Yesterday arguably one of the biggest general/sympathy strikes in modern history kicked off. I refer, of course, to reddit and the shuttering of hundreds of subreddits in protest of a woman’s firing and, more broadly, the lack of democratic accountability on reddit.
Millions of people right now are excitedly joining a general strike with billions of dollars at stake. Now the leftist subreddits have expectedly sneered at the strike because they despise the broader culture in reddit and see themselves as adversaries to anything popular in the site’s notoriously problematic userbase. But it’s an interesting situation because, you know, I was raised to never cross a picket line. And one would be hardpressed if one stepp... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
“The history of people who have a history is, we are told, the history of class struggle. The history of people without a history is, we might say with at least as much truth, the history of their struggle against the state.” Pierre Clastres,
La société contre l’État, 1974.
The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, James C. Scott, Yale University Press, 2009 – 442 pages
Whole societies without a State have existed until recently in Zomia, the vast mountainous region of south-east Asia which is far from the urban centers and significant economic activity.
This zone is also situated between eight nation-states, where several cosmologie... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
[ed. – The following was presented and followed by a discussion at the 2015 East Bay Anarchist Book & Conversation Event in Oakland, U.S.A. One of the central prompts was; “Can there be an anarchism that lives outside the box of the human social project?” The recommended conversation which followed this reading can be found in the original audio, later released by the project Free Radical Radio (now on hiatus). Any mistakes or omissions in the transcription, we take responsibility for.]
In his profound work, Nature and Madness, human ecologist Paul Shepard offers what he feels to be the culmination of his life's work. An interdisciplinary, comprehensive exploration of the 20-year psychogenesis of the human anima... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
As an anarchist my feelings are not of detachment, I don't think with the politics that I have that I can easily divorce them from the personal, our emotional make-ups are going to be different depending on our life experiences, we may share some goals but carry different baggage, so how we go forward & jump hurdles in life will differ so it would be easier if politically close friends would find the patience to see that maybe we can't all be one happy family – some of us never had the faith, the social skill set in the first place to ever believe the tribe was the best team-spirit & all that!
Where we feel most alive is on the edge of anarchism, the edge of society, in the margins, lonely but true.
I'm not in an... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
ONCE TOO OFTEN we’ve been subjected to the accusation that being on the dole is an ‘easy life’. This has even been translated into various MP’s trading places for a week with someone who’s unemployed, in a feeble attempt to show just how easy life on the dole is. The video diary of a MP’s week on the dole, patronizing in the least, fails to offer the opportunity to see exactly what a fortnightly visit to the dole office entails.
The experience of a fortnightly visit to your local dole office, generally humiliating and intimidating, can vary dependent upon local office policy. For example the ‘16/21 hour rule’, which relates to the number of hours that you can study and still sign on, which un... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)
ANARCHISM:
WHAT IT REALLY STANDS FOR
ANARCHY.
Ever reviled, accursed, ne'er understood,
Thou art the grisly terror of our age.
"Wreck of all order," cry the multitude,
"Art thou, and war and murder's endless rage."
O, let them cry. To them that ne'er have striven
The truth that lies behind a word to find,
To them the word's right meaning was not given.
They shall continue blind among the blind.
But thou, O word, so clear, so strong, so pure,
Thou sayest all which I for goal have taken.
I give thee to the future! Thine secure
When each at least unto himself shall waken.
Comes it in sunshine? In the tempest's thrill?
I cannot tell--but it the earth shall see!
I am an Anarchist! Wherefor... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
Source: The Communist, Vol. XVIII, No.12, December 1939 Publisher: Workers Library Publishers, New York, NY Transcription/Markup: Brian Reid Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2007). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
HUNGRY for huge war profits, the barons of Wall Street are speeding to involve the American people in the imperialist war raging in Europe. The blackout of civil liberties is part of Wall Street’s war drive. Capitalist reaction is intent upon depriving the Communists of their civil rights as the preparation for an attack on the economic standards and civil rights ... (From: Marxists.org.)
The Sole Factors and Exact Ratios in its Acquirement and Apportionment.
In proceeding toward any given point, there is always one line which is shortest—THE STRAIGHT: so, in the conduct of human affairs, there is always one course which is best—THE JUST.
