By Peter Billington Seven North East Lancashire men fought as International Brigade volunteers during the Spanish Civil War. Four came from Burnley, two from Nelson and one from Colne. Two were killed in action, four served with great distinction and one deserted. The pamphlet looks at the North […]
If you think democracy is broken, here’s an idea: let’s replace politicians with randomly selected people. Author and activist Brett Hennig presents a compelling case for sortition democracy, or random selection of government officials — a system with roots in ancient Athens that taps into the wisdom of […]
Anarchist News It’s not a novel idea, for today large projects aimed to rebuild the world are in decline. In the twentieth century, the powerful movements mobilized millions of people to storm political Olympus and start “great construction projects”. But during the last century, they have gone bankrupt […]
By Chris Ealham This is a study of social protest and repression in one of the twentieth century’s most important revolutionary hotspots. It explains why Barcelona became the undisputed capital of the European anarchist movement and explores the sources of anarchist power in the city. It also places […]
For the prosecution. From 2017. By Jared Keller, Pacific Standard On August 15th, President Donald Trump threw the door wide open for American fascism. Speaking confidently on his home turf of Trump Tower in New York City, Trump blamed “many sides” for the violent clashes between antifascists and alt-right groups […]
For the defense. By Velkan Corvinus, The Revolutionary Conservative Today, April 20, 2021, we decreed the birth of the NTC, this being our first day of public struggle for the Tempestist Revolution: calling for the organization of our struggle and resistance. Our only objective is the destruction of […]
By Tim Briedis This thesis explores a slice of Brisbane’s radical history. I focus on the Self-Management Group (SMG), a revolutionary organisation that flourished from 1971-1977. The SMG formed as Brisbane activism shifted from a politics based around conscience to a revolutionary subjectivity. In 1977, the SMG dissolved. […]
By Paul Spooner International Terrorist movements were launched under Mikhail Bakunin & the First International led by Karl Marx, but extend well into the 20th Century. This article provides an overview of anarchism’s geopolitical relationships, its theoretical bases, operating organizations, methods and funding, with a focus on French […]
By Constance Bantman and David Berry Recent years have seen an upsurge of interest in the history of European anarchist and syndicalist movements. The rise of alter-globalisation protest borrowing many of its direct-action tactics from pre-World War I anarchism and syndicalism has been important in bringing it on […]
By Keith Smith “You are not an anarchist!” Probably one of the most espoused statements from within the anarchist circles. The definition of anarchism seems to be the very foundation that many within anarchists constantly argue about. Stray or disagree with on opinion? Not an anarchist. Have a […]
By Julian Casanova This article focuses on the various examples of anarchist violence, from terrorist action in the 1890s to anonymous bombs of the first decade of the twentieth century; from the tyranny of the Star pistol in the 1920s to the uprisings and revolutionary terror of the […]
By Elise Schmelzer, Canon City CUSTER COUNTY — Two sets of headlights headed straight for the geodesic dome house that serves as the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch’s headquarters. Outside in the deep dark of Colorado’s Wet Mountain Valley, the people who live at the ranch prepared to defend their […]
Caveat: I don’t personally belong to the LP or have any positions on its internal faction fights. I do have an interest in anti-state movements and enjoy observing these things from the sidelines. By Peter R. Quinones For those unaware, one of the most disgraceful state Libertarian Parties […]
By Steven Henry Martin Carlism and anarchism were revolutionary social movements that acquired significant popular support during the most intensive period of modernization in Spain (mid 19th to mid 20th centuries). It was noted but not well explored by contemporaries and historians that these enemies were similar in […]
By Pierre Lemieux Non-discrimination can easily come to mean discrimination. Suppose a law bans discrimination against individuals of Group 1. If that means the interdiction of imposing special obstacles or constraints on individuals of Group 1, it is pretty clear what non-discrimination means. But suppose that non-discrimination against […]
By Bert Altena One of the characteristics of anarchist movements is their pattern of appearance and disappearance. In fact, there are two different patterns. One is short-term and occurred mainly during the period of classical anarchism (i.e. 1870–1914). During these years, in several countries, the anarchist movement disappeared, […]
