Anarchist Contributions to Labor and Anti-War Movements
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Anarchist Contributions to Labor Organizing, Revolutionary Unionism, and Anti-War Movements
This collection explores the long relationship between anarchism, organized labor, revolutionary syndicalism, and anti-war activism. The sources span historical documents, scholarly studies, biographies, organizational histories, and contemporary analyses that examine how anarchists sought to organize workers through voluntary association, direct action, and democratic workplace control while opposing militarism, nationalism, and state power.
Labor Organizing and Revolutionary Unionism
The sources trace the development of anarchist participation in labor movements from the nineteenth century onward. They examine the growth of revolutionary syndicalism, industrial unionism, and anarcho-syndicalism as alternatives to both parliamentary politics and traditional craft unionism. Particular attention is given to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Spain's CNT, revolutionary unions throughout Europe and Latin America, and numerous labor struggles including Haymarket, the general strikes of Portugal, Brazil, Italy, and Spain, as well as campaigns for the eight-hour day and workers' self-management.
Anarcho-Syndicalism and Worker Self-Management
Many of the sources examine anarcho-syndicalism as both a labor strategy and a broader social philosophy. They discuss direct action, solidarity unionism, federal organization, workplace democracy, and the general strike as tools for transforming society. Historical case studies—including the Spanish Revolution, factory occupations, workers' councils, and collectivized industries—illustrate efforts to place production under democratic worker control rather than state or private ownership.
International Labor Solidarity
The collection emphasizes the international character of anarchist labor organizing. Studies examine cross-border cooperation among workers, migration, international syndicalist federations, anti-colonial labor movements, and the exchange of revolutionary ideas across Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America, Australia, and North America. Numerous works highlight the importance of international working-class solidarity as an alternative to nationalism and imperial rivalry.
Anti-War and Anti-Militarist Activism
A substantial portion of the material documents anarchist opposition to war and militarism. The sources examine resistance to World War I, World War II, the Vietnam War, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, colonial wars, and modern military alliances. Topics include conscientious objection, draft resistance, anti-conscription campaigns, revolutionary defeatism, anti-militarist propaganda, sabotage, industrial resistance, and the relationship between labor organizing and opposition to warfare.
Anti-Conscription and Civil Liberties
Numerous historical documents focus on Emma Goldman, the No-Conscription League, and broader campaigns against compulsory military service. These works examine speeches, manifestos, court prosecutions, and organizational efforts that defended freedom of conscience while opposing government attempts to compel military service during wartime.
Major Historical Figures
The collection includes significant works by and about influential anarchist thinkers and organizers including Rudolf Rocker, Emma Goldman, Errico Malatesta, Peter Kropotkin, Lucy Parsons, Ralph Chaplin, Sam Dolgoff, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Max Nettlau, and others. Their writings address labor strategy, industrial democracy, anti-militarism, worker education, internationalism, and revolutionary social change.
Historical Case Studies
The sources provide extensive historical coverage of labor struggles and revolutionary movements, including:
- The Haymarket movement and the origins of May Day.
- The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).
- Revolutionary syndicalism in France, Italy, Portugal, Brazil, Spain, and Britain.
- The Spanish Revolution and workers' collectives.
- Factory occupations and workers' councils.
- Anti-conscription campaigns during World War I.
- Anti-war organizing during World War II.
- Opposition to the Vietnam War.
- Contemporary debates surrounding Ukraine and revolutionary defeatism.
Themes Across the Collection
Recurring themes include:
- Worker self-organization.
- Direct action and solidarity unionism.
- General strikes.
- Industrial democracy.
- Federalism and decentralization.
- Mutual aid.
- Internationalism.
- Opposition to nationalism and militarism.
- Worker education.
- Anti-authoritarian social organization.
- Resistance to state repression.
- International labor cooperation.
Conclusion
Taken together, these sources demonstrate the wide historical scope of anarchist engagement with labor organizing, revolutionary unionism, and anti-war activism. They document both theoretical debates and practical organizing efforts across more than a century of labor history. The collection illustrates how anarchist movements consistently linked workplace democracy, international solidarity, opposition to militarism, and decentralized forms of social organization while contributing to labor struggles and anti-war campaigns across numerous countries and historical periods.
Anarchism, Labor Organizing, and Revolutionary Unionism
Review of Their Wars—Our Dead: Anarchist Reflections on Anti-Militarism
| Anarcho-Syndicalist Review | Libcom | February 20, 2026
This review examines a collection tracing anarchist resistance to militarism from the First World War to the present. It discusses revolutionary defeatism, conscientious objection, agitation among soldiers, draft resistance, and the connection anarchists made between industrial struggle and opposition to war.
The 18th January 1934 Portuguese General Strike
| Manuel Baptista | Libcom | July 8, 2025
This history describes the anarchist-inspired general strike against Portugal’s emerging fascist dictatorship. It examines the strength of revolutionary syndicalism, the strike’s suppression, and its significance as one of the final large-scale stands by Portugal’s independent labor movement.
History of a Workers’ Revolution in Catalonia
| Raymond S. Solomon | Libcom | May 18, 2025
This article surveys the generations of anarchist labor organizing that prepared Catalan workers to defeat a military uprising and assume control of factories, transportation systems, and public services during the Spanish Revolution.
Anarchists in a Workers’ Uprising: Italy’s Biennio Rosso
| Iain McKay | Libcom | March 7, 2021
This article examines anarchist participation in Italy’s 1919–1920 strike wave, factory occupations, land seizures, and worker councils. It highlights the Italian Syndicalist Union and the influence of Errico Malatesta.
Haymarket and the Rise of Syndicalism
| Kenyon Zimmer | The Anarchist Library | 2019
This scholarly chapter connects the Haymarket affair and Chicago’s anarchist labor movement with the international development of revolutionary syndicalism. It explains how the eight-hour movement, direct action, and the general strike influenced working-class organizers across national borders.
How the Ongoing Prison Strike Is Connected to the Labor Movement
| Kim Kelly | The Anarchist Library | September 4, 2018
This article places incarcerated workers’ strikes within the broader history of American labor resistance. It highlights organizing against prison labor exploitation and efforts to treat incarcerated people as workers capable of collective action.
Anarchism and the Unions: A Critique of Malatesta’s Ahistorical Perspective
This essay evaluates debates about whether anarchists should form explicitly revolutionary unions or participate in broader labor organizations. It draws on the history of the CNT and IWW to argue that anarchist ideas could coexist with unions open to workers of differing political views.
Three Articles About the First of May
| Errico Malatesta | Libcom | December 14, 2017
Malatesta reflects on the transformation of May Day from a militant international strike for workers’ demands into a more ceremonial labor holiday. He calls for restoring its connection to direct action and working-class emancipation.
The Russian Anarchist Movement During the First World War
| Dmitry Ivanovich Rublev | Libcom | May 27, 2017
This historical study examines Russian anarchist organizations, publications, labor activity, and ideological disputes during World War I. It shows how the war divided anarchists while stimulating antiwar agitation and revolutionary organizing among workers.
Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW
| Peter Cole, David Struthers, and Kenyon Zimmer, editors | Libcom | 2017
This international collection documents IWW activity in North America, Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australasia. It emphasizes migration, interracial labor solidarity, anti-imperialism, and exchanges between Wobblies and anarchists.
The Tragic Week, Spain 1909
| Murray Bookchin | Libcom | July 30, 2014
Bookchin recounts the Barcelona general strike and popular uprising triggered by military conscription for Spain’s colonial war in Morocco. The article shows how labor militancy and antimilitarism converged within the Catalan anarchist movement.
The IWW and the Search for an International Policy, 1905–1935
| Wayne Thorpe | Libcom | November 17, 2013
This article investigates the Industrial Workers of the World’s attempts to build relationships with revolutionary unions abroad. It explores the union’s internationalism, disagreements over political affiliation, and engagement with anarcho-syndicalist organizations.
Syndicalism and the Strike: French and Italian Revolutionary Syndicalism
| Wayne Thorpe | Libcom | April 27, 2013
This study traces how revolutionary syndicalists developed the general strike as both a labor weapon and a means of preventing war. It compares French and Italian experiences and the influence of the First International.
Anarcho-Syndicalism
| Freedom Collective | Freedom News | July 7, 2012
This overview explains anarcho-syndicalism’s view of labor unions as organizations for immediate workplace defense and institutions capable of replacing capitalism with worker-managed production.
