Origins

The origins of Chinese Anarchism are traceable to the early Chinese Nationalist movement, which had a wide range of influences both native and foreign. The predominance in the late 1800s of Nihilism and Anarchism in Russia, which borders China, was a major source of anarchist influence on the nationalist movement. In particular, the use of assassination as a tool in the anti-Manchu movement as promoted by groups like the Chinese Assassination Corps corresponded to the widespread use of heroic self-sacrifice and assassination by Russian anti-czarist and nihilist groups like ‘The Peoples Will’ and pan-slavic nationalists like ‘The Black Hand.’ (As described by Goldman) Even though Anarchism and Nihilism are distinct and separate ideologies, at that time the popular press in Europe and China generally conflated the two; which led to an early interest in Anarchism among some Chinese radicals. Because of the lack of Chinese-language materials, however, this early influence was very limited. Jump to: navigation, search Anarchism, in its most general meaning, is the belief that rulership is unnecessary and should be abolished. ... The Kuomintang (KMT) or Nationalist Party of China (Traditional Chinese: 中國國民黨; Simplified Chinese: 中国国民党; pinyin: Zhōngguó Guómíndǎng; Wade-Giles: Chung-kuo Kuo-min-tang; Tongyong Pinyin: Jhongguo Guomindang; literally the National Peoples Party of China) is a conservative political party currently active in the Republic of China (ROC) on... Jump to: navigation, search Gods death or nonexistence is a quintessential nihilistic concern. ... Jump to: navigation, search Anarchism, in its most general meaning, is the belief that rulership is unnecessary and should be abolished. ... Jack Ruby murdered Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, in a very public manner In its most common use, assassination has come to mean the killing of an important person. ... Nationalism is an ideology that creates and sustains a nation as a concept of a common identity for groups of humans. ... Black Hand, or Crna Ruka (Црна Рука), officially Ujedinjenje ili Smrt (Ујединјеје или Смрт) (Unification or Death) was a secret association founded in Serbia by pan-Serbian nationalists in May 1911 with the intention of uniting all of the territories containing Serb populations (notably Bosnia and Herzegovina, annexed by Austria... Jump to: navigation, search Anarchism, in its most general meaning, is the belief that rulership is unnecessary and should be abolished. ... Jump to: navigation, search Gods death or nonexistence is a quintessential nihilistic concern. ...

Anarchism and the Chinese Student Movement

The first explicitly and recognizably Anarchist presence originated in France and Japan with the study abroad programs for the children of wealthy families that were established after the failed Boxer Rebellion. While not accessible to the vast majority of the population, by 1906 these programs had attracted between five and six hundred students to Europe and about 10,000 to Japan. Tokyo, and Japan in general, was the most popular destination because of its geographic proximity to China, it’s relatively affordable cost, and the natural affinity between the two cultures. In Europe, Paris was particularly popular because it was relatively cheap, the French government helped to subsidize the students, and because France was seen as the center of Western civilization. According to some accounts, there was also a conscious effort on the part of the Chinese government officials who ran the program to use it to get radical students out of the country, with the most radical students being sent to Europe and the more moderate students going to Japan. If this is so, then that policy was to prove remarkably short-sighted as these foreign educated students would use the methods and ideologies of European Socialism and Anarchism to completely transform Chinese society. It is interesting to note that in both locations of study, Anarchism quickly became the most dominant of the western ideologies adopted by the students, and in 1906, within a few months of each other, two separate Anarchist student groups would form, one in Tokyo and one in Paris. The different locations, and perhaps also the different inclinations of the students being sent to each location, would result in two very different Anarchisms, however. Jump to: navigation, search Boxer forces, 1900 photograph The Boxer Uprising (Traditional Chinese: 義和團起義; Simplified Chinese: 义和团起义; pinyin: ; Righteous Harmony Society Uprising) was an uprising against Western commercial and political influence in China during the final years of the 19th century, from November 1899 to September 7, 1901. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1906 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search Long a symbol of Tokyo, the Nijubashi Bridge at the Kokyo Imperial Palace. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Eiffel Tower has become a symbol of Paris throughout the world. ... For alternative meanings for The West in the United States, see the U.S. West and American West. ... Jump to: navigation, search The color red and particularly the red flag are traditional symbols of Socialism. ... Jump to: navigation, search Anarchism, in its most general meaning, is the belief that rulership is unnecessary and should be abolished. ... Western can refer to: A Western blot is a method in molecular biology to detect a certain protein in a sample by using antibody specific to that protein. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1906 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar). ...

According to Li Shih-tseng, who was a participant in the movement, the influences of the Paris group could be divided into 3 main fields, these being Radical Libertarianism and Anarchism, Darwin and the Social Darwinists, and the classical Chinese philosophers. While the Paris group was far more reluctant then their counterparts in Tokyo to equate the teachings of Lao Tzu or the ancient Well-Fields system with the Anarchist communism they advocated, Li describes the group as consisting of young men who almost all had received excellent educations in the Chinese classical tradition admits that the old thinking doubtless influenced them. The clear tend with the Paris group, however, was to dismiss and even actively oppose any association of Anarchism with traditional culture. Jump to: navigation, search Anarchism, in its most general meaning, is the belief that rulership is unnecessary and should be abolished. ... The word Darwin, when used alone, has several possible meanings in the English language. ... Lao Zi (also spelled Laozi, Lao Tzu, or Lao Tse) was a famous Chinese philosopher who is believed to have lived in approximately the 4th century BC, during the Hundred Schools of Thought and Warring States Periods. ...

