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Well, another week and another letter to Weekly Worker. I have to say, the reply to my previous one seems a bit week, as can be seen from my reply. To be honest, it is a bit of an own-goal. Particularly as it was Marx who said that cannot judge people by what they say about themselves.

Well, another week, another letter to the Weekly Worker! or so it seems…

I would just to like to call for contributions for the next issue of Black Flag, the UK’s leading (and oldest) anarchist magazine. It has a class struggle anarchist perspective, i.e., communist-anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist.

We are aiming to make it bi-annual this year and the first issue was published for May Day. The next will be for the London Anarchist bookfair in October. The deadline is in mid-August, but please contact us to you are planning to contribute material.

Here is a letter I’ve sent off to Freedom in reply to a criticism of my review of Steve Jones’ attack on Kropotkin. It appears to be from a Stirnerite, although the narrow kind of egoist that gives Max Stirner a bad name.

Suffice to say, writing that introduction to Mutual Aid came in very handy! Here it is:

Dear Freedom

Ramoy Rya author of Clandestines – The Pirate Journals of an Irish Exile (AK Press 2006) is the latest writer to join the site. He lives in Chiapas, Mexico and his first piece reports on a recent visit to Oxaca, you can read it at http://anarchism.pageabode.com/ramor-ryan/anti-ulises-a-day-in-the-life-of-a-simmering-city

Well, after discussing how Lenin distorted the marxist theory of the state and how Marxists belatedly embraced the notion of workers’ councils a mere five decades after anarchists had, I got to thinking that since then they have tended to make a fetish out of them (just as they had previously made a fetish of the democratic republic).

I’ve updated the introduction to Mutual Aid, based on a few suggestions from comrades. In addition, I read through it and fixed typos and improved the grammar and structure.

I have to say, that doing research on this has increased my appreciation of Kropotkin’s work immensely. It is impressive how well it has stood up with regards to advances in modern science.

I’ve finished my introduction to Mutual Aid. It is a bit bigger than I intended! I’ve posted for people to look at and make suggestions. As this is a new edition of the book, it would nice if the introduction reflected the modern developments in the field as well as putting to rest a few of the more silly claims about it.

All journeys, including that through life, come to an end. Los Angeles was the end of a long road for me in more ways that one. I knew within a couple of weeks I would be returning to Ireland, so simultaneously it was the end of the 16 total weeks I had spent on the road, the end of my political activity in North America and hardest of all the end of a ten year relationship including four years of marriage.