Applying New Social Movement Theory to the Characteristics of Contemporary Anarchists
Dana Williams
23 August 2004
Abstract
This paper studies the characteristics and union membership of North American
anarchists. Traditionally, anarchism has been a working-class based movement that
rejects authority and domination. New social movement (NSM) theory suggests that
movements have changed in recent decades to focus less on the working class and
economic issues, and more upon social and political concerns. A survey by a prominent
anarchist website was analyzed to study if the NSM framework assists in characterizing
the contemporary anarchist movement in North America. Union membership was
positively correlated with four primary explanatory variables: economic ideology,
working class, and age. Union membership was negatively correlated with those who do
not want work. Then, survey respondent’s union membership was regressed on those
explanatory variables. With multivariate logistic regression equation, these variables all
remain significant, except for working class, which was no longer significant. North
Americans were also significantly less likely to be unions than those not from North
America. Given these findings, it is questionable how well anarchists are described by
NSM. The association of unions to ideology, class, work, and age suggest that anarchists
do participate in economic class and labor-related issues. The paper ends by making
suggestions on how to improve upon this research and explore other questions regarding
anarchists themselves and the anarchist movement.
