HIST 2063

Anarchism: History, Theory, Practice

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2015-2016.

Anarchism. What is it good for?  A political philosophy and approach to social organization that arose simultaneous with other grand  "–isms," anarchism, perhaps more than any other idea and practice, has been condensed down by its critics and observers into a vague set of often contradictory caricatures. Is 'it' characterized by bohemian communities of nihilists, their rebellion culturally innovative but politically impotent, book-ended by Friedrich Nietzsche and Johnny Rotten?  Or is 'it' individualist libertarians who walk in the ideological footsteps of Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand? Or collectivist anti-capitalists who tread the paths blazed by  Mikhail Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin? Or, most famously, is 'it' a murky underworld of conspiratorial bomb throwers, held together less by bonds of solidarity than by a commitment to violence?  This seminar provides some relief from such limited and constraining perspectives by taking anarchism seriously as a social and political practice and tradition, one rooted largely in the left-wing critique of both the state and capitalism.

When Offered Spring.

Breadth Requirement (HA-AS)

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