Second Thoughts on Revolutionary Syndicalism
| Marcel van der Linden | Libcom | February 15, 2011
This academic essay examines the defining characteristics, international reach, strengths, and decline of revolutionary syndicalism. It challenges narrow national histories and emphasizes the movement’s transnational character.
New Perspectives on Anarchism, Labour and Syndicalism
| David Berry and Constance Bantman, editors | Libcom | 2010
This scholarly collection examines anarchist participation in labor and syndicalist movements across national boundaries. The essays emphasize personal networks, migration, international communication, and the interaction between anarchist ideals and everyday union activity.
Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World
| Steven J. Hirsch and Lucien van der Walt, editors | The Ted K Archive | 2010
This collection challenges Eurocentric histories by documenting anarchist and syndicalist labor movements in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the colonial world. It analyzes organizing across racial, ethnic, and imperial divisions.
One Hundred Years of Anarcho-Syndicalism in Spain
| Confederación Nacional del Trabajo | The Anarchist Library | 2010
This institutional history recounts the founding and development of Spain’s CNT. It covers labor struggles, dictatorship, revolution, civil war, clandestine resistance, exile, reconstruction, and debates over revolutionary unionism.
Revolutionary Unionism in Latin America
| Solidarity Federation | The Anarchist Library | 2009
This history surveys anarchist and revolutionary-syndicalist unions in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay. It discusses general strikes, rent strikes, repression, worker education, and international solidarity.
Anarcho-Syndicalism in Melbourne and Sydney
| Conal Thwaite | Libcom | 2009
This thesis investigates the emergence of Australian anarcho-syndicalism during the late twentieth century. It analyzes workplace groups, transportation workers, ideological influences, and efforts to construct rank-and-file industrial organizations.
We Are All Leaders: Anarchism and the Narrative of the Industrial Workers of the World
| Jonathan A. Christiansen | Industrial Workers of the World Archive | 2009
This study examines how the IWW’s anti-hierarchical culture shaped its leadership practices. It argues that the union developed decentralized and collective forms of leadership even while relying on prominent organizers and speakers.
Anarcho-Syndicalism in the Twentieth Century
| Vadim Damier | Libcom | 2009
This global history follows anarcho-syndicalist unions through their rapid expansion, revolutionary struggles, resistance to fascism and Bolshevism, decline after World War II, and later revival.
A Short History of British Anarcho-Syndicalism
| SelfEd Collective | Libcom | September 26, 2008
This history follows British syndicalism from the prewar labor unrest through the shop-stewards movement and the 1926 General Strike. It evaluates anarchist efforts to create organizations controlled directly by rank-and-file workers.
A History of Anarcho-Syndicalism
| SelfEd Collective | Libcom | April 3, 2007
This extensive educational course surveys anarcho-syndicalist movements around the world. It covers their theories, organizational methods, major unions, strikes, revolutions, defeats, and continuing influence on workplace organizing.
1917–1918: The Brazilian Anarchist Uprising
| Edgar Rodrigues | Libcom | September 8, 2006
This history describes the anarchist-led strike wave that spread across Rio de Janeiro and other Brazilian cities. It follows workplace conflicts, general strikes, union expansion, repression, and an attempted revolutionary insurrection.
Remarks on Solidarity Unionism
| Staughton Lynd | The Anarchist Library | June 29, 2005
Lynd advocates organizing based on direct worker participation rather than dependence on professional union officials. He describes solidarity unionism as a democratic practice through which workers collectively address grievances and develop durable workplace power.
Anarchism, the General Strike and the Barcelona Labour Movement, 1899–1914
| Angel Smith | European History Quarterly | January 1997
This scholarly article investigates anarchist influence within Barcelona’s labor movement and the development of general-strike tactics. It examines changing relations among workers, anarchists, republicans, and syndicalist organizations.
A History of the Anarchist-Syndicalist Trade Union Movement
| Workers Solidarity Federation | The Anarchist Library | 1995
This global overview describes the growth of anarchist unions in Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia. It emphasizes their mass membership, federal structures, direct-action tactics, internationalism, and commitment to worker self-management.
The IWW in Canada
| G. Jewell | The Anarchist Library | 1994
This account documents the IWW’s organization of immigrant, migrant, unemployed, agricultural, lumber, and maritime workers in Canada. It highlights free-speech campaigns, mobile organizers, job actions, and government repression.
Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism
| Rudolf Rocker | The Anarchist Library | 1949
This essay provides a concise history of anarchist thought and its relationship to modern labor movements. Rocker argues for federations of worker and community associations rather than centralized political or economic authority.
IWW Convention
| Sam Dolgoff | Libcom | November 1938
Dolgoff reports on debates at the 1938 IWW convention, including collective bargaining and possible affiliation with the International Workers’ Association. The account illustrates strategic disagreements within revolutionary unionism.
Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice
| Rudolf Rocker | The Anarchist Library | 1938
Rocker’s classic work explains the historical development, objectives, and methods of anarcho-syndicalism. It presents unions, direct action, boycotts, sabotage, and the general strike as means of both defending workers and creating a self-managed society.
European Syndicalism and the IWW
| Ralph Chaplin | Libcom | January 31, 1933
Chaplin compares the American IWW with European anarcho-syndicalist organizations, particularly Spain’s CNT. He discusses differences in structure and terminology while emphasizing their shared commitment to revolutionary industrial action.
The General Strike
| Ralph Chaplin | The Anarchist Library | 1933
IWW organizer Ralph Chaplin presents the general strike as labor’s most powerful response to capitalist ownership and economic disorder. He discusses its potential forms, historical development, and capacity to transfer social power to workers.
Samuel Gompers
| Emma Goldman | The Anarchist Library | 1925
Goldman critiques the conservative craft unionism associated with American Federation of Labor leader Samuel Gompers. She contrasts limited wage bargaining with a broader struggle against capitalism and class domination.
The Soviet System or the Dictatorship of the Proletariat?
| Rudolf Rocker | The Anarchist Library | 1920
Rocker distinguishes decentralized workers’ councils from centralized party dictatorship. He argues that genuine soviets should function as autonomous economic and community organizations rather than instruments of state rule.
Declaration of the Principles of Syndicalism
| Rudolf Rocker | The Anarchist Library | 1919
This foundational declaration presents syndicalism as a cultural and economic movement committed to federalism, workers’ autonomy, direct action, and the replacement of capitalism and the state by freely associated producers.
Syndicalism: The Modern Menace to Capitalism
| Emma Goldman | The Anarchist Library | 1913
Goldman explains syndicalism’s commitment to direct industrial action, worker initiative, sabotage, and the general strike. She argues that liberation must be achieved by workers themselves rather than through political representatives.
Syndicalism and Anarcho-Syndicalism in Germany
| Helge Döhring | The Anarchist Library | n.d.
This history examines Germany’s Free Association of German Trade Unions and the Free Workers’ Union of Germany. It describes federal organization, strike solidarity, cultural activity, opposition to political parties, and resistance to militarism.
The Beginnings of German Syndicalism
| Rudolf Rocker | The Anarchist Library | n.d.
Rocker recounts the emergence of revolutionary localist unions in Germany and their development into a syndicalist movement. He explores their conflicts with centralized social-democratic trade unions and parliamentary politics.
Origins and Ideas of Anarcho-Syndicalism
| Solidarity Federation | The Anarchist Library | n.d.
This introduction traces anarcho-syndicalism to the libertarian wing of the First International. It explains workers’ self-organization, direct action, federalism, mutual aid, and the revolutionary transformation of unions into institutions of social administration.
Strategy and Struggle: Anarcho-Syndicalism in the Twenty-First Century
| Solidarity Federation | Libcom | n.d.
This text reassesses traditional syndicalist strategies under contemporary workplace conditions. It contrasts mass revolutionary unions with smaller organizations based on direct action, workplace networks, and militant worker self-organization.
Strategy and Struggle: Debate Within the Solidarity Federation
| Solidarity Federation | The Anarchist Library | n.d.
This collection presents internal debates about how anarcho-syndicalists should organize in modern workplaces. Contributors discuss revolutionary unions, workplace resistance groups, minority organization, and relations with mainstream trade unions.
Proposals for the Regeneration of the IWW
| Sam Dolgoff, editor | The Anarchist Library | n.d.
This collection debates how the IWW might recover its role as a revolutionary industrial union. It addresses labor law, collective bargaining, workplace organization, class struggle, internal democracy, and independence from government regulation.
Industrial Suicide: Understanding the 1924 Split of the IWW
| Cameron Molyneux | Libcom | n.d.
