American Anarchists

Anarchism in the United States began in the mid-19th century and started to grow in influence as it entered the American labor movements, growing an anarcho-communist current as well as gaining notoriety for violent propaganda of the deed and campaigning for diverse social reforms in the early 20th century. By around the start of the 20th century, the heyday of individualist anarchism had passed and anarcho-communism and other social anarchist currents emerged as the dominant anarchist tendency. Social anarchists, like Emma Goldman, can be credited with the introduction of LGBTQ social movements to the United States.

In the post-World War II era, anarchism regained influence through new developments such as anarcho-pacifism, the American New Left and the counterculture of the 1960s. Contemporary anarchism in the United States influenced and became influenced and renewed by developments both inside and outside the worldwide anarchist movement such as platformism, insurrectionary anarchism, the new social movements (anarcha-feminism, queer anarchism and green anarchism) and the alter-globalization movements. Within contemporary anarchism, the anti-capitalism of classical anarchism has remained prominent.

Around the turn of the 21st century, anarchism grew in popularity and influence as part of the anti-war, anti-capitalist and anti-globalization movements. Anarchists became known for their involvement in protests against the meetings of the WTO, G8 and the World Economic Forum. Some anarchist factions at these protests engaged in rioting, property destruction and violent confrontations with the police. These actions were precipitated by ''ad hoc'', leaderless and anonymous cadres known as black blocs, although other peaceful organizational tactics pioneered in this time include affinity groups, security culture and the use of decentralized technologies such as the Internet. A significant event of this period was the 1999 Seattle WTO protests.

History

Early anarchism

For anarchist historian Eunice Minette Schuster, American individualist anarchism "stresses the isolation of the individual—his right to his own tools, his mind, his body, and to the products of his labor. To the artist who embraces this philosophy it is 'aesthetic' anarchism, to the reformer, ethical anarchism, to the independent mechanic, economic anarchism. The former is concerned with philosophy, the latter with practical demonstration. The economic anarchist is concerned with constructing a society on the basis of anarchism. Economically he sees no harm whatever in the private possession of what the individual produces by his own labor, but only so much and no more. The aesthetic and ethical type found expression in the transcendentalism, humanitarianism, and romanticism of the first part of the nineteenth century, the economic type in the pioneer life of the West during the same period, but more favorably after the Civil War". It is for this reason that it has been suggested that in order to understand American individualist anarchism one must take into account "the social context of their ideas, namely the transformation of America from a pre-capitalist to a capitalist society, ..the non-capitalist nature of the early U.S. can be seen from the early dominance of self-employment (artisan and peasant production). At the beginning of the 19th century, around 80% of the working (non-slave) male population were self-employed. The great majority of Americans during this time were farmers working their own land, primarily for their own needs" and so "individualist anarchism is clearly a form of artisanal socialism ..while communist anarchism and anarcho-syndicalism are forms of industrial (or proletarian) socialism".

Historian Wendy McElroy reports that American individualist anarchism received an important influence of three European thinkers. According to McElroy, " e of the most important of these influences was the French political philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, whose words "Liberty is not the Daughter But the Mother of Order" appeared as a motto on ''Liberty'' masthead",Wendy McElroy
"The culture of individualist anarchist in Late-nineteenth century America"
. an influential individualist anarchist publication of Benjamin Tucker. McElroy further stated that " other major foreign influence was the German philosopher Max Stirner. The third foreign thinker with great impact was the British philosopher Herbert Spencer". Other influences to consider include William Godwin's anarchism which "exerted an ideological influence on some of this, but more so the socialism of Robert Owen and Charles Fourier. After success of his British venture, Owen himself established a cooperative community within the United States at New Harmony, Indiana during 1825. One member of this commune was Josiah Warren, considered to be the first individualist anarchist.Palmer, Brian (2010-12-29
What do anarchists want from us?
, ''Slate.com'' ''The Peaceful Revolutionist'', the four-page weekly paper Warren edited during 1833, was the first anarchist periodical published, an enterprise for which he built his own printing press, cast his own type and made his own printing plates. After New Harmony failed, Warren shifted his ideological loyalties from socialism to anarchism which anarchist Peter Sabatini described as "no great leap, given that Owen's socialism had been predicated on Godwin's anarchism".

The emergence and growth of anarchism in the United States in the 1820s and 1830s has a close parallel in the simultaneous emergence and growth of abolitionism as no one needed anarchy more than a slave. Warren termed the phrase "cost the limit of price", with "cost" here referring not to monetary price paid but the labor one exerted to produce an item. Therefore, " proposed a system to pay people with certificates indicating how many hours of work they did. They could exchange the notes at local time stores for goods that took the same amount of time to produce". He put his theories to the test by establishing an experimental "labor for labor store" called the Cincinnati Time Store, where trade was facilitated by notes backed by a promise to perform labor. The store proved successful and operated for three years after which it was closed so that Warren could pursue establishing colonies based on mutualism. These included Utopia and Modern Times. Warren said that Stephen Pearl Andrews' ''The Science of Society'', published in 1852, was the most lucid and complete exposition of Warren's own theories. Catalan historian Xavier Diez report that the intentional communal experiments pioneered by Warren were influential in European individualist anarchists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries such as Émile Armand and the intentional communities started by them.Xavier Diez. ''L'ANARQUISME INDIVIDUALISTA A ESPANYA 1923–1938''
pg. 42

