Anarchoblogs

We just found out about a recent review of Iain McKay’s An Anarchist FAQ by Effluvia Magazine. We are always so happy to see reviews of our books out there and hear how they are affecting readers. Thanks to everyone at Effluvia Magazine and we look forward to reading more reviews from all of you!

An Anarchist FAQ
By Kevin Casey

A couple of years ago An Anarchist Frequently Asked Questions (AFAQ) migrated from the internet to a 555 page tome, put out by Effluvia favorites AK Press. Iain McKay’s excellent introduction elucidates the general goals and motivations of the project: to stand as a resource for those interested in anarchism and to convince people why they should become anarchists.

The book was compiled by working anarchists labouring in their spare time to produce a collective text, and as such, it embodies anarchism in action. Its very pages are the result of a living breathing anarchism. It is the first of two volumes and is organized around questions such as: What is Anarchism? Why do anarchists oppose the current system?; What are the myths of capitalist economics?; How does statism and capitalism affect society? Each of these chapters (and more) as well as the subsections that they are broken down into make for a format that is easy to read either linearly or to dip in and out of as the reader finds connections between topics of personal interest and particular concern.

While friendly to the beginner and well-seasoned anarchist alike, AFAQ has something for everyone. From the history of the circle A to May of ‘68 in France to the definition of anarcho-syndicalism to whether anarcho-capitalism makes sense as a basic agenda. The difference between the black flag and the black-red flag? Check. (In fact, an entire section is devoted to “The Symbols of Anarchy.”) Anarchist responses and arguments to ecological problems? Check. Everything from the most basic questions, such as, “What is anarchism,” to finer distinctions between various tributaries of anarchist thought are covered in this comprehensive overview. Want to know how anarchist thought engages with technology and how capitalism affects the same? It’s all right here is one reader-friendly treeware volume (albeit somewhat large – think phonebook in heft).

Thinkers that all anarchists should be familiar with are covered (e.g. Proudhon, Bakunin) as well as more recent anarchist philosophers and writers. But the AFAQ is not a stodgy academic tome meant simply to satisfy a college course in anarchist thought (although is would make a great text for an overview seminar), but a guide and a call for action. Praxis is the name of the game with AFAQ and the text does just as much by way of steering the reader in the direction of action as it does to educate. It is an FAQ written by anarchists and throughout the book this is clear. It avoids jargon whenever possible and when it has to define a specific piece of terminology it does, in simple and intelligible prose. AFAQ addresses the big theoretical questions that the movement is rooted in as well as responds to critiques and criticisms leveled by opponents from both the left and right alike.

AFAQ is THE go-to survey of anarchist thought and a great place for the beginner to dip into the history and thought of modern anarchism. It is also an invaluable resource for the practicing anarchist who needs to recall a date or fact about the Spanish Civil war or the Paris Commune. I cannot recommend it highly enough to all would-be or practicing anarchists. It is an invaluable resource and worth reading again and again. By un-tethering the AFAQ from the cables and ethereal signals of the internet and putting the resource in a truly wireless volume that can be lugged deep into the forest, desert or jungle, AK Press has done us all a great service. They have freed this text of, by and about freedom from its technological roots and put it in our backpacks. In the words of Ian McKay, “when it comes down to it, anarchism is simply about making the world a freer and better place. If we forget that, then we forget what makes us anarchists in the first place.”

Apparently, bankrupt/millionaire Logan City councillor Hajnal Black is missing, on-the-run from authorities who have issued a warrant for her arrest following some unsatisfactory legal encounters. The lady’s not for turning (up to court). I first became aware of Ms. Black … Continue reading →

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Author of the hit book, Our Enemies in Blue, discusses Occupy, police, and capitalism.

I part ways with him on this. Kant links the sense of beauty to the imaginative faculty. What he means by that is this: when we look at something, we form an impression of it in our minds that we then make judgments about. When we consider something from an aesthetic point of view, though, we don't just form an exact impression, rather, we apply our imagination to it, altering it and then we make our judgments about that altered conception. It's the power of imagination, of our ability to abstract from reality, both in terms of patterns with visual art and in terms of story when you're dealing with writing, that powers our aesthetic judgment. We like pieces of art because we can see pleasant patterns and ideas in them that, although they might be implied, we ultimately make ourselves as part of the art's "meaning".

Kant believes that there is a generic imaginative faculty that makes, or can make, completely abstract objects up that are aesthetically pleasing, and these things are the base of art. Abstract designs in the outside world like Celtic knots, Islamic calligraphy, are examples of this pure imaginative faculty put into action.

Where Kant and I part paths is his conception of possible preconceived Ideals or embodiments of a personal Idea of beauty. He thinks that the only real Ideal we have in our heads comes from the human form. This is not just because we're human and can completely relate to subject, but because we can see the subject as having a "purpose", as being something other than abstract patterns. But, of course, there is more in the world than just abstract shapes, humans, and things that humans have made (which are also purposive). There is Nature itself and the forms of nature, which are as surely applications to an ideal of the abstract idea of Beauty as is the application of the abstract idea to human beings. We seem to be set up to see an inherent Ideal of beauty in Nature, even though it does not appear "purposive" to us. There is no apparent "purposiveness" in beautiful mountains, or forests. Yet perhaps purposiveness is not the only criteria for an applied, concrete, idea of beauty. Whatever Nature is, or has within it, both goes beyond abstraction and appears to resonate with us according to an ideal or ideals of beauty that we've most likely evolved through countless years of living in the natural world, which is our home, after all.

On Monday, the National Executive Committee of the Public and Commercial Services union voted not to call a national strike on 28 March. This, despite a ballot that specifically named that date and endless rhetoric around “M28,” naturally left many fe…

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Because Kant has been derided as being too abstract, not concrete enough. Briefly, his idea of aesthetic judgment locates it between two different tendencies that or ways of perceiving things: that of getting pure pleasure from something and that of completely rational reasoning. Something that is beautiful, or aesthetically pleasing, to Kant, partakes of features of both, but in a unique way.

In regards to pleasure, a true work of art shouldn't appeal to cheap shots or somewhat crude images in order to sell itself ....for instance, if you're going to do a nude painting, there's a difference between a nude painting done in the style of Playboy or Penthouse, with the model being featured purely for her features, and a work of art done with a model that, while having those features, incorporates them in such a way that they're not the main draw but are part of a bigger composition with its own meaning. If they were the draw alone, that would be art playing on the instinct of pleasure instead of justifying itself as a work of art in and of itself.

The same can be said for folks who include provocative things in their work to either be fashionable or to shock people without anything beyond it being attempted. Sure, it gets people's attention, and it gets them riled up, but unless there's more purpose behind it you're just unproductively pressing people's buttons, which gets adolescent and tiresome. See the latest of three decades of punk rock bands shocking people yet again with provocative names that include naughty words and naughty body parts.


The other side of the coin, the rational side, is art that's really about concepts and not about the piece as a piece of art. Kant emphasizes over and over again, in fact makes it the core concept of his aethetic work, that true art is not instrumental but allows a certain degree of play and interpretation on the part of the audience. If you're really just producing a piece of art to communicate a specific idea in a ham handed way, you might be better off just writing a pamphlet, because people don't get the same amount of aesthetic enjoyment from things like that are presented to them in ways that deny their ability to make their own judgments. If someone presents you with a piece of art and either implies how you should regard it, or it's very, very, obvious that the person has made it just to make a point and nothing else, there's not that much reason to look at it. Not twice, maybe not even once. It's effective propaganda, but propaganda is not art, and presenting propaganda as art is something that shouldn't be done.

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