Anarchist Studies |
During the turn-of-the-century anarchists proposed 'free love' as an alternative to the bourgeois organisation of gender relations, especially to bourgeois marriage. 'Free love' was also seen as the anarchist counterpart of feminism, advocating women's suffrage and equal economic opportunities. In current historiography, particularly in the case of Emma Goldman, this idea is usually seen as an important move towards a genuine anarchist feminism. A closer examination of the anarchist debate in Wilhelmine Germany suggests another conclusion. In the context of low female participation in the anarchist movement, a virulent antifeminism, as well as the fact that the concept of 'free love' was combined with an explicit rejection of female engagement in wage-labour, anarchist 'free love' seems rather to have contributed to the realisation and preservation of the patriarchal order.
This article contextualises one activist's account of the resistance to the construction of the M11 link road through Wanstead in London during 1994. The account offered illustrates numerous issues of considerable importance for both theory and praxis within 'green movements' in the late twentieth century. Whilst the action described is not claimed as an example of anarchist praxis, its relevance to key debates for anarchists and anarchist sympathisers are highlighted. It is argued that recent attempts to make the European Union policy community more open to 'bottom up' initiatives, combined with the European-wide nature of the Union's road programme, constitute an arena within which the British experience of direct action against roads provides the basis for a European wide network of resistance.
In contrast to anarchism in Japan and China, anarchism in Korea has been notable for the extent to which it has been permeated by nationalism and also for the Korean anarchists' readiness over many years to engage in conventional politics. The immediate reasons for these peculiarities of Korean anarchism would seem to lie in Korea's colonial subjugation by Japan from 1910 to 1945 and the division of the country after 1945. It is argued that, under the conditions which can occur in a 'Third World', anti-colonial setting, it is the emphasis which anarchism lays on decentralisation and local autonomy, important though these attributes are, which exposes it to the danger of degenerating into nationalism. On the other hand, it is further argued that anarchism is also equipped with principles which, if the danger is sufficiently recognised, can be invoked so as to safeguard anarchism from nationalist degeneration
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