Upon reading various scholarly literatures on the topic of anarchist movement in early 1900s China, it had increasingly appeared to me that anarchists resembled the figure of tragic heroes of the twentieth century whose downfall was doomed from the very beginning due to the fatal flaws in their nature.
At first glance, anarchism is an ideology primarily characterised by its renowned opposition towards any form of hierarchical governance and authority. However, one needs to bear in mind that the abolition of government and state does not mean the abolition of rule and order for an anarchist. Instead, anarchists’ mistrust in state stems from their disbelief in political governance and revolution’s ability to solve prevailing social problems at their time. They believe that, regardless to the political ideology one follows, all political revolutions only ever result in the substitution of one ruling group with another, and all political institutions only ever represent the interests of the minority that possesses wealth and power. Hence, previous social problems, such as oppression and inequality, will persist.1 Anarchist revolutionaries subscribe to the idea that only social revolution (as opposed to political revolution) and moral education can bring about their idealistic worldly society, advocating the maintenance of an orderly and harmonic society through self-governing. Most anarchists rejected all kinds of instrumental use of anarchism in achieving one’s own political enterprise, and declared that all those who seek to realise anarchism ideals through political movements fail to be real anarchists.
Non-surprisingly, this is where anarchist ideology attracts criticism. Many early twentieth century Chinese intellectuals attacked the anarchist for being too idealistic and overlooking the realities of Chinese society, in which the education level of the general public is far from sufficient to uphold self-governance, and external political influence posed significant threat to the survival of the nation.2 Although publicly influential, Anarchism’s fundamental rejection of political means and hierarchical organisation had hindered its advocators’ ability to develop it further than a decentralised social movement.
However, due to this unavailability of the established revolutionary methods, twentieth century Chinese anarchists are themselves confused along the way to figure out how to achieve their vision of a good society. This is why some anarchists, aware of the inherent weakness in their own ideology, comply with other revolutionary groups—such as the Revolutionary Alliance, the Communists, and the Guomindang—temporarily to achieve their own end goals. They adhere to political parties where they see congruency with their own vision, with the hope that it would help to overcome the deficiency in their own ideology. They are wanderers who were confused on the way to realise their own ideals of a revolutionised society. Various other revolutionary groups had welcomed those anarchists and their philosophies in the early stage of their revolutions, as they see value for their own cause in the popularity anarchism had acquired among the people. But once they achieved their own revolutionary goal, all turned their back to purge anarchism out of their system, precisely due to anarchism’s very anti-political establishment nature. In this sense, anarchists are pure idealists who are used, betrayed, and extinguished, in the revolutionary climate in early twentieth century Chinese society.
For anarchists, the only way forward is to reimagine the possibility of reforms, be that anarchist education, be that social revolution etc. Shifu, a prominent Chinese anarchist had once come close to a new path by linking anarchist message with the labour movement before his premature death, which is a potential direction for future anarchists to look towards.3
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