BY J. K. 1 N C A L L S.
12mo, 320pp., large type, good paper, silk cloth, $1.
CONTENTs.-Economic Schools—A Brief Review of their Qrigin and Growth; Rise and Growth of Capitalism; Unearned Increase—Profit; Interest, Rent; Conservation of Wealth; Tools and Improved Machinery; The Nature of Wages; Pri: Yate and Social Wealth ; Land Ownership; Private Property in Land; Capital and the Productive Factors; Partnership and Cooperation; Law of Contracts; Money ... (From: Google Books.)
The text is from my copy of Emma Goldman's Anarchism and Other Essays. Second Revised Edition. New York & London: Mother Earth Publishing Association, 1911. pp. 151-172. FRANCISCO FERRER AND THE MODERN SCHOOL
EXPERIENCE has come to be considered the best school of life. The man or woman who does not learn some vital lesson in that school is looked upon as a dunce indeed. Yet strange to say, that though organized institutions continue perpetuating errors, though they learn nothing from experience, we acquiesce, as a matter of course.
There lived and worked in Barcelona a man by the name of Francisco Ferrer. A teacher of children he was, known and loved by his people. Outside of Spain only the cultured few knew of Francisco Ferre... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
This manuscript was provided to Anarchy Archives by the author.
The Ghost of Anarcho-Syndicalism
by Murray Bookchin
One of the most persistent of human frailties is the tendency of individuals and groups to fall back, in times of a terribly fragmented reality, onto obsolete, even archaic ideologies for a sense of continuity and security. Today we find this not only on the right, where people are evoking the ghosts of Nazism and deadly forms of an embattled nationalism, but also on the "left" (whatever that word may mean anymore), where many people evoke ghosts of their own, be they the Neolithic goddess cults that many feminist and ecological sects celebrate or the generally anti-civilizational ambiance that exists among young mid... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
HARRY KELLY AN APPRECIATION BY HIPPOLYTE HAVEL STELTON, NEW JERSEY SUNDAY, JANUARY TWENTY-THIRD NINETEEN TWENTY-ONE
At the Celebration of his Fiftieth Birthday
Ferrer Colony
Stelton, New Jersey
Sunday, January 23, 1921
Some men are endowed with a personality which makes them superior to their fellow citizens. The names of such men seldom gleam from the front page of the daily press, yet they excel in themselves and find their recognition among those who are able to appreciate their characteristic qualities. Their inherent modesty never creates jealousy or envy, and their lives have greater influence and are of greater reality than the lives of those who achieve their fame and fulfill their ambition by kowtowing before ... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
This manuscript has been provided to Anarchy Archives by the author.
History, Civilization, and Progress:
Outline for a Criticism of Modern Relativism
by Murray Bookchin
Rarely have the concepts that literally define the best of Western
culture--its notions of a meaningful History, a universal Civilization, and the
possibility of Progress--been called so radically into question as they are
today. In recent decades, both in the United States and abroad, the academy
and a subculture of self-styled postmodernist intellectuals have nourished an
entirely new ensemble of cultural conventions that stem from a corrosive
social, political, and moral relativism. This ensemble encompasses a crude
nominalism, pluralism, and skepticism,... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
This work appears in Anarchy Archives courtesy of International Institute for Social History.
Reclus, Elisée. The Ideal and Youth. Liberty Press, London, 1895.
The Ideal and Youth.
By ELISÉE RECLUS.
If the word "Ideal" has really any meaning, it signifies far more than a vague yearning for better things, wearisome search for happiness, or a fitful and sad longing for an environment less hateful than the society of to-day; ah yes, we must give to the term an exact value, we must settle resolutely and intelligently what is the ostensible end of our ceaseless aspirations. Let us investigate then that Ideal.
For some it would be no more than a return to the ages of the... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
Living My Life
by Emma Goldman
Volume one
New York: Alfred A Knopf Inc., 1931.