In Tokyo, by contrast, they drew on the same influences but in a different order of preference. Where the Paris group was enamored of western science and western civilization; the Tokyo group rooted its anarchism in political traditions native to Asia. In practical terms that meant that the Paris group studied Esperanto, advocated Anarchosyndicalism, and drew heavily upon the works of Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin. The Tokyo group, by contrast, advocated a peasant-based society built around democratically run villages organized into a free federation for mutual aid and defense, and based their ideology on a fusion of Taoism, Buddhism, the Well Field System, and gave preference to Leo Tolstoy over Kropotkin. Both groups also advocated assassination early on, perhaps an indicator of the lasting influences of Nihilism, but by 1910 “conversion to Anarchism was typically accompanied by the renunciation of assassination.” For alternative meanings for The West in the United States, see the U.S. West and American West. ... Jump to: navigation, search World map showing Asia (geographically) Asia is the central and eastern part of Eurasia and worlds largest continent. ... Esperanto is the most widely spoken constructed international language. ... Anarcho-syndicalist flag. ... Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (Trolo) (Russian — Михаил Александрович Бакунин, Michel Bakunin — on the grave in Bern), (May 30, 1814–June 13, 1876) was a well known Russian anarchist. ... Peter Kropotkin Prince Peter Alexeevich Kropotkin (In Russian Пётр Алексе́евич Кропо́ткин) (December 9, 1842 - February 8, 1921) was one of Russias foremost anarchists and one of the first advocates of what he called anarchist communism: the model of society he advocated for most of his life was that of a communalist society... In a detail of Brueghels Land of Cockaigne (1567) a soft-boiled egg has little feet to rush to the luxuriating peasant who catches drops of honey on his tongue, while roast pigs roam wild: the 16th century was a good time for European peasants A peasant, from 15th... Jump to: navigation, search In emergency services, mutual aid is a formal agreement among emergency responders to lend assistance across jurisdictional boundaries when required; either by an emergency that exceeds local resources or a disaster. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Yin-Yang or Taiji diagram, often used as a symbol in Taoism. ... Jump to: navigation, search A replica of an ancient statue found among the ruins of a temple at Sarnath Buddhism is a philosophy based on the teachings of the Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama, a prince of the Shakyas, whose lifetime is traditionally given as 566 to 486 BCE. It had... Jump to: navigation, search Leo Tolstoy, pictured late in life Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy listen [â–¶] (Russian: Лев Никола́евич Толсто́й; commonly referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy) (September 9, 1828 – November 20, 1910; August 28, 1828 – November 7, 1910, O.S.) was a Russian novelist, social reformer, pacifist, Christian anarchist, vegetarian, moral thinker... Jack Ruby murdered Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, in a very public manner In its most common use, assassination has come to mean the killing of an important person. ...

In the early 1900s the Anarchist movement was largely a western movement and the Chinese students studying in Paris were enthusiastically supportive of Anarchism because they saw it as the most forward-thinking of all the western ideologies, and thus the furthest removed from what they perceived as a Chinese culture moribund by tradition. This position would repeatedly place them at odds with the Tokyo group who saw much that was good in traditional culture, and even argued that because China had not embraced the illusion of liberal capitalist democracy, it might be easier for them to make the transition to Anarchism then it would be for the Europeans. An ideology is a collection of ideas. ... Jump to: navigation, search Look up liberal on Wiktionary, the free dictionary Liberal may refer to: Politics: Liberalism American liberalism, a political trend in the USA Political progressivism, a political ideology that is for change, often associated with liberal movements Liberty, the condition of being free from control or restrictions... In economics, a capitalist is someone who owns capital, presumably within the economic system of capitalism. ...

These differences, however, do not mean that the two groups did not cooperate. Because of the decentralized political structure and emphasis on local economic and political self-determination advocated by both groups, they were able to come to a tacit understanding that after the revolution both systems could peacefully coexist. The conflict was essentially one of values, priorities, and – by implication – methods for achieving the revolution which both advocated. In particular, the conflict over the what place – if any – traditional Chinese philosophies should play in influencing Anarchist thoughts and actions was a major source of friction and debate between the two groups. The tendency for the advocates of different Anarchisms to disagree but agree to cooperate is not unique to the Chinese Anarchist experience. It is for this reason that many political scientists describe anarchism as a movement of movements, or as Noam Chomsky puts it “a set of ideologies and movements sharing certain basic characteristics.” The ideological diversity inherent in such a movement of movements has historically been one f it’s great strengths but also repeatedly undermined attempts to shape it into any cohesive force for social change. Decentralisation (or decentralization) is any of various means of more widely distributing decision-making to bring it closer to the point of service or action. ... Self-determination is a principle in international law that a people ought to be able to determine their own governmental forms and structure free from outside influence. ... Jump to: navigation, search Avram Noam Chomsky, Ph. ...

The Paris and Tokyo groups were unanimous, however, in their condemnation of Confucianism and advocation of a total social transformation. The European Anarchist movement also advocated social transformation, but the Chinese Anarchists stand out because of the primary importance they placed on the abolition of the old culture. Where European Anarchists reserved some of their harshest critiques for Christianity (which was seen as one of the three pillars of authoritarianism, along with Capitalism and the State), Chinese anarchists would declare all-out war against Confucian culture; which they saw as a form of social control roughly analogous to western Christianity in it’s hegemonic penetration of society and proscription of social norms. As Chtu Min-I (one of the members of the Paris group) put it: Jump to: navigation, search Sage Confucius——孔子 Confucianism (Chinese: 儒家, Pinyin Rújiā, The School of the Scholars; or, less accurately, 孔教 Kŏng jiào, The Religion of Confucius) is an East Asian ethical and philosophical system originally developed from the teachings of the early Chinese sage Confucius. ... Jump to: navigation, search Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented in the New Testament writings of his early followers. ... Jump to: navigation, search This article applies to political ideologies. ... Jump to: navigation, search In common usage capitalism refers to an economic system in which all or most of the means of production are privately owned and operated and where the investment of capital, and the production, distribution and prices of commodities (goods and services) are determined mainly in a... Jump to: navigation, search A state is an organized political community occupying a definite territory, having an organized government, and possessing internal and external sovereignty. ...

“The Chinese seem to be the greatest lovers of things ancient, so much so that their minds have been wholly bound by traditional customs and thus they have become enslaved by the ancients.” Over the course of the next twenty years, that emphasis on cultural transformation would be adopted by virtually all elements of the radical Chinese left; and it’s rhetoric – if not its substance – would eventually be used by Mao to justify the Cultural Revolution.

Anarchism and Chinese Nationalism

In the first phase of the movement, Anarchists of both schools were generally participants in the Nationalist movement, even though in theory they repudiated nationalism and nation-states. Thus the first attacks on the infant movement were to come from Nationalists who saw Anarchism as a threat to their effort to build a strong, unified, centralized modern nation that could stand up to the encroaching power of Western Imperialism. As one nationalist reader wrote in a letter to Hsin Shih-chi (An Anarchist newspaper published by the Paris group) "If you people know only how to cry emptily that ‘We want no government, no soldiers, no national boundaries, and no State’ and that you are for universal harmony, justice, freedom, and equality, I fear that those who know only brute force and not justice will gather their armies to divide up our land and our people."

Nationalists also argued that only by building a popular front could the Nationalist movement defeat the Manchu’s, and that in the long term if Anarchism was to have any chance to succeed it must necessarily be preceded by a Republican system that would make China secure. The response of the Hsin Shi-Chi editors, written by Li Shih-tseng, was based in the idea that the revolution they advocated would be global, simultaneous, and spontaneous; and that since it would be happening everywhere, the foreign imperialists would thus be too preoccupied with the revolutions in their home countries to bother invading or harassing China anymore. They also argued that having a strong centralized coercive government had obviously not prevented Chinas enemies from attacking her, and that in the long run tyranny is tyranny, regardless of whether it is “native” or foreign, so the only logical approach for people who want freedom must be to oppose all authority be it Manchu, Han, foreign, or native.

