Anarchism isn't colonial. Your ignorance is. - Don Diego de la Vega of Liza (2026)

To say that anarchism is a colonial ideology or simply Eurocentric usually stems from a very basic misunderstanding: mistaking the most visible part of its canon for the entirety of its history. This misunderstanding is not limited to external critics; it also permeates the anarchist movement itself. There are far too many anarchists who are more familiar with the aesthetics of the tradition than with its historical development, its internal debates, its organizational experiences, and its actual presence in workers’, peasant, anti-colonial, feminist, and popular struggles outside Europe.

This is no minor problem. A movement that is unaware of its own history ends up accepting the caricature that others paint of it. If anarchism is presented solely as a rejection of the state, as an abstract defense of individual freedom, or as a general anti-authoritarian sensibility, then it is easy to reduce it to a vague, incoherent tradition—or one that can be boiled down to a handful of European authors. Such a reduction impoverishes everything. It erases its socialist character, its relationship to the class struggle, its commitment to self-management, its internationalist dimension, and its strategic debates on organization, unionism, revolution, violence, reforms, popular power, and the building of social force.

Reducing anarchism to anti-statism is a serious theoretical error. The rejection of the state is part of the anarchist tradition, but it is not enough to define it. There are also extreme liberals, anti-state capitalists, religious sects, reactionary currents, and various forms of individualism that may reject the state for reasons completely opposed to those of anarchism. Historical anarchism did not fight the state in order to leave capital, private property, patriarchy, colonialism, exploitation, or social hierarchies intact. Its critique of the state was linked to a broader critique of domination and to a proposal for social reorganization based on self-management, federalism, collective action, and the emancipation of the oppressed classes.

That is why it is so misguided to equate anarchism with an individual ethic of disobedience. Anarchism did not historically develop as a simple assertion of the individual against all common norms. It was built through unions, federations, newspapers, cultural centers, schools, strikes, insurrections, specialized organizations, solidarity networks, peasant movements, and revolutionary experiences. Its central concern was not how to preserve the subjective comfort of each activist, but how to build a social force capable of confronting real structures of power. That distinction matters, because a revolutionary tradition cannot survive if its own activists reduce it to a matter of temperament, identity, or lifestyle.

The accusation of Eurocentrism holds some truth only if it is directed against a certain way of telling the history of anarchism, not against anarchism as a historical tradition. For a long time, many general histories prioritized Western Europe and the North Atlantic axis. They gave excessive prominence to great men, the best-known texts, and European debates, pushing the global spread of anarchism and its integration into specific social processes into the background. That historiography does indeed deserve criticism. But confusing a limited historiography with the actual movement is an unjustifiable leap.

Anarchism had a global presence. It was not a European doctrine that simply descended upon passive peoples. It spread through labor migration, political exile, militant press, labor networks, ports, prisons, translations, popular schools, and social struggles. In Latin America, it became linked to labor movements, revolutionary unionism, anticlericalism, popular education, and direct conflicts with employers and states. In East Asia, it took on its own forms in Japan, China, and Korea, where it intersected with anti-imperialism, criticism of militarism, and debates on education, the family, labor, social revolution, and colonial resistance. In various African and colonial contexts, anti-authoritarian ideas also came into contact with struggles against imperialism, racism, and exploitation.

None of this makes anarchism a pure tradition, free of contradictions or limits. It would be absurd to present it that way. There were anarchists with racist prejudices, sexist practices, Eurocentric interpretations, strategic errors, and the blind spots typical of their time. But a serious critique begins by distinguishing between the real limitations of specific activists, the weaknesses of certain historiographies, and the general substance of a political tradition. Anarchism is not defined by every mistake made by anarchists, but by its project to abolish relations of domination and replace them with self-managed forms of social life.