Henry David Thoreau was an important early influence in individualist anarchist thought in the United States and Europe. Thoreau was an American author, poet, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, philosopher and leading transcendentalist. ''Civil Disobedience'' is an essay by Thoreau that was first published in 1849. It argues that people should not permit governments to overrule or atrophy their consciences, and that people have a duty to avoid allowing such acquiescence to enable the government to make them the agents of injustice. Thoreau was motivated in part by his disgust with slavery and the Mexican–American War. It would influence Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Martin Buber and Leo Tolstoy through its advocacy of nonviolent resistance. It is also the main precedent for anarcho-pacifism. Anarchism started to have an ecological view mainly in the writings of American individualist anarchist and transcendentalist Thoreau. In his book ''Walden'', he advocates simple living and self-sufficiency among natural surroundings in resistance to the advancement of industrial civilization:"Su obra más representativa es Walden, aparecida en 1854, aunque redactada entre 1845 y 1847, cuando Thoreau decide instalarse en el aislamiento de una cabaña en el bosque, y vivir en íntimo contacto con la naturaleza, en una vida de soledad y sobriedad. De esta experiencia, su filosofía trata de transmitirnos la idea que resulta necesario un retorno respetuoso a la naturaleza, y que la felicidad es sobre todo fruto de la riqueza interior y de la armonía de los individuos con el entorno natural. Muchos han visto en Thoreau a uno de los precursores del ecologismo y del anarquismo primitivista representado en la actualidad por Jonh Zerzan. Para George Woodcock(8), esta actitud puede estar también motivada por una cierta idea de resistencia al progreso y de rechazo al materialismo creciente que caracteriza la sociedad norteamericana de mediados de siglo XIX
"LA INSUMISIÓN VOLUNTARIA. EL ANARQUISMO INDIVIDUALISTA ESPAÑOL DURANTE LA DICTADURA Y LA SEGUNDA REPÚBLICA (1923–1938)" by Xavier Diez
"Many have seen in Thoreau one of the precursors of ecologism and anarcho-primitivism represented today in John Zerzan. For George Woodcock, this attitude can be also motivated by certain idea of resistance to progress and of rejection of the growing materialism which is the nature of American society in the mid-19th century". Zerzan himself included the text "Excursions" (1863) by Thoreau in his edited compilation of anti-civilization writings called '' Against Civilization: Readings and Reflections'' from 1999. Walden made Thoreau influential in the European individualist anarchist green current of anarcho-naturism.

For American anarchist historian Eunice Minette Schuster, " is apparent ..that Proudhonian Anarchism was to be found in the United States at least as early as 1848 and that it was not conscious of its affinity to the Individualist Anarchism of Josiah Warren and Stephen Pearl Andrews. .. William B. Greene presented this Proudhonian Mutualism in its purest and most systematic form". William Batchelder Greene was a 19th-century mutualist, individualist anarchist, Unitarian minister, soldier and promoter of free banking in the United States. Greene is best known for the works ''Mutual Banking'' (1850) which proposed an interest-free banking system and ''Transcendentalism'', a critique of the New England philosophical school.

After 1850, Greene became active in labor reform and was "elected vice president of the New England Labor Reform League, the majority of the members holding to Proudhon's scheme of mutual banking, and in 1869 president of the Massachusetts Labor Union". He then published ''Socialistic, Mutualistic, and Financial Fragments'' (1875). He saw mutualism as the synthesis of "liberty and order". His "associationism ..is checked by individualism. ..'Mind your own business,' 'Judge not that ye be not judged.' Over matters which are purely personal, as for example, moral conduct, the individual is sovereign, as well as over that which he himself produces. For this reason he demands 'mutuality' in marriage—the equal right of a woman to her own personal freedom and property".

Stephen Pearl Andrews was an individualist anarchist and close associate of Josiah Warren. Andrews was formerly associated with the Fourierist movement, but converted to radical individualism after becoming acquainted with the work of Warren. Like Warren, he held the principle of "individual sovereignty" as being of paramount importance. Contemporary American anarchist Hakim Bey reports that "Steven Pearl Andrews ..was not a fourierist, but he lived through the brief craze for phalansteries in America and adopted a lot of fourierist principles and practices .. a maker of worlds out of words. He syncretized abolitionism, Free Love, spiritual universalism, Warren, and Fourier into a grand utopian scheme he called the Universal Pantarchy. ..He was instrumental in founding several 'intentional communities,' including the 'Brownstone Utopia' on 14th Street in New York and 'Modern Times' in Brentwood, Long Island. The latter became as famous as the best-known fourierist communes (Brook Farm in Massachusetts and the North American Phalanx in New Jersey)—in fact, Modern Times became downright notorious for "Free Love" and finally foundered under a wave of scandalous publicity. Andrews (and Victoria Woodhull) were members of the infamous Section 12 of the 1st International, expelled by Marx for its anarchist, feminist, and spiritualist tendencies".

