History of Anarchism - 20th Century - Post-war Years

Post-war Years

Anarchism sought to reorganize itself after the war. The Mexican Anarchist Federation was established on 1945 after the Anarchist Federation of the Center united with the Anarchist Federation of the Federal District. In the early 1940s Antifascist International Solidarity and Federation of Anarchist Groups of Cuba merge into the large national organization Asociación Libertaria de Cuba (Cuban Libertarian Association). From 1944 to 1947, the Bulgarian Anarchist Communist Federation reemerges as part of a factory and workplace committee movement, but is repressed by the new Communist regime. In 1945 in France the Fédération Anarchiste is established and the also synthesist Federazione Anarchica Italiana is founded in Italy. Korean anarchists form the League of Free Social Constructors in September 1945 and in 1946 the Japanese Anarchist Federation is founded. An International Anarchist Congress with delegates from across Europe is held in Paris in May 1948. In 1956 the Uruguayan Anarchist Federation is founded. In 1955 the Anarcho-Communist Federation of Argentina renames itself as the Argentine Libertarian Federation.

The debate on the issue of organization within anarchism took importance once again in this period especially in the anarchist movements of Italy and France. The Fédération Anarchiste (FA) was founded in Paris on December 2, 1945, and elected the platformist anarcho-communist George Fontenis as its first secretary the next year. It was composed of a majority of activists from the former FA (which supported Voline's Synthesis) and some members of the former Union Anarchiste, which supported the CNT-FAI support to the Republican government during the Spanish Civil War, as well as some young Resistants. Within the synthesist anarchist organization, the Fédération Anarchiste, there existed an individualist anarchist tendency alongside anarcho-communist and anarchosyndicalist currents. Individualist anarchists participating inside the Fédération Anarchiste included Charles-Auguste Bontemps, Georges Vincey and André Arru. On 1950 a clandestin group formed within the FA called Organisation Pensée Bataille (OPB) led by George Fontenis. The OPB pushed for a move which saw the FA change its name into the Fédération Communiste Libertaire (FCL) after the 1953 Congress in Paris, while an article in Le Libertaire indicated the end of the cooperation with the French Surrealist Group led by André Breton. The new decision making process was founded on unanimity: each person has a right of veto on the orientations of the federation. The FCL published the same year the Manifeste du communisme libertaire. Several groups quit the FCL in December 1955, disagreeing with the decision to present "revolutionary candidates" to the legislative elections. On August 15–20, 1954, the Ve intercontinental plenum of the CNT took place. A group called Entente anarchiste appeared which was formed of militants who didn´t like the new ideological orientation that the OPB was giving the FCL seeing it was authoritarian and almost marxist. The FCL lasted until 1956 just after it participated in state legislative elections with 10 candidates. This move alienated some members of the FCL and thus produced the end of the organization. A group of militants who didn't agree with the FA turning into FCL reorganized a new Federation Anarchiste which was established on December, 1953. This included those who formed L'Entente anarchiste who joined the new FA and then dissolved L'Entente. The new base principles of the FA were written by the individualist anarchist Charles-Auguste Bontemps and the non-platformist anarcho-communist Maurice Joyeux which established an organization with a plurality of tendencies and autonomy of group organized around synthesist principles. According to historian Cédric Guérin, "the unconditional rejection of Marxism became from that moment onwards an identity element of the new Federation Anarchiste" and this was motivated in a big part after the previous conflict with George Fontenis and his OPB.

In Italy the Italian Anarchist Federation was founded in 1945 in Carrara. It adopted an "Associative Pact" and the "Anarchist Program" of Errico Malatesta. It decided to publish the weekly Umanità Nova retaking the name of the journal published by Errico Malatesta. Inside the FAI a tendency grouped as (GAAP - Anarchist Groups of Proletarian Action) led by Pier Carlo Masini was founded which "proposed a Libertarian Party with an anarchist theory and practice adapted to the new economic, political and social reality of post-war Italy, with an internationalist outlook and effective presence in the workplaces...The GAAP allied themselves with the similar development within the French Anarchist movement" as lead by George Fontenis. In Italy in 1945, during the Founding Congress of the Italian Anarchist Federation, there was a group of individualist anarchists led by Cesare Zaccaria who was an important anarchist of the time.. A tendency which didn´t identify either with the more classical FAI or with the GAAP started to emerge as local groups. These groups emphasized direct action, informal affinity groups and expropriation for financing anarchist activity. From within these groups the influential insurrectionary anarchist Alfredo Maria Bonanno will emerge influenced by the practice of the Spanish exiled anarchist José Lluis Facerías.

Anarchism continued to be influential in important literary and intellectual personalities of the time such as Albert Camus, Herbert Read, Paul Goodman, Dwight Macdonald, Allen Ginsberg, Julian Beck and the French Surrealist group led by André Breton which now openly embraced anarchism and collaborated in the Fédération Anarchiste. In 1952 Breton wrote "It was in the black mirror of anarchism that surrealism first recognised itself." "Breton was consistent in his support for the francophone Anarchist Federation and he continued to offer his solidarity after the Platformists around Fontenis transformed the Fédération anarchiste into the Federation Communiste Libertaire. He was one of the few intellectuals who continued to offer his support to the FCL during the Algerian war when the FCL suffered severe repression and was forced underground. He sheltered Fontenis whilst he was in hiding. He refused to take sides on the splits in the French anarchist movement and both he and Peret expressed solidarity as well with the new Fédération anarchiste set up by the synthesist anarchists and worked in the Antifascist Committees of the 60s alongside the Fédération anarchiste."

Anarcho-pacifism became influential in the Anti-nuclear movement and anti war movements of the time as can be seen in the activism and writings of the English anarchist member of Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Alex Comfort or the similar activism of the American catholic anarcho-pacifists Ammon Hennacy and Dorothy Day. Anarcho-pacifism became a "basis for a critique of militarism on both sides of the Cold War." The resurgence of anarchist ideas during this period is well documented in Robert Graham's Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, Volume Two: The Emergence of the New Anarchism (1939-1977).