The origin of anarchist communist ideas

In 1868, Bakunin in defining his anti-statist position had declared himself to be a collectivist.

At this stage, according to Kropotkin, the term ‘collectivist’ was preferred to that of ‘anarchist’ because anarchy was associated with the economic ideas of the proudhonians: ‘The word an-archy (this was how it was then written) seemed to associate the party too closely with the proudhonians, whose ideas of economic reform the International was at that moment combatting.’. But all those who finally disassociated themselves from the authoritarianism of the sympathisers of Marx and called themselves collectivists were not anti-statists. And during the arguments that developed in the Anti-authoritarian International the latter came to be identified as anarchists.

At first the word ‘anarchy’ was used by the statists as a term of abuse to discredit the anti-statists. In Les prétendues scissions de L'Internationale (March 1872) Marx accused the bakuninists of wanting to destroy the International in order to replace it with anarchy. Hales, the English delegate at the Congress of Geneva in 1873, actually argued that the bakuninists were advocates of anarchy which was incompatible with collectivism.