A review of Carolyn Ashbaugh’s Lucy Parsons: American Revolutionary which debunks her claims that Lucy Parsons was not an anarchist. It also refutes her attempt to protray Emma Goldman as some sort of lifestyle anarchist, showing how she and Parsons shared a similar communist anarchist perspective. It appeared in Black Flag Anarchist Review Vol. 2 No. 1 (Spring 2022)
The new issue of Black Flag: Anarchist Review is now available:
This issue includes articles on or by American anarchists Sam Dolgoff, Voltairine De Cleyre and Lucy Parsons, libertarian socialist Cornelius Castoriadis as well as an Anarchist Guide to the Communist Manifesto and a discussion of anarchist approaches to (political) elections.
There are many schools of libertarian socialist thought. The various schools of anarchism (mutualist, collectivist, communist, syndicalist and individualist) are the most famous but there are others, some better remembered than others. Council communism, for example, still has its adherents but others, such as the Guild Socialism of this excellent collection, do not. In this case, this is a distinct shame as the ideas of G.D.H. Cole (1889-1959) should be better known for they address issues still relevant to activists today and, unlike council communism, Guild Socialism is not encumbered by Marxist prejudices nor jargon and was all the better for this.
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Tom Mann and British Syndicalism
Tom Mann (1856-1941) played a critical role in the industrial struggles of 1910-1914, better known as “the Great Unrest” or “the syndicalist revolt”. This article discusses his influence and ideas as well as his links to anarchism along with other aspects of British syndicalism during this period. It appeared in Black Flag Anarchist Review Vol. 1 No. 3 (Autumn 2021)
The new issue of Black Flag: Anarchist Review is now available:
This issue includes articles on or by Tom Mann and British syndicalism, Émile Pouget and his contribution to French syndicalism, libertarians at the 1896 London Congress of the Second International, fighting fascism in Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s, the anarcho-feminist Mujeres Libres group and more.
American academic J. Salwyn Schapiro claims that Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was a fascist have been repeated by Marxists ever since he made them. This article exposes his bad-faith as well as the many distortions and inventions Schapiro inflicted on Proudhon, showing that he was – for all his faults – an anarchist. It appeared in Black Flag Anarchist Review Vol. 1 No. 2 (Summer 2021)
The new issue of Black Flag Anarchist Review is now available:
This issue includes articles on or by Albert Meltzer, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Joseph Déjacque and Daniel Guérin, interviews with Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin and Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin, and reviews.
Anarchists, I hope, would read Mustapha Mond’s “A Brief Question of Syndicalism” with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it is always nice to see other socialists apparently searching for common ground with their libertarian “frienemies” and implicitly admit that we were right. On the other, there is a substantial element of wishful thinking about it which limits its usefulness.
Peter Kropotkin was above all else a revolutionary. While all-too-often remembered as the author of Mutual Aid, the gentile prince of co-operation, this picture of an anarcho-Santa is false. Kropotkin was no reformist, no naïve believer is cross-class cooperation. He was a revolutionary anarchist-communist who championed the direct struggle against capital for five decades.
This talk was given in February 2018 at the Five Leaves bookshop in Nottingham. As the name suggests, it discusses what anarchism is via the ideas and lives of twelve libertarians. The first part covered six male anarchists and the second six female ones.