Max Nettlau, born on the 30th of April in 1865, was an anarchist historian whose biographical subjects included Bakunin, Malatesta, and Élisée Reclus. His enormous collection of primary materials is held by the International Institute of Social History.

Max Nettlau was born in Neuwaldegg (Austria) to an affluent family. Nettlau’s skepticism of state authority began at a young age; his memoirs state that, even as a child, he ‘somehow considered the supporter of any government system as a seriously defective person’.

Formally, Nettlau studied linguistics, authoring his doctoral thesis on the Welsh language. While a student in London, he became a member of the Socialist League, the only organization he was ever to join according to the International Institute of Social History (IISG).

As an anarchist activist, Nettlau wrote articles for John Most’s Freiheit and befriended famous anarchists such as Peter Kropotkin, Elisée Reclus, and Errico Malatesta.

Nettlau was an avid collector of materials of social movements. Not just manuscripts by anarchist authors (although original texts by Bakunin became a part of his collection), but the actual pamphlets, bulletins, and papers of social movements themselves.

Among Nettlau’s works as an author are the first major biography of Michael Bakunin, biographies of anarchists Elisée Reclus and Errico Malatesta, and a seven volume work on the history of anarchism. A significantly shorter, one volume version is available in English as “A Short History of Anarchism”.

In 1935, Nettlau sold his archive (described by the IISH as “enormous”) to the newly found International Institute of Social History, where it remains to this day.

Nettlau died 1944 from stomach cancer in Amsterdam, having fled his native Austria follow the country’s “Anschluss” to Nazi Germany in 1938.

“Do I want to propose my own system? Not at all! I am an advocate of all systems, i.e. of all forms of government that find followers.”

  • Max Nettlau in “PANARCHY. A Forgotten Idea of 1860” (1905)

A Short History of Anarchism by Max Nettlau

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  • Des [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    29·
    7 months ago

    my mom, a turbo-lib who helped work phones and shit for the clintons back in the day and who probably eats MSNBC for breakfast raised by a catholic Zionist who thought israel was some wonder-state and needed for the end of the world

    haven’t talked to her about ANY of the palestine stuff. but she immediately agreed with me when i brought it up that Israel was a nazi state basically. like she said “yes they are basically a nazi state now and they are genociding palestinians”

    hasbara, et al: you guys have lost my MOM you are fucked

  • VirtualBread [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    22·
    7 months ago

    Am reading a bourgeois macroeconomics textbook right now (why do I torture myself so), and the example they give to explain the theory of comparative advantage made me physically cringe. It goes something like this:

    “Suppose that South America can produce 400 units of food or 200 units of computers, and Europe can produce 200 units of food or 400 units of computers. South America has a comparative advantage in producing food, while Europe has a comparative advantage in producing computers. So it would be mutually beneficial for South America to specialize in making food and Europe to specialize in making computers”

    My god, what a painfully ironic example, given that the theory of comparative advantage originated from 19th century Britain, which promoted the theory because it wanted to force foreign nations to open themselves up to British exploitation. But neither the colonialist interests behind the origin of the theory nor the way in which this racist example perfectly plays to said colonialist origins ever crossed the minds of the author.

    Death to bourgeois economics

    • Nakoichi [they/them]@hexbear.netMEnglish
      16·
      7 months ago

      You have no idea. I broke my hand, my friend broke his knee, my uncle broke his foot, my dad got hospitalized by some as yet unsolved medical mystery (he’s okay now as far as we know), and that’s just the wild shit that has been happening in my immediate personal sphere.

      This all happening against the backdrop of what feels like a dress rehearsal for WWIII has made for a very surreal few months.

  • thelastaxolotl [he/him]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
    19·
    7 months ago

    Good morning nerds meow-coffee

    Only 32 days for the presidential election here in México, the 3 main candidates suck sadly hopefully the communist party get get enough votes for plurinominal representative

  • Yor [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    19·
    7 months ago

    My coworker struggled to say “pog” out loud after seeing me type it before

    “Pag or pog or whatever” has aged her a decade in a single sentence

  • homhom9000 [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    18·
    7 months ago

    I have a friend who’s team is in Isntreal. A while ago, like month and some change, they mentioned team morale is down and they’re trying to improve it. Since hearing about that I can’t help but laugh. Suckas

  • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    18·
    7 months ago

    90s programmer: swole-doge i just made a 3D game on an architecture that doesn’t support floating point operations

    2020s programmer: cheems i don’t think we can compute the mean of that dataset since we only have 20TB of ram