Americas, the Middle East, or the South Pacific, wherever functioning communities exist, there will also exist social practices and institutions of solidarity and mutual aid. As Elisée Reclus noted long ago, ‘where anarchist practice really triumphs is in the course of everyday life among common people who would not be able to endure their dreadful struggle for existence if they did not engage in spontaneous mutual aid, putting aside differences and conflicts of interest’ (2005: 134). Colin Ward therefore argues that ‘an anarchist society, a society which organizes itself without authority, is always in existence, like a seed beneath the snow, buried under the weight of the state and its bureaucracy, capitalism and its waste, privilege and its injustices, nationalism and its suicidal loyalties, religious differences and their superstitious separatism’ (1973: 11). From this perspective, anarchism is not ‘the founding of something new,’ but as Gustav Landauer wrote, ‘the actualization and reconstitution of something that has always been present, which exists alongside the state, albeit buried and laid waste’ (Ward, 1973: 11).

Self-Organization

Instead of recruiting people into specifically anarchist organizations, many anarchists today advocate working within popular organizations that embrace anarchist styles of organization and action, for it is through these sorts of organizations that people will be able, in Paul Goodman’s words, to extend the ‘spheres of free action until they make up most of the social life’ (2009: 43).

A recent example of this approach is the ‘horizontalidad’ movement in Argentina which emerged following the collapse of the Argentine government and economy in December 2001. People from all walks of life, including the unemployed, workers, the middle class, women, the elderly and gays and bisexuals, created their own non-hierarchical (‘horizontal’) neighbourhood, community and workplace organizations without any formal leadership, independent of the government, the political parties and the trade unions, in which decisions were made by consensus or through directly democratic assemblies in which each person had an equal voice (M. Sitrin, 2012).

This approach should not be confused with the earlier position of the anti-organizationalists who rejected all formal organization (Galleani, 2005), or with those anarchists who put a one-sided emphasis on spontaneity (such as Hakim Bey, 2012). This current of anarchist thought does not reject organization, but views as more fruitful than specific anarchist organizations participation in popular and community organizations created and controlled by the people themselves because, as Murray Bookchin has written, ‘a society based on self-administration must be achieved by means of self-administration‘ (2009: 358).

Especifismo

Neither should this approach be confused with especifismo, a doctrine developed by certain Latin American anarchist groups which, despite emphasizing the need for anarchists to participate in popular struggles, nevertheless continues to advocate separate revolutionary anarchist organizations that will serve as ‘a means of overseeing the sustained spread of popular struggles, successfully providing a forum for discussion and action in which these struggles… can overcome their own shortcomings’ (Gaucho Anarchist Federation, 2012: 21). But if what anarchists want, in Alfredo Errandonea’s words, ‘is to set up popular organizations capable of taking over the running of society in the most libertarian society possible,’ then ”it is unthinkable that such all-embracing organizations should be under the sway’ of any particular political ideology, including anarchism (2012: 30).

Errandonea therefore questions whether, from this perspective, ‘there is any need for [separate anarchist] organizations… to exist.’ He suggests that there is, if  ‘if we feel it is important to coordinate the activity of its militants within a variety of popular organizations, if we feel the need to engage in reflection and collective collaboration’ (2012: 30). Others would argue that separate anarchist organizations run the danger of attempting to direct popular movements instead of working within them, with such ideological anarchist groups assuming the role of ‘representatives’ of the ‘true’ aspirations of the people, a ‘mediated’ kind of relationship which inhibits the ability of people to take direct control over their own lives.

Beyond Representation

It is through direct action and various forms of direct democracy that anarchists seek to overcome mediated social relationships, creating a society in which relationships are ‘direct and many-sided,’ in Michael Taylor’s words, much as they were in the egalitarian communities found in prehierarchical stateless societies (1982: 27-28). Instead of being represented by others, individuals directly participate in policy making through neighbourhood or community assemblies based on ‘face-to-face,’ rather than ‘mediated,’ relationships (Bookchin, 2009).

It is this opposition to representation and mediated relationships that anarchism shares with certain post-structuralist currents, leading to the development of a ‘post-structuralist anarchism’ (May and Newman, 2012). As Todd May has written, anarchism ‘can be defined as the struggle against representation in public life… the handing over of power by a group of people to another person or group of people ostensibly in order to have the interests of the former realized… What both traditional anarchism and contemporary post-structuralism seek is a society—or better, a set of intersecting societies—in which people are not told who they are, what they want, and how they shall live, but who will be able to determine these things for themselves’ (May, 2012: 423).

The Anarchist Current

Daniel Colson and Richard Day have tried to build on the insights of both post-structuralism and anarchism in developing a new conception of anti-authoritarian politics for the 21st century. ‘Despotism, in the form of the State, Science, Capital and Religion, generalizes the particular,’ Colson writes. ‘Anarchism, on the contrary, proposes what Deleuze calls the universalization of the singular’ (2012: 462) What anarchists therefore seek to create or participate in are social movements that are inspired ‘by the capacity of beings to rely on themselves, by the singularity of the relationship each has to the world, because each of them, considered as unique and irreplaceable, is the bearer of all of the others’ (Colson, 2012: 463).