This article analyzes how government repression, factional conflict, financial problems, and organizational disagreements produced the devastating 1924 division within the Industrial Workers of the World.
A Short History of May Day
This history traces International Workers’ Day to the anarchist-led struggle for the eight-hour workday and the prosecution of the Haymarket defendants. It explains how their execution became an international symbol of labor resistance.
Anarchist Communists and the Italian Base-Union Movement
| Federazione dei Comunisti Anarchici | Libcom | n.d.
This essay connects the factory councils of the Biennio Rosso with contemporary grassroots unions in Italy. It considers how anarchist communists can support militant rank-and-file organization without substituting themselves for workers.
Kropotkin and the Rebuilding of the International Workers’ Association
| Vadim Damier | The Anarchist Library | n.d.
This study discusses postwar efforts to reconstruct an international revolutionary labor movement independent of both social democracy and Bolshevism. It places Kropotkin within debates over syndicalism, councils, and worker control.
FAU and IWA—Looking Back to Look Ahead
| Free Workers’ Union International Secretariat | The Anarchist Library | n.d.
This account examines the history of Germany’s FAU and its relationship with the International Workers’ Association. It discusses organizational diversity, international cooperation, workplace strategy, and disputes within modern anarcho-syndicalism.
Class Struggle Without Borders
| Workers Solidarity Federation | The Anarchist Library | n.d.
This pamphlet introduces libertarian socialism through examples of anarchist labor organization in Spain, Ukraine, Latin America, and South Africa. It emphasizes internationalism, anti-racism, worker control, and opposition to nationalism.
Outline of U.S. Labor History with a Focus on the Role of the Left
| Adam Weaver | The Anarchist Library | n.d.
This overview surveys radical currents within American labor history, including anarchists, socialists, communists, and the IWW. It examines how state repression weakened revolutionary labor while leaving a lasting organizational and cultural legacy.
Anarchism, Labor Unions, and Working People
| WorkingUSA | Social History Portal | n.d.
This introduction highlights the long relationship between anarchist thought and labor organization. It identifies worker autonomy, direct action, union democracy, mutual aid, and resistance to bureaucracy as continuing areas of research.
Anarchist Contributions to Anti-War and Anti-Militarist Movements
Anarchism in Australia
| Leigh Kendall | Libcom | March 22, 2026
This historical overview discusses Australian anarchist involvement in labor, cultural, anti-conscription, and antiwar activism. It considers how Vietnam-era campaigns provided opportunities for wider criticism of capitalism and state authority.
The Anti-Militarism of Fools
| Nikita Ivansky | The Anarchist Library | September 2, 2025
This contemporary intervention examines divisions among anarchists over revolutionary defeatism, national defense, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It criticizes approaches that reduce complex conflicts to abstract antiwar formulas.
Response from Participants in the Prague Anti-War Congress
| Participants in the Prague Anti-War Congress | Libcom | August 30, 2024
This statement illustrates contemporary disputes within anarchist antimilitarism over Ukraine, national self-determination, NATO, Russian aggression, internationalism, and the political responsibilities of activists living within countries at war.
War on Anarchism
| Various Authors | Libcom | June 10, 2024
This controversial intervention criticizes anarchists who support military alliances or national war efforts. It reflects wider disagreements over imperialism, geopolitical power, self-defense, and whether involvement in state warfare can be reconciled with anarchism.
A Call Against Arms
| Antipolitika | The Anarchist Library | May 25, 2024
This Balkan anarchist statement develops an autonomous anti-capitalist position against contemporary wars. It connects militarism with nationalism, environmental destruction, gender violence, border controls, inequality, and expanding state repression.
Anarchism and the British Warfare State
| Carissa Honeywell | The Anarchist Library | April 4, 2024
This study examines how British anarchists linked war to the centralized state, capitalism, compulsory service, and hierarchical social relations. It focuses particularly on the Freedom Press group and its wartime publication War Commentary.
Reflections on Revolutionary Defeatism
| “Lefty” Hooligan | Libcom | March 2, 2024
This article reassesses revolutionary defeatism in light of recent wars. It discusses the position’s use by anarchists and anti-state communists and considers the practical meaning of opposing every belligerent government.
Anarchism and Revolutionary Defeatism
| K. C. Sinclair | Libcom | 2024
This essay traces revolutionary-defeatist ideas through Bakunin, Louise Michel, Malatesta, and later anarchist movements. It examines refusal of conscription, mutiny, class struggle during wartime, and efforts to turn interstate war into social revolution.
The Conscripts’ Strike and Anarchist Anti-Militarism
| K. C. Sinclair | Libcom | 2024
This historical discussion recovers Louise Michel’s proposal that conscripts refuse military obedience. It places her intervention within the wider anarchist tradition of transforming resistance to war into social revolt.
Are You My Martyr?
| Various Authors | Libcom | 2023
This exchange debates whether anarchists in an invaded country should prioritize antimilitarist agitation or armed defense. It demonstrates the tensions between opposition to military institutions and solidarity with communities resisting conquest.
Anarchism and the First World War
| Matthew S. Adams | The Anarchist Library | 2023
This study explores anarchist responses to World War I, including the international antiwar majority, the pro-Allied Manifesto of the Sixteen, conscientious objection, propaganda, repression, and the war’s consequences for the movement.
Anarchist Antimilitarism and Myths About the War in Ukraine
| Some Anarchists from the Central European Region | Libcom | November 5, 2022
This essay advocates practical opposition to war through industrial action, sabotage, refugee assistance, anti-propaganda work, mutual aid, and resistance to immigration controls. It challenges nationalist interpretations of the conflict.
Anarchist Anti-War Action and the Growth of Nationalism in Russia
| Antti Rautiainen | The Anarchist Library | 2022
This article describes Russian anarchist opposition to the invasion of Ukraine under conditions of censorship and repression. It analyzes street protest, sabotage, exile, prisoner support, and the effects of wartime nationalism.
Emma Goldman, One of History’s Best-Known Anarchists, Left an Outsized Legacy
| Kim Kelly | The Anarchist Library | June 24, 2020
This accessible biography connects Goldman’s anarchism with workers’ rights, feminism, birth control, free speech, opposition to conscription, criticism of Bolshevism, and support for the Spanish Revolution.
Australian Draft Resistance and the Vietnam War
| Michael Matteson and Geoff Mullen | Libcom | June 30, 2017
These accounts recover the role of anarchists and libertarians in Australia’s movement against conscription and the Vietnam War. They discuss draft-card burning, demonstrations, direct action, imprisonment, and cooperation with broader antiwar coalitions.
The Anarchist Anti-Conscription Movement in the USA
| Carl Levy | Manchester University Press | 2017
This scholarly chapter examines the strategy and political principles of the American No-Conscription League. It emphasizes that many anarchists opposed compulsory service while distinguishing their position from absolute pacifism.
Anarchism, Internationalism, and Solidarity Unionism in Tampico
| Kevan Antonio Aguilar | Wobblies of the World | 2017
This chapter examines cooperation between the IWW and Mexico’s anarchist labor movement in the oil port of Tampico. It highlights cross-border solidarity during wartime, anti-imperialism, and strikes against American and British companies.
A New Anarchism Emerges, 1940–1954
| Andrew Cornell | Libcom | May 19, 2015
This history follows American anarchists through World War II and the early Cold War. It covers conscientious objection, pacifist organizations, resistance to segregation, communal experiments, and the emergence of a new generation of antiwar radicals.
Anarchism and the British Warfare State: The War Commentary Prosecution
| Carissa Honeywell | Libcom | 2015
This study situates the prosecution of British anarchists within the development of a permanent warfare state. It examines censorship, military obedience, civil liberties, and anarchist criticism of both fascist and Allied governments.
War Commentary and Anarchist Opposition to World War II
| Carissa Honeywell | The Anarchist Library | 2015
Honeywell examines War Commentary as a rare organized anarchist opposition to the British state during World War II. Its editors connected wartime mobilization with capitalism, colonialism, industrial discipline, and postwar state planning.
The Tragic Week and Resistance to Colonial Conscription
| Murray Bookchin | Libcom | July 30, 2014
This account shows how opposition to conscription for Spain’s Moroccan campaign united antimilitarists, anarchists, and militant workers in Barcelona. A general strike developed into a broad uprising against church and state authority.
Syndicalism, the General Strike, and the Prevention of War
| Wayne Thorpe | Libcom | April 27, 2013
This history explains how delegates to the First International proposed stopping production when war broke out. Revolutionary syndicalists later incorporated the antiwar general strike into their international strategy.