In retrospect, the obvious question is how could they expect a global spontaneous revolution to come about, and the answer is that the Paris group – and many radicals of all stripes all over the globe at that time – believed in Revolution as something akin to a force of nature. Within the context of their thinking, Revolution would come because it was obviously needed, and their role was simply to prepare people for it and help them see the obvious necessity of social change. From a modern perspective, such thinking seems incredibly naïve. Understanding it, however, provides important insight into the fundamentally evolutionary nature of the movement, and explains the movement’s focus on education instead of organization building.

The involvement of prominent Nationalist figures indicates the role of personal relationships in the Paris groups’ organizing. The individuals who founded that group had come out of the Nationalist movement and remained strongly tied to it by a network of close personal friendships, so it was natural for them to attempt to include their friends in their organizing in the hopes of winning those friends (and the influence they possessed) over to the Anarchist cause. The actual result of such collaboration, however, was typically that it was the Anarchists, not the Nationalists, who compromised their positions since doing so allowed them to gain access to power positions in the Nationalist government that they theoretically opposed. That same year Jing Meijiu and Zhang Ji (another anarchist affiliated with the Tokyo group) would both be elected to the Republican parliament. Shifu and the Guangzhou group declared that by doing so they were traitors to the cause and proved their lack of commitment to the movement; but both men continued to call themselves anarchists and were active in promoting anarchism clear up to the late 1920s. Dirlik argues that this was indicative of lingering ambiguity in the definition of Anarchism. It would be more accurate to say, however, that the issue was one of strategy. These men considered themselves anarchists because they were working for the long-term abolition of capitalism, the state, and coercive authority in general; but in their vision Anarchism was a very long-term goal and not something they expected to see realized in their lifetimes - Chiang, for instance, expected that it would take 3,000 years to bring about the revolution they dreamed of. Understanding that, it becomes much easier to see why they would be tempted to campaign for and hold political office or collaborate with sympathetic elements in the government, since doing so would help them achieve their short term goals. This attitude is clearly distinct from the revolutionary anarchism of Kropotkin and Bakunin, or even of the Guangzhou group, which aimed for immediate revolution and the creation of an Anarchist society in the immediate future. The tendency to indefinitely postpone the revolution and the preoccupation with abstract philosophy and theory instead of concrete organizing by some of the wealthier participants in the movement doubtless has a lot to do with their class backgrounds. The split between wealthier “philosophical” Anarchists/Marxists/socialists/etc and working class revolutionaries is a common feature of revolutionary movements all over the world, and does not tell us anything in particular about the Anarchist movement in China.

As a counter-point to such collaboration, however, there is evidence that many more anarchists could have joined the new Nationalist government and gained positions of power and privilege but refused to do so because doing so would have violated their principles. As Scalapino and Yu put it “there can be little doubt that many refused to play the kind of political role that was so desperately needed in a period when trained personnel were extremely scarce compared to the tasks at hand.”

Early Growth

It was for this reason that the Paris group would declare that education was the most important activity revolutionaries could be involved in, and that only through educating the people could anarchism be achieved. Accordingly, they geared their activities towards education instead of assassination or grass roots organizing (the other two forms of activism which they condoned in theory). To these ends the Paris group would set up a variety of student-run businesses, including a Tofu factory, to fund the studies of radical students from China who wanted an education abroad. The students would come to work part time and study part time, thus gaining a European education for a fraction of what it would cost otherwise; and in the process gaining first-hand experience on what it might mean to live, work, and study in an Anarchist society. This study-abroad program would play a critical role in infusing anarchist language and ideas into the broader nationalist and revolutionary movements as hundreds of students participated in the program. The approach was eminently pragmatic in that it served a real need for students who wanted to study abroad but lacked the financial resources to do so, and because it demonstrated that Anarchist organizational models based on mutual aid and cooperation were viable alternatives to profit-driven capitalist ventures. Jack Ruby murdered Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, in a very public manner In its most common use, assassination has come to mean the killing of an important person. ... Tofu, sometimes also called bean curd, is a food made by coagulating soy milk, and then pressing the resulting curds into blocks. ... Anarchism is a generic term describing various political philosophies and social movements that advocate the elimination of hierarchy and imposed authority. ... Nationalism is an ideology that creates and sustains a nation as a concept of a common identity for groups of humans. ... In economics, a capitalist is someone who owns capital, presumably within the economic system of capitalism. ...

Despite the occasional friction, the overwhelming tendency of both the Paris and the Tokyo groups was to assist the nationalist cause. In fact, several of the Paris groups members were early members of the Kuomintang and became close friends of Sun Yet-Sen, and on at least two occasions Sun asked for and received “considerable” economic assistance from Chang Ching-Chiang, who was associated with the Paris group. This collaboration was understandable given the emphasis by both the Anarchists and the nationalists on the importance of Revolutionaries working together, and because of the extreme eclecticism of Sun Yet-Sen who stated that “the end goal of the three peoples principles [was] communism and anarchism.” It may also explain the willingness of the Paris group to accept funding from the Nationalist government to expand their programs during world war one some years later. Nationalism is an ideology that creates and sustains a nation as a concept of a common identity for groups of humans. ... The Kuomintang (KMT) or Nationalist Party of China (Traditional: 中國國民黨; Simplified: 中国国民党; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Chung-kuo Kuo-min-tang; Tongyong Pinyin: Jhongguo Guomindang) is a conservative political party currently active in the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan. ... Sun Yat-sen (November 12, 1866 - March 12, 1925) was a Chinese revolutionary leader and statesman who is considered by many to be the Father of Modern China. He had a significant influence in the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty and establishment of the Republic of China. ... Ypres, 1917, in the vicinity of the Battle of Passchendaele. ...

Anarchism had reached the mainland of China by 1907, and in fact some scholars go so far as claim that 1907 “marked the victory of Anarchism over Marxism” in China as anarchist communism became the dominant strain of socialist thought. There is significant truth to this statement since Marxism was just as clearly available to those students studying abroad and bringing radical ideas home as Anarchism was; but the overwhelming tendency was clearly to prefer Anarchism to Marxism. One explanation of this preference is the tendency of those students with authoritarian leanings to embrace Nationalism, with Anarchism being the clear alternative for those opposed to coercive authority. We must remember that it was not until after the Bolshevik Revolution that Marxists, led by Lenin in his polemics against Imperialism, would embrace Nationalism as a means to achieving Communism, and even today many Marxists adamantly oppose nationalism. This accounts, at least in part, for the profound lack of interest in Marxism among Chinese revolutionaries until after the Bolshevik counter-revolution in Russia. 1907 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search Anarchist Communism, also known as Anarcho-Communism, Communo-Anarchism or Libertarian Communism, is a political ideology related to Libertarian socialism. ... The color red and particularly the red flag are traditional symbols of Socialism. ... The October Revolution, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was the second phase of the Russian Revolution, the first having been instigated by the events around the February Revolution. ... Vladimir Ilyich Lenin ( Russian: Влади́мир Ильи́ч Ле́нин  listen?), original surname Ulyanov (Улья́нов) ( April 22 (April 10 ( O.S.)), 1870 – January 21, 1924), was a Russian revolutionary, the leader of the Bolshevik party, the first Premier of the Soviet Union, and the founder of the ideology of Leninism. ... Jump to: navigation, search A cartoon portraying the British Empire as an octopus, reaching into foreign lands A cartoon showing the U.S. growing up and growing girth. ... Marxism is the political practice and social theory based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. ...

