ISM | Ideas Meet Power

What is Anarchism? Liberty's Great Refusal (S2E1)

Anarchism emerged not simply as a theory, but as a response to hunger, repression, industrial capitalism, and the growing power of the modern state. In this opening episode of Season 2, we trace anarchism's roots in the late nineteenth century, from the aftermath of the Paris Commune to the labor struggles of industrial Chicago. Through figures like Louise Michel, Lucy Parsons, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, and Peter Kropotkin, we explore how anarchism evolved from a critique of authority into a mass movement rooted in strikes, unions, and collective action. Along the way, we examine the origins of the black flag, the rise of anarcho-syndicalism and anarchist communism, and the radical vision that inspired workers across the globe to imagine a world beyond capitalism and the state. This is the story of anarchism’s great refusal. This is Season Two—The Age of Anarchism: Chicago and the American Labor Revolt Next: Chicago 1877: The Great Railroad Strike Written and produced by Matt Payne. Support, Subscribe, Read on Substack: https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com/ [https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com/] Original Musical Compositions by Ian Payne: https://www.jamesianpayne.com/ [https://www.jamesianpayne.com/] Support the Show: PayPal [https://www.paypal.com/donate/?business=CLKDEFJA5MR5U&no_recurring=0¤cy_code=USD] Contact: ismhistorypodcast@gmail.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismhistorypodcast.substack.com [https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Thoreau’s Plea for John Brown: Conscience Against the State

In the wake of John Brown’s raid, Henry David Thoreau delivered one of the most forceful defenses of moral action in American history. While much of the North recoiled after Harpers Ferry, Thoreau stood up in Concord and defended Brown as a man of principle, willing to act where others would only speak. What follows is a reading of Thoreau’s A Plea for Captain John Brown, one of the clearest expressions of the idea that when a government becomes unjust, the individual conscience may stand above it. This episode serves as a bridge into Season 2 of ISM: The Age of Anarchism and the American Labor Revolt, where these same questions about conscience, resistance, violence, and legitimacy will reappear in new and more collective forms. Next: Season Two — The Age of Anarchism: Chicago and the American Labor Revolt Written and produced by Matt Payne. Support, Subscribe, Read on Substack [https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com/] and Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/c/ismhistorypodcast]. Original Musical Compositions by Ian Payne: https://www.jamesianpayne.com/ [https://www.jamesianpayne.com/] Support the Show: PayPal [https://www.paypal.com/donate/?business=CLKDEFJA5MR5U&no_recurring=0¤cy_code=USD] Contact: ismhistorypodcast@gmail.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismhistorypodcast.substack.com [https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Harpers Ferry 1859: John Brown, An American Radical

In October of 1859, a small band of abolitionists led by John Brown seized the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Their goal was simple but audacious: to ignite a mass slave uprising and bring an end to slavery by force. Within 36 hours, the raid had collapsed. Brown’s men were killed, captured, or scattered. Brown himself was wounded, arrested, and sentenced to hang. But Harpers Ferry was never just a failed insurrection. In the aftermath of the raid, something shifted. Across the North, Brown was transformed from criminal to martyr. Across the South, his actions ignited fear, mobilization, and a growing sense that war was no longer avoidable. The illusion that slavery could be contained, or compromised with, began to dissolve. This episode traces the rise and fall of John Brown: from the violent struggles of Bleeding Kansas, to the quiet planning of his final campaign, to the last stand at the Engine House, and the trial that turned him into a national symbol. But more than that, it asks a deeper question: What happens when a political problem becomes a moral one? And what happens when a nation begins to believe that justice may require violence? From Harpers Ferry to the Civil War, and beyond, this is the story of how one man’s radical act helped transform the moral language of the United States and how that transformation would echo far beyond the abolition of slavery. Because the questions raised at Harpers Ferry did not end in 1865. They moved. This is an ISM Interlude on John Brown and the American Radical Tradition. Next: Thoreau’s Plea for John Brown — Conscience Against the State Written and produced by Matt Payne. Support, Subscribe, Read on Substack [https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com/] and Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/c/ismhistorypodcast]. Original Musical Compositions by Ian Payne: https://www.jamesianpayne.com/ [https://www.jamesianpayne.com/] Support the Show: PayPal [https://www.paypal.com/donate/?business=CLKDEFJA5MR5U&no_recurring=0¤cy_code=USD] Contact: ismhistorypodcast@gmail.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismhistorypodcast.substack.com [https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Marxism vs. Anarchism: The Question of the State (S1E9)

