Anarchism in Switzerland appeared, as a political current, within the Jura Federation of the International Workingmen's Association (IWA), under the influence of Mikhail Bakunin and Swiss libertarian activists such as James Guillaume and Adhémar Schwitzguébel. Swiss anarchism subsequently evolved alongside the nascent social democratic movement and participated in the local opposition to fascism during the interwar period. The contemporary Swiss anarchist movement then grew into a number of militant groups, libertarian socialist organizations and squats.
History
In August 1291, an alliance was formed between the cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden, establishing the Swiss Confederacy with imperial immediacy, which allowed for the territory's autonomy from the Holy Roman Empire. During the growth of the Old Swiss Confederacy throughout the 14th and 15th centuries, it continued to assert its autonomy through a number of conflicts against noble houses such as the Habsburgs and the Burgundians, eventually achieving de facto independence from the empire after its victory in the Swabian War, which exempted the Confederacy from the decisions of the Imperial Diet. In its place, the Swiss Confederacy established the Federal Diet, a regular meeting of cantonal delegates with only limited powers. The Diet was the only form of federal authority in Switzerland and the cantons remained essentially sovereign.
During the Protestant Reformation, social inequality grew significantly, as more political and economic power became concentrated in the hands of a few rich families, which began to draw resentment from peasants and free citizens. In response to the rise of these oligarchies, popular revolts started to break out in many of the cantons, with the objective of restoring common democratic rights. Despite the cantonal authorities managing to subdue these uprisings through the granting of concessions, autocratic tendencies continued to slowly transform the democratic cantons into oligarchies, culminating in the establishment of the absolutist Ancien Régime in 1648, with the recognition of Swiss independence from the Holy Roman Empire. But the institution of absolutism in Switzerland soon led to the Swiss peasant war of 1653, which resulted in the implementation of a series of reforms including the lowering of taxes, ultimately preventing the country from completely implementing absolutism as had occurred in France under Louis XIV.
In 1798, the French invasion of Switzerland brought about the collapse of the Old Confederacy, which was replaced with the Helvetic Republic, representing an attempt to impose a central authority over Switzerland. However, a federalist revolt eventually overthrew the Republic, restoring the cantons and re-establishing a federal and decentralized Swiss Confederation. Following the defeat and dissolution of the First French Empire in the War of the Sixth Coalition, Cantonal constitutions began to be worked out independently and the Federal Diet was reconvened to replace the constitution with a new Federal Treaty, beginning the restoration of the Ancien Régime.
But the restoration of the Swiss ruling class brought with it a rise in liberalism and radicalism, calling for greater democracy in the Swiss cantons. Following the July Revolution, cantonal assemblies were held calling for new cantonal constitutions, particularly focused on the implementation of proportional representation and the ability to propose citizens' initiatives. As liberal and radical groups attained more power, they began to institute widespread reforms including the abolition of censorship, the separation of church and state, the recognition of popular sovereignty and the introduction of representative democracy. In 1848, Switzerland was officially constituted as a federal state, imposing a central government made up of representatives of a new National Assembly.
With the outbreak of the Paris Commune, the anarchist James Guillaume drew a contrast between the federalism practiced by the communards with the federalism of Switzerland. According to Guillaume, the Parisian conception of federalism, as inspired by the philosophy of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, was organized in direct opposition to nationalism and statism, whereas Swiss federalism maintained the nation-state, albeit organized through decentralization.
The International and early Swiss anarchism
The re-establishment of the Swiss confederation in 1848 provided a safe haven for many European revolutionaries, many of which had been forced into exile by the monarchist regimes that largely ruled the continent at the time. These expatriates included a significant number of revolutionary socialists and anarchists, who began to lay the groundwork for the labor movement in the country.
Following the repression of the January Uprising in Poland, European workers began to discuss the need for an international organization, culminating in the 1864 founding of the International Workingmen's Association (IWA). In September 1866, the IWA convened its first congress in Geneva, during which the French mutualists came to dominate the discussion, with native Swiss trade unions and educational societies also in attendance, concluding its activities by taking up the demand for the universal establishment of the eight-hour day. The following September, the IWA's second congress was convened in Lausanne, where the majority of delegates came from the local Swiss labor movement. It was during this second congress that the international took on a more explicitly socialist program. Here too the mutualists were predominant in the discussions of the congress, raising debates on national banks, trade union investments and education, ultimately bringing about the approval of resolutions to "induce the trade unions to devote their funds to cooperative production" to institute free, compulsory and secular education, and to call for the public ownership of transportation.