19th-century individualist anarchism

An important current within American individualist anarchism was Free love. Free love advocates sometimes traced their roots back to Josiah Warren and to experimental communities, and viewed sexual freedom as a clear, direct expression of an individual's self-ownership. Free love particularly stressed women's rights since most sexual laws discriminated against women: for example, marriage laws and anti-birth control measures. The most important American free love journal was ''Lucifer the Lightbearer'' (1883–1907) edited by Moses Harman and Lois WaisbrookerJoanne E. Passet, "Power through Print: Lois Waisbrooker and Grassroots Feminism," in: ''Women in Print: Essays on the Print Culture of American Women from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries'', James Philip Danky and Wayne A. Wiegand, eds., Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006; pp. 229–250. but also there existed Ezra Heywood and Angela Heywood's '' The Word'' (1872–1890, 1892–1893). M. E. Lazarus was an important American individualist anarchist who promoted free love.

Hutchins Hapgood was an American journalist, author, individualist anarchist and philosophical anarchist who was well known within the Bohemian environment of around the start of 20th-century New York City. He advocated free love and committed adultery frequently. Hapgood was a follower of the German philosophers Max Stirner and Friedrich Nietzsche.Biographical Essay by Dowling, Robert M. American Writers, Supplement XVII. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008

The mission of ''Lucifer the Lightbearer'' was, according to Harman, "to help woman to break the chains that for ages have bound her to the rack of man-made law, spiritual, economic, industrial, social and especially sexual, believing that until woman is roused to a sense of her own responsibility on all lines of human endeavor, and especially on lines of her special field, that of reproduction of the race, there will be little if any real advancement toward a higher and truer civilization." The name was chosen because "Lucifer, the ancient name of the Morning Star, now called Venus, seems to us unsurpassed as a cognomen for a journal whose mission is to bring light to the dwellers in darkness." In February 1887, the editors and publishers of ''Lucifer'' were arrested after the journal ran afoul of the Comstock Act for the publication of three letters, one in particular condemning forced sex within marriage, which the author identified as rape. In the letter, the author described the plight of a woman who had been raped by her husband, tearing stitches from a recent operation after a difficult childbirth and causing severe hemorrhaging. The letter lamented the woman's lack of legal recourse. The Comstock Act specifically prohibited the public, printed discussion of any topics that were considered "obscene, lewd, or lascivious," and discussing rape, although a criminal matter, was deemed obscene. A Topeka district attorney eventually handed down 216 indictments. Moses Harman spent two years in jail. Ezra Heywood, who had already been prosecuted under the Comstock Law for a pamphlet attacking marriage, reprinted the letter in solidarity with Harman and was also arrested and sentenced to two years in prison. In February 1890, Harman, now the sole producer of ''Lucifer'', was again arrested on charges resulting from a similar article written by a New York physician. As a result of the original charges, Harman would spend large portions of the next six years in prison. In 1896, ''Lucifer'' was moved to Chicago; however, legal harassment continued. The United States Postal Service seized and destroyed numerous issues of the journal and, in May 1905, Harman was again arrested and convicted for the distribution of two articles, namely "The Fatherhood Question" and "More Thoughts on Sexology" by Sara Crist Campbell. Sentenced to a year of hard labor, the 75-year-old editor's health deteriorated greatly. After 24 years in production, ''Lucifer'' ceased publication in 1907 and became the more scholarly ''American Journal of Eugenics''.

Heywood's philosophy was instrumental in furthering individualist anarchist ideas through his extensive pamphleteering and reprinting of works of Josiah Warren, author of ''True Civilization'' (1869), and William B. Greene. At a 1872 convention of the New England Labor Reform League in Boston, Heywood introduced Greene and Warren to eventual ''Liberty'' publisher Benjamin Tucker. Heywood saw what he believed to be a disproportionate concentration of capital in the hands of a few as the result of a selective extension of government-backed privileges to certain individuals and organizations. ''The Word'' was an individualist anarchist free love magazine edited by Ezra Heywood and Angela Heywood, issued first from Princeton, Massachusetts; and then from Cambridge, Massachusetts. ''The Word'' was subtitled "A Monthly Journal of Reform," and it included contributions from Josiah Warren, Benjamin Tucker, and J.K. Ingalls. Initially, ''The Word'' presented free love as a minor theme which was expressed within a labor reform format. But the publication later evolved into an explicitly free love periodical. At some point Tucker became an important contributor but later became dissatisfied with the journal's focus on free love since he desired a concentration on economics. In contrast, Tucker's relationship with Heywood grew more distant. Yet, when Heywood was imprisoned for his pro-birth control stand from August to December 1878 under the Comstock laws, Tucker abandoned the ''Radical Review'' in order to assume editorship of Heywood's ''The Word''. After Heywood's release from prison, ''The Word'' openly became a free love journal; it flouted the law by printing birth control material and openly discussing sexual matters. Tucker's disapproval of this policy stemmed from his conviction that "Liberty, to be effective, must find its first application in the realm of economics".

