Brought to you by Loughborough University’s Anarchism Research Group (ARG), Anarchist Essays presents leading academics, activists, and thinkers exploring themes in anarchist theory, history, and practice.
For more on the ARG, please visit https://www.lboro.ac.uk/subjects/politics-international-studies/research/arg/ and follow us on Twitter at @arglboro
Essay #123: Michael Grooff, ‘Sympathy as the Engine of Mutual Aid’
In this essay, Michael Grooff argues for a bipartite reading of Kropotkin’s account of sympathy, the mechanism behind the evolutionary mutual aid principle. Incorporating both simulation as well as perception in our analysis solves the problem of animal sympathy and provides a better account of sympathy as the basis of anarchist morality.
Michael Grooff is a PhD researcher in fundamental and practical philosophy at the Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany. Grooff's most recent publications are Sympathy as the Engine of Mutual Aid: Reading Kropotkin's Bipartite Account of Sympathy and Freedom of Recreation: A Critique of the Prohibition, Decriminalization, and Legal Regulation of Psychedelics for Recreational Use.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Bluesky @anarchismresgroup.bsky.social
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
25 May 2026
Essay #122: Alejandro Forero Cuéllar, ‘Anarchism and the Abolition of the Criminal Justice System’
In this essay, Alejandro Forero examines how bourgeois criminology weaponized positivist science to pathologize dissent, pseudoscientifically labeling anarchists as "born criminals" to justify state repression and legal exclusion. In response, Spanish anarchists repurposed evolutionary theory to propose the total abolition of prisons, advocating for a society rooted in mutual aid, rational education, and the elimination of the social inequalities that breed crime.
Alejandro Forero is Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Barcelona. His most recent publications on the topic are: (2025) Anarchism and the Abolition of the Criminal Justice System: The Struggle for the Discourse on Evolution and Social Order in Spain., in Envisioning Abolition (edited by David Scott and Emma Bell), and 2023 “The new man and the abolition of punishment: Hulsman’s approach and its similarities with the anarchist tradition” in Pain in Vain: Challenging the Penal System, Towards the Abolition of Punishment: On the Legacies of Louk Hulsman.
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Bluesky @anarchismresgroup.bsky.social
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
11 May 2026
Essay #121: Ruby Tuke, ‘The Embryonic Abolitionist Ideas of William Godwin’
In this essay, Ruby Tuke argues that the political philosopher, author and proto-anarchist William Godwin’s critique of punishment, alongside his commitment to a form of community-rooted justice guided by rational moral judgement, offers a striking yet overlooked antecedent to contemporary penal abolitionist debates.
Ruby Tuke is a writer and researcher currently working at the intersection of nineteenth‑century radicalism and contemporary penal abolitionist thought. Her most recent publication is a chapter in Envisioning Abolition, edited by David Gordon Scott and Emma Bell (Bristol University Press, 2025).
Anarchist Essays is brought to you by Loughborough University's Anarchism Research Group and the journal Anarchist Studies. Follow us on Bluesky @anarchismresgroup.bsky.social
Our music comes from Them'uns (featuring Yous'uns).
Artwork by Sam G.
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