Contemporary anarchism

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Contemporary anarchism within the history of anarchism is the period of the anarchist movement continuing from the end of World War II and into the present. Since the last third of the 20th century, anarchists have been involved in anti-globalisation, peace, squatter and student protest movements. Anarchists have participated in armed revolutions such as in those that created the Makhnovshchina and Revolutionary Catalonia, and anarchist political organizations such as the International Workers' Association and the Industrial Workers of the World have existed since the 20th century. Within contemporary anarchism, the anti-capitalism of classical anarchism has remained prominent.^[1][2]

Anarchist principles undergird contemporary radical social movements of the left. Interest in the anarchist movement developed alongside momentum in the anti-globalisation movement,^[3] whose leading activist networks were anarchist in orientation.^[4] As the movement shaped 21st century radicalism, wider embrace of anarchist principles signaled a revival of interest.^[4] Various anarchist groups, tendencies and schools of thought exist today, making it difficult to describe the contemporary anarchist movement.^[5] While theorists and activists have established "relatively stable constellations of anarchist principles", there is no consensus on which principles are core and commentators describe multiple "anarchisms" (rather than a singular "anarchism") in which common principles are shared between schools of anarchism while each group prioritizes those principles differently. Gender equality can be a common principle, although it ranks as a higher priority to anarcha-feminists than anarcho-communists.^[6]

New currents which emerged within contemporary anarchism include post-anarchism and post-left anarchy. New anarchism is a term that has been notably used by several authors to describe the most recent reinvention of the anarchist thought and practice. What distinguishes the new anarchism of today from the new anarchism of the 1960s and 1970s, or from the work of Anglo-American based authors such as Murray Bookchin, Alex Comfort, Paul Goodman, Herbert Read and Colin Ward, is its emphasis on the global perspective. Essays on new anarchism^[7] include David Graeber's "New Anarchists"^[8] and Andrej Grubačić's "Towards Another Anarchism";^[9][10] other authors have criticized the term for being too vague.^[11]

Anarchists are generally committed against coercive authority in all forms, namely "all centralized and hierarchical forms of government (e.g., monarchy, representative democracy, state socialism, etc.), economic class systems (e.g., capitalism, Bolshevism, feudalism, slavery, etc.), autocratic religions (e.g., fundamentalist Islam, Roman Catholicism, etc.), patriarchy, heterosexism, white supremacy, and imperialism."^[12] Anarchist schools disagree on the methods by which these forms should be opposed.^[13] The principle of equal liberty is closer to anarchist political ethics in that it transcends both the liberal and socialist traditions. This entails that liberty and equality cannot be implemented within the state, resulting in the questioning of all forms of domination and hierarchy.^[14] Contemporary news coverage which emphasizes black bloc demonstrations has reinforced anarchism's historical association with chaos and violence; however, its publicity has also led more scholars to engage with the anarchist movement, although contemporary anarchism favours actions over academic theory.^[3][15]