from Center for a Stateless Society by Eric Fleischmann Thomas Malthus, in his infamous work An Essay on the Principle of Population, takes several sections to critique the ideas of arguably the first modern anarchist thinker William Godwin. In one, Malthus writes, The great error under which [Mr.] […]
Anarchist News From The Final Straw Radio This week we are very happy to present an interview with Pranav Jeevan P, who is a student, a writer, an anti-caste activist, and an Indian anarchist living in the state of Kerala. You are listening to the full extended audio […]
Anarchist News In the non-utopic utopia of bolo’bolo, no ibu (person more or less) can be expelled from a bolo (an autonomous, autarkic collection of 300-500 ibu). Within that imagined world of interdependence, where the 300-500 people in your immediate vicinity rely on you and you them for […]
By Danny Evans This thesis analyses the opposition mounted by anarchists to the policy of state collaboration, which was adopted by the principal organisations of the Spanish libertarian movement at the outset of the civil war. Collaboration is understood in broad terms as the involvement of libertarian individuals […]
By Jason Lee Byas, Center for a Stateless Society Almost everyone today accepts at least one utopian idea: that slavery is so morally unacceptable that the practice must be stomped out wherever found, and any institution that depends upon it must immediately crumble. It’s probably even an understatement […]
By Morris Brodie This article examines the function of anarchist periodicals in the United States during the Great Depression. Periodicals acted as forums for debate, where ideas were constantly challenged and important theoretical issues were aired. This was both within anarchism and between the wider radical movement. In […]
The Mindcrime liberty show is joined by Keith Preston to discuss whether Thomas Hobbes, the author of the leviathan, is right about the necessity of the state. Is it true that without the state/leviathan humans’ life would be short, brute, and nasty? What would an anarchist criticism of […]
By Thomas Swann How many anarchists does it take to start a conversation about anarchism in a business school? Perhaps the most appropriate punchline is that such a conversation shouldn’t ever take place at all, never mind the number of participants. And yet just that conversation did take […]
By Paul Raekstad The meaning of political concepts is always tied to the practices that develop, sustain, and change them through time. Democracy is no different. One of the most interesting recent chapters in the history of democracy is the New Democracy Movement, which includes the wave of […]
By Lew Rockwell, Mises Institute The web loves nothing more than a good brawl, so people often write me to ask me to respond to a critic of LRC or the Mises Institute. There’s certainly no shortage of them, and they come from the Left, the Right, and […]
It’s Going Down https://ia801402.us.archive.org/33/items/igdbiden-100/IGDBiden100.mp3 On this episode of the It’s Going Down podcast, we discuss the first three months of the Biden administration, looking at three specific topics: Migrant detention camps continue to grow, as the Biden administration continues to push for a “smart” wall and militarization across […]
By Michael Schmidt Despite for much of the 20th Century being known as the “Switzerland of Latin America” for its peaceable democratic climate rooted in arguably one of the world’s first welfare states under the “radical liberal” anticlerical President José Batlle y Ordóñez from 1910, the small South […]
ABSTRACT The contemporary re-emergence of anarchism on a global scale deserves serious attention from students of ideology. As the defining orientation of prominent activist networks, anarchism today is the principal point of reference for radical social change movements in the North, and represents a mature and complex genre […]
By Pablo Rodero The present work studies those aspects of contemporary social movements that could produce long-term changes in society. To do so, it examines the extent to which contemporary social movements can be considered as a part of a global anarchist re-emergence since the late 1990s. The […]
By Máirtín Ó Catháin After the visit of John McAra (1870–1915), an anarchist propagandist from Scotland to Belfast in 1908, it was remarked by the press that there was clearly no hope for anarchism in Ulster. He was labelled a ‘crank’(a definitionfamouslyembraced by FrancisSheehy–Skeffingtonas ‘a small instrument that […]
By Peter R. Quinones In Georgia last week all COVID-19 based restrictions were lifted. I happened to be out of town at the time, but as someone who lives close to, and works in Atlanta, I was eager to see what the attitude amongst Atlantans would be. Would […]
By Jonathan Payn This document, first published in Portuguese under the title Anarquismo Social e Organização and adopted at the first Congress of the Feder-ação Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro in August 2008, seeks to map out the FARJ’s theoretical conception of an organised, class struggle anarchism and, […]
Kropotkin’s daughter discusses life under the Stalin regime.
