A-Infos (en) Spaine, Regeneracion - Anarchism is not colonial. Your ignorance is. By liza (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

To say that anarchism is a colonial or simply Eurocentric ideology 
usually stems from a very basic misconception: mistaking the most 
visible part of its canon for its entire history. This misconception is 
not limited to external critics; it also permeates the anarchist 
movement itself. Too many anarchists are more familiar with the 
aesthetics of the tradition than with its historical development, its 
internal debates, its organizational experiences, and its actual 
presence in workers', peasants', anti-colonial, feminist, and popular 
struggles outside of Europe.

The problem is significant. A movement that is ignorant of its own 
history ends up accepting the caricature others create of it. If 
anarchism is presented solely as a rejection of the state, as an 
abstract defense of individual liberty, or as a general 
anti-authoritarian sentiment, then it is easy to reduce it to a diffuse, 
incoherent tradition, or one reducible to a handful of European authors. 
This reduction impoverishes everything. It erases its socialist 
character, its connection to the class struggle, its commitment to 
self-management, its internationalist dimension, and its strategic 
debates on organization, trade unionism, revolution, violence, reforms, 
popular power, and the building of social force.

Reducing anarchism to anti-statism is a serious theoretical error. The 
rejection of the state is part of the anarchist tradition, but it is not 
enough to define it. There are also extreme liberals, anti-statist 
capitalists, religious sects, reactionary movements, and various forms 
of individualism that may reject the state for reasons completely 
opposite to those of anarchism. Historical anarchism did not fight the 
state to leave capital, private property, patriarchy, colonialism, 
exploitation, or social hierarchies intact. Its critique of the state 
was linked to a broader critique of domination and a proposal for social 
reorganization based on self-management, federalism, collective action, 
and the emancipation of the oppressed classes.

That is why it is so impoverished to identify anarchism with an 
individual ethic of disobedience. Anarchism did not develop historically 
as a simple assertion of the individual against all common norms. It was 
built in unions, federations, newspapers, cultural centers, schools, 
strikes, insurrections, specific organizations, solidarity networks, 
peasant movements, and revolutionary experiences. Its central problem 
was not how to preserve the subjective comfort of each militant, but how 
to build a social force capable of confronting real structures of power. 
This distinction matters, because a revolutionary tradition cannot 
survive if its own militants reduce it to mere temperament, identity, or 
lifestyle.

The accusation of Eurocentrism holds some truth only if it's directed 
against a particular way of telling the history of anarchism, not 
against anarchism as a historical tradition. For a long time, many 
general histories privileged Western Europe and the North Atlantic axis. 
They gave undue prominence to great figures, well-known texts, and 
European debates, relegating the global expansion of anarchism and its 
integration into specific social processes to the background. This 
historiography should indeed be criticized. But to confuse a limited 
historiography with the actual movement is an unjustifiable leap.

Anarchism had a global presence. It was not a European doctrine that 
simply descended upon passive populations. It circulated through 
workers' migrations, political exiles, militant press, union networks, 
ports, prisons, translations, popular schools, and social struggles. In 
Latin America, it was linked to workers' movements, revolutionary 
syndicalism, anticlericalism, popular education, and direct conflicts 
with employers and states. In East Asia, it had its own expressions in 
Japan, China, and Korea, where it intersected with anti-imperialism, 
critiques of militarism, debates on education, family, labor, social 
revolution, and colonial resistance. In various African and colonial 
contexts, anti-authoritarian ideas also came into contact with struggles 
against imperialism, racism, and exploitation.

None of this makes anarchism a pure tradition, without contradictions or 
limitations. It would be absurd to suggest so. There were anarchists 
with racist prejudices, sexist practices, Eurocentric interpretations, 
strategic errors, and blind spots typical of their time. But serious 
criticism begins by distinguishing between the real limitations of 
specific activists, the weaknesses of certain historiography, and the 
general content of a political tradition. Anarchism is not defined by 
each mistake made by anarchists, but by its project of abolishing 
relations of domination and replacing them with self-governing forms of 
social life.

The colonial question must be formulated precisely. Colonialism does not 
simply mean that an idea originated with European authors. Colonialism 
means the political, military, economic, racial, and cultural domination 
of some peoples over others. It means extraction, imperial 
administration, imposed borders, racial hierarchies, forced labor, 
evangelization, policing, imprisonment, and subordination. If the term 
is applied rigorously, anarchism appears historically closer to the 
struggles against these structures than to their defense. Anarchists 
fought against empires, nation-states, armies, employers, churches, 
landowners, police, and bureaucracies. They also criticized the idea 
that liberation consisted solely of replacing a foreign elite with a 
national elite.

