A symbolic intervention with the hanging of a banner at the monument to
Stavros Kallergis was carried out by a group of members of ourcollective a short time ago at Ergatikis Protomagias Square at the
intersection of Pireos and Petrou Ralli streets. ---- The following is a
short biography of Stavros Kallergis ---- CHICAGO 1886- ATHENS 1893 ----
Stavros Kallergis was born in 1865 in Houmeri, Mylopotamos, Crete. At a
very young age he came to Athens and studied at the School of
Architecture of the Technical University. During his student years, he
came into contact with socialist ideas that were in the early stages of
their emergence in Greece and collaborated in publishing newspapers with
other figures of the early socialist movement, such as Plato Drakoulis.
Very soon, Kallergis became an active part of the development of the
early socialist and labor movement in Greece, as well as the first
sowing of anarchist revolutionary ideas.
At the age of 19, he organized a student demonstration with slogans such
as "Equality-Brotherhood-Community" and "Free Education". In 1890, he
founded the "Central Socialist Association" in Athens with members who
were both students and pupils, while at the same time he published the
newspaper Socialist through whose columns he published a revolutionary
program that was quite advanced for its time. The Socialist, with
discontinuities in its publication, hosts in its columns articles on the
working reality and the workers' struggles of the time, as well as
translations of works by anarchists such as P. Kropotkin and articles on
M. Bakunin. It seems that Kallergis, during this period, was influenced
by the ideas of Kropotkin and Bakunin as well as other anarchists of the
time.
Kallergis did not seek to be only a theoretician of the early socialist
movement, but he actively participated in the workers' struggles of his
time, with the most typical example being the rallies for May Day, being
one of the pioneers for its establishment in Greece, but also for the
introduction of the demands brought by the workers' struggle in Chicago
in 1886 for an 8-hour workday. His contribution to the beginning of the
workers' rallies on May 1 was decisive, starting from May 1, 1891, when,
together with 12 of his comrades, they were all photographed together,
as a symbolic participation in the international workers' day. The
following year, in May 1892, approximately 30 members of the "Socialist
Association" gathered at the Panathenaic Stadium and protested "against
the plutocratic regime". The rallies and the actual establishment of the
Workers' Day began in 1893, when a gathering of several thousand workers
took place with demands for the 8-hour workday, Sunday holidays, etc.
The following year, Kallergis was arrested in the context of the May Day
workers' mobilizations and later left for Paris where he met E. Rekly,
P. Kropotkin and other anarchist and socialist radicals of the time.
With all his problems as a fighter and as a person, as well as his
controversial path, Stavros Kallergis was a great figure for the labor
movement in Greece, but also a person who contributed to the emergence
of anarchist ideas during the 19th century, publishing anarchist
revolutionary texts and walking alongside anarchists of the time such as
Evangelos Markantonatos (a collaborator in the anarchist newspaper at
the time and a member of the "Socialist Association"), although not
always in full agreement. Both his contribution to the establishment of
the workers' May Day, as well as his contribution to the early anarchist
movement of the time, make Kallergis a memorable figure in our early
class and political history, an integral part of it and its co-creator.
If we want our struggle today to have a victorious perspective, then we
should not forget its historical roots, its historical identity and its
historical goals for a moment. Anarchist ideas in Greece, as well as
internationally, were conceived through the early stages of socialist
thought and the workers' movement, they became flesh from the flesh of
the class struggle and developed in fierce confrontation with the
authoritarian socialist proposals of Marxism. Anarchism, without its
class and socialist foundation, without its materialist worldview,
without its anti-authoritarian perspective and revolutionary aim, cannot
exist, cannot achieve its historical destiny as the revolutionary
ideology of the working class: the cessation of the exploitation of man
by man, the creation of a free, classless and stateless society.
A movement without memory is a movement without perspective
Long live the Workers' Day
Long live the global Social Revolution
INITIATIVE OF THE ANARCHIST SAINTS OF ANARGYROS - KAMATEROU
https://protaanka.espivblogs.net/2025/05/01/paremvasi-stin-mnimi-toy-stayroy-kallergi-stin-plateia-ergatikis-protomagias/
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