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Title: Anarchism in Belgium Author: Erik Buelinckx Date: 2009 Language: en Topics: Belgium, history Source: Retrieved on 22nd November 2021 from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781405198073.wbierp0043 Notes: Published in The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest.
As in surrounding countries, the anarchist movement in Belgium had its
beginnings around the mid-nineteenth century. Belgium, created in 1830
by what started as partly a proletarian revolution which quickly turned
into a bourgeois one directed by the superpowers of that time, adopted a
rather liberal constitution, mainly regarding freedom of speech and
publishing. Belgium was one of the first industrialized countries, and
over the following decades it became attractive to fleeing
revolutionaries from all over Europe. Until 1848, paternalistic
bourgeois led the workers’ organizations. In the 1850s there were the
influences of Utopian socialists like Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825),
Charles Fourier (1772–1837), and Victor Considérant (1808–93), later
followed by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s sojourn as a political refugee from
1858 to 1862, and the publishing of many of his works in Brussels. Of
special interest, too, was the rationalist socialism of Hippolyte Colins
(1783–1859).
Free-thinkers and socialists shared a common “enemy” – clergy and
capital – and founded together L’Affranchissement (1854) where strong
figures like Nicolas Coulon (1816–90), Jan Pellering (1817–77), and
Désiré Brismée (1822–88) played an important role. Although differing in
ideas, the main understanding was that education, organization, and
material liberation were needed for intellectual liberation. Brismée,
being more moderate, founded Les Solidaires (1857), and later a new
organization, Le Peuple (1860), as well as a newspaper, La Tribune du
peuple (1861), with Proudhonist influences.
A collaborator on La Tribune du peuple and a key figure in the emerging
anarchism was the Flemish Cesar De Paepe (1841–90). In his Patignies
speech (1863) he formulated a triple attack on state, church, and
capital. In 1865 the Belgian workers’ organization joined the new
International, and in the following years their delegates were mainly to
be found on the anti-authoritarian side. Several wildcat strikes broke
out in the more industrialized regions, but the new organization wasn’t
always ready for these. De Paepe tried to establish a link between
collectivism and mutualism, and at the 1868 Brussels congress his ideas
prevailed, but this meant also a break with some French anarchists and
internal disagreements for the Belgian delegates. At the 1872 congress
in the Hague the Belgian delegates mostly took the anti-authoritarian
and collectivist side. De Paepe was still not in favor of political
action, and although he had contacts with Marx and Bakunin, their
growing differences of opinion were also manifested with the Belgians.
In 1874 De Paepe started to embrace social democracy to realize change.
The year 1877 saw a universal congress in Ghent, intended to unite all
factions, and a more anarchist one in Verviers, the latter without
Flemish representation, showing that language, regional identity, and
the level and kind of industrialization were rather influential.
Flanders and Brussels were around the turn of the century less anarchist
than the Walloon part of Belgium, with Verviers and later Liège,
although a strong but local group existed for a few years in Mechelen
(Flanders). In Liège and the surrounding industrialized region a short
period of direct action and illegalism followed the arrests of anarchist
comrades during strikes and other revolts, with lots of wounded and 14
deaths (1886). Combined with the rise of the reformist Socialist Party
using “universal” suffrage (for men) as a convincing argument to gather
all “progressive” elements around the party line, this defeated any
larger organized anarchist movement in Belgium.
After 1900 there was a renewed anarchist interest in syndicalism, but
the centralizing activities from socialists, and later the outbreak of
the war in 1914, made it too difficult to leave lasting anarchist
influences in the unions. Specific for Brussels at the turn of the
century was some kind of intellectual and cultural anarchism inside the
regular Workers’ Party, through artistic contacts mainly with Paris.
Kropotkin visited Belgium on several occasions, and Elisée Reclus
(1830–1905) stayed in Brussels to teach for the Université Nouvelle.
Also notable were the connections of Belgian-born anarchists such as
Raymond Callemin (1890–1913), Jean De Boë (1889–1974), and Victor Serge
(1890–1947) with the Bonnot Gang.
After World War I, anarchist activity diminished, but from the 1930s on,
Hem Day (a.k.a. Marcel Dieu, 1902–68), Ernestan (a.k.a. Ernest Tanrez,
1898–1954), and Léo Campion (1905–92) kept it alive, injecting a strong
anti-militarism. After World War II they published Pensée et Action
(1945–70). Flemish anarchists were still more in contact with the Dutch
movement, and the French-speaking anarchists with French anarchists.
In the 1960s anarchism gained momentum again, with influences from the
Dutch Proves and the Paris May 1968 uprising. From the 1970s through the
1990s, however, the movement experienced ups and downs. Five times,
“Days of Anarchy” were held in Brussels (1979), Mechelen (1980), Ghent
(1981, 1983), and Leuven (1982), mostly around ecology, class war,
social injustice, youth resistance, anarcha-feminism, and
anti-militarism.
The alternative globalization movement was influenced by anarchist
ideas, and in turn spurred a new generation of anarchists, this time
using the latest technologies to spread their ideas instead of the print
format of magazines such as Alternative Libertaire (Brussels, 1976–2003)
and Perspectief (Ghent, 1985–96). At present, both print and Internet
are used, for example by De Nar (May 2008: issue 216) and A voix Autre
(2005-). Every year, on May 21, the anarchist artist Jan Bucqouy, a
friend of pie-thrower Noel Godin, stages a coup on the royal palace. In
March 2008 the eighth annual anarchist book fair was organized in Ghent,
and in May, the second Subversive Book Fair in Brussels.
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REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS
Faes, A. (2005) Hedendaags anarchisme in Nederland en Vlaanderen
(1933–2000). Unpublished MA thesis. Gent: RUG. Available at http://www.
scriptiebank.be/EN. Accessed April 1, 2008.
Inghels, N. (2002) Le mouvement anarchiste en Belgique francophone de
1945 Ă 1970. Unpublished MA thesis. Brussels: ULB. Available at
raforum.info/these/spip.php?rubrique5. Accessed April 1, 2008.
Moulaert, J. (1981) De vervloekte staat. Anarchisme in Frankrijk,
Nederland en België 1890–1914. Berchem: EPO.
Moulaert, J. (1995) Rood en zwart. De anarchistische beweging in België
1880–1914. Leuven: Davidsfonds.
Netdau, M. (1996) A Short History of Anarchism. London: Freedom Press.
Wouters, D. (1981) De Mechelse anarchisten (1893–1914) in het kader van
de opkomst van het socialisme. Mechelen: Dirk Wouters.