INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP Communicating Community: Anarchism and Its Boundaries Monday, 8th of July 2019, Sala del Torrino (Villa Salviati) Organizers: Oscar Broughton (Freie Universität Berlin), Pascale Siegrist and Arturo Zoffmann Rodríguez (European University Institute) This workshop seeks to bring together historians of different subfields – social, political, intellectual and cultural history – working on anarchism. As an attributed label or a self- description, the term “anarchist” has proven extremely powerful. However, its pithiness has also served to obscure its many meanings. Directed against collectivities such as the state or institutionalised religion, anarchism proposed alternative visions of community, up to the complete rejection of the idea of community as such. These visions were all but homogenous – arguably, this openness was also part of anarchy’s appeal. In this workshop, we want to ask what people were doing when they were picking up the term (or not); how was it used to exclude enemies and to seduce its ideal socio-political base; we want to appreciate how the term became meaningful in different contexts and to explore both its integrative and its exclusionary potential. This implies paying special attention to turning points within larger trajectories such as individual conversions, schisms and conflicts within existing communities and the impact of concrete historical events on the spread of anarchist ideas. “Communication” here designates the ways in which the belonging to “anarchism” was made explicit, from the construction of lineages of anarchist philosophy, up to mass propaganda and common practices and rituals. While we do not aspire at an overarching theory of anarchism at all times and in all places, our goal is to use historical examples of communicating anarchism and defining its boundaries to tease out its usefulness as an analytical term for historians. Papers will address the following topics: - Begriffsgeschichten of anarchy and anarchism - The integration of “proto”-anarchists into anarchist theory - Processes of anarchist community-building (and exclusion), the role of social and intellectual networks - Anarchist communication strategies - Collective and individual anarchist identity formation - The setting up of boundaries between anarchism and other forms of socialism and syndicalism, as well as sub-divisions within the movement - The adaption, circulation and usage of the term in the non-Western world - The chronology and longue durée trajectory of anarchism and its changes of meaning This workshop is kindly sponsored by the Graduate School Global Intellectual History at the Freie Universität Berlin and the Department of History and Civilization at the European University Institute. PROGRAMME 9.15 Arrival and Registration 9.30 – 11.00 Welcome and Introduction Oscar Broughton and Pascale Siegrist, European University Institute Panel 1: Who’s an Anarchist? Contested Figures and the Canon Chair: Shiru Lim o John-Erik Hansson (Université de Cergy-Pontoise): “Was William Godwin an Anarchist?” – Some Genealogical Reflections on a long-standing Question o Tommaso Giordani (Tallinn University): Was Georges Sorel an anarchist? Anti-statism, Marxism, and modes of proletarian violence 11.00 – 11.30 Coffee break 11.30 – 13.00 Panel 2: Beyond Borders, Beyond Politics: Campaigning for Anarchy Chair: Uladimir Valodzin, European University Institute) o Oscar Broughton (Freie Universität Berlin / Humboldt Universität Berlin):“Guilds at home and abroad” - The National Guilds League in the fading era of Transnational Anarcho-Syndicalism o Constance Bantman (University of Surrey): Transpolitical Anarchist Networks: The Example of Jean Grave (1880s-1939) 13.00 – 14.00 Lunch 14.00 – 15.30 Panel 3: Anarchism Between Decentralisation and Globalisation Chair: Ana Maria Spariosu (European University Institute) o Robert Kramm (University of Hong Kong): Anarchist-Communism in Early-Twentieth Century Japan o Pascale Siegrist (European University Institute): Lev Mechnikov’s Global Anarchism 15.30 – 16.00 Coffee break 16.00 – 17.45 Panel 4: Anarchism in one Country? New Perspectives on the Spanish Case Chair: Marius Ostrowski o Arturo Zoffmann Rodríguez (European University Institute):The Shadow of October in the heat of July: The Memory of the Russian Revolution and Spanish Anarchist Identity, 1914-36 o Danny Evans (Liverpool Hope University): The CNT from Anarcho-Bolshevism to Bolshevisation, 1931-1937 o Jessica Thorne (Royal Holloway, University of London): 'Bending the Bars’: Anarchism, Anti- Francoism and the Spring of the New Left, 1950-1975 18.00 – 18.30 Roundup Discussion (Arturo Zoffmann Rodríguez) 20.00 Dinner at San Michele All’Arco Via dell’ Oriuolo, 3/red, 50122 Firenze FI 