The IWW, Internationalism, and Opposition to War
| Wayne Thorpe | Libcom | 2013
This study shows how the IWW’s international policies were shaped by anti-capitalism, hostility to nationalism, and solidarity among workers. It also examines disagreements about formal cooperation with anarcho-syndicalist internationals.
A History of Wild Rose Rebellion, 2007–2009
| Wild Rose Rebellion | Libcom | January 26, 2011
This organizational history describes an Iowa anarchist group formed by activists from an antiwar coalition, an infoshop, and an IWW branch. It follows their preparations for protests against the 2008 Republican National Convention.
Anarchists and the Second Chechen War
| Antti Rautiainen | Libcom | March 13, 2010
This reflective history analyzes Russian anarchists’ unsuccessful efforts to organize opposition to the Second Chechen War. It discusses repression, public indifference, nationalist pressure, and strategic weaknesses within the anti-authoritarian movement.
The Labor Movement, War, and Revolutionary Syndicalism
| David Berry and Constance Bantman, editors | Libcom | 2010
Essays in this collection demonstrate how migration and transnational labor networks allowed anarchists to circulate anti-militarist ideas. Syndicalists viewed international worker organization as a practical counterforce to nationalist mobilization.
The International Workers’ Association and Anti-Militarism
| Vadim Damier | Libcom | 2009
Damier documents antiwar and antimilitarist campaigns undertaken by anarcho-syndicalist unions. The study connects workplace organizing, international labor solidarity, opposition to arms production, and resistance to military mobilization.
Rabble Rousers and Merry Pranksters
| Toby Boraman | Libcom | 2007
This history of anarchism in Aotearoa New Zealand documents anarchist participation in anti-nuclear, anti-Vietnam War, anti-bases, unemployed, and peace movements from the 1960s through the 1980s.
War and Revolution: Hungarian Anarchism
| Martyn Everett | Libcom | 2006
This history examines Hungarian anarchists during World War I and the revolutionary period that followed. It describes antiwar propaganda, labor organizing, revolutionary networks, state repression, and conflicts with authoritarian communists.
Anarchism and the Anti-Globalization Movement
| Barbara Epstein | Monthly Review | September 2001
This article examines the anarchist ideas and decentralized organizing methods that influenced the anti-globalization movement. It connects the movement to earlier antiwar, feminist, environmental, and direct-action traditions.
Anarchy in Interpretation: The Life of Emma Goldman
| Jason Wehling | The Anarchist Library | 1995
This biographical essay traces Goldman’s labor, feminist, free-speech, and antiwar activism. It describes her imprisonment for organizing the No-Conscription League and the wartime suppression of Mother Earth.
Revolutionary Syndicalism and the Antiwar Strike
| Rudolf Rocker | JSTOR | 1938
Rocker’s analysis presents the strike as a means of challenging both capitalist production and the material foundations of warfare. He links control of industry with the possibility of preventing governments from mobilizing workers against one another.
Address to the International Working Men’s Association Congress
| Emma Goldman | The Anarchist Library | 1937
Goldman reports on the Spanish Revolution and appeals for international labor solidarity with the CNT and other anarchist organizations fighting fascism while constructing worker-managed institutions.
The General Strike as an Anti-War Strategy
| Ralph Chaplin | The Anarchist Library | 1933
Chaplin’s discussion of the general strike illuminates why anarchists and syndicalists considered workers’ control over production a potential means of stopping arms manufacture, military transportation, and interstate warfare.
Speech Against Conscription and War
| Emma Goldman | Archives of Women’s Political Communication | June 14, 1917
Goldman defends resistance to conscription and argues that imprisoning antiwar speakers cannot eliminate the social causes of dissent. The address illustrates her combination of civil-liberties advocacy and revolutionary antimilitarism.
Speech at a Meeting of the No-Conscription League
| Emma Goldman | University of Massachusetts Amherst | June 4, 1917
Goldman denounces compulsory military service as an attack on individual conscience and political liberty. The speech helped make the No-Conscription League a major target of federal wartime repression.
Labor, Conscription, and the No-Conscription League
| Emma Goldman | Gifts of Speech | June 4, 1917
This speech appeals directly to workers and immigrants threatened by the draft. Goldman argues that freedom of conscience is incompatible with a government compelling individuals to kill on its behalf.
Anarchists Demand Strike to End War
| Emma Goldman and New York Times Reporters | The Anarchist Library | May 19, 1917
This contemporary report describes a gathering at which Emma Goldman, IWW members, and other radicals promoted a workers’ strike against conscription and American participation in World War I.
Speeches Against Conscription
| Emma Goldman | Libcom | 1917
These speeches explain why anarchists considered wartime conscription a decisive test of their opposition to militarism. Goldman calls compulsory service a form of state coercion and urges individuals to act according to conscience.
Anarchists, Labor, and the Antiwar General Strike
| Emma Goldman | The Anarchist Library | 1917
Reports collected here show Goldman advocating a general strike against the draft and the war. They reveal the overlap among anarchists, IWW activists, immigrant workers, and other American opponents of militarization.
Anti-War Manifesto
| Anarchist International | The Anarchist Library | 1915
This international manifesto urges workers and peasants to reject nationalist mobilization during World War I. It reminds workers that the same weapons issued for foreign war had frequently been used to suppress strikes and revolts.
Anti-Militarism: Was It Properly Understood?
| Errico Malatesta | The Anarchist Library | 1915
Malatesta defines antimilitarism as refusal to take up arms at the command of rulers. He distinguishes participation in state warfare from voluntary struggle for social revolution and popular liberation.
Anarchist Internationalism and the First World War
| Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, Errico Malatesta, and others | The Anarchist Library | 1915
Signed by prominent anarchists from several countries, this declaration rejects the claim that workers share common interests with their national governments. It calls for international working-class resistance to the war.
Anarchism and Other Essays
| Emma Goldman | The Anarchist Library | 1910
This collection presents Goldman’s views on anarchism, labor, political violence, prisons, patriotism, women’s emancipation, and social transformation. Her essay on patriotism provides an influential anarchist critique of nationalism and militarism.
The Effect of War on the Workers
| Emma Goldman | The Anarchist Library | 1900
Goldman argues that imperial war imposes death, taxation, unemployment, and deprivation on working people while enriching governments, arms manufacturers, and economic elites.
Why Anarchists Oppose Militarism and Nationalism
| Boston Anarchists Against Militarism and Boston NEFAC | The Anarchist Library | n.d.
This pamphlet explains anarchist opposition to armies, nationalism, imperial intervention, and the military economy. It argues that workers are repeatedly sent to fight one another for the interests of states and ruling classes.
Rethinking Anti-Militarism Today
| Anarchist Federation | The Anarchist Library | n.d.
This statement considers how militarization operates through foreign interventions, domestic patrols, recruitment campaigns, emergency laws, surveillance, and nationalist culture. It proposes renewed antimilitarist education and direct action.
British Anarchism Succumbs to War Fever
| Anarchist Communist Group | Libcom | n.d.
This polemic defends antimilitarism as a central anarchist principle. It argues that armies enforce capitalist interests abroad, suppress strikes and uprisings at home, and transform workers of different countries into enemies.
The Prosecution of the War Commentary Anarchists, 1945
| Carissa Honeywell | Libcom | n.d.
This article documents the British government’s prosecution of anarchist editors who opposed World War II and encouraged soldiers to think critically about military discipline and postwar social reconstruction.
Anarchists Against World War I: Two Little-Known Events
This article recounts anarchist antiwar meetings and organizing in the British towns of Abertillery and Stockport. It demonstrates that opposition to World War I extended beyond famous metropolitan organizations.
Pacific Northwest Antiwar History: Labor Radicalism and World War I
| Jessie Kindig | University of Washington | n.d.
This regional history explores how radical labor organizations, socialists, anarchists, and the IWW opposed World War I in the Pacific Northwest while confronting censorship, vigilantism, imprisonment, and government raids.
Pacific Northwest Antiwar History: Anti-Nuclear Organizing
| Jessie Kindig | University of Washington | n.d.
This illustrated history surveys anti-nuclear organizing in the Pacific Northwest during the 1970s and 1980s. It documents affinity groups, civil disobedience, feminist peace activism, and decentralized direct-action networks influenced by anarchism.
The No-Conscription League
| Wikipedia Contributors | Wikipedia | n.d.
This overview describes the anarchist organization founded by Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman in 1917. It covers its manifesto, public meetings, anti-draft campaign, federal surveillance, and the prosecution of its organizers.
