To say that anarchism is a colonial or simply Eurocentric ideology usually stems from a very basic misconception: mistaking the most visible part of its canon for its entire history. This misconception is not limited to external critics; it also permeates the anarchist movement itself. Too many anarchists are more familiar with the aesthetics of the tradition than with its historical development, its internal debates, its organizational experiences, and its actual presence in workers', peasants', anti-colonial, feminist, and popular struggles outside of Europe.
The problem is significant. A movement that is ignorant of its own history ends up accepting the caricature others create of it. If anarchism is presented solely as a rejection of the state, as an abstract defense of individual liberty, or as a general anti-authoritarian sentiment, then it is easy to reduce it to a diffuse, incoherent tradition, or one reducible to a handful of European authors. This reduction impoverishes everything. It erases its socialist character, its connection to the class struggle, its commitment to self-management, its internationalist dimension, and its strategic debates on organization, trade unionism, revolution, violence, reforms, popular power, and the building of social force.
Reducing anarchism to anti-statism is a serious theoretical error. The rejection of the state is part of the anarchist tradition, but it is not enough to define it. There are also extreme liberals, anti-statist capitalists, religious sects, reactionary movements, and various forms of individualism that may reject the state for reasons completely opposite to those of anarchism. Historical anarchism did not fight the state to leave capital, private property, patriarchy, colonialism, exploitation, or social hierarchies intact. Its critique of the state was linked to a broader critique of domination and a proposal for social reorganization based on self-management, federalism, collective action, and the emancipation of the oppressed classes.
That is why it is so impoverished to identify anarchism with an individual ethic of disobedience. Anarchism did not develop historically as a simple assertion of the individual against all common norms. It was built in unions, federations, newspapers, cultural centers, schools, strikes, insurrections, specific organizations, solidarity networks, peasant movements, and revolutionary experiences. Its central problem was not how to preserve the subjective comfort of each militant, but how to build a social force capable of confronting real structures of power. This distinction matters, because a revolutionary tradition cannot survive if its own militants reduce it to mere temperament, identity, or lifestyle.
The accusation of Eurocentrism holds some truth only if it's directed against a particular way of telling the history of anarchism, not against anarchism as a historical tradition. For a long time, many general histories privileged Western Europe and the North Atlantic axis. They gave undue prominence to great figures, well-known texts, and European debates, relegating the global expansion of anarchism and its integration into specific social processes to the background. This historiography should indeed be criticized. But to confuse a limited historiography with the actual movement is an unjustifiable leap.
Anarchism had a global presence. It was not a European doctrine that simply descended upon passive populations. It circulated through workers' migrations, political exiles, militant press, union networks, ports, prisons, translations, popular schools, and social struggles. In Latin America, it was linked to workers' movements, revolutionary syndicalism, anticlericalism, popular education, and direct conflicts with employers and states. In East Asia, it had its own expressions in Japan, China, and Korea, where it intersected with anti-imperialism, critiques of militarism, debates on education, family, labor, social revolution, and colonial resistance. In various African and colonial contexts, anti-authoritarian ideas also came into contact with struggles against imperialism, racism, and exploitation.
None of this makes anarchism a pure tradition, without contradictions or limitations. It would be absurd to suggest so. There were anarchists with racist prejudices, sexist practices, Eurocentric interpretations, strategic errors, and blind spots typical of their time. But serious criticism begins by distinguishing between the real limitations of specific activists, the weaknesses of certain historiography, and the general content of a political tradition. Anarchism is not defined by each mistake made by anarchists, but by its project of abolishing relations of domination and replacing them with self-governing forms of social life.
The colonial question must be formulated precisely. Colonialism does not simply mean that an idea originated with European authors. Colonialism means the political, military, economic, racial, and cultural domination of some peoples over others. It means extraction, imperial administration, imposed borders, racial hierarchies, forced labor, evangelization, policing, imprisonment, and subordination. If the term is applied rigorously, anarchism appears historically closer to the struggles against these structures than to their defense. Anarchists fought against empires, nation-states, armies, employers, churches, landowners, police, and bureaucracies. They also criticized the idea that liberation consisted solely of replacing a foreign elite with a national elite.
