Anarchism in the United States spans a wide range of anarchist philosophy, from individualist anarchism to anarchist communism and other less known forms. America has two main traditions, native and immigrant, with the native tradition being strongly individualist and the immigrant tradition being collectivist and anarcho-communist. Influential American anarchists include Josiah Warren, Henry David Thoreau, Lysander Spooner, Lucy Parsons, Murray Rothbard, Benjamin Tucker, Voltairine de Cleyre, Johann Most, Luigi Galleani, Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, social ecologist Murray Bookchin, Paul Goodman, and linguist Noam Chomsky.
The first American anarchist publication was The Peaceful Revolutionist, edited by Josiah Warren, whose earliest experiments and writings predate Pierre Proudhon. Currently anarchist ideas are undergoing the most massive expansion in American history since its influence dwindled after the Bolshevik Revolution.
Read more about Anarchism In The United States: Indigenous Anarchism, Individualist Anarchism, Social Anarchism, Insurrectionary Anarchism, Re-emergence of Anarchism in The U.S., Notable American Anarchists
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“Madam, I may be President of the United States, but my private life is nobody’s damn business.”
—Chester A. Arthur (1829–1886)
“Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man’s subordination. Anarchism is therefore the teacher of the unity of life; not merely in nature, but in man.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“What makes the United States government, on the whole, more tolerable—I mean for us lucky white men—is the fact that there is so much less of government with us.... But in Canada you are reminded of the government every day. It parades itself before you. It is not content to be the servant, but will be the master; and every day it goes out to the Plains of Abraham or to the Champs de Mars and exhibits itself and toots.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I cannot say what poetry is; I know that our sufferings and our concentrated joy, our states of plunging far and dark and turning to come back to the world—so that the moment of intense turning seems still and universal—all are here, in a music like the music of our time, like the hero and like the anonymous forgotten; and there is an exchange here in which our lives are met, and created.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)