Anarchist companionship

The anarchist companionship was the relationship system of the anarchist movement in Western Europe at the end of the 19th century, encompassing both formal and informal anarchist networks guided by shared values such as hospitality and financial or practical aid to fellow companions. These networks also engaged in supporting other social struggles of the period—even those that were not explicitly anarchist.

This transnational network, lacking a real nerve center or central authority, allowed anarchists of the time to meet, consult, and undertake joint actions while providing them with significant mobility across Europe. The companions shared a set of structuring elements that united them: common values, a shared commitment to the anarchist struggle, and a collective imaginary, particularly shaped by the anarchist press and songs of the period.

Born as a response to state repression in Europe, this shifting and decentralized network proved difficult for authorities to control. They portrayed it as the result of a vast international anarchist conspiracy—an interpretation that does not reflect the reality of anarchist companionship. Attempts to suppress it generally failed due to its elusive nature.

After the Ère des attentats (1892–1894) and the growing distinction between individualist anarchists and anarcho-communists, anarchists turned to other forms of action and coordination, particularly anarcho-syndicalism. Although anarchist companionship eventually disappeared, some anarchists continue to use the term to refer to themselves, making it an anarchist counterpart to the more communist-linked term of 'comrade'.

The term companion literally means 'bread fellow, messmate'.^[2] The term replaced citizen among anarchists in France in the early 1880s for several reasons, some of which were noted by the Boulangist newspaper La Cocarde in 1888:^[3]

A few words about this epithet companion, which anarchists use to refer to one another. Citizen was the republican word—I would even say the revolutionary one. But citizen implied a right of citizenship (civitas, civis), a contract agreed upon with a governing power: citizen suited only slaves—from an anarchist perspective. Something else had to be found. They created the term companion, which, in fact, carried no obligations.

During this period, companions were generally men, although women could also be part of the movement.^[5] Contrary to the view upheld in earlier historiography of the movement, companions were not necessarily young, celibate men.^[5] In the French Nord department, for instance, among male companions, 67% were between 20 and 35 years old, 27.7% were over 35, and only 4.8% were under 20, which presents the image of a movement primarily composed of militants in their 'age prime'.^[5] Moreover, police reports on companions indicate a relatively equal number of married and single men, without accounting for free unions or cohabitation, which also existed.^[5]

In France, a certain number of companions were foreigners, mainly Italians, Russians, Polish, Belgians, Spanish, or British people.^[5] However, sources on them are difficult to analyze, as they belonged to circles that were challenging for the French authorities to infiltrate, making precise details hard to determine.^[5] From a socio-economic perspective, companions were predominantly involved in manual work, but far from all of them were artisans. Additionally, their professions varied greatly depending on location—while one city might have a majority of artisans, another might have mostly factory workers, making the composition of the movement quite diverse.^[5]

The term companion gave its name to anarchist companionship, the structural network of the anarchist movement in Western Europe at the end of the 19th century.^[3] This network, composed of anarchists who self-identified as companions, had no real nerve center. However, contrary to what La Cocarde claimed—describing it as carrying no obligations—being a companion actually entailed a series of duties toward others.^[3] First and foremost, being a companion meant being socialized among anarchists. This socialization primarily took place through meals and dinners organized by certain groups.^[3] These gatherings allowed anarchists to meet, introduce one another, coordinate, assess the reliability of different individuals—in short, they helped unify the movement.^[3]

The duties of companions were quite demanding.^[3] Firstly, they were expected to demonstrate total hospitality toward fellow companions and, in some cases, toward those in need.^[3] This hospitality extended beyond simply offering food and shelter to passing anarchists; it also involved hiding and assisting individuals sought by the authorities, helping them evade capture. In some cases, hospitality even went as far as helping the hosted companion find employment.^[3]