By Peter R. Quinones “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member” – Groucho Marx When I think about that Groucho quote I wonder if he was a libertarian. Many in the Libertarian Party (LP) can’t comprehend what Dave Smith is doing in […]
By Jim Donaghey Robin Ballinger argues that ‘[m]usic is neither transcendental nor trivial, but inhabits a site where hegemonic processes are contested’ (in Sakolsky and Ho (eds.), 1995: 14) – in other words, music matters. However, music (and culture more widely) is often viewed as being of minor […]
By Hogeye Bill Is Sectarianism a Problem? There are a significant number of anarchists who hold a narrow view of what anarchism is, defining it in such a way to disqualify other anti-state ideologies. Some try to justify this historically – but in this case only mutualists are […]
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit Exile in Happy Valley Every decade or so anarchism seems to find its way back into the limelight for another 15 minutes. We’re usually roundly vilified but it still offers us a rare window to attract the non-political class and shop around […]
By John P. Clark Bridging the Unbridgeable Chasm: On Bookchin’s Critique of the Anarchist TraditionJohn P. Clark [Published in Perspectives on Anarchist Theory (Fall, 2006): 33-41. A revised version appears as Ch. 7, “Bridging the unbridgable chasm: Personal transformation and social action in anarchist practice” in JohnP. Clark, […]
Anarchist News For all our talk of solidarity, there are some anarchists who other anarchists just love to hate. In every milieu there are larger than life figures who’ve transgressed in one way or another – either through something they said, or wrote, or did – and who […]
Black Agenda Report “The principles of anarchism appear to be growing in some corners of the Black community,” due largely to the work and thought of former Black Panther Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin. In our opening post, the Black Agenda Review described its objective to provide a longer historical and more explicitly […]
By Colin Jenkins Anarchy is synonymous with chaos and disorder. It is a term that stands in direct contrast to the archetype of society we have become accustomed to: hierarchical, highly structured, and authoritative. Because of this, it carries negative connotations. Merriam-Webster, the consensus source of meaning within […]
Anthony Ince, Kulturgeografiska Institutionen, Stockholms Universitet Forthcoming (2014) in Levy C and Newman S (eds.) The Anarchist Imagination: Anarchism Encounters the Humanities and Social Sciences. London: Routledge. I first realized that I wanted to become a geographer when I read Tearing Down the Streets , by the anarchist Jeff […]
A review of: Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World (1870-1940): The Praxis of National Liberation, Internationalism, and Social LiberationEdited by Steven Hirsch and Lucien van der Walt; with a Foreword by Benedict Anderson Abstract: The volume under review is a very informative and, an immenselythought-provoking […]
By J.D. Tuccille, Reason It’s good fun to mock politicians’ inability to keep their pants on and to wage culture war against those awful people on the other side of the political divide, but at some point we’re going to have to pay some attention to a growing […]
By Peter R. Quinones I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the fact that until the day I shuffle off this mortal coil I’m going to be subjected to the “it’s a private company” argument from “libertarians.” They’ve spread this asinine slogan so far and wide that they have […]
By Colin Jenkins Anarchy is synonymous with chaos and disorder. It is a term that stands in direct contrast to the archetype of society we have become accustomed to: hierarchical, highly–structured, and authoritative. Because of this, it carries negative connotations. Merriam–Webster, the consensus source of meaning within the […]
By Toby Boraman The 1960s have been dismissed as a joke, a time when naive young people believed they could change society by wearing beads and placing owers in their hair. This is a myth. The 1960s and – to perhaps a greater extent – the 1970s were […]
Anarchist News Ted Kaczynski’s thorough critique of anarchoprimitivism takes center stage here, in “The Truth About Primitive Life: A Critique of Anarchoprimitivism.” The article is well-supported by three pages of Works Cited and fully 313 endnotes (available on TheAnarchistLibrary.org). In favor of anarchoprimitivism is “Civilization Will Stunt Your […]
By Uri Gordon, Perspectives on Anarchist Theory An interesting back issue from 2004. This issue of Perspectives goes to press to the relentless sounds of empire encroaching. It is the sound of USfighter planes bombing cities across occupied Iraq, and the drone of the helicopters that shadow our […]
Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic by Chalmers Johnson
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