From Black Rose Anarchist Federation by Colin O’Malley
This article speaks on the failures of the anarchist movement to grow, despite numerous social movements, and how models of anarchist political organization point the way forward to overcome these pitfalls. This piece originally appeared in Perspectives on Anarchist Theory No. 27 (2014) published by the Institute for Anarchist Studies.
From Al Jazeera
Both anarchist violence of the past century and ISIL today have sought to bring radical change to the global order.
From Wildism
Among the weak arguments against Progress, there is the peculiar case of dominant ideologies hosting factions that reject it in the name of dominant values. The so-called “regressive left” is an example of this from humanism. The regressive left argues that Western civilization embodies power structures that prevent it from living up to humanist or post-humanist values. That is, these structures either prevent Western civilization from acknowledging the equal moral worth of all humans, or from acknowledging the moral standing of humans plus something else, like sentient animals or nature. For instance, Merchant (1980, p. 278) writes,
From Black Rose Anarchist Federation
In the midst of the worst economic crisis in decades, the left stands at a crossroads. Despite widespread anxiety, restructuring, stirrings, and disruptions, the left has been unable to respond or develop bases for movements and revolutionary organization in any meaningful sense. In many ways the eruption of the Occupy movement onto the center stage with all of its weaknesses in politics, structure, and dynamics, was a reflection of this. The events of Wisconsin, Occupy, the Oakland General Strike, and the May 1st mobilizations have brought to the fore the nature and potential of combative movements from below as well as the limits of present politics. At the very least since the financial crisis of 2008, social activists are looking for clearer paths towards anti-capitalist alternatives. Many are realizing that something more is needed beyond endless activism, protest politics, and vertical-style union and NGO mobilization. The base level of political education on the left, provided largely by non-profits and liberal university campuses, suddenly seem to have even fewer answers than before. This has left many turning towards political study to deepen their analysis as well as taking up questions around the need for political organization.
The politics of personal responsibility has been around for a few decades now. What first was a tense term, mostly used as an insult by the right, of politically correct has morphed into a mainstream popular culture game of privilege-checking, call-out culture, and the more nuanced calling-in.
From Agency: An anarchist project by B. Traven (CrimethInc.)
Really, Mr. Trump, it’s been surprising to hear some of the language you’ve been using in your Presidential campaign: globalization is a bad thing, you want fair trade rather than free trade, the global elites are out to get us. The last time I heard such rhetoric, I was inside a besieged convergence center preparing for a police raid.
I’m curious if you’re aware that there was already an anti-globalization movement? Like, twenty years ago?
If we take as reliable evidence the anxiety (verging to panic) that spread over the social media among supporters of Remain once the results of the British referendum were made known, it would seem that a real tragedy has been played out on the 23rd of June. Or was it a ‘triumph of democracy’, as the celebrations of some leftists, who saw in the result a vindication of their own anti-EU agenda, would have us believe? Without adopting an imaginary middle road, it is advisable to distance oneself from both attitudes; neither the mix of fear with self-righteous indignation against those who voted “Leave”, nor the hasty projection of one’s own wishes add anything to a critical understanding of the referendum, of its driving forces, its context and its outcome. A drama no doubt unfolds, but what is its nature? Arguing that Brexit, in its immediate manifestations, has more farcical elements than tragic, is not meant to suggest that the referendum was an insignificant event; far from it. A farce can be deadly serious in its consequences, so much so if it is part of an unfolding tragedy.
It is now 20 years since An Anarchist FAQ (AFAQ) was officially launched and six years since the core of it was completed (version 14.0). Its has been published by AK Press as well as translated into numerous languages. It has been quoted and referenced by other works. So it has been a success – although when it was started I had no idea what it would end up like.
“We can never recover an old vision, once it has been supplanted. But what we can do is to discover a new vision in harmony with the memories of old, far-off, far, far-off experience that lie within us.” —D.H. Lawrence
“All things are full of gods.” —Thales
“One existence, one music, one organism, one life, one God: star-fire and rock-strength, the sea’s cold flow And man’s dark soul.” — Robinson Jeffers
Summary: Crimethinc has initiated a discussion about the relationship between anarchism and democracy. Their opinion is that anarchism must be opposed to democracy—not only to bourgeois representative democracy but also to direct, participatory, libertarian-socialist, democracy. I argue, instead, that there is a struggle over the meaning of “democracy,” and that anarchism can and should be interpreted as the most radical, decentralized, and participatory extension of democracy.
Are Anarchism and Democracy Opposed? A Response to Crimethinc
by Wayne Price
