‘Society’ versus ‘State’. Concepts of society in early German anarchist thought before and around 1848

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Olaf Briese
• Subject Area: Political Science
• Term: from 2020 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 432246782

This project analyses concepts of ‘society’ in early anarchist thought in the years from 1842 to 1851 (‘society’ was presented as a distinctly positively connotated alternative to ‘state’). These concepts were to a large degree inspired by the reception of Lorenz Stein’s (later ‘von Stein’) conceptions of society, which had been introduced to German audiences through his book, Der Socialismus und Communismus im heutigen Frankreich of 1842. These concepts have received little attention in German-speaking countries, where academic research on anarchism has been largely absent over the last five decades.Central are the newspapers and journal publications of ‘wahrer Sozialismus’, in particular the Trier’sche Zeitung, which functioned as its main publication organ for many years. Analysing these publications will allow a new picture of the development of early socialism in Germany to emerge, one that highlights its “anarchoid” and anarchistic aspects and offers a substantial corrective to the way it is presented by Marx (and later by the Marxists). Proposals for “wahrer Sozialismus” interwove theoretical production with a presentation strategy that targeted a specific audience and were presented in popular newspapers and journals. This project shows how these proposals were actually interpreted and integrated by the emerging workers’ movement and proves that they dominated socialist discourse in the German states into the revolutionary period of 1848. At their core, these “anarchoid” resp. anarchist proposals offered positive determinations of ‘society’ that promised undivided freedom – from all economic control and all state-political authority. As will be shown, it was precisely the utopian underdetermination of the ‘society’ concept that made such “wahrsozialistische” proposals attractive to artisans and the working class.Source material is provided by newspapers and ephemeral literature, which tend to be marginalized in philosophical and political research. The project will evaluate neglected newspapers and journals and analyse them for “anarchoid” and anarchist content by excavating significant texts and discoursive threads on the theme of state and society. It aims to reinvigorate research on anarchism in German-speaking regions, which is underdeveloped in international comparison. Expanding the horizons of international “classic” and “post-classic” concepts of society, it also asks what role the anarchist foundational alternative of society versus state plays in “classic” anarchism (Kropotkin, Goldman) and in “revisionist” reconceptualisations (Bookchin) up to contemporary anarchism debates (Graeber, van der Walt, Gordon). It includes insights into the much debated question of whether ‘society’ can still be seen as a relevant concept in political theory.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants