sharedlifeinlove

[sharedlifeinlove]

[sharedlifeinlove]

[sharedlifeinlove]

[sharedlifeinlove]

[sharedlifeinlove]

[sharedlifeinlove]

Agent Provocateur | Callypso • in black + multicolour embroidered sheer Italian tulle | Fall Winter 2025-26

[sharedlifeinlove]

[sharedlifeinlove]

[sharedlifeinlove]

[sharedlifeinlove]

[sharedlifeinlove]

Like many contemporary anarchists, many anarchists of the 19th and 20th centuries maintained relationships with multiple romantic partners, or were involved with partners who did. Just as it does today, this often precipitated gossip, heartache, jealousy, and interminable emotional processing. A complete history of anarchist polyamory drama would be nearly as ambitious as a comprehensive history of the anarchist movement itself. Here, we’ve limited ourselves to a few poignant anecdotes from the lives of a handful of classical anarchists. There is a great deal more to be told—for example, the love triangle involving Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and Johann Most, or Voltairine de Cleyre’s writing about ownership and possessiveness in relationships.

Why revisit all this, you ask? Certainly not just for the salacious thrill of letting the skeletons out of the closet to dance a little on holidays. No, we return to these stories because our antecedents were just like us, flawed and fallible yet capable of greatness. They were responsible for both heroic acts and gross stupidities (let’s not forget Bakunin’s anti-Semitism). In studying their lives, we might recognize some ways to improve ourselves.

“We want freedom; we want men and women to love and unite freely for no other reason than love, without any legal, economic, or physical violence. But freedom, even though it is the only solution that we can and must offer, does not radically solve the problem, since love, to be satisfied, requires two freedoms that agree, and often they do not agree in any way; and also, the freedom to do what one wants is a phrase devoid of meaning when one does not know how to want something.” —Errico Malatesta, “Love and Anarchy”

[sharedlifeinlove]

[sharedlifeinlove]

[sharedlifeinlove]

椿野ゆうこ

[sharedlifeinlove]

[sharedlifeinlove]