ABSTRACT

The international antianarchist conferences in Rome (1898) and in St. Petersburg (1904) marked the beginning of a transnational policing operation against anarchism and led to the establishment of an early form of Interpol. Analyzing anarchist movements with resource mobilization (RM) theory would lead to equally unsatisfying results. Like the rational choice theorem, RM assumes no more than the superficial identification of the individual with a movement. RM understands the potential member as an individual whom a movement seduces into participation. The national also occurs in nationalistic or patriotic recuperations, which are both sub branches of traditionalism as an identity-constituting element of anarchy. Ignoring the national completely, due to the proclaimed antinationalist orientation of anarchist movements, would amount to neglecting a defining element of the movements' collective identity, which, at least in the case of fin de sicle Swiss anarchism, was relied on heavily as a defining entity and as a motivational factor.