Numerous authors have speculated that libertarian socialist and anarchist thinking has a number of forerunners throughout history - or people and movements who expressed similar ideas long before Bakunin was born.
Examples of Forerunners
Among Movements
Agriculturalism
Agriculturalism (sometimes called the School of the Tillers) was a philosophy that emerged in ancient China (around 770BCE to 221BCE) which argued that agriculture was the key to a stable and prosperous society. They also advocated for ideas that can be seen as forerunnners of libertarian socialism, such as having a "king" who worked alongside peasants in the fields and consulted with others before reaching a decision. They also believed in the abolition of economic inequality and communal ownership of land.[1]
David Graeber summaried the movement as believing that: "both merchants and government officials were both useless parasites, and attempted to create communities of equals where the only leadership would be by example, and the economy would be democratically regulated in unclaimed territories between the major states. Apparently, the movement was created by an alliance between renegade intellectuals who fled to such free villages and the peasant intellectuals they encountered there. Their ultimate aim appears to have been to gradually draw off defectors from surrounding kingdoms and thus, eventually, cause their collapse."[2]
Maroons
The maroons refers to a variety of communities formed in the Americas of alliances between free slaves and indigenous people. Maroons formed a variety of self-governing communities and defended themselves from colonialists.[3]
Quakers
The Quakers are a Christian denomination that emerged out of Protestantism in the 1600s who have often been identified as being similar to libertarian socialism. They are famous for being consistently one of the most liberal and forward thinking sects of Christianity. Quakers tend to believe that all people are capable of finding god, and avoid building hierarchical structures. They have historically advocated against war, for the abolition of slavery, against drinking alcohol and for wearing plain clothes. Quakers are most famous historically in England and North America, but are located all over the world.[4]
Among Individuals
Socrates
Some have argued that Socrates' insistence on critical thinking and arguing with power structures makes him something of a proto-anarchist, although Socrates never explicitly advocated for the end of the state.[5]
- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculturalism
- ↑ David Graeber, The Democracy Project: A History, A Crisis, A Movement (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2013), 188-189
- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maroons
- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakers
- ↑ Peter Marshall (1993) - Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism