Anarchism : Anarchist and Anti-Authoritarianism

Was Freud right when he Claimed Psychoanalysis is Concerned with ‘social Phenomenon’ Including Politics? , by Burn Shit
Sigmund Freud’s seminal texts on psychoanalysis sealed his position as the unofficial father of modern psychology. Whilst not subscribing to any explicitly political weltanschauung – or world-view – the idea that the study of the individual psyche was inseparable from the social psychology of the group underpins his work. His theoretical analyzes of the unconscious mind and the concept of regression, libidinal development and its sublimation, the division of the mind into three antagonistic parts – Id, ego and superego, and the pleasure instincts and death drives inherent in all human beings are evidently attempts at explaining social phenomenon, currents and patterns of human behavior that run throughout the history of civilization. The significance and importance of psychoanalysis in the twentieth century is self-evident; the rise and fall of fascism and it’s quasi-masochistic ‘mob mentality’, the war of ideologies and the allur... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Vote Yes , by Burn Shit
Tomorrow’s independence referendum affords the Scottish people the best chance in decades to bloody the nose of the British Establishment. Westminster’s suited and booted are out in force to save the 300-year-old Union having been awoken from an aloof stupor of arrogant complacency. Buller Boy’s promises of devo-max and Head Boy Ed’s moist appeals for a sense of British identity, shared history, patriotism and even, for the TUC audience, class unity, smack of desperation, leaving us feeling Wetter Together. This vote is not about Alex Salmond. It’s about self-determination. It’s about securing a guarantee that 5 million people will not face the misfortune of waking up to a Tory government that nobody voted for, extricating themselves from an ultra-centralized, sclerotic system which sees a narrow clique of public schoolboys whooping as they announce that the commoners need to tighten their belts to secure the road to recovery. History is... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Vietnam’s Second Revolution , by Burn Shit
It is, we are told, the dawning of the Asian Century. The global balance of power is shifting again towards the East. The economic powerhouses of China and India put recession-hit European and American markets to shame, with GDP growth rates consistently pushing towards double figures for the last decade. China has capitalized fully on its vast army of cheap labor, high rates of saving and investment, and internal migration from the countryside to burgeoning megacities. An authoritarian, one-party state keeps a tight lid on its power, paying lip-service to Marx, Mao and Lenin while simultaneously spreading its legs for economic liberalization, foreign direct investment, and the heady world of globalization. As the developed economies in the West struggle to pay off their international creditors and manage their structural deficits, the Asian Tigers enjoy a boom. Vietnam’s leaders, predictably, also want a piece of the pie. Almost forty years after the withdrawal of U... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

There’s a Class War On, Dickhead. Pick a Side. , by Burn Shit
For all postmodernism’s rejections of totalizing systems, utopian ideologies and socially-constructed binaries, there’s always the seduction of the old class line, the red (and/or black) banner of world revolution and the fight against the unitary systems of oppression; the state and capital. There’s comfort in the politics of ‘us and them’; a sense of belonging, shared identity and even a self-pitying, self-perpetuating victimhood. The conspiracy theory is the zenith of totalizing socio-political ideas. They superimpose order and meaning where there is none, give a unified and total explanation for what is, a formulaic dual reduction and simplification of all the world’s ills into byproducts of our subjugation by secret global cabals; the Illuminati, the Bilderberg Group or the Jews. Power lies with invisible elites, who reveal themselves (to taunt or to leave us some clues?) only through ancient symbols in government-corporate archite... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