M. E. Lazarus was an American individualist anarchist from Guntersville, Alabama. He is the author of several essays and anarchist pamphlettes including ''Land Tenure: Anarchist View'' (1889). A famous quote from Lazarus is "Every vote for a governing office is an instrument for enslaving me." Lazarus was also an intellectual contributor to Fourierism and the Free Love movement of the 1850s, a social reform group that called for, in its extreme form, the abolition of institutionalized marriage.

Freethought as a philosophical position and as activism was important in North American individualist anarchism. In the United States "freethought was a basically anti-Christian, anti-clerical movement, whose purpose was to make the individual politically and spiritually free to decide for himself on religious matters. A number of contributors to ''Liberty'' were prominent figures in both freethought and anarchism. The individualist anarchist George MacDonald was a co-editor of ''Freethought'' and, for a time, ''The Truth Seeker''. E.C. Walker was co-editor of the free-thought/free love journal ''Lucifer, the Light-Bearer''". "Many of the anarchists were ardent freethinkers; reprints from freethought papers such as ''Lucifer, the Light-Bearer'', ''Freethought'' and ''The Truth Seeker'' appeared in ''Liberty''...The church was viewed as a common ally of the state and as a repressive force in and of itself".

Voltairine de Cleyre was an American anarchist writer and feminist. She was a prolific writer and speaker, opposing the state, marriage, and the domination of religion in sexuality and women's lives. She began her activist career in the freethought movement. De Cleyre was initially drawn to individualist anarchism but evolved through mutualism to an "anarchism without adjectives." She believed that any system was acceptable as long as it did not involve force. However, according to anarchist author Iain McKay, she embraced the ideals of stateless communism. In her 1895 lecture entitled ''Sex Slavery,'' de Cleyre condemns ideals of beauty that encourage women to distort their bodies and child socialization practices that create unnatural gender roles. The title of the essay refers not to traffic in women for purposes of prostitution, although that is also mentioned, but rather to marriage laws that allow men to rape their wives without consequences. Such laws make "every married woman what she is, a bonded slave, who takes her master's name, her master's bread, her master's commands, and serves her master's passions."

Individualist anarchism found in the United States an important space of discussion and development within what is known as the Boston anarchists. Even among the 19th-century American individualists, there was not a monolithic doctrine, as they disagreed amongst each other on various issues including intellectual property rights and possession versus property in land. Watner, Carl (1977).  . ''Journal of Libertarian Studies'', Vol. 1, No. 4, p. 308. A major schism occurred later in the 19th century when Tucker and some others abandoned their traditional support of natural rights as espoused by Lysander Spooner and converted to an egoism modeled upon Stirner's philosophy. Besides his individualist anarchist activism, Spooner was also an important anti-slavery activist and became a member of the First International. Some Boston anarchists, including Tucker, identified themselves as socialists which in the 19th century was often used in the sense of a commitment to improving conditions of the working class (i.e. "the labor problem"). The Boston anarchists such as Tucker and his followers are considered socialists to this day due to their opposition to usury.

''Liberty'' was a 19th-century anarchist market socialist and libertarian socialist periodical published in the United States by Benjamin Tucker from August 1881 to April 1908. The periodical was instrumental in developing and formalizing the individualist anarchist philosophy through publishing essays and serving as a format for debate. Contributors included Benjamin Tucker, Lysander Spooner, Auberon Herbert, Dyer Lum, Joshua K. Ingalls, John Henry Mackay, Victor Yarros, Wordsworth Donisthorpe, James L. Walker, J. William Lloyd, Florence Finch Kelly, Voltairine de Cleyre, Steven T. Byington, John Beverley Robinson, Jo Labadie, Lillian Harman, and Henry Appleton. Included in its masthead is a quote from Pierre Proudhon saying that liberty is "Not the Daughter But the Mother of Order."

Some of the American individualist anarchists later in this era such as Benjamin Tucker abandoned natural rights positions and converted to Max Stirner's egoist anarchism. Rejecting the idea of moral rights, Tucker said that there were only two rights, "the right of might" and "the right of contract." He also said, after converting to Egoist individualism, "In times past ... it was my habit to talk glibly of the right of man to land. It was a bad habit, and I long ago sloughed it off ... Man's only right to land is his might over it."Tucker, Instead of a Book, p. 350 In adopting Stirnerite egoism (1886), Tucker rejected natural rights which had long been considered the foundation of libertarianism. This rejection galvanized the movement into fierce debates, with the natural rights proponents accusing the egoists of destroying libertarianism itself. So bitter was the conflict that a number of natural rights proponents withdrew from the pages of ''Liberty'' in protest even though they had hitherto been among its frequent contributors. Thereafter, ''Liberty'' championed egoism although its general content did not change significantly."Wendy Mcelroy. "Benjamin Tucker, Individualism, & Liberty: Not the Daughter but the Mother of Order"

