Essay #109: Jason Garner, ‘Updating Anarchism’

In this essay, Jason Garner, looks at the debate between anarchists in countries on both side of the Atlantic about the need, or not, to revise anarchist tactics in the light of the end of the postwar revolutionary wave in 1923. This is part of an overall project on “Reformism and Cooperation in interwar anarchism. National and transnational debates in a context of decline”. Jason Garner, former lecturer and teacher in Contemporary and Argentine history though presently freelance historian relocatied to Europe. External member of Gesraiot, Grupo de Estudios sobre Representaciones y Acciones de las Izquierdas y Organizaciones de Trabajadores, IIDyPCa, Rio Negro National University (Argentina). Recent publications: Goals and Means: anarchism, syndicalism and internationalism in the origins of the Federacion Anarquista Iberica, AK Press, 2016. ‘The Revue International Anarchiste’s World Survey (1924-1925) A transnational attempt at reappraising, revising, and reinvigorating the anarchist movement’, Journal for the Study of Radicalism, Spring 2023, Vol.27, no.1, 1-25 ‘“Too many cooperatives and too few cooperativists”: The Consumer Cooperative movement in Catalonia 1898-1939.’ Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies, July 2022 ‘Left to die – The fate of the Catalan Consumer Cooperative Movement during the Primer Franquismo (1939-1959’, European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire, April 2022 ‘A failure of Praxis? European revolutionary anarchism in revolutionary situations 1917-1923’. Left History. An interdisciplinary journal of historical inquiry and debate, (24) 1, 2021, 10-44. Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Bluesky @anarchismresgroup.bsky.social Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns). Artwork by Sam G.