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what is anarchism? 27
anarchist thought: history
In 1989 David Goodway bemoaned the poverty of anarchist historiography,
which he felt tended towards the uncritical hero-worship of
the classical anarchists and the failure of social historians to direct
their attention to the anarchist movement. 44 Little was known, he
argued, about this popular movement and what was known was
written by those who were hostile to it and/or who adopted theoretical
approaches which were likely to shed only critical light on its
activities. Goodway’s observations usefully highlight the polemical
nature of the historical debate about anarchism, the vehemence
with which Marxist historians, in particular, have attacked the anarchist
movement and the consequent interest that non-Marxist historians
have shown in the ideological division between anarchists and
Marxists. This division remains central to historians of anarchism.
For example, Nunzio Pernicone’s recent work is based on the ‘simple
premise’ that ‘Anarchism not Marxism, was the ideological current
that dominated and largely defined the Italian socialist movement
during its first fifteen years of development’. 45 Through such historical
analyses it is possible both to illustrate the issues on which oldstyle
anarcho-communists (and others) split from other socialists
and to frame the changing relationship between anarchism and
liberalism.
The relationship between anarchists and Marxists has never been
happy. The historical antagonism is often personalized: after rebuffing
Marx’s request in 1846 that the two co-operate, Proudhon
became the target for Marx’s wrath. In 1847 he published The
Poverty of Philosophy, using all his intellectual powers to publicly
ridicule Proudhon’s economic theory. In the 1860s, Bakunin took
the lead as Marx’s anarchist opponent. He and Marx battled for
control of the First International (International Working Man’s
Association, or IWMA), an organization that brought together
European radicals and socialists, falling out spectacularly in 1871.
As if to emphasize their personal enmity, Proudhon, Marx and
Bakunin happily heaped scorn on each other in the course of their
disputes. Yet the personalization of the debates between them is
misleading since it wrongly suggests a uniform and entirely hostile
anarchist critique of Marxism. Predictably, anarchists have assessed
Marxism in different ways and been willing to adopt some of Marx’s
positions as their own. To give one example: in his review of