Several publications "were undoubtedly influenced by ''Liberty'' presentation of egoism. They included: ''I'' published by C.L. Swartz, edited by W.E. Gordak and J.William Lloyd (all associates of ''Liberty''); ''The Ego'' and ''The Egoist'', both of which were edited by Edward H. Fulton. Among the egoist papers that Tucker followed were the German ''Der Eigene'', edited by Adolf Brand, and ''The Eagle'' and ''The Serpent'', issued from London. The latter, the most prominent English-language egoist journal, was published from 1898 to 1900 with the subtitle 'A Journal of Egoistic Philosophy and Sociology. Among those American anarchists who adhered to egoism include Benjamin Tucker, John Beverley Robinson, Steven T. Byington, Hutchins Hapgood, James L. Walker, Victor Yarros and Edward H. Fulton. Robinson wrote an essay called "Egoism" in which he states that "Modern egoism, as propounded by Stirner and Nietzsche, and expounded by Ibsen, Shaw and others, is all these; but it is more. It is the realization by the individual that they are an individual; that, as far as they are concerned, they are the only individual.""Egoism"
by John Beverley Robinson Steven T. Byington was a one-time proponent of Georgism who later converted to egoist stirnerist positions after associating with Benjamin Tucker. He is known for translating two important anarchist works into English from German: Max Stirner's ''The Ego and Its Own'' and Paul Eltzbacher's '' Anarchism: Exponents of the Anarchist Philosophy'' (also published by Dover with the title ''The Great Anarchists: Ideas and Teachings of Seven Major Thinkers''). James L. Walker (sometimes known by the pen name "Tak Kak") was one of the main contributors to Benjamin Tucker's ''Liberty''. He published his major philosophical work called ''Philosophy of Egoism'' in the May 1890 to September 1891 in issues of the publication ''Egoism''.

Early anarcho-communism

By the 1880s anarcho-communism was already present in the United States as can be seen in the publication of the journal ''Freedom: A Revolutionary Anarchist-Communist Monthly'' by Lucy Parsons and Lizzy Holmes."Lucy Parsons: Woman Of Will"
at the Lucy Parsons Center Lucy Parsons debated in her time in the US with fellow anarcha-communist Emma Goldman over issues of free love and feminism. Included in their debates over questions of gender, patriarchy, and free love were questions of homosexuality. Part of Goldman’s specific brand of anarchism was a belief that the state should be removed from interpersonal and sexual relationships. Freedom from state sexual control included, in Goldman’s view, the freedom to choose a sexual or romantic partner regardless of their gender. It was free-love anarchists like Goldman who, during this period, introduced the beginnings of a homosexual rights movement to the United States. Anarchists on this issue, however, were not united and many disagreed with Goldman’s inclusion of homosexuality and free love in an anarchist belief system.

Described by the Chicago Police Department as "more dangerous than a thousand rioters" in the 1920s, Parsons and her husband had become highly effective anarchist organizers primarily involved in the labor movement in the late 19th century, but also participating in revolutionary activism on behalf of political prisoners, people of color, the homeless and women. She began writing for ''The Socialist'' and ''The Alarm'', the journal of the International Working People's Association (IWPA) that she and Parsons, among others, founded in 1883. In 1886 her husband, who had been heavily involved in campaigning for the eight-hour day, was arrested, tried and executed on November 11, 1887, by the state of Illinois on charges that he had conspired in the Haymarket Riot, an event which was widely regarded as a political frame-up and which marked the beginning of May Day labor rallies in protest.

Another anarcho-communist journal called '' The Firebrand'' later appeared in the United States. Most anarchist publications in the United States were in Yiddish, German, or Russian, but ''Free Society'' was published in English, permitting the dissemination of anarchist communist thought to English-speaking populations in the United States."''Free Society'' was the principal English-language forum for anarchist ideas in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century." ''Emma Goldman: Making Speech Free, 1902–1909'', p.551. Around that time these American anarcho-communist sectors entered in debate with the individualist anarchist group around Benjamin Tucker. Encouraged by news of labor struggles and industrial disputes in the United States, the German anarchist Johann Most emigrated to the USA upon his release from prison in 1882. He promptly began agitating in his adopted land among other German émigrés. Among his associates was August Spies, one of the anarchists hanged for conspiracy in the Haymarket Square bombing, whose desk police found to contain an 1884 letter from Most promising a shipment of "medicine," his code word for dynamite. Most was famous for stating the concept of the propaganda of the deed, namely that " e existing system will be quickest and most radically overthrown by the annihilation of its exponents. Therefore, massacres of the enemies of the people must be set in motion." Most is best known for a pamphlet published in 1885: ''The Science of Revolutionary Warfare,'' a how-to manual on the subject of bomb-making which earned the author the moniker "Dynamost". He acquired his knowledge of explosives while working at an explosives plant in New Jersey. Most was described as "the most vilified social radical" of his time, a man whose profuse advocacy of social unrest and fascination with dramatic destruction eventually led Emma Goldman to denounce him as a recognized authoritarian.

A gifted orator, Most propagated these ideas throughout Marxist and anarchist circles in the United States and attracted many adherents, most notably Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman. In February 1888 Berkman left for the United States from his native Russia.Avrich, ''Anarchist Portraits'', p. 202. Soon after his arrival in New York City, Berkman became an anarchist through his involvement with groups that had formed to campaign to free the men convicted of the 1886 Haymarket bombing.Pateman, p. iii. He, as well as Goldman, soon came under the influence of Johann Most, the best-known anarchist in the United States, and an advocate of propaganda of the deed—''attentat'', or violence carried out to encourage the masses to revolt.Walter, p. vii. Berkman became a typesetter for Most's newspaper ''Freiheit''.