Emma Goldman, 1869–1940
| PBS American Experience | PBS | n.d.
This biographical profile surveys Goldman’s role as an anarchist organizer and advocate of labor rights, women’s equality, education, free speech, and resistance to compulsory military service.
Labor Radicalism and Opposition to World War I
| Jessie Kindig | University of Washington | n.d.
This history documents the central role of radical workers in opposing the First World War. It covers IWW organizing, socialist and anarchist dissent, government raids, sedition prosecutions, and vigilante violence.
The Effect of Militarism on Labor
| Emma Goldman | Freedom | March–April 1900
Goldman links military expansion to economic exploitation by showing how workers produce weapons, finance wars through taxation, serve in armies, and endure the unemployment and hardship that follow imperial conflict.
Anarchist Labor Internationalism Against War
| Workers Solidarity Federation | The Anarchist Library | n.d.
This pamphlet argues that workers have more in common across national borders than with the governments and employers of their own countries. It presents international class solidarity as an alternative to nationalism and war.
Anti-Militarism and the Anarchist Labor Movement
| Various Authors | The Anarchist Library | n.d.
This subject archive brings together historical and contemporary anarchist writings on conscription, standing armies, nationalism, imperialism, military alliances, conscientious objection, revolutionary defeatism, and direct action against war.
Anarchist Arguments Against Military Nationalism
| Boston Anarchists Against Militarism | The Anarchist Library | n.d.
This introductory text explains that military nationalism encourages workers to identify with ruling institutions rather than with exploited people elsewhere. It advocates cross-border solidarity and class-based opposition to war.
Anarchist Labor Organizing and Revolutionary Unionism
France and the Anarchist General Strike of 1912
| Freedom Editors | Freedom News | December 11, 2022
This historical article recounts the French CGT’s one-day general strike against war. Approximately 600,000 workers participated, demonstrating the capacity of revolutionary unions to connect industrial power with antimilitarist action.
Anarchists in the Italian Factory Occupations
| Iain McKay | Libcom | March 7, 2021
This account details anarchist and syndicalist involvement in Italy’s Biennio Rosso. Workers occupied factories, formed councils, and attempted to move beyond wage bargaining toward direct management of production.
The Rise and Fall of the Knights of Labor
| Raymond S. Solomon | Freedom News | December 15, 2019
This history examines the Knights of Labor, the eight-hour movement, and the Great Upheaval of the 1880s. It places the Haymarket anarchists within a wider movement of strikes, boycotts, and worker organization.
Moving with the Times—but Not in Step
| Vernon Richards | Freedom News | August 2, 2018
Richards reflects on anarchist relations with socialist parties and the institutional labor movement. He argues that workers’ emancipation requires decentralized initiative rather than political leadership from above.
A Timeline of Anarchism in Britain
| Freedom Editors | Freedom News | May 25, 2017
This timeline identifies major events in British anarchist history between 1880 and 1930, including labor organizing, strikes, publications, antiwar activity, prosecutions, and international solidarity campaigns.
The Rise of the Revolutionary Syndicalist Movement
| Vadim Damier | Libcom | 2009
This global history describes the rapid growth of revolutionary syndicalist unions before World War I. It covers militant strikes in Portugal, France, Italy, Spain, Latin America, and other regions.
The Revolutionary Years
| Vadim Damier | Libcom | 2009
Damier examines the postwar revolutionary wave, including Barcelona’s La Canadiense strike, Italian factory occupations, German workers’ councils, and the expansion of anarcho-syndicalist organizations.
We Are All Leaders
| Jonathan A. Christiansen | Industrial Workers of the World | 2009
Christiansen examines how the IWW combined charismatic organizers with an anti-hierarchical commitment to rank-and-file control. The article explores collective leadership as a distinctive anarchistic feature of Wobbly culture.
The First Globalisation and Transnational Labour Activism in Southern Africa
| Lucien van der Walt | African Studies | 2007
This study examines the international networks that spread anarchism and syndicalism among workers in southern Africa. It discusses the Industrial Workers of Africa, interracial labor organizing, general strikes, and the antiwar War on War League.
The IWW: Its First One Hundred Years
| Fred W. Thompson and Jon Bekken | Industrial Workers of the World | 2005
This organizational history follows the IWW from its founding in 1905 through major strikes, free-speech fights, wartime repression, internal divisions, and later revival. It emphasizes industrial unionism, direct action, and worker solidarity across racial and occupational divisions.
Collectives in the Spanish Revolution
| Gaston Leval | The Anarchist Library | 1975
Leval provides a detailed survey of industrial and agricultural collectivization. He examines how anarchist unions and community assemblies coordinated complex economic activity without conventional private ownership.
The Spanish Collectives
| Sam Dolgoff, editor | The Anarchist Library | 1974
This collection presents testimony and analysis concerning worker and peasant collectives established in revolutionary Spain. It discusses production, distribution, workplace democracy, agricultural federation, and wartime pressures.
The Evolution of Anarcho-Syndicalism
| Rudolf Rocker | Libcom | 1938
Rocker traces the development of revolutionary unionism from the First International through French syndicalism, the IWW, and the creation of anarcho-syndicalist labor internationals.
With the Peasants of Aragon
| Augustin Souchy | The Anarchist Library | 1937
Souchy’s eyewitness account describes anarchist rural collectives during the Spanish Revolution. Villages reorganized landholding, production, exchange, public services, and local government through voluntary assemblies.
The General Strike for Industrial Freedom
| Ralph Chaplin | Industrial Workers of the World | 1933
Chaplin presents the general strike as a process through which workers can halt capitalist production and establish collective control over industry without relying on parliamentary government.
The Advancing Proletariat
| Ralph Chaplin | Industrial Workers of the World | 1932
Chaplin interprets labor history as a continuing struggle between those who work and those who control productive property. He presents industrial organization as the basis for a new cooperative social order.
The Centralia Conspiracy
| Ralph Chaplin | Industrial Workers of the World | 1920
Chaplin describes the prosecution of Wobblies following the violent Centralia confrontation of 1919. He argues that employers, veterans’ organizations, and government officials conspired to destroy the local union.
The IWW: A Study of American Syndicalism
| Paul Frederick Brissenden | Columbia University | 1919
This early scholarly history analyzes the origins, ideology, structure, and strike activity of the Industrial Workers of the World. It provides detailed evidence about the IWW’s relationship with anarchism and revolutionary syndicalism.
The Everett Massacre
| Walker C. Smith | Industrial Workers of the World | 1918
This account documents the killing of IWW members traveling to support a free-speech fight in Everett, Washington. It illustrates the violent repression faced by itinerant workers and revolutionary union organizers.
Sabotage
| Elizabeth Gurley Flynn | Industrial Workers of the World | 1916
Flynn defends sabotage in its original labor meaning as the conscious withdrawal of efficiency by workers. She distinguishes it from indiscriminate destruction and places it within the tradition of workplace direct action.
Are There New Fields for Anarchist Activity?
| Max Nettlau | The Anarchist Library | 1914
Nettlau considers how anarchists might extend their work beyond propaganda into trade unions, cooperatives, cultural associations, and antimilitarist movements while retaining an independent revolutionary perspective.
Syndicalism
| Earl C. Ford and William Z. Foster | The Anarchist Library | 1913
This early American text explains syndicalism as a movement that combines daily labor struggles with the revolutionary goal of abolishing wage labor and transferring control of industry to workers.
Direct Action and Sabotage
| Walker C. Smith | Industrial Workers of the World | 1913
This pamphlet explains direct action as workers’ use of their economic power without dependence on politicians or courts. It discusses strikes, slowdowns, workplace resistance, and control over the labor process.
Anarchism and Organization
| Amédée Dunois | The Anarchist Library | 1907
Dunois argues that anarchists should build durable organizations and participate actively in unions, antimilitarist campaigns, educational associations, and other popular movements rather than relying exclusively on isolated individual revolt.
Industrial Unionism
| William E. Trautmann | Industrial Workers of the World | 1907
Trautmann argues that craft divisions weaken workers by separating people employed by the same corporations. He advocates unified industrial organization capable of confronting concentrated capitalist power.
The IWW Preamble
| Industrial Workers of the World | IWW Archive | 1905
The IWW’s foundational declaration argues that workers and employers have no common interests. It proposes organizing all workers into One Big Union capable of carrying on production after the abolition of capitalism.
The Old-Time Wobblies
| A. J. Miller | Industrial Workers of the World | n.d.
