Reviews

by Anarcho
Anarchist Writers
March 14, 2017

This year (2017) marks the 170^th anniversary of the publication of Karl Marx’s The Poverty of Philosophy, written in “reply” to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon’s System of Economic Contradictions published the year before. The book’s title is a play on the subtitle of Proudhon’s two volumes (“or, the Philosophy of Poverty”) and for Trotskyist Ernest Mandel “the prototype of that sort of implacable polemical writing which has often inspired the pens of Marx’s followers”. (The formation of the economic thought of Karl Marx [London: N.L.B., 1971], 53)

Given its age and stature, some may wonder why bother to review it? There are two reasons why this is no esoteric act.

Rebellion in Patagonia tells how the anarchist-organised rural workers strike in 1920-21 and win historic concessions, after the army and reformist politicians opt for compromise. The landowners are intent on destroying the workers’ organisation and resist implementing the agreement, which leads to the second strike (of 1921). The owners want a solution, one that leaves them in full control. ‘If the military doesn’t intervene, “there will be nothing but ruins and desolation.”’ (p148 quoting La Nación) Why is there a problem? ‘“Outside agitators, the aftertaste of unrestricted immigration, profess doctrines in which those who were once slaves will take the place of their oppressors.”’ (p121, quoting La Unión) Class interests are sprinkled with patriotic rhetoric. Political pressure is applied to the reformists. The army is encouraged – this time – to return things to ‘business as usual’. In other words, to massacre the strikers.

A Review of Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements (2015, AK Press/IAS) and Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology (2015, PM Press), by Kim Smith

Institute for Anarchist Studies
September 6, 2016

This book review appears in the current issue of Perspectives on Anarchist Theory (N. 29, on anarcha-feminisms) available here, from AK Press.

Review of Thomas Frank's Listen, Liberal: Or Whatever Happened to the Party of the People?

Review by Wayne Price

by Kevin Carson
August 11th, 2016
Center for a Stateless Society

from Desde el instinto

Black and Green Review is a U.S magazine that is the most recent project of John Zerzan and Kevin Tucker. Mr. Zerzan needs no introduction in anti-civ circles as he is, after Uncle Ted (Kaczynski) the best known theorist in the world in this school of thought. Kevin Tucker is less well-known, but he is a writer who works with Zerzan on publications such as Green Anarchy from last decade, but also on his own projects such as Species Traitor which was a magazine along the lines of the current Black and Green Review: more of a book than a magazine with various articles from different authors. As a magazine, Black and Green Review is physically very well made, with various sections of short and long articles, and it is a little over two hundred pages long.

Review by Jason McQuinn
Modern Slavery magazine

Max Stirner edited by Saul Newman (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2011) 223 pages, $90.00 hardcover.

Unruly Equality: US Anarchism in the 20th Century. Andrew Cornell. University of California Press. 2016.

In Unruly Equality: US Anarchism in the 20th Century, the US anarchist and educator Andrew Cornell portrays anarchism as a complex and historically evolving ideology which cannot be reduced to the search for individual freedom. The writer’s primary historiographical purpose is to offer a prehistory of contemporary anarchism and to underline the importance of the period 1940-60, which is frequently seen as one of stagnation for the anarchist movement in the United States.

by Ron Jacobs
The Counterpunch
January 15, 2016

by Miriam, Detroit
First of May Anarchist Alliance Minneapolis Collective

Ferguson, Roderick A. Aberrations in Black. Toward a Queer of Color Critique. (Minneapolis, London. University of Minnesota Press. 2004. Critical American Studies Series.)