Anarchist Writers

A few years back, I published a few articles in Freedom on raising the demand for co-operatives in response to the economic crisis. These were ‘Bailouts or co-operatives?’ and ‘Co-operatives and conflicts!’ (although they appeared in Freedom slightly edited). The last was in reply to another article on this subject, which was replied to on-line.

This is the English translation of the principle piece of evidence in an anti-terrorism case in France. Nine people were arrested in 2008, mostly in the village of Tarnac, under the charge of sabotaging overhead electrical lines on the French railways. With only little circumstantial evidence available, the French Interior Minister has associated them with a ultra-left insurrectionary movement and singled out this book as a “manual for terrorism.” It is not that, but is it a manual for revolution?

Over the weekend of February 5th the Workers Solidarity Movement sent delegates to Paris to take place in a European conference of the groups involved in Anarkismo.net. Anarkismo.net is a multi-lingual news and analysis site made up of 31 organisations around the world who agree with the Anarkismo.net editorial statement*. WSM members were involved in founding this project almost five years ago, this was the first formal meeting of some of the groups involved.

Mutualism is a libertarian form of market socialism. It is most associated with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the first person to call himself an anarchist. However, he did not invent the term but rather picked it up from workers in Lyons when he stayed there in the 1840s.

Anarchist Writers is both an article archive for modern anarchist writers and a blog site for the same writers.  You'll find articles written for publication elsewhere but then archived here in the centre column.  The right hand column has the latest blog posts from our writers.

In terms of the development of a libertarian movement in Ireland the march on the EU summit at Farmleigh will probably be seen as a turning point. For the first time the movement mobilized large number of people from outside its own ranks, in a demonstration that was in direct defiance of the Irish governments attempt to ban such demonstrations.

 An interview carried out August 2009 on the legalised squat / collective housing project Kopi with Shane about anarchism and political activity in Berlin.

An interview with Andrew Flood about the impressions of the North American anarchist movement he formed during his 2007/2008 44 city tour of the US and Canada.  The interviews ends with questions about the comparison of the movement in Ireland with that in Britian and the promotion of anarchism via the internet.   This was submitted and published in Black Flag.

Anarchists see the state as a mechanism by which a minority imposes its will on the majority of the population. To maintain its hold of power the state forms whatever armed forces and judicial apparatus are deemed necessary to keep the level of dissent manageable. This is different from how most Marxists define the state, concentrating on the mechanism by which the state stays in power (bodies of armed men) rather then the function of the state. It is the characteristic of minority rule which defines the state for anarchists

Two letters on why class analysis is important for anarchism, as well as trying to dispel common misconceptions of what such an analysis means and implies.