Furthermore, companions provided financial assistance to one another.^[3] They organized fundraising efforts to support imprisoned companions or those in financial distress. In these fund collections—such as the case of companion Faure and her children, who received financial support from the anarchist movement when her husband was imprisoned—distance was not an obstacle.^[3] Parisian companions, for example, could organize fundraising efforts for companions located across France or even in other countries.^[3]

As state repression increased, groups of companions became increasingly closed off — to guard against police informants, any newcomer to a group was closely monitored for a period of time by the companions.^[7] This included following the individuals or comparing the declared and actual financial resources of a given individual.^[7] If the information uncovered raised suspicions about someone, they could be publicly accused during a meeting and confronted by others, potentially leading to their exclusion from the movement.^[7] Such use of non-state intelligence was noted by state intelligence services, who wrote in France, for example:^[7]

Anarchist groups appear to be open to everyone, but each member, once admitted, is carefully scrutinised. They are treated with suspicion until their exact position is known, including the workplace, their resources, and expenses. If their life is regular, all is well. If they spend a lot, they are observed to determine whether their expenses exceed their income. In such a case, they must justify their resources. If they cannot, they are quietly expelled. Several members have already been expelled in this manner.

The companions also helped each other carry out actions.^[8] For example, Sante Geronimo Caserio, an Italian companion who did not speak a word of French, arrived in Lyon with the plan to assassinate Sadi Carnot, who was responsible for major repressions against the anarchist movement.^[8] Unfamiliar with the city, he met some companions and was placed along Carnot's route—at the precise location where the assassination could take place.^[8] Bouhey considers this a likely example of mutual aid among companions, even between militants from different countries who did not speak the same language.^[8]

The companionship system could be used for terrorism, as in this case, but the actions carried out by companions were highly diverse.^[9] They included political propaganda, organizing public readings for illiterate militants or those seeking education, and holding public meetings to promote their cause.^[9] Companions could also coordinate public disturbances or engage in individual reclamation—stealing property from bourgeois targets to redistribute it.^[9] For instance, Louise Michel was accused of organizing, alongside her companions, the looting of Parisian bakeries in 1883. She allegedly used these networks to meet and encourage other anarchists to help her incite a popular uprising, aiming to seize bakeries in protest against the high price of bread.^[9]

Finally, companions were generally well integrated into the social struggles of their time, to which they attached great importance. However, their stance toward the workers' movement was ambiguous, as they saw strikes, political parties, and even unions as, at best, useless.^[9] Nevertheless, they believed they had to take part in these struggles despite their reservations, and companions sometimes supported broader non-anarchist causes.^[9]

Despite these duties, companions could be tolerant toward one another and their practical compromises with capitalism.^[10] In that regard, Faure wrote:^[10]

Of course, the concessions they make to the bourgeois environment, to capitalist society, and too often to legality, are not presented by anarchists as acts of 'anarchist realization'; they acknowledge them for what they are: individual expedients, necessary evils. They do not take them seriously. It does not matter whether the anarchist companion has agreed to work for an employer, to enter into a legal marriage, or to write for a newspaper that complies with legal deposit requirements—the essential thing is that they fight relentlessly against the capitalist system, openly practice free love, and write whatever they think.

The companionship system, which was by nature relatively clandestine and outside state control, became a target for Western authorities, who sought to dismantle it.^[11] To achieve this, political authorities framed anarchists as part of a vast transnational conspiracy.^[11] The French police and press claimed that anarchists were preparing a generalized plot of attacks from London, which was not true.^[12][13] While London did serve as a safe haven for some anarchists, offering refuge and support, there was no centralized coordination of terrorist activities.^[13] Furthermore, the French police became highly alarmed, falling into a state of collective paranoia regarding London-based anarchists—many of whom did not even support terrorism or propaganda of the deed.^[13]