Early converts to Anarchism came from broadly divergent segments of Chinese society and included pacifist Buddhist monks like Tai xu, and advocates of Revolutionary Terrorism like Liu Shifu (who had been a member of the China Assassination Corps, and who abandoned terrorism and assassination when he converted to anarchism). Again, the depiction of Anarchism as a ‘movement of movements’ - capable of offering something for everyone - is critical to understanding this phenomenon. As with the student groups that were becoming increasingly active in Tokyo and Paris at this time, Anarchists in mainland China by and large agreed to disagree on those issues that they could not come to a consensus on and worked together wherever doing so was mutually beneficial. From an organizational perspective, the result was a broadly dispersed collection of revolutionary “nodes of activity” without any central coordination – let alone authority. In the short-term this organizational structure was an asset to the movement because it made it incredibly hard for the authorities to repress. The long-term implications, however, were not so positive. Statues of Buddha such as this, the Tian Tan Buddha statue in Hong Kong, remind followers to practice right living. ... Jump to: navigation, search The term terrorism is largely synonymous with political violence, and refers to a strategy of using coordinated attacks that typically fall outside the time, manner of conduct, and place commonly understood as representing the bounds of conventional warfare. ... Jack Ruby murdered Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, in a very public manner In its most common use, assassination has come to mean the killing of an important person. ...

Anarchism as a Mass Movement

By 1911 Anarchism had become the driving force behind popular mobilization and had moved beyond its initial association with relatively wealthy students studying abroad to become a genuine revolutionary movement among the people as a whole. There is some evidence that the grassroots workers movement which was developing at this time enjoyed a secondary influx of Anarchist ideals as people who had been working in the United States were forced to return home following the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, which severely limited (but did not eliminate) the flow of Chinese workers to and from the United States. In the United States, anarchists had been almost alone in the labor movement in explicitly opposing racism against Asian and Mexican workers, and when Emma Goldman came to speak in San Francisco in the 1890's there were several thousand Chinese workers in attendance. Additionally, from 1908 on many thousands of Chinese workers in North America - particularly those working in California and the Pacific North-West - became members of the Anarchosyndicalist Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The Wobblies (as IWW members were called) were the first American labor union to oppose the institution of White supremacy in an organized and deliberate fashion and to actively recruit Asians, Blacks, Latinos, and migratory workers. Their defense of Chinese immigrants who were being subjected to systematic harassment and discrimination won them a large base of membership among Chinese workers, and widespread support among the Chinese community in North America. The influence of Chinese IWW members returning to China has gone largely unstudied, but the strong Anarchist participation in the Chinese union movement and the willing reception that they met may owe something to this earlier relationship between Chinese workers and Anarchist Revolutionaries. The Chinese Exclusion Act may be: Another name for the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923 in Canada, coined by the Chinese-Canadian community. ... 1882 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ... The labor movement (or labour movement) is a broad term for the development of a collective organization of working people, to campaign in their own interest for better treatment from their employers and political governments. ... Jump to: navigation, search A black man drinks out of a water fountain designated for black people in 1939 at a streetcar terminal. ... Jump to: navigation, search The term Asian in a geographical sense simply refers to something or someone from Asia. ... Jump to: navigation, search Emma Goldman (June 27, 1869 – May 14, 1940) was a Lithuanian-born anarcho-communist known for her anarchist writings and speeches. ... This page is a candidate for speedy deletion. ... Anarcho-syndicalist flag. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or the Wobblies) is an international union headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, having much in common with anarcho-syndicalist unions, but also many differences. ... The IWW Label A Wobbly membership card The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or the Wobblies) is an international union headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, having much in common with anarcho-syndicalist unions, but also many differences. ... Jump to: navigation, search White supremacy is an ideology which holds that the white race is superior to other races. ...

Following the Nationalist revolution of 1911 and the victory of the Revolutionary Alliance, which counted several prominent Anarchists as movement “elders,” Anarchists throughout China had a bit more room to engage in organizing. At the same time, however Nationalist rule was by no means a guarantee of freedom to organize for antiauthoritarians, and government persecution was ongoing. With Nationalist goals of overthrowing the Manchu Qing dynasty having been achieved, the main ideological opposition to Anarchism came from self-described Socialists, including the Chinese Socialist Society and the Left wing of the nationalist movement which – following Sun Yet-Sen’s lead – called itself socialist. Jiang Kanghu, who founded the Chinese Socialist Society in 1911, had been a contributor to the New Era (one of the publications of the Paris Group), and included the abolition of the State, the traditonal family structure, and Confucian culture as planks of his parties’ platform. The main source of conflict came because the CSS wanted to retain market relations but supplement them with a broad social safety net, since they felt that without any incentive mechanism people would not produce anything and the society would collapse. Other sources of friction had to do with the CSS’s focus on building the revolution in China first, and using elected office as a tool to do so – both significant deviations from classical anarchism. In retrospect, the CSS’s program sounds like a hybrid pairing of Anarchist politics with an economic structure reminiscent of European Social Democracy – an odd mix to be sure, but clearly capable of fitting within the broad tent of the movement. Jiang did not call himself an anarchist however, so his party was generally perceived as being outside the movement, despite the similarities. Shifu founded a group in Guangzhou later that same year, with an explicitly anarchist-communist platform, and in 1912 Jiang's party split into two factions, the “pure socialists,” led by the Anarchist Buddhist monk Tai xu, and the remains of the party led by Jiang. The “Pure” Socialists revised platform included the complete abolition of property and an anarchist-communist economic system. Shifu criticized them for retaining the name “Socialist” but their platform was clearly anarchist so the two groups generally considered each other comrades. The emphasis on the importance of the Peasant struggle, which had been pioneered earlier by the Tokyo group, would also become a major subject of discussion and organizing among Chinese anarchists from both the Pure Socialists and the Guangzhou group in this period. It was anarchists who first pointed to the crucial role that the peasants must play in any serious revolutionary attempt in China, and Anarchists were the first to engage in any serious attempts to organize the Peasants. Jump to: navigation, search The Manchu (Manchu: Manju; Simplified Chinese: 满族; Traditional Chinese: 滿族; pinyin: ) are an ethnic group who originated in the dong bei or North East region consisting of Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang provinces, collectively known in English as Manchuria. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Qing Dynasty (Manchu: daicing gurun; Chinese: 清朝; pinyin: qÄ«ng cháo; Wade-Giles: ching chao), sometimes known as the Manchu Dynasty, was founded by the Manchu clan Aisin Gioro, in what is today northeast China expanded into China proper and the surrounding territories... For information on mainstream political parties using the term Socialist, see Social democracy and Democratic socialism, For the governments of the USSR, the PRC, and others, see: Communist state, Other variants of Socialism include Marxism, Communism, and Libertarian Socialism. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1911 was a common year starting on Sunday (click on link for calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search A state is an organized political community occupying a definite territory, having an organized government, and possessing internal and external sovereignty. ... Confucianism (儒家 Pinyin: rújiā The School of the Scholars), sometimes translated as the School of Literati, is an East Asian ethical, religious and philosophical system originally developed from the teachings of Confucius. ... Sifu or Shifu (師父) means Master or Teacher in the Chinese Language. ... Location within China Guangzhou (Simplified Chinese: 广州; Traditional Chinese: 廣州; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Kuang-chou; Jyutping: Gwong2zau1; Yale: GwóngjaÅ«) is the capital of the Guangdong Province in southern China. ... 1912 was a leap year starting on Monday. ... Categories: 1911 Britannica | Historical stubs | Feudalism ...