Chapter 22
A letter from Carl Stone unexpectedly changed my plans regarding the study of medicine. "I thought it was understood when you left for Europe, he wrote, "that you were to go to Switzerland to study medicine. It was solely for that purpose that Herman and I offered to give you an allowance. I now learn that you are at your old propaganda and with a new lover. Surely you do not expect us to support you with either. I am interested only in E. G. the woman her ideas have no meaning whatever to me. Please choose." I wrote back at once: "E. G. the woman and her ideas are inseparable. She does not exist for the amusement of upstarts, nor will she per... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
IF I WERE to give a summary of the tendency of our times, I would say, Quantity. The multitude, the mass spirit, dominates everywhere, destroying quality. Our entire life--production, politics, and education--rests on quantity, on numbers. The worker who once took pride in the thoroughness and quality of his work, has been replaced by brainless, incompetent automatons, who turn out enormous quantities of things, valueless to themselves, and generally injurious to the rest of mankind. Thus quantity, instead of adding to life's comforts and peace, has merely increased man's burden.
In politics, naught but quantity counts. In proportion to its increase, however, principles, ideals, justice, and uprightness are completely swamped by the ar... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
CHAPTER XVII
ANOTHER VISIT TO PETER KROPOTKIN
A few days before our Expedition started for the Ukraine the
opportunity presented itself to pay another visit to Peter Kropotkin. I was delighted at
the chance to see the dear old man under more favorable conditions than I had seen in
March. I expected at least that we would not be handicapped by the presence of newspaper
men as we were on the previous occasion.
On my first visit, in snow-clad March I arrived at the Kropotkin
cottage late in the evening. The place looked deserted and desolate. But now it was summer
time. The country was fresh and fragrant; the garden at the back of the house, clad in
green, smiled cheerfully, the golden rays of the sun spreading warmth and light. Pete... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
MY FURTHER DISILLUSIONMENT IN RUSSIA
By Emma Goldman, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company; 1924
CHAPTER XI
THE SOCIALIST REPUBLIC RESORTS TO DEPORTATION
The Tcheka had succeeded in terrorizing the whole people. The only exceptions were the politicals, whose courage and devotion to their ideals defied the Bolsheviki as it had the Romanovs. I knew many of those brave spirits, and I saw in them the only hope to sustain one amid the general wreckage. They were the living proof of the powerlessness of terror against an Ideal.
Typical of this class was a certain Anarchist who had long been sought for by the Tcheka as an important Makhnovetz. He was a member of the military staff of the revolutionary povstantsi of the Ukraina ... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
Naked Warriors
Herbert Read, London: Art & Letters, 1919.
PREFACE
I would like to speak for a generation to following effect:
We, who in manhood's dawn have been compelled to care not a damn for life or death, now care less still for the convention of glory and the intellectual apologies for what can never be to us other than a riot of ghastliness and horror, of inhumanity and negation. May we, therefore, for the sake of life itself, be resolved to live with a cleaner and more direct realization of natural values. May we be unafraid of our frank emotions, and may we maintain a callous indifference to falsely-artistic prettifying of life. Then, as the reflex of such beauty where hitherto it has had no absolute existence.... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
WHAT is patriotism? Is it love of one's birthplace, the place of childhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it the place where, in childlike naivety, we would watch the fleeting clouds, and wonder why we, too, could not run so swiftly? The place where we would count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken lest each one "an eye should be," piercing the very depths of our little souls? Is it the place where we would listen to the music of the birds, and long to have wings to fly, even as they, to distant lands? Or the place where we would sit at mother's knee, enraptured by wonderful tales of great deeds and conquests? In short, is it love for the spot, every inch representing dear and precious recollections of a h... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
IN 1849 Feodor Dostoyevsky wrote on the wall of his prison cell the following story of The Priest and the Devil:
"'Hello, you little fat father!' the devil said to the priest. 'What made you lie so to those poor, misled people? What tortures of hell did you depict? Don't you know they are already suffering the tortures of hell in their earthly lives? Don't you know that you and the authorities of the State are my representatives on earth? It is you that make them suffer the pains of hell with which you threaten them. Don't you know this? Well, then, come with me!'
