Looking back and moving forward: The radical humanism of The Politics of Individualism
L. Susan Brown
In this paper the author of The Politics of Individualism Liberalism, Liberal Feminism and Anarchism examines the main themes of the work and its relevance and meaning ten years after its initial publication. As the book was originally written as a PhD dissertation, the adversarial nature of the academic milieu and its impact on the author is explored. Also outlined are critical reviews of the work, both positive and negative. The radical humanism of the work is highlighted and reaffirmed. A more collaborative approach to anarchist political strategy is urged.
Reinventing hierarchy: The political theory of social ecology
Robert Graham
Proponents of social ecology claim that the human domination of nature arises from the domination of human by human. They argue that to create an ecological society, we must eliminate hierarchy and domination within human societies. This opposition to hierarchy and domination is shared by anarchist doctrines. However, many social ecologists also argue in favour of various forms of democratic government. The question that arises is whether you can have a government without hierarchy and domination. I argue that the political proposals put forward by various social ecologists entail hierarchical structures of political authority incompatible with the social ecological ideal of non-hierarchical, non-dominating community. Anyone committed to that ideal should therefore reject these proposals.
Anarchism, Marxism and the Bonapartist state
Saul Newman
This paper explores the question of state power and sovereignty in radical political theory through an examination of the classical anarchist critique of Marxism. It draws on the Bonapartist moment in Marx's thinking, seeing this as laying the groundwork for the development of a theory of the state as autonomous from class, suggesting that the implications of this argument are only fully realised in anarchism. Anarchism was able to develop a wholly autonomous and specific theory of state power and political authority - one that was irreducible to the Marxist class and economic analysis. I will argue that this had crucial consequences for contemporary radical political theory as it allowed the political dimension to emerge as a separate field of antagonism, demanding its own specific forms of analysis. I then explore the implications of this theoretical terrain through Agamben's analysis of biopower and state sovereignty, and Laclau and Mouffe's 'post-Marxist' understanding of hegemonic political identification, suggesting that there are important links here with anarchism that could be developed.
Russian roots: From populism to radical ecological thought
Viktor Postnikov
Today's 'Green' and ecological thinking closely resembles the principles elaborated by Tolstoy, Bakunin and Kropotkin. This paper provides a critical re-assessment of their thinking, noting their links with radical ecology.
REVIEW ARTICLES
The Party to End THE Party or The Street Party and Its Place in the End of Communism IAN WELSH
Cultural politics and revolutionary practice in Spanish anarchism RICHARD CLEMINSON
REVIEWS
Shibboleth: My Revolting Life
Penny Rimbaud aka J.J. Ratter
Crass Art and Other Pre Post-Modernist Monsters
Gee Vaucher
Allan Antliff
Free Schools, Free People
Ron Miller
David Gribble