Anarchism and Eugenics: An Unlikely Convergence, 1890–1940

Richard Cleminson, professor of Hispanic studies at the University of Leeds, is uniquely suited to explore the complex dialogue between eugenics and anarchism. He has written extensively on anarchism and sexuality, biopolitics, and the relationship between anarchism and science. Examining pre–World War II eugenics and related discourses requires both scrupulous analysis and historical sensitivity, along with a deep understanding of primary sources and secondary literature, to contextualize a subject that understandably evokes strong reactions from many readers. Cleminson brings all these skills to bear in a remarkably fascinating study of how anarchists in Spain, France, Portugal, England, and Argentina engaged with contemporary scientific debates.Considering that pre-1930s eugenics encompassed issues such as progressive sex education, reproductive freedom, and women’s and children’s health, it is not surprising that anarchists engaged with these debates—they had been addressing such topics for decades. For instance, Terence Kissack, in his classic study Free Comrades: Anarchism and Homosexuality in the United States, 1895–1917, argues that anarchists in the United States were virtually alone in formulating an oppositional politics against state regulation of same-sex relations. Free love and birth control were regular topics in the English-language anarchist press, often appearing well before these issues gained attention in the mainstream press. In this context, Hal D. Sears’s The Sex Radicals: Free Love in High Victorian America (1977) documented debates around “anarchistic eugenics” and regeneration among anarchists associated with the magazine Lucifer. Some of these activists contended that official marriage and submission to sexist laws could lead to dysgenics; in other words, a woman should be free to choose the father of her child from the best examples of manhood. Birth control and reproductive debates thus became central to anarchists’ entry into eugenic thinking. They “sought to ‘resignify’ eugenics as an exercise in non-statist socio-biological change” (13).As Cleminson acknowledges, the idea of a dialogue between anarchists and eugenics may seem paradoxical, even offensive. Yet before the 1930s, eugenics was far from monolithic or even inherently authoritarian. Historical focus has tended to emphasize negative eugenics, such as sterilization and marriage prevention, while giving far less attention to positive, educational, or preventive measures, which were the areas anarchists primarily engaged with. Scholarship on anarchism and eugenics remains limited, especially compared to the growing body of work on socialism and eugenics (e.g., Diane Paul, David Redvaldsen). This neglect is partly due to the anarchists’ emphasis on environmentally oriented hereditarian ideas and their consistent opposition to state intervention. As Cleminson observes, while eugenics is often associated with state policies, many eugenic ideas also circulated through voluntary associations and professional networks beyond direct state control. What drew many anarchists to eugenics was the fact that they were “deeply fearful of the eventuality of society being engulfed by atavistic human traits” that would make libertarian communism, and even emancipation, impossible (176).Some might argue that the “positive eugenics” embraced by certain anarchists was not really eugenics at all, since it lacked any direct connection to genetics or racism. Others may contend that because anarchists rejected the state and all forms of coercion, their so-called eugenics amounted merely to a politics of women’s reproductive rights, hygiene, and responsible parenting. Cleminson challenges this view by showing how neo-Malthusianism acted as a bridge, leading anarchists to adopt selective ideas that edged closer to population politics. While such criticism is understandable, he cautions that it is ultimately ahistorical because it is shaped by a post-Holocaust understanding of what eugenics signifies.Cleminson’s in-depth, transnational study examines anarchists in Spain, France, Portugal, England, and Argentina and their discourses in the anarchist press. This wide scope alone makes the book a valuable contribution for English-speaking audiences. Organizing the many debates across different newspapers and countries requires numerous subheadings, which may at times interrupt the narrative flow. However, Cleminson deliberately (and justifiably) chooses this structure to highlight international exchanges of ideas on eugenics, birth control, and social reform while emphasizing local variations rather than relying on broad national generalizations. This transnational and translocal approach is one of the book’s greatest strengths.The text is often dense, and several explanatory sentences could be broken up for greater clarity. This density reflects the variety of environmentalist, hereditarian, and Malthusian ideas—some of which were pseudoscientific—that circulated at the time. Given this complexity, Cleminson succeeds in showing why some anarchists engaged with eugenics, why others opposed it, and why some avoided certain aspects. What emerges clearly is that many anarchists were well versed in, and frequently commented on, the major scientific debates of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.Despite what the title might suggest, many anarchists wanted nothing to do with eugenics and developed their own critiques. Cleminson strengthens his study by including Peter Kropotkin, one of anarchism’s most influential thinkers. Kropotkin sharply criticized eugenics for its elitist and coercive tendencies, emphasizing instead the role of social environment over heredity in shaping human behavior. To address social and physical “deficiencies,” he argued, society should implement reforms such as improved housing, better education, and the elimination of poverty. His position deeply influenced British anarchists around the magazine Freedom, who denounced sterilization and eugenic “quality control” as tools of social oppression. Their opposition to eugenics never wavered.Cleminson’s transnational study of anarchist eugenics, supported by an impressive range of primary sources, is ultimately a historical reflection on the nature of power and modernity. This becomes especially clear when viewed through the Foucauldian lens Cleminson adopts, in which power is decentralized, multifaceted, and cannot be reduced to simple top-down models. Anarchists hoped to use eugenics to create a free and healthy society, yet this effort inevitably brought them into the realm of governance and control. Could voluntary eugenics, they asked themselves, end up reproducing hierarchies of worth and unfreedom?Cleminson shows that anarchism was therefore not outside modern biopolitics but deeply entangled with it. Although not all anarchists were involved, this entanglement complicates straightforward narratives of resistance versus domination. Despite their antistatism, anarchists “were unable to resist absorbing the rationales of ‘governmentality’ that impregnated European and Latin American societies” (172). If “governmentality” is understood as “forms of political reason which enable objects and subjects of rule to be worked upon,” then Cleminson seems to suggest that no radical movement is entirely immune to the logics of governmentality when confronting issues of bodies, reproduction, and health (172).