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Artwork for The Great Anarchists
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The Great Anarchists

crispin sartwell

Twenty to thirty minutes each through the greatest philosophers and theorists of anarchism, including Josiah Warren, Peter Kropotkin, and David Graeber.

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  • 19 episodes
  • Avg 26 min
  • English

Episodes 19

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  • S1 · E17
    January 15 · 23 min

    The Decline of Anarchism in the 20th Century

    In the 20th century, anarchism ceased as a mass revolutionary movement (except perhaps in Spain in the 1930s). Why? I give three reasons here: the internal momentum of the state, reaching its culmination as a war and genocide machine; the internal direction of the left, particularly around Bolshevism, toward extreme statism (from welfare state liberalism to socialist state control of the economy to state communism); and the terrible strategic and ethical mistake that anarchists made around 1900 to engage in assassinations, bombings, and acts of terror.

  • S1 · E16
    January 6 · 26 min

    Leo Tolstoy (and William Lloyd Garrison): Anarchism, Pacifism, and Christianity

    Can you be a religious anarchist? Bakunin probobly thought not; Emma Goldman thought so. But any way you look at it, Tolstoy was a beautiful writer with a beautiful Christian vision. I agree with him, and Petr Chelčický, and William Lloyd Garrison, that Christianity is incompatible with human government. PS pacifism entails antistatism

  • S1 · E15
    January 3 · 32 min

    Art of Anarchism: Emma Goldman

    The brilliant speaker and inspiring visionary (1869-1940): from Haymarket to the McKinley assassination, from confronting Lenin in his office to the Spanish Civil War. Alexander Berkman. Nestor Makhno.

  • S1 · E11
    Nov 25, 2025 · 29 min

    Max Stirner and Egoist Anarchism

    A wild and bizarre genius whose one book garnered momentary attention, especially from Marx and Engels. He's very closely connected to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, in my view. I quote a blog entry from Alexander Green: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alexander-green-stirner-and-marx

  • #10
    Nov 20, 2025 · 30 min

    Lysander Spooner Kicks Your Ass

    From basic American or Lockean or classical liberal values, Spooner (1808-1887) proves that anarchism follows. Proves it, I say. The killerest of the American individualists. If we have equal unalienable rights, anarchism follows immediately and obviously. lysanderspooner.org

  • #9
    Nov 13, 2025 · 29 min

    Henry David Thoreau: State and Slavery

    Our best writer, maybe. The assertion that he's an (individualist) anarchist is based on "Civil Disibedience," but Thoreay expresses these positions throughout his authorship.

  • S1 · E8
    Nov 6, 2025 · 29 min

    Proudhon: from Rousseau to Marx

    The first person to call himself an 'anarchist' (that we know of), and a central transitional figure between Rousseau and Marx. His 'mutualism' might still be a decent way between individualism and collectivism.

  • S1 · E6
    Oct 31, 2025 · 34 min

    Josiah Warren: the Practical Anarchist

    The continuity with Godwin is provided by Robert Owen and the astonishing Frances (Fanny) Wright. Warren (1798-1874) was the founder of American individualist anarchism, but...let's talk about the meaning of individualism and collectivism.

  • S1 · E5
    Oct 27, 2025 · 13 min

    Anarchism and Human Nature

    A supplement to the Godwin episode. I argue that anarchists need not have a naively positive view of human nature. Not at all, though Godwin and Emma Goldman did, and though for example absolutist Thomas Hobbes had a very negative one. But anarchism follows from Hobbes's view too, believe it or not. Or if Hobbes is right about human nature, anarchism is just as or more valid than if we're all benevolent Godwinians.

  • S1 · E4
    Oct 26, 2025 · 29 min

    The Enlightened Anarchism and Feminism of William Godwin

    The first great "philosophical" or non-religious anarchist in the West, author of the novel Caleb Williams or Things as They Are, and the still underrated classic An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft (whom he married and with whom he had a daughter [Mary Shelley]) are major influences.

  • S1 · E4
    Oct 9, 2025 · 31 min

    Anarchism and the Radical Reformation

    Gerrard Winstanley and Levellers, but a whole long history including Thomas Müntzer and the German Peasants' Rebellion. Anabaptists, Diggers, Ranters, Quakers and the origin of modern egalitarianism and anti-authoritarianism.

  • S1 · E2
    Sep 29, 2025 · 21 min

    The Parrhesia of Diogenes the Cynic

    the most wonderful anti-authoritarian philosopher in western history the book i mention is 'fearless speech' by michel foucault

  • S1 · E1
    Sep 26, 2025 · 24 min

    Why I'm an Anarchist

    (and what we'll be talking about in future episodes)

Showing 1–19 of 19 episodes