Property and Freedom Society, Bodrum 2025
David Durr on “A Brief History of Swiss Anarchism”
Reported by Sebastian Wang

In this speech, Professor David Dürr, long a teacher of private law and jurisprudence in Switzerland and now a litigation lawyer, set out to trace what he called a brief history of Swiss anarchism.

He began with a striking claim: “Switzerland is the cradle of anarchism. Traces of the libertarian movement can be found a century ago in Swiss history.” He cited the Lausanne Centre for Anarchist Research, which in 1976 made the same assertion. Switzerland was the host of the 1869 Basel convention of the International Workingmen’s Association, where Mikhail Bakunin confronted Marx over the dangers of centralism. Switzerland was also the scene of anarchist violence: in 1898, an Italian anarchist assassinated the Empress Elisabeth of Austria (“Sissi”) in Geneva.

Yet for Dürr, anarchism was not merely the creed of revolutionaries but something built into Swiss history itself. He distinguished “external” anarchism—resistance to absorption into larger entities—from “internal” anarchism, the preference for communal autonomy within. The Helvetii tribes, resisting Rome around 100 BC, represented an early form of external anarchism. They were not a single nation but loose allies. Even after conquest, Switzerland was never fully integrated into the Roman Empire. In the Middle Ages, Switzerland was not an entity at all, but a mosaic of small polities loosely attached to the Holy Roman Empire.

The turning point was around 1300, when the Habsburgs were consolidating their power. Here Swiss communities began to define themselves against incorporation. External anarchism became their principle: refusal to become part of a greater whole. Defence pacts between valleys and towns were instruments of internal anarchism—horizontal, contractual, without central authority. The defeat of Swiss expansion at Marignano in 1515 reinforced the inward turn. The Peace of Westphalia in 1648 confirmed external independence.

The great interruption was 1798, when Napoleon imposed the Helvetic Republic. Switzerland lost its external autonomy, but resistance to centralisation continued. After 1815, the Congress of Vienna restored external independence, while Switzerland reconstituted itself as a federation of 22 largely sovereign cantons. This, Dürr suggested, was a rebirth of internal anarchism.

The crisis came with the Sonderbund war of 1847–48. The liberal victors imposed a federal constitution, creating a central state. Dürr called this a coup d’état against constitutional and international law. Internal anarchism was destroyed, though external independence persisted. Since then, Switzerland has been torn between the anarchist instinct and the pressures of centralisation. Dürr pointed to the refusal in 1992 to join the European Economic Area as a flicker of resistance. But he warned of “weakening resistance” to EU integration.

He stressed Switzerland’s internal pluralism. Four languages, multiple religions, urban and rural divides, cantons and two thousand communes—all mean that there is no single common element binding Switzerland together. The myth of a “nation of will” is false. Hobbes’s Leviathan spoke of many wills fused into one body; Dürr replied that there is no such common will. There are only individual wills, and they are rarely free. Switzerland is not held by a mystical unity but by overlapping associations and traditions.

His conclusion was provocative: in twenty-three years, he predicted, Switzerland should liquidate and privatise the federal state, restoring internal anarchism while preserving external independence. The Swiss Confederation, as a central authority, is an aberration. The true Swiss tradition is anarchic: no central power, no involuntary collectivity, but a web of voluntary associations.

Listening to this, I realised that Switzerland is both a state and not a state, a federation that resists federations, a people who deny they are one people. The anarchist heritage is not just Bakunin in Basel but the stubborn refusal of valleys and cantons to submit. Dürr’s prediction of liquidation by mid-century may sound fanciful, but his deeper point is harder to deny: Switzerland has survived not by unity but by disunity, not by a single will but by the refusal of one will to dominate.