Abstracts Political Science

The unbridgeable chasm? Individualist anarchism in the United States

by Shane Little

This thesis revisits individualist anarchism’s place in the intellectual history of anarchism and challenges the ‘unbridgeable chasm’ in contemporary anarchism between the individualist and collectivist anarchist tendencies. Arguing, through a reassessment and rereading of the individualist tendency, that due to the neglect of individualist anarchism in anarchist history, the chasm suffers from a misinformed understanding of individualist anarchism. This study differs from other anarchist histories in that it does not understand individualist and collectivist anarchism as divergent and independent tendencies. Rather, it understands them as two tendencies / expressions of anarchism striving for similar goals through different strategy and language. This holistic reading of anarchism is informed by a novel methodology constructed in the thesis called ‘anarchism as tradition’. By employing this method, the thesis provides a fresh reading of individualist anarchism by investigating the lives and ideas of Josiah Warren, Angela and Ezra Heywood, Benjamin R. Tucker and Voltairine de Cleyre. The historical survey illustrates the rich thought of individualist anarchism, highlighting the important contributions it has had on anarchist thought, strategy and sexual politics, and outlines a more civil relationship towards collectivist anarchists than previous histories believed. Concluding that the chasm between individualist and collectivist anarchism is unsubstantiated, that a fresh re-reading of individualist anarchism is urgently required and that this reading can generate a more holistic intellectual history of anarchism and enrich the history of and contemporary interventions in anarcha-feminism and anarchist sexual politics.