Miller recalls veteran IWW organizers who preserved revolutionary-union traditions during periods of decline. The account illustrates how personal mentorship, workplace agitation, and oral history transmitted Wobbly ideas between generations.
Origins of a Wobbly Life
| A. J. Miller | Industrial Workers of the World | n.d.
This memoir describes the author’s path from Vietnam-era antiwar activism into the IWW. It demonstrates how opposition to war, countercultural protest, and workplace radicalism converged in the revival of revolutionary unionism.
Who Do You Call When You Don’t Have a Labor Union?
| Industrial Workers of the World | The Anarchist Library | n.d.
This organizing guide introduces solidarity unionism as a way for workers to act collectively without waiting for formal recognition. It combines workplace direct action with anti-racism, environmental justice, internationalism, and opposition to militarism.
Anarchosyndicalism
| Jesse Cohn | The Anarchist Library | n.d.
This concise reference article defines anarcho-syndicalism and identifies major organizations such as Argentina’s FORA, France’s CGT, Spain’s CNT, and the Industrial Workers of the World.
The Story of the Syndicalist Workers’ Federation
Brown recounts the emergence of the Syndicalist Workers’ Federation in postwar Britain. He discusses industrial propaganda, strike solidarity, opposition to nationalization, and efforts to reconstruct an international anarcho-syndicalist movement.
Anarcho-Syndicalism: History and Action
| Direct Action Movement | Libcom | n.d.
This pamphlet explains the history and strategy of the British Direct Action Movement. It advocates building a national working-class anarchist organization rooted in workplace action and international syndicalist cooperation.
One Big Union
| Industrial Workers of the World | IWW Archive | n.d.
This pamphlet outlines the IWW’s industrial-union model, in which workers organize by industry rather than craft. It emphasizes solidarity, direct action, democratic control, and preparation for worker management of production.
The Truth About the Bisbee Deportation
| Industrial Workers of the World | IWW Archive | n.d.
This history recounts the forced removal of more than one thousand striking miners and suspected IWW supporters from Bisbee, Arizona, in 1917. The deportation demonstrated close cooperation between corporations and local authorities.
Bread and Roses: The Lawrence Textile Strike
| Industrial Workers of the World | IWW Archive | n.d.
This history covers the IWW-led Lawrence strike of 1912, during which immigrant textile workers speaking many languages organized mass picketing, relief distribution, children’s evacuation, and negotiations across ethnic divisions.
The Paterson Silk Strike
| Industrial Workers of the World | IWW Archive | n.d.
This account examines the IWW’s 1913 struggle among silk workers in Paterson, New Jersey. It discusses mass meetings, multilingual organization, cultural pageantry, employer resistance, and the challenges of sustaining a long strike.
The Spokane Free-Speech Fight
| Industrial Workers of the World | IWW Archive | n.d.
This history describes how Wobblies deliberately filled Spokane’s jails to challenge ordinances preventing street speaking. The campaign established free speech as an essential condition for organizing migratory and unemployed workers.
The Fresno Free-Speech Fight
| Industrial Workers of the World | IWW Archive | n.d.
This article recounts the IWW’s use of mass civil disobedience against restrictions on public organizing in Fresno. Hundreds of workers volunteered for arrest until local authorities abandoned the restrictions.
Joe Hill and the IWW
| Industrial Workers of the World | IWW Archive | n.d.
This collection documents songwriter and organizer Joe Hill’s contribution to Wobbly culture. His songs transformed labor grievances into memorable expressions of solidarity, anticlericalism, and resistance to employers.
Lucy Parsons and the Industrial Workers of the World
| Lucy Parsons | Industrial Workers of the World | n.d.
These materials document Parsons’s participation in the IWW’s founding and her advocacy of industrial organization, direct action, racial equality, and revolutionary transformation.
Big Bill Haywood and Industrial Unionism
| William D. Haywood | Industrial Workers of the World | n.d.
Haywood’s writings and speeches explain why miners, factory workers, transportation workers, and other wage earners should organize together rather than remain divided into craft unions.
Elizabeth Gurley Flynn: Memories of the Industrial Workers of the World
| Elizabeth Gurley Flynn | Industrial Workers of the World | n.d.
Flynn recalls organizing textile workers, miners, timber workers, and free-speech campaigns. Her accounts highlight women’s leadership and the central role of immigrant workers in the early IWW.
The IWW and Agricultural Workers
| Patrick Renshaw | Industrial Workers of the World | n.d.
This history examines the IWW’s organization of migratory harvest workers across the American West. It discusses job delegates, traveling membership cards, camp conditions, wage struggles, and opposition to labor contractors.
Timber Workers and the IWW
| Industrial Workers of the World | IWW Archive | n.d.
This account covers organizing among loggers and sawmill workers in the Pacific Northwest. Wobblies fought for shorter hours, safer camps, better food, clean bedding, and worker-controlled job committees.
Marine Transport Workers and International Solidarity
| Industrial Workers of the World | IWW Archive | n.d.
This history examines the IWW’s attempts to organize sailors, dockworkers, and other maritime workers. Their strategic position enabled them to connect workplace action with international labor solidarity and opposition to war shipping.
The La Canadiense Strike
This history describes the CNT-led strike that paralyzed Barcelona in 1919. The movement won the release of prisoners, wage improvements, and legal recognition of the eight-hour workday in Spain.
The Casas Viejas Uprising
This article recounts an anarchist-inspired rural uprising in Andalusia and the government massacre that followed. It demonstrates both the depth of agrarian radicalism and the violence used against landless laborers.
The Asturian Miners’ Uprising of 1934
This history examines the revolutionary strike launched by miners in Asturias. Anarchists, socialists, and communists briefly cooperated in worker committees before the uprising was crushed by military forces.
The Barcelona May Days of 1937
This article describes the armed confrontation between rank-and-file revolutionaries and the increasingly centralized Republican government. It focuses on worker control, the CNT, and conflicts over the direction of the Spanish Revolution.
Workers’ Self-Management in the Spanish Revolution
Dolgoff documents collectivized factories, transportation networks, farms, and public services during the Spanish Revolution. He argues that workers demonstrated the practical possibility of decentralized economic coordination.
Anarchists, Workers, and Opposition to War
Review: Anarchists on the War in Ukraine
| Josie Ó Súileabháin | Freedom News | July 16, 2026
This review considers interviews with anarchists from Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and other European countries. It explores occupation, armed resistance, antimilitarism, solidarity, exile, and disagreements over participation in territorial defense.
The Continuing Necessity of Black Anarchism
| Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin | Freedom News | May 17, 2026
Ervin argues that Black anarchists should build autonomous organizations rooted in community survival, labor struggle, anti-fascism, and opposition to state violence rather than subordinate themselves to hierarchical political groups.
Two Different Paths to World Peace?
| Helge Döhring | Freedom News | September 7, 2025
This article compares anarchist Erich Mühsam’s revolutionary antimilitarism with alternative peace strategies. Mühsam identified the state, hierarchy, nationalism, and obedience as institutional foundations of organized warfare.
The 1912 French Antiwar General Strike
| Freedom Editors | Freedom News | December 11, 2022
This account describes the mass industrial protest organized by revolutionary syndicalists shortly before World War I. Building workers, miners, metalworkers, dockers, and other laborers stopped work in opposition to militarization.
On Interventionism: Considering No War but the Class War
| Rob Ray | Freedom News | July 10, 2022
This essay traces the anarchist and revolutionary use of the slogan “No War but the Class War.” It examines antimilitarist responses to conflicts from World War I to the invasion of Ukraine.
The Great Unrest and the Interrupted Labor Revolt
| Rob Ray | Freedom News | July 10, 2022
This article places British anarchist opposition to World War I within the Great Unrest, a major strike wave that challenged employers and government authority before wartime mobilization disrupted labor militancy.
The January Strikes and the End of World War I
| Rob Ray | Freedom News | July 10, 2022
This discussion highlights the importance of German mass strikes, military mutinies, and working-class revolt in ending World War I and destabilizing the imperial government.
World War and Freedom’s Nadir
| Rob Ray | Freedom News | September 20, 2018
This historical extract describes the crisis that World War I created for Britain’s anarchist movement. It covers Freedom’s antiwar campaigning and the dispute between Errico Malatesta and Peter Kropotkin.
The Freedom Group and World War I
| Rob Ray | Freedom News | September 20, 2018
This history describes how Freedom maintained antiwar agitation despite internal divisions, censorship, declining circulation, and the intense nationalism that accompanied Britain’s entry into World War I.