Inspired by Most's theories of Attentat, Goldman and Berkman, enraged by the deaths of workers during the Homestead strike, put words into action with Berkman's attempted assassination of Homestead factory manager Henry Clay Frick in 1892. Berkman and Goldman were soon disillusioned as Most became one of Berkman's most outspoken critics. In ''Freiheit'', Most attacked both Goldman and Berkman, implying Berkman's act was designed to arouse sympathy for Frick. Goldman's biographer Alice Wexler suggests that Most's criticisms may have been inspired by jealousy of Berkman. Goldman was enraged, and demanded that Most prove his insinuations. When he refused to respond, she confronted him at next lecture. After he refused to speak to her, she lashed him across the face with a horsewhip, broke the whip over her knee, then threw the pieces at him. She later regretted her assault, confiding to a friend, "At the age of twenty-three, one does not reason."

Emma Goldman was an anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century. Born in Kovno in the Russian Empire (present-day Kaunas, Lithuania), Goldman emigrated to the U.S. in 1885 and lived in New York City, where she joined the burgeoning anarchist movement in 1889.University of Illinois at Chicag
Biography of Emma Goldman
. UIC Library Emma Goldman Collection. Retrieved on December 13, 2008. Attracted to anarchism after the Haymarket affair, Goldman became a writer and a renowned lecturer on anarchist philosophy, women's rights, and social issues, attracting crowds of thousands. She and anarchist writer Alexander Berkman, her lover and lifelong friend, planned to assassinate industrialist and financier Henry Clay Frick as an act of propaganda of the deed. Although Frick survived the attempt on his life, Berkman was sentenced to twenty-two years in prison. Goldman was imprisoned several times in the years that followed, for "inciting to riot" and illegally distributing information about birth control. In 1906, Goldman founded the anarchist journal '' Mother Earth''. In 1917, Goldman and Berkman were sentenced to two years in jail for conspiring to "induce persons not to register" for the newly instated draft. After their release from prison, they were arrested—along with hundreds of others—and deported to Russia. Initially supportive of that country's Bolshevik revolution, Goldman quickly voiced her opposition to the Soviet use of violence and the repression of independent voices. In 1923, she wrote a book about her experiences, '' My Disillusionment in Russia''. While living in England, Canada, and France, she wrote an autobiography called ''Living My Life''. After the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, she traveled to Spain to support the anarchist revolution there. She died in Toronto on May 14, 1940, aged 70. During her life, Goldman was lionized as a free-thinking "rebel woman" by admirers, and denounced by critics as an advocate of politically motivated murder and violent revolution.

Her writing and lectures spanned a wide variety of issues, including prisons, atheism, freedom of speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage, free love, and homosexuality. Although she distanced herself from first-wave feminism and its efforts toward women's suffrage, she developed new ways of incorporating gender politics into anarchism. After decades of obscurity, Goldman's iconic status was revived in the 1970s, when feminist and anarchist scholars rekindled popular interest in her life.

Anarchism and the labor movement

The anti-authoritarian sections of the First International were the precursors of the anarcho-syndicalists, seeking to "replace the privilege and authority of the State" with the "free and spontaneous organization of labor."

After embracing anarchism Albert Parsons, husband of Lucy Parsons, turned his activity to the growing movement to establish the 8-hour day. In January 1880, the Eight-Hour League of Chicago sent Parsons to a national conference in Washington, D.C., a gathering which launched a national lobbying movement aimed at coordinating efforts of labor organizations to win and enforce the 8-hour workday. In the fall of 1884, Parsons launched a weekly anarchist newspaper in Chicago, ''The Alarm.'' The first issue was dated October 4, 1884, and was produced in a press run of 15,000 copies. The publication was a 4-page broadsheet with a cover price of 5 cents. ''The Alarm'' listed the IWPA as its publisher and touted itself as "A Socialistic Weekly" on its page 2 masthead.

On May 1, 1886, Parsons, with his wife Lucy and their two children, led 80,000 people down Michigan Avenue, in what is regarded as the first-ever May Day Parade, in support of the eight-hour work day. Over the next few days 340,000 laborers joined the strike. Parsons, amidst the May Day Strike, found himself called to Cincinnati, where 300,000 workers had struck that Saturday afternoon. On that Sunday he addressed the rally in Cincinnati of the news from the "storm center" of the strike and participated in a second huge parade, led by 200 members of The Cincinnati Rifle Union, with certainty that victory was at hand. In 1886, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (FOTLU) of the United States and Canada unanimously set 1 May 1886, as the date by which the eight-hour work day would become standard. In response, unions across the United States prepared a general strike in support of the event. On 3 May, in Chicago, a fight broke out when strikebreakers attempted to cross the picket line, and two workers died when police opened fire upon the crowd. The next day, 4 May, anarchists staged a rally at Chicago's Haymarket Square. A bomb was thrown by an unknown party near the conclusion of the rally, killing an officer. In the ensuing panic, police opened fire on the crowd and each other. Seven police officers and at least four workers were killed.

