Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was born in Besançon, the capital of the Franche Comté region of France, on 15 January 1809. These were formative times for France and Europe. The Napoleonic wars were turning in favour of the Holy Alliance, and it was the beginning of the end of the First Republic. In 1814, a year before the fall of Napoleon, the Austrians laid siege to Besançon and, following the end of the war, the city was struck by successive waves of famine, compounding the Proudhon family’s poverty. Pierre-Joseph’s father was a cooper and taverner, who infamously refused to profit from his customers, and his mother was from a modest peasant background. These deprivations made completing a timely, formal education impossible.

Research into the history of anarchism as a transnational movement has been remarkably dynamic since the mid-2000s, uncovering or revisiting rich individual and collective histories of mobilities and exchange, and making a significant theoretical contribution to the transnational turn in the humanities and social sciences. In return, the study of anarchism has been reinvigorated by the new perspectives afforded by transnational approaches, which have opened up new territories for empirical study and allowed a much finer understanding of the movement’s political, social, and cultural history, and the nature and scope of anarchist internationalism and national attachments, as well as of anarchism’s relationship with labour organizations – to name just a few key areas.

Socialist ideas, practices, and discourses first took shape in the bustling politico-cultural environment of Paris and the British centres of industrial development. But, since these places had the attention of the rest of urban Europe, it did not take long before the question of socialism was hotly debated there too. In many cases, socialism was not only passively received as a set of foreign ideas, but also actively redefined and adapted to particular social contexts or intellectual mores. Germany, though not yet united as a nation in politico-institutional terms, was the main site of such redefinitions and adaptions during the 1830s and 1840s. Soon it became a hub of early socialism in its own right, with German ideas of socialism disseminating in neighbouring regions outside the three dominant nationalities of Europe.

Saint-Simon occupies a surprisingly central place in the narrative of what has become the socialist tradition. He does so primarily because he, along with his contemporaries Charles Fourier and Robert Owen, were singled out by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the Communist Manifesto as representatives of ‘critical-utopian socialism and communism’.

‘A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of Communism.’1 Introducing the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels cast communism as an ill-defined force that allowed ‘all the Powers in Europe’ to tar all political opposition with its stigma. It was therefore ‘high time … to meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself.’ But communism was already much more than that.

Anarchism emerged in southern Africa from the 1880s, and revolutionary syndicalism became a significant factor from the early 1900s. These movements faced the challenges posed by colonial racism, rapacious capitalism, state violence, and a large but fragmented working class. Although the pioneers were white immigrant workers and exiles, the movement set down local roots and assumed a more cosmopolitan character, developing a significant influence on local black African and Coloured/mestiço populations, local Indians (south Asians), and some Afrikaners. The current’s heyday was before the 1930s, but it revived from the 1990s, reappearing in several countries by 2010.

Both anarchism and syndicalism built upon pre-existing American traditions, while simultaneously adapting new ideas and tactics from Europe and elsewhere. Recognizably anarchist doctrines began to circulate in the decades before the American Civil War (1861–5), but a large-scale anarchist movement emerged only in the 1880s. The first and only major American syndicalist organization, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), appeared in 1905, influenced by American strains of Marxism and unionism as well as anarchism.

Charles Fourier adamantly rejected the description of his work as ‘utopian’. But, of all the early socialists, he is the only one for whom the designation ‘utopian socialist’ makes much sense. A social critic who advocated ‘absolute deviation’ from established philosophies and institutions, he distanced himself in every possible way from the society in which he lived. A psychologist who celebrated the passions as agents of human happiness, he carried to its ultimate conclusion the rejection of the doctrine of original sin that had long been a hallmark of the utopian tradition. A social prophet who drew up blueprints for everything from colour schemes for work uniforms to designs for nursery furniture, he was more concerned than any of his contemporaries to give precise definition to his conception of the good society.

The origins of Mexican syndicalism and socialism are rooted in the pre-Columbian, Spanish, and post-conquest working-class experiences that came together beginning in the sixteenth century and then evolved from that base during the era of the Industrial Revolution (1780–2000). The movement has emerged from its early beginnings within one of the world’s most beleaguered working-class experiences into one that is now powerful enough to politically manage the nation and is capable of creating a more just social democratic society.

Establishing precisely when socialism and anarchist socialism arrived in Brazil is far from an easy task. Throughout the nineteenth century, references to European socialist thinkers or social reformers were common in the Brazilian press. At least since the late 1840s, authors such as Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon, Charles Fourier, Pierre Leroux, Louis Blanc, and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon were frequently mentioned. Nevertheless, these references were often critical. In a way, anti-socialism preceded socialism as a structured social movement. This can be measured by the fearful reactions to the Paris Commune of 1871 and by favourable remarks on Otto von Bismarck’s anti-socialist laws.

During the reign of Kawād I (AD 498–531), king of Ērānšahr (Realm of the Iranians), a Zoroastrian priest by the name of Mazdak, son of Bāmdād, appears in some sources whose rulings about property and ownership have been deemed proto-socialist. According to sources in Middle Persian of the late Sasanian Empire (AD 224–651), Mazdak promoted the sharing of women and property.