Anarchism without adjectives

Anarchism without adjectives is a pluralist tendency of anarchism that opposes sectarianism and advocates for cooperation between different anarchist schools of thought. First formulated by the Spanish anarchists Ricardo Mella and Fernando Tarrida del Mármol, as a way to bridge the ideological divide between the collectivists and communist factions, it was later adopted by the Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta and the American anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre.

Anarchists without adjectives are suspicious of dogmatism and criticize prescriptions for a post-capitalist future, which they consider authoritarian. Instead they hold that a new society should be allowed to emerge spontaneously after a social revolution, which they believe could result in the experimental development of different economic forms in different locations. They thus tend to focus on taking action in the present, with contemporary forms outright rejecting utopianism.

Background

After the founding of the Anti-authoritarian International, by 1876, debates between anti-authoritarians broke out over which economic system they would establish following a social revolution. Swiss anarchist leader James Guillaume spurred the debate with his proposition that, once a condition of post-scarcity was achieved, resources could be brought under common ownership and distributed "from each according to ability, to each according to need".

French and Italian members of the International advocated for a system of communist anarchism, in which the state and capitalism would be replaced by voluntary associations which would make goods and services freely available to all who needed them. On the other side, the Spanish section advocated for collectivist anarchism, which would distribute resources "to each according to contribution". At the 1877 Verviers Conference, James Guillaume attempted to overcome the split by arguing that "each group be free to determine its own solutions".