From this perspective, as Richard Day argues, it is fruitless to try to create a unified movement against neo-liberalism around a common identity or ideology, anarchist or otherwise. Rather, ‘the new global order needs to be fought on all levels, in all localities, through multiple, disparate—yet interlocking—struggles’ (Day, 2012: 474).

What this entails for those who consciously identify themselves as anarchists, in terms of practice, is ‘giving up control of movements, events and projects, listening rather than talking, linking up with existing organizations rather than duplicating, colonizing or depleting them because they do not seem to be guided by familiar models or led by familiar people’ (2012: 474). Day reminds us that while ‘neoliberalism is globally present, and operates across all axes of domination and exploitation… it is manifested differently for different identities, at different times and places. A multidimensional analysis of oppression is therefore crucial to any effort to oppose, subvert or offer alternatives to the neoliberal world order’ (2012: 468). However, such a ‘multi-dimensional analysis’ must also be applied within movements for social change in order to prevent or eradicate oppressive practices within those movements which, if allowed to develop, will negate the liberatory potential of such movements.

Day points to the affinities between contemporary anarchist currents and various indigenous struggles that are ‘guided by the reflection that while redistribution of sovereignty may indeed challenge a particular colonial oppressor, it will not necessarily challenge the tools of his oppression’ (2012: 471). As the Colectivo Alas de Xue notes, both anarchists and certain indigenous groups oppose the ‘multinational looting’ of natural resources, capitalist exploitation, compulsory military service and the separation of peoples by national borders, while using network forms of organization and respecting social and bio-diversity (2012).

Sharif Gemie argues that the Zapatista movement in Chiapas and the Kabyle rebellions in Algeria, both kinds of ‘indigenous’ struggles, ‘point to a different type of political culture, neither nationalist nor regionalist, neither particularistic nor universalistic,’ which may provide ‘sketches for a new form of global anarchism… within which tribal, regional, national and transnational cultures could co-exist in some form of harmony’ (2012: 324). One of the key concepts that these movements share with anarchists is the concept of self-determination, at the individual and social level. One way to achieve self-determination is through the development of local, cultural, economic and transnational networks through which groups seeking self-determination can support each other and coordinate their struggles against neo-liberalism and the authoritarian ‘global order’ necessary to impose neo-liberalism on these recalcitrant populations.

However, the various movements against neo-liberalism that have emerged since the 1990s and are still emerging today contain many different elements, not all of which are committed to the abolition of hierarchical forms of organization and the creation of self-managed societies. While many contemporary anarchists choose to work within these movements rather than creating anarchist movements to work alongside them, if they wish to achieve a self-managed anarchist society through social movements which prefigure such a society through their own self-managed forms of organization, then anarchists must continue to make their voices heard, at the local level and in broader networks that transcend cultural, linguistic, gendered and territorial boundaries.

Anarchists who advocate participation in movements against neo-liberalism do not seek to become absorbed into them, as sometimes happened with anarcho-syndicalists involved in broader based trade union movements. Rather, they seek to participate in these movements as equals, and therefore work within these movements to  encourage the adoption of organizational forms and tools which empower all of the participants. Although anarchists need to avoid appointing themselves the intellectual guides or conscience of popular movements seeking self-determination through self-organization, there is no reason why they cannot participate in such movements as self-identified anarchists, always looking for ways, in Chris Crass’ words, ‘to form alliances, relationships, and coalitions to work’ with others, being ‘prepared to learn as well as share’ (quoted in Day, 2012: 473).

While the discontinuity and dissimilarities between the ‘classical’ anarchism of the 19th and early 20th centuries and contemporary anarchism(s) are sometimes exaggerated, particularly by post-structuralist anarchists (or more presumptuously, ‘post-anarchists’), there have been some important changes in focus and emphasis among many contemporary anarchists (Cohn, 2012). While recognizing many of the concerns of the anti-organizationalists regarding the hierarchical and bureaucratic tendencies of organized groups, instead of eschewing organization as such, many anarchists today promote a variety of methods for ensuring maximum participation in decision-making within groups, in order to prevent the emergence of de facto hierarchies within these groups. However, in contrast to those earlier anarchists who promoted the creation of organized anarchist groups and federations, many contemporary anarchists seek to create and work within broad based movements for social change, in order to develop in the here and now non-hierarchical organizations which themselves constitute organs of self-management within these movements for social change, and in the society of the future (Amster, 2012).

I have reviewed the role of networks in the emergence and spread of anarchist ideas and movements, comparing their roles within anarchist movements to the role of networks in the contemporary global justice and ‘Occupy’ movements, in which many anarchists have chosen to participate. Instead of networks forming part of ideologically distinct anarchist movements, as in the past, anarchists today participate in non-hierarchical networks within broader movements for social change. Instead of debating which kind of organizational forms anarchists should adopt for themselves, if any – a debate internal to anarchist movements – contemporary anarchists seek to develop non-hierarchical network forms of organization within broader based movements for social change.  They consequently avoid becoming the de facto “leaders” of these movements, with all the contradictions that would entail, while encouraging the development of popular organs of self-management without which ‘anarchy,’ in a positive sense, can never be achieved.

References

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Amster, Randall (2012) Anarchism Today. Santa Barbara: Praeger.

Anderson, Benedict (2007) Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination. London: Verso.

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