What are the roots of anarchist-communism in the US?

Submitted by Craftwork on June 15, 2017

From where/when does anarchist-communism in the US actually originate?

I can't find much literature dealing with this question.

adri

6 years 10 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by adri on June 15, 2017

Craftwork

From where/when does anarchist-communism in the US actually originate?

I can't find much literature dealing with this question.

Berkman and Goldman? At least I think they were among the ones who popularized anarcho-communism in the US.

petey

6 years 10 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by petey on June 15, 2017

good topic. if i weren't on phone I'd scrounge up a few links, but there is material on this site iirc.

Craftwork

6 years 10 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Craftwork on June 15, 2017

I think it's earliest phase was with Joseph Déjacque's Le Libertaire, which was published from 1858 to 1861, although it seems unlikely that his influence was more than marginal.

Probably some time after 1881, when the Social Revolutionists split from the SLP and affiliated with the IWPA (which was founded in the same year).

spacious

6 years 10 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by spacious on June 15, 2017

In a broader sense (perhaps broader than what you mean here), Loren Goldner has argued that the indigenous U.S. radical tradition stems from "the fusion of anabaptist, Indian and African":

https://libcom.org/library/fusion-anabaptist-indian-african-american-radical-tradition-loren-goldner

klas batalo

6 years 10 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by klas batalo on June 16, 2017

probably the russians and the italians to be quite honest... both had fairly large immigrant concentrations... the IWPA was definitely one the first manifestations, but the AS and AC russians in exile after 1905 (see the Union of Russian Toilers/Workers) and malatesta and others in the italian immigrant anarchist groups also probably contributed...

other than that maybe read Unruly Equality and Left of the Left, to find clues...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism_in_the_United_States#Early_American_anarcho-communism

syndicalist

6 years 10 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by syndicalist on June 16, 2017

An interesting article relative to this discussion:

Fall 2004
The Firebrand and the Forging of a New Anarchism:
Anarchist Communism and Free Love

https://web.archive.org/web/20110606151412/http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~jmmoran/firebrand_freelove.htm

I believe theres something in A Short History of Anarchism by Max Nettlau (Freedom Press).

Need to check The International Anarchist Congress, Amsterdam 1907 by Maurizio Antonioli (Black Cat Press, Edmonton). I provided a report by Emma Goldman to that conference and I think she made some reference to some of the US origins.

Might be some generalized info in "Beer and revolution: The German anarchist movement in New York City, 1880-1914" by Tom Doyens:
https://libcom.org/library/beer-revolution-german-anarchist-movement-new-york-city-1880-1914-tom-goyens

From my read of the comments above, most folks are hitting on the right bases.

Hieronymous

6 years 10 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Hieronymous on June 16, 2017

I'd say Italians and Jews too. Check out [url=http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/62ckh5bh9780252039386.html]Immigrants Against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America by Kenyon Zimmer. [/url]

Here's from the book's blurb:

From the 1880s through the 1940s, tens of thousands of first- and second-generation immigrants embraced the anarchist cause after arriving on American shores. Kenyon Zimmer explores why these migrants turned to anarchism and how their adoption of its ideology shaped their identities, experiences, and actions.

Zimmer focuses on Italians and Eastern European Jews in San Francisco, New York City, and Paterson, New Jersey. Tracing the movement's changing fortunes from the pre–World War I era through the Spanish Civil War, Zimmer argues that anarchists, opposed to both American and Old World nationalism, severed all attachments to their nations of origin but also resisted assimilation into their host society. Their radical cosmopolitan outlook and identity instead embraced diversity and extended solidarity across national, ethnic, and racial divides. Though in the end unable to withstand the onslaught of Americanism and other nationalisms, the movement nonetheless provided an important example of a transnational collective identity delinked from the nation-state and racial hierarchies.