Socialism

What Happened to David Graeber?

From Los Angeles Review of Books

I BOW TO few in my admiration for the anthropologist, economist, radical leader, and delightful prose stylist David Graeber, who died unexpectedly in 2020 at the age of 59. Since I read his little book Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology in 2004, I’ve been telling anyone who seemed inclined to listen that he was the most important anarchist thinker since Peter Kropotkin, who died in 1921. His ideas, including those beautifully captured in his book Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), helped motivate and shape the Occupy movement, which took inspiration from his commitments to radical democracy, egalitarianism, and “prefigurative politics”—the idea that people seeking to make a revolution should try to live and organize now in a way they’d want to arrange their lives together in the future.

On Gaza: “Now Is Not the Time,” “Moral Equivalency,” and “Liberalism”

From Center for a Stateless Society by Kevin Carson October 26th, 2023

So I come neither to praise liberalism nor to bury it. Rather, I call on anarchism, and on the socialist movement more broadly, to embrace and celebrate all of the best in liberalism, and to make ourselves the new bearers of all that is worth preserving in its legacy. In that spirit, I say now is always the time to criticize abuses of power, regardless of which side commits them. And the actions of everyone, regardless of side, are to be judged by the same moral standard.

Between Collapse & Persistence

Graphic design: Juan Pablo Estrada

From Tierra Nueva, Spanish to English translation by Anarchist News

5th Libertarian Spring Gathering in Havana

On the last weekend of May, our small group of friends, which gives intermittent life to the Alfredo López Libertarian Workshop and the ABRA Social Center with our friendship, held the 5th Libertarian Spring Gathering in the middle of a city that is enduring a chronic collapse...

Socialism: Let’s Not Resuscitate the Worst Mistake of the 20th Century

From Surviving Leviathan with Peter Gelderloos

In the mid-19th century, socialism and communism were largely synonymous, and as often as not they referred to the dream of a future without all the institutions at the service of bankers, landlords, and factory owners; a future without the State.

Daniel Guérin Showed Us What a Socialist Writer Should Be

French socialist writer Daniel Guérin at his home in 1977.

From Jacobin by Ian Birchall

French socialist thinker Daniel Guérin lived a life of extraordinary political commitment, from anti-fascist and anti-colonial struggles to his pioneering advocacy of gay liberation. Guérin’s writings and record should be a touchstone for the modern left.

For workers self-management not state power!

ancoms be like

from Anarchists Communists Meanjin By Iswed Tiggjan

Developing an Anarchist Response to the Covid Crisis

A common criticism levelled at the modern anarchist movement is its lack of relevance to the lives of the working class. As an anarchist this is a criticism I largely agree with. Although I believe that anarchism as a social theory and revolutionary strategy has much to offer our class, overall anarchist ideas have little presence amongst the majority of workers today. Many opponents of anarchism tend to write this off as a fundamental defect of anarchism, proof that anarchism is a petit-bourgeois ideology, and that throughout history the working class has inherently known to reject it.

Why we’re against “mutual aid”

Anarchists: Bread Santa's good little helpers.

from Mutiny! An anarchist-communist publication by Black Flag Sydney.

Socialism is not charity: why we’re against “mutual aid”

For Kropotkin, the tendency of humans to co-operate also made possible the realisation of anarchist communism. Humanity, from a scientific perspective, did not need armies, policemen and capitalists to organise a functioning, harmonious society; solidarity would come to replace authority as the glue that binds civilisations together.

Price on Blumenfeld

Price on Blumenfeld

From H-Socialisms by Wayne Price

'All Things Are Nothing to Me: The Unique Philosophy of Max Stirner'

Max Stirner was the pen name of Johann Kasper Schmidt (1806-56). He was part of a milieu of young philosophers who sought to develop further the philosophy of the great German thinker Georg W. F. Hegel, who had died in 1831. This milieu has been referred to as the Young Hegelians or Left Hegelians. While Hegel’s system had solidified into a reactionary form, they mainly tried to rework it in more humanistic, naturalistic, and democratic directions. The most well-known of these young men today (there were women in the grouping, but their names have dropped out of history) are Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. (Engels had been a personal friend of Stirner’s for a time.) Michael Bakunin—later a founder of revolutionary socialist-anarchism—also studied Hegel and was in contact with this milieu.

Are Anarchists Socialists?

Many people regard anarchism and socialism as contradictory programs. This is based on the conception of "socialism" as state ownership of the economy. Yet historically, anarchists have regarded this program as "state socialism" or "authoritarian socialism." They have rejected such views in favor of "anarchist-socialism" or "libertarian socialism." This concept of anarchism as a variety of socialism remains important today in opposition to pro-capitalist "libertarianism" and to "democratic socialism"--that is, reformist state socialism

No-Wing Anarchy

I am told that anarchism is a “left wing” ideology, by many. I am not sure those who claim this understand the true meaning of the term.

The terms “left wing” and “right wing” come from the position of seated delegates during the French Revolution. The bourgeoisie would sit to the left, and the monarchists would sit to the right. The first leftists were, in fact, capitalists.

For Irish Freedom & Working Class Power!

“If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organization of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs.”
-James Connolly, Irish Republican & Labor Leader

Subscribe to RSS - Socialism