Anarchist communism
[9] The modern current of communism was founded by the Neo-Babouvists[10] of the journal L'Humanitaire [fr] (published in mid-1841),[11] who drew from the "anti-political and anarchist ideas" of Sylvain Maréchal (1750–1803).
[12] The foundations of anarcho-communism were laid by Théodore Dézamy in his 1843 work Code de la Communauté,[13] which he formulated as a critique of Étienne Cabet's utopian socialism.
[15] Following the French Revolution of 1848, Joseph Déjacque (1821-1865) formulated a radical form of communism that opposed both the revolutionary republicanism of Auguste Blanqui and the mutualism of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.
Déjacque opposed the authoritarian conception of a "dictatorship of the proletariat" as discussed by Joseph Weydemeyer and by Karl Marx from 1852 onwards; he regarded it as inherently reactionary and counter-revolutionary.
Opposed not just to government, but to all forms of oppression, Déjacque advocated for a social revolution to abolish the state, as well as religion, what would become known as the nuclear family, and private property.
[17] Déjacque's communist platform, outlined in his Humanisphere (1859), preceded the program of the 1871 Paris Commune, and anticipated the anarcho-communism later elaborated by Errico Malatesta (1853-1932), Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) and Luigi Galleani (1862-1931).
Of the few individual anarchists who were influential at this time, it was Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, with his conception of federalism and his advocacy of abstentionism, who inspired many of the French delegates who founded the IWA and laid the groundwork for the growth of anarchism.
[21] The entry of Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) into the IWA in 1868 first infused the federalists with a programme of revolutionary socialism and anti-statism, which agitated for workers' self-management and direct action against capitalism and the state.
[32] James Guillaume's August 1876 pamphlet, Ideas on Social Organisation, outlined a proposal by which the collective ownership of the means of production could be used in order to transition towards a communist society.
[36] Although Guillaume had himself remained neutral throughout the debate, in September 1877, the Italian anarcho-communists clashed with the Spanish collectivists in Verviers at what would be the Anti-Authoritarian International's final congress.
While the collectivists upheld trade unions as a means for achieving anarchy, the communists considered them to be inherently reformist and counter-revolutionary organisations, prone to bureaucracy and corruption.
"[7] Even after Peter Kropotkin and others overcame their initial reservations and decided to enter labor unions, anti-syndicalist anarchist-communists remained, such as Sébastien Faure's Le Libertaire group and Russian partisans of economic terrorism and expropriations.
However, the American anarcho-communist journal The Firebrand was published in English, permitting the dissemination of anarchist communist thought to English-speaking populations in the United States.
The Makhnovist movement made various tactical military pacts while fighting various reactionary forces and organizing an anarchist society committed to resisting state authority, whether capitalist or Bolshevik.
[51] In response to the army rebellion, an anarchist-inspired movement of peasants and industrial workers, supported by armed militias, took control of Barcelona and of large areas of rural Spain, where they collectivized the land.
[52] However, even before the fascist victory in 1939, the anarchists were losing ground in a bitter struggle with the Stalinists, who controlled the distribution of military aid from the Soviet Union to the Republican cause.
A group called Entente anarchiste appeared, which was formed of militants who did not like the new ideological orientation that the OPB was giving the FCL seeing it was authoritarian and almost Marxist.
[57] According to historian Cédric Guérin, the new Federation Anarchiste identity included the unconditional rejection of Marxism, motivated in significant part by the previous conflict with George Fontenis and his OPB.
