Editors' Introduction

In this issue—our second devoted to anarchism—we take up its history. Recently, historians have contested standard historical notions of anarchism: refuting traditional assumptions about the irrationality and millenarianism of anarchism, taking a much closer look at the sociality and tactics of anarchist groupings, exploring the relationship between fear of anarchists and the rise of the security state, filling in gaps in the historical record that have suggested the disappearance of anarchism, revisiting the apparent opposition between anarchism and socialism, and examining the lasting transnational exchanges of anarchist ideas unbound from their national geographies. Interest in anarchism has also surged in historical studies of terrorism, although these works tend to flatten the complexities of anarchist ideas and histories while inflating moments of violence. Our goal is to present a more balanced view of the many historical iterations of anarchism without extolling any single political view.

In our first article, Davide Turcato presents his important work on the "realism" of anarchist ideas. Dispensing with the social movement theorist's emphasis on effectiveness and fulfillment of purpose, Turcato looks at the rationality and coherence of anarchist insurrectionary movements through the lens of Errico Malatesta's participation in First of May demonstrations in France, Italy, and Spain in the 1890s. Turcato carefully dissects historical understandings of clashes at these demonstrations as unplanned, spontaneous, and disorganized. Rather, Turcato emphasizes underground networking, propaganda efforts, tactical turns, and plans for direct action among the anarchists surrounding Malatesta. Turcato challenges historians of anarchism to set aside assumptions about the irrationality of anarchists to focus, instead, on their deliberations.

Like Turcato, Elun Gabriel is concerned with the misconception of German anarchists during this period as a prepolitical "expression of primitive outrage." Gabriel finds a more complex scene of workers consuming a combination of political theories to support specific political goals. Gabriel revisits the careers of Johann Most and William Hasselmann, arguing that although the two men evolved from social democrats to anarchists, they never lost their audiences. Both anarchism, with its strong expressions of dissent, and social democracy, with its clear political goals and strategies, filled the needs of workers. In this way, Gabriel explains the complexities of this period, which oft en saw socialists, industrial unionists, and anarcho-syndicalists negotiating theories of political change.

Continuing his long-standing work on transnational Italian anarchism during this period, Nunzio Pernicone also examines misconceptions of anarchist violence and the formation of public image. Although historians of terrorism emphasize the successful attentats, Pernicone studies the failed case of Pietro Acciarito, a blacksmith who, in 1897, attempted to stab King Umberto. Rather than focusing on Acciarito as an exemplar of anarchist violence, Pernicone explores how the monarchy, taking a more authoritarian stance, saw a public relations benefit in the failed attack. Acciarito's trial is especially interesting in that, although the bourgeoisie favored repression of anarchists, it reacted with unfavorable dismay at violations of judicial process in the case, revealing that these sites of public condemnation are oft en more contested than one might assume.

In examining the largely unexplored relationship between anarchists and the New Left, Andrew Cornell considers the neglected anarchists of the 1940s and 1950s who provided networks, theories, and aesthetic practices for the social movements of the 1960s. Inspired by Leo Tolstoy, Pyotr Kropotkin, and Bart de Ligt, anarchist publications espoused a pacifist response to fascism, providing a bridge between the anarcho-syndicalists of the early twentieth century and the civil rights, women's liberation, and antiwar movements. Cornell suggests that the anarchists of the postwar period underwent a "paradigm shift," turning attention away from class and the revolutionary moment and focusing instead on aesthetics and prefigurative politics.

With the recent interest in anarchism as a response to expanding neoliberalism or variants of socialism, we hope that our journal can provide some insight into anarchists' visions of human society and their roles as rational historical agents striving to implement those visions. As these articles suggest, anarchism offers a wide array of theory and praxis in particular historical contexts. Anarchism also presents perspectives that, although oft en associated with the Left as conventionally conceived, do...