Anarchism asserted itself within the First International as a movement of revolt against the centralized, authoritarian and State-centred Marxist tendencies. Later marxism specialized in electoral politics while anarchism developed a vigorous anti-parliamentarian character. In its first decades of life, militant anarchism was a revolutionary movement advocating a social system based on libertarian communism, which was to be achieved through social revolution, i.e. through the destruction of the State and of all orders and privileges, by recourse to the direct action of individuals along with the oppressed, dispossessed masses. The project was too plain to offer anything to political calculation, too radical to allow niches to the comfortable liberalism of well-heeled revolutionaries, too intransigent to make itself available to the intrigues of opportunism. In order to be carried out, this project required that one’s ideas be resolute and steady, it required determination and unselfishness, all things that were rare among the avid crowd of political adventurers. Our first comrades were good-hearted, honest intellectuals and intelligent and generous workers, always ready, the former as well as the latter, to take up arms and struggle for the triumph of anarchy. Until the first wave of revisionism came over.

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