The main base of Anarchist activity in mainland China during this phase was in Guangzhou, and the Paris and Tokyo groups continued to have significant influence. The Pure Socialists were also strongly involved, but because they were as much Buddhists as they were Anarchists, were more concerned with promoting virtue and less focused on immediate revolution. By this time the Paris group had rendered their Anarchism into an extremely abstract philosophy that was more concerned with the place of the individual in society then with the day-to-day realities of working people. This is perhaps not surprising given the relatively wealthy backgrounds of most of the Paris group, but it would lead to increased friction between them and their more class-struggle oriented comrades in Guangzhou. Location within China Guangzhou (Simplified Chinese: 广州; Traditional Chinese: 廣州; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Kuang-chou; Jyutping: Gwong2zau1; Yale: Gwóngjaū) is the capital of the Guangdong Province in southern China. ...

The Guangzhou group is usually described as being “led” by Shifu, and this is generally accurate insofar as we understand it as leadership by example since he was never granted any formal position or coercive authority by the group. Their most significant contributions at this stage were the foundation of “an alliance between intellectuals and workers” and their propaganda work which set out to differentiate anarchism from all the other socialisms that were gaining in popularity; and in so doing crystallized for the first time exactly what Anarchism was. Where the Paris group had preferred to outline their ideal in terms of negative freedoms, i.e. freedom from coercion, freedom from tradition, etc; the Guangzhou group used positive assertions of rights and workers, women, peasants, and other oppressed groups to outline their vision of an Anarchist society. Noticeably absent was any mention of Ethnic minorities, since a basic part of their platform was the elimination of Ethnic, Racial, and National identities in favor of an internationalist identity that placed primary importance on loyalty to humanity as a whole, instead of to ones ethnic or racial group. It is important to recognize that this position was formulated in response to the primacy placed on ethnicity by the Anti-Manchu movement, which sought to assert the illegitimacy of the Qing dynasty based in part on the fact that its members were part of an ethnic minority out of touch with the Han majority, a position which Anarchists of all four major groups decried as racist and unbefitting a movement that claimed to be working for liberation. Their position, therefore, was that ethnicity-based organizing promoted Racism, and had no place in a Revolution that sought liberation for all of humanity. Sifu or Shifu (師父) means Master or Teacher in the Chinese Language. ... The philosophical concept of negative liberty is the absence of coercion from others. ... In classical economics and all micro-economics labour is one of three factors of production, the others being land and capital. ... Image of a woman on the Pioneer plaque sent to outer space. ... Categories: 1911 Britannica | Historical stubs | Feudalism ... An ethnic group is a group of people who identify with one another, or are so identified by others, on the basis of a boundary that distinguishes them from other groups. ... An ethnic group is a group of people who identify with one another, or are so identified by others, on the basis of a boundary that distinguishes them from other groups. ... This article is about race as an intraspecies classification. ... National is the Japanese brand under which Matsushita products are sold. ... Internationalism is a political movement which advocates a greater economic and political cooperation between nations for the benefit of all. ... Jump to: navigation, search The Qing Dynasty (Manchu: daicing gurun; Chinese: 清朝; pinyin: qÄ«ng cháo; Wade-Giles: ching chao), sometimes known as the Manchu Dynasty, was founded by the Manchu clan Aisin Gioro, in what is today northeast China expanded into China proper and the surrounding territories... Han can refer to: Han Chinese, the dominant majority ethnic group of mainland China The Chinese written language (漢文) The Han Dynasty (202 BCE - 220 CE) of China The state of Han, a state during the Chinese Warring States Period Han, one of the Chinese Sixteen Kingdoms, founded by the... An African-American drinks out of a water fountain marked for colored in 1939 at a street car terminal in Oklahoma City. ...

While consistent with the stance of the global Anarchist movement at the time, this position elicits mixed responses from modern Anarchists, many of whom see revolutionary potential in the struggles of oppressed ethnic and racial groups. In terms of the Revolutionary project in China, Ward Churchill cites the declarations of support for ethnic self-determination for China’s ethnic minorities which the Communist movement made as key to winning their movement the support of those groups; which was to prove decisive during the later civil war between the Chinese Communist Party and the Nationalists. It is ironic that Anarchist movement, which is based on the idea of local political and economic self-determination – and thus fulfills the autonomist aspirations of those group - was unable to articulate to minority communities how their desire for self-determination would be realized within the context of an Anarchist society. Communist Party of China flag The Communist Party of China (Simplified Chinese: 中国共产党; Traditional Chinese: 中國共産黨; pinyin: Zhōnggu ngchǎndǎng) is the ruling party of the Peoples Republic of China. ...

In practical terms, the work of the movement at this stage was propaganda and organizing. Guangzhou Anarchists founded a newspaper called “Peoples Voice” and began organizing workers, while in Taiyuan (Taiwan), Jing Meijiu - who had converted to Anarchism as part of the Tokyo group - founded an explicitly anarchafeminist] worker-run factory/school to serve as a tool to help women simultaneously earn a living and receive an education. The similarity to the Paris groups Diligent Work and Frugal Study program are obvious. In 1912, members of the Paris group that had returned to China established the “Promote Virtue Society,” whose leadership included prominent Anarchists like Li Shezeng and Nationalists like Wang Jiangwei. The focus of that society, in keeping with the tendencies of the Paris group, was as much on virtuous and moral personal behavior as it was on Revolutionary praxis. Their rules for membership delineated different levels of commitment and discouraged members from eating meat and visiting prostitutes; and concretely forbade them from riding in Sedan chairs, taking concubines, or holding public office. While it may be tempting to see such rules as superfluous, the evidence suggests we should take them seriously, since most of the Anarchist organizations in China in this period included similar rules for their members. The goal was to create a cadre of Revolutionaries who would lead by example and help create a model for a new revolutionary culture. There are obvious parallels here to the traditional obligation for people involved in public life to set an example and promote virtue as well. Jump to: navigation, search North Korean propaganda showing a soldier destroying the United States Capitol building. ... Organizing is the management function that usually follows after planning. ... As a word, praxis can mean: Praxis is a Latinate English noun, referring to the process of putting theoretical knowledge into practice. ...

Only a few years later, during World War I, the Paris group would take advantage of the French Governments need for laborers to gain funding from the French and Chinese governments to expand their work-study movement to include Chinese workers. The students continued to come, but part of their program of education now included holding classes and educating the thousands of Chinese workers supplementing the French war effort. In so doing they aided one imperialist capitalist power in its self-defense against another imperialist capitalist power. While a small number of well-known Anarchists, including Peter Kropotkin, supported the French during World War I because they saw France as more progressive then Germany and feared a German victory would undermine their Revolutionary activity in France, this was definitely a minority position in terms of the global movement. However, the Paris group was nothing if not pragmatic, and since the Chinese workers were going to come one way or another, they took advantage of the situation and used it as an opportunity to meet their enemies short term needs while fulfilling their long-term goal of educating the workers. The fact that they were able to get government funding for an education program with the goal of training young people and workers in how to become effective revolutionaries is a vindication of their tactics. The practical implications of such a broad diffusion of Anarchist ideas, and the setting in which it took place, are both strong indicators of the strong fusion of pragmatism and idealism that typified the Paris groups activities. In any case, the increased contact with actual flesh-and-blood workers had a profound effect on their propaganda and theory, with labor issues suddenly becoming a much more prominent part of their platform. Imperialism is the policy of extending the control or authority over foreign entities as a means of acquisition and/or maintenance of empires, either through direct territorial or through indirect methods of exerting control on the politics and/or economy of other countries. ... Peter Kropotkin Prince Peter Alexeevich Kropotkin (In Russian Пётр Алексе́евич Кропо́ткин) (December 9, 1842 - February 8, 1921) was one of Russias foremost anarchists and one of the first advocates of what he called anarchist communism: the model of society he advocated for most of his life was that of a communalist society... Jump to: navigation, search World War I was primarily a European conflict with many facets: immense human sacrifice, stalemate trench warfare, and the use of new, devastating weapons - tanks, aircraft, machineguns, and poison gas World War I, also known as the First World War, the Great War, the War of...

By 1914 Anarchism had become a genuine popular movement in China as increasing numbers of people from peasants and factory workers to intellectuals and students became disillusioned with the Nationalist government and its inability to realize the peace and prosperity it had promised. A major liability that the movement had picked up along the way, however, was the extreme diffusion of Anarchist idea to the point where it was becoming difficult to define exactly who was and who was not an Anarchist. Shifu set out to remedy that situation in a series of articles in Peoples Voice, which attacked Jiang Kanghu, Sun Yet-Sen, and the Pure Socialists. The debates that ensued served for the first time to really crystallize what exactly was meant by Anarchism in the broad sense. It is important to note that these articles were generally friendly in tone. The goal was to clearly differentiate between the different schools of thought that were available at that time. The letters directed at Sun Yet Sen and the Nationalists were aimed at exposing the ambiguities of their use of the word “socialism” to describe their goals, which were clearly not socialist according to any contemporary definition. The attacks on Jiang and the CSS sought to portray their vision of revolution and socialism as too narrow because it was focused on a single country, and to oppose their retention of market relations as part of their platform. The attack on the Pure Socialists was by far the mildest, with the main criticism being that if they were Anarchists then they should call themselves Anarchists and not socialists. Peoples Voice invited and printed responses from all parties, and their goal seems to have been the creation of an open and respectful debate among friends. Jump to: navigation, search 1914 is a common year starting on Thursday. ... Sifu or Shifu (師父) means Master or Teacher in the Chinese Language. ... Sun Yat-sen (November 12, 1866 - March 12, 1925) was a Chinese revolutionary leader and statesman who is considered by many to be the Father of Modern China. He had a significant influence in the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty and establishment of the Republic of China. ...

For the next five years the movement would grow slowly but steadily as each of the disparate groups continued their propaganda, education, and organizing projects. In 1915 the anarchist arguments for a Social Revolution that had originated a decade earlier with the original Paris group would find broader acceptance in the New Culture Movement which was pioneered by a small group of intellectuals in Beijing but spread to the rest of the county over the next four years, until it merged into the May Fourth movement. The New Culture Movement was not Anarchist, but in it’s glorification of science and extreme disdain for Confucianism and traditional culture it extended critiques that had originated with the Paris group, and the proliferation of Anarchist thought during this period can be seen as a confirmation of the influence Anarchists had on the movement from its foundation on. The participants saw it as a conscious attempt to create a Chinese renaissance, and consciously sought to create and live the new culture that they espoused. Jump to: navigation, search 1915 was a common year starting on Friday (see link for calendar). ... Students in Beijing rallied during the May Fourth Movement. ... Jump to: navigation, search Beijing â–¶(?) (Chinese: 北京; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Pei-ching; Postal System Pinyin: Peking) is the capital of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). ... Jump to: navigation, search Students in Beijing rallied during the May Fourth Movement. ... Jump to: navigation, search Sage Confucius——孔子 Confucianism (Chinese: 儒家, Pinyin Rújiā, The School of the Scholars; or, less accurately, 孔教 Kŏng jiào, The Religion of Confucius) is an East Asian ethical and philosophical system originally developed from the teachings of the early Chinese sage Confucius. ... Jump to: navigation, search By region Italian Renaissance Northern Renaissance French Renaissance German Renaissance English Renaissance The Renaissance, also known as Il Rinascimento (in Italian), was an influential cultural movement which brought about a period of scientific revolution and artistic transformation, at the dawn of modern European history. ...

