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From the Fall of Saigon to the Fall of Lehman

Tue, 06/17/2014 - 06:33 — Sidewinder

[Chapter from AK Press "The End of the World as We Know It?"]

In a blurry black and white photograph from Italy in the 1960s, a worker rides a Vespa past a factory wall on which is scrawled operaist graffiti "Il Vietnam è in fabbrica" - Vietnam is in the factory. Today it would be more likely to find "The factory is in Vietnam" on the walls of the long-closed factory. Yet these two moments are not unconnected. So how did we get from the fall of Saigon to the fall of Lehman brothers, from Nixon to Obama? The answer from much of the Left seems to be "financialization", understood not as a materialist process, but as fulfillment of the Communist Manifesto's apocalyptic vision that "all that is solid melts into air."

Financialization, credit, debt become immaterial, intangible factors, things of air and fiction, in the process becoming explanations that explain nothing. Trying to step back from such ultimately unsatisfying interpretations, this chapter begins the attempt to outline a materialist history of how the global capitalist system has evolved since the demise of the post-WW2 Bretton Woods system in the ruins of Saigon, to the present day rise of China as the world's foremost industrial power and the onset of stagnation and decline of the West.

Solidarity, Engagement & the Revolutionary Organisation

Fri, 12/06/2013 - 10:56 — AndrewNFlood

Over the last couple of years the WSM has been going through a process of re-examining the way we relate to people interested in what we have to say. Alongside this we have recently begun to try and get a better understanding of what it is we do. Both these processes have some major implications in reaching an understanding of what the usefulness of a revolutionary organisation is in the modern era of broad and loose social networks.

 

Review of Volume 2 of the Anarchist FAQ

Tue, 05/14/2013 - 10:21 — AndrewNFlood

Back before many people had discovered the internet a small group of anarchists including this writer began work on the Anarchist FAQ. We were tired of having to provide the same basic explanations over and over as new people joined the news net group, alt.soc.anarchism, so we began the FAQ so newcomers could be referred to it.

I soon dropped out of the project as did most of the others involved but a small group, with Iain McKay the most active among them, kept working on it year after year. In the sixteen years that have passed the FAQ has became huge and an exhaustive argument for anarchism.

Awakening from the nightmare that is history (fiction)

Wed, 04/25/2012 - 05:15 — AndrewNFlood

"Hey, what the hell are you doing awake?"

He was startled. His slow mind was no more expecting to see me awake than to see a temple statue from last month's battlefield come to life. Perhaps he thought I had emerged from the empty bottle of scotch that lay on the floor at his feet.

I shot him cleanly through the head.

Review of Proudhon's "System of Economic Contradictions"

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 14:17 — Anarcho

System of Economic Contradictions

or, The Philosophy of Poverty

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon made his name with his first Memoir on property, 1840’s “What is Property?” After two more Memoirs in 1841 and 1842, his next major work was 1846’s “System of Economic Contradictions” in which he first used “mutualism” to describe his libertarian socialism (inspired by the workers in Lyons where he stayed in 1843).

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Anarchist Writers is both an article archive for modern anarchist writers and a blog site for the same writers.  You'll find articles written for publication elsewhere but then archived here in the centre column.  The right hand column has the latest blog posts from our writers.

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Anarchism & elections

Mon, 08/10/2009 - 04:54 — AndrewNFlood

If we do not wish to see society divided into order-givers and order-takers we should not take part in choosing the order-givers. Our goal is efficient grassroots democracy, which will be co-ordinated nationally and internationally. We hold that everyone affected by a decision should be able to have a direct say in making that decision.

Thinking about Anarchism: Smash the state

Tue, 08/04/2009 - 09:48 — AndrewNFlood

Anarchists see the state as a mechanism by which a minority imposes its will on the majority of the population. To maintain its hold of power the state forms whatever armed forces and judicial apparatus are deemed necessary to keep the level of dissent manageable. This is different from how most Marxists define the state, concentrating on the mechanism by which the state stays in power (bodies of armed men) rather then the function of the state. It is the characteristic of minority rule which defines the state for anarchists

Roadblocks on the Information Super-highway

Thu, 07/23/2009 - 09:13 — AndrewNFlood

An examination of the first attempts to censor anarchists online from 1995. The current structure of the internet makes effectively censoring it a very difficult prospect. And the crude attempts to set activists up for persecution has already met a heated response as thousands have e-mailed protest letters to some of the publications involved. A key factor in keeping the information freely flowing will be how far workers using and maintaining the net go along with or oppose this censorship.

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