On 25th May 2018 Ireland voted by 2 to 1 to remove the ban on abortion from the Irish constitution. This massive victory came after years of grassroots campaigning demanding that the government call such a referendum and then a very intense 68 days of campaigning where 1000s of volunteers threw everything they had into winning. For 30 years before that I campaigned and wrote about that struggle and in the years since I’ve started to try to capture the learnings from that moment of change from a specifically anarchist perspective. This is an index of that material and an appeal to those anarchists who were involved to consider doing an audio interview with me that can further add to this story.
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On Anarchist Organisation
A discussion of anarchist views on organisation, placing it within the historical context of liberalism, democracy and the labour movement. It shows that anarchists have had a firm notion of what a good organisation should be, one in which all members participate as equals rather than in a hierarchy of masters and slaves.
In 1998 Murray Bookchin wrote a response to the critics of his Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm entitled Wither Anarchism?. Twenty years later appears a pamphlet bearing the same name and in a way covering the same issue – the state of the movement. Only the most blinkered anarchist would disagree that this is a valid question – and one we need to address even if the rest of the revolutionary left is hardly much better and without the benefit of having a viable theory.
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Precursors of Syndicalism IV
In previous instalments of this series, we have discussed syndicalist ideas in the First International (Precursors of Syndicalism I), before turning to International Working People’s Association (Precursors of Syndicalism II) and communist-anarchism (Precursors of Syndicalism III). Here, we highlight anarchist-communist criticisms of revolutionary syndicalism.
As part of the global climate strike about 25 thousand students marched through the center of Dublin city. This was one of many demonstrations that took place around Ireland, even the small dormitory towns around Dublin like Maynooth had their own demonstrations. So the actual numbers protesting in Ireland was probably in the region of 40,000. In this piece Andrew looks at how collective action can halt Climate Breakdown using the example of the need for transport to illustrate why individual consumer choices cannot fix things.
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Precursors of Syndicalism III
After discussing the rise of syndicalist ideas in the First International (Precursors of Syndicalism I) and then in the Chicago-based International Working People’s Association (Precursors of Syndicalism II), we now turn to debates within the European anarchist movement before the rise of revolutionary syndicalism in France. In other words, communist-anarchism in the form of its most famous thinker, Peter Kropotkin. To do so shows that the standard narrative on anarchism and syndicalism is wrong.
This is the first of a series of four books which aims to outline the range and nature of libertarian organisations and views in the twentieth century. Here the author, A W Zurbrugg, discusses anarchist and syndicalist perspectives on war before and during the First World War and must be congratulated in the breath of material summarised. It is a useful reminder that libertarians were at the centre of the labour movement in much of Europe (Britain and Germany being notable exceptions) and in Latin America at this time, addressing issues with an awareness that they could actually impact on events.
Disagreements about the role of violence in political movements is at least as old as those movements. Extinction Rebellion have tried to short cut such discussions through reference to a piece of research they suggest shows non-violent movements are twice as successful in achieving their objectives. In this episode of We Only Want the Earth I examine what this paper actually claims and use this as a way to talk about non-violence and recent radical political movements.
This is a write-up of a talk I gave in Edinburgh in April 2019 on anarchist ideas on social change and organisation. I have used the slides I created for the talk as the basis of this write-up, although as usual I am sure this is not the same as what was said on the night but close enough. Hopefully this talk gives a useful summary of anarchist ideas on organisation and their development from the birth of anarchism to around 1920.
Anarchists from Proudhon onwards have met with misunderstanding and not a little deliberate distortion. Peter Kropotkin, despite being one of the most widely read anarchist thinkers, has also suffered this fate. This, perhaps, is due to him being so widely read for the most easily available works are those he wrote as general introductions to anarchism. The more numerous works he wrote for the anarchist press addressing the issues it was facing remain mostly buried in archives.