Peter Kropotkin (Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin) was a Russian
anarchist philosopher and writer who advocated
anarcho-communism. Kropotkin was a proponent of a decentralised
communist society free from central
government and based on voluntary associations of self-governing communities and worker-run enterprises. He wrote many
books, pamphlets and articles, the most prominent being The Conquest of Bread and Fields, Factories and Workshops, but also Mutual Aid: A Factor of
Evolution, his principal scientific offering.
Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin was a Russian
revolutionary anarchist, socialist, and founder of collectivist
anarchism. He is considered among the most influential figures of
anarchism and a major founder of the
revolutionary socialist and social anarchist tradition. Bakunin's prestige as a
revolutionary also made him one of the most famous ideologues in
Europe, gaining substantial influence among radicals throughout
Russia and
Europe. Bakunin's collectivist
anarchism advocates the abolition of both the state and private ownership of the means of production. Instead, it envisions the means of production being owned collectively and controlled and managed by the producers themselves.
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Bakunin is remembered as a major figure in the history of
anarchism, an opponent of Marxism, especially of the
dictatorship of the
proletariat, and for his predictions that Marxist regimes would be one-party dictatorships. Bakunin continues to influence anarchists such as
Noam Chomsky, and Bakunin has had a significant influence on thinkers such as
Peter Kropotkin,
Errico Malatesta, as well as
syndicalist organizations such as the Wobblies, the anarchists in the Spanish Civil
War, and contemporary anarchists involved in the modern-day anti-
globalization movement.
Emma Goldman was an anarchist political activist, writer, and
feminist icon. 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. During her life, Goldman was lionized as a freethinking "
rebel woman" by admirers. Her writing and lectures spanned a wide variety of issues, including
prisons, atheism,
freedom of speech,
militarism, capitalism, marriage, free
love, and
feminism. 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 gained iconic status
… Read more in the 1970s by a revival of interest in her life, when
feminist and anarchist scholars rekindled popular interest.
Anarchism was central to Goldman's view of the world and she is today considered one of the most important figures in the history of
anarchism. Goldman believed that the economic system of capitalism was incompatible with
human liberty and she also argued that capitalism dehumanized workers. Goldman viewed the state as essentially and inevitably a tool of control and domination, and as a result of her anti-state views, she believed that
voting was useless at best and dangerous at worst.
Voting, she wrote, provided an illusion of participation while masking the true structures of decision-making. Instead, Goldman advocated targeted
resistance in the form of strikes, protests, and "
direct action against the invasive, meddlesome authority of our moral code". Although she was hostile to the suffragist goals of first-wave
feminism, Goldman advocated passionately for the rights of women and is today heralded as a founder of anarcha-
feminism, which challenges
patriarchy as a
hierarchy to be resisted alongside state power and class divisions.
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