Anarchist communism

Anarchist communism, often termed libertarian communism, is a far-left political ideology and a major current within the broader anarchist movement. It advocates the abolition of private property in the sense of productive assets while maintaining personal possessions, and seeks a society based on common ownership, voluntary cooperation, and the free distribution of goods and services. Its central maxim—“from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”—expresses its commitment to a classless, stateless, and moneyless social order. Although its theoretical frameworks emerged during the nineteenth century, the ideology has informed a number of historical revolutionary experiments, including the Makhnovist territories in Ukraine during the Russian Revolution and the anarchist collectives of the 1936 Spanish Revolution, especially in Catalonia.

Intellectual and Historical Forerunners

The roots of anarchist communism can be traced to a number of early utopian and revolutionary thinkers active before the formal emergence of the anarchist movement. In the early 1840s, writers associated with the French journal Le Populaire promoted a programme influenced by Sylvain Maréchal, emphasising antipolitical sentiment, social equality, and the abolition of marriage. These thinkers anticipated libertarian communist themes, including the dissolution of rigid social structures and the free movement of people between rural and urban forms of labour.
A foundational figure was Théodore Dézamy, whose Code de la Communauté (1843) developed a systematic critique of Étienne Cabet’s utopian socialism. Dézamy called for the abolition of money, the division of labour, and the state, while promoting communal ownership and the immediate establishment of a communist society without transitional governance. His ideas foreshadowed later anarchist communism by rejecting state-led or staged approaches to social transformation.
Joseph Déjacque, writing in the wake of the 1848 French Revolution, advanced a more explicitly anarchist form of communism. Rejecting both the authoritarian socialism of Auguste Blanqui and the market-based mutualism of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, he advocated workers’ self-organisation, the abolition of the nuclear family, and the free distribution of resources. Déjacque’s vision emphasised unlimited freedom of production and consumption, subject to statistical coordination rather than coercive authority. His 1859 work L’Humanisphère prefigured the later programmes of anarchist communists and anticipated features of the Paris Commune of 1871.

Formation within the International Workingmen’s Association

The organisational nucleus of anarchist communism emerged within the International Workingmen’s Association (IWA), founded in 1864. Early French delegates, influenced by Proudhon’s federalism and abstentionism, represented a variety of non-authoritarian socialist positions. A more radical tendency within the French sections, led by Eugène Varlin, rejected mutualism in favour of communal forms of organisation centred on the municipality and universal education.
The entry of Mikhail Bakunin and his followers in 1868 consolidated the anti-authoritarian current. Bakunin promoted workers’ self-management, direct action, and decentralised federal structures. The rising tensions between Marxists and anti-authoritarians culminated in the exclusion of anarchists from the IWA following the defeat of the Paris Commune. In response, the Jura Federation and its allies founded the St. Imier International, a decentralised organisation explicitly aligned with anti-authoritarian principles.
Although Bakunin initially rejected communism as inherently authoritarian, many anarchists began moving beyond his collectivist framework after his death in 1876. Collectivism’s reliance on remuneration according to labour-time was increasingly criticised as a potential continuation of capitalist inequalities.

Emergence of Anarchist Communism

The term “anarchist communism” first appeared in 1876 in a pamphlet by François Dumartheray. At the Anti-Authoritarian International’s Lausanne meeting that year, Élisée Reclus publicly endorsed the new doctrine. Shortly afterwards, James Guillaume published Ideas on Social Organisation, proposing that collective ownership should ultimately lead to the abolition of exchange value once productive capacity reached a post-scarcity threshold.
Anarchist communism gained early institutional support in Italy and Spain, where sections of the IWA embraced anti-authoritarian socialism. Italian anarchists—among them Carlo Cafiero, Errico Malatesta, and Andrea Costa—played a central role in advancing the doctrine. The Italian movement formally adopted a programme for anarchist communism, breaking with collectivist principles and rejecting wage-based remuneration. Cafiero’s 1880 tract Anarchy and Communism called for the elimination of wage labour and the direct distribution of goods according to need, marking a clear theoretical statement of the new current.
Debates within the movement often centred on organisation. While collectivists stressed trade unions as essential instruments for social change, anarchist communists tended to favour small, decentralised affinity groups, believing these to better reflect anti-authoritarian ethics and revolutionary spontaneity.

Organisationalism, Insurrectionism, and Expansion

By the 1880s, anarchist communism had begun to split into two broad tendencies:

• Pro-organisationalists, who supported federated workers’ associations, syndicalist strategies, and organised agitation.
• Insurrectionary or anti-organisational anarchists, who rejected formal structures, viewing them as prone to bureaucracy, reformism, and compromise.

Thinkers such as Peter Kropotkin provided an evolutionary and social-scientific defence of anarchist communism. Kropotkin argued that cooperation and mutual aid were natural principles observable in human societies and ecological systems. In his model, the people themselves would directly manage production and distribution on a communal basis, replacing hierarchical enterprise structures with decentralised decision-making.
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, anarchist communism spread across Europe, the Americas, and parts of Asia, influencing labour movements and revolutionary struggles. Publications, workers’ circles, and émigré networks helped integrate anarchist communist ideas into transnational radical politics.

Practical Experiments and Legacy

Several historical moments offered opportunities for anarchist communism to be tested in practice. The most notable examples include:

• The Makhnovist movement (1918–1921) in Ukraine, which established self-managed communes and militias during the Russian Civil War.
• The Spanish Revolution of 1936, particularly in Catalonia and Aragon, where large-scale collectivisation and the abolition of hierarchical economic structures took place under anarchist influence.

These experiences revealed both the possibilities and challenges of implementing libertarian communist principles under conditions of war, scarcity, and political hostility.
Today, anarchist communism remains a significant tradition within anarchist thought, informing contemporary debates about decentralisation, commons-based economies, mutual aid networks, and the critique of state power. It continues to inspire movements seeking egalitarian social relations founded on voluntary cooperation, collective ownership, and the abolition of coercive institutions.