ABSTRACT

Anarchism has always had a hard time dealing with race. In its classical era, which dates roughly from the time of Proudhon in the 1840s to the time of Goldman in the 1930s, it sought to inspire the working class to rise up against the church, the state, and capitalism (see, for example, Goldman 1969). This focus on “god, government, and gold” was revolutionary, but it didn’t quite know how to confront the racial order in the United States. Most U.S. anarchist organizations and activists opposed racism in principle, but they tended to assume that it was a byproduct of capitalism. That is, racism was a tool the bosses used to divide the working class that would disappear once class society was abolished. Anarchists appealed for racial unity against the bosses but they never analyzed white supremacy as a relatively autonomous form of power in its own right (Roediger 1986, 1994). With a few exceptions, contemporary anarchism (which dates roughly from Bookchin to Zerzan), has not done much better. Its analysis of hierarchy and domination has expanded the classical era’s critique of class to all forms of oppression, including race. Yet with few exceptions, the contemporary American anarchist milieu still has not analyzed race as a form of power in its own right, or as a potential source of solidarity. As a consequence, anarchism remains a largely white ideology in the US.