No Gods, No Masters: A History of Anarchism

This episode shows how anarchism emerged from the horrendous social conditions facing workers at a time when industrialization was, paradoxically, providing better hygiene and social standards – for some. In an era in which the life expectancy of workers was 30 years—most of those spent in misery—it is no surprise that new approaches would arise. Tracing the history of early anarchist thought from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who declared that property is theft, to Mikhail Bakunin, who advocated violent revolution to destroy the state completely.

By the early 20th century, anarchists in France were a powerful enough constituency to draw the French president to an event. In England, they were considered so dangerous that when they occupied a London building, it took the full force of heavy artillery and 800 police officers to dislodge them. LAND AND FREEDOM looks at differing strains within the anarchist movement during the peak of its popularity – when it seemed, for a time, that the dream of anarchist revolution might come to pass. This was an era of social ferment and experimentation, including communal living, nudism and gender equality; educational reform designed to usher in the development of “the new man”; the resurgence of propaganda of the deed in the guise of violent robberies and shootouts with police; and the participation of anarchists in revolutions from Mexico to Russia.

At the start of the 20th century, everything seemed to be plain sailing in the best possible of libertarian worlds, because anarchism had rid itself of its former demons. And thanks to the major waves of migration that carried the movement to the remotest areas of the world, it was able to rally a major part of the peasantry around to its cause. But to ensure their ideal triumphed, before the imminence of a world conflict, libertarians could no longer afford merely to indulge in wishful thinking and think up generous practices. They must take up arms and go on the offensive once again. And so, from the two shores of Mexico to the vast steppes of the Ukraine, in an era full of sound and fury, Nestor Makhno and the Flores Magon brothers found themselves at the forefront of the first major revolutions of the 20th century as they tried, once and for all, to change the world.

IN MEMORY OF THE VANQUISHED traces the appropriation of anarchism by communists, and of anarchist symbolism by fascists in France, Italy, and Spain, and takes an in-depth look at the Spanish Revolution of 1936, which was heavily anarchist in Catalonia. Remarkable newsreel footage from Barcelona shows smoothly functioning life in a city run largely on anarchist principles, with collectively run arts organizations and companies, and without bureaucracies and bosses. But this too, would not last, as anarchists paradoxically entered the republican government in order to face Franco’s fascists. The anarchist militias would end up being absorbed into the republican troops.

At the end of the Second World War, anarchism suffered a massive decline. Some great personalities such as Bertrand Russel or Albert Camus nevertheless continued to defend and promote its ideal. And little by little, in the heart of the Cold War, they were joined by many socialists or communists whose eyes were opened to the reality of Soviet socialism after the Prague Spring. Like Murray Bookchin, more and more revolutionaries turned to anarchism in the late 1950s and helped revive it. Thanks to them, formal or informal organizations - such as the San Francisco Diggers - emerged; new symbols, such as the circled A invented in 1964 by the Jeunes Libertaires group in Paris; new mass movements that challenged Stalinism and capitalism and tried to change the world.