Anarchists and the May Fourth Movement

In 1919, with the rise of the May Fourth Movement, China would explode – and anarchists would light the fuse. The movement was focused on creating broad-based “social change,” and “the language of Anarchism provided the tongue in which this advocacy found its expression.” The May Fourth Movement was not “anarchist” in any coherent sense, but its organizational praxis, its analysis, it’s tactics, and its goals were all strongly influenced by Anarchism and many of its participants considered themselves Anarchists. Reading the historical documents, one cannot help but be struck by the incredible similarities between it and the recently deceased North American Anti-Globalization movement. Both movements drew in a wide cross section of students, workers, farmers, and intellectuals as part of a praxis that began with defending the country against a perceived threat (The WTO and Globalization in North America and Japanese Imperialism in China), but quickly expanded their critique and praxis into a broad movement with revolutionary implications. Both movements were jumpstarted by Anarchists but – because the Anarchists in both cases were reluctant to force their ideals upon people or seize control of the movement – both remained outside the control of any political faction. In both cases the Anarchists were able to defend the movement from being co-opted by others, and refused to co-opt it for themselves because they believed in the critical importance of spontaneity in the revolutionary project and preferred to be carried along by the movement and let it develop “naturally.” In both cases the result was a massive flowering of interest in Anarchism, and in both cases, the movement collapsed without any focus that could sustain it over the long term when the Anarchists failed to translate that interest into a coherent revolutionary movement. Dirlik describes the anarchists as preferring to “surf” on the waves of revolution, having faith in the “ocean” – i.e. the people – to generate more waves. One might be tempted to see this as a sign of laziness and say that the Anarchists were not interested in actually making Revolution happen but preferred to talk about it endlessly and then jump in when things got hot, instead of doing the long-term slow work of organizing that is required to make change happen. This analysis, however, ignores the fact that Anarchists were involved in real grassroots organizing work – they founded Chinas first Unions, they pioneered peasant organizing, and their education programs trained a whole generation of revolutionaries – including many of the Marxists who would supplant them. If the Anarchists had wanted too, they could have claimed the May Fourth movement as their own and controlled it, and many modern observers must be tempted to wish that they had. A key part of Classical Anarchism, however, was the belief that working people themselves already know how to fight and win a revolution, and that when they are ready for Anarchism they will create it. In this view, the goal of the true revolutionary is thus not to take control of mass movements and use them as tools to achieve predetermined roles, but to educate, agitate, and organize the structural basis of the movement, and then let the people take it where they want it to go.

Anarchism and the Rise of Maoism

Once the Bolsheviks in Russia had consolidated their power, they immediately sought to expand their sphere of influence. Their interpretation of Marx’s prediction that the revolution would be global was that – as the vanguard – it was their role to use the resources at their disposal to instigate and support Bolshevik-style revolutions all over the world. In keeping with Lenin’s doctrine on Imperialism, their focus was on the undeveloped nations, because they believed that once those nations had thrown off imperialism, Western capitalism – deprived of the material support and raw materials it required – would collapse. They also specifically targeted countries with already established revolutionary movements, and China clearly qualified. In 1919 the first Bolshevik missionaries entered China and began contacting Anarchist groups for aid and support. The Anarchists, who largely still saw the Bolsheviks as allies at this point, helped them set up communist study groups – many of which were originally majority Anarchist - and introduced the Bolsheviks into the Chinese labor and student movements. Bolshevik Party Meeting. ... Marx is a common German surname. ... Jump to: navigation, search Look up Revolution on Wiktionary, the free dictionary This article is about revolution in the sense of a drastic change. ... Jump to: navigation, search Vanguard can mean: A vanguard is the forward division in an army. ... Vladimir Ilyich Lenin ( Russian: Влади́мир Ильи́ч Ле́нин  listen?), original surname Ulyanov (Улья́нов) ( April 22 (April 10 ( O.S.)), 1870 – January 21, 1924), was a Russian revolutionary, the leader of the Bolshevik party, the first Premier of the Soviet Union, and the founder of the ideology of Leninism. ... Jump to: navigation, search A cartoon portraying the British Empire as an octopus, reaching into foreign lands A cartoon showing the U.S. growing up and growing girth. ... Jump to: navigation, search In common usage capitalism refers to an economic system in which all or most of the means of production are privately owned and operated and where the investment of capital, and the production, distribution and prices of commodities (goods and services) are determined mainly in a... Anarchism is a generic term describing various political philosophies and social movements that advocate the elimination of hierarchy and imposed authority. ... Students attending a lecture at the Helsinki University of Technology Etymologically derived through Middle English from the Latin second-type conjugation verb stÅ­dÄ“rÄ•, which means to direct ones zeal at; hence a student is one who directs zeal at a subject. ...

In 1921, with the establishing of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the anarchist movement almost immediately began to lose ground While the reasons for this loss of influence are not immediately obvious, it seems likely it was the result of a combination of factors. First and foremost of these was the Anarchist’s inability to coordinate activities across regions (due to the lack of any national Anarchist confederation). Secondly, there was a growing awareness that the Bolsheviks were Marxists, not anarchists – which caused an immediate loss of prestige for the anarchists who had previously claimed the success of the Russian revolution for their own. Third and perhaps most critical is the evolutionary nature of most, if not all, of the movement which did not expect to see its goals met any time in the even remotely near future. When workers are hungry they don’t want to hear about how great some hypothetical revolution 3,000 years in the future will be, they want change in the here and now –when it is useful. Talking about some fantastic utopian dream reality in the distant future is all well and good if one is wealthy and sees Revolutionary activity as a way to fulfill an abstract social obligation to promote virtue, but it is functionally useless if you are a worker trying to figure out how to make enough money to feed your children. Bolshevism and the CCP platform were immediately attractive to working people because they offered change in the here and now. In short, utopia is only useful if you can actually get there. To be fair to the Anarchists, there were many of them who, by the early 1920s when the movement peaked, were talking about revolution as a goal that could be achieved in the here and now, but the movement was never able to focus its energies into the creation of the type of organization that would have been required to actually win a revolution. Jump to: navigation, search 1921 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar). ... Communist Party of China flag The Communist Party of China (Simplified Chinese: 中国共产党; Traditional Chinese: 中國共産黨; pinyin: Zhōnggu ngchǎndǎng) is the ruling party of the Peoples Republic of China. ... This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Marxism is the political practice and social theory based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. ... This article is about biological evolution. ... See Utopia (disambiguation) for other meanings of this word Utopia, in its most common and general meaning, refers to a hypothetical perfect society. ... Jump to: navigation, search Virtue (Greek αρετη; Latin virtus) is the habitual, well-established, readiness or disposition of mans powers directing them to some goodness of act. ... Utopia, in its most common and general positive meaning, refers to the human efforts to create a better society, a perfect society that does not exist (yet). ... Jump to: navigation, search 1920 is a leap year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar) // Events WIKIPEDIA EATS VAGINA January 7 - Forces of Russian White admiral Kolchak surrender in Krasnoyarsk. ...

