Half a Century of Anarchy
2026 marks our 50th anniversary. For the sake of historical accuracy, our official founding date is September 26, 1976, during the international conference held in Venice to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Michail Bakunin’s death. A founding act one could describe as closely tied to identity, but the history that follows situates that choice within a much more complex narrative that combines historical re-examination—never hagiographic, much less museum-like—with reflection on anarchist thought and its practices in light of the profound social, economic, cultural, and technological transformations that have taken place over the past five decades. As the many research projects undertaken in the years my shown —from self-management to technobureaucracy, from utopia to anarcho-feminism, from social ecology to neo-anarchisms in their various forms— the paths we took led us to explore lesser-known landscapes along barely marked trails.
It is precisely this dual focus—historical memory and an understanding of the world in which we live and act—that is perhaps the most distinctive feature of our decades-long work. But these are not two aspects that run parallel without ever intersecting: the past on the bookshelves and the present in our research activities. On the contrary, the two aspects interact closely, giving each other meaning. Indeed, if you go through the papers that all too often gather dust on the shelves, you’ll find that the history of anarchism—or rather, of the men and women who embodied it—is a history of boundless creativity. Of course, you have to be a bit of a bookworm to pore over that mountain of paper—made up of books, pamphlets, newspapers, and the most unclassifiable documents—and, on top of that, you have to make an effort to read the many languages of anarchist internationalism. But if you can make it, you’ll realize that among those yellowed pages lie ideas and experiments that are extremely relevant today. No doubt, historical circumstances are different, and it is our task to reinterpret and contextualize them, but the extraordinary ability to imagine—and often prefigurate—ways of living and acting together without hierarchies or domination remains astonishing. This is so evident when we look at our shelves, which are filled not so much with paper as with life, and struggle, that one often wonders why every generation seems to have to rediscover what had already been discovered and experienced.
And this capacity to foreshadow the future, dispersed across time and space, is also irrefutable proof of another cornerstone of our experience: namely, that the history of anarchism can only be a history from below. However, in making this statement, we do not mean to “reject” our founding act dedicated to Bakunin, or the subsequent moments of reflection dedicated to the great classical thinkers such as Malatesta, Kropotkin, Reclus, Berneri… On the contrary, we are still convinced of the value of re-reading the classics—with a completely unorthodox approach—in order to extract from their theoretical corpus everything that speaks directly to the present day. But if we are not focused on the history of ideas, but rather on the history of practice, then it is to the anonymous masses who built both the barricades and the communities that we must turn. They are the true protagonists of anarchist history.
We have been engaged with this and other issues over the half-century that has passed since 1976, during which we have ceaselessly shaped and reshaped our vision of anarchy—an approach we have no intention of abandoning, even in the uncertain future that awaits us. One thing, however, is certain: our journey continues, whether it be the Pax Romana that marked the past or the totalitarian scenarios taking shape in the near future. And another thing is equally certain: we have not walked this path alone, and we will continue to do so alongside countless others, thus making it a truly collective endeavor.
"As is inevitable with the passing of time, many of the comrades, both men and women, who made vital our study center/archive—starting with the founding core, the same group behind “A rivista anarchica,” “Interrogations,” and “Volontà”—are no longer with us. Yet what they accomplished remains here; their actions and reflections are the building blocks that still support the structure today. We wish to remember two of them in particular, Amedeo Bertolo and Paolo Finzi, both central figures in our history. And we conclude by quoting a phrase spoken by Amedeo himself at the beginning of this long journey: “We are anarchists and proud to be so.” Fifty years later, we still feel the same way.
14/07/2026