At long last, Property is Theft! is now at the printers. You can buy it at AK Press ( USA and UK). A little over 2 months late, but still not too bad considering how much material it contains (it comes in at 840 pages). The advance praise for the anthology is included below — comments coming from the likes of Robert Graham, Lucien van der Walt, David Berry and Mark Leier. There is also a new cover:
Archives: Blog entry
A <em>blog entry</em> is a single post to an online journal, or <em>blog</em>.
As long term readers of this blog will be aware, I wrote an introduction and evaluation for the new edition of Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid by Freedom Press. Perhaps unsurprisingly given my previous work record, it got a bit long and only the biographical sketch and further reading bits of it were included in the final book.
A year or two back as part of an uncompleted WSM project to produce a pamphlet on student struggles I wrote up my recollections of those I was involved in at the end of the 1980’s. This pretty much was all from memory as outside of a few photos I hadn’t held on to very much from that period. Probably because of this I was asked to speak on this topic at a conference organised by the latest generation of student radicals. These are the notes from my talk.
First off, my Proudhon anthology Property is Theft! should be complete and sent to the printers next week. At last! That is over two years of work finally finished — a big thank you to the people who translated material plus the folks at AK Press in America. I’m hoping it will have an impact on how Proudhon is viewed in the anarchist movement, as well as generally in the radical and academic worlds. Second, before sharing a few thoughts on anarchist economics, I need to go over the articles I’ve posted.
Why You Should Start a Solidarity Network
People often accuse anarchists of being opposed to all forms of organization. Some of us are quick to point out, however, that it’s not all organization we are opposed to – just apparently the effective ones.
In December I published an article on the ‘The Spectacle Of Defiance & Hope’ to accompany some photos I’d taken of the event. This ended up generating quite a bit of discussion on indymedia and across a couple of Facebook profiles. The article itself which I titled ‘The Spectacle Of Defiance And Hope and the marginalistion of the left‘ was written without a huge amount of thought and from the reactions stepped on some toes but the discussion generated, even if initially defensive, was I think quite useful. Because this discussion was scattered across a couple of locations including Facebook where comments were not accessible to those without accounts in this blog I have collected together most of the replies and my responses as well as using this blog some additional points.
Property is Theft! is nearing completion. It is a few months late, but given the wealth of material (much of it newly translated into English) this is not too bad. The book has been indexed and is being proofread for the final time. As part of the whole aim to make it the "definitive" anthology of Proudhon for some time to come, AK Press suggested that it needs a biographical sketch. This is it.
This blog is going to be a mixed bag. Some may say, as usual and they would be right! However, this is going from Paul “I’m a Keynesian” Krugman against Keynes on cutting wages, via solving Economic Contradictions, to worker resistance to Bolsheviks. The first is important now, in our resistance to austerity, while the history of Russian labour protest is all about learning from the past.
Happy New Year! Wow, where did 2010 go? Well, I ended 2010 on a bit of a flurry. I got Property is Theft! back from the proof-editor and busied myself getting it updated and sent back to AK Press, where it remains being final proof-read and indexed. I hope to see the final version soon!