What began as a family quarrel within socialism would become a permanent schism that would shape every revolution that followed. When sailors at Kronstadt rose to demand “All power to the soviets, not the parties,” they believed they were defending the true legacy of 1917. Instead, they were crushed by the Red Army on the frozen ice of the Gulf of Finland, exactly fifty years after the Paris Commune had first been declared. For many revolutionaries watching in horror, Kronstadt marked the moment when the promise of socialism hardened into one-party rule. This episode traces the long road to that rupture. From the ashes of the Paris Commune to the collapse of the First International, socialism’s first generation wrestled with a question that would define the modern left: Can the state be used to liberate the working class? Or must it be abolished altogether? Through the ideas and conflicts of Karl Marx and Mikhail Bakunin, and through the lived experiences of figures like Louise Michel, Emma Goldman, and Alexander Berkman, we follow how a shared revolutionary tradition fractured into two opposing visions. Marx and his allies argued that capitalism’s centralized power could only be defeated by an organized, disciplined workers’ movement capable of seizing the state and transforming it from within. Bakunin and the anarchists insisted that power itself was the enemy—that any revolutionary state would inevitably reproduce domination, hierarchy, and terror. These disagreements, once theoretical, were forged into doctrine by defeat, exile, and bloodshed. From The Hague Congress of 1872 to the repression of Kronstadt in 1921, and from the Bolshevik victory in Petrograd to the anarchist collectives of Spain, this episode follows the hardening of that divide and the human costs on both sides. The question of the state was never settled. But its consequences would carry across centuries and continents. This is Season One—The Origins of Socialism: Paris and the Making of Modern Revolution Next: Season Two—The Age of Anarchism: Chicago and the American Labor Revolt Written and produced by Matt Payne. Original Musical score by Ian Payne. Support, Subscribe, Read on Substack: https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com/ [https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com/] Original Musical Compositions by Ian Payne: https://www.jamesianpayne.com/ [https://www.jamesianpayne.com/] Support the Show: PayPal [https://www.paypal.com/donate/?business=CLKDEFJA5MR5U&no_recurring=0¤cy_code=USD] Contact: ismhistorypodcast@gmail.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismhistorypodcast.substack.com [https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]

Paris 1871: The Death of the Commune (S1E8)

For 72 days, the Paris Commune turned the capital into a living experiment in working-class democracy. Parks opened, palaces became public space, newspapers and clubs exploded with debate, and a wave of reforms tried to remake daily life from the ground up: secular schools, cooperative workshops, equal pay in the National Guard, and a new vision of the “social republic.” But outside the city walls, Versailles gathered an army, and the dream of peaceful federation gave way to civil war. Inside the Hôtel de Ville, the Commune’s contradictions sharpened into open conflict. Jacobins demanded unity and discipline. Blanquists pressed for emergency powers. Internationalists and Proudhonists resisted anything that resembled a new state. As shells fell and bread ran thin, fear began to replace the exhilaration of March. The Decree on Hostages, the return of a Committee of Public Safety, and the tightening grip of censorship exposed a brutal question that had haunted every revolution since 1793: how does a movement built on liberty survive when surrounded? Then, on May 21, as Parisians gathered for a concert in the Tuileries, Versailles troops slipped quietly through an undefended gate. What followed was not a conventional battle, but a methodical annihilation as Versailles conquered Paris district by district. The week would end in massacre, executions, and fire: the Tuileries in flames, the Hôtel de Ville reduced to ash, the Commune’s leaders hunted down, and tens of thousands of working people crushed in the streets. In the aftermath, the revolution would put on trial, especially in the figure of Louise Michel, who refused repentance and claimed the Commune as “the Social Revolution” itself. And from the ruins of Paris, the left would inherit its defining divide as Marx and Bakunin both hailed the Commune but drew opposite lessons—centralism versus federation, discipline versus spontaneity, the workers’ state versus the negation of the state. The Commune lasted seventy-two days, but its fires would continue to burn for a century. This is Season One—The Origins of Socialism: Paris and the Making of Modern Revolution Next: Marxism vs. Anarchism: The Question of the State Written and produced by Matt Payne. Support, Subscribe, Read on Substack: https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com/ [https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com/] Original Musical Compositions by Ian Payne: https://www.jamesianpayne.com/ [https://www.jamesianpayne.com/] Support the Show: PayPal [https://www.paypal.com/donate/?business=CLKDEFJA5MR5U&no_recurring=0¤cy_code=USD] Contact: ismhistorypodcast@gmail.com This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ismhistorypodcast.substack.com [https://ismhistorypodcast.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1]