Men Against the State

Men Against The State:The Expositors of Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827-1908 The writing of a history of anarchism in the United States will run into the difficulties created by the necessity of establishing criteria for the purpose of separating anarchism from other expressions of radical social thought which may be allied to but are distinct from it. On the verbal level the most perplexing problem is that of definition of terms, beginning with the basic word itself. In one respect the obstruction may never be bridged. An almost insuperable barrier has been the matter of semantics. The use of the term as an identification for a social order characterized by the absence of the State is quite recent. As used by Pierre Joseph Proudhon in this way, it is hardly more than a century old. However, its association with reprehensibility in this country has generally greatly restricted its use for descriptive purposes. European radicals have been far less inhibited in this way; hence the study of anarchism there is relatively unimpeded by hesitancy on the part of radicals to disclose themselves. Their propaganda has been open and identified, and thus may be readily examined.