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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > Anarchism
Nicolas Walter helped create the surge of political dissent that
came to Britain in the 1960s and 70s. For forty years he was a
contributor to the anarchist press, principally Freedom and its
companion periodicals Anarchy and The Raven. He was active in many
groups including the "Spies for Peace" and the Rationalist Press
Association, editing The New Humanist. This volume selects from his
extensive writings on anarchist history and theory. This book is a
virtual history of anarchism, reaching from its prehistory in the
American Revolution to the work of Murray Bookchin and Colin Ward
In this updated collection of essays, Zerzan explores the
understanding of how we got here and the actual depth of the human
plight to struggle for a qualitatively better reality. Originally
published in 1994, this edition includes all-new material from the
well regarded philosopher.
Penned by Chilean anarchist Jeszs Sepzlveda, "The Garden of
Peculiarities is a substantial 21st-century anarchist essay.
Previously published in Spanish and Portuguese, it makes the case
for neo-primitivism, or green anarchy, as the best tool for
activists battling mega-corporate globalization. Written in terse,
pointed prose, the book thoughtfully analyzes the deficiencies of
postindustrial culture and explores the best human and
plant-centered alternatives for dealing with them.
Jewish anarchism has long been marginalized in histories of
anarchist thought and action. Anna Elena Torres and Kenyon Zimmer
edit a collection of essays which recovers many aspects of this
erased tradition. Contributors bring to light the presence and
persistence of Jewish anarchism throughout histories of radical
labor, women's studies, political theory, multilingual literature,
and ethnic studies. These essays reveal an ongoing engagement with
non-Jewish radical cultures, including the translation practices of
the Jewish anarchist press. Jewish anarchists drew from a matrix of
secular, cultural, and religious influences, inventing new
anarchist forms that ranged from mystical individualism to
militantly atheist revolutionary cells. With Freedom in Our Ears
brings together more than a dozen scholars and translators to write
the first collaborative history of international, multilingual, and
transdisciplinary Jewish anarchism.
Sculptors Against the State considers the relation of anarchist
ideology to avant-garde sculpture through an examination of three
iconic artists whose work transformed European modernism: Umberto
Boccioni, Jacob Epstein, and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. Addressing such
complex subjects as sexual liberation, homosexuality, the history
of emotions, the ethics of violence, and tactics of nonviolent
resistance, Mark Antliff demonstrates how sculptural processes were
shaped by forms of anarchism calculated to foster a radical
community. The anarchist view that the State is a state of mind and
a set of social relationships is a central theme Antliff uses to
explore not only the art of Boccioni, Epstein, and Gaudier-Brzeska
but the associated aesthetics of radical luminaries such as Oscar
Wilde, F. T. Marinetti, and Ezra Pound. Taking Boccioni’s Unique
Forms of Continuity in Space, Epstein’s Tomb of Oscar Wilde, and
Gaudier-Brzeska’s Hieratic Head of Ezra Pound as a starting
point, Antliff argues that these sculptors saw the arts as a
radical catalyst for an entirely new constellation of interpersonal
relations and psychological dispositions—ones antithetical to
those propagated by the State. Powerfully argued and informed by
extensive archival research, Sculptors Against the State provides a
new understanding of these artists, even as it sheds light on why
contemporary anarchist theory is necessary for understanding the
profound cultural impact modernism had during the twentieth
century. Antliff’s work will be of interest to students and
scholars of modernist art and literature, and particularly those
who study the intersections between artistic practice and politics.
What shape can radical politics take today in a time abandoned by
the great revolutionary projects of the past? In light of recent
uprisings around the world against the neoliberal capitalist order,
Saul Newman argues that anarchism - or as he calls it postanarchism
- forms our contemporary political horizon. In this book, Newman
develops an original political theory of postanarchism; a form of
anti-authoritarian politics which starts, rather than finishes,
with anarchy. He does this by asking four central questions: who
are we as subjects; how do we resist; what is our relationship to
violence; and, why do we obey? By drawing on a range of heterodox
thinkers including La Boetie, Sorel, Benjamin, Stirner and
Foucault, the author not only investigates the current conditions
for radical political thought and action, but proposes a new form
of politics based on what he calls ontological anarchy and the
desire for autonomous life. Rather than seeking revolutionary
emancipation or political hegemony, we should affirm instead the
non-existence of power and the ever-present possibilities of
freedom. As the tectonic plates of our time are shifting, revealing
the nihilism and emptiness of our political and economic order,
postanarchism's disdain for power in all its forms offers us
genuine emancipatory potential.
2014 Reprint of 1902 Edition. Full facsimile of the original
edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. This
work is a landmark anarchist text by Peter Kropotkin, and arguably
one of the most influential and positive statements of the
anarchist political philosophy. It is viewed by many as the central
work of his writing career. It was first published in book form in
1898 in New York and London. Here Kropotkin shares his vision of a
more harmonious way of living based on cooperation instead of
competition. To a large degree, Kropotkin's emphasis is on local
organization, local production obviating the need for central
government. Kropotkin's vision is also on agriculture and rural
life, making it a contrasting perspective to the largely industrial
thinking of communists and socialists. Kropotkin's focus on local
production leads to his view that communities should strive for
self-sufficiency, the production of a community's own goods and
food, thus making import and export unnecessary. To these ends,
Kropotkin advocates irrigation and growth under glass and in fields
to boost local food production. This work has been widely
influential for anarchists and non-anarchist alike, and Kropotkin's
deductions are as controversial and revolutionary today as they
were when he formulated them.
