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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > Anarchism
A vibrant, deeply human portrait of a woman dedicated to fierce
protest against the tyranny of institutions over individuals, by
the celebrated author Emma Goldman is the story of a modern radical
who took seriously the idea that inner liberation is the first
business of social revolution. Her politics, from beginning to end,
was based on resistance to that which thwarted the free development
of the inner self. The right to stay alive in one's senses, to
enjoy freedom of thought and speech, to reject the arbitrary use of
power-these were key demands in the many public protest movements
she helped mount. Anarchist par excellence, Goldman is one of the
memorable political figures of our time, not because of her gift
for theory or analysis or even strategy, but because some
extraordinary force of life in her burned, without rest or respite,
on behalf of human integrity-and she was able to make the thousands
of people who, for decades on end, flocked to her lectures, feel
intimately connected to the pain inherent in the abuse of that
integrity. To hear Emma describe, in language as magnetic as it was
illuminating, what the boot felt like on the neck, was to
experience the mythic quality of organized oppression. As the women
and men in her audience listened to her, the homeliness of their
own small lives became invested with a sense of drama that acted as
a catalyst for the wild, vagrant hope that things need not always
be as they were. All you had to do, she promised, was resist. In
time, she herself would become a world-famous symbol for the spirit
of resistance to the power of institutional authority over the lone
individual. In Emma Goldman, Vivian Gornick draws a surpassingly
intimate and insightful portrait of a woman of heroic proportions
whose performance on the stage of history did what Tolstoy said a
work of art should do: it made people love life more.
Inform yourself! Inform on your neighbor! Follow Special Agent
Christian White on a cheerfully creepy tour of declassified
government surveillance documents. White probes the redacted
(blacked-out) texts of the FBI's notorious Counterintelligence
Programs, searching for the words erased in the name of the Freedom
of Information Act. Learn fun techniques for the infiltration of
activist groups, how to earn benefits and a pension as an agent
provocateur, and how to, in the words of J. Edgar Hoover, "expose,
disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize" your
neighbors! These are our tax dollars at work, folks; we might as
well enjoy it. This script has been performed by writer/activist
L.M. Bogad in theatres, galleries, labor halls, and community
centers for the past twelve years. The pamphlet also includes a
preface by Guillermo Gomez-Pena, and a companion essay by Bogad
about the history of domestic surveillance/harassment, and a "how
to" for would-be performers of the script.
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.
From the 1880s through the 1940s, tens of thousands of first- and
second-generation immigrants embraced the anarchist cause after
arriving on American shores. Kenyon Zimmer explores why these
migrants turned to anarchism, and how their adoption of its
ideology shaped their identities, experiences, and actions. Zimmer
focuses on Italians and Eastern European Jews in San Francisco, New
York City, and Paterson, New Jersey. Tracing the movement's
changing fortunes from the pre-World War I era through the Spanish
Civil War, Zimmer argues that anarchists, opposed to both American
and Old World nationalism, severed all attachments to their nations
of origin but also resisted assimilation into their host society.
Their radical cosmopolitan outlook and identity instead embraced
diversity and extended solidarity across national, ethnic, and
racial divides. Though ultimately unable to withstand the onslaught
of Americanism and other nationalisms, the anarchist movement
nonetheless provided a shining example of a transnational
collective identity delinked from the nation-state and racial
hierarchies.
Anarchists who supported the Cuban War for Independence in the
1890s launched a transnational network linking radical leftists
from their revolutionary hub in Havana, Cuba to South Florida,
Puerto Rico, Panama, the Panama Canal Zone, and beyond. Over three
decades, anarchists migrated around the Caribbean and back and
forth to the US, printed fiction and poetry promoting their
projects, transferred money and information across political
borders for a variety of causes, and attacked (verbally and
physically) the expansion of US imperialism in the 'American
Mediterranean'. In response, US security officials forged their own
transnational anti-anarchist campaigns with officials across the
Caribbean. In this sweeping new history, Kirwin R. Shaffer brings
together research in anarchist politics, transnational networks,
radical journalism and migration studies to illustrate how men and
women throughout the Caribbean basin and beyond sought to shape a
counter-globalization initiative to challenge the emergence of
modern capitalism and US foreign policy whilst rejecting
nationalist projects and Marxist state socialism.
In this clear and penetrating study, Ruth Kinna goes directly to
the heart of this controversial ideology, explaining the influences
that have shaped anarchism and the different tactics and strategies
that have been used by anarchists throughout history to achieve
their ends. Kinna covers themes both historical and acutely
contemporary, including: Could anarchy ever really be a viable
alternative to the state? Can anarchist ideals ever be consistent
with the justification of violence? How has anarchism influenced
the anti-globalization movement?