This point is fundamental. Anarchism is not content with simply asking who holds political power. It asks why a separate structure must exist to govern society. This difference sets it apart from both liberalism and authoritarian nationalist or socialist projects that accept the concentration of power as an instrument of emancipation. Where others envisioned freedom as the seizure of the state, anarchism insisted on the direct organization of the oppressed classes. Where others relied on parties, leadership, or revolutionary bureaucracies, anarchism championed the capacity of the exploited themselves to build their own organizations, their own decision-making processes, and their own mechanisms of defense.
That is precisely why historical ignorance within anarchism is so damaging. When this social and organizational dimension is forgotten, anarchism is reduced to an attitude. It becomes a generic rejection of authority, a permanent suspicion of any collective commitment, an inability to maintain stable structures, and a disdain for strategy. Thus, concepts like autonomy, horizontality, and anti-authoritarianism lose their political content and are transformed into excuses for fragmentation. Freedom ceases to be a project of social reorganization and comes to mean that no one can demand anything from anyone else.
That version of anarchism doesn't threaten power. On the contrary, it leaves it undisturbed. Anarchism without historical memory, without class analysis, without organization, without collective discipline, and without engagement in real struggles can produce gestures, but not social force. It may have symbols, but not strategy. It may have discourse, but not the capacity for transformation. Capital, the State, and the ruling classes don't confront rebellious temperaments. They confront organized movements, with popular support, with clear objectives, and with practices capable of sustaining conflict over time.
The historical recovery of anarchism is not a secondary academic matter. It is a political necessity. Studying global anarchism allows us to dismantle two errors simultaneously: the external accusation that reduces it to a European ideology and the internal degradation that reduces it to individual freedom without a social project. It allows us to remember that anarchism was, at its best, a tradition of mass mobilization, organization, class struggle, internationalism, and self-management. It also allows us to acknowledge its failures without turning them into total condemnation, and its successes without transforming them into mythology.
An anarchism that takes itself seriously must be familiar with Bakunin, Kropotkin, Malatesta, and Louise Michel, but it cannot stop there. It must study how anarchism historically intersected with workers', peasants', and anti-colonial movements in different contexts; how its trade unions and federations functioned; what strategic debates arose regarding parties, unions, insurrection, and people's power; and why certain experiences gained social traction while others remained isolated or were defeated. Not out of an encyclopedic zeal, but because without this historical understanding, the movement becomes politically immature.
The correct critique is not "anarchism is colonial." The correct critique would be: too often anarchism has been told from a Eurocentric perspective, and too many anarchists have accepted this reduced version of their own history. This critique is legitimate because it compels us to expand the archive, correct the canon, look beyond Europe, and reconstruct the tradition from its actual practices, not just from its most cited texts.
Anarchism doesn't need to be defended as a sacred identity. It needs to be rigorously understood. Its value lies not in being a symbol of rebellion, but in having formulated a profound critique of domination and a proposal for social organization based on self-management, federalism, and direct action by the oppressed. If the movement wants to live up to that history, it must abandon the comfort of easy slogans and return to serious work: studying, organizing, debating strategy, building social strength, and ceasing to confuse freedom with a lack of responsibility.
For those who want to learn more about the global historical development of anarchism, a key recommendation is Bandera Negra (Black Flag ) by Felipe Correa, published by Teima Editorial. It is a serious yet accessible work that helps to dismantle many myths and oversimplifications about the anarchist tradition, revealing its international, organizational, and revolutionary dimensions.
The book is available at various bookstores throughout the state. You can also find more information here: https://banderanegra.net/
Don Diego de la Vega, militant of Liza
https://regeneracionlibertaria.org/2026/08/18/el-anarquismo-no-es-colonial-tu-ignorancia-si
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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