A concise history of the significance and global reach of organised
anarchism, tracing its spread beyond the borders of Western Europe
and North America, to Latin America, the Caribbean, Middle East,
Asia, Oceania and Africa. Journalist Michael Schmidt identifies
five 'waves' of labour militancy that have defined organised
anarchism over the past 150 years, explaining the central features
of each.
"It's been a long time since I've read a more interesting,
informing, and inspiring book."-Bill Moyers What can we do beyond
Occupy Wall Street? Political and economic systems are failing us,
and it's time for citizens to create change-individually and
collaboratively. In The Leaderless Revolution, Carne Ross sounds a
call to action. With dramatic stories from the United States and
around the world, Ross's analysis contrasts with the naive,
Panglossian optimism of globalization boosters like Thomas
Friedman. Uncontrolled economic volatility, perpetual insecurity,
rampant inequality, and accelerating climate change are heading us
into a dangerous period of prolonged crisis. Ross-a former British
diplomat to Iraq who resigned over his nation's involvement in the
U.S.-led invasion-draws from his own experiences to offer an
empowering new vision of how we can put things right.
2011 Reprint of 1911 Edition. Emma Goldman (1869 - 1940) was an
anarchist known for her political activism, writing and speeches.
She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political
philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the
twentieth century. Anarchism was central to Goldman's view of the
world and she is today considered one of the most important figures
in the history of anarchism. First drawn to it during the
persecution of anarchists after the 1886 Haymarket affair, she
wrote and spoke regularly on behalf of anarchism. In the title
essay of her book Anarchism and Other Essays, she wrote:
"Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human
mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human
body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles
and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order
based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of
producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every
human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the
necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and
inclinations."
Anarchy and the Art of Listening is an ethnography of politics as
it is practiced on the other side of the spoken word, in the act of
listening. James Slotta explores how people in the Yopno Valley of
Papua New Guinea cultivate their listening to exercise power, shape
their futures, and sustain their communities in the face of
ambitious leaders and powerful outside institutions. As in many
parts of the global south, missionaries, NGO workers, educators,
mining companies, politicians, development experts, and others have
sought to transform life in and around the Yopno Valley. But as
this book makes clear, people there have not been a passive and
pliable audience for these efforts. They have brought their skills
as "anarchic listeners" to these encounters, advancing political
agendas of their own. To understand political life in the Yopno
Valley, we need to look not only at political speech but at the
practices that lie on the other side of the word in the act of
listening. This, Slotta suggests, is also true well beyond the
bounds of the Yopno Valley.
Deleuze and Guattari never identified as anarchists, nor do they
seem to know much about its historical development or continued
praxis. Yet their individual and collective work belies this
apparent and wilful oversight through a steady consideration of
revolutionary subjectivity and active political experimentation.
Chantelle Gray argues that while we cannot - and should not -
attempt to call them anarchists, their work resonates with core
anarchist principles such as prefiguration, careful experimentation
and emergent strategies aimed at creating a feeling that life is
worth living. This involves paying attention to both joyous affects
and sad passions, which necessitates the affirmation of all of
chance and, from that, fabulating new modes of existence. By
bringing together the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari with the
theory and practices of anarchism, this book demonstrates that
fabulating the future is nothing short of a noetic act, making
reasonable something which initially was senseless.
Caritina Pina Montalvo personified the vital role played by Mexican
women in the anarcho-syndicalist movement. Sonia Hernandez tells
the story of how Pina and other Mexicanas in the Gulf of Mexico
region fought for labor rights both locally and abroad in service
to the anarchist ideal of a worldwide community of workers. An
international labor broker, Pina never left her native Tamaulipas.
Yet she excelled in connecting groups in the United States and
Mexico. Her story explains the conditions that led to
anarcho-syndicalism's rise as a tool to achieve labor and gender
equity. It also reveals how women's ideas and expressions of
feminist beliefs informed their experiences as leaders in and
members of the labor movement. A vivid look at a radical activist
and her times, For a Just and Better World illuminates the lives
and work of Mexican women battling for labor rights and gender
equality in the early twentieth century.
The anarchist black cat and friends (including a walking round
bomb) take on the global arms trade, and militarism, in this latest
collection of barbed (and hilarious) anarchist political commentary
in the venerable comic strip form.
What is the relevance of anarchism for politics and political
theory today? While many have in the past dismissed anarchism, the
author contends that anarchism's heretical critique of authority,
and its insistence on full equality and liberty, places it at the
forefront of the radical political imagination today. With the
unprecedented expansion of state power in the name of security, the
current 'crisis of capitalism', and the terminal decline of Marxist
and social democratic projects, it is time to reconsider anarchism
as a form of politics. This book seeks to renew anarchist thought
through the concept of postanarchism. This innovative theoretical
approach, drawing upon classical anarchist theory,
poststructuralism, post-Marxism, critical theory and psychoanalytic
approaches, allows for a new engagement with contemporary debates
about future directions in radical politics relating to political
subjectivity and identity, political organisation, the State,
globalisation, liberty and equality today, and the political
'event'.
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