Anarchism as a social movement in Cuba held great influence with the working classes during the 19th and early 20th century. The movement was particularly strong following the abolition of slavery in 1886, until it was disected first in 1925 by President Gerardo Machado, and finally by Fidel Castro'sMarxist government following the Cuban Revolution in the late 1950s. Cuban anarchism mainly took the form of Bakuninistanarcho-collectivism and, later, anarcho-syndicalism. The Latin American labor and by extension the Cuban labor movement itself was at first more influenced by anarchism than Marxism. (read more...)
Its external forms have altered in the course of its historical development, but its functions have always remained the same. They have even been constantly broadened in just the measure in which its supporters have succeeded in making further fields of social activity subservient to their needs. Whether the state be monarchy or republic, whether historically it is anchored to autocracy or in a national constitution, its function remains always the same. And just as the functions of the bodily organs of plants and animals cannot be arbitrarily altered, so that, for example, one cannot at will hear with his eyes and see with his ears, so also one cannot at pleasure transform an organ of social oppression into an instrument for the liberation of the oppressed. The state can only be what it is: the defender of mass exploitation and social privileges, the creator of privileged classes and castes and of new monopolies. Who fails to recognise this function of the state does not understand the real nature of the present social order at all, and is incapable of pointing out to humanity new outlooks for its social evolution.
Anarchism is no patent solution for all human problems, no Utopia of a perfect social order, as it has so often been called, since on principle it rejects all absolute schemes and concepts. It does not believe in any absolute truth, or in definite final goals for human development, but in an unlimited perfectibility of social arrangements and human living conditions, which are always straining after higher forms of expression, and to which for this reason one can assign no definite terminus nor set any fixed goal. The worst crime of any type of state is just that it always tries to force the rich diversity of social life into definite forms and adjust it to one particular form, which allows for no wider outlook and regards the previously exciting status as finished. The stronger its supporters feel themselves, the more completely they succeed in bringing every field of social life into their service, the more crippling is their influence on the operation of all creative cultural forces, the more unwholesomely does it affect the intellectual and social development of any particular epoch.
1918 - Intelligence agencies begin to circulate the names & addresses of over 8,000 Mother Earth magazine subscribers, targeting them for investigation. Emma Goldman also reluctantly concurs with Stella Ballantine's decision to close the Mother Earth Bookshop.
1920 - Eight-member expedition for the Petrograd Museum of the Revolution, including Henry Alsberg, Alexander Berkman, and Emma Goldman, travels through the Ukraine (July 15-August 6). The events are recounted by Berkman in The Bolshevik Myth. (pictured)
1927 - Julien Content (b. 1892) dies. Crippled in a car accident in 1926, today he commits suicide.
1994 - Anarcho-punks from the north & north-east hold a conference at the University of Ceara, 15 - 17th July. The meeting brings together individuals & groups from five separate states to discuss various themes.
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