Anarchist Schools of Thought - Anarchism Without Adjectives

Anarchism without adjectives, in the words of historian George Richard Esenwein, "referred to an unhyphenated form of anarchism, that is, a doctrine without any qualifying labels such as communist, collectivist, mutualist, or individualist. For others, ... was simply understood as an attitude that tolerated the coexistence of different anarchist schools". Anarchism without adjectives emphasizes harmony between various anarchist factions and attempts to unite them around their shared anti-authoritarian beliefs. The expression was coined by Cuban-born Fernando Tarrida del Mármol, who used it in Barcelona in November 1889 as a call for tolerance, after being troubled by the "bitter debates" between the different movements. Rudolf Rocker said that the different types of anarchism presented "only different methods of economy, the practical possibilities of which have yet to be tested, and that the first objective is to secure the personal and social freedom of men no matter upon which economics basis this is to be accomplished."

Voltairine de Cleyre was an anarchist without adjectives who initially identified herself as an individualist anarchist but later espoused a collectivist form of anarchism, while refusing to identify herself with any of the contemporary schools. ("The best thing ordinary workingmen or women could do was to organise their industry to get rid of money altogether . . . Let them produce together, co-operatively rather than as employer and employed; let them fraternise group by group, let each use what he needs of his own product, and deposit the rest in the storage-houses, and let those others who need goods have them as occasion arises.") She commented that "Socialism and Communism both demand a degree of joint effort and administration which would beget more regulation than is wholly consistent with ideal Anarchism; Individualism and Mutualism, resting upon property, involve a development of the private policeman not at all compatible with my notion of freedom" although she stopped short of denouncing these tendencies as un-anarchistic. ("There is nothing un-Anarchistic about any of until the element of compulsion enters and obliges unwilling persons to remain in a community whose economic arrangements they do not agree to.")

Errico Malatesta was another proponent of anarchism without adjectives, stating that "t is not right for us, to say the least, to fall into strife over mere hypotheses."