Eight anarchists directly and indirectly related to the organisers of the rally were arrested and charged with the murder of the deceased officer. The men became international political celebrities among the labor movement. Four of the men were executed and a fifth committed suicide prior to his own execution. The incident became known as the Haymarket affair, and was a setback for the labor movement and the struggle for the eight-hour day. In 1890 a second attempt, this time international in scope, to organise for the eight-hour day was made. The event also had the secondary purpose of memorializing workers killed as a result of the Haymarket affair. Although it had initially been conceived as a once-off event, by the following year the celebration of International Workers' Day on May Day had become firmly established as an international worker's holiday. Albert Parsons is best remembered as one of four Chicago radical leaders convicted of conspiracy and hanged following a bomb attack on police remembered as the Haymarket affair. Emma Goldman, the activist and political theorist, was attracted to anarchism after reading about the incident and the executions, which she later described as "the events that had inspired my spiritual birth and growth." She considered the Haymarket martyrs to be "the most decisive influence in my existence". Her associate, Alexander Berkman also described the Haymarket anarchists as "a potent and vital inspiration."Avrich, '' The Haymarket Tragedy'', p. 434. Others whose commitment to anarchism crystallized as a result of the Haymarket affair included Voltairine de Cleyre and "Big Bill" Haywood, a founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World. Goldman wrote to historian, Max Nettlau, that the Haymarket affair had awakened the social consciousness of "hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people".

Two individualist anarchists who wrote in Benjamin Tucker's ''Liberty'' were also important labor organizers of the time. Jo Labadie was an American labor organizer, individualist anarchist, social activist, printer, publisher, essayist, and poet. Without the oppression of the state, Labadie believed, humans would choose to harmonize with "the great natural laws ... without robbing heirfellows through interest, profit, rent and taxes." However, he supported community cooperation, as he supported community control of water utilities, streets, and railroads.Martin, James J. (1970). ''Men Against the State: The Expositors of Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827–1908.'' Colorado Springs: Ralph Myles Publisher. Although he did not support the militant anarchism of the Haymarket anarchists, he fought for the clemency of the accused because he did not believe they were the perpetrators. In 1888, Labadie organized the Michigan Federation of Labor, became its first president, and forged an alliance with Samuel Gompers.

Dyer Lum was a 19th-century American individualist anarchist labor activist and poet. A leading anarcho-syndicalist and a prominent left-wing intellectual of the 1880s, he is remembered as the lover and mentor of early anarcha-feminist Voltairine de Cleyre. Lum was a prolific writer who wrote a number of key anarchist texts, and contributed to publications including ''Mother Earth'', ''Twentieth Century'', ''Liberty'' (Benjamin Tucker's individualist anarchist journal), ''The Alarm'' (the journal of the IWPA) and ''The Open Court'' among others. He developed a "mutualist" theory of unions and as such was active within the Knights of Labor and later promoted anti-political strategies in the American Federation of Labor (AFL).Carson, Kevin. Mutualist Political Economy
Preface
Frustration with abolitionism, spiritualism, and labor reform caused Lum to embrace anarchism and radicalize workers, as he came to believe that revolution would inevitably involve a violent struggle between the working class and the employing class. Convinced of the necessity of violence to enact social change he volunteered to fight in the American Civil War, hoping thereby to bring about the end of slavery. The ''Freie Arbeiter Stimme'' was the longest-running anarchist periodical in the Yiddish language, founded initially as an American counterpart to Rudolf Rocker's London-based ''Arbeter Fraynd'' (''Workers' Friend''). Publication began in 1890 and continued under the editorial of Saul Yanovsky until 1923. Contributors have included David Edelstadt, Emma Goldman, Abba Gordin, Rudolf Rocker, Moishe Shtarkman, and Saul Yanovsky. The paper was also known for publishing poetry by Di Yunge, Yiddish poets of the 1910s and 1920s.

The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was founded in Chicago in June 1905 at a convention of two hundred socialists, anarchists, and radical trade unionists from all over the United States (mainly the Western Federation of Miners) who were opposed to the policies of the AFL.

Red Scare, propaganda by the deed and World Wars period

Italian anti-organizationalist individualist anarchism was brought to the United States"it was in times of severe social repression and deadening social quiescence that individualist anarchists came to the foreground of libertarian activity – and then primarily as terrorists. In France, Spain, and the United States, individualistic anarchists committed acts of terrorism that gave anarchism its reputation as a violently sinister conspiracy.

Murray Bookchin. '' Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm'' by Italian born individualists such as Giuseppe Ciancabilla and others who advocated for violent propaganda by the deed there. Anarchist historian George Woodcock reports the incident in which the important Italian social anarchist Errico Malatesta became involved "in a dispute with the individualist anarchists of Paterson, who insisted that anarchism implied no organization at all, and that every man must act solely on his impulses. At last, in one noisy debate, the individual impulse of a certain Ciancabilla directed him to shoot Malatesta, who was badly wounded but obstinately refused to name his assailant." Some anarchists, such as Johann Most, were already advocated publicizing violent acts of retaliation against counter-revolutionaries because "we preach not only action in and for itself, but also action as propaganda."