"Thank You, Anarchy "is an up-close, inside account of Occupy Wall
StreetOCOs first year in New York City, written by one of the first
reporters to cover the phenomenon. Nathan Schneider chronicles the
origins and explosive development of the Occupy movement through
the eyes of the organizers who tried to give shape to an uprising
always just beyond their control. Capturing the voices, encounters,
and beliefs that powered the movement, Schneider brings to life the
General Assembly meetings, the chaotic marches, the split-second
decisions, and the moments of doubt as Occupy swelled from a
hashtag online into a global phenomenon.
A compelling study of the spirit that drove this watershed
movement, "Thank You, Anarchy "vividly documents how the Occupy
experience opened new social and political possibilities and
registered a chilling indictment of the status quo. It was the
movementOCOs most radical impulses, this account shows, that shook
millions out of a failed tedium and into imagining, and fighting
for, a better kind of future.
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Eyewitness reports of the crushing counter-revolution from Augustin
Souchy, Jose Peirats, Burnett Bolloten and Emma Goldman. This
'minor' incident in the Spanish Civil War claimed more casualties
in the armed struggle that took place, than in the first week of
the military uprising in Barcelona on July 19th 1936.
For decades, most anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements
identified radical transformation with capturing state power. The
collapse of these statist projects from the 1970s led to a global
crisis of left and working class politics. But crisis has also
opened space for rediscovering alternative society-centred,
anti-capitalist modes of bottom-up change, operating at a distance
from the state. These have registered important successes in
practice, such as the Zapatistas in Mexico, and Rojava in Syria.
They have been a key influence on movements from Occupy in United
States, to the landless in Latin America, to anti-austerity
struggles in Europe and Asia, to urban movements in Africa. Their
lineages include anarchism, syndicalism, autonomist Marxism,
philosophers like Alain Badiou, and radical popular praxis. This
path-breaking volume recovers this understanding of social
transformation, long side-lined but now resurgent, like a seed in
the soil that keeps breaking through and growing. It provides case
studies with reference to South Africa and Zimbabwe, and includes a
dossier of key texts from a century of anarchists, syndicalists,
insurgent unionists and anti-apartheid activists in South Africa.
Originating in an African summit of radical academics, struggle
veterans and social movements, the book includes a preface from
John Holloway. The chapters in this book were originally published
as a special issue in the Journal of Contemporary African Studies,
with the addition of a new dossier on the history and voices of a
century of politics at a distance from the state in South Africa.
Anarchy and the Kingdom of God reclaims the concept of "anarchism"
both as a political philosophy and a way of thinking of the
sociopolitical sphere from a theological perspective. Through a
genuinely theological approach to the issues of power, coercion,
and oppression, Davor Dzalto advances human freedom-one of the most
prominent forces in human history-as a foundational theological
principle in Christianity. That principle enables a fresh
reexamination of the problems of democracy and justice in the age
of global (neoliberal) capitalism.
A tale, never before told, of anarchy, cooperation, and betrayal at
the margins of the Mexican revolution. In this long-awaited book,
Claudio Lomnitz tells a groundbreaking story about the experiences
and ideology of American and Mexican revolutionary collaborators of
the Mexican anarchist Ricardo Flores Magon. Drawing on extensive
research in Mexico and the United States, Lomnitz explores the
rich, complicated, and virtually unknown lives of Flores Magon and
his comrades devoted to the "Mexican Cause." This anthropological
history of anarchy, cooperation, and betrayal seeks to capture the
experience of dedicated militants who themselves struggled to
understand their role and place at the margins of the Mexican
Revolution. For them, the revolution was untranslatable, a pure but
deaf subversion: La revolucion es la revolucion-"The Revolution is
the Revolution." For Lomnitz, the experiences of Flores Magon and
his comrades reveal the meaning of this phrase. The Return of
Comrade Ricardo Flores Magon tracks the lives of John Kenneth
Turner, Ethel Duffy, Elizabeth Trowbridge, Ricardo Flores Magon,
Lazaro Gutierrez de Lara, and others, to illuminate the reciprocal
relationship between personal and collective ideology and action.
It is an epic and tragic tale, never before told, about camaraderie
and disillusionment in the first transnational grassroots political
movement to span the U.S.-Mexican border. The Return of Comrade
Ricardo Flores Magon will change not only how we think about the
Mexican Revolution but also how we understand revolutionary action
and passion.
A for Anonymous shows how a leaderless band of volunteers
successfully used hacktivism to fight for the underdog, embarrass
their rich and powerful targets-from Sony and Paypal to the Church
of Scientology and Ferguson Police Department-all in the name of
freedom of speech and information. Their exploits blurred the
distinction between "online" and "reality," and help shape our
contemporary world.
