“I’m committed to making sure the forces of peace and justice prevail,”Missouri Governor Jay Nixon said in Ferguson on Saturday, August 16, after a week of conflicts sparked by the police murder of teenager Michael Brown. “If we’re going to achieve justice, we first must have and maintain peace.”
Is that how it works—first you impose peace, then you achieve justice? And what does that mean, the forces of peace and justice? What kind of peace and justice are we talking about here?
As everyone knows, if it weren’t for the riots in Ferguson, most people would never have heard about the murder of Michael Brown. White police officers kill over a hundred black men every year without most of us hea... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
In response to “Beginning of Time, End of Time,” FE #313, Summer, 1983.
The question of time and its relationship to domination is central to understanding our captivity. John’s article attempts to come to grips with this very difficult subject; while what follows is often critical of his attempt, I do not want to slight its radical intent or the hard work he put into it. Nor should these criticisms obscure the fact that it is an important introduction- to the question of time: it helps us to see our perception of time as unnatural, as something imposed upon us, as a force to be overthrown if we are to liberate ourselves.
John’s original manuscript contained 109 footnotes, comprising an extensive readin... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
I had lived all my life out of town. When, in 1881, I went to live in Moscow, the poverty of the town greatly surprised me. I am familiar with poverty in the country; but city poverty was new and incomprehensible to me. In Moscow it was impossible to pass along the street without encountering beggars, and especially beggars who are unlike those in the country. These beggars do not go about with their pouches in the name of Christ, as country beggars are accustomed to do, but these beggars are without the pouch and the name of Christ. The Moscow beggars carry no pouches, and do not ask for alms. Generally, when they meet or pass you, they merely try to catch your eye; and, according to your look, they beg or refrain from it. I know on...
Prepared as a contribution to In the Middle of a Whirlwind: 2008 Convention Protests, Movement and Movements, a project coordinated by Team Colors and published by The Journal of Esthetics and Protest
The Short Answer
If you plan to attend the demonstrations at the Democratic or Republican National Conventions, you should already know what you intend to accomplish there and how you will go about it. If, for example, you intend to blockade a street, you should already be in a committed affinity group, have picked out a location, and be hammering out the details. Things never go as planned, but preparation helps get things off on the right foot. If you haven’t done any of this yet, there’s still time, but get a move on—o... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Most folks radicalized online in these recent years have virtually no knowledge of what serious state repression looks like, and that lack of preparation scares me to my bones.
SWAT raids, abductions, rape, torture blacksites, mock executions… those of us anarchists around from the counter-globalization era have experienced a vast array of state repression. The traumatized stories of our friends built up tacit knowledge that hasn’t been fully conveyed to generations brought up on the internet.
Have no doubt, it’s always only a matter of time. Raids will come.
House raids usually come down in the wee hours of the morning, almost always involve drawn assault rifles and flashbangs. One recurring favorite... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Part III: Left Communism and the Russian Revolution
In the previous articles we examined various Trotskyist and neo-Trotskyist positions on the nature of the USSR.
We now turn to the theories of the less well known but more interesting Communist Left, who were among the first revolutionary Marxists to distance themselves from the Russian model by deeming it state capitalist or simply capitalist. The Russian Left Communists' critique remained at the level of an immediate response to how capitalist measures were affecting the class, whereas in both the German/Dutch and Italian Lefts, we see real attempts to ground revolutionary theory in Marx's categories in a way distinct from Second International orthodoxy.
Introduction
... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
As members of the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation, we believe there is a need to restate some fundamental positions we hold in common. We have taken this step because some recent opinions stated within Love and Rage backtrack on some of these basic principles. We believe:
Revolutionary anarchism is the program of a self-organized, cooperative, decentralized, and thoroughly democratic society. All social needs will be provided by a network of voluntary, self-managed associations. This means the overthrow of all forms of oppression, including, but not limited to, the domination of the working class, women, gays and lesbians, African Americans, Latinos, youth, neo-colonies, and nature. Self-organization of the people is bo... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
Introduction
In this paper I attempt to stake out some of the questions that are going to confront Love and Rage after we resolve the immediate crisis precipitated by “What We Believe.” I look critically at the ten-year long project of building a serious revolutionary anarchist organization and try to identify the elements in anarchist theory and our initial conception of this project that might be responsible for our failure to achieve that objective. I then argue that in order to move forward, we need to stop identifying ourselves as within the anarchist tradition but rather view ourselves as something new that takes significant things — like anti-authoritarianism and anti-statism — from anarchism. I then look a... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
It is not from a vague humanitarian sensibility, nor from a hazy and mystic pity that we are proclaiming our horror of war. We know very well that life is a continual selection, in which only the most able and gifted triumph.
What causes our hatred for war, i. e., for the state of war and all that follows in its train, is that while it reigns self-assertion and individual determinism are more than ordinarily restrained, constrained, repressed, not to say reduced to naught. It substitutes in place of the individual struggle for existence and happiness a collective struggle profitable to a small number of the governing and the large exploiters of all countries. It places the individual in a humiliating position of subordination and dep... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
The inaugural address in connection with the Oxford and District Socialistic
Union was delivered on Wednesday by Mr. William Morris, at the Central School,
Gloucester-green. There was a crowded attendance, which included many
undergraduates and ladies. Professor York Powell took the chair, and briefly
introduced the lecturer.
Mr. Morris chose for his subject the words "What we have to look for", and said
he did not mean by this what the ideal of Socialism had to offer to them when
they had got people's heads turned in the right direction, but rather what
their present movement might reasonably expect to come across in its progress
towards socialism. Within the last five years or so the movement which
represented the change from ... (From: Marxists.org.)
Revolt Library 
Anarchism 
