Anarchist Writers

I’m not sure why, but there seems to be a tendency by academics to discuss anarchism without actually bothering to find out much, if anything, about. George Monbiot does this quite regularly, with equally regular amusement for those who have even a basic understanding of libertarian theory. The latest is Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics at UCL, in his new book "Coral: A Pessimist in Paradise".

The "free market" capitalist argument is that unemployment is caused by the real wage of labour being higher than the market clearing level.

There are a few sure things about reading history books. Firstly, and most obviously, you generally know how it ends (badly, in the case of the Paris Commune). What is important is what you learn from the events discussed. Secondly, when it is a Marxist account you are guaranteed that it will (at best) ignore or (at worse) distort the anarchist involvement and analysis of events.

Brown is now discovering that proclaiming the end of “Boom and Bust” does not, in fact, mean much. The amazing thing about the current economic panicking is not that it is happening but that some people seem surprised by it. While on the way up many “experts” seem to forget it, capitalism has always been marked by a business cycle.

The publication of Empire in 2000 created an intense level of discussion in left academic circles that even spilled over at times into the liberal press. This should please the authors, Antonio Negri, one of the main theoreticians of Italian 'autonomous Marxism' and a previously obscure literature professor Michael Hardt. It is clear that they see Empire as the start of a project comparable to Karl's Marx's Das Kapital. The Marxist Slavoj Zizek has called Empire "The Communist Manifesto for our time".

Throwing the baby out with the bathwater

This collection of four essays contains the last works of Murray Bookchin. As such, it is of interest to all greens and radicals. Eirik Eiglad, the editor of the journal "Communalism", provides an introduction and end piece to the book. Of the four essays, the first three were written when Bookchin was still considered himself an anarchist.

The two articles 'Anarchism, insurrections and insurrectionalism' and 'Notes on the article 'Anarchism, Insurrections and Insurrectionalism' are now available to download as a PDF pamphlet in a number of formats.

This article written in 1997 looked at the choices facing the left and the anarchist movement in terms of building a new anti-capitalist movement. Over ten years later the article remains much of its relevance, I wish it could be otherwise, both in terms of the argument it makes to the left in general and to anarchists in particular.

This collection of three articles examines the how and why of anarchist organization. The first is a look at the success of the network form of organization and why it came to the fore in the current period. It then looks at the limitations of that form or organization. The second articles looks at the organizational practise of the first anarchists and in particular Michael Bakunin and re-examines the different levels of organization he advocated in the light of the needs of anarchists today. The final article asks why anarchist organizations mostly failed to grow following the collapse of the left and identifies why large scale anarchist organizations are essential if we are to ever overthrow capitalism.