The State of Revolution , by Burn Shit
It seems the whole world is teetering on the edge of a wonderful oblivion. Stable authoritarian regimes have been toppled by their restive subjects, a tyrant beaten and dragged through the streets by a band of armed insurgents. Egyptians are now back on the streets and in the squares, reinvigorating what seemed like a revolution betrayed by hangers-on from the ancien regime. Across the world, resistance against austerity drives and finance capital is mounting, and in England a police shooting led to three nights of sustained rioting, looting and arson that spread across the country via Blackberry. European capital’s wet-dream of a single-currency trading bloc is on its deathbed as Greeks defend themselves against EU-IMF gangsters with strikes, occupations and molotovs. Italy and Spain will soon follow suit. Today there is no unified struggle against systems of oppression because there is no unified system of oppression. Never has this been more evident than now. Rath... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Bosses’ charter The revelations from the secret research at the Office of the Employment Advocate have proven what we knew would happen with Work Choices is already happening. Conditions are being lost wholesale through AWAs and bosses are using them to divide us among ourselves. In other news, wages are stagnating despite the tightest labor market in a generation and union membership is still declining. The union officials have no answer to the Howard Government’s legislation, even though it threatens to put them out of a job. And this is before the election – many bosses are holding back till after it and after current agreements expire. The ALP won’t save us A “Labor” government will be no savior for workers. Anyone who thought differently would have received a rude awakening as Labor leader Kevin Rudd announced the policy he has decided to impose on the ALP. It could have been written by the Business Council o... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Agriculture, the indispensable basis of civilization, was originally encountered as time, language, number and art won out. As the materialization of alienation, agriculture is the triumph of estrangement and the definite divide between culture and nature and humans from each other. Agriculture is the birth of production, complete with its essential features and deformation of life and consciousness. The land itself becomes an instrument of production and the planet’s species its objects. Wild or tame, weeds or crops speak of that duality that cripples the soul of our being, ushering in, relatively quickly, the despotism, war and impoverishment of high civilization over the great length of that earlier oneness with nature. The forced march of civilization, which Adorno recognized in the “assumption of an irrational catastrophe at the beginning of history,” which Freud felt as “something imposed on a resisting majority,” of which Stanle... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Following days of delirium in the media, with journalists prey to bouts of mystical ecstasy, heads of State (even some wanted by the police) genuflecting in front of the sacred corpse of JPII, and the long wait to see what decision the “holy spirit” would make, the election of this pope will finally bring things back to a state of normality. The normality in this case being the same old unsurprising, calculating church which is everything but holy. We knew that JPII had appointed most of the cardinals in the conclave and that, despite his media-friendly image as “a nice guy”, he strongly supported the reactionary moral policies of Ratzinger. Notwithstanding the crazy expectations of some (an African pope, a pope of the Latin-American masses, and so forth), we were all too aware that JPII firmly intended the church to remain as a monarchic State with an aversion to any sort of innovation or participation. The conclave has confirmed that the p... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

I have a personal rule — I think you should never review a book that you strongly disagree with or strongly agree with. If you entirely agree, then a “review” would be nothing more than an echo. But if you strongly disagree there’s also little point to writing a review, the disagreements cannot be isolated but expand fractally. Foundational differences — differences of worldview, values, epistemology, etc. — grow too large to be covered, much less amicably debated. For example I never published a review for Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams’ Inventing the Future because I found our disagreements too vast. It became evident that no review would be possible without relitigating the universe of differences in values, analysis, and strategy that divide anarchists from state socialists. Radical Markets by Posner and Weyl tested me in much the same way. I am glad I acquired a physical copy — but... (From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)

Source: “In and About Cottonopolis” Commonweal, Vol 4, No. 153, 15 December 1888, p.396; Transcribed: by Ted Crawford. On Sunday the 2nd, I delivered my annual lecture to the Sunday Society at Ancoats to an audience larger than usual. These lectures are not followed by questions and discussion, so there was not much opportunity for finding our what the audience thought about Socialism. The audience seemed, as usual, much made up of the ‘lower middle-class’ and the ‘aristocracy of labor’. But there was sprinkling of our comrades of the SDF, with whom to help I engaged in a good private discussion at tea (which followed the lecture) with enquirers and carpers, which is also a usual feature of these gatherings. In the evening I went with comrade Hunter Watts to the rooms of the Manchester Branch of the SDF, where I addressed our comrades. The members of the branch were almost all of the non-aristocracy of labor, but many of th... (From : Marxists.org.)