By the 1880s, people inside and outside the anarchist movement began to use the slogan, "propaganda of the deed" to refer to individual bombings and targeted killings of members of the ruling class, including regicides, and tyrannicides, at times when such actions might garner sympathy from the population, such as during periods of heightened government repression or labor conflicts where workers were killed. From 1905 onwards, the Russian counterparts of these anti-syndicalist anarchist-communists become partisans of economic terrorism and illegal 'expropriations'." Illegalism as a practice emerged and within it "The acts of the anarchist bombers and assassins ("propaganda by the deed") and the anarchist burglars ("individual reappropriation") expressed their desperation and their personal, violent rejection of an intolerable society. Moreover, they were clearly meant to be ''exemplary'' invitations to revolt.".

On September 6, 1901, the American anarchist Leon Czolgosz went armed with a .32 caliber Iver Johnson "Safety Automatic" revolver he had purchased four days earlier and assassinated the President of the United States William McKinley. After the jury deliberated for only one hour, Czolgosz was convicted on September 24, 1901. On September 26, the jury unanimously recommended the death penalty and Czolgosz was executed by electrocution in Auburn Prison on October 29, 1901, just 45 days after his victim's death.The Execution of Leon Czolgosz — "Lights Out in the City of Light" — Anarchy and Assassination at the Pan-American Exposition
Emma Goldman was arrested on suspicion of being involved in the assassination, but was released due to insufficient evidence. She later incurred a great deal of negative publicity when she published "The Tragedy at Buffalo". In the article, she compared Czolgosz to Marcus Junius Brutus, the killer of Julius Caesar, and called McKinley the "president of the money kings and trust magnates." Other anarchists and radicals were unwilling to support Goldman's effort to aid Czolgosz, believing that he had harmed the movement.

Luigi Galleani was an Italian anarchist active in the United States from 1901 to 1919, viewed by historians as an anarcho-communist and an insurrectionary anarchist. He is best known for his enthusiastic advocacy of "propaganda of the deed", i.e. the use of violence to eliminate "tyrants" and "oppressors" and to act as a catalyst to the overthrow of existing government institutions.Avrich, P., '' Sacco and Vanzetti: The Anarchist Background'', Princeton: Princeton University Press, (1991), pp. 81, 97–99, 135–141, 147, 149–156, 158, 172, 195, 214Galleani, Luigi, ''Faccia a Faccia col Nemico'', Boston, MA: Gruppo Autonomo, (1914) From 1914 to 1932, Galleani's followers in the United States (known as ''Galleanists''), carried out a series of bombings and assassination attempts against institutions and persons they viewed as class enemies. After Galleani was deported from the United States to Italy in June 1919, his followers are alleged to have executed the Wall Street bombing of 1920, which resulted in the deaths of 38 people. Galleani held forth at local anarchist meetings, assailed "timid" socialists, gave fire-breathing speeches, and continued to write essays and polemical treatises.The foremost proponent of "propaganda by the deed" in the United States, Galleani was the founder and editor of the anarchist newsletter '' Cronaca Sovversiva'' (''Subversive Chronicle''), which he published and mailed from offices in Barre. Galleani published the anarchist newsletter for fifteen years until the United States government closed it down under the Sedition Act of 1918. Galleani attracted numerous radical friends and followers known as "Galleanists", including Frank Abarno, Gabriella Segata Antolini, Pietro Angelo, Luigi Bacchetti, Mario Buda also known as "Mike Boda", Carmine Carbone, Andrea Ciofalo, Ferrucio Coacci, Emilio Coda, Alfredo Conti, Nestor Dondoglioalso known as "Jean Crones", Roberto Elia, Luigi Falzini, Frank Mandese, Riccardo Orciani, Nicola Recchi, Giuseppe Sberna, Andrea Salsedo, Raffaele Schiavina, Carlo Valdinoci, and, most notably, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.

Sacco and Vanzetti were suspected anarchists who were convicted of murdering two men during the 1920 armed robbery of a shoe factory in South Braintree, Massachusetts. After a controversial trial and a series of appeals, the two Italian immigrants were executed on August 23, 1927. New York Times, 1927-08-23 Since their deaths, critical opinion has overwhelmingly felt that the two men were convicted largely on their anarchist political beliefs and unjustly executed. Montgomery 1960 p. v. Young & Kaiser 1985 preface. In 1977, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis issued a proclamation that Sacco and Vanzetti had been unfairly tried and convicted and that "any disgrace should be forever removed from their names." Many famous socialists and intellectuals campaigned for a retrial without success. John Dos Passos came to Boston to cover the case as a journalist, stayed to author a pamphlet called ''Facing the Chair'', and was arrested in a demonstration on August 10, 1927, along with Dorothy Parker.

After being arrested while picketing the State House, Edna St. Vincent Millay pleaded her case to the governor in person and then wrote an appeal: "I cry to you with a million voices: answer our doubt ... There is need in Massachusetts of a great man tonight." Others who wrote to Fuller or signed petitions included Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells

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