2 ABSTRACTS Transpolitical Anarchist Networks: The Example of Jean Grave (1880s-1939) Constance Bantman, University of Surrey, UK This paper will explore the functioning and impact of transpolitical anarchist networking and campaigning activities in the context of the Third Republic, centring on the remarkable example of Jean Grave, one of the most connected anarchists in France and internationally before 1914. This examination will highlight the integrative power of anarchist networks and campaigns over the course of several decades, through the examples of the protests against anti-anarchist repression during the 1890s and against ‘Spanish atrocities’ in the early 1900s, as well as upon the outbreak of the First World War. These were important moments for the integration and of anarchism into a broad progressive advocacy movement, with strong reputational benefits, which partly counteracted the marginalisation of anarchism in the same period. The paper will seek to define what (self-)perception of anarchism emerged from these campaigning and networking activities. “Guilds at home and abroad” - The National Guilds League in the fading era of Transnational Anarcho-Syndicalism Oscar Broughton, Freie Universität Berlin The National Guilds League (NGL) occupies an ambiguous and marginal position in history writing and one largely conceived it in terms of the British nation-state. This paper aims to expand this impression by examining the linkages and broader global contexts which shaped the NGL. In so doing it attempts to reposition the NGL into the larger frame of transnational anarcho-syndicalism which characterised the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Formed in the midst of the First World War the NGL (1915-23) was a composite alliance of activists, historians and trade unionists. Their aim was the furtherance of a new ideology, guild socialism, which had begun to emerge during the prewar years in Britain and would become largely extinct during the interwar period. Strong opponents of the dominant current of parliamentary socialism and the conventional nation- state, the NGL worked to develop an alternative vision for the future transforming and repurposing ideas of industrial democracy and nationalisation, and integrating them with conceptions of workers control and gender equality. These ideas spawned numerous practical experiments across a range of industries in Britain including housing, furniture production, agriculture, mining and postal services, and generated broad interest across the political spectrum. Despite drawing its membership primarily from within the UK and targeting British audiences, the appeal of the NGL was not limited to the UK. A minority of members were drawn from abroad, predominantly from within the British Empire, but also from the Americas, Europe and Asia. These actors were instrumental in the popularisation of guild socialist ideas, via the distribution of NGL publications and the creation of a large network of correspondence network with the NGL. This network precipitated the spread of further publications, the formation of various local supporting organisations, and a shared awareness amongst members and affiliates that the NGL was part of a much larger series of postwar conversations about the nature of socialism, capitalism and democracy. 3 The CNT from Anarcho-Bolshevism to Bolshevisation, 1931-1937 Danny Evans, Liverpool Hope University ‘Anarcho-Bolshevik’ was a pejorative term used to describe the insurrectionist current in the CNT. Those who used it during the Second Republic tended to be anarchists keen to distance themselves from the ill- fated uprisings of 1933, and from subsequent attempts – associated chiefly with the Nosotros affinity group – to create a disciplined fighting corps at the heart of the movement. During the Spanish civil war, ‘Bolshevik’ retained its currency as an insult among anarchists, but was used primarily to describe the ways in which the movement’s entanglement with the Republican state had rendered its organisations bureaucratic and hierarchical. This paper will analyse the shifting meaning of ‘Bolshevik’ within the libertarian movement during this period, examine the basis for its use in the context of factional struggles, and what this implied for anarchist organising and the anarchist imaginary during the Republic and civil war. Was Georges Sorel an anarchist? Anti-statism, Marxism, and modes of proletarian violence Tommaso Giordani, Tallinn University To what extent is it possible to classify the work of Georges Sorel as belonging to the anarchist tradition? Sorel never claimed the label for himself, and though he was an active intellectual in the 1880s and the 1890s, he seldom commented on the political significance of the anarchist attacks