Burkina Faso: Revolution, authoritarianism & the crisis of African emancipation politics

From Mail & Guardian

Today, a new face of revolution is emerging in Burkina Faso under the youthful and charismatic Captain Ibrahim Traoré. His image is cast in the mould of Thomas Sankara, evoking the anti-imperialist spirit of the 1980s... What are we to make of yet another seizure of power by men in uniform, claiming to act on behalf of the people? If history is to be our teacher, then we must ask... Are we merely witnessing the replay of a tragic cycle in which the people are always betrayed?... In answering this, anarchist theory offers a sobering and necessary critique, particularly the principle of “prefiguration”. Loosely this means what we want our society to become in the future is literally shaped by what we do today

TotW: Dissolving Power, Not Replacing It

Power structures persist because power itself becomes the game. Even attempts to redistribute power often reinforce its logic rather than dismantling it. Can anarchism go beyond shifting power and instead make it something that naturally dissipates?

Tipping the Scales: Popular Power in an Age of Protest and Pandemic

From Black Rose Anarchist Federation

This article originally appeared in the Perspectives on Anarchist Theory Journal (No. 32) published by the Institute for Anarchist Studies in 2021. A brief updated introduction has been appended below, but otherwise the text is presented without modification.

Black Autonomy Podcast: Dual Power

A Simple Explanation

Dual power can be explained as the building of a transitional program for political, social, and economic transformation. Itcreates survival programs to oppose state power and creates a new type of autonomous public sector when the state fails the people.

The Cost of Power and Hierarchy

from The Commoner

On April 5th, 1887, Lord John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton proclaimed, ‘Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ Obviously, we could poke fun at the evident contradiction of the prestigious position Lord Acton held and the intent and meaning of the quote, and if we were to get into Lord Acton’s politics, it would be incredibly difficult to take his word seriously when speaking on the subject of power. However, this isn’t about Lord Acton, this is about the truism that power corrupts. Yet in contemporary discourse, not everyone sees it as a truism. It is still a highly contested claim in many circles, and I’d like to attempt to settle the issue if I can. I’d like to examine some of the early conceptualisations of consciousness and psychology in the field of philosophy and relate that to current discoveries in modern science. I’d then like to loop back around to show how this is all relevant when considering the claims that have been consistently made by anarchists for as long as the political philosophy has existed.

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