Author: Anarcho

The 1848 Revolutions: An Anarchist Perspective

Post author By Anarcho
Post date December 17, 2018

This is a write-up of a talk I gave at the Sparrow’s Nest Archive in Nottingham on 23 June 2018. The talk was advertised by the following text:

The Revolutions of 1848 remain the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history. While remembered as essentially liberal in nature, aiming at ending the old monarchical regimes they were also note-worthy for the advent of the industrial working class as a factor in social struggle. So as well as political change, the social question was raised while the events of 1848 shaped the ideas of Marx and Proudhon. So on their 170^th anniversary, we look at the 1848 revolutions and their lessons for today.

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Peter Kropotkin: Science and Syndicalism

Post author By Anarcho
Post date November 18, 2018

This is a write-up of my notes for the book launch of Kropotkin’s Modern Science and Anarchy in Nottingham, 17^th of November 2018. This, in turn, was a slightly revised version of a talk I did in Edinburgh early that year. As with all my subsequent write-ups, this is more what I aimed to say rather than what was said (this, for example, has far fewer jokes than uttered on the day). Still, it covers the main points said on the day.

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Propertarianism and Fascism

Post author By Anarcho
Post date November 6, 2018

Discussing the links between propertarianism (i.e., right-wing “libertarianism”) and fascism, concentrating on Ludwig von Mises and his support for it in the short-term to crush the labour movement, including his role as an advisor to the Austrian fascist government of Engelbert Dollfuss. It appeared in Anarcho–Syndicalist Review No. 75 (Winter 2019)

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The State and Revolution: Theory and Practice

Post author By Anarcho
Post date October 20, 2018

The State and Revolution: Theory and Practice

This is almost my chapter in the anthology Bloodstained: One Hundred Years of Leninist Counterrrevolution (Oakland/Edinburgh: AK Press, 2017). Some revisions were made during the editing process which are not included here. In addition, references to the 1913 French edition of Kropotkin’s Modern Science and Anarchy have been replaced with those from the 2018 English-language translation. However, the bulk of the text is the same, as is the message and its call to learn from history rather than repeat it. I would, of course, urge you to buy the book.

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Precursors of Syndicalism

Post author By Anarcho
Post date October 6, 2018

It is a standard cliché of Marxist attacks on anarchism to contrast “individualistic” anarchism with “collectivist” syndicalism. The former are backward looking, reactionary and beyond the pale while the latter are almost Marxist, and so worthy of faint praise. Another, also wrong, cliché has wider acceptance, namely that syndicalism arose in France during the 1890s in response to the failure of “propaganda of the deed.”

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Review: The Next Revolution by Murray Bookchin

Post author By Anarcho
Post date May 20, 2018

Murray Bookchin (1921-2006) was for four decades a leading anarchist thinker and writer. His many articles and books – Post-Scarcity Anarchism, Toward an Ecological Society, The Ecology of Freedom and a host of others – are libertarian classics and influential in the wider green movement.

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A Few Notes about Anarchist Economics

Post author By Anarcho
Post date April 24, 2018

Anarchism is generally not associated with economics. There is no “Anarchist” school of economics as there are “Marxist,” “Keynesian” and so on ones. This does not mean there are no anarchist texts on economics.

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Review: Anarchists Never Surrender by Victor Serge

Post author By Anarcho
Post date March 12, 2018

This book is a collection of new translations of articles by Victor Serge (1890-1947). Born of Russian anti-Tsarist exiles in Belgium, Serge is of note for his odyssey from anarchism to Bolshevism, then from Trotskyism to some kind of libertarian Marxism.

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Ursula Le Guin and Utopia

Post author By Anarcho
Post date February 21, 2018

It is with great sadness that I write this for one of my favourite writers, Ursula Le Guin, had died. The New York Times called her “America’s greatest living science fiction writers” in 2016 but that does not really do her work justice: she was one of the world’s greatest writers. It is just that she worked mostly in the Science Fiction and Fantasy genre. And like a few others – Michael Moorcock and Alan Moore spring to mind – also contributed to popularising anarchism outside political circles. Her SF novel The Dispossessed (1974) is still by far the best account of an anarchist society, warts and all!

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Review: Private Government

Post author By Anarcho
Post date February 6, 2018

This is both an important book which raises a key issue and one which simply states the obvious. It is both a well-researched work and one which ignores a school of thinkers who were pioneers on the subject. It is one which both challenges assumptions and takes them for granted. In short, it is both perceptive and frustrating.