The authorities were caught off guard by the existence of political and moral agreements uniting anarchist companions, which they attributed to the influence of propagandists and attempted to oppose by criminalising them.^[11] Thus, in France, the first loi scélérate (villainous law) of 18 December 1893, which redefined the concept of criminal associations in French law while claiming to combat these agreements preventively, targeted this system but failed to hinder companionship because it was based on a legal framework ill-suited to this new reality.^[11] It also did not adequately define the various characteristics of anarchist companionship, according to a jurist of the time regarding the government's failure in the Trial of the Thirty.^[11] The jurors refused to believe in associations between people who had never met and refrained from convicting most of the accused; "since anarchist companionship was neither an association nor a conspiracy, the legislator should not have applied the old forms of conspiracy to it".^[14]

Although the companionship network was loose and lacked central authority, companions generally shared a common worldview.^[3] First and foremost, they used the same symbols and historical references.^[3] The history of the working class and the repression against labor movements were key structuring elements, as anarchists integrated and reclaimed these memories.^[3] Events such as the Semaine sanglante ('Bloody Week') or other massacres like the Haymarket Square massacre became crucial shared historical references.^[3] Additionally, some symbols became widely adopted among companions, most notably the black flag.^[3]

By borrowing symbols from the labour movement, anarchists reinterpreted them to differentiate themselves from socialists.^[3] Furthermore, the emergence of anarchist art, particularly anarchist songs, helped spread their ideals and deeply influenced the movement. Anarchist press also played a unifying role, providing companions with similar perspectives on the world.^[3] These perspectives often depicted their society as profoundly violent and unequal, with a stark opposition between oppressors and the oppressed, engaged in a struggle to the death.^[3]

In terms of theory, companions followed various ideological perspectives, leading to major internal debates.^[3] However, despite these differences, companions, especially in the 1880s, saw themselves as part of a single movement.^[3] At first, this diversity of opinions did not significantly impact the unity of the companionship network.^[3] However, by the mid-1890s, the Ère des attentats (1892–1894) and the growing divide between individualist anarchists and anarcho-communists led to fractures within companionship.^[16] This shift ultimately resulted in the rise of new organizational forms, such as anarcho-syndicalism.^[16]

Although the companionship system faded in favor of new structures and methods, the term 'companion' continues to be used by some anarchists, who prefer it over 'comrade', a term more closely associated with communism.^[17]

Anarchist companionship in France was primarily studied by Vivien Bouhey in his work Les Anarchistes contre la République ('The Anarchists against the Republic'), where he highlighted these networks and raised many interesting points, but tended to rely heavily on police sources, which were therefore not very objective.^[18] He tended to present companionship as a well-established "organization", thus following, at least to some extent, the mistaken police narrative of the time regarding it.^[18] Simon Luck, who specializes in the sociology of political organizations, criticizes these perspectives and prefers instead the idea of "coordination, of networks of solidarity and mutual aid, rather than organization".^[18]

• Bantman, Constance (2014), "« Anarchistes de la bombe, anarchistes de l'idée » : les anarchistes français à Londres, 1880-1895" ['Bomb anarchists, idea anarchists': French anarchists in London, 1880-1895], Le Mouvement Social, 246 (1), Paris: 47–61, doi:10.3917/lms.246.0047
• Berthoud, Joël (1969). L'attentat contre Carnot et ses rapports avec le mouvement anarchiste des années 90 (mémoire) [The attack on Carnot and it's relationship with the anarchist movement of the 1890s (memory)] (PDF) (in French).
• Bouhey, Vivien (2009), Les Anarchistes contre la République [The Anarchists against the Republic], Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes (PUR)
• Chambost, Anne-Sophie (2017), "« Nous ferons de notre pire… ». Anarchie, illégalisme … et lois scélérates" [«We’ll Do our Worse». Anarchy, Illegalism … and Evil Law], Droit et Cultures (in French), 74 (2): 65–87, doi:10.4000/droitcultures.4264
• Faure, Sébastien (1934), Encyclopédie anarchiste [Anarchist encyclopedia], Paris: La Librairie internationale