kb/data/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism-4.md

title	chunk	source	category	tags	date_saved	instance
Anarchism	5/9	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism	reference	science, encyclopedia	2026-05-05T14:56:14.124140+00:00	kb-cron

During the classical era, anarchists had a militant tendency. Not only did they confront state armed forces, as in Spain and Ukraine, but some of them also employed terrorism as propaganda of the deed. Assassination attempts were carried out against heads of state, some of which were successful. Anarchists also took part in revolutions. Many anarchists, especially the Galleanists, believed that these attempts would be the impetus for a revolution against capitalism and the state. Many of these attacks were done by individual assailants and the majority took place in the late 1870s, the early 1880s and the 1890s, with some still occurring in the early 1900s. Their decrease in prevalence was the result of further judicial power and of targeting and cataloguing by state institutions. Anarchist perspectives towards violence have always been controversial. Anarcho-pacifists advocate for non-violence means to achieve their stateless, nonviolent ends. Other anarchist groups advocate direct action, a tactic which can include acts of sabotage or terrorism. This attitude was quite prominent a century ago when seeing the state as a tyrant and some anarchists believing that they had every right to oppose its oppression by any means possible. Emma Goldman and Errico Malatesta, who were proponents of limited use of violence, stated that violence is merely a reaction to state violence as a necessary evil. Anarchists took an active role in strike actions, although they tended to be antipathetic to formal syndicalism, seeing it as reformist. They saw it as a part of the movement which sought to overthrow the state and capitalism. Anarchists also reinforced their propaganda within the arts, some of whom practised naturism and nudism. Those anarchists also built communities which were based on friendship and were involved in the news media. Karl Marx, considered to be one of the principal founders of Marxism, criticised anarchism as the movement of the "petty bourgeois", i.e. of formerly self-employed craftsmen and artisans who had been ruined by capitalistic industrialisation or even war and then driven to factories; even so, they refused to subject themselves to factory discipline, party leadership, and State control, were prone to violence when frustrated, and advocated seizing factories only to break down mass production and return to craftsmanship. Friedrich Engels, who is considered Marxism's other principal founder, criticised anarchism's anti-authoritarianism as inherently counter-revolutionary because in his view a revolution is by itself authoritarian. A Socialist Workers Party pamphlet by John Molyneux, Anarchism: A Marxist Criticism argues that "anarchism cannot win", believing that it lacks the ability to properly implement its ideas. Another Marxist criticism of anarchism is that it has a utopian character because all individuals should have anarchist views and values. According to this Marxist view, that a social idea would follow directly from this human ideal and out of the free will of every individual formed its essence. Marxists state that this contradiction was responsible for their inability to act. In the anarchist vision, the conflict between liberty and equality was resolved through coexistence and intertwining.

=== Revolutionary and insurrectionary ===

In the current era, Italian anarchist Alfredo Bonanno, a proponent of insurrectionary anarchism, has reinstated the debate on violence by rejecting the nonviolence tactic adopted since the late 19th century by Kropotkin and other prominent anarchists afterwards. Both Bonanno and the French group The Invisible Committee advocate for small, informal affiliation groups, where each member is responsible for their own actions but works together to bring down oppression using sabotage and other violent means against state, capitalism, and other enemies. Members of The Invisible Committee were arrested in 2008 on various charges, terrorism included. Overall, contemporary anarchists are much less violent and militant than their ideological ancestors. They mostly engage in confronting the police during demonstrations and riots, especially in countries such as Canada, Greece, and Mexico. Militant black bloc protest groups are known for clashing with the police; however, anarchists not only clash with state operators, they also engage in the struggle against fascists, racists, and other bigots, taking anti-fascist action and mobilising to prevent hate rallies from happening.

=== Evolutionary ===