The Bisbee Deportation and Wartime Repression
| Industrial Worker | Industrial Workers of the World | June 4, 2017
This historical issue examines the forced deportation of striking miners and suspected radicals during World War I. The incident illustrates how patriotism and wartime emergency powers were used to suppress labor organizing.
Wobblies, Mexican Radicals, and Cross-Border Organizing
| Industrial Worker Contributors | Industrial Workers of the World | June 4, 2017
This collection discusses exchanges among IWW members, Mexican anarchists, miners, and migrant workers in the borderlands. Their networks challenged corporate power, racial division, and wartime nationalism.
The State, Militarism, and Anarchist Resistance
| Carissa Honeywell | The Anarchist Library | 2015
Honeywell explains how anarchists opposed not only particular wars but also the centralized institutions, industrial discipline, surveillance, and political obedience required by a permanent warfare state.
Handbook for Nonviolent Campaigns
| War Resisters’ International | War Resisters’ International | 2014
This handbook offers practical guidance on campaign planning, affinity groups, consensus decision-making, direct action, legal support, and movement sustainability for antimilitarist organizers.
The French CGT’s Campaign Against War
| Wayne Thorpe | Libcom | April 27, 2013
Thorpe examines the French CGT’s resolutions calling for a general strike if war began. The strategy sought to use workers’ control over transportation and production to obstruct military mobilization.
The Failure of Nonviolence
| Peter Gelderloos | The Anarchist Library | 2013
This book evaluates recent protest movements and argues that symbolic demonstrations alone rarely overcome entrenched institutions. It advocates decentralized resistance using varied tactics and community organization.
Anarchist Labor Networks Across National Borders
| David Berry and Constance Bantman, editors | Cambridge Scholars Publishing | 2010
This collection demonstrates how migrants, exiles, newspapers, personal correspondence, and union congresses created a transnational anarchist labor movement that resisted narrow nationalism.
Malatesta, Labor Internationalism, and Popular Chauvinism
| Davide Turcato | Cambridge Scholars Publishing | 2010
This chapter analyzes Malatesta’s labor-oriented anarchism and his warnings about nationalism within the working class. It shows why international organization alone could not automatically prevent wartime chauvinism.
The International Workers’ Association and Opposition to Militarism
| Vadim Damier | Black Cat Press | 2009
Damier documents how anarcho-syndicalist unions opposed conscription, military production, imperial expansion, fascism, and collaboration between labor institutions and national governments.
How Nonviolence Protects the State
| Peter Gelderloos | The Anarchist Library | 2007
Gelderloos argues that movements should retain tactical diversity rather than impose universal nonviolence. He examines labor struggles, anticolonial movements, civil-rights campaigns, and resistance to war.
The War on War League in South Africa
| Lucien van der Walt | African Studies | 2007
This study describes a South African antimilitarist organization that brought together syndicalists and labor radicals during World War I. Its networks helped revive revolutionary unionism and interracial organizing.
Labor Internationalism Against Colonial War
| Lucien van der Walt | African Studies | 2007
This article shows how syndicalist networks linked struggles against exploitation with opposition to empire and racial domination. Workers’ internationalism provided an alternative to both colonial nationalism and white labor protectionism.
Revolutionary Unionism Beyond the Nation-State
| Lucien van der Walt | African Studies | 2007
This study reveals how syndicalists built international and interracial organizations despite colonial borders. Their organizing anticipated a labor movement based on class solidarity rather than citizenship or race.
The Shop-Stewards Movement and Wartime Labor Militancy
| SelfEd Collective | Libcom | 2006
This history examines the growth of rank-and-file shop-stewards committees during World War I. Workers created structures that could coordinate resistance independently of conservative national union executives.
British Syndicalists and the 1926 General Strike
| SelfEd Collective | Libcom | 2006
This account describes syndicalist influence on attempts to place the General Strike under direct rank-and-file control. It also examines why bureaucratic union leadership was able to terminate the action.
The Antiwar Potential of Industrial Unionism
| Fred W. Thompson and Jon Bekken | Industrial Workers of the World | 2005
This history explains how the IWW’s internationalist structure challenged the division of workers into rival national camps. Its opposition to World War I provoked extensive government raids, prosecutions, and imprisonment.
The 1917 Federal Prosecution of the IWW
| Fred W. Thompson and Jon Bekken | Industrial Workers of the World | 2005
Federal authorities used espionage and wartime legislation to raid IWW offices and prosecute more than one hundred organizers. The campaign weakened a union that opposed conscription and continued organizing strategic industries.
Pacifism as Pathology
| Ward Churchill | The Anarchist Library | 1986
Churchill criticizes the elevation of nonviolence into an absolute rule for social movements. The essay generated extensive anarchist debate over tactics, self-defense, repression, and movement solidarity.
Workers’ Control and the Material Foundations of Peace
| Rudolf Rocker | The Anarchist Library | 1938
Rocker argues that permanent peace requires eliminating centralized states and capitalist competition. Federated worker organizations would replace military and economic rivalry with cooperative administration.
The General Strike Against Capital and War
| Ralph Chaplin | Industrial Workers of the World | 1933
Chaplin’s strategy implied that workers organized at the point of production could prevent governments from transporting troops, manufacturing weapons, and sustaining warfare by withdrawing their labor collectively.
The Bolshevik Myth
| Alexander Berkman | The Anarchist Library | 1925
Berkman’s diary records his growing disillusionment with authoritarian communism. It documents the suppression of workers, anarchists, striking laborers, peasants, and independent revolutionary institutions.
The Political Soviet Grinding Machine
| Emma Goldman | The Anarchist Library | 1924
Goldman describes how revolutionary aspirations in Russia were subordinated to party dictatorship, militarized labor, political policing, and centralized control.
The Russian Tragedy
| Alexander Berkman | The Anarchist Library | 1922
Berkman argues that Bolshevik centralization destroyed autonomous soviets, unions, and factory committees. His analysis connects militarized political authority with the defeat of worker self-management.
The Kronstadt Rebellion
| Alexander Berkman | The Anarchist Library | 1922
Berkman recounts the 1921 revolt by sailors and workers demanding free soviets, civil liberties, and economic autonomy. The Bolshevik government suppressed the movement militarily.
The War Resisters’ International Declaration
| War Resisters’ International | War Resisters’ International | 1921
This declaration rejects war as a crime against humanity and pledges participants to refuse support for every kind of warfare. Anarchists and revolutionary pacifists played important roles in the organization’s international networks.
War Dictionary
| Alexander Berkman | The Anarchist Library | 1917
Berkman uses satirical definitions to expose the language governments employ to romanticize military discipline, patriotism, conscription, profiteering, and mass killing.
The No-Conscription Manifesto
| Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman | The Anarchist Library | 1917
This manifesto announces organized resistance to compulsory military service in the United States. It defends freedom of conscience and calls conscription an extension of state power over individual life.
Pro-Government Anarchists
| Errico Malatesta | The Anarchist Library | 1916
This response to the Manifesto of the Sixteen argues that anarchists cannot endorse governments without abandoning their principles. Malatesta insists that every state pursues power rather than human emancipation.
The Manifesto of the Sixteen
| Peter Kropotkin and others | The Anarchist Library | 1916
This controversial declaration explains why a minority of prominent anarchists supported an Allied victory over Germany. It became the central document in one of anarchism’s most important debates over war.
The Anarchist International and War
| Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, Errico Malatesta, and others | The Anarchist Library | 1915
This manifesto represents the antiwar position adopted by most prominent anarchists during World War I. It urges workers to reject nationalist unity and continue the social struggle against every ruling class.
Preparedness: The Road to Universal Slaughter
| Emma Goldman | The Anarchist Library | 1915
Goldman attacks campaigns for military preparedness as efforts to normalize obedience, expand armaments, enrich manufacturers, and prepare the population for industrialized warfare.
Government and War
| Errico Malatesta | The Anarchist Library | 1914
Malatesta argues that governments create and perpetuate war because they rest on coercion, competition, and ruling-class interests. He rejects the idea that supporting one state can bring lasting liberation.
Anarchists Have Forgotten Their Principles
| Errico Malatesta | The Anarchist Library | 1914
Malatesta criticizes anarchists who supported the Allied governments during World War I. He maintains that accepting state warfare contradicts anarchism’s opposition to government, nationalism, and militarism.
The War and the Workers
| Alexander Berkman | The Anarchist Library | 1914
Berkman argues that modern wars are fought for markets, colonies, and ruling-class advantage while workers pay the costs through taxation, military service, death, and deprivation.