When the Communist party entered into the United Front with the Kuomintang against the warlords in 1924, they gained even broader access to the labor movement, and to mass movements in general. In a period of two years, the CCP grew from a membership of only a few hundred to over 50,000 through their support and assimilation of the various mass movements. With this increased membership, the CCP no longer felt the need to conceal their disdain for the Anarchist movement and began a series of attacks against anarchism and anarchists in its internal publications. The purpose of these attacks was first to discredit their opposition, and secondly to bring the ideology of their newly-acquired mass base into line. This is particularly critical since virtually all of the CCP’s leadership for the next fifty years would be drawn from people who had started as Anarchists. The fact that so many promising radicals left the Anarchist movement and joined the CCP is indicative of the large-scale collapse of Chinese anarchism during this period. In Leninist bogus, a united front is a coalition of Clinton likeleft-wing working class forces which put forward a common set of demands and share a common plan of action, but which do not subordinate themselves to the front, retaining their abilities for independent political action and continuing to... The Kuomintang (KMT) or Nationalist Party of China (Traditional: 中國國民黨; Simplified: 中国国民党; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Chung-kuo Kuo-min-tang; Tongyong Pinyin: Jhongguo Guomindang) is a conservative political party currently active in the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan. ... Warlords may refer to: The plural of Warlord, a name for a figure who has military authority but not legal authority over a subnational region. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1924 was a leap year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... Jump to: navigation, search An ideology is a collection of ideas. ...

As the influence of the CCP grew, their attacks on Anarchism became more overt and less friendly. Where the first debates between Ou Shenbai and Chen Duxiu (his former teacher) had been friendly, later debates became actively hostile. As the Anarchist movement rapidly shrank into insignificance, the comrades became increasingly desperate. Chen Duxiu (October 8, 1879 - May 27, 1942) played many different roles in Chinese history. ...

It is worth reiterating that a minority of Anarchists, mostly from the Paris group, had been involved in the Kuomintang almost from its founding; but that the majority of Anarchists, in keeping with their stated principles against involvement in the exercise of coercive authority, had declined to participate in this alliance. In those instances where Anarchists had participated in such collaboration the results were generally positive – a prime example being the “Diligent Work and Frugal Study” program. When the Kuomintang purged the CCP from its ranks in 1927, the small minority of Anarchists who had long participated in it urged their younger comrades to join the movement and utilize the Nationalist movement as a vehicle to defeat the Communists and realize Anarchism. The contradictions of such a strategy are obvious, and drew immediate opposition from those Anarchist groups that were still functioning. Even those critical of the plan, however, eventually joined in – if only because doing so seemed to be the only remaining chance to make their movement relevant again and reclaim its lost momentum. The result of this last collaboration was the creation of Chinas first Labor University, which was intended to be a domestic version of the Paris groups educational program and sought to create a new generation of Labor Intellectuals who would finally overcome the gap between “those who work with their hands” and “those who work with their minds.” The university would only function for a very few years before conflicts between the Anarchists who staffed it and the Nationalist government that oversaw it and provided the funding would destroy it. It had been okay for the Anarchists to use government funding to promote Anarchism as long as they did so in France, but when they began to do so at home, their “allies” were less then pleased. As the Nationalists increasingly cracked down on and suppressed the various mass movements, the Anarchists who had finally joined the Kuomintang became more and more disillusioned, and when the Nationalists finally acted against the Anarchists themselves, the movement was never able to recover. It is ironic that the Anarchists loyalty to their principles prevented them from participating in the Kuomintang during the years when that movement was genuinely revolutionary and supportive of mass movements, and that it was only when the right-wing of the Nationalist movement had finally gained control and purged the Communists, that the Anarchists agreed to work with them on any large scale. In real terms, their mistake was tragically common, they looked at their enemies enemy, and assumed it was their friend – only to find out rather painfully how badly mistaken they were. After the Guomintang purge, those Anarchists who had survived were left with no allies, no movement, and no unity. It was only a matter of time before Marxist guns would silence them. The Kuomintang (KMT) or Nationalist Party of China (Traditional: 中國國民黨; Simplified: 中国国民党; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Chung-kuo Kuo-min-tang; Tongyong Pinyin: Jhongguo Guomindang) is a conservative political party currently active in the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan. ... Jump to: navigation, search 1927 was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ... Nationalism is an ideology that creates and sustains a nation as a concept of a common identity for groups of humans. ... This article is about communism as a form of society, as an ideology advocating that form of society, and as a popular movement. ... Jump to: navigation, search Anarchism, in its most general meaning, is the belief that rulership is unnecessary and should be abolished. ...

Conclusions

Based on all of this, we can draw a few general conclusions about the Chinese Anarchist movement as it existed from 1906 to the late 1920s. First it is clear that the movement’s original growth was due to a variety of factors, the feeling of young intellectuals that after a century of humiliation and defeat by western powers that they needed to look outside of traditional culture and theory for answers, the attraction of a truly free society and borderless global society as envisioned by classical Anarchism and as encountered by Chinese students in Paris and Tokyo, and the strong parallels with certain elements of Chinese culture that made Anarchism accessible and approachable. The movement grew rapidly at first because it provided a unique revolutionary praxis wherein its adherents were able to fulfill the cultural obligations of promoting virtue and hard work while simultaneously challenging existing social institutions and cultural norms. With the rise of Anarchist-inspired and influenced mass movements such as the New Culture Movement and the May Fourth Movement, Anarchists had a clear opportunity to transform their missionary-style education-oriented approach into a genuine revolutionary movement that could accomplish their long term goals of sweeping away the old society and creating a new one based on Anarchist principles of free federation and mutual aid; but their refusal to take a leadership role in the movement and failure to create any national organization that could coordinate the large-scale grassroots organizing necessary to involve a critical mass of peasants and workers resulted in a critical loss of momentum. That loss of momentum cleared the way for communist co-option of the mass movements, and (combined with the rising prestige of Bolshevism following Lenin’s counter-revolution in Russia) directly led to a drastic loss of prestige and position for the Anarchist cause. When faced with direct attacks from the CCP, the Anarchists lack of structural or ideological coherence crippled their ability to respond effectively, and led to a last-ditch attempt to bolster the movement through government support, which ultimately discredited them and (when they refused to tow the Nationalist party line) led to increased government repression. In all cases, it was the internal failures of the movement that undermined its initially bright chances for success.

Works Cited:

Anonymous “A Letter to Hsin Shi-chi from a Certain Individual with Answers” Hshin Shi-Chi No8. Aug 10, 1907

Bernal, M. “The Triumph of Anarchism over Marxism,” China in Revolution. Ed M.C Wright, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971

Berkman, Alexander. The Russian Tragedy Der Syndicalist, Berlin, 1922. Reprinted by Phoenix Press, London.

Chu Ho Chung, “The Record of European T’ung Meng Hui, inLo Chia-lun. (Documents of the Red Revolution), vol II Taipei 1953

Chtu, Min-I “Looking to the Past” Hsin Shin-chi no 24, Nov. 30 1907

Choi, Jennifer Jung Hee. The Rhetoric of Inclusion: The I.W.W. and Asian Workers http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~epf/1999/choi.html

Churchill, Ward. “Marxism and Native Americans.” Acts of Rebellion: The Ward Churchill Reader. Routledge Nov. 2002

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