Shortly after the Lausanne Congress, the inaugural congress of the League of Peace and Freedom was held in Geneva, coordinated with the aim of achieving peace between European nations and the establishment of a "United States of Europe". This congress saw the participation of a number of prominent anarchists, including Mikhail Bakunin and Élisée Reclus, who joined the league's central committee. However, the League's second congress in Bern marked a split between the organization's liberal democratic majority and the anarchist minority, which caused Bakunin, Reclus, Mroczkowski and Fanelli to leave the League and establish the International Alliance of Socialist Democracy, which soon dissolved itself into the various national sections of the IWA.
In September 1869, the IWA's fourth congress was convened in Basel, in which the Swiss delegates included the anarchists James Guillaume and Adhémar Schwitzguébel. This congress saw the French section, which was largely composed of mutualists such as Henri Tolain, Eugène Varlin and Benoît Malon, become isolated from the International by the growing Marxist faction.
In the wake of this excision, on October 9, 1870, anti-authoritarian and anarchist sections of the IWA's Romandy Federation went on to found the Jura Federation during a meeting in Saint-Imier. The federation published the Sonvilier Circular in 1871, which aligned it against hierarchical political parties and advocated for horizontal revolutionary organizations that modelled themselves after the future society they wished to bring about. When the anarchist faction was expelled from the IWA at the International's fifth congress, the Jura Federation organized a rival congress in Saint-Imier. The congress resolved to reject the expulsion of anarchists from the IWA and other resolutions of the Hague Congress and the International's General Council, which they deemed as authoritarian. From the libertarian section of the split rose the Anti-Authoritarian International, which they claimed to be to true heirs of the IWA.
In September 1873, the two rival Internationals both held separate sixth congresses in Geneva. The Congress of the Marxist section proved to be a failure, as only a small number of regional federations participated and the General Council was itself unable to attend, leading it to eventually dissolve itself. Whereas the anarchist congress was attended by delegates from all over western Europe, with a federation from the United States even announcing its accession to the anarchist International. The anarchists agreed to the formal dissolution of the General Council and the autonomy of local federations, as well as the adoption of the general strike as a revolutionary tactic for the first time.
In 1874, Mikhail Bakunin retired to Minusio and died on July 1, 1876. Following Bakunin's death, a number of debates began to emerge within the anarchist movement, concerning the concepts of insurrectionism, syndicalism and anarcho-communism. In September 1876, the International held its eighth congress in Bern, during which the proposal to open up the International to non-anarchist organizations was debated. Subsequent congresses thus took positions that were increasingly favorable to Russian populism and nihilism, approving of more radical tactics like propaganda of the deed. Debates also took place between the collectivist position of Bakunin and the newly synthesized anarcho-communism, which was proposed by Peter Kropotkin, with the Jura Federation officially adopting anarcho-communism at its congress in La Chaux-de-Fonds. Kropotkin and Reclus also founded the Jura Federation's official newspaper Le Révolté on February 22, 1879, and published a number of revolutionary pamphlets, although the political fallout that followed the assassination of Alexander II of Russia in 1881 led to Kropotkin's expulsion from Switzerland. By this time, the Anti-Authoritarian International and the Jura Federation had both largely dissolved.
Social democracy and syndicalism
As a result of the split in the International, the socialist movement within Switzerland became split across the same lines. In Romandy, anarchism became the predominant tendency, whereas in German-speaking Switzerland, it was social democratic tendencies that took the lead.
When the Social Democratic Party was founded in 1888, a number of German-speaking anarchists and syndicalists joined the party and its affiliated trade unions, influencing party policy towards anarchist, federalist and syndicalist ideas. However, anarchist activists were often the target of expulsion by Swiss authorities, a practice which was even applied by social democratic police officials. German and Austrian anarchists were only able to briefly agitate in Switzerland before themselves being expelled, at the behest of social democratic figures. The social democrats also led to expulsion of anarchists from the Zürich Socialist and Labour Congress, which had been convened by the Second International. The Social Democrats went on to win their first eat in the National Council during the 1896 Swiss federal election.
Nevertheless, the influence of anarcho-syndicalism had brought with it the strategy of the mass strike, as the early 1900s saw a wave of localized general strikes spread through the country, despite Swiss trade union leaders remaining largely skeptical of the practice. The anti-strike rhetoric that followed in their wake saw a surge in anti-semitic and xenophobic conspiracy theories, which blamed the strikes on Jewish speculators and foreign anarchist revolutionaries.