Wars and Capitalism
| Peter Kropotkin | The Anarchist Library | 1914
Kropotkin analyzes wars as products of commercial rivalry, colonial expansion, armaments industries, and competition among capitalist states for markets and investment opportunities.
Labor Matters and Antimilitarism
| Max Nettlau | The Anarchist Library | 1914
Nettlau observes that revolutionary unions had already spread anti-state ideas through labor struggle and antimilitarism. He nevertheless emphasizes the need for broader anarchist education beyond union structures.
The Failure of Christianity
| Emma Goldman | The Anarchist Library | 1913
Goldman criticizes churches for blessing armies, defending property, and encouraging submission despite professing ideals of peace and human brotherhood.
Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty
| Emma Goldman | The Anarchist Library | 1911
Goldman portrays patriotism as an ideology teaching ordinary people to sacrifice themselves for states and economic interests. She connects patriotic education with militarization and repression of dissent.
Anarchists in Workers’ Unions and Antimilitarist Movements
| Amédée Dunois | The Anarchist Library | 1907
Dunois identifies unions and antimilitarist organizations as essential arenas for anarchist action. He argues that coordinated participation in mass movements can overcome the limitations of isolated propaganda.
Anarchist Organization Across Labor and Peace Movements
| Amédée Dunois | The Anarchist Library | 1907
Dunois presents anarchism as an organized social movement participating simultaneously in workplace struggles, popular education, anticlerical activity, and resistance to militarism.
Patriotism and Government
| Leo Tolstoy | The Anarchist Library | 1900
Tolstoy argues that patriotism divides humanity into hostile political communities and enables governments to recruit ordinary people for conquest and mass killing.
The Slavery of Our Times
| Leo Tolstoy | The Anarchist Library | 1900
Tolstoy links wage exploitation, taxation, private property, military force, and government authority. He argues that economic domination ultimately depends on organized violence.
The State: Its Historic Role
| Peter Kropotkin | The Anarchist Library | 1896
Kropotkin argues that centralized states grew through conquest, taxation, military organization, and the destruction of autonomous communal institutions.
The Kingdom of God Is Within You
| Leo Tolstoy | The Anarchist Library | 1894
Tolstoy condemns armies, nationalism, and state authority as incompatible with Christian ethics. The work became foundational for anarchist pacifism and later movements of nonviolent resistance.
Christianity and Patriotism
| Leo Tolstoy | The Anarchist Library | 1894
This essay examines how governments manufacture patriotic enthusiasm and use religious institutions, education, ceremonies, and the press to legitimize military violence.
Law and Authority
| Peter Kropotkin | The Anarchist Library | 1886
This essay challenges the belief that social order depends on laws enforced by police and armies. Kropotkin emphasizes custom, cooperation, mutual aid, and voluntary agreement.
An Appeal to the Young
| Peter Kropotkin | The Anarchist Library | 1880
Kropotkin urges young people to use their education in service of workers and the oppressed rather than governments, armies, corporations, and privileged professions.
Civil Disobedience
| Henry David Thoreau | The Anarchist Library | 1849
Thoreau defends refusal to cooperate with governments engaged in slavery and aggressive war. His tax resistance influenced later anarchists, conscientious objectors, and nonviolent antiwar movements.
Resist Not Evil
| Leo Tolstoy | The Anarchist Library | n.d.
Tolstoy develops a Christian-anarchist rejection of warfare, punishment, and coercive government. He argues that individuals should refuse military service and participation in state violence.
Anarchism and Pacifism
| Geoffrey Ostergaard | The Anarchist Library | n.d.
Ostergaard analyzes the points of convergence and disagreement between anarchism and pacifism. He discusses nonviolent direct action, anti-statism, revolution, and refusal of military authority.
Nonviolent Anarchist Action
| Geoffrey Ostergaard | The Anarchist Library | n.d.
This essay argues that strikes, boycotts, occupations, noncooperation, and civil disobedience provide anarchists with methods that undermine authority while prefiguring voluntary social relations.
Anarchism and Nonviolence
| David Graeber | The Anarchist Library | n.d.
Graeber examines the relationship between anarchist organizing and nonviolent direct-action movements. He emphasizes consensus, affinity groups, decentralization, and the creation of alternative institutions.
Revolutionary Nonviolence
| Andrew Cornell | The Anarchist Library | n.d.
Cornell traces the development of radical pacifism among American anarchists, conscientious objectors, civil-rights organizers, and antiwar activists during and after World War II.
Anarchism and the Movement Against the Vietnam War
| Andrew Cornell | The Anarchist Library | n.d.
This history examines anarchist participation in draft resistance, antiwar publications, communal projects, direct action, and the broader radicalization produced by opposition to the Vietnam War.
Anarchists and War Tax Resistance
| War Resisters League | The Anarchist Library | n.d.
This organizing text presents refusal to pay military taxes as a form of noncooperation with warfare. It discusses conscientious resistance, mutual support, legal risks, and redirecting money toward community needs.
Resistance to Civil Government
| Various Authors | The Anarchist Library | n.d.
This collection situates individual refusal, tax resistance, draft resistance, and civil disobedience within broader anarchist and anti-authoritarian traditions.
A History of War Resisters’ International
| War Resisters’ International | War Resisters’ International | n.d.
This history follows an international movement of conscientious objectors, pacifists, anarchists, and antimilitarists. It covers resistance to conscription, support for prisoners, and campaigns against colonial and nuclear warfare.
Conscientious Objection and Revolutionary Antimilitarism
| War Resisters’ International | War Resisters’ International | n.d.
This resource documents conscientious objection as both a defense of individual conscience and a strategy for undermining military institutions through collective refusal.
Antimilitarist Campaigning Against Military Recruitment
| War Resisters’ International | War Resisters’ International | n.d.
This campaign examines how schools, advertising, entertainment, and employment programs normalize military service. It provides resources for resisting recruitment and supporting alternative opportunities for young people.
The Militarisation of Youth
| War Resisters’ International | War Resisters’ International | n.d.
This resource analyzes military influence over education and youth culture. It connects recruitment with nationalism, economic inequality, gender roles, and the normalization of obedience.
The Broken Rifle: International Antimilitarist Reporting
| War Resisters’ International | War Resisters’ International | n.d.
This publication archive documents conscientious objection, resistance to arms production, military recruitment, military bases, nuclear weapons, and war profiteering across numerous countries.
Anti-Militarism and the One Big Union
| Industrial Workers of the World | The Anarchist Library | n.d.
The IWW argues that workers should not kill workers in other countries for the benefit of governments and corporations. It connects international industrial solidarity with opposition to nationalism and war profiteering.
From Draft Resistance to Workplace Organizing
| A. J. Miller | Industrial Workers of the World | n.d.
Miller’s memoir demonstrates how Vietnam-era opposition to conscription and imperial warfare brought activists toward anarchism, direct action, and participation in the revived IWW.
From War Commentary to the Syndicalist Workers’ Federation
Brown traces organizational continuity from the anarchists who published War Commentary during World War II to the postwar creation of a specifically syndicalist labor organization.
Nationalization or Workers’ Control?
The Syndicalist Workers’ Federation argued that state ownership left workers under managerial authority. It proposed direct control of industry by workers’ organizations instead of either private capitalism or nationalized state capitalism.
Labor Songs as Instruments of Internationalism
| Joe Hill and IWW Contributors | Industrial Workers of the World | n.d.
Wobbly songs created a shared culture among workers divided by language, ethnicity, occupation, and migration. Their lyrics attacked bosses, patriotic manipulation, religious hypocrisy, and passive reliance on political leaders.
Free Speech as a Labor and Antiwar Issue
| Industrial Workers of the World | IWW Archive | n.d.
IWW free-speech fights established public agitation as a necessary condition for organizing workers and challenging militarism. Participants used coordinated arrests and jail solidarity to defeat restrictions on political speech.
Women Wobblies, Labor Militancy, and Peace
| Elizabeth Gurley Flynn | Industrial Workers of the World | n.d.
Flynn’s career demonstrates women’s importance in revolutionary unionism, civil-liberties defense, strike relief, and opposition to the persecution of radicals during wartime.
Industrial Democracy as an Alternative to Militarism
| Industrial Workers of the World | IWW Archive | n.d.
The IWW presents industrial democracy as an alternative to societies organized around corporate ownership and state coercion. Worker administration of production would remove major economic incentives for imperial competition.