"The devil grabbed the priest by the collar, lifted him high in the air, and carried him to a factory, to an iron foundry. He saw the workmen there running and... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
TO ANALYZE the psychology of political violence is not only extremely difficult, but also very dangerous. If such acts are treated with understanding, one is immediately accused of eulogizing them. If, on the other hand, human sympathy is expressed with the Attentäter, 1 one risks being considered a possible accomplice. Yet it is only intelligence and sympathy that can bring us closer to the source of human suffering, and teach us the ultimate way out of it.
The primitive man, ignorant of natural forces, dreaded their approach, hiding from the perils they threatened. As man learned to understand Nature's phenomena, he realized that though these may destroy life and cause great loss, they also bring relief. To the earnest stu... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
Dmitrov, Russia, April 28, 1919
I have been asked if I did not have a message for the workers of the western world. Certainly there is plenty to say and learn of the actual events in Russia. As the message would have to be long to cover all, I will indicate only the principal points.
First, the workers of the civilized world and their friend in other classes ought to prevail on their governments to abandon entirely the idea of armed intervention in Russia whether openly or secretly. Russia is undergoing now a revolution of the same extent and importance as England under went in 1639 to '48, and France in 1789 to '94. Every nation should refuse to play the shameful role played by England, Prussia, Austria and Russia during the Fren... (From: Marxists.org.)
THE FRENCH DRAMA: BRIEUX
MATERNITY
Motherhood today is on the lips of every penny-a-liner, every social patch-worker and political climber. It is so much prated about that one is led to believe that motherhood, in its present condition, is a force for good. It therefore required a free spirit combined with great dramatic power to tear the mask oft the lying face of motherhood, that we may see that, whatever its possibilities in a free future, motherhood is to-day a sickly tree setting forth diseased branches. For its sake thousands of women are being sacrificed and children sent into a cold and barren world without the slightest provision for their physical and mental needs. It was left to Brieux to inscribe with letters of fire the cryin... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
I have attempted to give in the preceding pages a correct statement of the violent repression which is going on now in Russia, since the concession of representative government, contained in the Manifesto of October 30, 1905, was nullified by an under-current of organized reaction. In this statement I have done my best to avoid anything that might be a distortion, or an exaggeration of facts, and yet the picture is so terrible that it is almost shaking one's faith in human progress.
Suffering and martyrdom are certainly unavoidable in every struggle for freedom. But the amount of suffering and cruel repression now prevalent in Russia surpasses everything that is known from the lessons of modern history.
Every nation is certainly bound to ... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
FREEDOM PAMPHLETS. No. 1.
New Edition. 1920.
I. REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT AND WAGES.
In their plan for the reconstruction of society, the Collectivists commit, in our opinion, a double error. Whilst speaking of the abolition of the rule of capital, they wish, nevertheless, to maintain two institutions which form the very basis of that rule, namely, representative government and the wage system.
As for representative government, it remains absolutely incomprehensible to us how intelligent men (and they are not wanting among the Collectivists) can continue to be the partizans of national and municipal parliaments, after all the lessons on this subject bestowed on us by history, whether in England or in France, in Germany, Switze... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
The spectacle presented at this moment by Europe is deplorable enough but withal particularly instructive. On the one hand, diplomatists and courtiers hurrying hither and thither with the increased activity which displays itself whenever the air of our old continent begins to smell of powder. Alliances are being made and unmade, with much chaffering over the amount of human cattle that shall form the price of the bargain. "So many million head on condition of your house supporting ours; so many acres to feed them, such and such seaports for the export of their wool." Each plotting to overreach his rivals in the market. That is what in political jargon is known as diplomacy.
[NOTE. -- While it will be understood that the political si... (From: Anarchy Archives.)
I.
On the 18th of March, 1871, the people of Paris rose against a rule that was generally detested and despised, and proclaimed the city of Paris independent, free, and belonging only to itself.
This overthrow of central power was made without the usual scenes of a revolutionary uprising: on that day there were neither volleys of shot nor floods of blood shed behind the barricades. The rulers were eclipsed by an armed people going out into the streets; the soldiers evacuated the city, the bureaucrats hastened towards Versailles, taking with them everything they could carry. The government evaporated like a puddle of stinking water under the breath of a spring wind, and by the 19th, having shed hardly a drop of its children's blood, Paris ... (From: Anarchy Archives.)