The colonial question must be framed precisely. Colonialism does not mean that an idea originated with Europeans. Colonialism means the political, military, economic, racial, and cultural domination of some peoples over others. It means extraction, imperial administration, imposed borders, racial hierarchies, forced labor, evangelization, policing, imprisonment, and subordination. If the term is applied rigorously, anarchism appears historically closer to the struggles against these structures than to their defense. Anarchists fought against empires, nation-states, armies, employers, churches, landowners, police, and bureaucracies. They also criticized the idea that liberation consisted solely of replacing a foreign elite with a national elite.

This point is fundamental. Anarchism is not content to ask who holds political power. It asks why there must be a separate structure that governs society. This distinction sets it apart from both liberalism and authoritarian nationalist or socialist projects that accept the concentration of power as a means of emancipation. Where others envisioned freedom as the seizure of the state, anarchism insisted on the direct organization of the oppressed classes. Where others placed their trust in revolutionary parties, leaderships, or bureaucracies, anarchism defended the ability of the exploited themselves to build their own organizations, their own decision-making processes, and their own mechanisms of defense.

That is precisely why historical ignorance within anarchism is so harmful. When this social and organizational dimension is forgotten, anarchism is reduced to a mere attitude. It becomes a generic rejection of authority, a constant suspicion of any collective commitment, an inability to maintain stable structures, and a disregard for strategy. Thus, concepts such as autonomy, horizontality, and anti-authoritarianism lose their political substance and become excuses for disorganization. Freedom ceases to be a project of social reorganization and comes to mean that no one can demand anything from anyone.

That version of anarchism does not threaten those in power. On the contrary, it leaves them undisturbed. An anarchism without historical memory, without class analysis, without organization, without collective discipline, and without involvement in real struggles may produce gestures, but not social force. It may have symbols, but no strategy. It may have rhetoric, but no capacity for transformation. Capital, the state, and the ruling classes are not confronted by rebellious spirits. They are confronted by organized movements, rooted in the people, with clear objectives and practices capable of sustaining conflict over time.

The historical revival of anarchism is not a secondary academic issue. It is a political necessity. Studying global anarchism allows us to debunk two misconceptions at once: the external accusation that reduces it to a European ideology, and the internal denigration that reduces it to individual freedom without a social project. It allows us to recall that anarchism was, at its best, a tradition of the masses, of organization, of class struggle, of internationalism, and of self-management. It also allows us to acknowledge its failures without turning them into a total condemnation, and its successes without turning them into mythology.

Any form of anarchism that takes itself seriously must be familiar with Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, and Louise Michel, but it cannot stop there. It must study how anarchism historically intersected with workers’, peasants’, and anti-colonial movements in different contexts; how its union and federative organizations functioned; what strategic debates arose regarding parties, unions, insurrection, or popular power; and why certain experiences took root in society while others remained isolated or were defeated. Not out of a desire for encyclopedic knowledge, but because without that memory, the movement becomes politically immature.

The correct criticism is not “anarchism is colonial.” The correct critique would be: all too often, anarchism has been portrayed in a Eurocentric manner, and too many anarchists have accepted this narrow version of their own history. That critique is indeed legitimate, as it compels us to expand the historical record, correct the canon, look beyond Europe, and reconstruct the tradition based on its actual practices—not just on its most frequently cited texts.

Anarchism does not need to be defended as a sacred identity. It needs to be rigorously understood. Its value lies not in being a symbol of rebellion, but in having formulated a profound critique of domination and a proposal for social organization based on self-management, federalism, and direct action by the oppressed. If the movement wants to live up to that history, it must abandon the comfort of easy slogans and return to serious work: studying, organizing, debating strategy, building social power, and ceasing to confuse freedom with the absence of responsibility.

For those who want to gain a better understanding of the global historical development of anarchism, a key recommendation is "Bandera Negra" by Felipe Correa, published by Teima Editorial. It is a serious yet accessible work that helps debunk many myths and oversimplifications about the anarchist tradition, highlighting its international, organizational, and revolutionary dimensions.

The book is available at various bookstores throughout Spain. You can also find more information here: https://banderanegra.net/