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Concept
Anarchism without adjectives
Summary
Anarchism without adjectives is a pluralist tendency of anarchism that opposes sectarianism and advocates for cooperation between different anarchist schools of thought. First formulated by the Spanish anarchists Ricardo Mella and Fernando Tarrida del Mármol, as a way to bridge the ideological divide between the collectivists and communist factions, it was later adopted by the Italian communist Errico Malatesta and the American individualist Voltairine de Cleyre.
Anarchists without adjectives are suspicious of dogmatism and criticise prescriptions for a post-capitalist future, which they consider authoritarian. Instead they hold that a new society should be allowed to emerge spontaneously after a social revolution, which they believe could result in the experimental development of different economic forms in different locations. They thus tend to focus on taking action in the present, with contemporary forms outright rejecting utopianism.
When anarchist communism was first formulated in 1876, debates over its merits led to a split within the Anarchist International, as French and Italian communists clashed with collectivists from Spain. At the 1877 Vervies Conference, Swiss anarchist leader James Guillaume attempted to overcome the split by arguing that "each group be free to determine its own solutions".
This position was adopted by a number of Spanish anarchists, who advocated for the tolerance of different, coexisting anarchist schools of thought. In 1886, Catalan anarchists around the periodical Acracia began attempting to settle the communist-collectivist split by propagating a kind of "non-denominational" anarchism. Despite opposition from anarchist communists around the Tierra y Libertad paper, these anarchists began referring to themselves as "socialist anarchists" and used terms such as "indifferent anarchism" or "plain and simple anarchism" in order to overcome the divide.
In 1888, the anti-sectarian campaign was adopted by a circle of anarchist intellectuals led by Antoni Pellicer, who formulated a perspective that rejected any qualifying labels for anarchism.
Official source
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