This point is fundamental. Anarchism is not content with simply asking 
who holds political power. It asks why a separate structure must exist 
to govern society. This difference sets it apart from both liberalism 
and authoritarian nationalist or socialist projects that accept the 
concentration of power as an instrument of emancipation. Where others 
envisioned freedom as the seizure of the state, anarchism insisted on 
the direct organization of the oppressed classes. Where others relied on 
parties, leadership, or revolutionary bureaucracies, anarchism 
championed the capacity of the exploited themselves to build their own 
organizations, their own decision-making processes, and their own 
mechanisms of defense.

That is precisely why historical ignorance within anarchism is so 
damaging. When this social and organizational dimension is forgotten, 
anarchism is reduced to an attitude. It becomes a generic rejection of 
authority, a permanent suspicion of any collective commitment, an 
inability to maintain stable structures, and a disdain for strategy. 
Thus, concepts like autonomy, horizontality, and anti-authoritarianism 
lose their political content and are transformed into excuses for 
fragmentation. Freedom ceases to be a project of social reorganization 
and comes to mean that no one can demand anything from anyone else.

That version of anarchism doesn't threaten power. On the contrary, it 
leaves it undisturbed. Anarchism without historical memory, without 
class analysis, without organization, without collective discipline, and 
without engagement in real struggles can produce gestures, but not 
social force. It may have symbols, but not strategy. It may have 
discourse, but not the capacity for transformation. Capital, the State, 
and the ruling classes don't confront rebellious temperaments. They 
confront organized movements, with popular support, with clear 
objectives, and with practices capable of sustaining conflict over time.

The historical recovery of anarchism is not a secondary academic matter. 
It is a political necessity. Studying global anarchism allows us to 
dismantle two errors simultaneously: the external accusation that 
reduces it to a European ideology and the internal degradation that 
reduces it to individual freedom without a social project. It allows us 
to remember that anarchism was, at its best, a tradition of mass 
mobilization, organization, class struggle, internationalism, and 
self-management. It also allows us to acknowledge its failures without 
turning them into total condemnation, and its successes without 
transforming them into mythology.

An anarchism that takes itself seriously must be familiar with Bakunin, 
Kropotkin, Malatesta, and Louise Michel, but it cannot stop there. It 
must study how anarchism historically intersected with workers', 
peasants', and anti-colonial movements in different contexts; how its 
trade unions and federations functioned; what strategic debates arose 
regarding parties, unions, insurrection, and people's power; and why 
certain experiences gained social traction while others remained 
isolated or were defeated. Not out of an encyclopedic zeal, but because 
without this historical understanding, the movement becomes politically 
immature.

The correct critique is not "anarchism is colonial." The correct 
critique would be: too often anarchism has been told from a Eurocentric 
perspective, and too many anarchists have accepted this reduced version 
of their own history. This critique is legitimate because it compels us 
to expand the archive, correct the canon, look beyond Europe, and 
reconstruct the tradition from its actual practices, not just from its 
most cited texts.

Anarchism doesn't need to be defended as a sacred identity. It needs to 
be rigorously understood. Its value lies not in being a symbol of 
rebellion, but in having formulated a profound critique of domination 
and a proposal for social organization based on self-management, 
federalism, and direct action by the oppressed. If the movement wants to 
live up to that history, it must abandon the comfort of easy slogans and 
return to serious work: studying, organizing, debating strategy, 
building social strength, and ceasing to confuse freedom with a lack of 
responsibility.

For those who want to learn more about the global historical development 
of anarchism, a key recommendation is Bandera Negra (Black Flag ) by 
Felipe Correa, published by Teima Editorial. It is a serious yet 
accessible work that helps to dismantle many myths and 
oversimplifications about the anarchist tradition, revealing its 
international, organizational, and revolutionary dimensions.

The book is available at various bookstores throughout the state. You 
can also find more information here: https://banderanegra.net/

Don Diego de la Vega, militant of Liza

https://regeneracionlibertaria.org/2026/08/18/el-anarquismo-no-es-colonial-tu-ignorancia-si
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