From the Arab Spring to the Spanish Indignados, from Occupy Wall
Street in New York to Nuit Debout in Paris, contemporary protest
bears the mark of citizenism, a libertarian and participatory brand
of populism which appeals to ordinary citizens outraged at the
arrogance of political and financial elites in the wake of the
Great Recession. The book draws from 140 interviews with activists
and live witnesses of occupations and demonstrations to explore the
new politics nurtured by the "movement of the squares" of 2011-16
and its reflection of an exceptional phase of crisis and social
transformation. Gerbaudo demonstrates how in waging a unifying
struggle against a perceived Oligarchy, today's movements combine
the neo-anarchist ethos of horizontality and leaderlessness,
inherited from the anti-globalisation movement, and a resurgent
populist demand for full popular sovereignty and the reclamation of
citizenship rights. The volume analyses the manifestation of this
ideology through the signature tactics of these upheavals,
including protest camps in public squares, popular assemblies and
social media activism. Furthermore it charts its political
ramifications from Podemos in Spain to Bernie Sanders in the US,
revealing how the public square occupations have been foundational
to current movements for radical democracy worldwide.
The Anarchist Inquisition explores the groundbreaking transnational
human rights campaigns that emerged in response to a brutal wave of
repression unleashed by the Spanish state to quash anarchist
activities at the turn of the twentieth century. Mark Bray guides
readers through this tumultuous era-from backroom meetings in Paris
and torture chambers in Barcelona, to international antiterrorist
conferences in Rome and human rights demonstrations in Buenos
Aires. Anarchist bombings in theaters and cafes in the 1890s
provoked mass arrests, the passage of harsh anti-anarchist laws,
and executions in France and Spain. Yet, far from a marginal
phenomenon, this first international terrorist threat had profound
ramifications for the broader development of human rights, as well
as modern global policing, and international legislation on
extradition and migration. A transnational network of journalists,
lawyers, union activists, anarchists, and other dissidents related
peninsular torture to Spain's brutal suppression of colonial
revolts in Cuba and the Philippines to craft a nascent human rights
movement against the "revival of the Inquisition." Ultimately their
efforts compelled the monarchy to accede in the face of
unprecedented global criticism. Bray draws a vivid picture of the
assassins, activists, torturers, and martyrs whose struggles set
the stage for a previously unexamined era of human rights
mobilization. Rather than assuming that human rights struggles and
"terrorism" are inherently contradictory forces, The Anarchist
Inquisition analyzes how these two modern political phenomena
worked in tandem to constitute dynamic campaigns against Spanish
atrocities.
Robert Nozick's "Anarchy, State and Utopia" is one of the works
which dominates contemporary debate in political philosophy.
Drawing on traditional assumptions associated with individualism
and libertarianism, Nozick mounts a powerful argument for a minimal
nightwatchman' state and challenges the views of many contemporary
philosophers, most notably John Rawls.
Jonathan Wolff's new book is the first full-length study of
Nozick's work and of the debates to which it has given rise. He
situates Nozick's work in the context of current debates and
examines the traditions which have influenced his thought. He then
critically reconstructs the key arguments of "Anarchy, State and
Utopia," focusing on Nozick's Doctrine of Rights, his Derivation of
the Minimal State, and his Entitlement Theory of Justice. The book
concludes by assessing Nozick's place in contemporary political
philosophy.
An analyses on the radical collectives organized in Spain. "The
eyewitness reports and commentary presented in this highly
important study reveal a different understanding of the nature of
socialism and the means for achieving it."--Noam Chomsky
Translating Anarchy tells the story of the anti-capitalist
anti-authoritarians of Occupy Wall Street who strategically
communicated their revolutionary politics to the public in a way
that was both accessible and revolutionary. By "translating" their
ideas into everyday concepts like community empowerment and
collective needs, these anarchists sparked the most dynamic
American social movement in decades.
An early text from Tiqqun that views cybernetics as a fable of late
capitalism, and offers tools for the resistance. The
cybernetician's mission is to combat the general entropy that
threatens living beings, machines, societies-that is, to create the
experimental conditions for a continuous revitalization, to
constantly restore the integrity of the whole. -from The Cybernetic
Hypothesis This early Tiqqun text has lost none of its pertinence.
The Cybernetic Hypothesis presents a genealogy of our "technical"
present that doesn't point out the political and ethical dilemmas
embedded in it as if they were puzzles to be solved, but rather
unmasks an enemy force to be engaged and defeated. Cybernetics in
this context is the tekne of threat reduction, which unfortunately
has required the reduction of a disturbing humanity to packets of
manageable information. Not so easily done. Not smooth. A matter of
civil war, in fact. According to the authors, cybernetics is the
latest master fable, welcomed at a certain crisis juncture in late
capitalism. And now the interesting question is: Has the guest in
the house become the master of the house? The "cybernetic
hypothesis" is strategic. Readers of this little book are not
likely to be naive. They may be already looking, at least in their
heads, for a weapon, for a counter-strategy. Tiqqun here imagines
an unbearable disturbance to a System that can take only so much:
only so much desertion, only so much destituent gesture, only so
much guerilla attack, only so much wickedness and joy.
His classic vision of a new world, updated by Colin Ward.
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